As I was drawing near the end of my time as OHSU’s first and only archivist in the entirety of its 125-year history, I was waxing a little (maybe a lot) nostalgic and poetic. I, since 1999, had my way in the Archives. I was privileged beyond my wildest dreams. I was the first to open boxes and was blown away by the treasures therein. I was “the decider”: this we will keep and this we will “weed”.

I had the most amazing opportunities to meet pioneers in healthcare and selfless individuals who have given to the world, to society, to students and to patients alike. I met researchers who are dedicated to uncovering the ultimate holistic history of people, events, and institutions. I was a liaison between donors and the repository for funds and materials and marveled at their generosity.

I wished that my mom was there to walk with me as I ended my career at OHSU, but do not be mistaken, I was joyously looking forward to the rest of my life.

Below is a little story that I wrote for the Oregon Health & Science University, School of Medicine monthly newsletter. Perhaps, you might enjoy it.

It is a very small book, just 14cm in length and 7.5 cm wide and 4 cm thick. It is the 1638 edition of Hippocratis coi Aphorismi. It is a marvel to behold and an amazing thing to hold. The soft, yellowed vellum binding is cool to the touch and completely unembellished, while the text-block edges are rough cut and stained tea brown. The cover of the spine is slightly separated revealing the narrow leather thong holding the stiff cover to the text block. In hand lettering, it reads Hippocrates Heurnio. The paper has a slightly sandy texture and nary a page is torn. Hippocrates wrote Aphorisms in 400 B.C.E.

And how did it happen to come to us… this valuable and rare edition? There are only two clues left to us. Revealing the tiny manuscript’s custodial history are two bookplates glued to the endpapers. One bookplate displays a coat-of-arms and a banner which reads: Prodess Quam Conspici, below in a lovely script is the name Peter Nouaille, Greatnefs. This I have learned is Peter Nouaille of Greatness, Kent, England, a breeder of silk worms who had built a silk mill on a tributary of the River Thames at Seven Oaks. “This mill was built in 1761. Peter came into the possession of the manorial watermill on marrying Elizabeth de la Mare of Greatness. Nouaille went bankrupt in 1778 but recovered, employing 100 people when he retired in 1800. It closed down after Nouaille’s death c1828.” The mills on the river’s tributaries were immortalized in the poem Ode on the Silk Mills at Greatness by Joseph Harrison.

How Peter Nouaille came into possession of this charming little book, and how dear Peter was divested of it, we shall most assuredly never know. But on an auspicious (for us) obscure date, another custodian came into possession; when and how we cannot divine. But we do know his name because we find the second clue… a bookplate belonging to the Medical School Library with the inscription: “Presented by J. Ettelson, M.D.”

Jesse Ettelson, MD, was born in Sprague, Washington in 1885, the son of Washington pioneers. He graduated from the Washington State University and the University of Illinois, gaining his Doctorate of Medicine from Rush Medical School in 1910. He went on to graduate studies at the Vanderhill Clinic in New York, where he studied dermatology and studied also at the University of Vienna in Austria. He came to Portland and served his internship at Good Samaritan Hospital and was one of the first dermatology specialists in Portland. He taught for a number of years at the University of Oregon Medical School and practiced in Portland until his retirement in 1941. He died at his home on a Thursday in 1968.

How then can we imagine Ettelson coming upon this book? Was he strolling along the street of some city in Europe, or in New York or even in Portland?  Had he entered a small dim bookstore and found the small volume of interest? Did he pick it up, examine it and found it as lovely as I have on a dark and rainy day? Perhaps.

You can find the lovely poetic work in translation from the Latin and the Greek http://classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/aphorisms.mb.txt  You can see other copies that have been scanned at Google Books. But the real thrill to be found is beyond its content and lies within the context of the object and its history. On a Friday, Todd Hannon, reference librarian, carried it to the History of Medicine class at 12:00 noon for the students to see and to handle. Oh! The joy of rare book collections.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Darent

I just left my neighbor’s cozy house and entered the cold and sparkling world of untouched snow and the full moon in cancer in a crystal clear sky of pure and inky black. The perfectly dry burgandy wine and the warming amber whiskey I drank made me long for something un-named, more deep than the desire of most of mankind… I could cry.

Then I reached my door, reluctant to leave the wondrous night outside. My dog greeted me with a smile at the door, so happy to see me, wriggling against my legs and there were five 16 year old boys at the dining room table playing Dungeons and Dragons, empty popcorn bowl on the table, sleeping bags spread out on the floor, the warmth of a gas furnace… emails and texts of love on my phone.

Isn’t life awesome…

Ten days eating grapes makes watermelon magical.

I’ve always been a watermelon eater. As a kid, grandma had cold watermelon in the fridge all summer long. We’d eat a whole, giant watermelon, just the two of us, in an afternoon, sitting in her garden with the birds and honeybees and a shaker of salt.

These watermelons were not the wussy watermelons we eat today. These were the size of a two-year old child, dotted with big black fertile seeds. I’d spit them in the grass, I’d spit them in the garden, and some I’d plant among the zinnias.

We didn’t bother with plates and forks and spoons. Grandma would cut thick slices, I mean 2 inches thick, then she’d cut them into half moons.

I’d start by taking big, juicy bites, juice running down my bare chest, up to my elbows and dripping onto my legs. As I ate deeper and deeper, the rind would reach my ears, leaving my cheeks wet and sticky, until I’d eaten all the red and pink right down to the white part.

It was a good thing Grandma would have the rotating sprinkler on that kept her weedless grass green and her flower-laden garden blooming all summer long. And it was a good thing I was in my cotton panties… in later years, of course, I was in my bathing suit.

Grandma and me were serious watermelon eaters, but we’d laugh until we were crying. While we’d eat until our stomachs were bulging, she’d tell me the story of how when she was a kid, her and her brothers and sisters would eat the watermelon growing out under the fences along the road in rural Kentucky.

No wonder I loved my grandma so much. She’d peel me oranges ’til I had my fill, too. But that’s a different story.

I can’t eat watermelon without thinking of the best grandma that ever lived.

Postscript: So, this post is going up without photographs because I’m tired of waiting on myself to add them. I have a very good reason to publish it, which soon you will discover. Read this and you will uncover some deep “truths” about me if you care to dig.

(Written July 2016)

Where does my ego flee when wounded by intellectuals… to lick my wounds. It runs to that dark cave where lives a monster whose name is imposter. It lies in wait to further disembowel what is already dying.

My cries for help to one on the road passing by:

“Feeling kind of… Uh huh. Mmm mmmm. Yep. Nope. ‘Cause I know nothin’ ’bout sports, less ’bout music, even less ’bout movies and TV, zip about Judaism, Islam, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Occultism, Activism, zero ’bout philosophy, geography, photography, cartography, biography, cardiology, musicology or any other -ology or cracy or sophy or ism… or so it feels to me tonight.”

I just want to be quiet.

My cries are heard. To this fellow traveler:

“My challenger thinks I’m hallucinating.
But one knows how one feels.

Was it my monster insecurities raising ugly multiple sepentine heads to eat the blood of my dying, intellectual road-kill ego? Yes! It always is and your crystal clear words of wisdom soothing and healing what’s left of my ailing heart where the wounds from its teeth bit deep. I will make it, since I embarked on this steep climb of my choosing. Battered and torn with my ego nearly dead but my heart still beating, I will arrive but better, much better for it.”

I escape the cave and walk on…

Laying on your beating heart~
My breath like silver thread.
Time, though short, til we depart~
Still lies for us ahead.

Electric fingers play on nerves,
Through the fabric of my jeans.
Strum melodies from mysterious dank dreams.
Bring back from the swamp,
That not heard from, returns.

Laying on your beating heart,

My breath a silver thread,

Time, though short, ’til we depart,

Still lies for us ahead.

The night when souls wander freely is fast approaching. The sky is clear and in this chill morning I can even read the constellations. Lights in sickly orange and violet glow eerily from rustling bushes and the withered, brittle leaves falling sound like footsteps following stealthily and close behind. A black cat steals silently across my path, but I am not startled;  I look behind to see if I am still alone in the black stillness. My gaze reaches out for the lone street light still beyond my rapid shuffle through the dark street. Was the crack in the wall always there or is it just now opening for me. Finally. .. the bus.  “Good morning, how are you?” “Great”, I say, as if nothing has happened.

Mr Bushke was the drug dealer/addict that collided with my Kristi’s car just two years ago. I’m not over it. I don’t think I will ever be. The family attended the sentencing at the Clackamas County courthouse and we were each given an opportunity to say something to him. This is what I said:

Mr. Buschke,

There is no amount of time; no level of punishment that you might suffer that could help you to understand the amount of suffering that you have caused this family. That’s why I don’t really care what sentence is handed down to you. But I need to tell you that you have immeasurably devastated this large family.

Kristi was my little sister. I would have done anything to protect her from anyone or anything that might hurt her. I never could have imagined that her life would end in such a needless and tragic way. She was sweet, funny, hilarious even, caring, devoted and kind.

Every day and every night I cry for her. I cry because you hurt her, you killed her by your negligence. But even more than that, I cry because I don’t have her anymore. I counted on her in so many ways. We were as close as any two human beings can be. We would talk for hours on the phone. She listened to me and offered me her advice. We spent every chance we had to be together. We traveled together. She was my best friend. We shared a past that no one else did and now she is gone and I have to figure out how to live without her.

I would hate to be you. It must be horrible.

Woman killed, 3-year-old granddaughter hurt in Hwy 211 head-on crash

Posted: Oct 15, 2014 9:20 PM PST Updated: Nov 12, 2014 9:29 PM PDT

By Jeff Kirsch

MOLALLA, OR (KPTV) – A 64-year-old woman was killed and her granddaughter hospitalized after a head on crash on Highway 211 east of Molalla.

Oregon State Police say a Ford Mustang being driven by 33-year-old Sean Buschke of Colton was headed westbound on Highway 211 near South Vaughan Road when it crossed the center line and struck an eastbound Honda Accord. It happened at 2:35 p.m. Wednesday.

The woman driving the Accord was taken to Oregon Health & Science University but later died. She was identified Thursday as Kristi Anderson of Molalla.

Her 3-year-old granddaughter was taken to OHSU with non-life threatening injuries. The girl was using a child safety seat.

Buschke was also taken to OHSU for treatment of injuries described as non-life threatening. He was wearing a seat belt.

Police said the use of a seat belt by Anderson is pending confirmation.

The investigation is continuing. No charges have been filed as of now.

Investigators urge any witnesses to the crash to call the OSP Northern Command Center dispatch at 503-731-3030.

The highway was shut down for more than four hours Wednesday.

Copyright 2014 KPTV-KPDX Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.