History – Page 3 – Go Retire Psychiatrist

History Lessons in the Ramshorn Journal

I think I found a pair of articles from the mid-1970s in the Huston-Tillotson College Ramshorn Journal that might have a connection to each other, even though the authors didn’t know it at the time.

One of them was written by yours truly and published in December of 1975, entitled “H-TC Sponsors Education Seminar.”

The other is a New York Times editorial from January 1976 which was reprinted in the May 1976 volume of the Ramshorn Journal and was written by Christopher F. Edley, a very successful lawyer and, at the time, the Executive Director of the United Negro College Fund.

Both were written about the same time, in the era of the civil rights struggles. I’m not comparing myself to the brilliant and accomplished Mr. Edley. And I’m just going to admit that I really don’t remember much about the trip to Houston for the Education Seminar about which I wrote my article, despite my being a participant. But I think it’s hard not to notice the language I used in my description of the importance of what the education seminar was all about. While much of the text is rather dry, when I discuss what was emphasized, I sound a little more intense. I may not remember much of what we specifically did and said but I caught the tone.

When I say the trip was not a guided tour, I mean that both faculty and students were serious about what the main message was for us—as black people. We had to measure up in a way that implied that we had to be better than best. That whole section starting with “Throughout the program, our people were reminded that any person who aspires to a position with any company must fulfill particular criteria.” It was as if I were saying we had to be perfect to make up for being black. We had to be the exemplars.

The individual must exhibit creativity, aggressiveness, ambition, self-confidence, initiative, dedication, maturity, and an ability and willingness to cooperate and effectively communicate with other people. The individual must punctual and reliable. Industry demands nothing less than high-gear performance. But they pay handsomely for that high-gear performance.

As I read this now, I get caught up on all the exhortations to be scrupulous, alert, and so on because, after all, we’re in a corporate jungle which is all about survival. I could have recast the last sentence above as “But they pay dearly for that high-gear performance”—which refers to the candidate, not the one doing the hiring.

I admit that how I wrote the story may reflect my reaction to rather than the reality of the emphasis of speakers at the seminar. But I did get the impression that I, as a black person, would be held to a higher standard than a white person. And I was uncomfortable about that.

When I turn to the New York Times article by Mr. Edley, I again am impressed with the struggle for fairness and justice, which didn’t seem forthcoming. He expressed the same sense of unfairness that I felt in Houston. The tone is almost one of outrage. He described the black people who were going to college in those days as most likely being the first ones in their families to go to college.

That’s what I was.

Mr. Edley was expressing frustration about blacks and browns just being able to get to the door of opportunity. I got the message that the struggle would go on forever—even if we got in the door. We didn’t just have to prove we were equal. We had to prove we were better.

Anyway, as I read the articles I wrote for the Ramshorn Journal 50 years ago, I begin to realize why I had no memory of having written them. It gradually becomes less strange that I still don’t really remember much of my time at Huston-Tillotson College, one of the historically black colleges and universities (HBCU) in America. But I needed that experience, even if I did pay dearly for it.

Click in the gallery; click on the picture, click the icon with an “i” in a circle, click view full size, click the plus sign to enlarge the image.

24th Anniversary of 9/11 Attack on America: A Reminder of Our Connection to Each Other

I’m thinking about the upcoming commemoration of the 24^th Anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attack on America. There will be the annual event in New York City.

In Muscatine, Iowa, there will be the annual Patriot Day ceremonies sponsored by the City of Muscatine and the Muscatine Fire Department. After the morning ceremony, the Memorial Stair Climb will begin at 8:52 a.m. at the Muscatine High School football stadium bleachers.

The KCRG news reported on August 7, 2025 that 3 more World Trade Center victims were identified last month by DNA testing. The New York medical examiner’s office continues testing the remains recovered from the wreckage.

Like many people, I remember where I was and what I was doing when the attack happened in 2001. I was the general hospital psychiatric consultant on duty at the hospital at the time. I was hustling up the stairs back to my office after responding to a consultation request.

I happened to glance at the big television screen on the wall of the main floor lobby in the south part of the hospital. I watched in horror as a newscast showed the fire and smoke coming from one of the towers, which I later learned came from the plane crashing into the building. The rest of the day was full of reports of the attack.

When we visited New York City in 2017, we saw the Memorial & Museum Plaza as well as the Survivor Tree, the Callery Pear. It was discovered at Ground Zero, scarred and scorched but alive and replanted at the Memorial in 2010 after being nursed back to health at the city nursery. It is still alive and well today. It remains a symbol of strength, hope, and a reminder of our connection to each other.

One More Time: Another Ramshorn Journal Editorial

This is the 2^nd editorial I wrote in 1975 about fraternities during my freshman year at Huston-Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University, one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, HBCUs). There are a couple of misspelled words (“incidence” should be incidents; “altruish” should be altruism).

On the whole, it’s a more developed piece than the editorial about college hazing. I thought then and still think that Help Week should be substituted for Hell Week.

ramshorn journal vol 38, dec 1975 Click the image; Click the little icon circle with i; hover over the image and click the plus sign to enlarge.

I Was a College News Reporter After All

It turns out I was a news reporter for the Huston-Tillotson College Ramshorn Journal after all! I wrote a few of them, including an editorial about Greek fraternity hazing in 1975. I’m including it in this post below. It has an apparent typo in it (“Motherhood” should be brotherhood).

It’s typical for fired up freshman writing. I see lots of youthful idealism, energy, and a drive for change. How did I forget so much of what I was over the last 50 years?

I wrote “Is Hazing Necessary” (the question mark is missing) because I saw it going on in my freshman year. I can’t remember whether the fraternity members gave me flak about it or not. But I guess I can’t say it didn’t happen just because I can’t remember it.

Hazing still happens, as I found out when I did a quick web search today. I still don’t know why. Even The University of Iowa had an incident in November of 2024.

I don’t know how I lost such an important part of my past. And I don’t know what led me to recover it. I do know that if Sena hadn’t pursued the search after I was ready to forget it, I wouldn’t have these fragments of my personal history now. And I’m grateful to Huston-Tillotson Downs-Jones University Library for their help.

Ramshorn Journal Oct.1975 (page 4) Click the image; Click the little icon circle with i; hover over the image and click the plus sign to enlarge.

A Little Iowa Hawkeye Cribbage History

Sena played a couple of games of cribbage solitaire today and came within 8 points of making 121! And so that makes us both fans of this variation on cribbage.

There was a little project I set for myself given that DeLynn Colvert’s book, “Play Winning Cribbage” has a section called Cribbage World Publication, which is a monthly publication you can find on the American Cribbage Congress (ACC) website. Colvert was an editor of Cribbage World and included in his book copies of events and ads of interests to ACC members. Many items are odd and comical.

One of the interesting tidbits is an announcement that is historically important for cribbage in Iowa. However, none of the items including this one are dated. So, I had to hunt it down in the archives on the ACC website. The title is “Two 29’s Within 5 Minutes!” It refers to an event called the Hawkey Classic, which used to be the name for the annual cribbage tournament held in Des Moines, Iowa. Two 29 hands were scored within 5 minutes of each other during this tournament. This is remarkable because the odds of dealt a 29 hand are 1 in 216,580!

I had to dig through many pages of Cribbage World and Artificial Intelligence (AI) was no help at all (not that I asked it because AI intrudes itself on all my searches whether I want it’s help or not). In fact, it denied the existence of the Hawkeye Classic cribbage tournament.

Anyway, I had to make a guess about what issue of Cribbage World that announcement was published. I guessed that it was in the 1990s (for no particular reason) and I found it on page 3 in the June 1990 issue after striking out in the 1991-1993 issues (although I found one item related to cribbage solitaire which involved playing five hands instead of six).

It turns out that there’s been an annual cribbage tournament for over 40 years in Iowa and that tradition did start in Des Moines. It was called the Hawkeye Classic and was ACC sanctioned. However, my guess is that it gradually became absorbed into the Iowa State Fair schedule of events. It’s usually held on the last day of the fair. This year, I found out there were 252 entrants, which I think is probably not unusual.

Another interesting note about this issue of Cribbage World I noticed is that there isn’t a Hawkeye Classic cribbage tournament announcement listed in The Tournament Trail section. However, it does list the Grand National (National Awards Banquet) on September 20, 21, 23 in 1990 at the Hotel Fort Des Moines, Des Moines, Iowa. But I did find an announcement about the Hawkeye Classic in one of the earlier issues from 1991-1993.

Iowa Hawkeye cribbage is alive and well!

Cribbage Solitaire Inventor Lost in the Mists of Time?

I just played 3 games of cribbage solitaire that I posted about in the last couple of days. I got to 4^th street in 2 of them and got to 115 in one. I think getting to 121 is at least possible. You have 6 deals to get there and you need over 20 points per deal to make it. Each game takes me about 10 minutes.

I haven’t seen any rules for this cribbage solitaire variation about looking at your cards or not as you deal them. I deal the hand cards face down as well as the first two crib cards face down. I look at the six cards in my hand from which I select the other two cards to throw to the crib. I only look at all four crib cards when I’m ready to count the crib points. I don’t know if anybody else does it differently. See my YouTube video demo for how I interpret the game play.

The only rules I’ve seen for this cribbage solitaire version are in DeLynn Colvert’s book (“Play Winning Cribbage, 5^th edition, published in 2015) or were cited by someone on the boardgamegeekdotcom thread which dates to 2008 and they are virtually identical. Neither source identifies the inventor of the rules. I wonder if they would be in the original edition of Colvert’s book, which was first published in 1980. You can find a 1993 edition on eBay going for $150. There’s a 1985 edition advertised for $113. I can’t find anything on the Internet Archive about it.

It’s probably lost in the mists of time.

Svengoolie Show: “The Curse of Frankenstein” No Laughing Matter

The Svengoolie show last night was the 1957 Hammer production “The Curse of Frankenstein” starring the 3 stooges. Actually, this film was no laughing matter and this was my first time (and last time) seeing it.

That’s not saying it’s a “bad” movie. It’s just tough to come up with anything comical to say about a gothic horror flick that was inspired by Mary Shelley’s novel, “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.”

I’ve not read Mary Shelley’s novel and I only skimmed the Encyclopedia Britannica entry. That’s good enough for an old guy pretending to be a movie reviewer.

What hooked me, though, early on the film was a short dialogue between Paul Krempe (Robert Urquhart) and Elizabeth Lavensa (Hazel Court). Paul describes Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) in contemptible and scary terms, to which Elizabeth reacts by saying that Victor is either “wicked or insane.” Paul answers that Victor is neither—which struck me as odd.

I would have no trouble saying Victor is evil, but what do I know? On the other hand, I ran across a couple of web articles that mentioned “psychopath” as a suitable label for someone who thinks nothing of pushing an old man like the scientific scholar Professor Bernstein (Paul Hardtmuth) over a banister to kill him in order to dig his brain out of his skull to insert into a do-it-yourself hodgepodge of spare body parts in an experiment to create a living being.

Victor, from the time he first meets Paul, presents as an insufferable, entitled brat lacking a conscience and by the time he reaches adulthood he’s the perfect example of someone with the most creepily severe case of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) imaginable.

He gets the housekeeper Justine (Valerie Gaunt) pregnant, tricks her into entering the laboratory where the monster (Christopher Lee) kills her, marries Elizabeth and then abandons her on their wedding night in order to cheat in a cribbage game with the monster.

He pretends to bury the monster in the woods after Paul kills it by shooting it in the eye with an AK-47—then sneaks back to dig it up, carry it back to the lab and reanimates the wreck. He proudly shows it off to Paul, who throws up on him. This makes no difference to Victor who is always smeared with dirt anyway because he hangs out in morgues, graveyards, and golf courses (“as he approaches this critical putt, somebody leaps out and cuts off his feet”), filching eyes, hands, Adams apples and what have you to assemble and repair the monster.

There are big differences between Shelley’s monster and Hammer’s creature—the latter doesn’t speak at all while the former is eloquent. Hammer’s creature can barely stand up or sit down on command while Shelley’s monster can do triple axels skating across the Arctic ice as Victor pursues him.

During the movie, my mind often wandered off to memories of Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.”

In Memory of Leonard Tow, Founder of the Tow Foundation and Humanism in Medicine

I just found out that Leonard Tow died on August 10, 2025. In humility, I express my gratitude and respect for his creation of the Tow Foundation, a big part of that being the Humanism in Medicine Award, of which I am one of the many recipients over the years. I hope this great tradition goes on forever, a reminder to doctors, patients, and families of the great rewards and greater responsibilities in medicine.

I thank Dr. Jeanne M. Lackamp, now Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatrist in Chief for University Hospitals and Director of the University Hospital Behavioral Health Institute for nominating me and Dr. Jerold Woodhead, Professor Emeritus in Pediatrics at University of Iowa Health Care for placing the pin in my lapel. That was in 2007.

Leonard Tow established the Humanism in Medicine award to foster the development of humanistic doctors. They exemplify compassion and respect for others, humility and empathy.

That is how I will remember Leonard Tow.

Svengoolie Movie: “Werewolf of London” Comedy Show

I watched the Svengoolie TV show last night and saw the 1935 Universal Pictures movie “Werewolf of London.” You can watch the movie on the Internet Archive.

This film reminded me of another British movie, “Return of the Vampire” in which there was a comedy sketch between two grave diggers. In Werewolf of London there’s this hilarious scene in which the unfortunate Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Harold Hull) meets with a couple of old women named Mrs. Whack (Ethel Griffies) and Mrs. Moncaster (Zeffie Tilbury).

They were a couple of alcoholic landladies with rooms to let who competed with each other to rent a room to Dr. Glendon, who is trying to prevent his murderous tendencies when he transforms into a werewolf by moving out of his house. The scene is priceless, arguably the highlight of the movie, and begins at about 46.41 minutes into the film. Mrs. Whack and Mrs. Moncaster, even though they seem smitten with Dr. Glendon yet hesitate to offer him a drink, probably because they want most of the booze all to themselves.

Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) who is afflicted with “werewolfery” according to the other werewolf, Dr. Yogami. Warner Oland played Yogami, although he was actually Swedish and had played Charlie Chan in other films. They met briefly under violent circumstances while Glendon was in Tibet looking for the Mariphasa flower—although Glendon doesn’t recall that until later.

The thing about the Mariphasa is that drops from the flower are an antidote for lycanthropy. Or is it lycanthrophobia? Dr. Yogami mentions the latter twice and it shows up twice in print as well during the film. Lycanthrophobia is by definition the fear of turning into a werewolf. Lycanthropy is the process of turning into one—minus the fear factor, presumably. Whatever.

Dr. Glendon prowls around and slaughters a few victims when the moon is full but tries to avoid killing his wife, Lisa (Valerie Hobson) by renting a room above a tavern apparently, and crashes though the window of his room, possibly because of claustrophobia. This of course makes him a victim of multiple phobias and there is no one playing the role of psychiatrist; figure that one out.

Eventually, there’s a showdown between two cops and Glendon which takes the form of a 3-way thumb wrestling match between them, mainly because Glendon has an obvious case of dental caries in his fangs which causes some pain, especially when the vodka-swilling comedy duo of Whack and Moncaster try to get him plastered by pouring liquor down his gullet through a funnel.

You’ll want to watch this when you’re in a good mood and disinclined to watch anything that is consistently horrifying. There is no laugh track.

Pondering a Mystery in My Past at Huston-Tillotson University

I found a photo of me in the Downs-Jones Library files at Huston-Tillotson University (formerly Huston-Tillotson College) today. It’s the featured image for this post. I was going down memory lane looking at old pictures of former classmates and teachers at H-TU and—there I was. It’s a photo of me in 1975, and it looks like I’m sitting in the Downs-Jones Library on campus posing for the picture. I don’t remember sitting for it. I had hair then and afros were in style.

I was a little worried about copyright issues just downloading or printing the image until I finally noticed the icons for doing both on the web page. I guess they wouldn’t be there if it were prohibited.

What’s also funny is that the caption above my picture says “James Amos—Reporter.” This meant that I was contributing to the college newspaper, The Ramshorn Journal. Funny thing is, I couldn’t remember writing anything for it.

I tried to find copies of the Ramshorn Journal for 1975, but there were only records for issues published in the early to mid-1960s. I guess I’ll never know what I wrote, if anything.

I’m surprised there would be any photos of me at all since I didn’t graduate from H-TU but transferred to Iowa State University and graduated from there in 1985.

I clipped out my photo from a few others. The group included the sponsor of the Ramshorn Journal, the editor, and the typist. That makes it looks I was a part of the staff. I’ll be darned if I remember doing anything for it. If I had written anything, I would think I’d have kept copies. But I have no documents proving it. I don’t have copies of the Ramshorn either. I’m a writer by inclination and habit so this is a mystery.

As I looked through yearbooks, I couldn’t find anyone I could ask about it either. That makes sense because it was 50 years ago. On the other hand, if there are digitized issues of the Ramshorn Journal from the 1960s, there might be some later issues kept somewhere in the library. Maybe there’s something with my byline on it.

If I get curious enough about it, I might ask somebody at the Downs-Jones Library if they could check on it.