Saad Shaikh, MD

Your Page Title   "Am I on the menu?" I took this photo in front of the bed and breakfast, Case de Olas, I was staying at in Puerto Escondido, a small beach town on the pacific coast of Mexico. In the evenings, everyone gathered on the beach to watch the sunset and some played a multi note drum, and the sunsets were gorgeous.  In the daytime, I would take a yoga class on the rooftop in the morning and afternoon. I had been looking at this turkey each time I left my room to go in to town for lunch or dinner, but then on the way back I caught him in this perfect pose. Yes, I realize that the entire storyline of the photo is my own projection, but nevertheless, stories only means things to humans anyways. A year later, I was back again at the same place, but he was no where to be found. I hope he didn't end up on the menu.

Your Page Title   "I have never looked up at the stars" so said one of the residents in my noon conference at the VA Hospital in Orlando where I use to head up the residency and fellowship programs. I use to throw some of my photographic work in between the other more conventional teaching slides to break the monotony of the conference. There also would be a Zen koan or interesting vocabulary word of the day on the whiteboard (like Tsundoku - all the books you've bought and haven't read) and conference would start with the ringing of a Buddhist singing bowl but that's a story for another day. The goal was to break up the ordinary and to remember the forest. That medicine is observation just as life is as well, or should be. But, too often, in medicine physicians lose the forest for the trees. In any case, that weekend I had the group accompany me on a field trip to the Emil Buehler Planetarium here in Orlando and we all learned a...