My friend Jay's weird form of Synesthesia.

syn·es·the·sia

Learn to pronounce

the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body.

One of my best friends is Dr. John(Jay) P. Clark D.O.  We first met in about 2002 when he started to refer his patients to me for vascular surgery onsults. He was a solo practitioner Family Practice physician.  I was working in a large cardiology group and in 2003, left to have my own private practice.  He continued to send his patients to me and that led to our close and great friendship.

Jay has had several medical setbacks.  This all started with a spinal stenosis and two major spine/spinal cord surgeries that left him partially paralyzed  in his lower extremities.  He then had a stroke that also affected his upper extremities.  Since then he has needed to be in a wheel chair most of the time,however he is able to walk up a few steps or a short distance with a walker.  To keep him from getting cabin fever, but also because I really enjoy our discussions, I would pick him up and we'd go to lunch, dinner or some form of entertainment.  The entertainment would usually be live music at a local bar.

Something you need to know about Jay is that before going to Medical School he was an art major at Drake University(a large private University/Law School, more on that in another post).  While an accomplished artist after he entered Medical school he really didn't do any significant art for almost  50 years. Although, for my 50th birthday he made me a great birthday card and won the prize for best b'day card that year.  

We've been going out together 2 or 3 times a week for about 4 years when last January he brought some paper and Sharpies with him.  When we got to the bar he stated sketching the performers while they played.  I was amazed at the sketch that he made. However, something else was even more amazing.

Because of both his stroke and the medication that he is on for the last three years he would have a tendency to fall asleep every 10 to 15 minutes.  We would go out to listen to music and I would need to poke him several times each hour.  Of course he would insist that he hadn't fallen asleep but was just resting his eyes, Right!  Well, an amazing thing happened.  Once he started sketching the musicians, he would never fall asleep.  There have been times that, at a music festival, he would be sketching for 10 to 12 hours and never once fall asleep.

The really amazing part of all this was the magnificent sketches that he would produce.  Something you need to know is that he would insist on being as close to the stage as he could get, sometimes insisting I put him right in the middle of the dance floor space.  This was because of his severe macular degeneration, a condition that robs you of your vision, yet he was still amazingly able to continue sketching. This would mean that everyone would see what he was doing.  The obvious question from the band was can we have it?, and from others in the audience was, can we buy it?  So, he came up with a number of $20 for each sketch..  One night he even made $150 (someone gave him a fifty and when he went to give change the guy said "keep it").  

His sketches don't just capture the image of the musicians but they capture the music and the movement of the musicians as you can see in the couple of sketches I've attached.  The other amazing thing about him sketching is that the faster the music tempo is the faster he draws.  Typically it would take him anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes to do a picture( last week he took two hours to sketch the Des Moines Jazz Orchestra with 25 members). However, if the music goes fast he draws faster.  He drew a five piece band in 3 minutes while they were playing Wipeout.

I call this Synesthesia because I feel it meets the true meaning of the word.  Jay feels the music and sees the movement and converts that through feel into a sketch that lets you, through your sight, experience the music, the sounds, the movement and Jays interpretation all at once. 

We now go out anywhere from three to five times each week. I hope this goes on for many years.  It gives me joy seeing him enthralled with life that this brings him.

Memoirs of a Teenage Surgeon: The First Cut

"Take the scalpel and cut on the line", I did as I was told feeling the cut on my own leg as I was cutting into the patient starting to amputate his leg, and me being only 16 years old.
    It was an overcast gloomy June day.  I had rode in with my dad to his Liquor store, Tuxedo Wine and Liquor, around the corner from Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx NY.  We drove each morning from our house in Queens which was  a few block from where Donald Trump grew up( no I never knew him or his family). This was my summer routine at the age of 16 for the third year in a row. You see two years ago my father, through one of his customers who was the head technician in the surgical research laboratory at Montefiore Hospital,

Montefiore Hospital, one of the nations
leading research hospitals.  In 1968 the
Red brick with green roof was the
 original Hospital

got me a volunteer position at the surgical research labs(how that came about is another tale to tell). The night before I had worked till after midnight organizing and plotting on grafts the data on a research project I was doing with Dr. Smith(name changed to protect a surgeon still practicing).  When I got in I called Dr. Smith at the local city hospital where he was working that day.  He asked me to come over and we would review the data.
     So I get on the 4 elevated subway(misnomer in this case) and take it south to 167th street and Jerome avenue(one block from where both my parents grew up). I walked the half block to Morrisania city hospital walking into the emergency room entrance. Quickly going to the bank of elevators, I rode up to the top floor saying hello to the others going to that floor that I knew from previous times.

Morrisania City Hospital,
The top floor was the operating rooms.
With no air conditioning the windows
were open during the summer, so we had
 a sterile fly swatter on the sterile
 operation field.

When I got off the elevator I asked someone if they had seen Dr. Smith and told he was in pathology.  On entering pathology I saw him talking to on of the pathologists in the cutting room(the room where fresh specimens are cut up and prepared for slides to examine).  I walked over to them and they were standing, each drinking a cup of coffee with cream.  As I walked up I noticed that a clump of fat was floating in the pathologists cup. So I mentioned it to him.  He looked at it, not saying anything, he walked a few feet to the coffee table.  He took a spoon and fished out the clump of fat and continued drinking the coffee.  That was the days when men were men and doctors felt they were indestructible. Dr Smith said come with me.
    We walked over to the operating rooms and as we walk in the head nurse told Dr. Smith that there was an emergency in the E.R and there were no residents to assist him.  He turned to me and asked if I would help him.  The nurse didn't even react since I had been assisting him , on occasional cases,for almost a year.  I had started working with him 2 years ago in the surgical research labs and he knew I could do a good job assisting him.
    I followed him into the doctors changing room and opened one of the lockers without a lock.  I began undressing to my underpants and went over and got a set of scrubs.  I then put my shoes back and shoe covers over them.  we walked out to the pre-op area and Dr. Smith talked to the patient while I stood quietly behind him.  He introduced me as a student who would be assisting him. I reached around and shook hands with the patient, an obese black man in his fifties.
   We went back to the lounge and for the 20 minutes till the patient was asleep and ready for us we went over the data I had put together from the research study I was doing for Dr. Smith in the animal research laboratory at Montefiore Hospital.  A nurse came in said they were ready for us.  We walked to the scrub sinks and put on the cap and masks( unlike TV where they have the TV nurse put on the mask after the surgeons scrub, solely so you see the actors face for a few more moments). We scrubbed for the required 5 minutes.  We walked into one of the most unique operating rooms


TO BE CONTINUED


 Above knee amputation movie(run at 2X speed).

Why I'm a Humanitarian:' Finish your food there are kids starving in Europe.'

Why I'm a Humanitarian:' Finish your food there are kids starving in Europe.'

When I was growing up my grandmothers and my mother would always say ,'Finish your food there are kids starving in Europe.'  The irony was that when they told me that in 1957-8 there probably were not that many kids starving in Europe, but maybe somewhere. However this was an important lesson for me that has stuck my entire life and has changed me.  The lesson I took away from that simple, though wrong, statement was that even small acts that we do can help others.  It has caused me to dedicating my life to doing as many small acts that like the butterfly effect can have ripples that spread out and make the world a better place.  I also had a Hebrew school teacher (the principal) Rabbi Elliot Ness who took a group of us out of Hebrew class with  everyone else to teach us Jewish Philosophy and Talmud.   We were taken out of class because they gave up on ever teaching us Hebrew and therefor we were Elliot Ness and the Unteachables (Groan) .  We learnt much more then the students in the regular Hebrew School and it has stuck. Two of the fundermentals of Jewish and Talmudic philosophy are Tikun Olum, Repair the World, and the Golden Rule 'Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.'  Itr was these three concepts drilled into me in my most formative years that have made my the person I am today.

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.

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.