Month: December 2007

Banes, Blessings and Broken Banister Knobs

alabama-theatre.jpgHave you ever seen the same thing a million times, but in a moment of great clarity, suddenly seen it in an entirely different way? If so, then you know how I felt last night as I road-tripped with Eyegal and some good friends to the beautifully restored Alabama Theatre in downtown Birmingham for a showing of the classic Christmas feel-good film, It’s a Wonderful Life.

A television rerun or a DVD don’t do the deed like the flashing neon sign, the gleaming, waxed floors and the gilded, cathedral-like trimmings of The Alabama. Throw in a Wurlitzer that rises like a wailing phantom from beneath the stage floor, audience sing-a-longs of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” and “Buffalo Gals” and a retro Disney cartoon for an appetizer, and you suddenly find yourself drifting back to the 1940s, a time when real gentlemen wore woolly, tweed suits and flashy fedoras down to the corner market, and ladies, in their form-flattering skirts and soft, feminine blouses, charmed passersby and flaunted their sizzling sexuality without shedding a single stitch of clothing.… Read the rest

Fly Over

It was a most unusual request to make at the end of a funeral: Please exit the building, walk to the parking lot, and look toward the sky.

Out the mourning masses went, the gravity of their grief pressing down on their shoulders like some kind of inviolable physical law. They knew what was coming, but the poetry of the moment still startled and stirred their souls. Two jets, one trailing a colorful, smoky ribbon of tribute, streaked past and were gone an instant later, reminding the mourners of the brevity of it all, of the “need for speed” in making things right in the time that we have.… Read the rest

Hooah, Captain Gales

I’ve had the privilege of teaching many interns and residents over the years, and it’s always a joy to see them sally forth and take on the world. Although some have made me nervous (are you sure you’re ready for this?), others, such as Dr. Curt Gales, were obviously destined to accomplish great things.

I was Curt’s preceptor during his residency at Fox Army Hospital in 1996-97. He was, without a doubt, one of the best students I ever had. Emboldened with the kind of confidence and independent spirit that can only come from driving a combine on a Kansas wheat farm at the age of twelve, Curt never flinched at any difficult case or task that we assigned him.… Read the rest