Category Archives: Prose

100 Words

When I lived in Switzerland for graduate school in 1978, I took a Christmas trip to Italy with a friend. I was worried about not speaking the language but my friend’s roommate, who was studying linguistics, said to just learn 100 basic words and use them freely without regard to grammar. A word for me, you, them, goes with a verb without conjugation. A word for later and earlier substitutes for tenses. I tried it and he was right that people really appreciated the effort and made sense out of very few words. I have followed this technique repeatedly and regretted it when I didn’t.

When my family spent the summer of 2006 in Europe so I could write my first book, Driving Innovation, I made a list of what I thought the 100 words should be and I had the children write the translations in tabular form for Spanish and French. We used it in our travels to good effect.

We recently found the yellow sheet with the list of 100 words. (Well, it was actually 75 words.) It was in a phrase book for most European languages that was my traveling companion for many years.

Now that I can’t talk and spelling is slow with the Tobii eye gaze system and slower with a glance chart, I make do communicating  with nods and shakes of my head or directing my stare at the thing I am concerned with. If people are patient and ask me lots of yes/no questions, we can communicate successfully.

If you are reading this, you are capable of memorizing 100 words. In writing this post, my two college graduate children and I have added 25 words to the original 75 from the yellow sheet to make it an even 100. Feel free to customize the list as you desire. Here they are:

  1. Yes
  2. No
  3. Hello
  4. Goodbye
  5. Please
  6. Thank you
  7. I’m sorry
  8. Excuse me
  9. Where is…?
  10. How much (cost)?
  11. When
  12. Who
  13. I/me
  14. You
  15. He/him
  16. She/her
  17. It
  18. They/them
  19. Man
  20. Woman
  21. This
  22. That
  23. Here
  24. There
  25. And
  26. Or
  27. Toilet
  28. Police
  29. Restaurant
  30. Hotel
  31. Bank/ATM
  32. Taxi
  33. Do you speak English?
  34. I don’t understand
  35. What does ___ mean?
  36. Help
  37. I want…
  38. To eat
  39. To drink
  40. To find
  41. To sleep
  42. To read
  43. To have
  44. To be
  45. To do
  46. To make
  47. To need
  48. More
  49. Less
  50. A lot/lots
  51. A little
  52. Earlier
  53. Later
  54. Open
  55. Closed
  56. Good
  57. Bad
  58. Hot
  59. Cold
  60. Vegetarian
  61. Meat
  62. Fish
  63. Poultry
  64. The check
  65. Monday
  66. Tuesday
  67. Wednesday
  68. Thursday
  69. Friday
  70. Saturday
  71. Sunday
  72. 1
  73. 2
  74. 3
  75. 4
  76. 5
  77. 6
  78. 7
  79. 8
  80. 9
  81. 10
  82. 11
  83. 12
  84. 13
  85. 14
  86. 15
  87. 16
  88. 17
  89. 18
  90. 19
  91. 20
  92. 30
  93. 40
  94. 50
  95. 60
  96. 70
  97. 80
  98. 90
  99. 100
  100. 1,000

House plants (or slow-moving pets, or Darwin is my gardener)

Michael Gollin
October 2015

The first frost sunset with fingernail new moon did not catch us unprepared. We had time to bring in the house plants before it got too cold. My favorite is a citrus tree I bought in Chinatown when I lived there in the 1980s. I used to stop by the florist sometimes on my way home from work, and one day I saw a cheerful plant with scented flowers and small green citrus fruits. I bought it for my loft apartment and each winter it blooms and fruits. It has been with us in Bowie the whole time. You can see where I pruned it decades ago.
My house plants are survivors.

In my office, colleagues praise my plants and tell me I have a green thumb. My response is that Darwin is my gardener. You don’t see my failures because they died and were removed. Dead twigs and leaves are pruned away. What’s left is green and healthy. Some were gifts. Some were cuttings. Some were rescued from trash. A few I bought. There’s a jade plant so big it is a shrub and a bushel-sized aloe vera, both of which have progeny around the office from cuttings. Everyone has a green thumb if you keep trying and occasionally learn from your mistakes. 

(Are house plants at the office “office plants”?)

Back at home, African violets are supposed to be temperamental. Not mine. It’s ten years old and gets no special treatment, but it still flowers throughout the year.

Snake plants can live a year behind the refrigerator according to a tale a friend told me. I haven’t tried that but I’ve never killed one.

I had a Norfolk Island pine (Araucaria heterophylla)  that grew from three feet until it hit the ceiling. I tried a fancy technique of rooting the top but it failed and the tree stayed outside that winter and froze. I should get a new one.

For me, house plants are like slow-moving pets.

America is socialist, duh, and we should be proud of it

Michael Gollin
July 2015

When the Trans-Siberian Railway stopped in Irkutsk in Central Siberia in 1981 and my Swiss student tour group got off for a couple of days so we could visit Lake Baikal, a group of local Soviet students met us and showed us around, including the obligatory Great War (WWII) monument. They were smart but spoke glowingly about  the future of communism.

I had a rare epiphany and said cogently that Marx and Lenin failed to predict Roosevelt and the New Deal and American socialism which stops the “inevitable” worker revolution of communism in its tracks. Socialism humanized a corrupt capitalism with robber barons and great recessions. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps are all examples of the ways in which America is socialist.

It always amuses me when people do not see we are already socialist. That is why our system is so much better than communism. We are able to benefit from free markets while avoiding the many pitfalls of unrestrained capitalism. The debate then is just how socialist we will be.

My Induction into the Brighton High School Hall of Fame

I am being inducted into my high school hall of fame today. My brother Jim read the speech reproduced below. My parents still live in the neighborhood and were in attendance along with some good friends. Jim beat me, having been inducted years ago.

Here is a flattering video made for the ceremony:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=KYFG58cTD1Q

Here is the speech:

All You Need is Love
For Brighton High School
By Michael Gollin    
June 2016

All You Need is Love.
The Beatles broke up in 1970, just before I entered Brighton High School, and their songs had begun their leap toward immortality. As a member of the peace and love generation, this song strikes me as timeless.

Family love is where we begin.
High school is a time when many of us draw apart from our families, but trust me when I say that you will be much happier when you reestablish loving relationships with parents and siblings. All of you should have the pleasure of finding a spouse and creating your own family. Then things can turn full circle when your children form their own identities in their high school years. And when you get old or sick, they can take care of you.

Love of learning comes next.
Hopefully you have found subjects that you find so interesting that you can’t stop looking for information about them. Maybe it’s music, movies or social justice or computer technology or sports. For me, it was nature and thus biology. But I really learned a lot from all of my classes and being on stage or in the orchestra pit for all the musicals!
     Get in the habit of learning and keep it up your whole life long and you will never get bored. The trick is to stay curious and be brave enough to say “I don’t know.” When I was in high school I wondered why leaves are green and several years later I learned the answer, in a college biochemistry class, that the chlorophyll absorbs all the other visible colors and converts the photons into sugar and oxygen. The green color is a gift for us.

Love of work is for the fortunate.
If you find work that you love and that pays a living wage, then you are well on the path of happiness. For me, I love my job as a patent attorney, including my colleagues, and clients, who are professors, a Nobel laureate, the Bill Gates Foundation, and research institutions around the world. When I got sick, I didn’t want to go on full disability and I still do what I can even though I can’t talk or walk.
    It took me ten years of post high school education and ten years of lawyering before I got in my groove and it was hard work all the way.
    What are your goals? Whatever your calling, be patient and strategic and your path should open up to you.

Love of play is easy.
It’s easy to love play and some of our happiest times come when we are playing with friends, whether games, music, socializing, or entertainment. Play complements our other activities and creates one of the strongest threads in the fabric of life. 

Love for humanity.
You will be much happier if you consider the impact of your actions on your community and humanity at large. My simple motto is “increase the good and decrease the bad.” Be creative and fearless and never underestimate the power of small groups of committed people to accomplish great things, or at least good things.

Love for nature.
I have always found peace and refreshment by being outside, whether sitting, walking, hiking, running, biking, swimming, boating or gardening. Now that I can only sit and look and listen, I still try to go outside every day. We come from nature; we are part of nature, and it brings me comfort to realize I will return to nature when my body dies. Whatever helps you to keep your mind, body, and soul strong and fresh, make time for it.

One of my sayings goes like this:
A full life is one that begins in love, flows with love, and ends in love.

In conclusion, to quote the Beatles again, love is all you need.

National Law Journal Review of My Book

Former Venable Life Sciences Head Publishes Memoir

Katelyn Polantz, The National Law Journal
April 26, 2016

Michael Gollin, a founder of Venable’s life science practice, has for four years struggled as his mobility declined. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS, has set in. Yet he’s been as active as ever in thinking about his life’s work.

One of his theses, written as verses to a song late last year: “I learned the most important thing / With my disease onset / No one lives forever / But I’m not dead yet. / Yes! We’re not dead yet.”

Gollin has collected much of his recent writing on a blog, innovationlifelove.org. Now those pieces are available as an ebook, which his sister, Kathryn Marshak, who formerly worked in publishing, helped distribute this year. It is available on Amazon.com. The book includes new essays as well as writings from Gollin’s blog dating back to August 2012.

Gollin, 58, writes on his smart phone, and he has a language synthesizer that uses his own voice, recorded years ago, to speak.

“When I was diagnosed with ALS, I was dragged into a terrifying new situation, but I realized how lucky I’ve been in life, and I quickly resolved to make the best of the situation,” Gollin wrote recently. “It has been surprisingly liberating to explore this uncharted territory.”

Below are a few poems and essays from Gollin’s newest work.

Cherry Blossom
Crossing the Delaware
Never Give Up
Gifts
At Sea
BIO Conference

New E-dition of My Book

 
Innovation Life Love: Reflections on Mortality
Now Downloadable from Amazon

Innovation Life Love: Reflections on Mortality is now available as an ebook on Amazon.com. Author Michael Gollin  was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in 2012 and began blogging about his experiences and philosophy, forming the basis of the 262-page book.
 
Innovation Life Love offers insight into the unusual challenge of knowing one’s ultimate fate of progressive paralysis and deciding to make the most of every day. “In my personal and professional life as patent attorney, author, professor, and non-profit entrepreneur,” Gollin writes, “I’ve tried to be a productive member of all my communities: family, friends, work, home, country, and planet. When I was diagnosed with ALS, I was dragged into a terrifying new situation, but I realized how lucky I’ve been in life, and I quickly resolved to make the best of the situation. It has been surprisingly liberating to explore this uncharted territory.” In it, he confronts death head-on, contemplating dead wildlife and evolution in the Galapagos and feeling echoes of his ancestors in the Lithuanian woods where they were murdered.
 
Innovation
Innovation Life Love was adapted from Gollin’s writings—poetry, essays, photographs, and speeches—that have appeared on his blog, innovationlifelove.org. Gollin also authored  Driving Innovation: Intellectual Property Strategies for a Dynamic World (2008), available in hardback, paperback, and Kindle versions on Amazon.com). With Innovation Life Love, Gollin demonstrates how he has applied creativity and problem-solving skills to the physical, technological and emotional challenges he confronts every day.  

Life and Love
Insights into the meaning of life are thrown into sharp relief by the prospect of one’s own death, according to Gollin, who is compelled by love to pass on what he has learned and experienced in life. He succinctly answers questions about life, setting goals, and making decisions. He invites us to appreciate the beauty of nature by sharing a rafting trip down the New River and a hike the Sun Gate of Machu Picchu. Readers worldwide have been inspired by Gollin’s wisdom, courage, and optimism in the face of devastating physical illness.

Innovation Life Love Availability
Innovation Life Love is available for immediate download for $5 at Amazon.com. The print version is available on Amazon.com for $14. Read more about Michael Gollin on Amazon.com, his blog site, and at the Venable LLP website.
###
For more information, contact:

innovationlifelove@gmail.com
For more information on Innovation Life Love:
Innovationlifelove.org
Amazon.com website.

How to Raise Kids (Answering My Son’s Questions – Part 5)

How to Raise Kids (Answering My Son’s Questions – Part 5)

Michael Gollin (with help from Max Gollin)

Marry the right spouse, someone who wants to raise kids well. Wait until you have time to devote to parenting.  Then wing it.

We read lots of books and took advice from our parents and relatives and older friends.  You get to see various approaches, lenient or strict, serious or silly, cheap or expensive.

Each time Jill was pregnant, I was terrified that I would fail as a father. With Natasha, it was fear that I would do something basically wrong. With Max, I couldn’t imagine fathering two kids successfully at the same time, and with Julia, how could I handle three?

I think my existential angst came from the realization that babies begin life completely dependent on parents for everything, then as you raise them, they have to grow into completely independent adults, and this metamorphosis is inherently traumatic and seemingly impossible without massive disturbance. There is no easy path.  But I believe most activities in life that are worth doing are difficult.  Raising our kids is the most worthwhile endeavor of my life.

Editor’s note: this is part of a series of advice letters my dad wrote for me in September 2014 when I asked him for some guidance on the big things in life –Max