Spinal muscular atrophy

My Duck Companion

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

If you are reading this page on a Windows browser, there should be a logo on left side of the tab at top, a little green-brown-yellow blob. I first placed it there as an inside joke with myself, but the story is worth sharing. The full-size photo is at the top. (Most of this first appeared in a post from December 2013, “A Duck About Town.”)

It is a photo of a duck. The photo was taken in 2013, and it was added at the last second on the very first post written later that year. If you have looked at this web site once or a thousand times (thanks, mom!), the duck has been there, on whatever device you use, each time. It is this site’s mascot, a companion to each piece I write.
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A Trip to the City

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Public transportation is a wonderful thing. The Tri-State area surrounding New York City, where I live, is more than adequately served by public transit. All 20,000,000-plus of us who reside here live at maximum a short drive away from a train station or a bus stop that offers regular service to and from the Big City and parts in between; thousands (perhaps millions) of us live within walking distance of a bus or a train station.

The last vehicles that leave NYC leave well after midnight, and the earliest vehicles heading to NYC from the farthest reaches outside the city leave only a couple hours after that time, so public transportation runs almost 20 of the 24 hours a day.

If you live or travel in New York City, you know the official Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway map. NYC has 490 stops or stations spread among its five boroughs, and the picturesque map shows the lines snaking through the city:
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Mountains out of Steps

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

My least favorite cases are staircases. My least favorite ways are stairways. My least favorite air is a stair.

The photo above (not at all) accurately depicts (for reasons of comic exaggeration) what every staircase resembles in my mind’s eye. Including the one in my home. It is life with mobility impairment. Once upon a pair of teenage legs ago, I took stairs two at a time.

In 2012 my first neurologist, Dr. M, diagnosed me with late-onset Friedreich’s ataxia, or at least he reported that he felt I have a form of spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA), a disease that has dozens of forms and is genetic in origin.
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