A good news story about the New York City subway

Gryffindor, via Wikimedia

In 2006, I declared in my bio at The Scientist, where I was deputy editor at the time, that my favorite gadget was the New York City subway. An experience 15 years later has made that even more true.

A few Friday mornings ago, I walked briskly down the steps of the 79th St. downtown 1 subway entrance at the northwest corner of 79th and Broadway, just around the corner from our apartment. I had a quiet morning schedule that day, so it was already after 9.

I swiped my MetroCard and walked up the platform, toward the last few cars, since I wanted to make the transfer to the N/R in Times Square more efficient. The next train wasn’t arriving for a few minutes, so I went to pull out my phone.

That’s when it happened. 

RIP, Bill Sharfman

Bill Sharfman, circa 2017

I haven’t had a diet Coke in three years, and Bill Sharfman gets a large part of the credit.

I had chugged the stuff — or its predecessor, Tab — since my parents had put it on the dinner table in 1982. There is even a picture of me, in a special issue of US News and World Report from 1996, striding down the halls of Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital before 6 a.m. as a medical student on my surgical rotation with a 20-ounce bottle in my hand. 

Sometime in the mid-2010s, however, I became convinced by studies suggesting that artificial sweeteners were doing me more harm than good. So like leading cardiologist Harlan Krumholz, I quit. My wife Cate was delighted, and set to work finding all sorts of ways to make iced coffee: My other problem was that I had never developed a taste for hot drinks. 

But all of those methods seemed too complicated for someone used to unscrewing a cap and pouring. How would I wake up my brain every morning? 

My brother died 25 years ago today.

Me, David and Andrew, circa 1984

My brother died 25 years ago today.

Twenty five years feels like a significant length of time, even if in some ways it’s an arbitrary interval to mark. It has been close to a decade since another milestone, when David, who was 17 on January 9, 1995, had been gone longer than he was alive.

Perhaps there’s nothing significant about a quarter of a century, but this year’s anniversary prompted me to fly across the country to spend it with my mother, my other brother Andrew, and his family. It also prompted me to want to leave a record of some scattered thoughts.

So here they are.

I donated my car to my local NPR station. You should, too.

A few of you may remember the obituary I posted last year for my 1999 Jetta. In it, I mentioned that the Jetta would be donated to our local NPR station.

On leaving New York, and maybe my impostor syndrome, behind

Last sunset over the Hudson as a Manhattan resident

I first fell in love with New York City as a teenager growing up about 30 minutes from the George Washington Bridge. It probably happened when I started taking the commuter bus from the suburb I grew up in to the Port Authority and blossomed into romance when I’d travel to Columbia for the annual Scholastic Press Association meeting and a science honors program on Saturdays. By the time I was in college in Cambridge, I knew I needed to live in New York, and that made NYU an easy choice for medical school.

Except for about two years between 1998 and 2000, I’ve lived on the island of Manhattan since 1994. It’s been quite a love affair. And while it’s not ending, exactly, it’s shifting to a new phase. Cate and I are leaving the Hell’s Kitchen apartment we’ve lived in since just a few weeks before we were engaged in April 2004. It’s the same building I’ve lived in since September 2000.

That means I was standing on my balcony on September 11, 2001, watching the Twin Towers fall.

RIP: 1999 Jetta dies

A 1999 Volkswagen Jetta Wolfsburg, known early in its life for being a stick shift and in its later years by mechanics in three states, died on Friday, October 21. It was 18, with more than 187,000 miles on its odometer.

The immediate cause of death was overheating on the Massachusetts Turnpike, according to a family member close to – some would say too close to – the Jetta. A mechanic said that even figuring out what had led to the temperature spike would cost more than the car was currently worth.

But to owner Ivan Oransky, who drove the car off the dealer’s lot on August 24, 1998, the value of the Jetta was never financial. “It was what I could afford when I was a medical intern in New Haven. The Jetta served me, and then Cate, well,” Oransky told CarObits.com, speaking of his wife, Cate Vojdik.

Farewell, Market Diner

From Nov. 1, 2015.

Farewell, Market Diner. Many of you, particularly Adam Marcus, will know this as one of my homes away from home. It was a place where the staff knew my regular breakfast order so well, it was usually ready by the time I crossed the street.

The Diner closed once before, a number of years ago, when the owner planned to build on its site and the lot where the Chelsea Garden Center — also now closing — sits. Those plans fell through, and the owners took the opportunity to renovate and reopen, to the joy and relief of so many regular patrons.

It looked like a different Market Diner that reopened, but it was the same place. I still remember the old Diner, full of wonderfully awful 1960s decor. The light fixtures over the tables looked like huge pieces of orange rock candy. I can only imagine how garish they were to those of you who aren’t colorblind.

I wrote a play about the immune system when I was 11. Really. Here it is.

This guy, I’m not.

For several years, I’ve been in search of a play that I wrote in the sixth grade, circa 1984. (Strictly speaking, it was a short story, but my class performed it as a play.) I was reminded of it by an event, perhaps something that was part of EST/Sloan’s project on plays involving science, and earlier this month, my mother texted me to say she’d found it her house.

Some background: My father was a pediatrician in private practice, and he was frequently beeped — yes, this was the early 1980s — in the middle of family meals. So, inspired by a case of strep throat that interrupted dinner one night, I wrote a short story/play on the immune system.

Mad Men: An Oransky in the advertising business

“Keith is now paying for the service at the rate of 10 cents a day by shining Mr. Oransky’s shoes.”

That’s the kicker of an item in the April 1, 1960 advertising column in The New York Times.

In which I become an expert on global technology because I have an email address

There are all sorts of ways to be recognized as an expert. Courts typically certify those who’ve published peer-reviewed literature, or who have years of experience, or who fulfill some other criteria. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t take that much.

From an email solicitation I received today:

I am calling on behalf of [redacted] an independent global research consultancy. We are conducting a survey of Opinion Leaders such as yourself to understand your views on a number of important issues related to how global technology companies are viewed and how they might better meet stakeholder expectations. You do not have to be actively involved in technology (ie : – IT/programming/Manufacture etc ) so long as you have some views on the subject such as ethically sourced materials for manufacture, energy efficiency & responsibilities to workforces.

Well, as many of my friends and family would agree, I certainly have some views on any number of subjects, so I should be OK here. I have views on proper capitalization, for example, and that would appear to be helpful in this case.

But it’s the next paragraph that really cements my status as an expert: