I am a retired ER/Urgent Care physician, as well as a musician, luthier and whitewater catarafter. I grew up in Highland, New York, a small town in the Hudson Valley, went to Our Lady of Lourdes High School across the river in Poughkeepsie, and then attended Fordham College in the Bronx. I attained an MD degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo and moved to Denver for an internship at Rose Memorial Hospital. Following several clinical positions that included a neighborhood health clinic, two student health services and an emergency room rotation, I moved with my wife to Jackson, Wyoming to direct the hospital emergency room in the summer and the medical clinic at the base of Jackson Hole ski area in the winter. When I learned of an emergency room position opening at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, we moved to the northwest where we have been since. While at Sacred Heart, I met a physician who was opening a minor emergency office (later to be called Urgent Care) and we established three of these centers in Spokane. After fifteen years of successful operation, we sold the clinics to a local hospital consortium and I went to work as an Urgent Care specialist at Group Health, later to become part of the Kaiser Permanente organization. I retired from Kaiser in 2011.