Yesterday my unelected dictator, the man who usually drives me – a well-groomed and sprightly 2023 Ford Transit Trail – fell down and got a boo boo. I’m not impressed, and not very sorry. He’s been pushing the envelope – taking me into snow, ice, cold like single digits on the Kelvin scale, and parking … More Milton gets homesick
Happy 4th of July. I lift my cup of cool pink lemonade and offer a toast: To freedom. And the character to preserve it. … More Gap Year. Week 27.
Now we wait. … More Gap Year, Week 26
“Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”
… More Gap Year, Week 22
Memorial Day is in the rearview mirror, and the summer of my Gap Year is officially here. This is shaping up to be the most important phase of the journey as I begin to seriously work on applications to low-residency MFA programs in creative writing. My heart and mind, though, remain anchored in clinical genetics. … More Gap Year, Week XXI
No frills. Busy reading. I am making up for years lost, years focused on 10-page medical review articles, chapters on next-generation sequencing, neurofibromatosis, Birt-Hogg-Dube syndrome. For at least a decade, the number of novels read per year has been in the low single digits. If there is to be a transition to a life as … More Gap year, week 20
There will be a time when the soldiers will be forgotten, just a footnote dissolved in the cauldron of data that eons and events will churn and dilute, when our soil and planets, our hearts and light will return to stardust.
In the meantime, we can remember, if we so choose. Then the question is “Why?”
… More Gap Year, week nineteen
Since January I have been on this interesting journey from medicine to writing. Since Week 15, my last posting in mid-April, I have been distracted from writing by the best of all excuses – adventure and exploration, friends and family, haunts old and new. The photo here is moonrise over the Mississippi, from the shore … More Gap year, week unknown
I appreciate everyone reading my weekly posts about this interesting year between medicine (1.0 FTE) and writing. I’m starting to get some of those unsettling questions, though, like, “What are you writing?” Puts me on the spot. I am unpracticed in apologetic hand waving and have a natural tendency to feel guilty. Afraid to confess … More Gap year; week 14
Gap Year – Week 13 I am a quarter of the way through this gap year, the 12 months between fanatical obsession with exome sequencing and full-time dedication to the writing life. The past few weeks we have focused on a new adventure – Van Life. My wife and I have been thinking about this … More Gap year. Week 13.
Welcome or welcome back to my travels between respectability and susceptibility. Less than three months ago I was an employed clinical geneticist. Now I’m the retiree ordering a cappuccino in the forenoon. This month my plans have been to focus on nonfiction, including medicine, but I have not been especially efficient. We took a week … More Gap Year -> Week Eleven
Truth is stranger than fiction. You can see here a beard (me) in a hooded sweatshirt. What is probably true is that it is my Hamilton College lacrosse sweatshirt, last worn in 1979, then saved in several generations of cardboard boxes and moved from Clinton to Baltimore to Boston to Bethesda, Tacoma, Seoul, Vienna (VA), … More Gap Year | Week 9
This goalie says, “I find your aim to be …. disappointing.” Springtime, or close enough to spring, means one important thing. Lacrosse season is here. I watched Georgetown (ranked 19) beat Notre Dame (ranked 1) in Indiana. Very exciting. I played lax WBITD (Way Back In The Day), and my family has some lacrosse heritage … More Gap Year – Week 8
Ontology and cheeseburgers! Last week we skied Crested Butte (Colorado) and Taos (New Mexico) on bluesky mornings and afternoons, almost spring temperatures, to the point that a few snowboarders at the top of Siver Queen Express opted to honor their bravado and pectorales majores by not wearing shirts. No, I doubt they bothered with sunscreen. … More Gap Year: Week 5
We are getting used to Summit County, Colorado. Over the past 2 weeks we have skied Breckenridge, Keystone, Arapahoe Basin, and Vail. The idea is to get better, and today we were happily – well, maybe not happily, but with a modicum of attenuated terror – handling bumps and blacks. And minimal injuries! All I … More Gap Year: January 22, 2024
Late lunch at Bread and Salt in Frisco. Paula and I walked down 5th to Main, the windy snow at our backs, the atmosphere January grey. Curbside seating was not offered. The patio chairs and bistro tables were mounded with a cubit of snow, the yellow umbrellas furled and resentful of the chill and desertion. … More Gap Year: January 15, 2024
I’m taking a gap year. Yes, I think I’ve earned it. Perhaps it’s more like a sabbatical. No, let’s call it a gap year. Such 12-month vacations didn’t become popular or common until I was well past high school graduation in 1973. Back in the early 70s, if you decided to knock around after 12th … More Gap year : week one
This young couple has a secret. … More Beaumont Avenue, 1938
Albeit reluctantly. You understand that a 2023 Ford Transit Trail, a class B campervan RV, has limited credibility. Even among quantum physicists. And the physicists’ cats. But that’s an inside joke that’s not trying to get out. My reluctance stems from another paradox – that if one spreads the word that a remote and pristine … More Milton Recommends
Hey! Nice day, yeah? We class B RVs are keen on blue skies and crisp fall air. We put on airs. Except Sprinter Vans, they’ve got airs built in so they can’t put them on or take them off. Mercedes. Oooh la la. I’m a blue collar Ford, except I have an Ecoboost 350 engine … More Milton gets ferried
Hot hot hot hot hot hot hot. Hey, something is going on. And I don’t mean in Idaho or Alaska. Or DC. Well, maybe DC. Who, me? We’ve not met? Excuse me. I’m Milton, the campervan. Class B. More precisely, a 2023 Ford Transit Trail now upfitted and … well, is it upfit or upfitted? … More Milton’s too dang hot!
Of course I have not forgotten that a year encompasses just 52 weeks. But a gap year is more flexible than what we admire as the legal, orthodox, and obdurate movement of the earth around the sun. I retired in January 2024. For the umpteenth time, from the practice of clinical genetics (yes, that’s a … More Gap Year, Week 76
It’s Memorial Day. Workers are cutting grass in our neighborhood. The ice cream store is busy; butter-pecan drips down the side of your cone until expertly tongued. Folks stroll with babies. Two Marines in their dress blues stand beside a gravestone and clink their long-necked beer bottles. A toast is offered, and the guest of … More Perhaps honor is enough
In January last year, now 16 months ago, I decided to retire from medicine and start another adventure – a full commitment to writing. Such excessive confidence, despite the many warning signs! I’d be better off with a dusting of ADHD, anything to distract mee from doggedly pushing forward to my doom. Now I am … More The last days of leisure
The onshore wind they call a stiff breeze. Here on the Gulf Coast, this comes in from the south and seems undiminished among the dunes where we are hunkered down for a couple of days. Certainly is different than Kamloops, but we love both. How is it that my pronouns have shifted from the singular … More Milton hits the beach
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. ICE is coming for me. OK OK OK. OK already! Sure, I’m a campervan, a small but muscular Class B RV, a Ford. And Ford says that my model has been “Assembled in the U.S.A. with domestic and foreign parts.” My guess is that deep-state logic dictates … More Milton enjoys his paranoia
Well, you could call it a bat cave, or a man cave, but seeing that I’m not a mammal, just a Transit Trail campervan, the cave demands a more appropriate name. Trail Cave. I like it. My place is dry and cozy, even though it’s not hollowed out of a hillside or a mountain. Good … More Milton enjoys his Trail Cave
Last week, no bueno. Sitting in that dealership back lot, all lonely, and this International Scout was droning on about the border and the arroyos in Presidio County. Back in the day. He had been through 12 sets of tires. Twelve? And he was telling me about every flat. But who am I to complain, … More Welcome home, Milton! And happy birthday!
Scott D. McLean, MD 