Goin' South
The proper response when someone tells you they’re going to spend a year at the South Pole is to encourage them to follow their dreams. However, that encouragement would have been lost on me. A turn around the sun at the bottom of the world was never my dream. Then original late adolescent plan was to become a doctor. I was the going to be an astronaut, because clearly doctors make great astronauts. And when I was famous for being an astronaut, I was then going to be a US Senator. But after six decades of moderate effort I haven’t even met the Marvin Lee Aday criteria for success: “Now don’t be sad, ’cuz two out of three ain’t bad.” At least I got to be doctor, and batting .333 gets a multimillion dollar contract in baseball. (I love baseball for many reasons, not the least of which is that if you’re successful merely three times out of ten, you’re a superstar. Doesn’t work that way in medicine, but wouldn’t it be great if you only had to get it right a third of the