History – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Finally Saw the Movie “The Day The Earth Stood Still”

We watched the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” today. It was made in 1951 and I’d never seen it. Sena thinks she did a long time ago. You can watch it on the Internet Archive. Similar movies didn’t make much of a splash, some of which you might remember:

“The Sacking of Punxsutawney Phil”: An expose of how the groundhog gets fired because it can’t reliably predict when spring begins.

“The Loser Always Pays the Bill”: A delightful comedy about two guys who play Rock, Paper. Scissors 30,000 times to decide who pays for lunch.

“Let’s Get Stewed to the Gills”: An experimental film in which 3 college freshmen find ways to cope with higher education by pouring beer in everything they consume.

Anyway, the movie is about an extraterrestrial named Klaatu and his robot Gort who land in Washington, D.C. to warn everybody that it’s best not to blow up Earth and other nearby planets with nuclear weapons unless you want the robot cops like Gort from Venus to spank everybody in sight.

I can’t poke fun at this movie like I do with all the Svengoolie films. The story is fascinating, the acting is superb, and it’s been called one of the 12 greatest science fiction films of all time by none other than Arthur C. Clarke (according to Wikipedia). The cast includes Michael Rennie as Klaatu, Patricia Neal as Helen Benson, and Sam Jaffe as Professor Jacob Barnhardt.

It was based on a short story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates, which you can read in its entirety on the web because the person who posted it says there’s no record of copyright currently on file.

I read “Farewell to the Master” and I can say I’m glad the movie used the name Gort instead of Gnut for the giant robot.

Now that I’ve seen the movie, I’m still inclined to speculate that maybe Frank E. Stranges got the idea for his book “Stranger at the Pentagon” from it, but there’s no way to prove it. If you google the name of the character Valiant Thor in Stranges book, you’ll get photographs back of a man who happens to be an Australian actor named Cody Fern who was on a TV show I’ve never seen, “American Horror Story.” He played Valiant Thor and this contributes to the lore surrounding a fictional character and tends to give it a sort of semblance of reality. Stranges contributed to the mystique by presenting the events in the story as historical fact.

But the importance of the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” is the warning to the leaders of the nations of the world in the early days of the Cold War (and even today) that playing with nuclear matches is a bad idea.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pentagon

So, just for laughs I sometimes watch Ancient Aliens (you know, the UFO show with the hair dude). Last night, they were talking about some guy named Valiant Thor as if he were a real person. Maybe some of you know about the book, “Stranger at the Pentagon,” which you can read for free on the Internet Archive. I just quickly clicked through the pdf of it and it’s pretty interesting. The one I saw had sections about Men in Black (MIB) in it, which of course means Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are even older than we think.

It was written in 1967 by Dr. Frank E. Stranges and it’s supposedly a story of an extraterrestrial named Valiant Thor who presented to the White House in the 1950s and spoke to President Eisenhower and others, giving the urgent message that Earthlings need to shape up or the planet would be destroyed.

OK, the spoiler is that there’s no evidence this ever happened, although many people, like Fox Mulder, want to believe.

I want to believe, too but there’s no official record Vai (as Valiant Thor is sometimes called in the book) ever lived at the White House, although maybe he snorted something you can sometimes find in the White House but nobody officially will admit that ever happens either.

One person stated that the idea for the book might have come from the 1951 film “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Artificial Intelligence (who always butts in to my web searches) doubted it’s ever been on the Svengoolie TV show, but I found a Facebook post from 2025 which called it a “Sven fan favorite.” It’s probably never been on Svengoolie because it’s far too classy. There’s an interesting article about it on Turner Classic Movies but I don’t know if TCM ever showed it.

As near as I can tell from just from what I’ve read on the web about this movie is that it was made in the early Cold War days and it’s really sending a message to mankind warning them away from killing everybody and the planet and instead strive to establish peace in the world. It’s long been regarded as a cinema masterpiece.

Did it influence Dr. Stranges to write the book “Stranger at the Pentagon”? I don’t know, but some people think so, judging from one social media comment. I think that person might have been put off by the attempt to make it sound like it was historically accurate, which is what many people seem to think.

In my opinion, the whole yarn about Valiant Thor is fiction that, while not historically accurate, is compelling enough to make you think about how important it is for national leaders and people who live on the planet to try and clean up our act. Efforts to make this story seem like it actually happened backfires and misses the point.

By the way, none of this has anything to do with Bigfoot.

One Anecdote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr is Nothing to Sneeze At

I’ve finished reading both biographies of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (the one by Jonathan Eig and the autobiography edited by Clayborne Carson).

Both books were fascinating. Many of the accounts of King’s life were familiar to me mainly because I had seen them written about in other books and articles. Some of them are a strange mixture of pathos, terror, and even a little humor if you can imagine it. For me, one of the most touching anecdotes was the one about the white girl who wrote a short letter to King after he was stabbed by a demented black woman on September 20, 1958. It was in both biographies.

He was at an event in which he was autographing one of his books. A black women pushed through the crowd and asked him if he were Martin Luther King. He didn’t look up and said simply, “Yes.” The woman stabbed him with a letter opener. The blade stopped very close to his aorta and the doctor who treated him said he could have exsanguinated if he had just sneezed.

Dr. King got a lot of kind letters from people about that, but the one that is most memorable to him (and me) was from a 9^th grade high school student who wrote that she was a white girl and said “I am so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

Later, King would use the phrase several times in his final speech (“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”) which he delivered at the Bishop Charles J. Mason Temple in Memphis before he was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel there in April of 1968.

Both of the biographies are riveting documents of the life of a preacher devoted to the principle of non-violence. We can still learn from him.

Upcoming Svengoolie Movie: “Dracula” (1931)

So, the upcoming Svengoolie movie is “Dracula” released in 1931 starring Bela Lugosi. They tried to get George Burns to star in it, but he refused to take the cigar out of his mouth long enough to put the fangs in.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this classic vampire flick in which the story differed from the Bram Stoker novel in that Soupy Sales was substituted to play Renfield who traveled to Transylvania instead of Jonathan Harker to sell real estate to Count Dracula. This, of course, could only be accomplished by contacting the extraterrestrials to create a wormhole in which time travel could be accomplished by bending the wormhole tightly enough to snatch Soupy from the future, which was lucky because it prevented him from making the disastrous on-air joke in 1965 in which he “suggested” to kids to get “green pieces of paper” (money) from their parents and mail it to him.

If you don’t remember the story that way then you’re either suffering from the Mandela Effect or the ETs got to you as well.

Anyway, except for the switch in characters, the action goes pretty much to plan the way Stoker wrote it up except for the ironic issue of Lugosi actually being quite fond of garlic which led to him eating the stuff while filming in addition to filching it in between takes and taking it back to his trailer to share it with Lon Chaney, who was feeling pretty bad for not getting the Dracula role in the first place because, despite it being offered to him first, he was later rejected because he couldn’t stop turning into the Wolf Man at inopportune moments during the screen test when the cue card person kept turning the card upside down. His growls sounded inside out, which struck the director as silly, which got him laughing so much he got the hiccups.

Anyway, Lugosi got the part and he’s remembered for unforgettable lines like the ones below:

Count Dracula: This is a very old wine. I hope you like it.

Renfield: Aren’t you drinking?

Count Dracula: I never drink since I took the pledge.

Well, I may have got a couple of details wrong, but that never hurts anything.

Super Bowl LX 2026 Super Commercials

I watched the Super Bowl last night and I saw a couple of commercials (there’s always a lot of special commercials, only a few of which send healthy messages). I thought they were very positive and affirmed the importance of acceptance of others who are different from you. I’m reading The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. Edited by Clayborn Carson and these two ads are consistent with the book’s theme.

Thoughts on the Book: “King: A Life” by Jonathan Eig

I just finished Jonathan Eig’s biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and I have just a few thoughts to share on my immediate impression of the book. Before I read the book, I got the impression that there might be a detailed description of Dr. King’s mental health.

Although I didn’t see any specific speculation by Eig on the matter, he did mention psychiatrist Dr. Nassir Ghaemi’s impressions about King based on historical records that Dr. King had suffered from a clinically significant mood disorder. Eig wrote a one sentence summary which followed a comment by King’s wife Coretta about his depression:

“Decades later, the psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi would write that King probably suffered severe depression, a psychiatric illness that can enhance “realism in the assessment of one’s circumstances as well as empathy toward others.”

This was followed by a comment from a psychologist who cast doubt on the idea that King suffered from depression.

I’ve never read any of Dr. Ghaemi’s books. Eig didn’t list any specific books by Dr. Ghaemi. I think the relevant source might be his book, “A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness” published in 2011.

In a previous post I expressed my skepticism that the suicide attempts sometimes mentioned (although not consistently called that in Eig’s book). The only two such episodes described in his book are reactions to his grandmother being injured in the first instance and after she died in the second. He jumped out of a second story window both times and escaped serious injury. He was 12 and 13 years old respectively. Neither account describes any formal outpatient or inpatient mental health evaluation or treatment. It sounds like these were impulsive reactions based on the descriptions. I didn’t find any accounts in the book of suicide attempts in his adult life.

The Goldwater Rule which has been in the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Principles of Medical Ethics since 1972 discourages clinicians from diagnosing psychiatric illness in currently living persons. While that may not necessarily apply to deceased persons and may or may not only be relevant to members of the APA, I’m still unsure whether it’s always appropriate for mental health professionals to publicly entertain speculations or inferences about psychiatric diagnoses in anyone without an in-person evaluation. One possible exception might be for a threat assessment.

All that said, I didn’t find anything in Eig’s book that would contradict a non-psychiatric explanation for Dr. King’s emotional states in the context of the extraordinary pressures and burdens in his life. Although at times he was hospitalized for fatigue and “depression” it’s difficult to tell exactly how often.

This blog post so far takes up a fair amount of space discussing Eig’s book regarding the emotional side of Dr. King. There’s a lot more space in the book that emphasizes his incredible accomplishments, despite his being up against terribly high odds.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt

Still Reading Dr. MLK Jr Biographies

I’m just checking in to let you know I’m still reading Jonathan Eig’s biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I’m in the last section. I plan to read The Autobiography of MLK Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson next.

I’m not ready to share much right now in the way of my impressions other than to say that it’s at least as painful to read from an emotional standpoint as the other books by great authors I’ve read and which have prompted visits by invitation to The University of Iowa College of Medicine in the past to present the MLK Jr Distinguished Lectures:

“Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity” by Michele Norris.

“Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson (who also wrote “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,” which won the Pulitzer Prize).

Our Hidden Conversations by Michele Norris

These are often riveting page turners but I need to take a break every so often because of the terrible events described.

Observations on Jonathan Eig’s Martin Luther King Distinguished Lecture

I discovered that the University of Iowa made a video presentation of Jonathan Eig’s speech for the Martin Luther King Distinguished Lecture on January 21, 2026. Mr. Eig wrote the MLK biography, “King: A Life” which was published in 2023. We just got a copy of it along with “The Autobiography Of MLK. We’re reading them now. We both watched the one-hour long video, which is available only in Panopto format to University of Iowa employees who could not attend the event in person.

He’s an engaging, humorous, and humble guy who spoke without using notes and ad libbed the entire talk which covered the most important events and people in King’s life including his wife and several other famous people in the civil rights era of the 1960s.

He had an interesting anecdote about the young National Park Service ranger, Gordon, “Gunny” Gundrum who adjusted King’s microphone repeatedly while he was giving his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington in 1963. It was caught on camera and interpreted by some as an effort to interfere with the speech. In fact, it was because King was only 5’7” tall and his face was obscured by the microphone. Eig questioned him about it (yes, he was still alive) and at first Gundrum didn’t even recall doing it.

Sena wondered why Eig didn’t mention Rosa Parks in his presentation. In his book, he describes her refusal to take a back seat on a city bus as the catalyst for the Montgomery bus boycott, and her role in considerable detail.

On the other hand, Eig pointed out that King’s wife, Coretta, was the one who taught King about activism in the first place since she had been involved doing that before they ever met.

Eig mentioned that King has attempted suicide twice in his adolescence. On the other hand, even though I’m only partway through his book, I recall these were described early and involved being upset about his grandmother on a couple of occasions. One when his brother slid down a banister, hit his grandmother in the head and knocked her out cold. The other was when she actually died. He was not seriously injured in either incident. Eig also shared that King was psychiatrically hospitalized several times. Some suggested he undergo regular outpatient psychiatric treatment, but he declined because of the stigma.

One of his more moving anecdotes was about what King said just before he was gunned down at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968. King had stepped outside to get some fresh air. It was a cold and one member of his group suggested he go inside and get a jacket. King replied, “Yes, I will.” As he turned to do so, he was shot and killed. The way Eig framed King’s last words made you think of that statement as an affirmation of how he’d responded to the many challenges and demands in his life.

We Just Got MLK Jr Biographies Delivered Today

We just got both of the Martin Luther King Jr. biographies delivered today! They both have great photographs and we’ll get started reading them. We’ll keep you posted on what our impressions are.

We also saw a YouTube video of a 1963 TV program of civil rights leaders including MLK Jr posted a few years ago.

Thoughts on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Today being Martin Luther King Day, I’m reminiscing a little about my short time as a student at Huston-Tillotson College (one of this country’s HBCUs, Huston-Tillotson University since 2005) in Austin, Texas. It’s always a good idea to thank your teachers. I never took a degree there, choosing to transfer credit to Iowa State University toward my Bachelor’s, later earning my medical degree at The University of Iowa.

However, I was a reporter for the college newspaper, The Ramshorn Journal. That’s where the featured image comes from.

Although I didn’t come of age at HT, I can see that a few of my most enduring habits of thought and my goals spring from those two years at this small, mostly African-American enrollment college. I learned about tenacity to principle and practice from a visiting professor, Dr Melvin P. Sikes, in Sociology (from the University of Texas) who paced back and forth across the Agard-Lovinggood auditorium stage in a lemon-yellow leisure suit as he ranted about the importance of bringing about change.

He was a scholar yet decried the pursuit of the mere trappings of scholarship, exhorting us to work directly for change where it was needed most. He didn’t assign term papers, but sent me and another freshman to the Austin Police Department. The goal evidently was to make them nervous by our requests for the uniform police report, which our professor suspected might reveal a tendency to arrest blacks more frequently than whites.

He wasn’t satisfied with merely studying society’s institutions; he worked to change them for the better. Although I was probably just as nervous as the cops were, the lesson about the importance of applying principles of change directly to society eventually stuck. I remembered it every time I encountered push-back from change-resistant hospital administrations.

As a clinician-educator I have a passion for both science and humanistic approaches in the practice of psychiatry. Dr. James Means struggled to teach us mathematics, the language of science. He was a dyspeptic man, who once observed that he treated us better than we treated ourselves. Looking back on it, I can see he was right.

Dr. Lamar Kirven (or Major Kirven because he was in the military) also modeled passion. He taught black history and he was always excited about it. When he scrawled something on the blackboard, you couldn’t read it but you knew what he meant.

And there was Dr. Hector Grant, chaplain and professor of religious studies, and devoted to his native Jamaica. He once said to me, “Not everyone can be a Baptist preacher.” He tried to explain that my loss of a debate to someone who won simply by not allowing me a word in edgewise was sometimes an unavoidable result of competing with an opponent who is simply bombastic.

Dr. Porter taught English Literature and writing. She also tried to teach me about Rosicrucian philosophy for which she held a singular passion. Not everyone can be a Rosicrucian philosopher. But it prepared the way for me to accept the importance of spirituality in medicine.

I didn’t know it back in the seventies, but my teachers at HT would be my heroes. We need heroes like that in our medical schools, guiding the next generation of doctors. We need them in a variety of leadership roles in our society. Most of my former HT heroes are not living in the world now. But I can still hear their voices.