Lessons from a Gold Kippah

It is a Saturday morning in autumn, 1969. I am sitting in the 7th row of Congregation B’nai Zion, a Conservative synagogue in Chicago’s East Rogers Park. In addition to my suit and prayer shawl, I am wearing a shiny gold Kippah, the emblem of the temple’s Post Bar/Bat Mitzvah Club. My job this morning is to present the new Bar Mitzvah boy with an identical Kippah and invite him to join the club.

I watch and listen as the young man chants his Haftarah and blessings. The Rabbi gives a benediction and a short sermon. As a representative of the Women’s Club presents the Bar Mitzvah with a silver Kiddush cup, I await a signal from the Cantor that I should step up to the Bimah to make the next presentation.

No signal. I try to catch the Cantor’s eye. Still nothing. I subtly point to my gold Kippah. Not an inkling of recognition. I stay in my seat and the service moves to the concluding prayers. The young man/boy never receives his special gold invitation, and I am frustrated and embarrassed in my seat.

I learned a lesson that morning. That frustration stayed with me. Wait for a signal, and it might never come. When the time is right, get up and take the stage.

That takeaway has guided me throughout my career. I’ve applied for professional positions for which I wasn’t exactly qualified. Sometimes, I got them, and sometimes, I didn’t. If I did, I held my own, learning on the job.

I started writing a blog without knowing if anyone wanted to read it. It turns out, lots of people do. Without training, I’ve written a play and submitted it to a producer. That may have been a step too far, but it was a learning experience.

On countless occasions, I have stepped forward to take civic posts and volunteer positions, and I thrived when I did. And now, as the April 1 municipal election approaches, my name is once again on the ballot as I run for trustee of my home village of Riverwoods.

There will never be a Bat Signal lighting up the sky. There may never even be a Cantor discretely signaling you to the stage. Don’t wait for a sign. Go out and create your opportunity. As Nike says “Just do it.”

A Pathologist Remembers

One of the sweetest things about my long pathology career was the lifestyle. My duties at Holy Family Hospital and UroPartners Laboratory rarely impacted family life. There were few urgent calls and even fewer true emergencies. I endured only one “all-nighter” at Holy Family—the night of November 8, 1988. There was no medical crisis that night but it was the capstone of a very special project, the installation of the hospital’s first full-service laboratory computer system.

In the early 1980s Holy Family was a small but busy suburban Catholic hospital, overshadowed by its big-boy neighbors, Lutheran General and Northwest Community Hospitals. Despite its small stature, it was the first hospital where I encountered a computerized ordering system for lab tests. The system notified the phlebotomy team which patients needed blood drawn each morning. A special time code, 11:11, indicated a STAT draw. The network was rudimentary, but functional.

In the spring of 1988, our Director, Dr. Earl Suckow, was pressured by the hospital medical staff to install a more up-to-date laboratory system that could not only receive orders but also collate all a patient’s lab results in one easy-to-read report. This was the dawning of a new era in laboratory communications. Dr. Suckow had little interest in the details of installing a system and assigned me with our lab manager Bakul to begin the task.

Only a few, small commercial companies were providing the type of system we required. After several site visits, Bakul and I chose Terrano, an Ohio company, as our vendor. Three of our lab section managers, Marianne, Jeff, and Jana, became my team, while Terrano sent us Kay, an experienced installation expert, to guide us.

The team spent the next several months grinding through the details of designing our reporting system. Every unit of measurement had to be verified, every normal range reviewed, and every medical comment parsed. At what time of day reports would be printed, and what staff was responsible for delivering them and entering them into the patient’s charts, was negotiated with the hospital nursing staff. We even battled over the colors for the various types of reports: in-patient, out-patient, remote.

As the months passed, our team dwindled. Marianne had a complicated pregnancy, Jana resigned from the hospital, Jeff had too many other responsibilities. As Installation Day approached, Kay and I were the last survivors.

November 8th was Election Day. While the rest of the nation followed the battle between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, Kay and I began our final preparation. We verified both the lab and nursing staff had been trained, all terminals were in place, and the printers were loaded with ink and paper.

At about 5 pm we hit “Go” on the new system. Kay and I spent the night watching the orders trickle in, comparing each one to the simultaneous order in the old ordering system. We generated the draw list and labels for our phlebotomists, and began nodding off as the first test results crossed the interface from the CBC analyzer into the new computer system.

By the afternoon of November 9, it was clear that George Bush would be our next president, and that our Terrano computer system was a success. Kay and I exchanged high fives before she headed off to O’Hare and her flight to Ohio*. I told the lab night manager to call me only if absolutely necessary, and I went home and get some much needed sleep.

It was good to be a pathologist!

*In researching this post I discovered that Kay passed away four years ago at the young age of 58. I am sorry I never spoke to her again after our successful all-night installation.

Dear Readers,

You all know me or have read my blog posts enough to feel like you do. I’m level-headed and quiet, and I rarely let my emotions get the best of me. I like to keep my posts light, with politics usually playing only a tangential role. While I don’t hide my liberal leanings, I won’t hit you over the head with them every time I post.

This morning, however, I feel like letting loose. I read something in The New York Times that made me pop my cork. An opinion piece by Brooke Harrington, a professor of economic sociology at Dartmouth, laid out a compelling case against Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE. It was a well-written column, and I found myself nodding in agreement as I read. So far, my cork was intact.

Then I turned to the online comments—something I’ve only recently started doing. The first half-dozen responses echoed my sentiments, with some minor quibbles over specific points.

But then came the comment that made my blood boil and my cork fly. A reader from Boston dismissed the entire column implying it was all liberal lunacy and overstatements. That kind of reaction isn’t new, and I was prepared to brush it off—until I reached their final argument.

In reference to federal employee layoffs, they wrote:

“Those who are crying a river for all federal employees should remember that things like that happen to millions of Americans every single day, and guess who is mourning them—no one.” (My emphasis.)

Where did that claim come from? A misleading tweet? A sensationalized headline? In reality, job losses fluctuate, but on average, about 3.25 million people lose their jobs each month—that’s roughly 150,000 per business day. A lot of people, yes, but nowhere near “millions every single day.”

And you know what? People do mourn for those who lose their jobs in the private sector. I’ve seen it firsthand, especially in health care, where private equity firms swoop in, pay those at the top, and gut the support staff. Incidentally, those same private equity firms stand to gain the most from the continuation of the Trump tax cuts.

So today, I’m venting—not just at one misinformed comment, but at the broader atmosphere of misinformation and distrust that allows such claims to flourish. I’ll try to put the cork back in before my next post—but no promises!

The last time I used my blog to contemplate bullies was last October. In that post, I told the story of Gary and his confederate Jean, the tyrants of my freshman year in high school. Their ruthlessness and aggressiveness were used against the weak and frightened just to gain a bit of pocket change and a sense of power. I concluded that post by comparing them to the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump.

Since October, two events have led me to reexamine that post. The first was a surprise, and the other was totally to be expected.

The first. I was sitting on the sidelines of my usual pickleball court, waiting for my turn to play. I was chatting with Betty, my partner in the previous game. We went through the usual routine of exchanging names, occupations, and a bit of history. To our surprise, we both attended the same Rogers Park high school.

When she told me her maiden name, my jaw dropped. “You’re Gary’s sister!” I exclaimed.

It was true. She was the sister of the nightmare of my youth. Without prompting, she said, “I know he was a terror, but he was really such a nice guy. And he was a great brother. No one EVER hassled me. Jean was a sweetheart too.”

I replied that I was sure Gary looked out for her, but in my heart, I knew there was no way I would ever think of Gary and Jean as “nice guys.” You are what you do.

That motto is also borne out by the other, less surprising, event I referred to above. The election of Donald Trump has given new meaning to bullying. Along with his pal Jean Elon, he has set his sights on remaking our country as a monument to himself, King Donald I. Instead of pocket change he tries to shake mineral rights out of the pockets of those he terrorizes. He lacks any empathy for those he attacks. He defends his tyrant buddies, but I doubt he can find one of them who would consider him a “nice guy.”

I survived my freshman year in high school by avoiding Gary whenever I could. The only way to survive now is to resist and fight back. I hope you can show me the way.

Last night, I attended a local Board of Trustees meeting in our village. The meeting discussed an issue that was raising some heat among the town’s residents. Many of the villagers stepped forward to address the Board. Some received thunderous ovations after they spoke, but others were not treated as kindly.

The issue at hand was tangentially related to tax rates, which led one resident to say (and I paraphrase) “I understand why I have to pay taxes for the schools, even though I don’t have school-age children. But why do I have to pay taxes for a library? It’s 2025, who needs a library?”

My heart sank.

I am sure I can remember every public library I have ever spent time in. I started visiting the Chicago Public Library Branch on Clark Street in Rogers Park as a toddler My mother firmly clenched my hand as she browsed the shelves, looking for a summer read. Soon I was allowed to explore the library on my own—followed by journeys downtown to hunt and peck at the children’s section of the Michigan Avenue Central Library.

I fondly recall my first library card, and the bright strips of paper inserted into each book at checkout. I also recall how my reading tastes changed from Dr. Suess stories to Encyclopedia Brown mysteries, to enjoying the Grand Dame of Mystery, Agatha Christie. It was in a library book that I found out who murdered Roger Ackroyd.

As I grew older, my love for libraries only deepened and as a suburbanite, I always took advantage of nearby libraries. I quickly learned where the new fiction was kept, how to find the best mysteries, and where I could find interesting magazines to kill a few minutes while waiting for someone. I even won a trivia/book treasure hunt contest at one municipal branch. That was years before my Jeopardy! debut.

I discovered so many authors at my library: John Le Carre and his British agents, Daniel Silva and his Israeli team, and Lee Child and his American loner. For a taste of something different, there was thought-provoking or historical non-fiction.

When Barb convinced me that my long daily commute was a perfect time to listen to audiobooks, I prowled until I found my library’s Books-on-CD section. John Steinbeck’s East of Eden was the first novel I listened to, and it remains one of my favorites. Ernest Hemingway, Philip Roth, and even Harlan Coben went from the library’s CD rack to the player in my car. And when cars no longer came equipped with a CD player, the library had provisions for downloading to my phone. From there via Bluetooth I could convey the latest Dana French novel to my SUV’s speakers.

Libraries are wonderful, magical, places. So to the woman who spoke at the Board meeting, I need to say that maybe, maybe, no one NEEDS a library. But what a world of pleasure they can provide!

If you enjoy reading “Getting More From Les”, please help us grow. Subscribe and share with friends. Subscriptions are free.

Promos announcing the airing of Season 2 of Severance have been airing on Apple TV+ for several weeks. The series, whose smash-hit first season aired in 2022, is set in an eerie company whose employees have voluntarily had their memories, personalities, and life experiences bifurcated into at-work “innies” and at-home “outies.” The show asks whether you can remember what you have never experienced.

Last week, I sat down to watch the opening episode of the new season. And I was stunned. No, not by the brilliant acting or evocative music. Not by plot twists or ready answers to Season 1 cliffhangers. I was shocked that it all felt new and foreign to me. What was the plot? What had those cliffhangers been? Why didn’t I remember any of it?

No, I haven’t been subjected to a severance-inducing intra-cranial capsule insertion. I am a victim of the malady of “streaming overseeing.”

Barb and I will choose a series recommended by friends, family, or critics and watch an episode a night until we have completed the show’s cycle. Then we repeat the process with a new series.

We enjoy each series as we binge-watch it. We have visited dystopian worlds, laughed and cried with families from every continent, and tracked down a rich bounty of spies, crooks, and dastardly traitors. We feel lost when one series ends and we are searching for a worthy successor.

Despite how entertaining these shows are, it is amazing how quickly my memory of them becomes muddled, mixed with remembrances of the ones that have come before. Which Australian show snuck in a wicked step-grandmother? Was it Offspring, Packed to the Rafters, or A Place to Call Home? Was the explosion on the moon part of For All Mankind, or did that happen at the beginning of Foundation? I know one of the multiple Yellowstone prequels featured Helen Mirren. But which one? Who played her husband?

The premise of Severance is so unique that it would be difficult to mix it up with another show. My memories of it have just been submerged by the weight of all those other worlds. I knew I couldn’t continue the second season without a refresher course, so I rewatched all of Season 1. Nothing in it was familiar to me. Every twist and turn was new and fresh. It was great.

And I will remember it all until something new comes along and severs my brain one more time!

Please help “Getting More from Les” grow. Share this post with one other reader. or share on social media. And as always, let me know what you think.

Thank you for your support.

Monday is a momentous day for the United States, marking both Martin Luther King Day—a time to honor a civil rights icon—and Inauguration Day. It’s a time of reflection on leadership, democracy, and the power of the vote. This got me thinking: who has received the most votes in U.S. history? Male or female, President or Vice President, who is the ultimate “Lifetime Big Kahuna” of American elections?

Let’s count down the top five vote-getters in national elections and crown the winner on our abbreviated version of America’s Top Forty. Can you guess who is at Number One?

#5: Al Gore — 143 Million Votes
In the three national elections from 1992 to 2000, Al Gore amassed an impressive 143 million votes. He won the Vice Presidency twice as Bill Clinton’s running mate, and then famously lost the 2000 Presidential race to hanging chads and the Supreme Court. I doubt Al agrees with Meatloaf that, “two out of three ain’t bad.” Although Gore fell short of the Oval Office, his environmental advocacy and national presence have left a lasting legacy.

#4: Richard Nixon — 182 Million Votes
Richard Nixon’s career was as remarkable as it was tumultuous. Over five national elections, from his Vice Presidential bids with Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 to his three Presidential runs in 1960, 1968, and 1972, Nixon garnered 182 million votes. He won four of those elections, making him a dominant figure of his era, even if Tricky Dick’s second term as President ended with the Watergate scandal and disgrace.

#3: George H.W. Bush — 186 Million Votes
The 41st President of the United States, George H.W. Bush, takes third place on our survey with 186 million votes in four elections from 1980 to 1992. He was victorious twice as Ronald Reagan’s Vice President, but flanked by Dan Quayle he succeeded in only one of his two Presidential bids. Though his reelection bid in 1992 fell short, Bush’s patrician demeanor and success in the first Gulf War left a mark on American history.

#2: Donald Trump — 214 Million Votes
Number 2 on the list is President Trump, a position I am sure Rudy Guliani and Sidney Powell would help him improve. His total of 214 million votes is impressive, probably comparable to the number of votes Richard J. Daley received from the City of Chicago in any of his frequent mayoral runs. Just think how many votes Trump could have with someone like The Boss (Daley, not Springsteen) in his corner.

#1: Joe Biden — 291 Million Votes
And now, the undisputed “Lifetime Big Kahuna” of American elections: Joe Biden. With Vice Presidential elections alongside Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, combined with his two Presidential campaigns in 2020 and 2024, Biden’s lifetime total stands at a staggering 291 million votes. His record-breaking 81 million votes in the 2020 election solidified his place in history as the candidate with the most individual votes ever cast in a single election. Biden’s political career, spanning decades, reflects the enduring power of perseverance and public service. We will be sorry to see you go, Joe.

Conclusion:
There you have it, America’s top five vote-getters. These leaders represent the highs and lows of American democracy, earning their places in history through the astounding number of citizens who supported them. Love them or hate them, they each received a staggering number of votes on the national stage.

The next time you’re at the polling booth, remember: every vote contributes to the story of our nation’s leaders—and maybe, just maybe, to a future “Big Kahuna.” As Casey Kasem used to say, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars!”

Help “Getting More From Les” grow. Please forward or share today’s post to one or more readers!

Do you keep a journal or a diary? A daily reminder of how you have spent the past 24 hours? Your activities? Your thoughts? Your meals?

I have never been a diarist—I lack the patience to capture life with a daily entry. While my blog posts sometimes read like a page from a diary, they are too sporadic and their focus is too variable to be a realistic depiction of my daily life.

But there is one journal I am meticulous about. For the last 35 years, I have been logging my physical fitness workouts. It’s all there, in three spiral-bound steno notebooks. Every mile I have run, every stride on the elliptical, every Tabata-lite class I have taken, and every session with a trainer is listed in precise chronological order.

The series of places I have worked out at all make their appearance. The Cardiac Rehab Center at Holy Family Hospital, the microscopic fitness centers near my former Westchester laboratory, and park district facilities in Buffalo Grove and Deerfield are all included in my tiny block lettering. Each mention reminds me of a different phase in my life.

I record my weight and my maximum heart rate. Did I listen to a CD on a 5-mile voyage through the neighborhood? That’s listed too. (In this age of streaming I have stopped keeping track of my workout soundtrack.)

Over time snippets of other data have crept into the rows of statistics. A brief mention of a sore back explains a two-week absence of exercise. Acknowledgments of trips abroad, trips at sea, and trips through the USA all explain some of the gaps, as do references to the occasional medical procedures.

I can look through my logbooks and see how often I worked out on the days before our son or daughter were married—and how exhaustion kept me on the sidelines for a few days after. I can even see how the death of my mother affected my stamina and vigor in the weeks following her passing.

Of course, it is an incomplete picture of my last 35 years. There are no happy emojis at the birth of a grandchild and no sad ones at the loss of a pet. But examining each page does bring back memories—recollections of weddings, funerals, and travels.

Having those logbooks motivates me to keep on going, to keep on listing row after row of entries. And maybe I’ll include some notes to my future self—at least a smiling emoji or a thumbs up now and then!

Rediscovering My Writing Dream

In the first year of my retirement, when our four grandchildren were younger and I was more ambitious, I vowed to write a children’s book and dedicate it to them. A car ride with three of the children suggested an outline for the story—it would be the story of a five-year-old boy who was enjoying an afternoon with his cousins and grandparents but also wished he was at home playing with his baby sister. He wanted to be in two places at once.

How could he do that? In my story, a magic car wash would be filled with bristly brushes, spurting hoses, and foaming soap in a long, narrow tunnel. While the car and its passengers were being pulled along the car wash rails, the occupants, guided by a giant rooster (don’t ask) could amazingly be in two places simultaneously. Thanks to the magic car wash, the young lad could travel with his cousins in the car and play with his sister at home, all at the same time.

The grandkids loved the idea — especially the rooster — so much that I decided to take the next step: attending a free online seminar teaching how to write, edit, and publish a children’s book. The seminar speaker, Miss L, promised penning and illustrating a bestseller would be easy, especially if I signed up for some of her (not free) advanced seminars and tutorials.

That seminar was months ago. Despite nearly daily emails from Miss L reminding me that “today is the day to start my writing voyage,” my project has fallen by the wayside, buried beneath other priorities and responsibilities.

The kids haven’t forgotten though. They continue to ask me if I have written about our special car wash. Barb gives me an occasional nudge too.

But nothing has sparked my motivation—until today, that is. Today the universe sent me a sign that the time for writing is now.

How do I know some cosmic force is telling me to write my book? What is the sign?

Every morning my inbox contains a new “Word of the Day.” Sometimes it’s a word I know, sometimes it’s a word I only think I know, and sometimes it’s a new word for my lexicon.

Today’s word was a newbie for me, Isochronous. The definition of isochronous? Why, it’s multiple events occurring at the same time! Just like the story I want to tell in my book.

Thanks to that little push, I think I am ready to get to work. After all, I now have a working title: The Isochronous Self-Service Filling Station and Car Wash! I know Miss L, Barb, and the grandchildren will be delighted that I am finally getting started.

Kids and blog readers, look for it soon at bookstores and/or gas stations near you. It’s going to be big!

What are your unfulfilled ambitions? I’d like to know what our readers yearn for. Leave a comment, or send them to me at lesrraffblogger@myyahoo.com.

My doctor's visit has just ceased
I've barely left her clutches
When my Apple watch begins to chime
And jerks me off my crutches.*

It's not the instructions that give me pause
I know it's good to read 'em
It's the final line all marked in bold
That has my ulcers steamin'*

"Won't you please go rate my care,
The highest score the better
So that on Yelp and Docs on Call
I'll be the best bone-setter."

"Did the receptionist smile when you paid your bill?
Did our valet park your car right?
Was the coffee hot when you filled your mug?
We need the rating airtight!"

Wherever you go, whatever you do
Your compelled now to relate it
What's right, what's wrong. no in-between
And you better not predate it.

The plumber and the moving man
Your barber and Mom's electrician
Want ten points on a ten point scale
They should pay me a commission!

When I buy doo-dads on Amazon
A hose or some eye-glass cleaner
Jeff Bezos's boys will send a link
That to ignore's a misdemeanor.

"Was the product shipped in a timely way?
Did it meet your satisfaction?
Did the nozzle leak, did the cleaner smear?
Did we take the proper action?"

I understand about data points
They want customers with opinions
But for me it's just a waste of time
I'm not one of the rating minions.

To one request I will respond
When my time on earth is nigh done.
And the God above says "Rate your life."
I'll say "Dear Lord I had a fine one!"

*To my dear friends who may worry, I currently have neither broken bones or painful ulcers!

	

		

							

					

												

							
								Type your email…							
													
												

							
							
							
							
							
							
							
														
								Subscribe							
						
					
				
								
	
	
Share
Leave a comment