…since he was born. Happy birthday, Andrew (ES)!

The early years:

High school:

College in New York City; he went back a week early for the fall 2004 semester so he could protest at the Republican National Convention. That’s him in the yellow t-shirt, right foreground.*

He graduated from NYU, having only gotten into trouble once more**:

He took a year off to be a volunteer teacher in Chiapas, Mexico:

He graduated from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. In his first house he rejoiced to be able to unpack ALL his books.

After residency he, his girlfriend, her daughter, and their dogs moved to Zuni, New Mexico:

* I was volunteering at the library that day and got home to a message from him on the answering machine. “Hi, Mom. I’m standing in the middle of Broadway waiting to be arrested.” He was held along with ~1,000 other protesters in a former bus garage on a pier in Manhattan, dubbed Guantanamo on the Hudson. He slept on the concrete floor using his shoe as a pillow. After being held there for nearly two days, he saw the wardens spreading carpet over the floor before letting in reporters. He eventually received $1,000 damages for his incarceration.

** He is a devoted — one might say obsessive — animal lover, and it was very hard for him to leave Bear, our dog. To help his homesickness he brought two flying squirrels back with him. (We were getting flying squirrels in the attic every fall. Eventually Smokey managed to trap some unharmed and bought a large cage to keep them. Flying squirrels are nocturnal, which suited my night owl husband.) Of course, pets were not allowed in the NYU dorms. He checked with his prospective roommate about having the little furry friends before bringing them back to NYC. But the powers that be found out about the criminal squirrels, and he was disciplined. (Both squirrels had succumbed to natural causes by then.) The whole affair was a front-page story in the Washington Square News, the student newspaper.