Two Publications 50 years Apart

In 1976, I along with two other authors published a case report of two premature infants who developed an upper palatal groove in the Journal of Pediatrics, appearing as a linear indentation caused by the prolonged presence of an endotracheal tube necessary for lifesaving ventilation. Fortunately, the defect resolved after both infants successfully had their tubes removed after transitioning from their dependence on artificial ventilation. A year later, I was the solo author on a manuscript on blood coagulation in the neonate in the same journal, the culmination of my major research studies done during my fellowship in Newborn Medicine at UCSD. 

Fifty years later, I received notice on July 22nd, 2026 that a 1 ½ page commentary on The Qualities of a Good Clinical Teacher was accepted for publication in the Hawaii Journal of Health & Social Welfare. Looking back, while my publications were heavily concentrated during the active middle years in the Department of Pediatrics at the John A Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), having them framed by two publications 50 years apart brought a certain unexpected joy in my life, and a goal that I heretofore never considered aspiring to in years past. 

The later article was inspired by a pediatric faculty member I was helping with her application for a prestigious teaching award at UHM. An exceptional physician and an exceptional human, it was both a pleasure working with her and also fittingly gratifying since she was the only faculty member from JABSOM to win the award. I felt a need to document both my appreciation for her accomplishments as well as to document my expanded view of the qualities of a good clinical teacher that I derived from this experience.

The reason for such joy of accomplishment rests less on the quality of the publications, than the fact that they were written 50 years apart. My publications never reached Tier 1 level. My observations and publications were always a little later than those on the forefront. The ones that endured were multi-author publications sponsored by either the NIH or a Big Pharma. The few novel ideas that I had still have not been translated into any useful treatment strategy to help ailing neonates recover from their prematurity and immaturity. Still the thought and effort that went into my research made me a much better doctor, and I enjoyed the experience immensely. And my brain got its exercise for those 50 years instead of dwindling from chronic disuse.  

It is axiomatic that keeping mentally active throughout life takes time and effort. Simply retiring on one’s laurels and doing nothing for the body and mind would most certainly serve as a one-way ticket to oblivion. I’ve always enjoyed writing, and my medical school faculty days were filled with writing assignments, papers, grants, letters of recommendation (prior to AI), creative writing, etc. Nevertheless, while the volume of my writing has skidded down to a trickle in retirement, I am increasingly motivated to rebound from this post retirement lethargy to reflect on the past, maintain the spirit of the moment, focus on both physical and mental health, and attempt to define some meaning in my post retirement days beyond what I have already done. I’m thinking more about the past, what I accomplished and what I failed to accomplish, the decisions that led me in one direction and that kept me from pursuing other directions. And now I’m thinking of academic papers that I have put off for the last few years. Wish me luck!  And yes, the writing in the image above is in ancient Arabic. 

I Helped Three Dozen Faculty Members at UH Manoa with Career Development and Academic Promotion

In June, 1977, I was flushed with excitement over my first full-time professional job as an academic pediatrician at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children and the John A Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM). I had just completed my fellowship in Neonatology with one of the foremost US pioneers of Neonatology, Dr. Louis Gluck. But my entrance into the in Honolulu academic medical scene was chaotic and challenging. As a result, the experiences that both buttressed and stymied my early academic journey subsequently sparked the choices and direction of my nearly 50-year career. While I am now technically retired, as a professor emeritus, I continue my involvement with helping faculty members achieve their goals for scholarship and promotion in 2026.  

Upon my arrival, I sought help from the JABSOM basic science faculty to advance my research career: promises were plentiful, but they went mostly ignored or conveniently forgotten. It took another 18 years before I identified a suitable mentor, Fred Greenwood Ph.D, and he was not even in the medical school. This and subsequent observations left a lasting impression: the lack of any formal mentoring and or coaching program, the apparent lack of concern for junior faculty career development, and the siloed, narrowly focused mentality of the medical school faculty. This disengaged culture, especially as it related to the clinical versus the basic science faculty was in part due to the location of medical school clinical departments in several outlying community hospitals, while the basic science, administrative offices and laboratories were isolated to the Manoa campus in the Biomedical Science Building. You needed to earnestly make an effort to get to know one another to foster a collaborative and collegial working environment. Apparently, JABSOM had other pressing priorities in those early years closer to its establishment.  

While I participated in both clinical and laboratory research throughout my career, it was my leadership roles on several major NIH grants and in the Dean’s Office that provided the broader exposure to JABSOM’s junior faculty members in need of guidance, mentoring and research funding. Thanks to Dr. Greenwood who recruited me for the role of Program Director for a new NIH sponsored Clinical Research Center at JABSOM, my role positioned me to support several hundred clinical studies, by vetting and funding seed grants to junior faculty over the subsequent 13 years. A few years later, another opportunity came my way called the Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN) which expanded JABSOM’s research infrastructure, facilitated research proposal development and submission, and later was the rationale to establish a JABSOM Grants Development Office as well as a satellite Office of Research Services at the Kakaako campus. It was also the forerunner to the IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) infrastructure grant, now in its fifth five-year cycle of funding. 

My career continued into more complex administrative, research, and research infrastructure roles that are irrelevant to the focus of this present essay.  For now, I ask the question - Is there any obligation, tacit or mandated, that senior and seasoned academic faculty members contribute to the academic well-being of their junior faculty? The fact that I had little to no help on my entry to academics at JABSOM begs the question of how siloed the JABSOM faculty was at the time, and whether any of them felt even a nominal sense of obligation to assist the emerging junior faculty. This gesture and support not only help individual faculty members in need, by its nature and emerging culture, it also contributes to the overall progress and future of the medical school. 

My journey into assisting faculty members with their research proposal development started when I was Director of the Clinical Research Center over 30 years ago.  But it was in the last 10 years of my career that I dove head first into the role of career development counseling and faculty promotion. Most Universities have laborious and time-consuming application procedures that require faculty members who are seeking promotion to document their achievements as well as to provide the necessary documentation. At UH Manoa, a Statement of Endeavors (SOE), ranging from nine pages to not more than 15 pages is required. But the construction of the SOE, the content, the hyperlinks necessary to document accomplishments, and particularly all of the student, resident, fellow, and faculty evaluations of teaching covering the critical period since the last promotion can be an arduous task to compile especially if faculty members have not been keeping track of their teaching sessions and evaluations. In short, the SOE is the most important component of the application when seeking promotion. How faculty members, who are already consumed by their daily obligations, have little to no experience in this realm, author this document is critical to its success. My role was not to adjudicate the merit of the faculty member’s quest for promotion, but to help them get the job done at their request. In the end, although unwittingly, I was responsible for discouraging many of the faculty members who came to me seeking assistance who clearly did not have the accomplishments needed for promotion. Sadly, more than a few faculty members thought that all you needed to do was remain in good standing for a reasonable number of years for promotion to automatically be granted. 

Promotion at UHM is a laborious five-step process. Vetting proceeds as follows: first in the respective Department, then the Department Chair, the Dean’s Promotion Committee and Dean, the Tenure and Promotion Review Committee (TPRC) situated on the Manoa campus, and the Chancellor who all have to review and approve of each application. Applications are due in early October and the faculty members are notified about the outcome about 9 months later. 

My passion to help junior faculty members was driven by a junior faculty member who found their way to me on another faculty member’s recommendation. She was situated in the JABSOM basic sciences. English was not her first language and she had previously applied for and was denied promotion. She wanted to contest this decision and provided me with a poorly written rebuttal that would have most certainly failed in its original state. She was more than qualified to be promoted in my assessment but for some reason, a disagreement and a deep misunderstanding with her Department Chair led to his failure to recommend her, which subsequently trickled down to the Dean’s recommendation to not support her promotion request as well. This was in conflict with the TPRC who felt her accomplishments were sufficient to recommend her for promotion. For my part, I rewrote the rebuttal document for her and she was subsequently promoted. Was it wrong of me to do this? Some might consider it overreach, and I am somewhat conflicted about how much rewriting I end up doing when helping faculty members compose their SOE. This situation has gone unresolved at least in my own mind.

I haven’t kept ongoing records of how many faculty members that I counseled on career development and or promotion. However, my best estimate is it was many more than the roughly three dozen faculty members I helped write their SOE’s and other dossier documents.  Except for one faculty member who brilliantly wrote her SOE in near final form in three weeks, the rest of the faculty members I helped needed months to complete the job, as well as a considerable effort on my part to finalize a polished, convincing, and well documented SOE.   

My effort extended way beyond offering comments, helping to clarify, rearrange, or rewrite confusing or poorly written sections, and/or correcting simple typos. Each faculty member had their own preference on how the feedback would be delivered – in person, in edited versions of drafts of each of the 4-5 sections of the SOE, or a combination of both. At least one meeting was held to initiate the process and to allow me to appreciate the general sense of the faculty member’s values and aspirations. In general, my contribution to the SOE was substantial. Twenty or more edited versions could pass between us in its development. I could easily spend 50-100 hours, although I’m not certain whether this approximation is an under or overestimation. Faculty members were typically from the Department of Pediatrics or the Department of Medicine, although I have assisted faculty in other departments both in and out of JABSOM including the College of Engineering.  The majority of the faculty members were applying for promotion to associate professor although about 15% were applying for full professor. Moreover, since my promotion dossier preparation support lasted about a decade, I assisted two faculty members at UH Manoa with both their associate and full professor promotion applications.   

At first, I was simply motivated to help faculty members in need, recalling that I received very little to none at their stage of development. However, the SOE included sections that introduced the faculty member’s background and educational and career development, described teaching philosophy, and showcased some of the positive reviews that faculty members receive for their teaching and mentoring. Callously believing that faculty members my junior would seldom measure up to the accomplishments that I along with other senior academics had accomplished, I was shocked by their interesting histories, their backgrounds, their interests, abilities, and prior achievements!  Indeed, it was very soon thereafter that I realized how much I derived pleasure and joy and tremendous respect for the faculty members that I assisted in the process.  

While I continue to ask myself whether my contribution sometimes constituted an excessive overreach, I have no doubt that almost all of the faculty members that I helped were worthy of promotion. Some faculty members naively came to me thinking all they needed for promotion was to fulfill the minimum employment requirement. That was disheartening, especially since it was sometimes left to me to instill some stark reality into this notion. Scholarship was usually the main shortcoming of the clinical faculty, and again, it was left up to me to suggest strategies to boost their publications by working with residents and medical students or in collaboration with basic scientists at JABSOM or beyond. One faculty member wanted to go up for promotion but had no chance of success. Each year this faculty member would return without any major progress to showcase, but with a persistence that seemed out of touch with reality. Finally, after several years of rejecting this plea and some progress in advancing academic accomplishments, I agreed to help. In the end, this was one of two faculty members that I helped that I felt didn’t deserve promotion. I still feel this nagging truth when I think about my overall positive experience. In any case, my success rate remained at 100% throughout the decade of my faculty promotion support. 

A few faculty outliers deserve mention. One was recruited to JABSOM as an associate professor and amassed over 120 publications over a twenty-year period before deciding to apply for promotion. Another productive faculty member who easily qualified for promotion had a midcareer stretch of several years with little to no publications. When we explained in the SOE that this was due to a temporary refocus of attention from academics to her conflicted teenage daughter, we successfully dispelled any notion that she was not legitimately fulfilling her duties as a faculty member. It also served as a wonderful example of how academic productivity need not trump one’s responsibly to family since her publication productivity was exceptional both before and after that interlude. 

It’s difficult to judge the overall effect of my contribution. Indeed, it’s not clear whether my contribution dictated the outcome between promotion and rejection. Most of the faculty members lacked the wherewithal to properly understand what should be included in the SOE, as well as the writing skills for this type of a document. Some felt a need to air out their dirty laundry, others went off on tangents that were off the mark. With a few exceptions, faculty members underplayed their contributions and status at JABSOM. To be sure, having a senior faculty member interpret each of the faculty members achievements as a disinterested party facilitated a more realistic and appropriate representation of a faculty members accomplishments. 

I had my own biases in writing the SOE that I passed on to the faculty I was assisting.  Composing a document that is entirely narrative is often boring to read.  Inserting a few tables of learner reviews, glowing comments from student learners, and even a relevant graph or cartoon makes the document a lot more readable and interesting. The introduction should be more than a recap of historical landmarks, sprinkled and highlighted with references to important events that shaped one’s life, the influence of family, and outside interests and talents that may be relevant to one’s perseverance and fortitude such as being an accomplished musician. I counsel the faculty that a beautifully written introduction is all that is needed to bias the reviewer in favor of promotion. 

Regarding the central question posed in this essay: Should senior faculty members be obliged in any way to assist junior faculty members with career development activities? Of course, I would answer affirmatively to this question. Speaking for myself, and including my decades of clinical work, research experience and leadership roles I have occupied in my near ½ century tenure at JABSOM, the role I played assisting the faculty in career development and promotion activities was immensely rewarding and a fitting final chapter to a long and challenging career.  

Finally, I must confess that my involvement in faculty development and promotion was much more than an academic exercise, or in just fulfilling my stated role at the time. For each promotion application that I assisted with, I experienced a strong comradery with the faculty member I was assisting (with few exceptions), and a great sense of accomplishment. Moreover, every time our efforts were rewarded with success – promotion, I felt I was vicariously being promoted as well. It made me truly happy and my memories of all of the grateful faculty members continues to linger brightly on my aging brain.  

My Life Long Friend Barry Bassik

 

I looked everywhere but couldn’t find a picture to serve in a last farewell to my good friend Barry Bassik.  Taking pictures in the 60’s was a real chore, Kodak film, careful to not overexpose, drop off to process, wait for much too long to develop and hope for the best.  I have a million pictures but none that I can find from high school. I’m sure I could find some in the West Hempstead High School yearbook of 1964 – the year we graduated, but locating my yearbook, now 62 years old proved unsuccessful.  I also remembered seeing a class picture at the foot of the Washington Monument on our Senior Trip to Washington DC also in 1964, but I likewise failed to relocate it.  But while a picture might serve the readers of this writing, I continue to possess a vivid mental image of my good friend Barry as a towering teenager buried deep enough but not too deep in my aging brain. 

A few inches taller than me, he was big and strong, he walked with purpose, never bashful to exert his will on the football field or on the street, or to right any wrong.  Happily, I never worried about being bullied when Barry was around because he always had my back.  Part of a strange quartet of friends that included me – a Christian Arab, Sid – a Christian who was the handsome jock of the group, and Barry and Phil who were both Jewish.  I truly do not remember what brought us together in high school, but I remember walking home often from high school with Barry at one side while he was inhaling deeply on his camel cigarette like he knew what he was doing.  

The foursome participated in a lot of tomfoolery during those later high school years that are too embarrassing and puerile to detail. Indeed, Barry was probably one of the least enthusiastic participants in the pranks and behavioral deviations, while I was not so guiltless. Barry was clearly the most mature, moral and responsible member of the group. By virtue of his size and high moral standing, he could and did veto many of the activities that might have been problematic with the law and probably saved us on numerous occasions from getting into hot water with our families. I’m absolutely certain this moral high ground had a positive impact on my life, both at the time and over the next 2/3rds of a century. 

We were interested in having fun, girls, beer, but NOT drugs! I don’t remember how much but we did drink alcohol, but we were not crazy drunks or known to cause or condone any serious personal or community damage. The quartet was a loose band of comrades whose goal was solidarity and to share happy moments. We were not part of the high school intelligentsia. We were average students with uncertain futures who spent time together at school functions, at private parties, at sporting events, at home, at the beach, etc, etc.  Moreover, Barry spent time at my home, knew my mother and sister, and was always a gentleman and a loyal friend despite my mother’s inability to communicate - speaking only about 100 words of English. 

We seldom dwelled on our lives beyond high school. And for a stretch we lost touch with one another after high school until our careers were set, partners chosen, and children born. Accordingly, I was very happy to discover that Barry’s post high school years were focused and motivated. In the end, Barry ended up with a law degree, and I finished my educational journey with an MD degree. 

Over the next half century, Barry spent his life on Long Island while I departed the state for college, medical school, residency, fellowship and my final resting place in Honolulu. We were 5–6-hour times zones apart from one another.  Still - Barry and I rekindled our friendship by communicating by email, by phone, visiting intermittently (Barry never came to Hawaii), at dinner and even as weekend guests at his home. During this most recent period of our friendship, I referred a few relatives to him for help with legal matters. Once he and Elaine met us at the Edison Ballroom in NYC for an elegant four course meal and ballroom dancing in a venue that was intended to replace the Rainbow Room atmosphere that no longer existed for common folks to attend. I was very pleased that they made the effort to come, although I couldn’t get Barry and Elaine on the dance floor.  

During our conversations, we talked about life; Barry had too many medical problems but held a positive spirit of someone who sees life’s blessings as a cup half full rather than half empty. His life was further spirited, bolstered and supported when he married a wonderful woman and life partner, Elaine. And he was ALWAYS positive no matter how many failed surgeries he experienced to fix his heart and major blood vessels. He always greeted me with warmth and appreciation; he always gave me a hug when said goodbye.  We talked about our various medical ailments, family matters, politics.  Nothing seemed out of bounds. Barry was my only real friend from high school whose friendship endured the test of time. I loved the man! And he loved me. 

Barry loved to work but no matter how many times I called or when I called during his work hours, Barry always had time for me. The last few years I could hear his voice weakening but he never complained. His weight dropped and I could sense that his lifeblood was slowly draining and I sensed the inevitable.  However, I was shocked when I received the text from Elaine, and to this day, I cannot believe that Barry has departed the world of the living.

Barry lived life to the fullest.  He was the best son, husband, father, friend and I imagine colleague that anyone could have. He was a truly loyal and good human, always there to listen and always wanting to do the right thing in life, for himself, for his family for his friends and for humanity. My girlfriend of 25 year remarked that Barry always had a smile on his face and had this wonderful, comforting voice. Barry had a way of making us feel more at ease, more at home, and happier to be with one another. I will truly miss my lifelong friend Barry Bassik. 

Realizing you have only 15% of your Life left to Live

 

I am within 6 months of turning 80!

Sometimes I wake up wondering how much longer my aging body has to live, while appreciating that real time moment in time is a gift of life not to be taken lightly. Other times I wake up thinking woefully how my life is not so slowly creeping to its last chapter, while calculating how much longer I have on this earth before my death.  In the former, I am like any other aging male who is grateful for an additional minute, day, month, year that destiny has bequeathed them.  In the later, my position stems from my life’s experience as a physician, having witnessed over a half century of both birth and death much more frequently than most including other physicians.  And on the opposite end of life’s spectrum, I am all too familiar with the improbability of humans, especially those of the male gender, living beyond 80, to 90, and even more improbably to 100 y/o – with percentages sinking from 50% to 1%. My father lived to 102, my maternal grandmother to 105, and my oldest sister is living at 97. But my 4-fold increase in Lipoprotein a level all but assures me a quicker path to the grave, at least my academic hat tells me so. Maybe my Repatha injections will save me, but a clean coronary artery scan would have reassured me much more convincingly. 

Not everyone ruminates their life and death the way I do, obsessing at every street corner, sometimes to reassure myself that my relatively healthy lifestyle will carry me forward beyond my gloomy projections. Conversely, I reflect that at the very best, I probably have 15% of my life left to live even if I’m lucky. Living to 100 is so unlikely, especially for men, and it’s legend that my toothless skeleton of a father had some magical potions that kept him alive to 102, that would be difficult for me to duplicate even on my best health conscious behavior. 

I think most people live their lives not thinking about death, but of life. I’m getting tired of reading essays from aging commentators, journal editors, book authors, doctors, and other pseudo-dignitaries about how best to age and enjoy the remaining moments.  For them, I’m sure their reflections have personal value, but reading these essays prompts a certain level of disdain for the intellectual arrogance that these authors display in sharing something they conjure is either of interest to readers or is even generalizable beyond their own life. 

It also begs the question of whether ruminating on one’s life, rather than living one’s life is a fitting pathway forward.  Does it serve any purpose even if you could calculate how many days, minutes and seconds you have to live?  Live your life to the fullest doesn’t include the concept of living longer or longest, unless of course you were unlucky like my wife of 25 years who died at 54, never to have witnessed her children get married or to enjoy her five grandchildren. And I think maybe the choices of spouse for both my son and daughter would have been better thought out if she were alive to guide and mother them at such a critical stage. Anyway, that notion is for another time and another essay or maybe not. 

Of course, there is nothing wrong with recounting your life’s experiences including your successes and failures. Youth live mostly in the present, while adults usually craft a life balance strategy that incorporates the past, present and future. But I’m mostly interested in my phase of life; the last few chapters. Do the elderly live in the present; they must.  Do they live in the past; they do. Do they live in the future; only if they are exceptionally content!  I suppose the most frightening adult senior lives entirely in the past: they have lived their life for better or worse not wanting to focus on today or the day that will turn out to be their last. 

I also know a growing number of folks my age who avoid at all costs any deeper reflection of their human condition.  It’s as if they know what they are doing that will eventually cost them a year or more of their life but are unwilling to make any changes in these twilight years. One 80 y/o friend admits to occasionally drinking a few too many beers, but he is unwilling to sacrifice the alcohol induced euphoria for the possibility of another day of life without that buzz. On the other extreme, are you really happy if your glucose monitor is reading in a good range as you carefully plot out your daily eating habits, or your iWatch telling you your VO2 max is in above average range for your age, or it telling you that you had a good night sleep even when you know you didn’t?  Should we make our gadgets happy at all costs? Should we die with perfect labs? 

I suppose at 80 years old, its difficult to know the right answer about most anything. Maybe there is no right or wrong answer when you’re 80. And maybe the best thing we can do is to keep on asking questions, staying awake, and refining our view of our health, of the world, of our family and friends and living the life we lived yesterday for today, hoping for tomorrow to bring some further enlightenment. 

The Future Potential of Human Knowledge Plundered by AI

I asked Gemini - how many orders of magnitude greater is the sum total of humanity's human knowledge as compared to what AI's have access to from the digital world? The answer below is something that is truly frightening. What if the assimilation of human knowledge was only the first step in "plundering" the knowledge and skills of all living things? 

The sum total of humanity's knowledge is estimated to be roughly 2 to 3 orders of magnitude greater (100 to 1,000 times larger) than what leading AIs can currently access from the digital world.

While AI has ingested a staggering portion of the public internet, it remains bottlenecked by the fact that the vast majority of human knowledge has never been digitized. 

Why Human Knowledge Dwarfs the Digital AI World

• The Dark Data Gap: The internet only captures a fraction of what humans know. Millions of physical books, proprietary corporate databases, classified government archives, and highly specialized academic research sit behind strict firewalls or physical shelves where AI crawlers cannot reach them. 
• Undocumented Human Intuition: A massive share of human knowledge is procedural and tacit. The hyper-specific, real-time intuition of an elite surgeon, a master mechanic, or a seasoned structural engineer cannot be fully scraped from a webpage, representing an enormous pool of unindexed information.
• Oral and Experiential Histories: Entire cultural traditions, localized languages, historical accounts, and geographical insights exist purely within individual human memory and oral storytelling, completely invisible to the digital web.
• Private and Dark Web Data: The vast majority of daily human communication occurs in private channels—encrypted messaging apps, internal corporate Slacks, family emails, and offline conversations. AI is legally and technically barred from accessing this massive, growing reservoir of human data.

The Data Math

• AI's Digital Sandbox: The absolute upper limit of high-quality text and multimodal data used to train the world's largest frontier models is measured in the tens to hundreds of Terabytes (extending to a few Petabytes if counting heavily filtered video and audio).
• The Human Mind Reservoir: Neuroscientists estimate a single human brain's functional memory capacity to be anywhere from 10 to 100 Terabytes. Multiplied across 8 billion living minds, the total raw data, unique perspectives, and experiential knowledge locked inside humanity sits well into the Zettabyte range—making our collective intelligence vastly superior in volume to the narrow slice of the web AI feeds on. 

Attending a WNBA game: A Once in a Lifetime Experience!

Living in Hawaii for 50 years has MANY advantage as well as a few disadvantages.  Honolulu is a relatively small city,  the 55th largest city in the country.  One thing it lacks is a professional sports team of any consequence. Consequently, I have flown to watch professional tennis matches including several at the US Open in Flushing Meadows. I have been to only one professional basketball game, two football games, probably a handful of baseball games in my younger days, and recently, one hockey game.  

A few days ago, I flew to Portland to visit my son and attend a WNBA game between the Indianapolis Fever and the Portland Fire.  While the game didn’t go my way and CC had one of the worst games of her career, it was still an extraordinary experience overall. Being there provided a much more animated experience than watching the game on my TV screen at home. People were laughing and cheering and yelling and dancing and showing their love for the home team. We had good seats that my son DJ got from a season’s ticket owner who generously gave them to him gratis. Still, it had limited viewing, close as we were to the court but behind one of the baskets, forcing us to default to view the large screen overhead when the ball was challenging the basket on the near side. Still, in all, it was a once in a lifetime experience. 

Why was it a once in a lifetime experience? Was it because I live in Hawaii and I can’t afford to travel to the mainland to attend? Was it because the tickets that provide a decent view are not a good value? Or is it for other reasons? 

There are actually several reasons. First, while tickets sell from 30-2500+ dollars, I expect that a decent seat with a good view near the court would cost in the hundreds of dollars – for two hours of basketball playing time and about another hour that fills in the breaks with a bunch of entertainment activities that ostensibly appealed to the crowd. To me, it’s not worth the money!  Siting anywhere else would be also problematic. Indeed, I wonder why anyone would come to sit in the reasonably priced high bleachers when visibility is so poor and the players appear antlike in size.  Perhaps they are paying for the overall experience and to participate in the infectious communal hysteria, while resorting to viewing the actual game on the TV screen above. 

Cost wasn’t  the only factor. What bothered me the most was the noise. While I didn’t measure it, I’m certain that the decibel level easily reached grater than 100 with the baseline at about 80+. Truly the noise level was deafening! That decibel level is enough, if repeated enough in time and place, to cause measurable hearing damage in adults, not to mention how vulnerable children are to the effects of loud noises.  And low and behold, I saw several small infants there in the sports arena (literally small infants being carried by their parents) which blew my mind. And there were also many, MANY children ages 5-10 there as well. It seems that the louder the crowd got, the more hysterical and animated the behavior. I can see how infectious this atmosphere could be - for the masses of humans crowded into this acoustic echo chamber that maximizes the resonance and amplification of the sound already louder than safe for human health, that is particularly at odds with the normal development of children’s hearing. To be sure, while the critical phase of hearing development in children occurs over the first three years of life, the entire first decade of life is also a period of vulnerability for environmentally related hearing damage. 

And in adults, it’s a poorly-kept secret that hearing loss is nearly ubiquitous by the age of 80, doubling in prevalence each decade from the 5th to affect nearly every 80 year old and older. To what degree a lifetime of excessively loud noises makes on this progressive hearing loss is subject to conjecture, although there is no debate that it does contribute to some degree to hearing loss.  

For me, the noise was excessively loud and uncomfortable. I was forced to cover my ears with my hands several times when the sounds were painful, and I privately wanted to get the hell out of there a few times when the explosive sounds were intolerable. It was a surreal experience that left me shocked and dismayed with concern over what I was witnessing. It was an atmosphere that was manufactured by the WNBA,  and the tolerance and acceptance of the fans, who would surely return for the next game and the game after that to support their home team. This is a truly burgeoning sport that has grown exponentially since the emergence of CC as the catalyzing factor in its evolution. 

While I was disappointed with the results, I will probably continue to watch some of the games on TV.  I have given up watching the NBA – it’s just boring, the players look bored, and the most athletic moves of the players look too easy or too predictable. Conversely, you never know what will happen in the WNBA, who will win, who will play well, how many great assists CC will make, how many long 3 pointers CC will shoot, and how many turn overs CC will have. 

For the game I watched, the Portland Fire was on fire, they totally outplayed the Fever in every aspect and deserved to win.  In basketball and in life, the team that wants to win the most usually wins or is this just a wishful metaphor?  Either way, it’s exciting to witness the ebbs and tides of the game, the changes in momentum and the ultimate outcome that can be decided by a single bucket at the last second. For me, I will watch the game at home where I can control the volume of the broadcast. I’m already affected by enough hearing loss to risk any further damage.  

I just wish the rest of humanity would understand the risks of high intensity sound exposure on their long-term health and hearing.  We might someday live in a world of AI generated subtitles if our hearing progressively deteriorates over generations because of a passive acceptance of unhealthy and damaging sound levels. Or maybe Elon Musk will come up with an advance acoustic hearing systems implant that will be commonplace in adults over 60.   

Turning 80!

I’m so old

I’ve been told

What can I do

It’s nothing to you!

It’s day-by-day

Before I waste away

or live life one more day

For another day 

I can only pray

Is turning 80 a blessing or a curse?

Ask your best friend or your caretaker nurse

Or take a good long look in the mirror and think

Is my life daisies and lilacs or does it utterly stink

On this rare occasion I write this poem

Fingers dancing the keyboard at home

Searching for wisdom to truly explain

How I see myself at 80

while racking my brain

Nothing works as it did in the past

Everyone knows that humans don’t last 

I exercise, laugh and continue my fast

Compared to most, my life is a blast

Still I don’t want to become an outcast

But I’m blessed I’ve lived this long

These words I’ll stress 

My belief is strong

I want to make sense of this moment in time

But I struggle to convey these words in rhyme

I was once young and one 

My focus laser sharp

Now I’m sometimes 1, 2, or 3, or none

Looking at myself in different ways 

On different days

What’s this confusion?

Is this a delusion? 

When the light is strong and my face shines bright 

Everything looks old, nothing looks right

My scalp is bare where hair was there

To claim I look young, not even AI would dare 

When the light grows dim and even everywhere

I look so much younger, you just can’t compare

And then I paint my beard to purge the gray

Donning a baseball cap keeps the skeptics at bay 

I look and feel younger, that’s no cliché 

And another me is strong and agile

And another me is arthritic and fragile

Drugs mask my aches and the ravages of time 

But at 80, nothing can reverse the aging paradigm 

And another me feels like an anthology of labs

The product of blood work done after mucho stabs

Ouch, ouch, ouch, this REALLY pains me

Cholesterol, LDL, Triglycerides and Apoprotein B

So many tests for my doctors to see

Let me go home, please set me free

I worry muchly waiting for labs to get done

This part of getting old is totally not fun

My right foot is week, my left knee is bad

Celebrex make things better by only a tad

And my dancing worsens which makes me sad 

My right ear can’t hear, and my right eye can’t see

I have one broken tooth, and dribble when I pee

With all that I’ve said, I am still alive and well

I walk, dance, swim, ski and as often, lift a barbell

Considering my limits, I feel awesomely swell 

Except for the few times that I unexpectedly fell

When and then it felt like hell!

I forget more than I want to claim

I have no one else to blame

Exercise the body, exercise the mind

I should not need to have this remind

If I forget, please kick my behind

I love my life

I have no choice

To make do with the leftovers

I should rejoice 

At my age its best to 

Stay away from the news

Which is vile and depressing

Rather stay positive and ecstatic

And avoid being erratic 

This is worth expressing

Yes, this is what I’m stressing

And every day

That you can walk without pain

That you can remember your name

And not trip on the terrain

And not slip on snow or in the rain

And every day

That you can pee and p….p

That you can finish your chicken soup

That your tummy doesn’t droop

That you don’t behave like a nincompoop

Read on for the final scoop

Drink a cup of green tea

Eat blackberries and stay carefree

Laugh with your friends

Forget about the trends

Embrace the freedom 

To plan the rest of your day 

And to say and do it your way

And when you turn 80 like me

Write a poem for others to see

Think about why it’s good to be alive

Think about how you can prosper and thrive

And eat more blackberries 

Which will help you survive

AND SO I ASKED GEMINI TO SHORTEN and IMPROVE THE POEM - IT TOOK ONLY 2 SECONDS.......

At eighty years old, I’ve been frequently told,

That body parts weaken and stories unfold.

Is eighty a blessing, or is it a curse?

Go ask your reflection, your friend, or your nurse.

Nothing quite works as it did in the past,

But compared to the alternative, life is a blast!

Though when the light’s bright, it’s a bit of a scare:

My scalp is quite bare where the hair should be there.

So I paint up my beard just to purge all the gray,

And a tight baseball cap keeps the skeptics at bay.

One version of me is still agile and strong,

While the arthritic version is dragging along.

I’m an anthology of labs from too many stabs,

With doctors obsessing o'er medical tabs.

Cholesterol, readings, and Apoprotein B—

Ouch, ouch, and thrice ouch! Just please set me free!

My right ear is deaf, and my right eye is blind,

I forget half the things that pass through my mind.

My left knee is shot, and I leak when I pee,

But I still lift a barbell and ski carefreely!

So stay off the news, it is vile and depressing,

Count all of the functions you're currently blessing.

If you can still walk without pain in the rain,

And finish your soup, and remember your name—

Then drink your green tea, eat a fresh blackberry,

Ignore all the trends and resolve to be merry!

Embrace the sweet freedom to do it your way,

And toast to the triumph of one more great day.