While preparing to write this post I received a telephone call from a long time friend. I hear from him now and then, usually when he is not quite sober and yet longing for the sobriety of his past.

Our friendship goes back to when he was a budding student with intellectual and musical ability that could have been harnessed into something great. He married a fine girl in our community and I had the privilege of being her obstetrician for her first two pregnancies.