This article requires a subscription to view the full text. If you have a subscription you may use the login form below to view the article. Access to this article can also be purchased.
In a room of our remodeled packing house—an outbuilding in back of our farmhouse on one of the Finger Lakes of upstate New York, where, in the nineteenth century, grapes were packed into boxes for shipment—hangs a framed photograph of a pelican. The room is one I enter daily. A further clue to its identity and utility is this: a water bird should feel at home there. This bird (its picture, that is) previously hung in the same essential room in the home I occupied, with my wife Sally and our children, when I practiced and taught neurology on the faculty of the University of Rochester, directed the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) clinic, and pursued an interest in ethics. Since then, my wife has died, my children are grown, I am retired, I have a new wife and home, but the bird hasn’t changed.
The pelican perches on a piling, its contours startling. Its body, in light and shadow, presents the patterns of an Art Deco schematization of a bird. Its gleaming eye fixes me. I know that a bird is incapable of displaying emotion by change of facial expression, but I have never doubted that it is eyeing me with scorn.
I like to take pictures and to have them enlarged to hang in my home. In my office in the packing house, next to the “Pelican Room” (otherwise known as the bathroom), for example, is a photograph I took years ago, its fading surface textured to look like canvas. It shows my three little boys running down a country lane beside a whitewashed fence, the smallest boy bringing up the rear. The feelings that snapshot evokes in me are still keen, but they aren’t guilt or regret. Not so with the pelican.
The man who shot the picture …
AAN Members
We have changed the login procedure to improve access between AAN.com and the Neurology journals. If you are experiencing issues, please log out of AAN.com and clear history and cookies. (For instructions by browser, please click the instruction pages below). After clearing, choose preferred Journal and select login for AAN Members. You will be redirected to a login page where you can log in with your AAN ID number and password. When you are returned to the Journal, your name should appear at the top right of the page.
AAN Non-Member Subscribers
Purchase access
Letters: Rapid online correspondence
REQUIREMENTS
You must ensure that your Disclosures have been updated within the previous six months. Please go to our Submission Site to add or update your Disclosure information.
Your co-authors must send a completed Publishing Agreement Form to Neurology Staff (not necessary for the lead/corresponding author as the form below will suffice) before you upload your comment.
If you are responding to a comment that was written about an article you originally authored:
You (and co-authors) do not need to fill out forms or check disclosures as author forms are still valid
and apply to letter.
Submission specifications:
- Submissions must be < 200 words with < 5 references. Reference 1 must be the article on which you are commenting.
- Submissions should not have more than 5 authors. (Exception: original author replies can include all original authors of the article)
- Submit only on articles published within 6 months of issue date.
- Do not be redundant. Read any comments already posted on the article prior to submission.
- Submitted comments are subject to editing and editor review prior to posting.
