Larry's blog

The hall had become a long, winding labyrinth with colorless walls and a fog that made it hard to follow the path.  I shuffled along for what seemed an eternity until I saw the light that signaled the beginning of a new corridor.  When I reached the end, I saw the sign of a door directly in front of me that read “Ronald Jones, MD.”  I knocked on the door and a voice said to come in.  I opened the door to find a middle aged man in a neat suit and tie behind a desk who motioned to a chair in front of his desk.  “Hello, I presume you are David Morin, my 10 o’clock appointment,” he said in a clipped British accent as I sat down.  I nodded and he looked down and pored over a chart on his desk and slowly began shuffling the papers.  After a long pause he looked up and asked how I was feeling today.  I shuffled my feet and fidgeted, thinking how I can express the fog, the utter colorlessness of everything around me, and the loss of memory.  “I used ...

I The morning newspaper arrived at the usual time on a bright Tuesday morning on Jul 6, 1937.  I had subscribed to Izvestia since I was in exile for almost 20 years in London.  It was getting harder and harder to understand what was going on in Russia since I left.  I opened the first page while I settled in with a cup of tea at the kitchen table.  A small article at the bottom of p.2 caught my eye.  I squinted as I struggled to make out the first line: Mikhail Popovich, former Commissar of Internal Affairs, was executed yesterday after being sentenced to death for treason and subversive writing. I sighed as tears dribbled down the sides of my face.  Why did it have to end this way?  I could have seen it coming 34 years earlier when I came to London for the first time.  Young and naive, but filled with revolutionary fervor, hope, and optimism.  Mikhail was older, but seemed to preserve that feeling of youthful optimism.  Maybe by...

“Comrade Kalinov, it’s good to see you,” said the burly man with a walrus mustache.  I had heard about Stalin from the leader of the worker council in Kiev though I never thought I would meet him.  Now he was acting like he already knew me.  Had we met before?  Stalin extended his hand as he rushed towards me.  He was even more intimidating than I expected and had a coarse accent that betrayed his Georgian origins.  It was the fall of 1917 and I was sent here because I had shown some leadership potential in the party.  The July strikes had failed and now there was talk of another coup planned in the fall.  I thought back to my humble beginnings in the caucuses mountains, in a small farming village.  We were typically starving at these time of the year when there was nothing left of the harvest and all we can get was some crumbs from the Kulaks who belonged to the few families that owned all the land.  My father provided for his seven...

I didn’t see the left hand, the one that landed with a sickening thud against my kidney for what seemed like the millionth time.   I just felt the searing pain traveling from my lower back and enveloping my entire body.   My body told me to quit, yet my mind was still sharp, and a voice said keep going even as I wilted in the heat and kept getting blinded by midday sun.   But for how long?   I could see my opponent winding up for yet another left.   This time I was ready.   As I saw the blow coming I deftly moved aside and delivered a right counter that landed squarely on this jaw.   I saw him stagger ever so slightly and used my last ounce of energy on a left, right, left combination, each landing on the top of his head with a sledge hammer’s force.   I watched him go down in slow motion and the referee escorting me to the corner.   “You got lucky, you bum,” a short middle aged man yelled in my ear as the crowd roared.   The referee...

Mike Reynolds was off and running at the crack of the bat.  The arc of the ball made him think the ball would carry over his head, but the hollow sound often signifies that the batter did not get all of it and the fly ball will be shallow.  Should he go in or out?  Mike decided to go out.  His reasoning was to keep the ball in front of you.  It’s easier to run in at the last second than run out as you would have to turn your head around if you run out and that would slow you down.  As he ran, the glint of the sun got in his eyes and he was momentarily blinded.  When he was able to pick up the ball, he realized it was going to be short and there was no way to catch it.  His plan was to catch it on one hop, running on a full head of steam, and so the momentum would allow him to make a strong throw.  He always had a rocket of an arm.  In his younger days he wanted to be a pitcher, but he never had the control to be successful.  He def...