It was a beautiful morning. The air was crisp and clear. A hummingbird hovered just to the left of me. It was blissfully quiet except for the singing of birds in the tall trees surrounding me. I was enjoying a delightfully restful summer vacation in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Stretched out on a chaise longue, I was working on a chapter I had been invited to contribute to a book on an aspect of child development. The rest of my family had gone off for a day of swimming in the lake that occupied the center of the vacation community to which we had come to spend the month of August.

As happens only infrequently, both the ideas and the words flowed from my pen smoothly and steadily. Unwilling to break the spell, I just kept going, right on into the middle of the afternoon, when I was forced to stop by a splitting headache that thoroughly spoiled the mood. I realized that, since I had not had enough foresight to wear a hat, I had given myself a bad case of sunstroke. Ibuprofen reduced the storm in my head