jjablkowski's blog

My young friend, all of 2 years and 2 months old, received a nice little balance bicycle from his loving grandfather. Not to be left out of the excitement, and to provide some safety to the little rider, I volunteered to get him a suitable helmet. I didn’t think much about the best color for a helmet; I just ordered one suitable for a small child. A lovely red helmet arrived at my address in a couple of days. I sent a photo to the mom, and before I could repack the helmet, a gracious thank you note arrived: “What a thoughtful gift, wonderful, thank you.

Sunday, 16 June, is Father’s Day. On that day I will raise a glass of fine red wine to celebrate the 2484th birthday of Hippocrates, the Greek physician of ancient times, who is considered to be the father of medicine. 

Dear reader: you may have noticed the placement of the apostrophe in the title of this blog post makes “Mothers” a plural possessive. Anna Jarvis, who in 1905 started the campaign for an official holiday honoring mothers, insisted on keeping “Mother’s” a singular possessive. While she supported celebrating motherhood in general, she wanted to emphasize that each family should celebrate their own mother.[1] The reason for my change is not to diminish celebrations for our own mothers, but to focus on the importance of support systems for new mothers. 

Roger Angle, a longtime contributor to the New York Times, died 2 years ago at age 101.

The recent closure of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC Library brought back all sorts of library-related memories. My mind went to 1949 when I was a penniless second-year premed student at McGill University. To earn a few extra dollars, I worked at the McGill Medical Library on Thursday afternoons. My task was to push carts heavily loaded with bound volumes of medical journals to their appropriate shelves. Today we click on our computers to perform extensive background research for scientific projects or to resolve clinical dilemmas.