The power of words 2-28-23

This editorial from Missouri Medicine in November 1988 addresses words.

Currently there is a segment of our cultural family that sometimes mistakes words for truth. My mother taught me that "sticks and stones can break your bones but words will never hurt you". She left out the possible addition to the saying, the “if you don't let them”. Going from words said to immediate assumption and bypassing deliberation can result in misadventure. DGS

Don's Blog A Bright Field 2-27-23

This poem is from Katy. It provides

inspiration in its simplicity. 

      A Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

         R. S. Thomas (1913–2000)  

Dwarf Iris and more 2-24-23

A small part of the gnome garden has dwarf iris (Iris reticulata) emerging. I love miniatures poking through last years detritus.

Reportedly they can grow up through the snow. I hope we don’t have to test that.

dwarf irises dancing in violet blue gowns blurred by breezes Brenda Davis Harsham -2014 These new beauties are joining newly bloomed crocuses of several colors.

DAFFODIL 2-22-23

I have planted numerous daffodils through the years. One group in the front garden finally bloomed yesterday. Many more to come. Neither rain, snow or cold weather seem to stop them.

In the narcissus genus, these prolific perennials are in the amaryllis family. they are variously called daffodils, jonquils and narcissus.

I wandered lonely as a Cloud: I wandered lonely as a Cloud That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden Daffodils; Beside the Lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the Milky Way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced, but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:— A Poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company: I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the shew to me had brought: For oft when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude, And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the Daffodils. William Wordsworth - 1770-1850

Don's Blog The Man Watching 2-20-23

        The Man Watching 

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after

so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes

that a storm is coming,

and I hear the far-off fields saying things

I can't bear without a friend,

I can't love without a sister.

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on

across the woods and across time,

and the world looks as if it had no age:

the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,

is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!

What fights with us is so great!

If only we would let ourselves be dominated

as things do by some immense storm,

we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,

and the triumph itself makes us small.

What is extraordinary and eternal

does not want to be bent by us.

I mean the Angel who appeared

to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:

when the wrestlers' sinews

grew long like metal strings,

he felt them under his fingers

like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel

(who often simply declined the fight)

went away proud and strengthened

and great from that harsh hand,

that kneaded him as if to change his shape.

Winning does not tempt that man.

This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,

by constantly greater beings.

Rainer Maria Rilke

First Flower of the Day Crocus 2-15-23

This flower began peeking out of the detritus several days ago.

And today it is out in full glory.

The crocus cannot but emerge with several days of full sun and temperatures in the sixties despite the fact that we are in the middle of February. It is in the iris family and grows from corms. It lasts just a few breaths.

Nostos There was an apple tree in the yard — this would have been forty years ago — behind, only meadows. Drifts of crocus in the damp grass. I stood at that window: late April. Spring flowers in the neighbor’s yard. How many times, really, did the tree flower on my birthday, the exact day, not before, not after? Substitution of the immutable for the shifting, the evolving. Substitution of the image for relentless earth. What do I know of this place, the role of the tree for decades taken by a bonsai, voices rising from the tennis courts — Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut. As one expects of a lyric poet. We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory. — Louise Gluck

Dancing 2-15-23

My aim in the editorials was for them to be a timeless reminder that life as a doctor was about more than doctoring. Although technical competence is required, being a physician demands more than being a master clinician. The ability to address a patient’s 'dis-ease' as a fellow traveler on the road of life allows us the possibility of a human connection which is a treasured gift.

Don's Blog Praise What Comes 2-13-23

                   Praise What Comes

Surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved

of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health

that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise

talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books

that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks

before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps

you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs

you never intended. At the end there may be no answers

and only a few very simple questions: did I love,

finish my task in the world? Learn at least one

of the many names of God? At the intersections,

the boundaries where one life began and another

ended, the jumping-off places between fear and

possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,

did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

  Jeanne Lohman

 

 

 

 

Don's Blog Wild Geese 2-10-23

      Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

    

      Mary Oliver

'Letting Go' 2-6-23

It's June,1988. I have been Editor of Missouri Medicine for awhile. Thirty-five years seems yesterday. If you wish to enlarge the print - on the computer put the mouse arrow on it and press.

Don's Blog 'Slowing Down' 2-6-23

   This poem is a gift from a friend.

     Slowing Down

After hurrying through days

of busy occasions dutifully noted

on calendars with fast-turning pages,

I hear whispers around me,

talk how I am slowing down

as if somethings wrong with that

and I should be sorry to be my age,

mournful about the changes.

But for now I have to say

how welcome the changes are,

that it's good sometimes

to live within a smaller compass,

no longer in charge of anything

more than daily necessities,

that I am learning 

to be worthy of time

and robust with memory

in a sanctuary of silence

where the loves of my long life

walk the shadows with me

where we embrace

where we sing.

  Jeanne Lohmann

Trip to the Alaska Bush Spring - 1969 IV

But our time is short and we had to hop on our new small plane to Kotzebue. We are back on point as we head north to this small village on the northwestern coast. Kotzebue or Qikiqtaġruk gets its name from the Kotzebue Sound of the Bering Sea off the northwest coast of Akaska. It was named after Otto von Kotzebue, a Baltic German who explored the sound while searching for the Northwest Passage in 1818. Qikiqtaġruk, means "small island" or "resembles an island" in the Iñupiaq language. It is an historic native village. The Noatak, Selawik and Kobuk Rivers drain into the Kotzebue Sound near Kotzebue to form a center for transportation to points inland. In addition to people from interior villages, inhabitants of far-eastern Asia, now the Russian Far East, came to trade furs, seal-oil, hides, rifles, ammunition, and seal skins. The trading center expanded with the arrival of whalers, traders, gold seekers, and missionaries. As we arrive at the airport we enjoy their sign. They call themselves the polar bear hunting capital of the world. Maybe not.

Some Alaska Native villages can look eerily the same.

The old ways predominate,

but there are some modern amenities.

But we are here for a purpose. Living inside in close quarters all winter results in chronic adeno-tonsillitis in native children. This in turn causes infection and blockage of the tube between the throat and the ear with resultant ear infections (otitis media). We are here to perform adeno-tonsillectomy in previously diagnosed children. Despite its rural location Kotzebue has an excellent hospital facility.

Over the next three days we do ten tonsillectomies a day. The first day we finish at 3:30PM; the second day at 2:00 and the third day at 1:00. We start out as relative strangers and become a team. I am not operating faster. The team increases its coordination and pre and post op activity becomes more efficient. The best outcome is that there are no postoperative bleeds. This is professionally satisfying at every level. A good friend, a traveling nurse, will specifically followup these kids and hopefully they will have better health and less ear infections. And every evening there is a spectacular sunset.

Trip to the Alaska Bush Spring -1969 III

We are in Nome for the day on our way to Kotzebue. Here is the local hospital in Nome in 1969. It was replaced with the modern Norton Sound Regional Hospital in 2013.

Here is the leader of our intrepid crew as we walked on Main Street. I am surprised not only by my apparent youth but also my totally inappropriate travel outfit. “What was he thinking?”

But I was not the only one who dressed up for the trip. Here’s the surgical team: the nurse anesthetist and the surgical nurse in front of a local bar. Unfortunately we could not attend the “Dance at Sam’s Pool Hall with Music by United Freedom Socials’.

We found ourselves in the midst of history. Here is the first sidewalk in Nome being poured on Main street in 1969. When I returned recently in 2017 this sidewalk was cracked and in need of replacement. Over 50 years in Nome takes its toll on a sidewalk.