I Speak of Dreams

One list of five things physicians and patients should question

A collaboration of United States specialty societies representing more than 500,000 physicians developed lists of Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question, specific to each specialty, in recognition of the importance of physician and patient conversations to improve care and eliminate unnecessary tests and procedures.

The American College of Medical Toxicology and The American Academy of Clinical Toxicology developed this list of Five Things Physicians and Patients Should Question

(click to embiggen)

The list:

1. Don’t use homeopathic medications, non-vitamin dietary supplements or herbal supplements as treatments for disease or preventive health measures.
2. Don’t administer a chelating agent prior to testing urine for metals, a practice referred to as “provoked” urine testing.
3. Don’t order heavy metal screening tests to assess non-specific symptoms in the absence of excessive exposure to metals.
4. Don’t recommend chelation except for documented metal intoxicationwhich has been diagnosed using validated tests in appropriate biological samples.
5. Don’t remove mercury-containing dental amalgams

You can download your own copy:  Download ACMT-AACT-5things-List_september2013.

You can see lists of five things from other specialties at http://www.choosingwisely.org/doctor-patient-lists/ 

Banned Books Week 2013

It's this week.  Fight against the banning of books.

Here's the 2013 list of books banned, and where and why they were challenged.

Download BBW_2012-2013_Shortlist 

It's Today! Talk, Type & Spell Like a Pirate

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

See if pirates ruled the world, we'd only need one letter.

See all the images for "If Pirates Ruled the World" at Worth 1000

It wouldn't take long to learn how to type, either.

Cory, who wishes he were a pirate told me about it.

CB Fisk Opus 91, from California to Indiana

Over 30 years ago, Jacques Littlefield met a kindred spirit, Charles Benton Fisk, over a mutual love of organs, and the science and engineering of music.   How did this happen?  Littlefield, a graduate of Stanford University, became involved in CB Fisk's Opus 85, and began to dream of a significant instrument -- not a house organ -- in a dedicated hall attached to his house.

First Jacques had to build the hall.  For that, he turned to another kindred spirit, Tad Cody, who he had met through a love of trains.   Tad designed the hall and the rooms and library connecting the hall to the original ranch-style house.  

In 1983, calamity could have struck the CB Fisk company.  Charlie Fisk died.  But Jacques had confidence in the company as a team, and Opus 91 was underway. The installation was completed in 1987, with additions made in 1989.  An important historic note about the usage of this organ was that the Stanford University graduate program in Organ Performance, interrupted by the effect of the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989, continued by the use of Opus 91 in the Littlefield hall, which was unaffected by the quake.

There is at least one recording made while Fisk Opus 91 was in Portola Valley, Kevin Buttle's Festival d'Orgue.

Time passes and things change.  Jacques Littlefield died in 2009, and his family decided that the best future for the organ was to find it a new home.  A team effort ensued to find the optimal setting.

After acquiring the instrument with collaboration from the Jacobs School of Music, the IMU and the office of the president of IU, Kazimir and C.B Fisk disassembled the organ in February 2012 and then placed it in storage in Bloomington until Alumni Hall was prepared for its official installation.

October 15, 2013 was the inaugural concert for Opus 91, now known (for its full formal name) as the Charles & Kendra Webb - Thomas & Ellen Ehrlich Great organ of Alumni Hall, Indiana University 

Performers and works:

• Bruce Neswick: Praeludium in C Major, Buxtehude
• Marilyn Keiser (organ), Esther Kim (violin), Joe Kaiser (cello): Suite, Opus 149, Rheinberger
• David Kazimir: Piece d'orgue, Bach
• Janette Fishell: Scene Pastorale, Lefébre-Wély
• Charles Webb: Toccata, Dubois
• Christopher Young: Petit Offertoire, Franck, and Prelude and Fugue in B Minor, Saint-Saens
• Offrande au Saint Sacrement, Messiaen

This concert kicked off the 2013 Jacobs School of Music's 2013 Fall Organ Conference.

A personal note:  Fisk Opus 91 was an important part of my relationship with Jacques in ways too many to mention.  Jacques' thinking about the instrument, and our relationships with the "Fiskies" who came to install and voice the instrument, opened a whole world to me.  The same is true for musicians who came to play the instrument over the years.  I trusted Fisk President Steven Dieck when he told me that Indiana University's acquisition of Fisk Opus 91 represented a great future for Jacques's dream and the instrument.

Having seen the installation and heard the instrument in its new home, I have to agree. I also think that the Webb-Ehrlich Great Organ's (as it now should be known) location on the campus of a great university gives an opportunity for the organ to be engaged in something else: an exploration of the impact of both engineering and design on the actual production of music.

This is something that Jacques embodied, and touched on through his friendships, and maybe there's a way for the Webb-Ehrlich Great Organ to bring this forward.

In writing up the site change for Opus 91, the CB Fisk Company wrote,

The members of the Fisk shop, especially those of us who knew Jacques Littlefield, are gratified that the organ has a new home at a leading university with such a distinguished organ faculty; we suspect that Jacques would also have approved.

As I leave Indiana, having seen and heard the organ again after some years, I find myself rather teary-eyed--not sad, just poignant. Jacques was nothing if not pragmatic. Yes, I think he would have thought this was a good "next career" for this instrument. I can even imagine him putting together some kind of symposium so the engineers and the organists would see into each other's disciplines.

Timelapse video of the organ being installed

Sources:

• CB Fisk Company, Opus 91
• Press release, IU http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/21762.html
• Indiana Daily Student http://www.idsnews.com/news/NewStoryPrint.aspx?id=91826
• Indiana Daily Student http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=94107
• Indiana Journal-Gazette http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20130806/NEWS07/308069951/1002/LOCAL

A bit o history, maties

Eh, then, you thought it was all grog and hornpipes?  If you dinnot know the pirates' lore, how then will you e'er read the map?

The home. Eighteen, now there's a number for you.

Pirate Songs

Some songs for yez ears, mayhap, to while  the long watch along betimes.

Brave Pinnion

Flying under a false flag, eh me bilgy toad?  Here's a selection of true to run up, when blood is in ye'r eye.   

Eighteen years we've been a'sailing. Only three days to go.  Have ye weevils?

Them Seven Seas

Oh the waiting grows weary.  Can ye name the seven seas as we wait to sail them?  (This lass is wrong)

September 15, 1963

Birmingham Sunday by Richard Fariña

Come round by my side and I'll sing you a song.
I'll sing it so softly, it'll do no one wrong.
On Birmingham Sunday the blood ran like wine,
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.

That cold autumn morning no eyes saw the sun,
And Addie Mae Collins, her number was one.
At an old Baptist church there was no need to run.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom,

The clouds they were grey and the autumn winds blew,
And Denise McNair brought the number to two.
The falcon of death was a creature they knew,
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom,

The church it was crowded, but no one could see
That Cynthia Wesley's dark number was three.
Her prayers and her feelings would shame you and me.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.

Young Carol Robertson entered the door
And the number her killers had given was four.
She asked for a blessing but asked for no more,
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.

On Birmingham Sunday a noise shook the ground.
And people all over the earth turned around.
For no one recalled a more cowardly sound.
And the choirs kept singing of Freedom.

The men in the forest they once asked of me,
How many black berries grew in the Blue Sea.
And I asked them right back with a tear in my eye.
How many dark ships in the forest?

The Sunday has come and the Sunday has gone.
And I can't do much more than to sing you a song.
I'll sing it so softly, it'll do no one wrong.
And the choirs keep singing of Freedom.

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Congress honors girls who died in '63 Birmingham church bombing

Sing Chantez Shant

Call out The Bilge Pumps.    Or look for Margaritaville James.

The sea chantez or shanteys or what have you,  oh yes, to do the hard labor.

But the day is only five days off.