Dear everyone,
It’s been a hectic couple of weeks for us. I am on-call this weekend, and I was woken at
5 am with a request to go to the hospital and do a frozen section on a liver
biopsy. Unfortunately, the liver was
pretty fatty, so I doubt it will be given to a donor. This was compounded a bit because Cindy and I
had spent the evening at Jami and Caroline Walloch’s Halloween party. Cindy dressed as a red dragon (She had a red
dragon hat, a shiny red jacket, and lots of bling), while I went as a Grateful
Walking Dead Head - - zombie face make-up, and a colorful tie-dye shirt from my
youthful years. It still fit! Sadly, the weather was atrocious, rainy and
cold all day long. Only one pumpkin was
carved, done by Cindy, of the Hinsdale Central mascot, the Red Devil (see below).
Cindy is leaving the house soon to go have lunch in Highland
Park; the guests of honor being Selena, Kevin and Soleia. It’s a bit too far away for me to feel
comfortable traveling, since I could get pulled back to the hospital; there is
another donor harvest going on today.
Later this evening we plan on going to Mercat a la Planxa on South Michigan with
my friend Anthony Chen, who is in town for a conference. Anthony was a classmate of mine at PEA, and used
to be a family practice physician in the Seattle area; now he is the head of
public health for his county (second largest in the state).. His wife is also an MD, and his son, another
PEA grad, is in medical school now at USC.
We will be joined at dinner by Jasper and Nicola. We had some pretty lively conversations. I was surprised by how disappointed Anthony
was in the ‘genetic revolution’. I agree
that cures have been slow in coming, but I am optimistic that medicine 50 years
from now will be as different (and better) than it was 50 years ago, and that genetics
will play a big role in shaping those improvements (and God knows we need
them). Still, we would agree that public
health is vastly underfunded.
Last weekend Cindy and Nicola came with me for dinner and a
play. We ate at Kinmont, an unpretentious small
restaurant on Superior Street that specializes on sustainable seafood. There are oysters there, but the menu is
pretty short. The environment was a little dark. They had Persian carpets hanging from the
ceiling to help abate noise, not that it was much of a problem for us early
Saturday night. We had some interesting
cocktails, yummy appetizers (including anchovies) and I had walleye, Nicola
trout, and Cindy an octopus with pork belly entry, along with a side of vegetables
with prosciutto. We all shared some
excellent key lime pie.
After dinner we went to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on
Navy Pier to see a production of the Tempest. I had never been there before. The theater is very comfortable, and I think
all of the seats would give the audience a good view of the stage. We were right up against the proscenium. I was interested in seeing this play, because
Teller (of the magical act Penn and Teller) was one of the co-producers, and
obviously in charge of the magic tricks.
The actor playing Ariel is a professional magician as well as an actor,
and he had some outstanding sleight of hand magic with card decks. Then there were some major tricks embedded
within the play, some which worked well with the plot (for instance, Prospero
twisting Ariel up in a tree trunk while explaining the backstory of the witch Sycorax),
and others not quite so much (Prospero doing a floating lady trick with Miranda). Also quite interesting was the part of
Caliban, which was played by two actor/dancers simultaneously (they work at
Pilobolus) - - hard to explain, but interesting to watch!
Next weekend I head to New York, while Cindy and Japser go
to Iowa for a weekend swim meet.
Love,
H.
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