Saturday, October 2, 2010

Future Party: A Rational Response To The Tea Party by Alan Koslow M.D.

by Alan Koslow M.D.

I am dismayed. I see a growing political movement that is based on looking to the past for answers. They believe the worlds is static and that solutions to current day problems can only be found in the political writings of our Founding Fathers. However, they like religious fundamentalists tend to pick those writings of these venerated Founding Fathers that support their views while ignoring those that refute it. The worst is that they do not see the need to change the game plan as the game changes. I felt this is a critical time to bring a rational perspective to the national political climate. It is the right time to birth a new political movement: The FUTURE PARTY.
The Future Party Manifesto
Where as: Public policy and politics have become irrational, and

Where as: Our Founding Fathers were products of the Enlightenment: and

Where as: The founding documents of the United States, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, are based upon Enlightenment philosophy, and

Where as: The world is not static, and

Where as: Global Warming will make our future more uncertain, and

Where as: We are moving into the Future not the past, and
Where as: The rest of the world is moving into the Future at a faster rate then the USA, i.e. the world is flattening, and
Where as: The Scientific Method is well established as a way to understand our physical world, and
Where as: Rational, critical thinking is often lacking in our political process, and
Where as: Every human being have the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness as defined in the Declaration of Independence, and
Where as: The majority does not the ability to deny a minority the same rights that majority enjoys, and
Where as: Our fore fathers came to the United States to escape religious intolerance and of all our freedoms the first one enumerated in the Bill of Rights is religious freedom and separation of church and state, and
Where as: The Constitution establishes that there shall be no religious test for office, and
Where as: Our politicians are for sale because of our campaign finance system, and
Where as: Our political system has deteriorated into One dollar One Vote instead of One Person One Vote, and
Where as: Corporation are not persons
Therefor:
We Pledge to: Restore sanity and rationality to public policy and politics, and
We Pledge that: The best scientific knowledge and predictions will be used to form public policy, and
We Pledge that: A Manhattan Project approach to solving Global Warming that does not cripple our economic system will be implemented, and
We Pledge to: Base all political solutions on Enlightenment principles and concepts, and
We Pledge to: Ensure all students are taught critical thinking skills in school starting in pre-K, and
We Pledge to: Ensure all students graduate High School with adequate science skills to understand our physical world and the scientific method that teaches us how that world functions, and
We Pledge to: Ensure all students be taught financial skills to thrive in our complex financial world, and
We Pledge to : Make Consumer Contracts and User agreements be required to have a plain word summary that would fit on a single page, and
We Pledge to: Eliminate the concept of person-hood for corporations, and
We Pledge to: Eliminate private financing of campaigns and have only public financing or small dollar individual contributions, and
We Pledge to: Ensure the freedom of religion, that our fore fathers felt so important is granted to all persons in the USA including the right to not have a religion, and
We Pledge to: Ensure the constitutional demand that NO religious test be used for public office be enforced, and
We pledge that: Theology will not be a basis for public policy and we will fight to uphold the first amendment, and
We Pledge that: College and professional school be affordable for all and not be a barrier to anyone, and
We pledge that: All persons in the United States will have health insurance, and
We Pledge to: Have a pathway to citizenship for all illegal aliens that have not committed a felony, and
We Pledge to: Have a rational visa system to allow enough seasonal workers to come into the country to fill the need not filled be legal residence, and
We Pledge to: Fight for human rights of all, regardless of how small or outcast a group they are in and regardless of age, race, country of national origin, religion (or lack of), sexual orientation, sex or philosophy.




This is a document in Flux. I have already made two major changes. As I get feedback and comments I may make more. i recommend if you are interested in this you re-check this on a weekly basis. I will also post major analysis and academic analysis as a separate blog on 'The Future Party' Blog.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Farm-to-School: Anatomy of Non-Profit Advocacy by Dr. Alan Koslow

American Diabetes Association Logo
by Dr Alan Koslow

It was the first Friday in June in 2006. I had a meeting that morning of the advocacy committee of the Central Iowa Chapter of the American Diabetes Association. We were trying to come up with a new agenda for in state advocacy for our chapter of the American Diabetes Association. The meeting was over and we did not have any good ideas. We broke up with a charge to each of us to come up with ideas. We would get back together in a few weeks.

That afternoon I happen to be driving my car about 1:30. Whenever I was driving between 1:00-3:00 PM on Fridays I would listen to Talk of the Nation: Science Friday on the local NPR station.I heard a story on farm to school programs and how they were done in both a small community in California and one in a southern state.   The fact that struck me was how they found this improved the nutrition and the health of the kids in these communities.  I immediately thought that this would be something to consider in Iowa.

My research at the that time led me to a national Farm To School group.  I found out that while there were multiple programs around the country, they were all local programs.  There were no state wide programs.  I saw this as a way to help local farmers and to improve the nutrition of the students and hopefully prevent obesity and diabetes.  I got in touch with a friend of mine who is a State Senator, Staci Appel.  We discussed this and she was quickly on board.  She became the champion of this bill.  The way we first envisioned it was to mandate that 50% of all food sold in Iowa schools within five years be Iowa grown.

Staci really went to town on this and I as the Advocacy Chair of the ADA gave her the support she needed.  This went like gang-busters and the bill was passed the next legislative session 2007.


In 2007, Iowa lawmakers passed Farm to School legislation to establish a program that would link elementary, secondary, public and non-public schools with Iowa farmers; provide schools with fresh and minimally processed Iowa grown food for inclusion in school meals and snacks; and to encourage children to develop healthy eating habits and provide them with hands-on learning opportunities, such as farm visits, cooking demonstrations, and school gardening and composting programs.

The Farm to School Program is coordinated by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship in partnership with the Iowa Department of Education and a seven-member Farm to School Council. The Iowa Farm to School Program will reach out to communities to establish strong partnerships.

Farm to School Initiatives:


Iowa Farm to School Chapter Initiative:

There are currently 9 active Iowa Farm to School Chapters throughout the state. Each chapter has developed and implemented a plan so as to uphold the objectives and mission of the Farm to School Program. Such activities in these chapters include; locally-grown Iowa food procurement, eating fresh fruit and vegetables from Iowa, school gardens, field trips to local farms and orchards, purchase of kitchen equipment to better serve needs of students, educational presentations and materials, food fairs, and classroom activities.

This is one of my initiatives I am very proud of.  It was the first State wide mandated Farm To School program in the nation.  There are now 27 other states that have followed Iowa. I won a Natioanl Advocate of the Year award for my work that led to this.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy. Some of these blogs may seem mundane. However, they are important foundations for later Blogs.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

How JFK Changed My Life

I can't tell you why I remember this in as much detail as I do. I was only seven years old. It was October of second grade. John F Kennedy was in a tight battle with Richard Nixon, the Vice President.  The Democratic and Republican National Conventions of that summer were the first I watched.  My parents let me stay up well pass my bed time to watch the conventions.  I was glued to the TV. I felt I was seeing democracy in action and it turned me on.

You see in New York City the public schools are closed on all election days (November, primary day and any special election).  From the year I was born until I finished sixth grade my mother was a poll worker.  She would take me with her from 7:00AM in the Morning till 9:00PM at night.  I would play with the other kids.  My mother and the other poll workers would play MahJong..  I learned the importance of voting, and thus have missed only a rare election my entire life.  Even if I was going to live in a place one year I registered to vote.  In college and medical school I voted absentee from school.


Woody Station Wagon
Car bwith speakers
I clearly remember it was a Sunday afternoon in October 1960.  The election was less then a month away. I was walking home from Sunday Hebrew School.  It was a few minutes after noon.  As I was walking the last little bit to my house a Woody Paneled Wagon with giant speakers on the roof was coming down the 72nd Avenue toward me.  It was plastered with campaign posters for JFK.  I heard patriotic music coming from the speakers and the music and the station wagon stopped and out bellowed, 'COME MEET THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES".  It then said this was just two blocks away, on Jewel(70th Ave.) Avenue off the corner of 164th Street.  My heart skipped a beat.

PS 200 Front
I checked with my Mom and went to the rally.  It was two blocks away at the far corner of PS 200 elementary school.  This was the closest school to my house.  However I went to a school (PS 154) almost three times farther, because PS 200 was built specifically for the complex of apartment buildings call Elechester built for the men in the local electricians union. On the map below you can see where my house is ( by the d in 72nd AVE, after you move the little man and the 'A' bubble to top edge of the map.).




View Larger Map


JFK at another Rally

Flat bed truck but without rail.
There was a giant crowd.  I was standing on the curb right by the third tree from the left in the street view image above.  We all waited what seemed like hours but was probably 45 minutes and a shout went up that he was coming.  I couldn't see since I was so short (I was only 7) and was standing on my tiptoes.  All of a sudden some men cleared the street in front of my and I say a flat bed truck coming toward me down the hill.  It stopped right next to the curb between the second tree and the one I was standing next to.  Everyone surged around the truck and I ended up next to the rear bumper.  I looked up and two feet in front of me was a giant standing on the back end of the flatbed truck and holding a rail.  He reached down and shock my hand.  I was awestruck.  He then gave a speach, which I don't remember a word of, but I became a die-hard fan of JFK that momment and a life time Democrat.






This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy. Some of these blogs may seem mundane. However, they are important foundations for later Blogs.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Fools Rush In: Saving Two Lives

We were living in Vienna Va. and I was working at the American red Cross Blood Research Laboratories at the NIH campus. The director of industrial design for the Am Red Cross was the regional director of the Industrial Design Group. They arranged a trip to the Amish area of Pennsylvania to tour the John Deer design facility. We had great tour of the design facilities and saw some of the first 3-D CAD systems in the world. We then all had dinner at a family style Amish restaurant. And we left to drive the two and a half hour drive back to DC at about 8 P.M.

We started driving on route 83 from Pennsylvania toward Baltimore. There was a detour and we had to leave the highway and go on a small two lane road that went through a very mountainous area near Hereford MD. Margie was driving and I was sleeping in the passenger seat. All of a sudden Margie stopped short thrusting me against the seat belt. I quickly awoke and looking out the windshield I saw in front of the car before us a tractor trailer laying on its side having rolled over between 120 and 150 degrees, about halfway between being on it's side and being on it's top. There was fuel spilling out of the tank onto the road. I rushed out of the car to the tractor and climbed up to the drivers window.


I climbed up the twelve feet to the window on the drivers side and looked in. I could see the driver trapped by the steering wheel and climbed through the window. He groaned "my brother". All I could see was a massive amount of chains in the back seat of the cab. I quickly realized that his brother was under all those chains. I quickly started to dig out the brother from under out. He had been sleeping in the back seat. Fortunately, I was able to get his head exposed. Neither of them were conscious at this time. It took almost 17 minutes for the local volunteer fire department to arrive. During that time I was keeping the neck stable on the brother in the back seat (I suspected a severe neck injury from having hundreds of pounds of chains fall on him (they were in the compartment under the matress he was sleeping on). Also he was unrestrained and likely to have injured his neck. While I was doing this the driver, his brother vomited. When the Hereford volunteer fire Dept arrived I refused to leave until someone with at least comparable training to myself arrived. I had worked seven years with the FAST team of western NY, was an EMT, had three years of surgical residency behind me. I explained I was already in the best position to render aid and the best skilled at the scene. They explained it was a highly dangerous situation because of the hundreds of gallons of fuel that had spilled. I told them you take care of the fuel and hand me two cervical collars and IV catheters and bags. I started an I.V on each. BTW there was not enough room for anyone else to come into the cab. I was doing this all upside down.I placed an cervical collar on each of the men. Several times I had to clear their months from vomit. I was given the Menaris France Award For Valiant Service in Emergency Medicine at their annual dinner in January 1984.

The Go team from Baltimore Shock Trauma Center was just recently organized and had not flown a mission yet. This rescue was their maiden rescue. The unique aspect of the team was that they had a surgeon, anesthesiologist, trauma nurses and carried O-negative blood for field transfusion. They could set up a full field surgical unit. They arrived about 45 minutes after the fire department and I allowed them to take over from me. I slowly backed out of the cab and was helped down by several of the firemen. It took them nearly 2 hours to get the men extracted. They had to get a crane to lift the cab. They first got a twenty ton crane and it was not enough finally they got a 45 ton crane and were able to get the men out of the tractor cab. We were finally ablee to get on our way about 2:30 in the morning. I took thee next day off from work and slept in. I was given the Citizen Award by the Baltimore County Fire Department. The two men both survived after weeks in critical care and months of rehab.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy. Some of these blogs may seem mundane. However, they

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

College: No This Is Buffalo Not Oxford.


It was June 1971 and I was on the plane on my way to Buffalo for an orientation for my freshman year. Now you may wonder why I was on the way to Buffalo when I had got a full ride academic scholarship to NYU (that will be a later blog). When I got there with several hundred other incoming freshman that would all become my closest friends(LOL), well at least a few, we got to sample what life at UB would be like. I met a girl that was the same height as me, six foot tall. She was the off spring of a Swedish man and Japanese woman that met during the occupation of Japan after WWII. She was absolutely Gorgeous and she was the first girl I knew that was my height. We spent most of that weekend together. It definitely gave me something to look forward to when I would be coming back in the fall.

They told us about a new experiment in American College Education that they were going to do. They wanted to start a residential college system similar to that at Oxford and Cambridge. There were going to be four colleges: Clifford Furness College (the science); College B (the humanities); Rachael Carson College (the environment); and an Art College. Clifford Furnas and College B were to be in McDonald Hall and the other two in the residential hall across the quad. The concept was that rather then upper class resident advisers, all the resident advisers will be graduate students. The Dorm director rather then being just some elderly couple would be a Junior Faculty member and their family. There would also be fellows of the College and they would hold seminars and offer non-credit courses exclusively for the members of the college. The idea was to have students who would expand their studies outside of the traditional disciplines and combine the arts and science when approaching a topic. I intellectually fell in love with the idea and ran to sign up. I met Lyle Borst PhD the Dean of Clifford Furnas College and Jon Ketchum (pictured at right) the Dean of College B. I will have lots more Blogs about both these men as they are two of the most important men in my intellectual development and also both had fascinating history and uniquely inquisitive minds.

We also met Warren and Tony Barbour(see picture of Warren on right) the dorm 'parents' . They lived with their new born daughter in an apartment on the first floor. Warren was an anthropology Professor and specialized in mid American ancient cultures and headed the excavation of The Teotihuacan Valley Project.

As a founding member, I stayed with Cliford Furnass College for six years through the end of my Junior year in Medical school(being the longest resident member ever). It was where I met Margie my wife. I had so many fantastic encounters with professors that I would never have had if I wasn't a resident there. Through Jon Ketchum I developed my strong interest in philosophy and stayed, during the summers, at the student residence Oakstone Farm that he ran. So stay tuned and I'll blog a lot on these topics and men.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.

Monday, September 20, 2010

I Can Believe I Ate the Whole Thing.



It was Friday night and the Spring Fling at Jamaica High School was just ending. I as the chairman of the ticket committee was the de-facto social coordinator of the cast party. I decided on Jahn's Ice Cream Parlor on Queens Blvd in Forest Hills Queens. I had my motives for having it there. Thomas McNeil, who went on to found Cyote Ugly, one of my best friends in High School and had graduated a year earlier, and I had a bet.
Here's some history about the real Coyote Ugly. It won't make the movie any better or any worse, but you will at least be armed with some facts:

Coyote stands alongside the best New York shots-n-beer saloons such as (in order that I like them): Doc Holliday's, The Patriot, and Duff's Brooklyn. There are other pretenders who copy these five saloons by letting girls dance on the bar, but forget them. All of these places, Coyote included, owe their existence to one man: Tom McNeil.

It was Tommy who owned the original Village Idiot from the 1980s until 1993 that introduced the concept of bars of this genre to New York. Tommy's formula for success is based on this concept: men will stick around a bar a hell of a lot longer, and spend way more money, if all the bartenders are female. (Gilbert claims that when Tommy needed new help, he would put out a sign that read, SHAMELESS SLUTS WANTED: NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY)
You have to realize Tom was twice my weight. At that time I was about 150 pounds and Tom was over 300 and played semi-pro football. Our bet was that I could out eat him. So thirty-four(34) of us went to Jahn's after the schools spring movie extravaganza.

We all got to Jahn's and I took charge and we got a table along the back center wall that was long and we could all sit at. You have to realize this table could be seen from the entire restaurant. Just what I wanted. Everyone was hyped because the show had gone great. I had enough from the party fund (I controlled the money) for everyone to pretty much get what they wanted. I sat against the center of the table with my back to the wall. Tom sat directly across from me. Everyone sat around us.

The bet was that we would each eat a Twin Jahn's Burger Delux and then a kitchen sink. We had to eat everything on the burger plate before we ate the Kitchen Sink. So everyone ordered their dinner and Tom and I ordered our Twin Jahn's Burger Deluxe. After we finished it we ordered two Kitchen Sinks. You have to realize that when they bring out the Kitchen Sink they have the whole staff parade behind making a racket with bowls and spoons. They wanted to make sure everyone in the restaurant knew that someone had ordered it. The waitress came with 34 bowls and started to place the two Kitchen Sinks half way down the table on each side of Tom and I. I said no one for him, pointing to Tom, and one for me. This got the attention of everyone.


The Kitchen Sink, a mammoth creation with twenty-two flavors of ice cream and eleven different toppings served in a huge tureen. The trick is to gather a crowd large enough - and it easily feeds ten to twelve - to finish it before it melts into a puddle of sugary goo. While the atmosphere suggests time has stood still, the price tag on this extravaganza reminds us it has marched on . . . what cost us $16.95 in our youth is now a whopping $42.65. The memories alone are worth five stars.
We started eating and the cheers went up. It was like a tournament. As we ate through about a gallon of ice cream each we gathered a crowd. I don't think anyone in the place wasn't gathered around our table. It seemed as each a cheer went up as each spoon went into my mouth. I heard a sigh and large exhalation of breath and looked up to see Tom slumped back in his chair and about a pint of ice cream soup in his bowl. Well I finished the last few spoons of mine and then took Tom's and finished his. Then I collapsed back into my chair and one of the loudest cheers I heard in my life went up. I paid the bill for everyone.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Racing the Day Away.

When I was 14 I started working at Bridgehampton Race Track. I should not have been able to work till I was 18 but that never stopped me. I was also doing surgery on dogs at fourteen and people at 16(much more on this in later posts) so why would I let a little age deficiency stop me. My brother-in-law Bruce Newman had the year earlier got involved in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). The SCCA ran auto races and road rallies across the country. They got members to volunteer to do all the jobs around the track during the races. The four main jobs were Pit marshal, Flagging and communication, rescue and Timing and Scoring. Bridgehampton was arguably the most dangerous racetrack in the United States. They ran local, regional, national races and the Trans-Am and Can-Am races. Twenty people both race drivers and spectators alike were killed over the 45 years the track was open.

Take a look at the race course on this video of the Can-Am of 1968(jump to 1 minute and 10 seconds) (those cars are going 180-210 MPH):




The race track was built by local racing enthusiasts when in the early fifties people were getting killed and very serious accidents were happening on the back roads of Bridgehampton. It became one of the fastest and most dangerous tracks in the USA.
Also among the drivers with a deep sense of respect for the place is Mario Andretti, who first drove at Bridgehampton early in a career that includes a world championship and an Indianapolis crown.

''It's a special track,'' Mr. Andretti said in an interview. ''It was one of the first race tracks I raced on in my career, in 1965. It was actually an awesome course. It was dangerous, in a sense.''

The first of the course's 13 turns, a right-hander that dives downhill, was infamous among racers. ''Turn One was an unbelievable corner because it was blind, and you just fell out,'' Mr. Andretti said. ''It could scare the bejesus out of anybody.''

If you look at the video and see there were no guard rails. Those men in white jump suits were me when I was on flagging and communication (when I both almost died and saved someone else's life) and also when I was on rescue( again almost getting killed and saving someones life)(these to be later posts). Over the pit area you will see a tower, that is were I spent most of my time the last two summers working there. I met some of the greats of racing and had a ball getting an award for my work. My brother-in-law Bruce worked Pit Marshal all four years and I was for most of my first year.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Lab Is Open. BOOM!!!!

I was fascinated with science from my earliest memories. I cannot remember as a child not wanting to be a scientist until I decided to become an exotic animal veterinarian (Zoo vet)(at age 9) and then a Vascular Surgeon(at age 15). The gateway drug for my jones on science was either a Gilbert or Porter Chemistry set, I've had both over the years and cannot remember which one was first. They were "safe" and "Tested" as you can see on the cover. Well I did everything to prove it was not safe and that they didn't test everything you could do with the enclosed chemicals. Even blow things up.

Our house had a finished basement that we used for entertaining. My sister had her friends over there. I played toy soldier with Joel Schiffenbauer down there. We had family gatherings down there when the first floor wasn't large enough. There was a laundry room about 20 foot by 15 foot that my mother told me to do all the science in. I eventually expanded to the entire basement after my sister Barbara got married when I was twelve. I was the talk of the neighborhood and all my cousins were afraid to go into the laundry room and later the entire basement.

I suspect that if you only did the experiments that were in the book that came with the chemistry set it was probably tested and thus safe. However, that was not fun. Plus there were lots of other chemicals around the house that made good reactions. Take Clorox (hypochloric acid) and mix it with Ammonia and you get a yellow gas that is heavier then air(very toxic chlorine gas) and hypochlorous acid . which I found burns a hole through the table, the tile on the floor under the table and an inch or two into the cement foundation of the house. I was lucky I only had a cough for a couple weeks. I do have since then chronic sinusitis and have always wondered if I caused it myself. The price we pay for our science.

I saw in the set a bottle that had a dull silver metal in oil. The label said magnesium and a warning to keep away from water. The instructions in the book said to take a small piece and place on metal pan and light with a match. It was an impressive very bright white light. I saw spots in front of my eyes for hours. I had to see what happened when you added water to the magnesium. Well that weekend my mother had to buy a new table to replace the one I was using. I understand they have taken a lot of the chemicals that came in my sets out.



This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Forbiden Love

I was the chair of ticket committee at Jamaica High school, The first Junior to hold that position. I inherited it from Bruce Brodsky. Now that may sound like a boring job in High School but remember he who controls the money pulls the strings. We sold the tickets for every school event that had tickets. This included all the sports teams, all the theatrical productions and all the special events. I was responsible for thousands of dollars in revenue. I was also the one who organized the post event parties for the participants. We were given a budget to pay for some of the expenses of the cast parties etc.. So it fell on me to organize all the parties and get togethers. Sometimes we would go to Jan's Ice cream Parlor (I have a major story about Jan's) sometimes we would hit pizza parlors and sometimes we would just go to a local park and hank around and smooze or some would do a little more. Keep reading, that's what this story really is about.

Jamaica High was unique among High Schools in New York City. It was the largest High School with 5800 students (1800 in my graduating class), it was the only High school in New York with a fifty-fifty Black-White ratio. It was fed by three very interesting areas: Jamaica Estates, possibly the wealthiest neighborhood in NYC; Jamaica, one of the three poorest areas in NYC; and Kew Gardens, a community were most of the permanent staff for the United Nations lived. So we had the most international, the richest and the poorest students in NYC mixed in one of the most fascinating melting pots there could be. We had the longest posted Principal, Dr Shucker and the only school in the United States who at that time had an unbroken record of a Westinghouse Science Tallent Search Semi-finalist every year since its inception. We had more PhD's then any other High School in NYC, almost all the Chairman were Doctorates. We were the first( in 1966) High School to have it's own Main Frame Computer an IBM 360 solely for student use. The school started on a staggered schedule between 7 A.M. for the earliest and 11:30 for the latest. The students were statified into seven academic levels from Industrial (non-raegents), General (non-reagents), General Reagents, two levels of Regular reagents, Honor and extra-honor. Overall an amazing school. I just learned they are closing it this year.

Back to our story, There was this girl Michelle, she was the most beautiful girl at Jamaica High School. She was a Senior, a year ahead of me. She was also one of the brightest girls, being in almost all Honor or Extra-honor Classes. She had a bubbly personality. Yes I had a crush on her but felt she was out of my league. She was the type that if we had a Home-Coming Queen she would have been it. She was articulate, gregarious and outgoing. She was an officer of the Student Association and an athlete. It was after a a school event. I arranged for everyone to meet at Cunningham Park, there was a grove near 198th Street and Union Turnpyke that we liked to hangout in. It was about 9:30 and about 40 or 50 kids were there hanging out and doing what High School kids do on a Friday Night after letting off steam at a school event. The amazing thing was that about half the kids were black and half white. It was probably one of the only places in NYC in 1970 that there was mixing of the races to this degree. I was proud that I was a major catalyst of this. Well I was sitting on a bench and Michelle sat down on the other end. We started talking. As time went on I realized she wasn't on the other end of the bench but we were sitting next to each other. Soon we were holding hands and looking into each others eyes. The divides between us, her a senior and me a junior, her the class beauty and me a geek(yes even then we had geeks, I was one of the first), her popular with the opposite sex and me almost dateless in high school. I don't know how it happened but all of a sudden we were kissing. Time flew and the next thing I knew, almost three hours later, it was 1:30 and the last of the people with a car were leaving and we had to go. We both left with a touch of sadness because we both, wrongly, thought that we could not continue our puppy love since she was black and I was white.

Watch the Body

I arrived as a freshman at the University of Buffalo in the fall of 1971. When I walked into my dorm room (the only triple in the entire dorm) I immediately noticed the stain on the dorm wall over my bed and opposite the main window in the room. I quickly found out that the previous spring the university had student riots that dwarfed those at Kent State but fortunately no one was killed. However, a teargas grenade was shoot through the window of my dorm and permanently stained the wall. Every year for the three years I lived in the room they painted the wall shortly after we left in the spring and by the day we moved in the stain burned through the new paint.

Because of the riots the relationship between students and police was very rocky so the School of Management started the Pilot 100 program:

12. Pilot 100: Improving Relations With College Students
(Buffalo, New York)

Goals: To allow "Longhairs" to ride along with police to see problems police encounter and to allow "pigs" to learn many students are serious about their academic work.

Strategies: The School of Management/ SUNY Buffalo, through a liaison with Marine Midland Bank, secured cooperation of Amherst Police Department, Buffalo Police Department, and SUNY-Buffalo campus police. All program participants were screened and female students could ride only if accompanied by a male student. The pilot program anticipated 100 students, but in two and a half months, 250 students had participated. Both sides called the program a success, except that students expressed interest in riding only with City of Buffalo police.

I as a freshman rode more then any other student, riding over 75 times. I rode about one third of the time with a female senior sociology student Gretchen. I and Gretchen were featured in a series of news stories carried in both the Buffalo News and the Amherst paper. The headline was "No Those Students in The Back of the Police Car are not Under Arrest".

The rules were such that the police precincts were divided into five levels of crime level. You had to ride in each level once to go onto the next level, with the tactical patrol being the highest. In the next to highest level I actually enjoyed riding with two police officers. I unfortunately do not remember their names. They were a black and white team and the Black officer took home his car on a new innovative from the federal government. They were involved in a car accident while responding to a call and were critically injured. I could have been in the car with them since I rode with them almost weekly. With them I was involved in three episodes that I will write about in this blog. There were two other episodes with the tactical unit that I will also write about. The relationships I developed that year really came in handy both during my volunteer work with the FAST team and the Red Cross Disaster service.

It was a beautiful Friday afternoon and I arrived at the police precinc,t on Main Street about a half mile from Downtown, at 3:45 as ussual to ride with my favorite pair of police officers. They were walking down the stairs from their daily briefing session. They waved and I followed them to their squad car. I got into the back as usual. We drove around for about 45 minutes and it was pretty quite when the call came across the radio for silent alarm going off. With lights and sirens blaring we tore down Main Street and turned the corner to see a body lying on the sidewalk in front of a jewelry store and someone about a block down running. They pulled up and told me to jump out and watch the body. They took 0ff at about 100 miles an hour burning rubber and going after the person running away. When I got out of the car I immediately noticed the man laying there was not moving. I went over and realized he was dead. He was what in those days I would have called old (I was only 18 and anyone over 30 was old) he had a mustache and graying hair. There was a gun laying on the ground a few inches from his hand. Immediately a crowd was starting to form around the body. I did my best for what seemed like hours, but was probably only 2 or 3 minutes, until several more police units arrived and took over the scene. The perp got away.

Nothing like a nice quite spring day in Buffalo.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Snippets Of My Life: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

In walked Mary Poppins for real. It happened when as a senior medical student I studied in England for three months(part of my five month long Honeymoon). I was studying with Mister Felix Eastcott (in England surgeons are called Mister {not Mr.} instead of Doctor, this comes from their original charter from the King of England when they were Barber-Surgeons to distinguish them from medical doctors). Mister Eastcott was the vascular surgeon to the Royal family and had his offices on Upper Harley Street, London. His office backed up onto the grounds of Buckingham Palace and was once the homes for the Stable staff. He was the first person to do a Carotid endarterectomy (one of the most common operations I do) in 1953. He wrote and published the first Textbook of Vascular Surgery. I worked with him at Saint Mary's Hospital Paddington, the same hospital that Flemming discovered Penicillin in 1928 and the ECK machine was invented. They had two noble prize winning work done there the discovery of penicillin and antibodies. Many of the Royal family gave birth there, including Princess Margarette while I was there (but unfortunately I never saw her or any of the royals).

I was in a preceptor relationship with Mister Eastcott which meant I followed him and assisted on all his cases, went to his private office hours ( a very interesting story later from that), went to his public clinic and first assisted him at the private Hospitals he went to ( a very interesting story will come from that). When we were at one of these private hospitals he would occasionally take me to his club with him. It was on one of these occasions that Julie Andrews walked in and made a beeline for Mister Eastcott. He jumped up and hugged and kissed her, introduced her to me and talked for a few minutes. I was young and star struck and just sat with my jaw hanging open. She was so nice.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Snippets of my Life: Whole lot of Nothing

A Whole Lot Of Nothing.

One of the most emotionally striking moments of my life was March 10th 1981 when I spoke with Mary Gohlke. The amazing aspect was that the night before I had seen her laying on an operating table with her chest wide open and absolutely nothing in there. No heart, no lung just air and several surgical clamps and tubes. The only other person in this condition I ever saw was a corpse. You see Mrs Gohlke was the first person, in the world, ever to receive a combined heart lung transplant by Dr. Bruce Reitz assisted by Dr Norman Shumway(developed technique for heart transplant, that was stolen by Christian Barnard {another story}). You see I was a third year resident at Stanford Univ at the time and I was on call that fateful day and was in the operating room during one of the most amazing firsts in modern surgery.

While I have not read Mrs. Gohlke autobiography, "I'll take Tomorrow" I clearly remember the story of how it came about as told to the operating team that ground breaking night of March 9th 1981. You see Mrs. Gohlke was third in line on the transplant list and because of her pulmonary fibrosis she had months to live and was doomed to die before receiving her live saving transplant. If you remember the Television show Lou Grant you will remember Margaret Pynchon the strong headed publisher of the Los Angeles Tribune. Well Mrs Pynchon was fashioned after mrs Gohlke who was the real life publisher of the largest newspaper in Arizona. Shumway related that two weeks earlier she approached him with a deal. You see the first transplant was being held up by FDA approval of cyclosprorin A, a drug required to prevent rejection of the transplant. Mrs Gohlke, with very powerful political connections offered to get the drug approved quickly if she would be moved to the front of the list. Shumway felt he had nothing to loose as if she didn't get an expidited approval her and the two people above her on the list would die before the FDA approved the use of cyclosporin A for Heart-Lung transplant.

Well within one week she had gotten the approval and within 5 days of that she got her heart lung transplant. It was amazing to She her during surgery with her open chest cavity and then the next day see her sitting up in bed talking. It was one of the most surreal experiences in my life. She went on to live five years.

I decided to restart work on a memoir. In order to do this I created an outline of my life. I have put down all distinct instances I remember that I think might make an interesting story. These stories don't just tell what I did, but I try to tell the background and culturally interesting things related to the story. Therefore some of the stories may be 90 percent me and 10 percent background while others may be reversed. I hope that these stories not only give you a feel for snippets of my life,but a feel for the times and placed I have experienced. Many of these experiences no longer are available for you to experience in this world we have today. However,I hope you can enjoy them through my eyes. Anyone who knew me or had similar experiences please let me know how your memories differ from mine. Thanks and I hope you enjoy reading these. Please follow this blog. 

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Snippets Of My Life: Welcome and Ahead of the Pack

I plan to Blog snippets of my life. These will be 250-500 word retelling of experiences I have had. Some will be humorous, some will be emotionally intense and some well I'll let you decide. All will be true. I hope that you like them and I hope you share them with your friends and family if they move you.

Ahead of the Packs:

I always have had lots of hobbies some where the standard types, like stamp collecting, coin collecting and model making. One was a little unusual, making skeletons of animals. I supplied my High School biology department with about 13 various vertebrate skeletons. One of my teachers Mr. Mahoney, my European history teacher and advisor to the student council, asked if I could make him a dog skull that he could use for a paper weight. At that time I was volunteering at Montefiore Hospital and one of my duties included work in the research lab (I'm working on a memoir of this). When the dogs needed to be sacrificed we would then incinerate them. Well why waste a good head. So with permission, I decapitated the head of one of the dogs and looked for a box to put it in. After looking around for a box the only one I found was a B& D syringe box. Well that evening I didn't want to wait for my father to drive me home so I took the subway, the 4 Lexington Ave Line that went from the Bronx to Midtown Manhattan by going through the south Bronx (at that time the worst crime area in the country) and then Harlem. Well I fell asleep on the subway train. When I awoke the box was missing. I can only imagine the end to this story when some junkie opened the box expecting a great score on some hyperdermic syringes. Mr Mahoney had to wait for later to get his paper weight.

More to follow.