Deja Vu with Quixotic Delusions of Grandeur

<p> <em>On a balmy October afternoon in 1971 I found myself on my back on a street in South San Francisco my left shoulder blade pinned to the curb. I had tripped....(and) there was a lanky young man with an unsettling ferocity in his eyes standing over me pointing a handgun at my face... </em></p><p><br></p><p>Though this typical public-schooled suburban American kid becomes a doctor with the Cesar Chavez-led United Farm Workers movement the opening lines of Marc Sapir's memoir reveal a life of disorderly chaos. From a radical disruptive anti-war medical student at Stanford Sapir became a Public Health official then accidentally first medical director of an all-inclusive team-based health program for disabled elders caring for writing and editing books about (and by) those elders. He coordinated development of Berkeley's high school health center and later operationalized a methodology in public opinion polling that explains systematic deception in opinion research. Labeling himself a failed communist the grandfather of 6 and playwright battles for working class egalitarian ideals while wandering around like a dement. Sapir inserts commentaries on social de-evolution language literature and cosmology distilled through living during the holocaust and exposure to Oliver Sacks' oeuvre and support. Youngster Marc dreamed of composing music and writing but being a good Jewish kid he caved to parental pressure and became my son the doctor...in the beginning.</p><p><br></p>