bird town

sue times two

photo: jetheriot

This is an illustration by Brady Robichaux of a photograph of my mother I scanned last year. It was made by . . . 

caught off guard

I'm rarely at a loss for words during team conferences with my patients and their families. I've done it enough times that I'm usually prepared to answer even the toughest questions: "Is my eyesight going to come back?" "Will my sister have to live in a nursing home?" "Is my husband ever going to get better?" Yesterday I was not prepared for the question a patient asked me.

chris chris

My monster has two heads,

one inside the other,

which makes him scarier than a regular

two-headed monster

whose heads sit side by side on his shoulders

where you can see both of them

at the same time.

revision

photo: jetheriot

Everything I write starts out with a rough draft in pencil on paper. Then I just keep re-writing it over and over and over until it sounds good.

deep

jetheriot

app description

I have a friend who would rather do just about anything besides meditate. She says she tried it once and it made her want to pull all her hair out and run screaming down the hallway. Maybe you can relate. Or maybe you have a short attention span, and the thought of sitting still for more than a few minutes intimidates you. As a brain injury doctor I treat a lot of patients with short attention spans and profound memory impairments. The truth is, meditation isn’t for everyone. Maybe it isn’t for you. That’s why I made this app.

me in my shemagh

photo: jetheriot

One day, several years ago, Camryn and Conroe came running up to me. They were like eight years old at the time. They couldn't wait to tell me about a new word they'd learned in school: FLAMBOYANT.

best shrimp burgers ever

photo: jetheriot

I must admit -- I didn’t make them from scratch. I bought them already made. All I had to do was cook them. But this isn’t a story about a recipe for shrimp burgers anyway. It’s a story about the value of doing only one thing at a time.

my two halves

photo: jetheriot

This is what I would look like if my face were symmetric.

the mystery of the unknown weed

To start at the beginning, last spring, a weed appeared in an empty flower pot on the back patio. I like to keep empty flower pots outside for exactly this purpose, so when the interesting plant started randomly growing in it, rather than pull it out and throw it away, I decided to cultivate it. This hobby is perhaps the most low-maintenance hobby ever. I never have to buy plants. I just wait for them to appear.

grackle silhouette

photo: jetheriot

fairy tales on vinyl

I was invited by Dr. Simon Fischer-Baum, a cognitive psychologist at Rice University, to speak to his Memory class at Rice next week. The topic:

peaceful habits promotional card

moss is a wildflower

photo: jetheriot

below absolute zero

WHEN WE SAY the soul is deep, how deep do we really mean? Deeper than the smallest capillary? Deeper than the darkest neuron? Doesn’t the soul go deeper than that, deeper than anatomy?