Fenton Johnson's Blog, page 2

Medicine and the Humanities: A Collaboration

Discussant remarks, First Friday presentations, Department of English, University of Arizona 12/2/11 Introduction:  Dr. Tilly Warnock, professor emerita, University of Arizona Speakers:  Dr. Ron Grant, director, University of Arizona Medical Humanities Program Dr. Rishi Goyal, Ph.D. Professor Fenton Johnson, discussant   Recent years have witnessed the rise of scientists writing as Renaissance men – I [...]

Signs and Wondering

June 2011   The second afternoon of an eight-day silent Zen Buddhist retreat on an island in Puget Sound, I was dive-bombed by a bald eagle. Here are the facts: The retreat center (a rented Christian summer camp, more about that later) has a labyrinth, where the meditator must walk every pathway to reach the [...]

Love and Sex in the Time of AIDS

Here's a link to my latest op-ed, this in the Los Angeles Times of 5 June 2011.  I have preserved the original title.  In the editing — possibly a telling comment in itself? — "love" was dropped.   http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/c...  

The Destiny of Us

  The Destiny of Us Fenton Johnson / April 2011   Oyez, oyez! Rise and hail! Bush wren, emu, crake and rail, Moa, parakeet, and chat, Puffleg, chiffchaff, after that An aged passenger is sat. With the dodo, twelve's complete, Ivory bill may take his seat In jurisprudent black.   In the docket, insolent, Man [...]

Lessons from the Quake: Giving Up Illusions

The following ran as an opinion essay in the Los Angeles Times of 16 March 2011: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/c...

Violence in the Desert, Violence in Our Hearts

12 January 2011 — Tucson, Arizona The mainstream consensus is that Jared Loughner was deranged, and the Tucson tragedy, however regrettable, is just another of those things that happen in a crowded, complicated, difficult world.  What comes to mind:  the Cuyahoga River of Ohio, at one point so polluted it burst into flames.  One might [...]

Madame Bovary: Desire, Grace, God

Even in loquacious, verbose English — elegantly performed in my audio version by Simon Vance, in a translation by Eleanor Marx-Aveling — the precision of Gustave Flaubert's French comes through. We are all searchers and Emma Bovary is the distillation of our longing.  She marries dull, devoted Charles to escape the routines of her childhood [...]