I just read this JAMA Network article on trip-killers. It’s about using drugs to stop bad trips caused by hallucinogens.
One mentioned was ketamine. When I was working as a consultation psychiatrist, I was called occasionally to evaluate patients in recovery rooms who were delirious from the ketamine that was sometimes used by anesthesiologists.
I found a paper with a list of ketamine’s limitations, which I think is helpful.
Trips and trip-killers can cause problems.
I was thinking about my time as a student at Huston-Tillotson University in the 1970s (then Huston-Tillotson College) and remembered somebody who was a student there. His name is James Spaights. In honor of his stature in music as it connects to the Black History Month theme of African Americans and the Arts, I just want to make special mention that Mr. Spaights is a concert pianist. I have not found his obituary (you know already about my habit of checking the obituaries) so I’m not going to talk about him in the past tense.
When I met him, Mr. Spaights was straightforward about his life goal, which was to be a concert pianist. Little did I know that he had already achieved that by the time I met him at H-TU.
He gave a fantastic performance for the faculty and students. I’m pretty sure we gave him a standing ovation.
I found some news clippings and other items about his career (unfortunately I couldn’t find recordings of his performances), which deserves to be better known. He was a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and a fraternity news letter shows his photo and bio in the 1977 issue of the SPHINX:
“Brother James Spaights, pianist, whom New York critics acclaimed “a virtuoso pianist and technician of the first rank” after his New York debut at Town Hall in 1965, was presented in concert on March 20, 1977 in Carnegie Hall, New York City, by the Behre Piano Associates of New York. Spaights is a former student of Madam Edwine Behre in New York City, also Freda Rosenblatt, Bronx, N.Y. and Emma Slutsky, Brooklyn, N.Y.
For three years Spaights served as Ambassador of Goodwill for the United States’ State Department as a concert pianist touring throughout Europe, parts of Canada, and the United States.
On his most recent United States tour, Spaights was presented by the Music Department at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland, and Goddard College in Montpellian, Vermont.
Spaights holds his B.A. Degree in Music from Howard University and a Master of Arts Degree in Music from Columbia University. He is a member of the Lechetisky Association of America, The Behre Piano Association of New York, and a member of Gamma Eta Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity in Austin, Texas.
He is presently serving a post in the Music Department of Huston-Tillotson College of Austin, Texas.” (The SPHINX, Fall 1977, Volume 63, Number 3 197706303).
I guess I misunderstood what Mr. Spaights was doing at H-TU when I was an undergraduate there. I thought he was a student! He never mentioned his career or accomplishments (at least to me) and he had a great sense of humor. I was in the presence of a music luminary and never knew it.
Ref: The SPHINX Volume 63, Number 3, October 1977.
This is the follow up to my post about how to escape from a car sinking in a flood. Our new car escape tool arrived. It’s the RESQME window breaker and seat belt cutter.
We checked our side windows and they are tempered glass on both the front driver and passenger side. The other way you could check is to partly roll down the windows and look at the top edge. If the edge has layers, it’s laminated; if it’s solid, it’s tempered. The window breaker is not effective on laminated glass on the windshield, according to the AAA study.
It’s rare to be in a situation in which you might need this tool. The best way to avoid it is not to drive in flooded areas. Turn around, don’t drown.
The Afro-American Cultural Center in Iowa City has many activities scheduled for Black History Month 2024. Check it out!
We enjoyed the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Education (originally given on January 17, 2023) by Dr. Russell Ledet. He’s definitely a mover and a shaker and this is another recorded presentation that I wish was available for the general public.
His bio is knockdown impressive. And even more interesting to me is that he’s presently in residency toward boarding in adult psychiatry and child psychiatry as well as pediatrics.
That’s right—triple boarding.
His talk was a fascinating oral autobiography from his upbringing in poverty to his military career, to his undergraduate and graduate college career, and his achievement in organizing a very successful nonprofit, The 15 White Coats. This helps get underrepresented minority students into medicine by giving them inspiration and financial support.
His life story by itself is inspiring. It’s also exhausting. The person introducing him wondered aloud if he ever slept!
He began with a well-known quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
Dr. Ledet’s story of his path from bootlessness to crowning success is compelling. You really have to hear it from him to get a clear idea of how difficult it was. It’s hard to imagine that a star like him once rummaged through dumpsters for food for the family while his mother was on the lookout to make sure he didn’t get caught.
I think a big part of what kept him going was his wife and kids. In fact, his wife, Mallory Alise, insisted that he take the path because of her fear he would die if he continued a dangerous assignment in the military.
A member of the audience who had a career similar to Dr. Ledet asked a question about what more should he do to make sure young people of color would get the kind of opportunities to succeed. Dr. Ledet had a very good answer, but that was not the most interesting part of the interaction. Firstly, the questioner didn’t sound (I know this is going to sound crass) black. He sounded more like someone who had grown up in the Northern United States—like me. But during the course of the conversation, it was clear that he was black. He just didn’t sound like Dr. Ledet. He also mentioned, almost in passing, that some people of color who succeed may develop imposter syndrome.
This sounded strange at first, but I quickly realized that I sometimes had felt like an imposter. This cuts two ways with me. One was the obvious context in which I came out of an impoverished background to finish college and medical school, and had a career as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist at a university medical center where I published and taught for many years. At times I felt like a phony.
The other situation in which imposter syndrome arose was when I went to Huston-Tillotson University (an HBCU formerly called Huston-Tillotson College) in Austin, Texas back in the 1970s. Most of the students were from the region. I had a Northerner’s accent and somebody once remarked on it, asking me “Why do you talk so hard?” I was easily identified simply because of how I spoke. I didn’t always feel comfortable, despite for the first time being not the only black guy in school. Ironically, I didn’t feel like I fit in, even in an HBCU. Even among those who looked like me, I sometimes felt like a phony. But that was not an enduring affliction.
And I think Dr. Ledet has a great deal of confidence and energy. More power to him.
Sena and I viewed a recording of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Distinguished Lecture given by Michele Norris on January 23, 2023. It was not available to the general public, about which I have inquired. It was a very interesting, informative, and entertaining presentation. It was about her 14-year Race Card Project which led to her new book, “Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity.”
Michele opened with a little information about Bayard Rustin, which we didn’t know. There’s a film titled “Rustin,” available on Netflix which is about him and Dr. King and their complicated relationship. He was a gay black man, which was difficult for the civil rights movement leaders to accept. He was the key organizer for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
In her own words, Ms. Norris created the Race Card Project because she thought no one wanted to talk about race. She found out she was wrong because there was an avalanche of response to her request that people write something about race on a small postcard (6 words) and send it back. Interesting examples:
“Father was racist. I’M NOT. Progress!”
“Did my Southern Grandpa attend lynchings?” (This card came from Iowa.)
“Married a white girl. Now what?” (The girl thought of the guy as an “assimilated” brown man.)
“Alabama. MLK assassinated. Students cheered. Horrified.” (This was in a college classroom.)
“We aren’t all strong, black women.” (Norris’s comment was that it makes black women seem more like a weed and not a flower).
“Two white dads. Three black kids.” (Adorable photo included of gay married men with three adopted black children.)
“Can someone help me find my privilege?” (Photo of a white man included. Ms. Norris said that most of the cards are from white people, which surprised her.)
“My name is Jamaal. I’m white.” (Include a picture of a white guy. This was a story about Iowa. The guy showed up for a job interview, and the receptionist says “I thought you would be taller.”)
“Vote for Obama. Look like me.” (White guy married to white gal; they adopted black girl. I think he meant, in the abstract, that no matter what color you or the candidate are you should vote based on whether the person is qualified for the job. It’s funny that his very young daughter commented on it in a predictably concrete way given her age. She said she lived in Iowa and didn’t see too many people who looked like her. Ms. Norris said this story would be included in the book.)
It’s tough to express complicated ideas in just six words.
Ms. Norris says it’s unlikely that we’re going to agree with each other. She wants to build bridges across the chasm which divides us and she is hopeful about our ability to do that. We ordered her book.
How about some good news? The CDC Respiratory Virus Data Channel reports decreasing respiratory virus activity as of January 26, 2024.
In the spirit Black History Month: African Americans and the Arts, Power and Impact is an exhibit of art work by notable Black artists in Iowa. It’s a partnership of the African American Museum of Iowa and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.
The exhibit runs between October 28, 2023 and March 31, 2024.
February is Black History Month and the University of Iowa events begins soon. There will be an inaugural Black History Ball and more!
February is Black History Month and in 2024 the theme is African Americans and the Arts.
This reminds me of a blues artist I heard on KCCK on the Big Mo Blues Show last Friday. His name is Toronzo Cannon and his career as a blues guitarist and songwriter is skyrocketing. I heard his song “The Preacher, the Politician, and the Pimp.”
The lyrics reminded me of a character (or maybe more properly a non-character) called Rinehart in Ralph Ellison’s book, Invisible Man. I’m by no means an Ellison scholar but in chapter 23 the main narrator gets mistaken for a black guy named Rinehart who has many faces in the black community. He’s a preacher, a numbers runner, a pimp, and is also related to a political movement in the novel. Rinehart is all of them and none of them, moving between the “rind and heart” of who black people are in America. The implication is that the identity of black people is multifaceted and the similarity of the theme in Toronzo Cannon’s song is striking.
Cannon is also multifaceted. He’s a Blues guitar star and song writer and is also still a bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority. How does he find time to do all that?
I wonder if Cannon got the idea for the song from Ellison’s novel. I guess I’ll never know.
This reminds me of an encounter I had with a black writer at Huston-Tillotson University (then Huston-Tillotson College, located in Austin, Texas) in the 1970s when I was an undergraduate in college. I’ve described this episode before in another post (“Black Psychiatrists in Iowa” 2019). The excerpt below includes a reference to a book review I wrote that was published in The American Journal of Psychiatry over 20 years ago:
“This reminds me of a book review I wrote for the American Journal of Psychiatry almost 20 years ago (Amos, J. (2000). Being Black in America Today: A multi perspective review of the problem. Am J Psychiatry, 157(5), 845-846.).”
The book was written by Norman Q Brill, M.D. It reminded me of my experience at Huston-Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University, a private school, historically with largely Black enrollment) in Austin, Texas back in the 1970s. I wrote:
“Dr. Brill’s appraisal of many black leaders in chapters such as “Black Leaders in the Black Movement” and “Black Anti-Semitism” may be refreshingly frank in the opinion of some. He tailors his prose so as not to denounce openly those whom many would describe as demagogues. At the same time, it is apparent that his underlying message is that a substantial number of them are not only out of touch with mainstream black America but may even mislead black people into adopting ideological positions that impede rather than foster progress. Dr. Brill’s description of the issue reminded me of my own experience with this phenomenon as a freshman in the mid-1970s at a college of predominantly black enrollment in the southern United States. A guest lecturer (who, as I recall, had also written a book about being black in America) told us that the white man would never allow a black man to be a man in America. He had only three choices: he could be a clown, an athlete, or a noble savage. These corresponded to the prominent and often stereotyped roles that blacks typically held in entertainment, sports, and black churches.”
I was taken aback by the speaker’s judgment and asked him what my choice should then be. He was equally taken aback, I suspect. He advised me to be a clown.
The lyrics of Cannon’s song “The Preacher, The Politician, and the Pimp,” Ellison’s Rinehart, and another writer’s characterization of the roles allowed in American society for black men all resonate together. What drives the similarity of this perception across different artistic platforms?
When I reflect on how I’ve negotiated my life’s path over they years, I guess I would have to admit that I’ve often played the clown. Anyone can see that in the way my sense of humor comes across. Is it the healthiest way to respond to racism in this country? In terms of the psychological defense mechanisms, I think it’s a relatively mature strategy. You could argue with that by asking, “But where’s the maturity in dad jokes?”
Hey, it worked for Dick Gregory:
“I’ve got to go up there as an individual first, a Negro second. I’ve got to be a colored funny man, not a funny colored man”—Dick Gregory.
Dick Gregory
Go Retire Psychiatrist 