Go Retire Psychiatrist

Reflection on James Alan McPherson’s “A Solo Song: For Doc”

I’ve been reading the short story collection Hue and Cry by James Alan McPherson with the idea that the entire book was new to me. So, I was stunned when I remembered the story, “A Solo Song: For Doc.” It has more than one layer of meaning, but on one level it’s about a Black railroad train waiter named Doc Craft who is forced into retirement. The narrator tries to teach a young waiter he calls youngblood learning the ropes about how the old school waiters made their work not just a job but a way of life. I was surprised to learn there was a television adaptation of the story made in 1982.

I must have read it in an anthology when I was a youngblood myself. It’s about racism but it’s also about aging, retirement, and change itself. It makes sense that I would feel differently about the story now that I’m older and retired.

I’m about a year into my retirement now and it has not been easy to adjust. Boredom and the search for a new meaning and purpose in my life still challenge me. While racism did not play a part in my decision to leave my profession, there is no doubt that things changed over my three-year phased retirement starting in 2017, dramatically so since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

I thought I was still maintaining my skills as a psychiatric consultant in the general hospital. I was physically fit, in many cases better able to run up and down the stairs for 8 flights than the youngbloods. When they asked me why I became a consulting psychiatrist, I often told them that I “did it for the juice.” I guess that’s why Doc Craft did it.

Maybe I retired because I didn’t want to be pushed out. Doc Craft didn’t retire because he just wasn’t made for it. Sometimes this doc wonders….

Virtual Information Sessions On Covid-19 Vaccines Update

Just some quick thoughts on the Virtual Information Session on COVID-19 Vaccines, Session 2 on 4/19/2021. This was another enlightening presentation. I just noticed that you’ll have to scrub forward to about 10 minutes and 30 seconds to start playback on the YouTube recording. This gap might be edited out in the near future.

It’s worth noting that the risk for getting blood clots from COVID-19 infection is greater than the risk for getting them from the vaccines, according to Dr. Pat Winokur, University of Iowa and Dr. Caitlin Pedati, IDPH. There were other educational answers to very good questions from the audience.

Don’t forget the third session on Saturday, 4/24/2021 at 10:00 a.m. in Spanish only for the YouTube event while the WebEx event will be a bilingual event. See this link for full details.

Virtual Information Sessions on Covid-19 Vaccines

There will be three live, free, virtual information sessions on the COVID-19 vaccines starting today at 10:00 a.m. Guest speakers include Pat Winokur, MD, Executive Dean, Carver College of Medicine; Institute for Clinical and Translational Science (ICTS); Professor of Internal Medicine–Infectious Disease. The third session will be available in Spanish. The sessions are scheduled for April 17, 19, 24.

Addendum: The first presentation this morning was very informative and a recording of it will be available at the link above.

Addendum: The video recording of today’s event doesn’t start until about 8 minutes and 27 seconds after you click on the start play button, so you can scrub ahead to that point to avoid the wait.

Addendum: This afternoon around 3:00 PM when I looked at the video recording the lag time problem on startup had been fixed.

Imagination Lives in Oakland Cemetery

We don’t usually make trips to Oakland Cemetery (or any cemetery for that matter), but today we made an exception to find the grave of James Alan McPherson, the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and longtime Iowa Writers’ Workshop faculty who died in 2016 and for whom an Iowa City park was renamed a month ago.

We never met McPherson, although we are reading a couple of his books (Elbow Room, the Pulitzer Park winning work, and Hue and Cry) and just visited the James Alan McPherson Park on Monday this week.

This trip brought back happy memories right away. It’s not the first time we’ve been to Oakland Cemetery. In 2015 and 2016 we took the same route, parking at Happy Hollow Park on Brown Street and walking east to find the Black Angel. The main reason for going to Happy Hollow Park back then was not so much to see the Black Angel, but for two Psychiatry Department Faculty vs Resident Matball games at Happy Hollow Park. Matball is an imaginative combination of kickball and baseball using large mats for bases and a kickball for pitching, which the hitter actually kicks and runs the bases.

I was on faculty but didn’t play, which I thought would help them win. It was very hot both years. Faculty lost both years. There was another match in 2017 which I didn’t attend, and which I think faculty also lost.

But it was great fun. I don’t remember who put the 2015 trophy won by the residents in a bowl of red (possibly strawberry, I didn’t eat any) Jell-O. That took imagination. It was a stroke of genius, but was not repeated after the following two losses. There have been no Matball games since then.

Anyway, we visited the Black Angel. I think I left some loose change at the foot of the sculpture, which is traditional I think, for good luck. The Black Angel has a very complicated story, which is in many cases, fueled by superhuman imagination. The stories get more complicated every year and the legends have been developing since the 9-foot statue with 4-foot pedestal was created in 1912.

Actually, the Black Angel is often used as a point of reference for the rest of the cemetery. That’s how we used it today to find McPherson’s grave, which is said to be in a place called the poets’ corner where many other artists, including Writers’ Workshop faculty, are buried.

The easiest way to find the Black Angel is probably to approach the cemetery from the west and head east to the intersection of Brown and Governor Streets, where there’s a big sign for Oakland Cemetery. There’s a map next to the cemetery office. We could not find any place marked “poets’ corner.” But the Black Angel is clearly marked.

You’ll notice you can drive through the cemetery, but the paved road is about the width of a car. It’s actually more like a service road, just right for riding mowers, but a little narrow for cars. There is no parking lot we could find, which is why we parked at Happy Hollow Park.

As you reach the Black Angel, you’ll notice one of her wings is raised at a right angle from her body. It points roughly North. You need to go in the opposite direction to find poets’ corner. As you pass the Black Angel, take the second path to the right and simply follow it around, moving south past the University of Iowa Deeded Body Program monument to a section marked with a narrow post labeled “Oak Green.” That’s where you’ll find McPherson’s headstone.

The headstone is easy to pick out; it’s an imaginative work of art. The black rectangular stone is decorated with clever sculptures including his signature car cap, two roses, and even a cigarette in an ashtray. He was a smoker. I don’t know what the characters on the pedestal mean.

On the back of the stone are many carved envelopes indicating McPherson’s mail correspondence with many loving friends and family—and beyond. There is a sense of humor and imagination here too. One of the envelopes is from “Publisher’s Clearinghouse” and the recipient section says “ATTENTION: You may have already won $1,000,000!” I can just picture Ed McMahon! Another is from “Fabian’s Seafood Truck” to “Our Loyal Customer.” I didn’t realize it while we were there, but when we got home, it occurred to me that as we were driving home from James Alan McPherson Park, we saw a big refrigerated truck where seafood was being sold; it was next to the Dairy Queen on Riverside Street. I searched Fabian Seafood on the web and found a picture that exactly matched what we saw.

Around the edge of the headstone was an inscription that to read in its entirety you have to walk all the way around the monument because the words are carved in the front, sides and back:

“I think love must be the ability to suspend one’s intelligence for the sake of something. At the basis of love therefore must live imagination.” This is a quote from McPherson. He also wrote in his essay “Pursuit of the Pneuma” about “an ancient bit of spiritual wisdom” which denies that God rested on the seventh day after creating all existence. Instead, God created imagination and gave this gift to his human creations, enabling us to wield an integrative kind of power—which is what love can do.

Imagination therefore lives in Oakland Cemetery.

Walk the James Alan McPherson Park

Yesterday, Sena and I visited the James Alan McPherson Park. The Iowa City Council renamed it in his honor last month; it was formerly called Creekside Park. There were compelling reasons for the name change. He was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his collection of short stories, Elbow Room in 1978, graduated from Harvard Law School in 1968, was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995, and was a permanent faculty member for thirty years at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, among other notable career achievements. He was 72 when he died in 2016 of complications of pneumonia.

McPherson was a longtime resident of Iowa City and was revered by his students. Colleagues described him as the “moral center of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop” and even the “moral center of the world.” Despite his stunning achievements, he was shy and often barely spoke above a whisper in the classroom. He lived in the general neighborhood where the park is located. We never got a chance to meet him.

We are reading his books, though.

The park is located at 1878 Seventh Ave Ct and sits on a little over 2 acres. It was empty except for the occasional walker on the trail. People were friendly. It seems hardly distinguishable from the neighborhood surrounding it and blends into the homes, hugs the meandering creek and adjoining trail, and seems held in a protective embrace by the homes bordering it. A new park sign and a memorial plaque will be installed later this summer.

We saw a rich variety of birds, in fact more than we’ve seen in a while.

We get a sense that everyone is welcome there. There are 6 parking spaces. You can imagine that limited parking makes the place a treasured possession of the immediate neighborhood. But people we encounter there make us feel that it belongs to all of us. Even a sign leaning against a house alongside the trail made that clear. We’ll be back.

Bigfoot, UFOs, and the Dollar Bill Jump Challenge

I’ve got one thing in common with a lot of people who say they’ve seen things like Bigfoot and UFOs. I’ve seen someone beat the Dollar Bill Jump Challenge but I can’t prove it.

I know there are a lot of people who say they’ve seen the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, little gray aliens, Sasquatch, and who also claim to have eaten delicious fruitcake. That is to say I’ve seen a lot of blurry photographs, videos, and I’ve thrown out more than my fair share of fruitcake.

However, I also don’t have any video evidence for what I saw a guy at the YMCA do over 40 years ago, which was to jump forward over a broom handle while holding his toes. Don’t bother asking me why there was a broom in the weight room at the YMCA. Too many questions get in the way of a good story. This middle-aged jock was telling me and another youngster about this strong man stunt of jumping over a broom handle laying on the floor. He never mentioned a dollar bill, but it looks like this is usually part of the game.

He looked right at me and said, “You look like an athlete, let’s see if you can jump over a broomstick.” First of all, I was a skinny kid and didn’t look athletic—that’s why I was in the weight room in the first place. Furthermore, the guy had several conditions for jumping over a broomstick on the floor I didn’t know about before agreeing to try it.

You have to bend over in front of the broom handle (dollar bill) and grab your toes, keep your knees slightly bent, and then all you have to do is jump. Most of the time, the challenge is to jump over a dollar bill. I think you could injure your feet on a broom handle, so I advise against it.

There are variations on this game. It probably makes no difference if you lay the dollar crosswise or lengthwise. You always have to grab your toes, not let go when you jump, and land upright. There’s an ankle grabbing variation which I don’t think makes much difference, but the classic rule is you have to hang on to your toes.

The other kid and I tried to do this about a dozen times and we invariably let go of our toes or fell over or both. Then the middle-aged jock did it flawlessly. No, I didn’t have a camera. It’s too bad because a video would prove one way or another whether this stunt is possible.

On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of videos and snapshots of Bigfoot on TV that are so terrible I can’t tell if I’m looking at a Bigfoot or a man in a monkey suit. I’ve never seen an alien, not even the corpse of one. I know, there are a lot of videos of UFOs, but they look like tic tacs and make me think of someone shaking a mini laser pointer in front of a cat to make it chase the light around. And I have not tried to eat fruitcake since I was little and my mom made me eat it because it was a Christmas gift from our church.

What would impress me is seeing a video of a Bigfoot ghost stepping out of a flying saucer while eating a big slice of fruitcake.

The one explanation I’ve found on line for why the dollar bill jump stunt is considered impossible is that your center of gravity has to move ahead of your base. The same article says you can jump backward easily because the support base moves first and the center of gravity stays in a balanced state. I can’t do that either. There are a couple of YouTubes that show a lot of people falling over. None of them tried it backward, although one guy tried it sideways and fell on his side.

For the record, my story of witnessing somebody beat the dollar bill jump is just that—a story. If you have a video of you or somebody beating the dollar bill jump challenge, let me know.