The Bleeding Heart Show

  

    

#110

09.04.10

     

The Bleeding Heart Show - 

The New Pornographers

     

Lamprocapnos spectabilis, a.k.a. Bleeding Hearts, are my favorite plant / flower.  I've been collecting photographs of them for a few years, and more so this year using all of my cameras, including the iPhone camera, in hopes of making a blog entry to honor them.  

       

The urge became all-the-stronger when I started getting in to yet another amazing, amazing Canadian collective band - The New Pornographers (TNP).  I've enjoyed some of their music for years over internet radio; but this Spring on my desert drive from Phoenix to Hollywood I heard a song from them that made my brain explode.  {If you've read any of my recent posts, you'll quickly realize that having my "brain explode" can only be considered a good thing.}  So after hearing that song (I'll feature it on an upcoming entry), I started collecting their albums and was thrilled when I first heard this song The Bleeding Heart Show.  After many listens, it is the standout track from what I consider TNP's standout album Twin Cinema.  My favorite TNP songs usually include or feature Neko Case on vocals, which is the case here.  Neko has a strong solo career going in her own right, and likely out-sells the NPs.

       

So please enjoy these photographs and this amazing song.  I am putting up a bunch of photos, in hopes that you might stay through the entire song, and maybe even let it play through several times consecutively.  It starts relatively slowly, and then picks up the pace in the midsection, and then finally lifts you off the ground, hurtling you into a mesmerizing coda at the end.  

     

The perfect song for my perfect plant.
    

   

    

     

    

    

    
This next photo shows T holding some bleeding hearts at the Alaska Botanical Gardens in 2004; the first time I had ever seen them.  {Image taken on my trusty old Nikon 8800, not with the iPhone camera.}
  

    
These last photos were taken in June, 2010 with my Canon Xsi.  The close-up is one of my favorite photos ever.  I used it as a model for a drawing I did on a sympathy card for T after her mother died.  I would have featured it at the top of this blog if I had shot it on the iPhone.  As much fun as it is to shoot with the iPhone camera, there are times you simply must have higher resolution images, right?
      

      

     
CCE
    

CQE, The Emperor

      

     

#109

08.31.10

     

CQE, The Emperor

     

Piano Concerto No. 5, 'The Emperor' 

- Ludwig van Beethoven

     

This blog entry is totally and unapologetically a tribute to my great father, CQE.

   

My family, as well as countless freinds and at-large citizens of the universe, all know that he is without question one of the finest humans to ever grace the planet with his presence.  For those who do not know him, that will sound trite and subjective, and that is both unfortunate and unavoidable.  For those who do know him, they will simply nod in agreement.
    
He has dedicated his professional life to medicine, healing, and teaching.  Many of those years were spent managing what was once the 'indigent clinic' at the old LDS Hospital in the SLC avenues; and now has become the Internal Medicine Outpatient Clinic of Intermountain Medical Center.  (Talk about a state-of-the art facility; it makes any hospital I have ever entered seem archaic by comparison.  And the people there?  Just a different cut altogether.  Non-profits are the best shot at purity of purpose, are they not?)
   
Recently an anonymous donor made a contribution to IMC on the condition that the hospital name the Outpatient Clinic after my father.  Wow - what a total honor, and on so many levels.  And do you think my father told me of the honor?  No... he would never mention any award or acknowledgment like that... my mother had to phone my siblings and I to give us the exciting news.  And when I did get to speak to him over the phone about the honor, he immediately told me of three or four more deserving individuals than himself; and no big surprise, only one of those was a physician.  The others were nurses or other dedicated staff, to him their roles were every bit as vital and important as his own.  
    
And that, my readers, is exactly and precisely why this man deserves an honor such as this.  
 Of course, the honor isn't just his, it is all of ours.  He elevates those around him, and I've been drafting behind him my whole life.  Surely he deserves a turn at the back of the peleton... but he's still right out there in front.
 
Perhaps you think I'm making this stuff up?  Go ahead and do a Medline search for one of his 80+ publications in the finest medical journals; or go to Amazon.com and pick up his textbook Hemochromatosis: Genetics, Pathophysiology, Diagnosis and Treatment, or if you don't have $340 to spare you could pick up the more affordable but highly informative Handbook of Iron Overload Disorders (I just got my copy signed!).  Or I suppose you could look at the 25+ teaching awards he's received over the years, or ask one of the hundreds (thousands, now?) of medical students, interns and residents who look up to him as their mentor.  The members of the American College of Physicians might clue you in; they elected him Governor for the State of Utah on a 5 year term which he currently fills.
 
And me?  I'm so lucky, I get to look up to him on all of those levels, and as my father too.
  
I was privileged to spend a day with my dad on 08.25.10, and what a treat that was:

*  Unveiling of the new clinic (second ceremony, this one was for the staff). The formal unveiling occurred the previous evening, and my older brother and hospital administrators gave lovely tribute speeches in his honor. 

*  Lunch conference with the students, interns and residents.  The discussion was on Medical Ethics, and given by Dr. J.J., specialist in Infectious Diseases, whom my father refers to as "a brilliant discussant", which I was favored to experience first hand.

*  Observing my father take 2 third-year medical students for a few hours to teach the reading of atrial fibrillation with right bundle branch block / right ventricular hypertrophy et al. on an EKG strip; followed by rounding on their previous-day inpatient admissions (ruling out renal bruits in a patient with significant mesenteric vascular disease, and Addison's Disease, respectively).  

 
This will go down as one of the finest days of my life.
   

    
In closing, I must mention that this blog entry is the first to feature classical music.  There's no reason for that; I enjoy classical music, and even went with T and CQEII to a 3 hour concert last Saturday night at St. Andrew's in Eagle River that featured some world class musicians (you should have heard the clarinetist!), and were privileged to see Q's violin teacher, the incomparable KGB join them with her viola.  I say it was "3 hours", but the fact is that we left at the 3 hour mark... it was almost 10:30 p.m. and Master Q was 3 hour's past his bedtime.  I shudder to think what we may have missed after we left.
 
This featured piece, a portion of Beethoven's Fifth (and final) Piano Concerto, was chosen for several reasons; the most important among them being it is CQEI's favorite piece of music.  Secondly, the sort of exposure this blog will create for my dad is not something he is going to like very well.  (I beg my family members to simply not mention it to him, {please?!}, lest he gag outright).  However, in the event that he should stumble across it, my sincere hope is that van Beethoven can smooth out the nausea he is sure to experience. 
     
Finally... this guy, CQEI, my dad, 
is The Emperor.
     
CCE


P.S. Though this blog may seem like it has become a journal of late (the injury, the healing, white daisies passing, the emperor)... that is coincidental, as there have been many 'personal' things going on around here.  I'll get back to the silly low-rez photos featuring music I enjoy beginning next entry.  Scout's honor.