The Brontë Society paid big money for a tiny, tiny book by Charlotte Brontë
After “years of chasing [it],” the Brontë Society has at last acquired the last in a series of very tiny books that Charlotte Brontë wrote in 1830, when she was 14. The Society paid €600,000 for the book at auction, after losing out on it to an “investment scheme” in 2011. This time, the Brontë Society received public donations thanks, in part, to an appeal from Dame Judi Dench.
The book measures 35mm x 61mm, and was part of a series of six entitled “The Young Men’s Magazines” (one of which has been missing since 1930). The books were written for the Brontë siblings’ toy soldiers (adorable), and the most recent acquisition contains three handwritten stories.
All five surviving tiny books will be reunited at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire. Tiny congratulations to all!
[via The Guardian]
Guest Post: Prevention — the goalie of the health care world by Dr. Dave Davis
My worry is that the current provincial government may reduce health-care costs without consideration for long term, down-the-road consequences
On the phone, my patient sounded as though her nose was plugged. Nasally. She said, "I've been sneezing, you know, Doctor. Runny nose, sore throat. Coughing a lot. I feel silly calling, but I heard about that poor nurse who died this week."
There was something else in her voice too: worry. The patient's daughter was a nurse, one of many who worked at the hospital where a second outbreak of SARS had claimed a staff member. Her daughter was unaffected, but she, my patient — well, you hear her.
I want to tell you two things about the call. Maybe three. OK, three.
The first: it was 2003, toward the end of the outbreak of Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS. Apart from the killer commute, I loved working in the large University of Toronto teaching clinic, seeing patients, teaching (and learning from) students and residents. I was as sleepless as my patient I think, but for a different reason: I was angry, frustrated that we had to close the clinic. And frightened too, a bit.
I still am. I'll tell you why in a second.
It was surreal: the clinic was closed for weeks, the product of the sinister, infectious, cold-mimicking SARS. Based in outpatient clinics and doctor's offices, most Ontario physicians were tied to their phones, as frustrated as I was. When we did return to work, we were gowned like astronauts, strangers in a strange land, our temperatures recorded outside the building before we were allowed in. SARS was a tragic thing: 40-plus deaths, many seriously harmed. It held many lessons, perhaps best captured by the calm, competent, late Donald Low:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92467/
It was also, to a large extent, preventable.
Ontario didn't fare so well with SARS at the outset: our public health and regulatory framework had been seriously damaged by an overly cost-conscious government in the late nineties. In the town of Walkerton, for example, fiscal conservatives had reduced or privatized many inspection services, compromising water safety: seven people died, hundreds became ill. A false economy, a tragic outcome.
And something like SARS could happen again: take MERS for example. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is a viral illness with a fatality rate of over 30 per cent, especially among the young. Caused by direct physical contact with camel saliva (so, pretty unlikely to affect us), this virus, like many, can morph into an illness spread by sneezing or coughing. That spread would be something to watch (and watch out for), like a wildfire spreading across the globe. Not a probability, but clearly a possibility: from the camel markets of Oman, to the huge nexus of Dubai, one of the world's busiest airports, to every point of the globe.
That brings me to the second thing — anxiety. In 2003, my patient and colleagues had reason for worry: patients made seriously ill from something that started out like a harmless cold; health-care workers and others dying from contact with patients. I remember one death in particular, a family physician who attended our University of Toronto's continuing education events. Like the firemen of 9/11, he was a brave first responder, who, as they say, "had to go back in," to look after his patients.
Anxiety is important, so much so that we teach family doctors to be aware of the one — diagnosis trap: identifying and treating only the biological or medical aspects of a patient's illness may be necessary, but certainly not sufficient for complete patient care. For almost any problem, there's an accompanying (often underlying) emotional component — worry, anxiety, depression. Even a broken arm has psychological and social implications: will the patient be able to work? Will she be able to afford her rent? How, exactly, did the broken arm happen?
Many of us carry that second element with us, silently, often unaddressed, bringing me to the third point. Today, a decade and a half after SARS, my worry is that the current provincial government may reduce health-care costs without consideration for long term, down-the-road consequences, without the awareness of the false economy of Walkerton. SARS speaks to us today as clearly as it did then: prevention, the unsung hero, is not sexy. It's also crucial. It's easily ignored or reduced to denigrating important things like restaurant inspections.
Prevention is the goalie of the health care world.
Let's hope — maybe demand is a better word — that no patient has to worry that a common cold, or any other virus, can kill her.
Dave Davis, MD, is a retired family doc and medical educator. His first novel, "A Potter's Tale," published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA and the US. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.com, or follow him @drauthor24
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| Hospital staff during the 2003 SARS crisis. Dave Davis worries that the current Ontario government could be putting cuts in place that jeopardize our ability to handle the next SARS-like crisis. - NYGH Archives |
On the phone, my patient sounded as though her nose was plugged. Nasally. She said, "I've been sneezing, you know, Doctor. Runny nose, sore throat. Coughing a lot. I feel silly calling, but I heard about that poor nurse who died this week."
There was something else in her voice too: worry. The patient's daughter was a nurse, one of many who worked at the hospital where a second outbreak of SARS had claimed a staff member. Her daughter was unaffected, but she, my patient — well, you hear her.
I want to tell you two things about the call. Maybe three. OK, three.
The first: it was 2003, toward the end of the outbreak of Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS. Apart from the killer commute, I loved working in the large University of Toronto teaching clinic, seeing patients, teaching (and learning from) students and residents. I was as sleepless as my patient I think, but for a different reason: I was angry, frustrated that we had to close the clinic. And frightened too, a bit.
I still am. I'll tell you why in a second.
It was surreal: the clinic was closed for weeks, the product of the sinister, infectious, cold-mimicking SARS. Based in outpatient clinics and doctor's offices, most Ontario physicians were tied to their phones, as frustrated as I was. When we did return to work, we were gowned like astronauts, strangers in a strange land, our temperatures recorded outside the building before we were allowed in. SARS was a tragic thing: 40-plus deaths, many seriously harmed. It held many lessons, perhaps best captured by the calm, competent, late Donald Low:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92467/
It was also, to a large extent, preventable.
Ontario didn't fare so well with SARS at the outset: our public health and regulatory framework had been seriously damaged by an overly cost-conscious government in the late nineties. In the town of Walkerton, for example, fiscal conservatives had reduced or privatized many inspection services, compromising water safety: seven people died, hundreds became ill. A false economy, a tragic outcome.
And something like SARS could happen again: take MERS for example. Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is a viral illness with a fatality rate of over 30 per cent, especially among the young. Caused by direct physical contact with camel saliva (so, pretty unlikely to affect us), this virus, like many, can morph into an illness spread by sneezing or coughing. That spread would be something to watch (and watch out for), like a wildfire spreading across the globe. Not a probability, but clearly a possibility: from the camel markets of Oman, to the huge nexus of Dubai, one of the world's busiest airports, to every point of the globe.
That brings me to the second thing — anxiety. In 2003, my patient and colleagues had reason for worry: patients made seriously ill from something that started out like a harmless cold; health-care workers and others dying from contact with patients. I remember one death in particular, a family physician who attended our University of Toronto's continuing education events. Like the firemen of 9/11, he was a brave first responder, who, as they say, "had to go back in," to look after his patients.
Anxiety is important, so much so that we teach family doctors to be aware of the one — diagnosis trap: identifying and treating only the biological or medical aspects of a patient's illness may be necessary, but certainly not sufficient for complete patient care. For almost any problem, there's an accompanying (often underlying) emotional component — worry, anxiety, depression. Even a broken arm has psychological and social implications: will the patient be able to work? Will she be able to afford her rent? How, exactly, did the broken arm happen?
Many of us carry that second element with us, silently, often unaddressed, bringing me to the third point. Today, a decade and a half after SARS, my worry is that the current provincial government may reduce health-care costs without consideration for long term, down-the-road consequences, without the awareness of the false economy of Walkerton. SARS speaks to us today as clearly as it did then: prevention, the unsung hero, is not sexy. It's also crucial. It's easily ignored or reduced to denigrating important things like restaurant inspections.
Prevention is the goalie of the health care world.
Let's hope — maybe demand is a better word — that no patient has to worry that a common cold, or any other virus, can kill her.
Dave Davis, MD, is a retired family doc and medical educator. His first novel, "A Potter's Tale," published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA and the US. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.com, or follow him @drauthor24
The Music Man Robert Kraft!
Robert Kraft, discusses career killers, writing TV theme songs, and his climb to becoming the Executive in Charge of Music for more than 300 Fox feature films.
The Meg Wins “Best Film” at the 2019 UCFTI Golden Screen Awards in the Chinese/American Co-Production Category
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| Sophia Cai Wins Best Supporting Actress |
Samuel Bernstein's New Play Runs through December 15 at Pacific Resident Theatre!
Sometimes a death in the family is the beginning of everything.
The Hoffman family meets to sell their late mother’s Upper East Side brownstone and divide a houseful and lifetime of memories. Ancient dramas of childhood run smack into the fresh grief of mourning. The questions that arise are not easily answered. What does it mean to be in midlife and fear you’ve made all the wrong choices? What does it mean to carry unbearable burdens? What does it mean to trust in everything that family is, but also accept everything it isn’t and can never be…
Runs the first two weekends of November and December. TICKETS
The Hoffman family meets to sell their late mother’s Upper East Side brownstone and divide a houseful and lifetime of memories. Ancient dramas of childhood run smack into the fresh grief of mourning. The questions that arise are not easily answered. What does it mean to be in midlife and fear you’ve made all the wrong choices? What does it mean to carry unbearable burdens? What does it mean to trust in everything that family is, but also accept everything it isn’t and can never be…
Runs the first two weekends of November and December. TICKETS
R.I.P. Kennedy Detail SSA - WINSTON LAWSON
In June 2010, seven Secret Service agents who were on the Kennedy Secret Service Detail reunited in Dallas along with their wives, for the emotional filming of a Discovery Channel Emmy nominated documentary based on the book, The Kennedy Detail. It was an unforgettable experience that brought back fond memories of the brotherhood of this close-knit group, but that, of course, also forced them to relive the most tragic day of their lives. Win Lawson was one of them.
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| With Jerry Blaine |
Win Lawson retired in 1981 as Deputy Assistant Director of Inspection.
Interview - WTVR - November 2013
RICHMOND, Va. (WTVR) – His job was to protect the President of the United States. Fifty years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it is a job that still haunts Secret Service Special Agent Winston Lawson to this day.
“You knew it was an important job. You couldn’t let it get to you too much,” Lawson said in his first television interview since the assassination.
Martin Scorsese: Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema.
Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain.
Cinema is an art form that brings you the unexpected. In superhero movies, nothing is at risk, a director says.
“It’s a perilous time in film exhibition, and there are fewer independent theaters than ever,” says Martin Scorsese.
“It’s a perilous time in film exhibition, and there are fewer independent theaters than ever,” says Martin Scorsese.
When I was in England in early October, I gave an interview to Empire magazine. I was asked a question about Marvel movies. I answered it. I said that I’ve tried to watch a few of them and that they’re not for me, that they seem to me to be closer to theme parks than they are to movies as I’ve known and loved them throughout my life, and that in the end, I don’t think they’re cinema.
Some people seem to have seized on the last part of my answer as insulting, or as evidence of hatred for Marvel on my part. If anyone is intent on characterizing my words in that light, there’s nothing I can do to stand in the way.
Many franchise films are made by people of considerable talent and artistry. You can see it on the screen. The fact that the films themselves don’t interest me is a matter of personal taste and temperament. I know that if I were younger, if I’d come of age at a later time, I might have been excited by these pictures and maybe even wanted to make one myself. But I grew up when I did and I developed a sense of movies — of what they were and what they could be — that was as far from the Marvel universe as we on Earth are from Alpha Centauri.
For me, for the filmmakers I came to love and respect, for my friends who started making movies around the same time that I did, cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.
It was about confronting the unexpected on the screen and in the life it dramatized and interpreted, and enlarging the sense of what was possible in the art form.
And that was the key for us: it was an art form. There was some debate about that at the time, so we stood up for cinema as an equal to literature or music or dance. And we came to understand that the art could be found in many different places and in just as many forms — in “The Steel Helmet” by Sam Fuller and “Persona” by Ingmar Bergman, in “It’s Always Fair Weather” by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen and “Scorpio Rising” by Kenneth Anger, in “Vivre Sa Vie” by Jean-Luc Godard and “The Killers” by Don Siegel.
Or in the films of Alfred Hitchcock — I suppose you could say that Hitchcock was his own franchise. Or that he was our franchise. Every new Hitchcock picture was an event. To be in a packed house in one of the old theaters watching “Rear Window” was an extraordinary experience: It was an event created by the chemistry between the audience and the picture itself, and it was electrifying.
And in a way, certain Hitchcock films were also like theme parks. I’m thinking of “Strangers on a Train,” in which the climax takes place on a merry-go-round at a real amusement park, and “Psycho,” which I saw at a midnight show on its opening day, an experience I will never forget. People went to be surprised and thrilled, and they weren’t disappointed.
Sixty or 70 years later, we’re still watching those pictures and marveling at them. But is it the thrills and the shocks that we keep going back to? I don’t think so. The set pieces in “North by Northwest” are stunning, but they would be nothing more than a succession of dynamic and elegant compositions and cuts without the painful emotions at the center of the story or the absolute lostness of Cary Grant’s character.
The climax of “Strangers on a Train” is a feat, but it’s the interplay between the two principal characters and Robert Walker’s profoundly unsettling performance that resonate now.
Some say that Hitchcock’s pictures had a sameness to them, and perhaps that’s true — Hitchcock himself wondered about it. But the sameness of today’s franchise pictures is something else again. Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.
They are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.
Another way of putting it would be that they are everything that the films of Paul Thomas Anderson or Claire Denis or Spike Lee or Ari Aster or Kathryn Bigelow or Wes Anderson are not. When I watch a movie by any of those filmmakers, I know I’m going to see something absolutely new and be taken to unexpected and maybe even unnameable areas of experience. My sense of what is possible in telling stories with moving images and sounds is going to be expanded.
So, you might ask, what’s my problem? Why not just let superhero films and other franchise films be? The reason is simple. In many places around this country and around the world, franchise films are now your primary choice if you want to see something on the big screen. It’s a perilous time in film exhibition, and there are fewer independent theaters than ever. The equation has flipped and streaming has become the primary delivery system. Still, I don’t know a single filmmaker who doesn’t want to design films for the big screen, to be projected before audiences in theaters.
That includes me, and I’m speaking as someone who just completed a picture for Netflix. It, and it alone, allowed us to make “The Irishman” the way we needed to, and for that I’ll always be thankful. We have a theatrical window, which is great. Would I like the picture to play on more big screens for longer periods of time? Of course I would. But no matter whom you make your movie with, the fact is that the screens in most multiplexes are crowded with franchise pictures.
And if you’re going to tell me that it’s simply a matter of supply and demand and giving the people what they want, I’m going to disagree. It’s a chicken-and-egg issue. If people are given only one kind of thing and endlessly sold only one kind of thing, of course they’re going to want more of that one kind of thing.
But, you might argue, can’t they just go home and watch anything else they want on Netflix or iTunes or Hulu? Sure — anywhere but on the big screen, where the filmmaker intended her or his picture to be seen.
In the past 20 years, as we all know, the movie business has changed on all fronts. But the most ominous change has happened stealthily and under cover of night: the gradual but steady elimination of risk. Many films today are perfect products manufactured for immediate consumption. Many of them are well made by teams of talented individuals. All the same, they lack something essential to cinema: the unifying vision of an individual artist. Because, of course, the individual artist is the riskiest factor of all.
I’m certainly not implying that movies should be a subsidized art form, or that they ever were. When the Hollywood studio system was still alive and well, the tension between the artists and the people who ran the business was constant and intense, but it was a productive tension that gave us some of the greatest films ever made — in the words of Bob Dylan, the best of them were “heroic and visionary.”
Today, that tension is gone, and there are some in the business with absolute indifference to the very question of art and an attitude toward the history of cinema that is both dismissive and proprietary — a lethal combination. The situation, sadly, is that we now have two separate fields: There’s worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there’s cinema. They still overlap from time to time, but that’s becoming increasingly rare. And I fear that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other.
For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art. And the act of simply writing those words fills me with terrible sadness.
Read more
My personal, tiny, attempts at helping our poor planet by Dave Davis
There are little things that we can do, not drifting helplessly in a sea of worry
Cows are not great for the environment, writes Dave Davis, but they are deserving of a dignified life regardless. - Rich Pedroncelli , The Associated Press
It was Lent or something close to it, and we were visiting our good friends-friends for life in Virginia for a few days. Wonderful couple, two fine sons, grandkids, the most hospitable people on the planet, with one slight difference from most of our friends: they were and are strict vegans. Soy milk, grains, veggies and fruit vegans. With good cause too, they said.
They had both read (digested you might say) the book, The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health by Thomas M. Campbell. They were firm believers in its conclusions, namely that our current eating habits were a major cause of cancer and other health problems.
Plus, it wasn't good for the planet.
I read it too. My wife and I decided we'd give up our regular diet (it was Lent after all) and, for 48 hours for her, longer for me, we did. Soya milk, faux-cheese, plant-based foods. Finding out where the vegan food shelf was in the local grocery store (there are actually several shelves now). I lasted maybe two weeks as a vegan, disturbed by dreams about chicken legs and cheeseburgers; I've slowly added back things like fish and chicken. A lot of chicken, I must say: my wife thinks I'll grow feathers one day.
Fast forward 10 years. The diet has slowly morphed. I'm certainly no vegan — more like a vegetarian who eats fish and chicken — but I've never returned fully to a regular North American diet. For the most part, I avoid red meat, thinking a couple things. One: most, though not all authorities, say that too much red meat isn't good for your body (there's evidence about heart disease, cancer and gout. Check out what the World Health Organization has to say.) Two: mostly now, I have to say, if a little sheepishly, it's my bit for the planet. Take cows for example: the amount of grain it takes to feed them, and the amount of gas they expel make them contributors to the greenhouse effect. And then there's this: I like to think they're sentient, deserving of life as much as we are.
Recently I read something in The New Yorker, a brilliantly crafted piece by Jonathan Franzen, an awesome writer. "What if we stop pretending?" he asks. Pretending what? Pretending that a global apocalypse of climate change will not engulf us all, and if not us, then our kids or grandkids.
Words are powerful tools. He makes a convincing case about climate change and our hurtling headlong into planetary disaster, as though that were a certainty. There are other opinions of course: my daughter, for example, thinks the planet will survive, thank you very much. I agree with her; it's us that I worry about. Franzen makes one very good point: faced with annihilation (in fact, faced with anything out of our control), we do two things. First, we deny the fact, since there's so little we can do; take our death for example. We only think about it episodically, not focusing on it. Breakfast though, Franzen says, breakfast he can focus on. I can relate to that (no bacon, though).
Or we do little things — not only in the planet-preserving, recycling, plastic-sparing mode, but also in little things that build friendships, equity and social justice. Regardless of the details, his piece is provocative, worth a read, and debate. And I agree with him about little things that we can do, not drifting helplessly in a sea of worry or self-pity (or worse, he says, denial).
That got me thinking about my dad. He was another Dave Davis (there are actually a lot of us out there) but to his many friends and even us he was "D.O.," a unique guy. In the 60s, faced with retirement from Dofasco, he started something called Third Sector, geared to recycling newspaper, kick-starting the blue box phenomenon locally, taking men off welfare rolls and giving them employment. The third way, he called it, involving the public sector and the private, a kind of collaboration. Ahead of his time, that D.O., even ahead of global warming.
Maybe that's what the not-really-vegan diet is: a kind of personal if tiny attempt to help the planet, by helping myself. It's not really very much but it's something we can do, like washing out the plastic to recycle it. Like turning lights off when we're not in the room. Like walking wherever we can, avoiding the oversized, cumbersome, gas-guzzling things that clog our roads.
And like us, even if we don't join them, we can admire our vegan friends (who continue to be amazingly hale and hearty, thanks for asking). Oh, and one more thing: maybe growing feathers, or gills — gills might be good for the high-water, flooding apocalypse thing.
Dave Davis, MD, is a husband, father and grandfather, a retired family doc and medical educator. His first novel, "A Potter's Tale," published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA, the US and the UK. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.com, follow him @drauthor24, or write him at drdavedavis.com.
Dave Davis, MD, is a husband, father and grandfather, a retired family doc and medical educator. His first novel, “A Potter’s Tale,” published by Story Merchant Books, Los Angeles, is available on Amazon in Canada, CA, the US and the UK. You can visit him at www.drdavedavis.com, follow him @drauthor24, or write him at drdavedavis.com.
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