I was opening my mail the other day and out of one envelope dropped a crisp new five-dollar bill. There was Old Abe staring up at me from the floor. I picked him up, wondering who in the world would send five dollars in cash through the mail.

It was from Ed Sondik.  I don’t know Ed.  I had no idea why he would send me money.  So I looked more closely at the letter, signed by Edward J. Sondik, Ph.D., director of the national Center for Health Statistics for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an agency of the Department of Health & Human Services, over in Hyattsville.