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Photographs By John Rosenthal

The photographs from this selection are available as a PDF only. Click here to download.

Cholestiatoma

Cholestiatoma is a loving beast; as with other cancers, he comes like a string around the finger, a chain around the throat, to insure that we do not idly forget why we are here. Cholestiatoma (Chole when masculine, Choleste when feminine) lives in my skull between the meninges and the right orbit.

Sunbeams

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.

Alfred Adler

The Ballad Of Outward Living

Living With The Dying

An Interview With Dale Borglum

A lot of my work is to just stay as clear as I can, so I can be there, available and loving, but at the same time have a penetrating enough awareness that I don’t buy into the superficial sentimentality of the situation. And death, of course, is the ultimate melodrama.

Growing Older

The Original Odd Couple, a soccer coach, a bibliophile

My Father’s Grandson

I called my father at his bank in Tulsa. He wasn’t there, as usual, so I left a message with his secretary, as usual. “Tell him, Helouise, that he has a new grandson.” I had to repeat the message twice, as Helouise was well aware that I was an only child and quite unmarried.

The Choice Of Emptiness

I am more and more convinced that only emptiness is creative. On all levels this is true. To be full of tradition is to have no room for the new. To be full of responsibility is to have no room for play. To be full of activity is to have no room for reflection. To be full of self is to have no room to receive another.

Chronicles

(March 22, 1977)

Gently Changing

An Interview On Cancer And Health With O. Carl Simonton

What we have our patients do is to take the symptoms of cancer as the illness, and to look for the five biggest changes that they can identify in their lives in the 18 months prior to the diagnosis being made. If they have had subsequent flareups, they look at the six months prior to each flareup. Then, they look at their emotional reactions to those changes. Finally, with each episode, they look at five good things that happened to them as a result of the diagnosis or of each flareup — what they get out of being sick.