We’re a Little Testy, Aren’t We? It is August so the nightmares will begin.  I have had these beginning-of-the-school-year teaching nightmares since my first assignment in 1970.  The venues and people in the dreams may change but the themes are usually the same:  unpreparedness or lateness.  I am late for one of my five classes, or I can’t find the right room to teach in or I forgot my notes or...

Unfit to be Tied One result of my Parkinson’s is that my brain has replaced my two hands with oven mitts.  Surprisingly the oven mitts are still adept at certain things like tying small flies (an eighth of an inch), wielding the mighty dvr remote, and typing this blog (although that is becoming more difficult).  Using the oven mitts to accomplish other tasks like dressing oneself is very...

I Want to Stop and Smell the Roses, But I think I first noticed that something was wrong with my sense of smell when my English Leather didn’t smell right. For those of you young men raised on Prorosa or Truefitt & Hill Trafalgar and Dr. Carver’s Aftershave and other post shave “balms,” (how are young boys going to become men by applying balms instead of after shave which, when splashed on,...

Blog8_2_2016 Sherri With an “I”   Parkinson’s has definitely affected my ability to argue, and that is a shame because I love to argue politics and ideas and ethics.  That is a legacy from my four years at Villanova.  I am certain this occurred on other campuses, especially in the sixties, but Villanova was big on questioning things, on finding the truth.  It was not enough to make a...

Blog7_22_2016 In the Blink of an Eye As I wrote in My Left Shaky Foot, on my first visit to my neurologist, he pointed out to his resident student that I was not blinking.  I blinked a few times.  The blink was working.  What was he talking about?  There are so many actions and reactions that our body conducts every single minute that, if we paid conscious attention to them all, we could not...