The curtain is closing on the spring semester of my twenty-seventh year of teaching. Twenty-seven years is an entire generation. My first students, Fuqua MBAs in the Class of 2000, were my age.* My current students, Colorado undergrads in the class of 2027, are 36 years younger. People ask me, “is this generation of students […]
Peek-a-boo
The moon peeks at meFloral perfume in spring airSurprise and delight Peek-a-booHaikuFor you You?
From the Archive: Wrong Number
In November 2004, I was at a conference in Boston. I brought the family with me. I was looking for a job because I wasn’t going to get tenure at Duke. I had set up some interviews. The phone rang in the hotel room: “Dr. Kornish?”Me: “Yes.”Voice: “This is H… L… [I didn’t catch his […]
Reasons
In a discussion with my class last semester, I shared with my students that I don’t believe that “everything happens for a reason.” I understand that many people DO believe it, but I do not. A student followed up with me: why? I took her question as an invitation to dissect that belief, or unbelief, […]
How Can I Write a Title for a Post When Words Cannot Do Justice to These Moments?
The blog has a new character! !!! Grandson 1 has arrived. Grandson 1’s parents (Son 1 and Dear Daughter-in-Law) do not want photos posted of him. I get it. I specifically recall the origin of this insistence. Son 1 was a teen. I showed him that when one wrote stuff online, people for years to […]
It’s a Sign (2024 Edition)
This is a beautiful ballad from the Eagles, released in 1975, “Take It to the Limit.” Listen here. All alone at the end of the evening And the bright lights have faded to blue I was thinking ’bout a woman Who might have loved me I never knew You know I’ve always been a dreamer […]
Chapter X, In Which LK Realizes She is Not The Little Match Girl
While we are in the troves of children’s literature, here’s a story about another tale that I reflect on. The key reason that my current work transition is so painful is my lifelong struggle with feeling like an outsider. There have been some moments in my life, most notably the college years, that I felt […]
Unbouncing
Excerpts from Chapter 7 of A.A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner, “In Which Tigger is Unbounced,” or, as I like to think of it right now, an allegory for the modern workplace. [Rabbit:] “Tigger’s getting so Bouncy nowadays that it’s time we taught him a lesson. Don’t you think so, Piglet?”Piglet said that Tigger […]
Matthew Barney
When I think of Matthew and Barney, here’s what I see in my mind’s eye. But the two names together are something entirely different: an avant-garde artist, Matthew Barney. He had a show at the Guggenheim museum in NYC when my family—mom and dad, sister and brother-in-law, DH and I—visited in 2003. Touristy activities over […]
Runcible
One of the themes in my remarks at my dad’s memorial was his love of poetry. He always told us, “poetry was meant to be read aloud.” Last week I traveled to Bloomington, Indiana and had breakfast at a restaurant called Runcible Spoon. The reference felt like a wink from dad: Edward Lear’s “The Owl […]