Random Dafydd

2011-06-22T12:52:00.002-05:00

Cross-posted from Monstrous Beauty.

This is something I only became aware of a few years ago. During the 15th century in in Burgundy, especially during the time of Philip the Good, there was a trend of making luxury manuscripts on vellum that had been dyed black. Unfortunately, the process of dying the vellum made it brittle and fragile, so these manuscript did not survive in great numbers. There are fewer than twenty surviving manuscripts and only three of them are still bound as codices. The remainder are preserved as single leaves, often pressed in acrylic to protect them. So far as I know, all of the surviving examples are Books of Hours. The Pierpont Morgan Library has one, and this is a two page spread from it. The illumination on the left is of the Descent of the Holy Spirit.

While I'm not a huge fan of Books of Hours, this is certainly striking.

Limoges Enamal Châsse.

2011-06-09T12:05:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from Monstrous Beauty

I must confess a certain ignorance when it comes to medieval metalwork and enamels. But here is a pretty thing.

This is Châsse or casket from Limoges, c. 1190-1200. A Châsse was a reliquary shaped sort of like a house with a sloping roof and triangular gabled ends. Limoges was center enamel work at the time. This is Champlevé enamel. Champlevé is created by casting a metal piece with impressions for the area to be enameled. The depressions are then filled with powdered glass. The entire piece is the fired and the glass melts and fuses with the metal.

This is reliquary for St. Thomas Becket. The main body shows his murder while the roof shows his entombment. On the end is a saint, probably Becket himself.

The reliquary is in the Musée de Cluny in Paris.

Image wikipedia.

16 years.

2011-04-19T10:23:00.001-05:00

Cross posted from The Weekend Scrub

Today is the 16th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. I wrote this a year ago.

Today I'm going to eat at Sonic.

Fifteen years ago I was lying in bed reading when there was a loud noise and the house shook. I initially thought that a car had hit the house. I lived in Oklahoma City and I was three and half miles away from the Murrah Federal Building.

Within a couple of hours I was scrubbed in surgery at St. Anthony's. I was no longer an employee, having parted ways with the hospital almost a year earlier. I was part of three separate teams working at the same time on the most seriously wounded patient. I've been scrubbing for almost twenty years. I remember two patient names. This woman is one of them. (The other had the same first and last name as I do.)

At one point I went to see if I could help in instrument processing. St Anthony's was the nearest hospital to the federal building. (Close enough that the hospital building itself had minor damage.) Hundreds of walking wounded had found their way to the St. Anthony ER. Almost all of them had severe lacerations. The average hospital stocks maybe thirty suture trays. Luanna, the scrub in charge of processing, had her staff opening every tray we wouldn't being using that day, the GYN instrument and the like, and reassembling them into suture trays: Two hemostats, a needle holder, a pair of scissors and some forceps.

When I came out of surgery, I was surprised to find bags full of Sonic hamburgers. Someone at Sonic had figured that there would be a lot of people working a lot of hours at the hospitals who would not have much chance to eat. They made and sent thousands of burgers to every hospital in town without being asked.

Today I will say a prayer for the souls of the departed and a prayer for the continued health of the survivors and families. And I'll eat at Sonic.

Child Ballad No. 1, "Riddles Wisely Expounded"

2011-02-10T08:45:00.000-06:00

Crossposted from Dafydd's Random Music.

"Riddles Wisely Expounded" is the first ballad in Francis Child's collection. In it a knight comes wooing three sisters. The youngest sister (who in some of the versions, sleeps with the knight first), is chosen by the knight to answer a series of riddles. If she answers the riddles correctly, then she will wed the knight. In some of the versions collected by Child, the questioner is not a knight, but the Devil disgused as an "unco knicht". When the daughter names him in answer to the last riddle, he shrieks and disappears, and thus the maiden escapes. Until that moment, however, she did not appear to know that she was competing for her soul.

Like many English songs, this ballad has also been collected in America, where it is usually know as "The Devil's Nine Questions." In it, the wooing aspect is dropped and if the maiden (who has often lost her sisters in these versions) fails to answer the riddles, she will be taken to Hell. What binds the two versions together is the set of riddles and their answers. Although there is some variation in the riddles, all of the versions include many of the same riddles. Some of the typical riddles are:

What is longer than the way? (love)
What is deeper than the sea? (hell)
What is higher that the tree? (heaven)
What is louder than the horn? (thunder)
What is sharper than a thorn? (hunger, or death)
What is whiter than milk? (snow)
What is softer than silk? (down)
What is greener that the grass? (poison)
What is worse than woman? (the devil)

Interestingly enough, the American version may be the older version. A mid-15th century version called "Inter diabolus et virgo" (Between the devil and the virgin), was included by Child in his later editions. It bears more resemblance to the American version, being a straightforward confrontation without the wooing setting.

This ballad was one of those that became part of the mid-cetury folk revival, being recorded by Ewan MacColl, Jean Ritchie and others. As such it has had a fairly wide circulation. The following is a listing of every recorded version I could find. I make no guarantees that I have found them all. I also expect this list to fall quickly out of date as there have been seven recordings released in the last five years alone. I welcome any corrections or information about recordings I may have missed.

"Riddles Wisely Expounded"
       Daniel Dutton on Murder of Crows, ?
       Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger on The Long Harvest, Vol. 2, Argo, 1966
       Jacqueline and Bridie on Hold Back the Dawn, Fontana, 1964
       Jean Redpath on Lowlands, Philo, 1994
       Lon Loomes on Fearful Symmetry, Fellside Recordings, 2005
"A Riddle Wisely Expounded"
       Hanita Blair on Minstrel, Millefolia, 2005
"A Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded"
       Askew Sisters on All In a Garden Green, Wild Goose Records 2007
       Demon Barbers on Waxed, Demon Barbers Sounds, 2010
"The Devil's Nine Questions"
        Atwater-Donnelly on The Weaver's Bonny, Rabbit Island Music, 2009
        Bonnie Kolac on After All This Time, Ovation Records, 1971 (out of print)
        Bruce Molsky on Song Links 2, Fellside Recordings, 2005
        Elizabeth Laprelle on Rain and Snow, Old 97 Wrecords, 2007
        Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger on The Long Harvest, Vol. 2, Argo, 1966
        Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger on Two Way Trip, Folkways, 1961
        Jean Ritchie and Oscar Brand on Shivaree! - A Folk Wedding Party, Essential Media Group, 2008
        Jill Trinka on The Little Black Bull, Gia, 2007
        Stephen Moore on Sourwood Mountain: American Folk Traditions, Vol 1, Stephen Moore, 2005
        Texas Gladden on Ballad Legacy, Rounder, 2001
"The Devil's Ten Questions"
        Phil Cooper on Written in Our Eyes, CDBY, 2007
"The Devil's Question"
        The Golden Glows on A Folksongbook, Glans and Luister, 2007
        Jean Ritchie and Paul Clayton on American Folk Tales and Songs, Tradition Records, 1956.

Here's The Askew Sisters performing "A Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded" live.

Apse Painting from Sant Climent de Taüll

2011-01-16T17:21:00.003-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty.

The Valle de Boi in Catalonia, with nine standing Romanesque churches and several ruins in about 85 square miles, has the densest concentration of Romanesque architecture in the world. The largest and best preserved of these churches is Sant Climent de Taüll, consecrated in 1123.

Catalonia in the 12th century was not a prosperous region and the builders of the church could not afford expensive mosaics, so the church was decorated with fresco. These frescoes are amongst the extant Romanesque murals. The apse mosaic is a Christ in Majesty, with Christ seated on the throne of the world. He is flanked by angels and is above medallions bearing the four beasts of the apocalypse. Mozarabic influence is seen in the broad bands of color that form the background.

In 1922 the murals of Sant Climent de Taüll were removed to protect them from theft and are now in the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona.

Image credit:
Wikipedia

Classical surgery.

2010-12-29T19:13:00.001-06:00

Cross posted from The Weekend Scrub

The surgeon gave me the specimen, said it was ileum. A bit later the circulator asked me what we were calling the specimen. I told her ileum, or Troy, her choice. She said "Oh".

Nobody gets my jokes.

Papyrus Style

2010-12-29T18:54:00.000-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

Before the invention of the codex, that is, a book made of leaves bound on one side, books were mostly on scrolls, and the predominate material for scrolls was papyrus. Papyrus was a paper like material made from a plant that grew in the Nile Delta. Greeks and Romans used papyrus as well as Egyptians, but because papyrus did not survive well in moist environments, the vast majority of papyrus survive has been found in Egypt. Because a scroll was continually rolled and unrolled, thick pigments would quickly flake off, so papyrus scrolls were not decorated or illustrated in the manner of later manuscripts, with lavish colored decorations. Scientific and mathematical texts required illustration, while illustration was optional for literary texts. Both types of texts did have illustrations though, and in a similar style, called by Kurt Weitzman called the "papyrus style". In the papyrus style, small, quickly drawn, ink illustrations would be inserted into gaps in the text block. The were seldom colored and usually had little if any background or framing.

Few examples of illustrated papyri remain, and thoe only in fragments. One example is the so-called Heracles Papyrus. It consists of two columns of text which have three quick sketches of Heracles fighting the The Nemean lion.

The iconography of the sketches is fairly conventional, compare the second sketch with this roughly contemporary mosaic from Spain.

Not all works on Papyrus were quick, rough sketches. The Charioteer Papyrus (pictured at top) is a fragment containing a finely drawn colored illustration of six chariot charioteers. There is no text on the fragment, so it is not known what work it illustrated. Indeed it cannot be said with certainty is came from a scroll or an codex.

The Papyrus style was carried over into early codices, although it was eventually abandoned because of the new opportunities provided by the new format

Old Baptist Mission

2010-12-21T23:19:00.001-06:00

Cross posted from Random Oklahoma

Old Indian Baptist Mission
Originally uploaded by DKROB4

This 1888 church is on the site of the mission established by the Reverend Jesse Bushyhead in 1839. The Cherokee Messenger, the first newspaper in Oklahoma was published at the mission. Bushyhead died in 1844 and was buried in the Mission cemetery. His grave is marked by a 15 foot tall monument and is, as the only extant site associated with him, is listed on the National register of Historic places.

Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes

2010-12-21T15:40:00.001-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

This is a presentation miniature from a manuscript of Hoccleve's, The Regiment of Princes (British Library, Arundel 38, Folio 37 recto). Hoccleve wrote The Regiment for Henry V shortly before his accession to the throne as a homily on virtues and vices. The introductory portion of the poem contains reminiscences of London tavern life, and calls on Sir John Oldcastle, "rise up, a manly knight, out of the slough of heresy." (The heresey being Lollardy.) Oldcastle was an old friend of the Henry V, who Henry eventually had executed for treason and who served as the model for Shakespeare's Falstaff. Hoccleve also took work as a scribe and worked with Adam Pinkhurst, who in 2004 was identified as Chaucer's Adam scrivener.

This miniature is often identified as Hoccleve presenting the book to Henry. But the man presenting the book is very well dressed, much more so than would be expected of a scribe, so it may represent John Mowbry, Duke of Norfolk, presenting the book to Henry. Norfolk was an early owner of the manuscript and his coat of arms are in the initial below the miniature. This is the only miniature in the manuscript. Other decoration includes three sided borders and illuminated initials.

Borgund Stave Church

2010-12-20T11:18:00.001-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

This is the Borgund Stave Church in Borgund, Norway The church was built in the late 12 or early 13th century and is the best preserved medieval stave church. A stave church is a wooden church made with a type of post and beam construction. Almost all surviving stave churches are in Norway. One survives in Sweden and one was moved to what is now Poland. A similar, Anglo-Saxon palisade church survive in England. Although only a few of these churches remain, they were, at one time fairly common throughout northern Europe. Because masonry and other stone work survives better than construction in wood, it easy for modern viewers to loose sight of the reality that much medieval architecture was actually in made of perishable materials.

Image credits, Wikipedia.

Jeremiah, Church of Saint-Pierre, Moissac

2010-12-20T11:03:00.001-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

The Church of Saint-Pierre, Moissac was on of the stopping points in southern France on the great pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. The church and its cloister host one of the greatest and best preserved collections of Romanesque sculpture in France. Amongst the sculpture is the famous Jeremiah contained within the trumeau (center post) on the south portal. The front of the trumeau has three sets of crossed lions. The lions create a gently scalloped contour along the sides of the trumeau, mirroring the the deeply scalloped jambs on either side of the portal. On the right side of the trumeau, is the sculpture of the prophet Jeremiah. The elongated body and graceful cross-legged posture rises and falls above the over-sized feet to match the scalloping on the front of the trumeau. The hair and beard are stylized plaits formed of groups of incised parallel lines. The stylized drapery clings to the body. The face, unusually well preserved for a sculpture positioned so easily within reach of vandals, is delicate and expressive. The entire effect is not one of portraiture, but instead one of idealized spirituality and reflection.

Image credits:

Detail of head, Emmanuel (epierre) on Flickr.
Portal, Elena Giglia (eg65) on Flickr.
Frontal view and oblique view, tilina25 on Flickr.

Chuldov Psalter

2010-12-15T10:08:00.001-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

The Chludov Psalter is one of the few surviving 9th century Byzantine manuscripts. The early part of the 9th century was a period of iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire. The Iconoclasm was a reaction against the use of religious images. During this period many works of art were destroyed. The Chludov Psalter was made either in secret during the Iconoclasm or after the restoration of icon, as a polemic against the Iconoclasm. In this illustration, the act of painting over an icon is paired with the Crucifixion, comparing those who destroyed icons to those who crucified Christ. To the right of the text a soldier offers Jesus a sponge filled with vinegar, while below the iconoclast Patriarch of Constantinople, John the Grammarian is seen painting over an icon of Christ using similar sponge attached to a pole. Even the pot for the the patriarch's paint is similar to the pot holding the vinegar used by the soldier.

Salisbury Cathedral

2010-12-14T09:35:00.000-06:00

Salisbury was my first. I was an ignorant 18 year old, just graduated from high school, spending the summer in Europe. My brother and I were on our way to Stonehenge and when we got to the town of Salisbury and we found that we had missed the bus. The next one wouldn't run for an hour. We noticed a spire looming over the town, and decided to go take a look. Finding a massive cathedral set in the middle of a park, we thought it would be worth exploring. In 1981, you couldn't enter through the main west portal, instead you entered on the west end, but off to the side. As I came in, it all felt very familiar, we were in the sort of vestibule that any Anglican church might have. Then we turned a corner and were in the nave. To this day, the feeling of absolute awe I felt has stayed with me. Only one other time, high in the Rocky Mountains, have I ever been so completely struck. On that trip we saw other cathedrals, Canterbury, Westminster Abbey, and St. Stephen's in Vienna, but, for me, that initial feeling of shock and joy will always belong to Salibury. We didn't catch the next bus either.

Salisbury, is unusual amongst cathedrals in that it was built entirely one building campaign and was happily spared major renovations in later centuries. There were no previous buildings on the site that could have constrained the plans. As a result it was built largely in a single style and has a unity that many cathedrals lack.

Image credits:
First exterior, michaelday_bath on flickr
Second exterior, Stephen McParlin (stephen_dedalus) on flickr
Nave, ajoh198 on flickr

Sutton Hoo Buckle.

2010-12-13T19:07:00.003-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

Sutton Hoo was one of the greatest archeological finds in the British history. The grave of a 7th century Anglo-Saxon king, excavated in 1939, contained a literal treasure hoard. One of the most impressive pieces was this large gold belt buckle. The main body of the buckle is an intricate mass interwoven animals, executed in chip carving with black niello highlights. The overall design is symmetrical although the details of interlacing are not. The main plate is hollow and has a hinged back, forming a secret compartment.

Bernward Doors

2010-12-10T05:48:00.001-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty.

The Bernward Doors, dating from 1015, are large bronze doors cast for the Cathedral of St. Mary in Hildesheim Germany, under the direction of Bishop Bernward. Bernward had visited Rome and may have been inspired by the ancient carved wooden doors of the Basilica of Santa Sabina. These doors represented a massive project for the time, being one of the largest cast bronze objects ever made in northern Europe. The left door contains eight scenes from the life of Adam, and the right eight scenes from the life of Christ. The scenes are carefully chosen and matched to emphasize the theological idea that Christ was the new Adam. For example, the Fall is matched with the Crucifixion, by which the fall was redeemed. The "trial" of Adam and Eve by God, is matched with the trial of Christ by Pilate.

The figures are set in a schematic space with a few plants or architectural details representing landscapes. The figures are in high relief, some of the heads lean out and become free of the background. Yet these nods to three dimensional reality for the scenes are undercut by the tendency for details, such as feet to overlap and break out of the surrounding frames.

Image credits:

Full door from Wikipedia.
Details from Sacred Destinations on Flickr.

Carpet Page, Lindisfarne Gospels

2010-12-09T12:30:00.001-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

Others may rave about the Chi Rho monogram from the Book of Kells, but for my money, this is the single most impressive piece of illumination from the Middle Ages. This is one of the carpet pages from the Lindisfarne Gospels. It's said that each of the carpet pages in the Lindisfarne Gospels have an intentional error in the knotwork. Good luck finding it.

Lewis Chessmen

2010-12-08T10:01:00.002-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

The Lewis chessmen are a group of chess pieces discovered on the Isle of Lewis in 1831. They were carved from walrus ivory and whale teeth in the 12th Century in Norway. There are 78 pieces: 8 kings, 8 queens, 16 bishops, 15 knights, 12 rooks, and 19 pawns, from as many as 5 different sets. The pieces were probably part of the stock of a trader dealing in luxury goods. Some of the pieces bear traces of red pigment, indicating that the two sides were white and red, unlike the modern white and black. Unlike modern chess sets, the rooks are portrayed as soldiers, including four berserks, chewing their shields, while the pawns are small geometric pieces, resembling standing stones.

The collection was split up soon after its discovery. The Museum of Scotland now owns 11 of the pieces, while the British Museum owns the balance. A exhibition of pieces from both the Museum of Scotland and the British Museum, along with related artifacts is currently touring Great Britain. I hope it come to North America.

Image credits:
Berserk Rook, Rook, and Knight, RobRoyAus on Flickr.
All others, Wikimedia Commons

Santa Sabina, exterior

2010-12-08T07:28:00.003-06:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty.

The Basilica of Santa Sabina is one of the oldest surviving early Christian basilicas. A few other basilicas are older (St Paul's Outside the Walls, St. Peter's, The Lateran) but they have all been substantially rebuilt or modified. Only St. Sabina's exterior remains close to the appearance of an early basilica.

Santa Sabina was built about a century after Constantine legalized Christianity. Although, it was not one of the original churches built under Constantine's patronage, but was built in the same style. The exterior is rather severe, without any external decoration. The clerestory windows above the aisles are filled with selenite rather than glass and allow large amounts of light into the interior. The interior was originally decorated with mosaics, but those are now lost. The original 5th century wooden door, carved with scenes from the Bible still exists.

Santa Sabina now serves as the mother church for the Dominican Order.

Image from Wikipedia.

The Nutting Girl

2010-08-18T23:39:00.002-05:00

Cross posted from Dafydd's Random Music

"The Nutting Girl", sung by Ashley Hutchings and friends from the album Morris On. Ashley was a founding member of Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, AND The Albion Band.

"The Nutting Girl" is a broadside ballad, several versions exist with minor variations. It was collected by Baring-Gould and printed in a bowdlerized form in Songs and Ballads of the West as "A-Nutting We Will Go". Most recordings, including this one, follow the version of Cyril Poacher collected and recorded by Alan Lomax and others. Watch out for singing plow-boys.

By Chance It Was

2010-08-17T19:29:00.002-05:00

‎Cross posted from Dafydd's Random Music

"By Chance It Was" performed by Clannad. This was collected by Sabine Baring-Gould in Devonshire and tune and words were published in Songs and Ballads of the West in 1889. Baring-Gould cites earlier publications of versions of the lyrics in a volume in the British Library called The Court of Apollo, which may be the volume by Abraham Shackleton published in 1815 and The Songster's Favourite which I assume is Mirth and Glee, or the Songster's Favourite published in 1782.

Crown of Reccesuinth

2010-07-27T21:34:00.001-05:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty.

This is a votive crown given to the Church by Reccesuinth, King of the Visigoths (649 – 672). It is gold filigree set with sapphires, pearls and other gems and is the best surviving piece of Visigothic metalwork. The letters hanging from the crown spell [R]"ECCESVINTUS REX OFFERET" (King Reccesuinth offers this.) The crown is at the National Archaeological Museum of Spain is Spain except for the "R" pendant from RECCESVINTUS, which is in the Musée de Cluny in Paris.

Images from Wikipedia.

Orion from Leiden Aratea

2010-07-26T21:28:00.001-05:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

Orion the Hunter from the Leiden Aratea. This is one of the great works of the Carolingian Renaissance, which how shows how thoroughly classical art was revived. This is such a close copy of its late antique model that is it was at one time thought to be of late antique provenence itself. Note the use of shading to model Orion's musculature. This had not been done in a realistic way for centuries when this manuscript was made. The text in this manuscript is know as the Aratea is by Germanicus and is based on the Phainomena of Aratus and is an introduction to the constellations. Germanicus is best remembered as the popular adoptive grandson of Augustus and grandfather of Nero. In Graves I, Claudius he was poisoned by Livia and Caligula. The Leiden university library has posted a digital facsimile of the manuscript here.

Leiden Aratea Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. Q 79, f. 58v.

Child Ballad #10, The Cruel Sister

2010-06-17T12:44:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted from Dafydd's Random Music.

Child Ballad 10: The Cruel Sisters, also known as The Twa Sisters. Evidently in addition to strange knights, you can't trust your sister either. Then there's the minstrel. If I find a dead body on the seashore, I'm not making a harp out of the bones. I guess I'll never be in a ballad. Sung by Pentangle.

15 years

2010-04-19T15:38:00.001-05:00

Cross posted from The Weekend Scrub

Today I'm going to eat at Sonic.

Fifteen years ago was lying in bed reading when there was a loud noise and the house shook. I initially thought that a car had hit the house. I lived in Oklahoma City and I was three and half miles away from the Murrah Federal Building.

Within a couple of hours I was scrubbed in surgery at St. Anthony's. I was no longer an employee, having parted ways with the hospital almost a year earlier. I was part of three separate teams working at the same time on the most seriously wounded patient. I've been scrubbing for almost twenty years. I remember two patient names. This woman is one of them. (The other was named David Stapleton.)

At one point I went to see if I could help in instrument processing. St Anthony's was the nearest hospital to the federal building. (Close enough that the hospital building itself had minor damage.) Hundreds of walking wounded had found their way to the St. Anthony ER. Almost all of them had severe lacerations. The average hospital stocks maybe thirty suture trays. Luanna, the scrub in charge of processing, had her staff opening every tray we wouldn't being using that day, the GYN instrument and the like, and reassembling them into suture trays: Two hemostats, a needle holder, a pair of scissors and some forceps.

When I came out of surgery, I was surprised to find bags full of Sonic hamburgers. Someone at Sonic had figured that there would be a lot of people working a lot of hours at the hospitals who would not have much chance to eat. They made and sent thousands of burgers to every hospital in town without being asked.

Today I will say a prayer for the souls of the departed and a prayer for the continued health of the survivors and families. And I'll eat at Sonic.

The Sound of Surgery

2010-04-07T12:25:00.003-05:00

Cross-posted from The Weekend Scrub.

I've mentioned elsewhere that the smell can be the grossest thing about surgery. Smell is not the most nerve wracking thing, though. Sound is. Not the sound of surgeons bellowing, but rather what is normally a quite normal sound, the pulse oximeter. For those not familiar with it, the pulse oximeter is a machine that measures the amount of oxygen carried by the blood. It does this by shining a specific wavelength of red light through a relatively thin body part, usually a finger. It then measures how much of that light is absorbed. From this it is able to calculate what percentage of the red blood cells are oxygenated. The best possible "score" is 100 (unless you are a member of Spinal Tap). Numbers above 96 are considered normal. Numbers below 90 are worrisome. The machine is also able to measure the pulse by measuring the time between each wave of freshly oxygenated blood. It has become one of the basic tools of anesthesia.

It has also has the best designed sound I have ever heard. It is the modern version of Monty Python's "machine that goes ping". Every time the curve peaks the machine makes an electronic "ping". Its the background noise of every OR. Most of the time it doesn't register on our consciousness. The genius in this sound is one feature: as the oxygen saturation decreases, the the tone of the "ping" lowers. A drop of 10 points will drop the tone over an octave. Since a decrease in saturation is often accompanied by a slowing of the pulse, the machine begins to sound like its battery is dying, which is the perfect metaphor, because that's what the patient is doing.

Believe me, a serious drop in the tone of a pulse ox will get everyone in the rooms attention.

This video shows the tone change in minor way. These tone changes wouldn't grab anyone's attention but they give an idea of what I am talking about. (Tone changes about 0:27 and 1:25)

Child Ballads, #2 The Elfin Knight

2010-04-07T09:31:00.002-05:00

Cross posted from Dafydd's Random Music.

Child Ballad 2: The Elfin Knight. The core of this ballad includes demands by a woman that her suiter perform impossible tasks including making of a garment with no seams. One varient is widely known as Scarbourough Fair. This is not that variant. Sung by Kate Rushby.

Child Ballads

2010-04-06T21:10:00.002-05:00

Cross posted from Dafydd's Random Music.

I've decided to see how many Child Ballads I can find.

Child Ballad 1: "Riddles Wisely Expounded" sung by The Askew Sisters. I never heard of them before I found this, but they are quite good.

Children

2010-04-05T14:54:00.002-05:00

We, for some reason, have a lot a hard-boiled eggs in the house right now. Which means deviled eggs. The Younger Daughter was helping mash the yolks for The Wife when The Wife noticed that with each yolk the Younger Daughter was stabbing the yolk and then mashing it all while saying "First I pierce its heart, then I crush it." Sometimes my children frighten me.

Chi Rho monograms.

2010-03-31T23:48:00.002-05:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

Last night I talked a bit about the Chi Rho monogram in the Stockholm Codex Aureus. It got me thinking about how often these monograms show up in insular gospel books. So I decided to see how may I could find and spent a couple of hours poking around looking for images of them. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but here are the ones I found, in roughly chronological order.

First up is the Book of Durrow, dating to the middle of the 7th century. The Chi is enlarged, the Rho slightly smaller, the whole line is enlarged and set off and colored yellow. It is n0t really known where the manuscript was made, although it was probably made somewhere in Ireland.

Durrow is followed by the Lindisfarne Gospels of about 7o0. This is a quantum leap with the Chi Rho dominating the page. The Chi and the Rho are extensively decorated. All of the text on the page is turned into one large decorative pattern. One of my favorite things about the Lindisfarne Gospels is how the artist would "draw" with the decorative red dots found in so many insular manuscripts. Here he has "written" with them to form the letters of the line following the Chi Rho monogram completely out of the red dots. The Lindisfarne Gospels are known to have been produced on the Island of Lindisfarne off the east coast of Northumberland.

Next up is an unnamed manuscript in the British Library (Royal MS 1 B VII). This is a smaller scale effort, as this is not as sumptuous of a manuscript. The zoomorphic Chi Rho Initial is as about as large as the initials which begins each of the gospels. The scribe started a new column at the Chi Rho initial, as if he were starting a new work, leaving the bottom of the left column blank. (The text in the obviously different script at the bottom of the left hand column is a later addition, a manumission of a slave in Old English.) This manuscript was produced in the first half of the 8th century in Northumbria.

Next is the St. Gall Gospels, now housed in the monastery at St. Gall in Switzerland. This manuscript was produced by monks in Ireland about 750 and brought with them when St. Gall was founded. By this point, Chi is taken over the page, leaving room for only a few words of additional text, which is so stylized and decorated as to be unreadable. (This and Lindisfarne are my two favorites.)

Next up is our friend from last night, the Stockholm Codex Aureus. This is somewhat more restrained, although the text is seen as a decorated pattern with legibility allowed to be lost to aesthetics. This manuscript was produced somewhere in Southumbria, probably Canterbury. The influence of the Roman Church mission at Canterbury probably exerted a restraining influence on the wilder "Celtic" traditions seen in more northern insular manuscripts. This manuscript dates to about 750.

This one needs no introduction. It is, of course, the Chi Rho page from the Book of Kells and easily one of the most famous manuscript images of the middle ages. Exuberance abounds and there is no restraint. (Despite its fame, I still like Lindisfarne better. Does that make me a heretic?)

This is from another unnamed manuscript in the British Library, (Royal MS 1 B VII). In a sense Kells was at once the culmination and last gasp of the Insular tradition. After Kells the Carolingian Renaissance got underway, and the insular style fell out of favor. The truly deluxe manuscripts of the era looked to classical models. Still some manuscripts were made in the Insular style. This manuscript is from about a century after Kells. Although the Chi Rho monogram is present it is more closely related to the zoomorphic initial of the other unnamed British Library manuscript than to the Durrow, Lindisfarne, St. Gall, and Kells.

This is from the the Bodmin Gospels which was made in the 9th or 10th century. This is not a deluxe manuscript, so, although the Chi is emphasized it is not a major piece of illumination.

This is from the Book of Deer, which was made in Scotland in the 10th century. One day I will have to talk more about this manuscript in detail. It is a relatively small scale, somewhat odd manuscript, but is clearly still following the Insular tradition.

This is the Corpus Irish Gospels, now owned by Corpus Christi College, Oxford. It was produced in the twelfth century, almost 500 years after the Book of Durrow. It, along with the next manuscript show the extreme tenacity with which this style had in Ireland. This monogram with its interlace decoration on spiral motifs would be at home in manuscripts centuries older.

My final manuscript is the Gospels of Mael Brigte, which are firmly dated by a colophon to 1138. Although simpler in decoration than the the Corpus Gospels, this manuscript is also done in the insular style, centuries after the style's high point and shows the enduring popularity of the style in Ireland.

Stockholm Codex Aureus

2010-03-30T22:54:00.003-05:00

It's been a long while since I posted anything here, but I'm back, at least for the moment. Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

This is the Stockholm Codex Aureus (Stockholm, Royal Library, MS A. 135), also known as the Codex Aureus of Canterbury. "Codex Aureus" can be translated as "Golden Book" and refers to the liberal use gold leaf used in the decoration of this manuscript. There are several other manuscripts known as the Codex Aureus as well, so you have to specify which one you are dealing with. Stockholm refers to its current location, while Canterbury refers to where it was probably made.

This is a Gospel Book and contains the Latin text of the four gospels. (I'm not sure what version, but I would bet that it is the mix of Vulgate and Vetus Latina found in other insular gospels). I also don't know what texts, other than the Gospels it contains, although I do know that it has Canon Tables. I would assume that some of the prefatory matter found in other Insular Gospels is present. There are 193 extant folios. Alternating folios have been dyed purple. The text is written in an uncial script in black, white, red, gold and silver inks. There are two surviving evangelist portraits, six decorated canon tables and seven decorated initials.

The portrait of Matthew shown here, is quite different from the highly stylized and abstracted portraits in other Insular manuscripts. Matthew is seated on throne within an arcade with pillars. Curtains hanging from above are wrapped around the pillars. In the tympanum above is his symbol, the winged man. There is little in the way decoration and the composition lacks the elaborate decorated borders found in some of the other insular manuscripts. Although the elements, including Matthew himself, are stylized and flattened the entire composition has a serene monumental quality. In many ways, this can be seen as a precursor to later Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian styles.

The facing text page, however, would be comfortably at home in any of the great Insular manuscripts like Kells or Durrow. The text block and each line of text is contained within a frame. The text lines alternate between a gilded background and golden letters, creating a dazzling effect. The opening initial is an elaborate monogram decorated with interlaced patterns and laid on a background of spiral motifs. As can be seen by the detail below, the draftsmanship is quite high.

That the evangelist portrait faces this page is quite interesting. The initial monogram is of the Greek letters Chi and Rho (XP). This monogram was often used as in place of the word for "Christ". The interesting thing is that, although evangelist portraits were usually placed at the beginning of a gospel, this is not the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew. This is the text which begins at Matthew 1:18. The preceding 17 verses contain a genealogy of Christ, and the actual narrative of Christ's life starts here. In insular manuscripts, the genealogy was often treated almost as a separate work and this "second beginning" was often given its own frontispiece, although this is the only manuscript that I am aware of that moves the evangelist portrait here. The enlarged, decorated Chi Rho monogram at this point in the text is a motif that is limited to insular gospel books.

This manuscript was at Christ Church, Oxford in the 9th century. It was looted by the Vikings, ransomed by Earl Alfred (later King Alfred). At some time in the middle ages it was lost again. It was found by a Swede in 1690 in Spain and purchased for the Swedish Royal Library

Just Do It.

2009-12-14T12:16:00.003-06:00

Cross-posted from The Weekend Scrub

This is a bit of a rant.

I work weekends. I have to be able to do just about any case that comes along. I understand that the ~~wimps~~ fine scrubs who work during the week are stuck in their specialties and don't have a lot of exposure to other specialties. I don't care though. There are certain cases spread through all of the specialties that every scrub working in a large hospital must be able to do. (I may make a list of these someday.) If you can't do them, go work out an outpatient surgery center, or L &D, or specialty hospital and let your position be filled by a competent scrub. Even if you don't see them every day, you gotta be able to day a crani for subdural, a thoracoscopy, an ORIF and other procedures in the "scary" specialties of ortho, CV and neuro, even if you a GYN, or Plastics or General scrub. You just have to be able to do them, or get the hell out of here.

There, I feel better.

Modern man.

2009-09-21T09:16:00.001-05:00

Here is the definition of badass.

We are wimps. Every damn one of us.

Bad scrub.

2009-07-08T12:47:00.000-05:00

Cross posted from The Weekend Scrub.

So I've been following this story and giving it some thought.

Short synopsis: A hep C positive scrub in Denver was caught exchanging her dirty syringes filled with saline for fentanyl syringes, which she then shot up with. Thousands of people may have been exposed. After being fired from the Denver hospital she went to work at a one day surgery center where she worked until she was arrested. Hundreds of more potential exposures.

Some interesting tidbits: the hospital knew she was Hepatitis C positive, it showed up on her blood work when she was hired. They counseled her on a ways to avoid avoid exposing patients. A few news stories have made statements that she did not have patient contact. That can't be true, if she was in fact working as a scrub, unless reaching into a patient's abdomen and holding their intestines doesn't count as patient contact.

Also the news stories say that she was caught after being found in an OR which she was not assigned to. This is interesting, as, at every hospital I have worked at, people go into other rooms all the time to steal supplies or say hello to friends. The hospital must have had serious suspicions about her, or she was found messing with the anesthesia stuff. Some of the articles mention a previous drug test which came back negative, so the hospital was probably suspicious.

The fact that she was going into other ORs explains those high numbers of potential exposures. She only worked at the hospital for about six months, so that's about 130 working days. She would have had to have been stealing dozens of syringes a day to actually expose thousands of people. In fact the hospital is testing every one who had surgery at the hospital when she was at work. Of those "only" a hundred or so will be at serious risk of exposure. Pretty horrific, but not quite as scary as the headlines.

I'm still flabbergasted at the substitution of her dirty syringes. Why? Stealing drugs I can understand, that's what addicts do. But exposing people? Surgery departments are awash with syringes. Finding sterile syringes would be quick and easy. Sterile saline is likewise easy to find. I can think of only three reasons why she reuse her dirty syringes: She was paranoid that the extra syringes would be missed; second, she didn't have access to the proper labels for the syringes, or the original labels could not be removed from the original syringe. Not having a proper label on her replacement syringe would expose her quickly. Finally she may have been an evil bitch who wanted to infect other people.

My final thought is that, without taking away any of her responsibility, there are others who have seriously screwed up here. There is no way that she should have been able to go get Fentanyl syringes. Narcotics are suppose to be strictly controlled. Ideally, an anesthesia provider should never draw up a narcotic until he or she is ready to give it. What was obviously happening was that anesthesia was pulling up drugs, setting them down, and leaving the room. Stupid. Especially, as seems likely, there was a staff person about whom the hospital had suspicions of drug abuse.

General badness all around.

Farrah Fawcett, R.I.P.

2009-06-25T15:30:00.003-05:00

I am going duplicate a thousand of blog posts across the internets today. Farrah Fawcett lost her battle with cancer today. She was 62. Although her one season stint on Charlie's Angels is what made her famous, she, of course, was most famous for the poster. As does every other male of a certain age, I have fond memories of that poster.

An interesting, to me at least, side note when I was at school in Austin, my wife worked at the Umfaulf Sculpture Garden. The Garden showcases the work of Charles Umlauf, who taught sculpture in the art school at UT. In the seventies one of his models was Farrah. He made several busts of her. Here's the most recognizable, it has the hair.

And of course the poster.

Old Books are cool.

2009-06-17T08:44:00.004-05:00

I used to sell books a little. I'd go to estate sales and the like and buy books cheap and put them on ebay or amazon and wait. If you know what you're doing, and have a little luck, it can be fairly lucrative I had several books that I paid under $3 for that sold for over $50 and a couple that went over $100. I also had a lot of books that I paid a dollar for that will eventually be donated to goodwill. Knowledge, of course, is the key, and kmowledge is often hard won.

Sometimes luck will do though. When he was 16 Capt. Nathan Harlan of the Indiana National Guard, picked up an old leather bound copy of the Federalist Papers for $7. He bought it, in part, because he was studying the Federalist Papers in school. It tTurned out to be Volume I of the two volume first edition. Facing his second tour in Iraq, he decided to cash it in, thinking he might get $500 for it. He got $80,000. As nice final touch, the auction house, Heritage Auction Galleries is waving its 20% fee in recognition of Capt Harlan's service in Iraq.

Hat tip to Ace of Spades HQ.

Random music: Philmont Hymn

2009-05-27T00:31:00.001-05:00

Crossposted from Dafydd's Random Music.

The internet is a strange place. The elder daughter is expressing an interest in Girl Scouts. I had been holding out until she was 14, so she could join Venture Scouts, the co-ed program run by the BSA. I have an ulterior motive. Venture Scout crews can go to Philmont. I went thrice as a Boy Scout, and want to go back, badly. If she goes, I can go. To entice the elder daughter I told her, again, about Philmont. To drive the point home I searched youtube for Philmont videos. It wasn't hard to find nice videos with slide shows of the scenery. I may have hooked her. Of course I ran across some videos that use the Philmont Hymn as a soundtrack. I like the Philmont Hymn, and a spent the better part of the evening singing it. (The younger daughter now hates it.) After my evening shower I had a brain fart on the lyrics, and looked them up via Google. A little bit if searching turned up an astonishing coincidence. The Philmont Hymn was written by a 16 year old Philmont Ranger in 1947, John Westfall. Mr. Westfall died this month after a good life aged 81. It turns out that he lived in town I now live in. His funeral was at the Episcopal Church down the street from my house, the church my family occasionally attends. His obituary describes as active in scouts and in his community throughout his life. He was a past member of the board of directors for the ballet company my daughter is in. I never met him, but throughout my life his song has meant a great deal to me. I never met him, but I miss him.

So far as I know, the Philmont Hymn has only bee professionally recorded once, by the US Air Force Academy choir. I used to own this version as a single.

A birding trip

2009-05-12T08:35:00.002-05:00

Yesterday the family and I piled into the car and wet on quick birding trip. We've been doing this fairly regularly for the past several months. Usually we don't see much out of the ordinary, but yesterday was different.

We just took a run up to Lake Copan, in part to see how high the water has gotten in the lake. We took the usual route, up what I call "Buffalo Road" and then skirting Dewey to the west and finally coming out on Highway 75 a couple of miles north of Dewey.

Last week we went up Buffalo Road and found a flock of Bobolinks, which were a life bird for all of us. Yesterday, the flock was still there. They may have settled in for the season which would be cool. Buffalo road is prime flycatcher habitat, and both Scissortails and Eastern Kingbirds were out in force. No Western Kingbirds though. The Dickcissels were also out in force. Add in a couple of Meadowlarks and Grackles and you had almost everything you could want from the Prairie.

While running up the road west of Dewey I spotted a couple of Great Egrets in a field. What Egrets were doing in a field, I'll never know. Well, I do know, they were hunting, as I saw one of them catch something a couple of times, but what they were hunting I can only guess. Perhaps there was a small pond that was hidden from view by the grass, or perhaps they were hunting mice or frogs. I dunno.

A bit later on, a red bird flew across the road in front of the car and landed on the fence. My wife called, out "Cardinal!". Something about the bird pulled me up short, though. It didn't look right. I stopped and took a look. Summer Tanager. Right then, an Eastern Bluebird flew from the section of the fence where the tanager had landed. I noticed a second bird on the fence that I at first registered as another bluebird. I quickly saw a blue head and red breast, the the bird turned a bit and I saw the green back. Painted Bunting! Summer Tanagers and Painted Buntings were two of my nemesis birds. I had neither seen either one, and here I had them both in the same binocular view. We hung out admiring the birds until a passing car flushed the birds.

We didn't see anything unexpected at Copan, although I have never seen the water that high. If it keeps raining, and they don't get a chance to lower the lake levels, Bartlesville is in for another flood. I also didn't find any Orioles at Washington Cove, which is usually a dead certainty. Maybe it's too early for them.

Here's the bird list for the day:

Double-crested Cormorant
Great Egret
Canada Goose
Turkey Vulture
Mourning Dove
Rock Pigeon
Eastern Kingbird
Scissortail Flycatcher
Blue Jay
American Crow
Barn Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Carolina Chickadee (heard)
Eastern Bluebird
American Robin
Northern Mockingbird
European Starling
Summer Tanager
Dickcissel
Painted Bunting
Meadowlark
Bobolink
Red-winged Blackbird
Common Grackle
American Goldfinch

Twenty five species. Not bad for 1 1/2 hour trip.

Manuscripts on the web: The British Library

2009-04-20T10:51:00.001-05:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty.

So, I like to go looking around the web for pretty pictures. One type of pretty picture I look for is illuminated manuscript images. One thing that I've found is that several institutions have done a great job digitizing images and making them available. Here are some of the places I've found.

Let's start with the big one. The British Library. The British Library, of course, has one of the best collections in the world. The Bibliotheque Nationale and the Vatican Library are the only close contenders I can think of.

The British Library is fairly generous, there are three ways they make manuscripts available. The big one is their Catalogue of Illuminated manuscripts. Thousands of manuscripts are cataloged here. (Over 1500 from the Harley collection alone.) Each manuscript has a upwards to twenty or so images available. The down side is that they are going methodically through the collections, and they haven't included the Cotton or Additional Manuscript collections yet, and that is where a lot of the really good stuff is.

Equally impressive is their Online Gallery of illuminated manuscripts. This used to be part of their Collect Britain site, and focused on manuscripts made in Britain. Each page is treated as separate work, but you can search by shelfmark. There are plenty of images of little known manuscripts. There are also illuminated manuscript images scattered through some of the other galleries. The Online Galleries also has a Virtual Books section with in depth looks at several important books including a late 17th cent Ethiopian Bible, the "Golf Book, the Luttrell Psalter, the Golden Haggadah, a 15th Century Hebrew Bible from Lisbon, the Sforza Hours, the Sherborne Missal, and the Lindisfarne Gospels. I can't make this feature work due to limitations of my computer and my lack of Geek skills.

A final place to look for images is the Images Online. This is primarily intended as a site to sell high quality images, but their previews are good enough quality for casual browsing. You can find images from many manuscripts not found at the other Brirish Library sites.

Finally for the British Library if you are looking for information on manuscripts, but not images, there is the Manuscript Catalogue. The entries in the catalog range from fairly complete articles, with bibliography to a few words in Latin.

Codex Manesse

2009-04-14T21:19:00.003-05:00

Cross-posted from Monstrous Beauty

The Codex Manesse (Heidelberg, University Library, Cod. Pal. germ. 848) is a German manuscript, which was produced in Zürich between 1304 and 1340. It is an important literary manuscript, as it is the single most comprehensive source of Middle High German love songs, the songs of the minnesängers. There are 140 poets represented, who range in social status from the Emperor Henry VI to commoners. As important as the manuscript is for literary history, it is best known for its illuminations. There are 137 portraits of poets, many of them shown in full armor with heraldic devices. These illuminations have been widely reproduced, so much so that are almost the stereotype of High Medieval art. The last I was at Barnes and Noble I noticed at three books with cover art drawn from the Codex Manesse. The illustrations have also been widely used as decorative motifs. I have some wooden plaques with reproductions of some of these pages on my walls right now. Here are some of the images.

Emperor Henry VI, Fol. 6r.

Conradin, Duke of Swabia, King of Jerusalem, King of Sicily, Fol 7r.

Henry I, Count of Anhalt (The manuscript calls him Duke in error), Fol 17r.

And, since this is a manuscript of songs, here is recreation of one of the songs.

When worlds collide.

2009-02-03T00:05:00.005-06:00

I haven't mentioned it here before, but I have spent some time over the last couple of months doing volunteer work at the special collections department of a local university library. I have been considering a change of career and going to library school. Before I jumped off that bridge, though, I thought I should have some idea of what doing library work was actually like. I also thought that it would be a great way to find people to write letters of recommendation for me.

My first project has been to inventory the library's World War I collection. They started the collection years ago, based, in part, on the fact that almost the entire male student body enlisted en masse and became part of the Rainbow Division. The donations of several alumni of their war memorabilia made a nice start and the library has, over the years, actively collected things since. They have a lot photograph and letter collections, a German code book, various logs, and lots of ephemera and other things that old men have saved from their youthful adventures. One of the collections they acquired along the was of a army surgeon named William Jason Mixter.

One of the standard instruments used in surgery is the mixter right angle clamp, seen here. Much of the instrumentation for modern surgery was developed in the first half of the 20th century, and most instruments are named after the person who developed them. Since Mixter is an unusual name, I was intrigued. A quick Google search confirmed that William Jason Mixter was almost certainly the inventor of the mixter right angle. What's more, he was a major figure in the history of neurosurgery. He was the first head of Neurosurgery at Massachusetts General, and a pioneer in back surgery. He was the first to realize that herniated discs could pain by compressing nerve roots and the spinal cord, and along with Joseph Barr, did the first successful discectomy.

The library did not buy the Mixter collection because of Mixter's importance in the history of neurosurgery, indeed they were unaware of it. They bought it because contained some interesting items that fit well with rest of the World War I collection. Nevertheless, they did end up with some stuff that was much cooler than they realized. And I got an unexpected collision of two of the different worlds in which I live.

William Jason Mixter

The day the music died

2009-02-02T16:57:00.002-06:00

Fifty years ago today, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P Richardson "The Big Bopper" boarded a small plane and flew into legend.

The intellectual rigor of ABBA

2009-01-26T21:30:00.004-06:00

Last month I read The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. His thesis is that today's under-thirty crowd is the least intellectually developed generation in recent history. He blames this, in part, on the nature of the digital communications that generation uses; video games, text messaging, myspace, cell phones, etc. He argues that kids burn so much time with these forms of communication, that there is no time left for anything else. Another, more important, part of his argument, is that one reason kids burn their time away is because the previous generation allowed them to, or more accurately the guardians of our cultural heritage, teachers, scholars, writers, artists and the like, never convinced the current generation that there was anything of value in the World's cultural heritage worth pursuing.

I've also read a couple of blog posts recently by academics lamenting the unprepared minds they are expected to reach. One professor discusses in length the number of students who don't seem to understand that 800 BC came before 450 BC. There has been much talk about how even the best students view coursework and classes as mere obstacles to be overcome with the least amount of work.

All of which leads me to ABBA. Yes, the 70s Swedish pop group. I was discussing these ideas with my wife, and commented on the fact that in many universities, general history courses are often no longer required. Students don't have to know who Napoleon was in order to get degrees. I dramatized by say that one can go all the way through one's high school and college career without even hearing the word "Waterloo".

Now I challenge anyone over the age of 40. Can you hear the word Waterloo without the hearing somewhere in the back of your mind ABBA singing? Even if you are or were a die hard rocker or country fan, ABBA still seeped in and stayed there, because that's watch catchy song hooks do.

The interesting thing about this is that the ABBA song is not about the battle, but about a girl falling in love. But to get the song, you have to know the phrase "to meet one's Waterloo" meaning to come to a permanent, decisive surrender. The girl has surrendered to love, she has met her Waterloo. Of course the phrase is meaningless if you know nothing about Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars. The phrase itself has slowly slid from the language over the last thirty years as fewer and fewer people understood the referent. Today it unlikely that any band would write a song that assumed that the listened would know what happened to Napoleon at Waterloo.

So this is where we are. We live in a culture in which ABBA songs are to intellectually rigorous for the mass market. God help us.

And since we are talking about music, here's a video. Don't hit play unless you want ABBA to be stuck in your head all day.

How in the hell?

2009-01-17T21:03:00.001-06:00

Cross-posted from The Weekend Scrub.

Working in surgery can lead to interesting questions.

Today's question is: How in the hell is it possible that someone can shoot themself in the leg with a bow and arrow?

HIPAA and me

2009-01-15T20:46:00.001-06:00

Cross posted from The Weekend Scrub.

So there is this law that says that we medical folk can't divulge patient's medical information without a good reason. We also can't act on it for any reason other than to treat or aid the treatment of the patient. The rules are so strict that if I saw my mother's name on the surgery schedule, I couldn't go and see her after surgery unless I also got the information from a non-hospital source. HIPAA can cause some problems for bloggers, as the best stories involve patient information. I feel that on this blog I am abiding by these rules in the following ways.

I, of course, never use patient names. I don't use my name or the name of my hospital. I don't even explicitly name the city where my hospital is located, although it probably isn't difficult to figure out. However given my other interests, as seen on my other blogs, anyone who knows me would recognize me here. I am the only scrub in my town, who works the weekend shift, with my set of interests. I have a limited set of patients, so it theoretically may be possible to figure out which patient I am talking about. I doubt anyone will actually go to the trouble to figure out which town I work in, then who I am, and therefore which hospital I work at, and then connect my patients with a blog post. It could be done, but only by someone who has access to my hospital's records, and who knows me. Still I protect myself further by lying. When I say "this weekend", I mean, "sometime in the last 19 years". I can and will change the nature of a patient's injuries, disease or treatment in ways that don't change the core of the story. If I can, I might even change the patient's gender. In other words, this isn't the patient you're looking for. Go away.

Surgical cases that suck

2009-01-15T17:30:00.004-06:00

Cross posted from The Weekend Scrub.

I made passing reference to the something that made a case suck over here, but I thought that the causes of surgery sucking could be further expanded upon. Note that some of this list is subjective. It is also viewed from the scrub staff's point of view, rather than the surgeon's, patient's, anesthesia's or circulator's point of view. I suppose that ophthalmologists actually like eye surgery. Some circulators like long cases because they get to sit. Anesthesia has a completely different set of priorities from the rest of us. They seem to think that just because the patient’s blood pressure stays in the 50s it is a bad case. There are even some scrubs who might some theses cases.

First and foremost, harvests suck. Nothing sucks worse.

Second, eyes suck, but not as much as harvests. Retina and vitreous surgery sucks more than other eyes.

Third, any case with certain doctors suck, because the doctor is an asshat. Luckily, this is actually a small set of surgeons.

Any case involving more that one surgical specialty sucks. The suck factor goes up exponentially. A case with two specialties sucks 4 times as much as a similar case with 1. Three specialties sucks 27 times as much. Four specialties sucks 256 times as much. If we get to five specialties, just put a central line in me and hook it to wall suction.

Any case which departs from its script sucks. Some departures suck more than others. This includes, for example, the unscheduled opening of an endoscopic case. Note that just because we don’t know what we are doing going in doesn’t mean that there isn’t a script. For example, an exploratory laparotomy for bowel obstruction has departed from the script if we find a huge diaphragmatic hernia. It hasn’t if we find a tumor or adhesions.

Dead bowel sucks. Smells too. That’s why it sucks.

Any case scheduled to last more that 150% of what a normal version of that case would last sucks. First it's going to last twice as long as it's scheduled for, and second the surgeon knows something, and it's not good.

Any case scheduled for longer than two hours sucks. (Corollary, heart scrubs are crazy.)

Any case that requires re-draping sucks.

Any case with broken bones in more than one limb sucks.

Any case in which the circulator has to leave the room for anesthesia more than twice sucks. The circulator is there to get me things, not them.

Aneurisms suck. All of them.

Holding retractors on vaginal cases sucks.

Interesting cases suck. After 19 years, if I haven’t seen it, I probably don’t won’t to. OK there’s one exception. Years ago, when I was a baby scrub, a case down the hall was a removal of a cyst. When the surgeon cut into the area an insect stuck its head out of the wound. The patient had been in the tropics recently. I didn’t see that case, but I’ve always wanted to see another one. Otherwise interesting is out.

So there it is, an incomplete list of ways that cases can suck. I leave out that there are certain case and doctor combinations that suck and that certain staff have people that they can't get along with, which sucks. I, of course, can get along with anyone.

The Day from Heck

2009-01-10T21:49:00.004-06:00

I've never had a day like yesterday before. It certainly wasn't the worst day of my life, but it was far from the best. It was mainly a long series of weird, mostly minor frustrations.

The day started when I rolled over, looked at my alarm clock and noticed it was 7:15. My shift starts at 6:45. I live an hour from work. This math doesn't work well. I jump up, run through the house, grab the phone to call work. No dial tone. I get my phone service, along with my internet, from the cable company, so I pull up my browser and connect to Google. I have internet, but not phone. I find the antique, princess phone that we keep for power outages, and hook it up. No dial tone. So I quickly get dressed, and start to work. planning on stopping at a convenience store to phone work. I don't see a phone at the first store on my way. The competition doesn't have one either, and it's the last store before I leave town. I turn around to got to QuikTrip, which I know has a phone. As I pass the first store, I notice a pay phone I overlooked before and pull in. No dial tone on the pay phone. I go into the store, and ask if there is a general failure of the phone system. They have dial tone in the store, and I make my call.

An hour later I pull into the hospital. As soon as I hit the front desk, my boss tells me "Call your mother." Never a good sign. I call her. There is a minor family crisis embedded within a major crisis. I can't do anything about the major crisis, but I can fix the minor crisis. What's more I'm the only one who can do anything, and it needs to be solved immediately. I check my OR, and see that another scrub is opening and is going to be running the mayo. I'm only there to hold retractors, so I ditch my room, find a phone and solve the minor crisis with a few phone calls. I also call the cable company and get them to send a tech to my house to fix the phone. My wife will be surprised.

My first case is a big complicated case with two surgeons, each in a different specialty. One of my rules is that the suckiness of a case increases exponentially with the number of specialties in the case. Two types of surgeons means the case sucks four times as much as a comparable case with one type of surgeon. This is a long case, so the suck factor is way high. Add on that the scrub running the mayo is in over his head, and I had an unpleasant couple of hours. (On a side note, if a surgeon asks for an instrument by name, get that instrument and no other. It really will make your life easier.) The rest of the day wasn't too bad, and the evening charge nurse took pity on me and let me leave early.

As I pull into my driveway, I notice what appears to be a small dog lying in the yard, next to the drive way. It doesn't move as I pull in. I walk over to it, and it is a small dog, with a lot of Jack Russell terrier in it. I nudge it with my foot. The whole body moves in one piece. Dead. I thought dogs crawled under bushes to die. When I go in, I find out that we have to go to Wally world, and the dog must be disposed of before we leave, so as to not disturb the sensibilities of the children. My wife doesn't volunteer. While I try to wrestle the dog into a trash bag without actually touching it, a long expected cold front arrived and dropped the temperature by about fifteen degrees in five minutes. Nice touch that.

After the trip to Wally world, I notice Lord Ratbane's litter box. There is cat stool with blood in it in the box. Although the cat seems to be acting fine, there is a vet trip in his near future.

I gave up and went to bed.

Today was a nice day.

Adventures in bibliography

2009-01-05T21:45:00.005-06:00

So, as if I don't have enough projects up in the air, I decided to tackle something that has been hovering in the back of my head for about a decade, which is to create a bibliography of medieval texts which have been translated into modern English. I have no idea how a professional bibliographer goes about creating such a bibliography (although I will, I hope, learn in the next few years.) But this is how I started.

First I needed a list of medieval authors. I started at the obvious place: Wikipedia. I entered the first medieval author that came to mind, Bede. I noted that the article is in several categories that will be fruitful to explore later, but see that in the "See also" section there is an article "English historians in the Middle Ages." It contains several lists, which I swipe. That article points to a second article, "List of English chronicles", which I also swipe. After collating the lists together and alphabetizing, I have a list about 100 medieval authors and texts, more than enough to start with.

First up on the list is Adam of Usk, a late 14th and early 15th century cleric, who spent some time around important people. He wrote a chronicle about the stuff he saw. I never heard of him or his chronicle before today. After reading his Wikipedia article, I'm off to find out what I can about English translations. A quick Google search finds me this blog entry, from which I find out that there was a nineteenth century translation and a late twentieth century translation. Next stop, the Library of Congress. Their catalog reveals 4 editions dated 1904, 1980, 1990 and 1997. The middle two are reprints of the 1904 edition, which I discover is the second edition. The 1997 is a new translation. I grab the pertinent information and move on. Swinging back by Google I find that Googlebooks has a preview of the 1997 edition. The preview includes the discussion of the manuscript tradition. It seems that Adam's chronicle survives in a single manuscript. The bulk of the manuscript is in the British Library (Add MS 10104), but at some point the final quire became separated from the manuscript. It wasn't rediscovered until 1885, after the first translation was published. The second edition included the text and translation of the lost quire. This explains why the reprints are of the second edition. Next stop is Worldcat, where I find the publication information for the first edition. I don't find any other English editions. I do find an Italian edition, though, which I ignore. For good measure, I check Bookfinder, but don't find any other editions. I am done with Adam. Repeat 10-20 times a day for ten years, and I might finish this project.

Adam of Usk, fl. 1400. English chronicler.
Thompson, Edward Maunde, Sir, ed. and trans.; Chronicon Adæ de Usk: A.D. 1377-1421 (London: J. Murray, 1876) (N.B. Adam's Chronicle survives in a single copy. The final quire of that copy became separated from the main manuscript at some point. It was not rediscovered until 1885. Thompson's second edition includes this fragment. The second edition, or the Given-Wilson edition are preferred over this edition.)

Thompson, Edward Maunde, Sir, ed. and trans.; Chronicon Adæ de Usk, A. D. 1377-1421, 2nd ed. (London: H. Frowde, 1904) Reprinted: Chronicon Adae de Usk, A.D. 1377-1421 (New York: AMS Press, [1980]): and The Chronicle of Adam of Usk, A.D. 1377-1421 (Felinfach, Lampeter, Dyfed: Llanerch Enterprises, 1990) (with abridged introduction).

Given-Wilson, Chris., ed. and trans.; The Chronicle of Adam Usk, 1377-1421 (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)

New household member

2009-01-01T21:20:00.003-06:00

Yesterday we welcomed a new member to our household: Lord Ratbane, Baron von Shasta, otherwise known as Shasta, or Mr. Kitty.

His Lordship is spending his period of adjustment to his new surroundings by hiding under and behind things. It took some physical persuading, but he will no longer be hiding behind the dishwasher. That way is closed.

The daughters had been making noise for several months about wanting a cat. The wife wanted a Maine Coon, mainly because she wanted a big cat. Well, we got a big cat. This cat is only three and half months old and is as large as some of the adult cats in our neignborhood. He is going to be monster. It is good thing for the neighborhood cats that he is going to be an indoor cat, because in 5 months he will be able to eat the current top cat for breakfast. (The current top cat is a mid-sized grey persian.)

Important safety note, BTW, if you hhave a low grade allergy to cats, it is best to not let the cat use its very sharp kitten claws to inject you in multiple places with its dander. Thank God (and McNeil Healthcare) for Benadryl.

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T10:08:00.003-06:00

Well, Happy New Year. I followed my annual tradition and got to bed before midnight. Didn't get to sleep though, as I got caught up in a book. I don't do New Years Eve. Don't see the point. Stay up late, drink, scream at arbitrary point in time. Yeah! I'm all for making February 17 at 3:47 PM a similar holiday.

2008 was not a bad year for me. We ended the year in our best financial condition in a while, which is kind of strange to say, given the times. But the reality is, if you haven't been an idiot with your mortgage, and you feel some security in your job, the times are not that bad. Prices went up a bit, but the bursting of the oil bubble has helped there. Since I'm in a recession proof industry, I feel pretty good about my job. Meanwhile I'm nearly a decade into paying my mortgage, which means that my pay has risen, but my housing costs haven't. We don't do credit cards, and whenever possible we pay cash for our cars. (We buy used.) I got caught flatfooted when my previous car died, which meant I had to take out a loan on the current car. That got paid off this year. If the current car lasts another year, I won't get caught flatfooted again. All in all, I could not care less what the credit markets are doing.

I've also developed a plan to get me out of my safe industry. I'm, quite frankly, tired of scrubbing. My plan involves going back to school and entering a fairly competitive job market, and may involve a future relocation, but also would move me into a field where the pay tops out at about double the realistic top-out in my current job.

In politics, my guy didn't win, but then my guy didn't materialize at all. The guy I disliked the least thought he could sit on the front porch and run for president. The guy I held my nose and voted for anyway lost. Oh well. Hopefully this is 1976.

I didn't loose any weight, in fact I gained some. I might actually have to make New Year's resolution about this one. Or not.

I don't do resolutions, per se. But some goals for the new year are:

1. Read more American history.
2. Read more "period" literature.
3. Fill some of the gaps in my reading of the Western Canon.
4. Redevelop some of my lost language skills. (Latin, French)
5. Develop some new language skills (Old English)
6. Write more.
7. Play a musical instrument regularly.
8. Walk more
9. Do more birding and other nature study.
10. Get into the library science program.
11. See and hear more music.
12. Develop a better understanding of architectural history in general and the architectural history of Oklahoma in particular.
13. Continue reading in art history, especially medieval art,
14. Visit more museums and other cultural/historic sites.
15. Widen my reading into new areas.
16. Create world peace.
17. Cure cancer.

All this while continuing my current interests and responsibilities. There is not enough time, to do it all, but I can try.

For unto us a child is born!

2008-12-25T13:33:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas!

Fear the shoes.

2008-12-08T19:31:00.005-06:00

This is the eldest daughter at her sword fighting lesson. It was bout night, and she is sparring with one of the instructors. We spend the whole day in Tulsa on sword fighting nights, and before we leave town we remind her to wear appropriate clothing for fencing. I guess that means girlie red shoes and velvet pants. (Thanks to Marc Carlson for picture.)

Tulsa's Oldest House

2008-12-08T12:43:00.002-06:00

Cross-posted from Tulsa Architectural History.

This is the oldest surviving house in Tulsa. It belonged to Reverend Sylvester Morris, a Methodist missionary, who founded many churches in and around Tulsa, including St. Paul's Methodist on Cherry Street. This house was built in the mid 1880s (the Tulsa Historical Society says 1885). Given that the railroad didn't arrive until 1882, that makes this house pretty early. The house is a simple framed building in the "Folk Style". It was originally located in the 400 block of North Cheyenne. It was moved to Owen Park in 1976, after being discovered by the local historian Beryl Ford. Sadly it is in an extremely neglected condition, with the windows and doors boarded over. As the picture at the Tulsa Preservation Commission website shows, when it was first moved, it still had doors and windows. Perhaps Owen Park is not the best place for this monument. The "new" building for the Tulsa Historical Society or Gilcrease Museum are two possible locations that would be better suited.

Ford identified the building, in part by, the unusual chimney. He also reportedly found letters addressed to Morris in the walls of the building. This picture shows the Morris family on the back porch of the house. Although the house in this picture has obvious similarities to the house in Owen Park, I find it interesting that the side door pictured here is nowhere in evidence in the Owen Park house. The missing door, however, could have easily been boarded over in the intervening years. (Photo provided courtesy of Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society.)

The Reverend Morris story had a sad end. In 1907, while returning home late one evening, two lawmen mistook him for a whiskey peddler. The lawmen called for him to stop, but either the elderly man did not hear them, or thought that they were highway robbers, and did not stop. The lawmen fired seven shots, two of which struck Morris, killing him. The horses, knowing the way, continued home, bearing the the pioneer's corpse. The killing caused a furor in Tulsa. The two marshals were indicted for murder, but were eventually acquitted.

Here's a final picture of the backside of the house. Thanks to my brother, for acting as my photo slave.

On Christmas songs

2008-12-02T09:13:00.002-06:00

Here is where I prove that I spend way too much thought on trivial matters.

We have reached the time of year when you can go nowhere without having Christmas music thrust at you. There is always at least one radio station playing nothing else. Invariably I will work with people who want to listen to it. Sometimes the Anglican in me wants to scream "IT'S NOT CHRISTMAS, IT'S ADVENT." For those of you who come from religious backgrounds that don't follow the liturgical year, Advent is the season that precedes Christmas. It is a season of preparation. It is a time for sober reflection and contemplation. And a daily piece of small candy. It is not a time for "Holly Jollies".

That rant aside, several years ago while listening to all of the Christmas music, I came to realize that "Christmas" music comes in several categories that can be arranged in order of decreasing relevance to the actual holiday of Christmas. I have inflicted this categorization on my family for several years, and now feel that it is time to inflict it on my readers. All three of you.

Category One: These are the true Christmas songs. Songs about the birth of the Christ, and all that attended it. If it's about the baby in the manger, the shepherds, the wise men, the star, the choruses of angels, or any mix of the above, it belongs in this category. Examples include "Silent Night", "Away in the Manger", "O Come, All Ye Faithful" and "We Three Kings". This category also includes songs that include events that are not in the Gospel accounts, but are still about the birth of Jesus, "The Little Drummer Boy", for example .

Category Two: These are songs about the secular trappings of Christmas; Santa Claus, his elves and reindeer, Christmas trees, presents, Caroling and the like. Example include "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "O Christmas Tree", and "Deck the Halls".

Category Three: This is a slippery category. It is for songs that are about Christmas, but not any particular aspect of it. They may rely on secular imagery such as Christmas trees, but they are there just to set the scene. The central message is "Gee isn't Christmas wonderful". Examples include "White Christmas", 'I'll Be Home for Christmas", and "Chestnuts roasting on an open Fire". One subset of these songs is the songs that use Christmas as backdrop for commentary on the singer's love life, "Blue Christmas", for example.

Category Four: These are Christian songs that are not about Christmas, that somehow have been attracted to Christmas. Examples include "Joy to the World"(a song celebrating the coming of the Saviour, but not about His birth.), "The Halleluia Chorus" (it's from the Easter cycle of The Messiah), "O Come, O Come Emanuel" (it's an Advent carol), and "Good King Wenceslaus" (it's about a Medieval Saint, but it mentions the Feast of St. Stephen, December 26).

Category Five: These are winter songs, they are not about Christmas at all, just winter. "Jingle Bells", "Let It Snow", "Winter Wonderland", etc.

Category Six: These are secular songs that have nothing at all to do with Christmas or winter that have somehow gotten attached to Christmas. The prime modern offender is "My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music.

So there it is, my over analysis of Christmas music. Don't get me wrong though. I love Christmas music, or at least most of it. The unfortunate fact is that the majority of the Christmas music played on radio and in public places comes from categories five and three, with a smattering of of category two. Actual Christmas songs, those from category one, are largely banned and if they are found it is in instrumental versions. Oh well.

Veteran's Day

2008-11-11T20:43:00.005-06:00

They also serve who only stand and wait - John Milton

I never considered myself as coming from a military family, yet when I count the number of men in my family with military background, it surprises me. My paternal grandfather was in the Air Corps in the Aleutians during WW II. My adoptive father was a radio operator on landing craft during WW II. I an uncle on my mother's side was a submariner during the Vietnam era and after. One cousin spent some time in the Air Force, and another in the navy. Another uncle by marriage was also submariner. Another uncle was in the army in the same time period. My mother's husband was amongst the first troops sent to Korea. My wife's grandfather was a navigator on bombers during WW II. His brother was a civilian captured by the Japanese on Wake Island. My father-in-law served in Vietnam. My brother spent nine years in the Army from the late 70s through the mid-eighties.

The sacrifices and service of the WW II and Vietnam ere veterans are now widely and justly recognized and celebrated. The Korean veterans are less well remembered, but when they are, their sacrifices are recognized. The veterans of today's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are justly honored. Today I want to talk about a largely forgotten group of veterans, those who served during the last years of the Cold War.

The period from the end of the Vietnam war to Desert Storm is seen as largely on of watchful peace. There were a few small wars in Grenada and Panama, but little seems to have happened. It was a period with a completely voluntary, professional standing military, something that had seldom been seen in American History before. At the beginning of the period the military was demoralized, underfunded and poorly regarded. At the end of the period, it was the force that drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait in a few hours, when many of the "experts" were predicting a quagmire. In that period hundreds of thousands of people served, quietly. Many enlisted as a means of earning money for college. Many got to spend a few years in Europe or other exotic locales and have a relatively safe adventure. Because of that it easy to undervalue their service. There were real risks. The troops in Europe essentially a sacrificial force, they were to hold the line until the rest of the military could be brought to bear. If Soviet tanks had ever invaded the West, some of these men and women would have had lifespans measured in minutes. We may look back at the "little wars" such as Grenada and Panama as side shows, but service men bled and died in each of those operations. Even "guard" duty could have real risks. I once worked with man who saw American men hacked to death with axes by North Korean troops. The Cold War never really became "hot", thank God. It didn't because hundreds of thousands of American troops waited for the war that never came. It didn't come because they waited, and for that we should be grateful.

A Hero

2008-11-08T21:31:00.002-06:00

This is a little belated, but I met a true hero the other day, Lt. Col. Bob Powell (USAF Ret.). Col Powell enlisted in the army in 1940, and was assigned to the air corps. He piloted a glider in Operation Market Garden, hitting ninety foot tall trees that intelligence had described as low lying bushes. He woke up six weeks later in a French hospital with three medals pinned to his bed, including the Bronze Star. He was also promoted to master sergeant, but was quickly "demoted" (his word) to second lieutenant. He flew planes during the Berlin Airlift, carried troops out of Japan into Korea during the Korean war and flew an AC-47 gunship in Vietnam. For years he ran a small military museum at Memorial High School, helping to fulfill that school's dedication as a memorial to the troops of WWI, WWII, and Korea. The museum had recently been moved out of the school and into a freestanding building near 61st and Sheridan.

This kind of service seems to run in families. He commented that he has a grandson he returned from Iraq. minus a foot.

Random Music: Suzanne by Leonard Cohen

2008-11-08T21:10:00.001-06:00

Cross posted from Dafydd's Random Music.

Leonard Cohen was one of these famous musicians I knew about, but whose music I didn't really know. I knew that he was widely regarded as a genius. I, of course, knew the song from the Judy Collins version. About six months ago, while coming home from work, I heard his version on a radio program that specializes in obscurities and was blown away. He is not a great singer, but his voice works well with the spareness of the lyric and melody. As fall fades into winter in my part of the world, this seems to be an appropriately melancholy song.

Blogging

2008-10-29T18:00:00.002-05:00

I haven't written much lately, but I think I'm going to be getting back to blogging on a regular basis. I've been inspired, at least in part by my brother's pledge to post at least once a day. So far he has kept it up, and I'm going to try to at least once a day on my days home. I have some specialized interests and will be running separate blogs on those interests, while continuing to cross-post here. I have been posting all of my medieval stuff at Monstrous Beauty, which I am reviving after a six-month lapse in posting. I have done a couple of posts on Tulsa's architecture history. I have cross posted them to the newly created Tulsa Architectural History, where I intend to write more regularly. I work as a scrub tech and have blogged on my work life, I have cross-posted those posts to The Weekend Scrub, where I will continue to thrill the world with inner workings of the OR. I have had a fitful music blog, where I comment on pieces of music that I like at Dafydd's Random Music. I will continue to post there, but am going to start cross posting those things here. So if you are primarily interested in Medieval Art, Tulsa history, Surgical Technology, or Random Music, it might be easier for you to follow those blogs. If you are interested in my Random musings on all of those things and more you should stay here. All three of you.

We few.

2008-10-25T22:40:00.000-05:00

Today is St. Crispins Day.

Stupid Dumb Ass Cats

2008-09-15T12:33:00.002-05:00

The Elder Daughter is very taken with the Warrior Cats books by Erin Hunter. She has read the each of the thirty million titles in the series at least 1035 times. (I may be exaggerating.) She also makes little dolls out of pipe cleaners including little pipe cleaner cats. She and the Younger Daughter (age 4) will play with cat dolls , acting out the books. Although she loves real cats, the Younger Daughter likes to tweak the Elder Daughter.

Does having your four year old call the game she is playing and enjoying, "stupid, dumb-ass cats" mean we have failed or succeeded as parents?

Damn.

2008-09-14T05:44:00.003-05:00

Everyone in surgery and the ER has made the same joke. A young man, often African-American, comes in having been shot or stabbed or beaten to a pulp. After the patient is anesthetized, someone will ask what happened. Then The Joke starts. "He was sitting on his front porch, after coming home from church, reading the Bible when TWO DUDES, came up and shot, stabbed or beat him for no reason. And then stole his Bible." A while back we had a young man in who had been shot and had horrible injuries. He was one victim of this drive-by shooting. Other hospitals in town had three more. At one point we had the state police come in to the lounge and ask we if we could look for identifying scars, so that family could know which kid was which. One of the kids eventually died. I didn't hear The Joke, but I did hear someone say, "Don't these guys have anything better to do." The Joke is funny because the sarcasm is true. It is usually assholes who are doing things that they should not who get shot, beaten and stabbed. In this case, it really was four kids, all doing well in school, one of whom was a star athlete, who were coming home from church, and were mistaken for some gang bangers and got shot.

Damn.

Hiatus, sort of.

2008-08-21T21:19:00.002-05:00

I am working an insane amount this week, and will be next week as well. This could go on for a while, so I will be doing very limited posting.

On the, other hand, I was passing through the Drs lounge in surgery last weekend and there were several docs watching the Olympics. About six or seven middle aged, professional men. the topic of discussion was which group of women athletes were the hottest. There were several votes for volleyball players and runners. One doc held out for swimmers. Said he liked the broad shoulders, skinny hips and little butt. (I hope he was talking about the women.) It seems you can take the guy out of the locker room, but you can't take the locker room out of the guy.

The answer, by the way, is high jumpers.

New Project

2008-08-05T23:16:00.003-05:00

So I haven't been doing much blogging recently. This is in part because I have been working on a rather large project.

Anybody who knows me knows that I like to make lists. Not "To Do" lists, but lists of things. One of the things I like to make lists of is books. Since my first daughter was born, I have developed an interest in children's literature. So obviously I had to start making a list of good children's literature.

I've decided to put this list as a web site, in part as an exercise in learning HTML. The first draft is over there. It's ugly, there are massive formatting problems and is incomplete. There probably will be a blog attached to it later.

How not to do surgery.

2008-07-22T08:59:00.000-05:00

Hat tip to Ace of Spades

Durham Cathedral Library, MS A II 10

2008-07-02T18:23:00.001-05:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty

First a little bit about the "name" of this manuscript. If you are already familiar with how shelfmarks work, you can skip to the next paragraph. Many manuscripts are famous and have names that are well known outside of the realm of medievalists, the Book of Kells for example. Others are more obscure, but are well known to medievalists, the Quedlinburg Itala or the Vatican Virgil, for example. Others may have names that uniquely identify them, but are not well known to anyone other than a specialist. Most manuscripts don't have names, though, and are identified only by shelfmarks. Shelfmarks are the cataloging labels given to each manuscript by the institution that holds it. Each institution makes its own rules as to how to assign shelfmarks. Some just number them; MS 1, MS 2, etc. Others will sort by their manuscripts into collections, and number each collection. The collections may be sorted by language, or manuscript type, or by donor. Some large institutions might have several different types of collections. In any case, the full shelfmark will identify a manuscript precisely. (Some institutions that only hold a few manuscripts, or perhaps only one, don't use shelfmarks at all.) These shelfmarks are a kind of secret passwords for medievalists. You stand a much better chance of getting an institution to let you look at a manuscript if you know its shelfmark. Some institutions, rather than simply numbering the manuscript, use a more complicated scheme, that gives you the precise location of the manuscript. To do this you must identify the bookcase a manuscript is in, the shelf of the bookcase, and the position of the manuscript on the shelf. This is what Durham Cathedral does. This manuscript is A II 10. This translates to the first bookcase (A), the second shelf (II), and the tenth manuscript (10).

This manuscript is a fragment of an early Insular gospel book. It is usually known only by the its shelfmark because there are at least two other fragmentary Insular gospel books at Durham Cathedral (MSS A II 16, and A II 17). MS A II 17 is sometimes called the "Durham Gospels". Kirsten Ataoguz at Early Medieval Art calls this the "Earlier Durham Gospels" and A II 17 the later Durham Gospels.

This manuscript is earliest in a sequence of magnificently decorated gospel books that stretches to the Book of Kells and beyond. This manuscript dates to the early 7th century and is not much younger than the Cathach of St. Columba. The surviving fragments contain two important pieces of decoration, on facing pages. Folio 3v* (see illustration above) contains the end of the the Gospel of Matthew. The text is in the left hand column, the other column contains a frame shaped like three capital letter "Ds" stacked one on top of the other. Each frame is decorated with a knot work pattern, and each frame has a different pattern. (Dr. Ataoguz suggests having students describe these patterns as an exercise in observation and description. Other than noting that the lower 'D' is decorated with a traditional three strand braid, I would find this very difficult.) The triangular spaces between, above and below the "D" frames are filled with larger, looser triangular knots. Inside the frames are written the explicit** to Matthew, the incipit** to the Gospel of Mark, and the Pater Noster, or Lord's Prayer, in Greek, but written in Latin letters. Facing this page is the opening page to the Gospel of Mark. (see illustration at right.) It starts with a large decorated initial. This initial takes the first three letters of the the opening word "Initium" and fuses them into a large monogram. The monogram is shorter on the right side than it is on the left. Each subsequent letter in the opening word is smaller than the preceding letter. This diminuation of letters was first seen in the Cathach. A manuscript of Jerome at Bobbio from the early 7th century also contains an "INI" monogram that is very similar in form to this monogram (see illustration below). This would suggest a fairly wide spread artistic convention.

This manuscript, fragmentary as it is, is still quite important. It is has the first surviving appearance of the knotwork that would a major motif in later Insular manuscripts. The later Insular gospel books would all use monograms similar to the "INI" monogram used here. It shows the continuation of the strong tradition of the diminuation of letters after an enlarged intitial.

The Bobbio Jerome initial. My apologies for the low quality of the image.

* Most manuscripts were not paginated as modern books are. In modern books, each side of a single leaf is given a new page number. Manuscripts are usually foliated, where each leaf is give a number. The two sides are then termed the "recto" and the "verso". The recto is the "front" side, that is the side that is on the right side of the book when it is opened. The other side, the verso is on the left side of the open book. Individual sides of folios are indicated by giving the folio number and an "r" or "v" for recto or verso.

**The incipit and explicit are the terms for text introducing announcing the beginning (incipit) and end (explicit) of a text. An incipit may read something like, "Here begins the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew". For the most part, except for an occasional "The End" at the end of some novels, this practice has died out in modern books.

Berlin Airlift

2008-06-26T16:43:00.002-05:00

Yeserday was the sixtieth anniversary of the start of the Berlin Airlift.

In June of 1948, the Soviet Union blocked all ground and water access to the Allied controlled portions of Berlin. The US and Royal Air Forces responded with the largest humanitarian airlift ever attempted. For over 300 days all food, medical supplies and fuel needed for over 2 million people were flown into the city. At the high point, a plane was landing every 90 seconds, 24 hours a day. Berliners worked at unloading the planes. Their efficiency was such that one 10 ton load was unloaded in under six minutes. Each flight crew flew multiple round trips per day. By late April 1949, the Airlift was bringing over 8000 tons of material, per day into the city. This was more that had been brought into city by rail prior to the blockade. On April 25, 1949, realizing that the airlift had reached a point where it could be carried on indefinitely, the Soviet Union called off the blockade. The airlift continued for another three months so as to create a stockpile of supplies within the city in case the airlift needed to restarted. In total 2,326,406 tons of supplies were airlifted. There were 278,228 total flights into Berlin. There were 101 people including 31 Americans who lost their lives in the operations, mostly from crashes.

One US pilot, Gail Halvorsen started dropping candy from his plane to the children waiting outside of the runway. His example was expanded and the flight became known as "Candy Bombers". Over three tons of candy were eventually dropped.

The Berlin Airlift was one the pivotal moments of the 20th century. Without it, the Western Alliance might not have formed, and the Cold War would have started with a Soviet victory.

George Carlin, RIP

2008-06-23T09:02:00.001-05:00

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker and Tits.

You can prick your finger, but don't finger your prick.

George Carlin has died at 71 of heart failure.

Google Maps "Street View" hits Tulsa

2008-06-19T22:53:00.003-05:00

Google has driven its funny van around Tulsa it seems. Street View is available for Tulsa. This is both pretty cool and kind of creepy. A while back, I called a friend in the DFW region and was able to describe his house, which I have never visited, to him, all courtesy of Street View. Kind of has a big brother aspect to it, especially when combined with the satellite views available on Google maps. I am sure that some criminals are finding this very useful data.

On the other hand, this will help a great deal with my research on Tulsa's architectural history. Rather than actually driving around to do my scouting I can sit here in Bartlesville in my underwear. With the current gas prices, this is great.

A down side, is that they don't seem to be done. There are blank spots all over the map. Especially troublesome is the large swath between Harvard and Yale from Pine to 41st Street, which has only about 15% of the streets covered. I notice that Tulsa doesn't have the little camera icon as you zoom out. OKC does and seems to have many fewer holes, so perhaps they are still driving, or processing data, or something.

Bobbio Orosius

2008-06-19T12:01:00.002-05:00

Cross posted from Monstrous Beauty.

The Bobbio Orosius, from the 7th century, introduces an important motif to insular art, the Carpet Page. This is the oldest surviving carpet page. The design is not similar to the Carpet Pages in the later more famous gospel books (Durrow, Lindisfarne, Kells), but its purpose seem to have been similar; To serve as a sort of internal cover. As Dr. J. Kirsten Ataoguz points out over at Early Medieval Art, the Bobbio Orosius carpet page can be compared, at least in layout to the cover of the Stoneyhurst Gospels. (see below for image.) Like the later gospel books this carpet page faces a decorated initial. (I regret not having an image of the initial, and the poor image of the carpet page here, but it is all that is available on the net.)

The Bobbio Orosius also represents an important movement in the religious and artistic history of Europe. Although the manuscript was produced at a monastery in Italy, it was produced by Irish monks. The monastery in question, Bobbio was founded by St. Columbanus, who was from Ireland. Many important communities on the continent were founded by Irish monks. Many of the important "insular" manuscripts were in fact produced in the scriptoria of these communities. These monasteries were to play a vital role in the religious and artistic life of the next several centuries.

The manuscript itself (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana MS D. 23. Sup.) is a copy of the Chronicon of Orosius. In the seventtenth century it was given to the newly established Ambrosian Library in Milan, where it remains today. Dr. Ataoguz also has a discussion of this manuscript at Early Medieval Art.

The Stonyhurst Gospel Covers

Roman D&D

2008-06-13T22:00:00.005-05:00

It seems that a 2nd century Roman glass twenty sided die was auctioned by Christie's for $18,000. The auction notes said that "Modern scholarship has not yet established the game for which these dice were used." But, we know, don't we.

Seriously, this is very cool. I wonder if they made four sided dice as well. And then stepped on them in the middle of the night.

Unicorns and Dragons and CERN, oh my

2008-06-12T11:34:00.002-05:00

Unicorns are real! I think we should rethink the plan those crazy physicists at CERN have for creating dragons.

Texas Governor's Mansion

2008-06-12T10:19:00.004-05:00

This is a few days old, but there was major fire at the Texas Governor's Mansion in the early morning last Sunday. It appears to have been arson. Although I hate to see any historic structure lost or damaged, this one hits a little closer to home. When we lived in Austin, there was a major bus transfer point in front of the mansion. I spent a lot of time waiting on buses admiring the mansion. We always said that we ought to tour the mansion some time, but never did. This should be a lesson to not assume that things will always be around. Gather rosebuds while you may.

The good news is the the mansion was in the middle of a major renovation (which is why security was so lax) and all of the artworks, furniture, and artifacts were in storage. The bad news is that a lot of the historic fabric is gone. For example, the banister rail had filled holes where Governor Jim Hogg had driven nails to keep his kids from sliding down the banister. From the pictures I've seen, that rail is a complete loss.

The picture above is courtesy of the Texas Governor's Office. The Governor's office has also posted more images of the damage here. Governor Perry has vowed to rebuild, whatever the cost. I saw one estimate that said that other similar structure with comparable damage cost 20 million dollars to repair. If I know Texas that are probably several dozen rich dudes who would be willing and able to foot the entire bill. I also can't imagine the Texas legislature not coming up with the money.

The Kiddie Park

2008-06-11T23:55:00.004-05:00

Kiddie Park roller coaster
Originally uploaded by ezeiza

Today we renewed a family tradition. We went to the Kiddie Park in Johnstone Park. For those not from Bartlesville, the Kiddie Park is small amusement park in Bartlesville primarily aimed at small children. The perfect age is 5. By the time a child gets to six some of the rides are already too small. The park is maintained mainly through donations and volunteers. There are sixteen rides, most of them variants of going around slowly in a circle. Many of the rides are vintage things kept running through loving care. The biggest ride is the roller coaster. The highest hill is about 12 feet tall. Tickets cost 25 cents and most of the rides cost 1 ticket. The remainder cost 2 tickets.

One of the highlights is the miniature train which runs out into Johnstone Park and back, running through a "tunnel" (really the shed the train is kept in in the winter) where it is traditional for young girls to scream in pitches not usually possible for humans. If you stay until closing time, the last train ride is free.

It's a gentle place. There are loud speakers playing music, but unless you right under them they serve mostly as background noise. None of the rides have loudspeakers or the like, so they just make a quiet clacking sound as they run. The child to adult ratio is pretty close to 1:1 the families with Mom, Dad, and grandparents along to watch the single child have fun, match the few families with multiple kids. The kids are remarkably well behaved. The kids running the rides are basically recent graduates from being customers. The park hires 14 and 15 year old kids, giving them an early chance at learning job skills and get some experience. because of the short hours and sub-minimum wage pay the kids can expect to earn about 400 bucks a summer. The Elder Daughter is already plotting what she will do with her riches when she is old enough to work there in a few years.

I was very glad to be able to got today. I was worried Monday. Last year the flooding in Bartlesville flooded the Park. It was closed most of the summer. Monday the river was up high again. Some major roads were closed and the water was into Johnstone Park. The Kiddie Park stayed dry and the water was ten feet lower today.

The kids had good time. The Younger Daughter rode the roller coaster for the first time and came off squeaking "I love it, I love it". The Elder Daughter got in four rides. The younger daughter demonstrated that you can dye significant portions of your body blue with a single snow cone. (BTW, who in the hell decided that blue was the appropriate color for raspberry?) The only down side is that a few of the rides including the train were down for repairs. With luck, and if the river don't rise, we will be back a dozen or more times this summer.

Note: The picture above is from Flickr and not from today's trip.

Tulsa Architecture, Hooper Brothers Coffee

2008-06-10T22:05:00.015-05:00

This is one of my favorite historical buildings in Tulsa, in part because I can find it, and most people don't know that it exists. It took me the better part of an hour to find it the first time though. It is in downtown, being within the inner dispersal loop, but just barely.

The building was built in 1924 and was active in the coffee business until 1961. The railroad tracks run right behind the building. Coffee beans were unloaded directly into the building, where they were roasted and ground. The coffee making machinery is long gong. In 1978, when the building was added to National Register of Historic Places, it still had the last working hydraulic elevator in Tulsa. The architect and builder are unknown. It is a rare survival of a 1920s commercial building.

The view above is the from the southwest. Below the view from the northwest.

The sign reading "Hooper Bros Coffee" on the front of the building is raised brickwork.

As can be seen above, the south facade has rectangular windows. There are panels with raised decorative brickwork between the windows of the two stories.

The windows on the west facade have low arches.

The west facade had a painted sign that is still faintly visible.

The north facade also had a painted sign that can only be seen in the lessened wearing of the bricks.

The corners of the building do not meet squarely, causing them to have a jagged appearance. The corner below in an "interior" corner. It is on the south facade, along the west edge of the, now boarded over, main doorway. I assume it represents an extension of an interior wall that was not built at a right angle to the south exterior wall. The southwest corner of the building has a similar appearance.

The Beryl Ford Collection at the Tulsa Library did not have any vintage images of this building online. They did have an image of the 1940 Hooper Brothers Coffee calendar.

Thanks to my brother for the photography of the building and to the Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society for the calendar image.

Buy Danish

2008-06-09T10:53:00.002-05:00

My Brother has a "Buy Danish" logo on his blog. Here is an example of why. The subtitles suffered a bit in translation. "I have neutralized one...motherfucker", and the ever popular ">taunting<".

Cathach of St. Columba

2008-06-07T21:29:00.000-05:00

The Cathach of St. Columba is the starting point for Celtic manuscripts. The traditional story is that Columba was lent a psalter by St. Finnian on the condition that he not copy it. Columba nevertheless copied in a single miraculous all-night session. When Finnian discovered the manuscript, he appealed to the local king, who awarded the copy to Finnian. Columba raised his kinsmen which resulted in the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne. Columba went into exile, where he founded Iona, as penance for the men killed in the battle. The Cathach is traditionally identified with Columba's copy. The Cathach, however, has been dated to the 7th century on paleological grounds. Throughout the Middle Ages it was carried into battle as a talisman, a practice from which it gets it name. "Cathach" means "battler" in Irish.

The decoration in the Cathach is limited to the first few letters of each Psalm. This decoration establishes several themes that are explored in great depth in later manuscripts. The first letter of each Psalm is enlarged. In earlier manuscripts initial letters had been enlarged and decorated. Bit the decorations in those manuscripts were used to fill space or were appended to the latter. In the Cathach, the decoration distorts the shape of the letter, so that the letter becomes the decoration. Subsequent letters were drawn into the decoration through the gradual shrinking of the letters. In earlier manuscripts the letters after the first letter were the same size as the he rest of the text. In the Cathach, each subsequent letter is a bit smaller than the preceding letter until the letters reach the size of the bulk of the text. The letters are often decorated with small red dots. These three ideas the distortion of letters for decoration, the dimidation of letters, and the use red dots for decoration are ideas worked out in great detail later.

D-Day

2008-06-06T23:15:00.002-05:00

Forty four years ago today, thousands of young men endured a horror I cannot imagine. By the end of the day, they had changed the future of the world. Every day fewer and fewer of those young men are left. The Tulsa World ran a profile on one of them today.

Here are the memories of some of the other those men.

NPR can't say hero.

2008-06-02T17:41:00.002-05:00

Today, as I was driving to work, NPR ran a short story saying that President Bush would be honoring PFC Ross McGinnis today. Although they described the act of heroism, throwing himself on a grenade in order to save four other soldiers, they never mentioned what he was being awarded. It was, of course, the Medal of Honor, posthumously. According to Wikipedia McGinnis is on of US servicemen to have thrown themselves on live grenades. The others were Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham, Navy SEAL Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, and Marine Rafael Peralta. Dunham and Monsoor were awarded the Medal of Honor and Peralta is waiting presidential approval.

5th century Coptic manuscript.

2008-06-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

This manuscript represents a bit of a frustration for me. I had read Weitzmann, and some other sources so I thought I had a pretty good idea what were the important manuscripts. Then I checked out Lorenzo Crinelli's, Treasures from Italy's Great Libraries (New York, The Vendome Press, 1997). One of the early manuscripts was this 5th century Coptic Old Testament fragment (Naples, Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele III, 1 B 18). Illustrated here is Job and his daughters. I wrote an article about it for Wikipedia. It makes me wonder though, how many more very early manuscripts am I missing? Are there other 5th century Coptic manuscripts. What about other eastern manuscripts. I know about Syriac manuscripts (The Rabula Gospels and the Bible in Paris) are there more? I haven't found a text in English on Coptic manuscripts, although there are some in French. It may be worth my while to struggle through them.

All of that aside, so that you won't have go read the Wikipedia article, here are the basics. This is a fragment of 5th century manuscript of the Old Testament written in the Coptic language. The manuscript has only 8 surviving folios and includes the text from the Book of Job and from Proverbs. One folio has a large pen drawing illustrating Job and his daughters with Job pictured as a bearded man wearing a crown and short tunic. His daughters wear tunics with jewels and diadems. The iconography of Job is very different in this manuscript from that in later centuries. Here he is seen as royal figure while in later portrayals he is seen as humbled and sitting on a dung heap.

Shines the name, shines the name

2008-05-26T21:50:00.002-05:00

There seem to be few songs that celebrate individual or small groups of real soldiers or sailors. There is of course "The Sinking of the Reuben James", there is also the "Ballad of Ira Hayes", but that is really something different. And then there is the "Ballad of Roger Young", Roger Young and the Ballad are familiar to ever reader of Heinlein, of course, but he like so many heroes have otherwise slowly fallen into anonymity.

From his Medal of Honor citation (courtesy of Wikipedia)

On July 31, 1943, the infantry company of which Pvt. Young was a member, was ordered to make a limited withdrawal from the battle line in order to adjust the battalion's position for the night. At this time, Pvt. Young's platoon was engaged with the enemy in a dense jungle where observation was very limited. The platoon suddenly was pinned down by intense fire from a Japanese machine gun concealed on higher ground only 75 yards (69 m) away. The initial burst wounded Pvt. Young. As the platoon started to obey the order to withdraw, Pvt. Young called out that he could see the enemy emplacement, whereupon he started creeping toward it. Another burst from the machine gun wounded him the second time. Despite the wounds, he continued his heroic advance, attracting enemy fire and answering with rifle fire. When he was close enough to his objective, he began throwing hand grenades, and while doing so was hit again and killed. Pvt. Young's bold action in closing with this Japanese pillbox and thus diverting its fire, permitted his platoon to disengage itself, without loss, and was responsible for several enemy casualties.

What were their names.

2008-05-26T10:47:00.003-05:00

Happy Memorial Day.

The USS Reuben James was the first United States Navy ship lost during World War II. It was named for Reuben James, a US Navy sailor who distinguished himself during the First Barbary War, in part by saving Steven Decatur's life during the burning of the USS Philadelphia.

Have you heard of the ship called the good Reuben James,
Manned by hard fighting men both of honor and of fame?
She flew the Stars and Stripes of the Land of the Free,
But tonight she's in her grave at the bottom of the sea.

CHORUS:
Tell me what were their names, tell me what were their names,
Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James?
What were their names, tell me what were their names?
Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James?

One hundred men were drowned in that dark watery grave;
When that good ship went down, only forty-four were saved.
'Twas the last day of October we saved the forty-four
From the cold icy waters off that cold Iceland shore.

It was there in the dark of that uncertain night
That we watched for the U-boats and waited for a fight.
Then a whine and a rock and a great explosion roared
And they laid the Reuben James on that cold ocean floor.

Now tonight there are lights in our country so bright
On the farms and in the cities they're telling of the fight.
And now our mighty battleships will steam the bounding main
And remember the name of the good Reuben James.

-Woody Guthrie

The officers and men lost on the USS Reuben James, October 31, 1941.

John Francis Bauer Jr., Chief Radioman, USNR
Harold Hamner Beasley , Seaman first class, USN
James Mead Belden, Lieutenant, USNR
James Franklin Benson, Machinist's Mate second class, USN
Joseph Peter Biehl, Seaman second class, USN
Paul Rogers Boynton, Yeoman first class, USN
Harold Lelie Britt, Coxswain, USN
Herbert Ralph Burrell, Seaman second class, USN
Hartwell Lee Byrd, Seaman first class, USN
Leftwich Erastus Carbaugh, Jr., Fireman first class, USN
Joseph James Varuso, Radioman second class, USN
James Brantley Clark, Fire Controlman second class, USN
Raymond Cook, Mess Attendant first class, USN
Carl Eugene Cooperrider, Gunner's Mate third class, USN
Lawrence Randall Cosgrove, Gunner's Mate second class, USN
Alton Adelbert Cousins , Cheif Machinist's Mate (PA), U.S.N.R.,
Charles Beacon Cox, Chief Torpedoman (AA), USN
Dennis Howard Daniel, Yeoman third class, USN
John Justus Daub, Lieutenant (junior grade), USN
Lawrence Delaney Devereau, Chief Boatswain's Mate (PA), U.S.N.R.
Leonidas Camden Dickerson, Jr., Storekeeper third class, USN
Gilbert Joseph Doiron, Water Tender first class, USN
Karl Lee Drinkwalter, Seaman first class, USN
Nebraska Dunston, Mess Attennndant third class, USN
Corbon Dyson, Radioman third class, USN
Heywood Lane Edwards, Lieutenant Commander, USN (Commanding)
Gene Guy Evans, Boilermaker second class, USN
Linn Stewart Evans, Fire Controlman third class, USN
Carlyle Chester Everett, Fireman second class, USN
Edwin Louis Farley, Seaman first class, USN
John Joseph Fitzgerald, Quartermaster third class, USN
William Aloysius Flynn, Torpedoman second class, USN
Hartley Hardy Franks, Ship's Cook second class, USN
Ralph George French, Chief Commissary Steward, USN
Lester Carson Gaskins, Machinist's Mate first class, USN
Benjamin Ghetzler, Lieutenant, USN
John Calvin Greer, Chief Electrician's Mate (PA), USN
Ernest Dwane Grey, Jr., Seaman second class, USN
Arthur Raymond Griffin, Signalman second class, USN
Donald Knapp Gunn, Seaman second class, USN
Charles Waldon Harris, Seaman second class, USN
Charles Chester Hayes, Seaman second class, USN
William Henry Henniger, Gunner's Mate first class, USN
Francis Robert Hogan, Gunners' Mate third class, USN
Hugh House, Gunner's Mate third class, USN
Maurice Woodrow Hudlin, Fireman first class, USN
Joseph Johnson, Mess Attendant first class, USN
Dewey George Johnston, Lieutenant, USN
Glen W. Jones, Chief Quartermaster (PA), USN
Anthony J., Kalanta Boatswain's Mate second class, USN
Leonard A. Keever Chief Machinist's Mate (PA), USNR
Ralph W.H. Kloepper, Signalman third class, Class V-3, USNR
Joseph Gustave Little, Seaman first class, USN
Paul L. Magaris, Radioman first class, USN
William James McKeever, Sean second class, USN
Windell Harmon Merrell, Fireman second class, USN
Auburn F. Merritt, Seaman second class, USN
Gerald Edward Mills, Seaman second class, Class V-1, USNR
Albert J. Mondouk, Chief Water Tender (PA), USNR
Edgar W. Musslewhite, Machinist's Mate first class, USN
Kenneth Cecil Neely, Seaman second class, USN
Aldon W., Neptune Seaman first class, USN
William Harding Newton, Yeoman third class, USN
Harold J. Orange, Seaman second class, USN
Pedro Ortizuela, Officer's Cook first class, USN
Benjamin T. Owen, Seaman first class, USN
William H. Painter, Seaman first class, USN
Joseph J. Parkin, Chief Water Tender (PA), USN
William N. Paterson , Coxswain, USN
Burl G. Pennington, Quartermaster second class, USN
Joseph C. Polizzi, Seaman first class, USN
Corwin D. Porter, Seaman first class, USN
Frederick R. Post, Boatswain's Mate first class, USN
Lee P. Powell, Pharmacist's Mate first class, USN
Elmer R. Rayhill, Seaman second class, USN
Lee Louis N. Reid, Torpedoman first class, Class V-6, USNR
John R. Ress, Seaman first class, USN
James W. Rogers, Seaman first class, USN
John J. Ryan, Jr., Coxswain, USN
Clarence Rygwelski, Seaman second class, USN
Edward Peter Saltis, Boatswain's Mate first class, USN
Eugene Schlotthauer, Chief Water Tender (AA), USN
Sunny J. Settle, Seaman first class, USN
Walter Sorensen, Gunner's Mate third class, USN
Wallace L. Sowers, Seaman second class, USN
Craig Spowers, Ensign, USN
Anthony Gedminus Stankus, Seaman second class, USN
Jerome Stelmach, Seaman first class, USN
Wilton L. Taylor, Fireman first class, USN
George F. Towers, Chief Gunner's Mate (AA), USN
Lewis Aubrey Turner, Signalman third class, USN
Loyd Z. Voiles, Seaman first class, USN
Harold M. Vore, Fireman first class, USN
Howard Voyer Wade, Ensign, USNR
Jesse Weaver, Seaman first class, USN
Chester L. Welch, Fireman second class, USN
Kenneth R. Wharton, Fire Controlman first class, USNR
George Woody, Jr., Seaman first class, USN
Edwin E. Wray, Seaman first class, USN

Thanks to my brother.

The irony of the internet.

2008-05-21T13:29:00.004-05:00

On my music blog, I posted about a couple songs on shipwrecks, specifically "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot and the "The Sinking of the Reuben James" by Woody Guthrie. In light of the "What were their names, What were their names" chorus of the "Reuben James", I initially wanted to include list of the names of the men lost on both ships. However, a Google search failed to turn a list of the names of the men lost on the Reuben James, but it did turn up a list of the names of the men on U-Boat 552, the German submarine that sank the USS Reuben James.

Bag of guns

2008-05-12T10:38:00.002-05:00

Another tale from the surgery department of the big-city trauma center.

No story that begins, "My buddy brought over this bag of guns." is going to end well.

He survived.

Stupid Names

2008-05-12T10:08:00.006-05:00

One of the joys of working in medicine or any other field in which you see many peoples' names, is the opportunity to see truly stupid names people inflict upon their children. For years I thought that the winner was the two separate women my wife found when working for the state Tax Commission named Aquaneta. But we have a new winner. This is, sadly, third hand so it is beginning to rise to the level of urban legend.

One of our fine CRNA's at work tells the story from his days in anesthesia school. It seems that one of his colleagues had child patient. Paperwork had his name as "Liam". No problem, Lee-Um, nice Irish name. Anesthesia student goes into room and starts the usual routine, "What is little Lee-Um having done today?" Cold response from mother "His name is "Yum". "Oh, I'm sorry, we have his name as Liam." "It's pronounced Yum." I'm going to interject here that this family were white. I only mention this because some of the transliteration schemes for Asian and African languages can lead to surprising pronunciations. That's not in play here. Back to the story. Stunned silence. "OK, I'm just curious, how do get "Yum" out of L-I-A-M?" "He's named after his father......William."

Hot chicks with guns

2008-05-08T11:33:00.002-05:00

One of the medical blogs I read, M.D.O.D. is written by several ER docs. One of them is vacationing in Israel. He seems to be have made a hobby of taking pictures of attractive young female IDF members and including the pictures in his blog entries. Just because. He doesn't really talk about them, he just puts the pictures in.

Tulsa before the railroad: Taylor Postoak Home

2008-05-07T14:07:00.002-05:00

One of my original ideas in setting up this is blog is that I would talk about Tulsa's architectural history. So far I have done nothing on that. Here is a start. I want to examine some of the evidence for buildings in the Tulsa area prior to the arrival of the railroad. The pictures below were taken from the Beryl Ford Collection, provided online courtesy of the Tulsa City County Library.

Modern Tulsa got its start with the arrival of the railroad in 1882. Tulsa was initially the terminus of the railroad and loading point for cattle driven up from Texas. A small town quickly grew up around the rail station.

Tulsa's history, however, did not begin then. Plains Indians had, particularly the Osage and Wichita lived in the area for centuries before 1882. Folsom points have been found in the area. The areas architectural history started with the arrival of the Creeks in the 1830s. The Lochapoka Creek set up a traditional Creek village centered around a square near present day 18th and Cincinnati. The American Civil War was disastrous for the Creek tribe, as it became a Creek Civil War as well. The Lochapoka village was burned and the inhabitants were driven away, into Kansas. After the war ended, the villagers returned, but they did not rebuild the village. Instead they built scattered cabins and houses. Very little remains from this period.

Below is one of the photographs of buildings from this period in and around Tulsa.

According to the Beryl Ford collection, this is the Taylor Postoak home in about 1865. It was located about 1 mile south of the current site of Rader Juvenile Detention Center, on the south side of the Arkansas River. According to an interview with his son, Lincoln Postoak, Taylor was a full blood Creek who was removed to Oklahoma from the East and who fought for the Union during the Civil War. Lincoln was born in 1868, so the if the date on the picture is correct, he is not one of the children in this picture. The children are identified as great granddaughters Bessie and Amy Fife with their father Soda Fife. I, however, have doubts about the date of the picture. Most of the homes in the area were burned during the Civil War. This is an awfully substantial house to have been built in the few months after the war ended. Note that the leaves are still on the trees so this was taken in the summer or very early fall. This photo is surely from at least few years later. The problem is according to Lincoln, by 1868 the family had moved to the vicinity of Coweta.

Regardless of date and identity, this a well built house with clapboard siding of at least two rooms. It is built on a cut stone foundation. The shingle covered roof incorporates the large front porch. The tree and the horse in the foreground block what appears to be a smaller log cabin with a stone chimney. Foliage is visible between and behind the two houses, so these two buildings are not connected. You can't tell what is behind the clapboard, but the Will Rogers Birthplace has similar clapboard siding on a log cabin (see image below). According to the Beryl Ford collection, the Postoak home later burned.

Yet another blog.

2008-05-07T00:19:00.003-05:00

I started yet another blog. This one is basically masturbatory exercise. (Not that any other blog isn't). This one will consist of links to and my commentary on music I like for various reasons. I don't expect anyone to be too interested. It is over there.

Songs of dead people 2.

2008-04-28T11:17:00.003-05:00

One of the best songs ever, Kilkelly, Ireland.

This version sung by Maloney, O'Connell and Keane.

Total running time 13:06

Songs of dead people.

2008-04-27T22:22:00.003-05:00

Years ago, I was an assistant scoutmaster for a scout troop in Tulsa. When I drove to camp-outs a few of the kids rode in my car. I had some mix tapes I had recorded of Celtic music that I played a lot. One trip, one thes kids asked "Does some one die in all of these songs?" As I realized he was right. Someone died in everyone of the songs on the tape.

My brother is compiling a list of songs to "scare normal people".

I thought I might try to recreate my long lost mix tape and compile a list of songs in which people die. Most of these songs will be Celtic or English folk. I'm looking for a running time of about 90 minutes.

To start with, here's a song to rip your heart out.

Total running time 6:25

Sorry Sammy

2008-04-27T21:54:00.003-05:00

Between work and the Elder Daughter's lessons, I have to go to Tulsa 5 times a week. That's a 90-120 mile round trip, depending on where in Tulsa I need to go.

Gas cost today, $3.39.

I've always claimed that this was the great protest song of my generation.

Driving the speed limit can cut you gas mileage by as much as 20%.

I'm sorry Sammy, I can drive 55.

Sigh.

Owned by grandma

2008-04-24T20:07:00.002-05:00

It doesn't pay to mess with some old ladies.

46 year old ex con held off by 95 year old woman in wheel chair with a screwdriver.

Film at 11.

Medieval Survey bibliography

2008-04-23T20:35:00.001-05:00

I would like to compile a bibliography of medieval art. In part it serves as a wish list, in case I ever win the lottery. This is a start, these works are surveys of the entire Medieval period. The only ones I am familiar with are the Calkins, which I own; the 1st edition of the Snyder, which was my Medieval Art textbook at OU; and the Stokstad which I have seen in the library. I quick look via Google at a few syllabuses for Medieval Art surveys seems to show the Snyder and Stokstad are the two most common textbooks in use. I hope to get my hands on the all of these in the near future. I f I do so, I may repost an annotated version of this.

Benton, Janetta Rebold, Art of the Middle Ages, New York, N.Y. : Thames & Hudson, 2002.

Calkins, Robert G., Monuments of Medieval Art. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, [1985?], c1979.

Focillon, Henri, (trans. Donald King). The Art of the West in the Middle Ages, 2 Volumes. London, New York, Phaidon, 1969.

Kessler, Herbert L, Seeing Medieval Art, Peterborough, Ont. ; Orchard Park, NY : Broadview Press, c2004.

Lacroix, Paul. Arts In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. New York, F. Ungar Pub. Co. [1964]

Lethaby, William Richard, Medieval Art From the Peace of the Church to the Eve of the Renaissance, 312-1350., London, Duckworth and co., New York, C. Scribner’s sons, 1904.

Luttikhuizen, Henry and Dorothy Verkerk, eds., Snyder's Medieval Art, Second Edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ : Prentice Hall, 2006.

Morey Charles Rufus, Mediaeval Art New York, W. W. Norton & company, inc. [1942]

Reber, Franz von, History of Mediaeval Art, New York, Harper & brothers, 1887.

Sekules, Veronica, Medieval Art, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2001.

Snyder, James; Medieval Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture 4th-14th Century; New York : H.N. Abrams, 1989; Upper Saddle River, NJ : Prentice Hall, 2006.

Stokstad, Marilyn, Medieval Art, 2nd ed., Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, c2004.

Zarnecki, George, Art of the Medieval World, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, the Sacred Arts, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, 1975.

Ender's Obama

2008-04-23T10:49:00.002-05:00

Orson Scott Card wrote one of the best science fiction novels of all time.

It seems he also blogs a weekly column, and he has written one of the best examinations of Obama's "bitter" remarks I have seen. He makes the obvious point (at least it's obvious once he points it out) that no one in a small town is bitter because they lost their jobs twenty five years ago and couldn't find any other work, because those people left to find jobs elsewhere. That's why small towns are getting smaller.

Doctors

2008-04-22T13:08:00.008-05:00

Doctors are wealthy. No big surprise there, but given what they do most people don't begrudge them that. You want smart, skilled people to there when you come into the ER at 3:00 AM with a heart attack, or stroke, or injury. The only way that will happen is if you pay them well.

Not every body sees it that way though. The Tulsa World recently ran a letter from a gentlemen who refers today's doctors as "capitalist businessmen who masquerade as doctors", and hopes for the day of socialized medicine. Seems he doesn't like being asked how he is going to pay for the services he receives. He draws a comparison between today's routine office visit and the procedures during a disaster. I've been in a hospital during a big disaster. The ER saw hundreds of patients, and I bet not one was asked anything about finances.

All this is interesting, because I read the letter in the OR break room. When I was done with my break, I went and gave a lunch break in the trauma ortho room. On that room, a board certified, fellowship trained, trauma orthopedist was fixing a horrible break to the proximal humerus on a young man who had wrecked his motorcycle. He was assisted by two certified scrub techs and two certified radiology techs. There was a board certified anesthesiologist given anesthesia. The surgeon was using some very sophisticated (and expensive) plates and screws to fix the multiple fractures. A representative of the company that made the plates was in the room to make sure everything went well with his products. This is a lot of talent and expensive technology being used by this young man. Now many young men who crash motorcycles don't have a lot of insurance. This young man had several tattoos, one reading "Thug Life Bitch", and another reading "Fuck All". (We were left wondering if the thought was left incomplete, Fuck all... accountants, public employees, goats?) I may be showing bias, but I think it is safe to say the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, and the hospital are not going to be paid for this man's care. Some times life provides a nice ironic juxtaposition.

If you have the right to demand my services, and I have no right to demand to be compensated for my labor, then I am your slave.

Scrub tech blog?

2008-04-22T11:22:00.004-05:00

It seems that scrub techs don't blog much about their jobs. There are several emergency room and ambulance people blogging, but I have yet to find a single scrub tech blogging about the job. There are scrub techs with blogs, but they seem to all be for sharing family pictures and stories. I guess this is because the job doesn't provide the same number of interactions with a wide variety of people. I really big case will have maybe six or seven people in the room plus the (unconscious) patient, and will last for several hours. The average ER person will see dozens of people in that time. Just more opportunity I guess to have those unusual experiences.

13 years

2008-04-21T23:06:00.005-05:00

I was working on Saturday, so for the first time didn't actually note the date. It's been thirteen years since Oklahoma City. I was in OKC. I heard the bomb go off. Although, I no longer worked there, I went into St. Anthony's and scrubbed. It was six blocks from the Federal Building. Normally when I scrub a case, I never even notice the patient's name. I still remember the most serious patient's name. I called the ICU for two weeks checking on her.

13 years. I no longer think about every day, or every week, but it is always there, and always will be. When September 11 came around, I wasn't shocked. Angry and horrified, yes. Shocked, no. The world is not safe.

Another memory from that day. When the first rush was over, I went to the break room to wait. There were boxes of Sonic hamburgers. It seems that Sonic decided to send food to the hospitals. They knew there would be a lot of people working a lot of hours. No one asked, but they sensed a need that they could fill and then filled it. I will always be a Sonic customer.

There was a lot of people seeing needs and filling them. St. Anthony's, being the closest hospital, saw hundred of walking wounded in a very few hours. Many of them had lacerations that needed stitches. They were able to get them, in part, because Luanna, the Scrub Tech who was in charge of central supply, had people tear apart all of the non essential sets, the GYN sets and the like, and reassemble the instruments into suture trays; needle holder, forceps, two hemostats, and scissors. Lord knows how many people made similar contributions.

Red Army Choir

2008-04-17T23:42:00.002-05:00

My brother is compiling a list of songs "to scare normals with." Things like punk bagpipes, and songs with refrains of "how many of them can we make die".

This is scary in another way. Bet you never knew that the "Song of Volga Boatmen" went so well with Lynyrd Skynyrd.

One Way Streets Suck

2008-04-17T20:56:00.004-05:00

If you have ever driven in downtown Tulsa, you know that it is a maze of one way streets. Now I lived in Tulsa most of my life and know my way around downtown. I know which streets go which way. More importantly, I know to always look and determine which way traffic flows, before I turn onto any street. Even if I am certain which way the street runs, I look. Since I'm used to them, the one way streets never bothered me.

Today, I was taking the family to the Violin Shop (which I cannot recommend highly enough) to have some minor work done on the Elder Daughter's violin. The Violin Shop is on the north side of the tracks, and I chose to cross the tracks on Detroit Ave, here. Now, if you aren't familiar with the area, or can't tell from the satellite shot, Detroit crosses the railroad tracks via an overpass the rises and drops over twenty feet in about a city block. It's a big hill, and you can't see the other side until you are right at the top. It is also one-way, north. (I'm sure you can see where this is going.) When I was almost to the top of the hill, this crappy, mid 80's import comes bopping over the hill, right towards me, and in my lane. Did I mention the bus right behind me in the lane to the right? Somehow, I and he managed to not trigger my airbags. I went on my way saying things like, "gee that was interesting". I didn't even need to change my shorts.

Now, I think the one way streets are a bad idea. At least over blind overpasses.

Museum blog

2008-04-14T22:42:00.003-05:00

I've started another blog, this one as place for me to gather together in one place info on the various exhibitions being put on by museums. I'm starting with Oklahoma museums, but will broaden the reach as time goes by. Posts there will not make it onto this blog.

Harvest Time

2008-04-14T18:56:00.004-05:00

This weekend we had an organ harvest. I hate organ harvests. Hate them. Will do any other case in the OR, with any doctor for any amount of time in order to not do them.

The reason I hate them is not rational, but what it comes down to, is I don't want to be part of the machinery of death. Don't get me wrong, I fully understand that these people are already dead. I accept, at least intellectually, the concept of brain death. We are not killing them. I have no problem with organ transplantation. I will happily participate in an organ transplant. (OK, not happily, but as a happy as I am to do any other long surgery with finicky surgeons.) If I needed it, I would sign up in a heartbeat to be organ recipient. If it weren't for my medical history, I would be an organ donor.

None of that matters. We bring a patient into the room with a pulse and 02 sats, and then we take out organs and turn the machines off and send the patient to the morgue. In the pit of my stomach it feels like we are causing death. I've tried, I can't get around it. It gives me nightmares.

Luckily, the other tech on my shift doesn't have these qualms. She understands my reservations and does all of them. This weekend it looked like the cases were going to fall in such a way that I would have to do this one. I was going to suck it up and do it, but man it depressed me. But my coworker came through. Thank you.

This should not have to be said.

2008-04-13T12:10:00.003-05:00

Another work weekend.

I know it is spring, because the lawnmowers are out.

For those of you who might forget, power lawnmowers have large, rapidly spinning blades underneath them. Don't stick you fingers under there.

This weekend's patient only lost the tip of one finger.