A Surprising New Way of Writing

If necessity is the mother of invention, then perhaps disaster—even a relatively small one—is the mother of necessity.

On a snowy Sunday, December 9th, I slipped on hidden ice, dislocated my elbow, and broke my rotator bone just below the elbow. That evening and in the days that followed I made a number of interesting discoveries.

The first was that if you arrive at a hospital emergency room via ambulance you might as well be the Queen of Sheba. You get instant attention. In my mother’s last ye...