Authorial/Biographical Context

Thalidomide

By: jeand

I watched Call the Midwife this Sunday, and, as usual, thought what a wonderful program
it is, to not shy away from the huge problems that the world has made for itself over the years. It
brought to mind my only very short term contact with a thalidomide victim. This was in 1965
and on Staten Island, a borough of New York City. I played the organ for the chapel at the US
Public Health Service Hospital where I worked as a student dietitian. The priest was a middle
aged man, very pleasant, who I will call Father Mike, although I can't remember his name. One
Sunday after Mass, he asked me if I would do him a favor. He was entertaining a young friend of
his, who I will call Susie, and again, I have no idea what her real name was. He wanted to take
her to a park for a picnic, and thought that a middle aged man wouldn't be able to cope with a
young girl on his own. When he came to pick me up, and was without his clerical clothes,
wearing a very bright print short sleeved shirt, and asked me to call him just Mike, it did
certainly make me a little bit uncomfortable.

  Susie was already in the car when Mike stopped for me, and she was a pretty and very
confident child of perhaps 12. We went to a park with a play area, and had our picnic. Everyone
had a good time, and Susie never stopped talking. She obviously knew Mike quite well, and this
outing was not the first such experience she had had with him. She went on the swings and the
slide, and seemed quite a normal happy child. As we returned to the Nurses' Home where I lived,
after having hamburgers for our evening meal, Mike asked me if I would take care of Susie. He
had booked her a spare room in the nurses' home. I agreed, and would make sure she was all
right in her room, and then call for her for breakfast the next morning before I returned her to
Mike, for him to take her home. I have the idea that she came from an children's home, but I'm
not sure that was ever stated.

Susie went to the ladies' room – and it was then that Mike dropped his bombshell. “Susie
will need your help getting ready for bed,” he said. “She'll need to take off her legs, and then in
the morning, you'll need to help her put them back on again. Will that be okay?” I was
dumbstruck. I hadn't realized Susie had artificial legs – she certainly managed them well. And
the thought of having to do such a personal thing for her made me feel very inadequate and
nervous. “Don't worry,” he said, noticing my discomfort. “She's used to people having to do it
for her, and she won't be embarrassed. She'll tell you just what to do.”

So when we returned to the nurses home, we got the key for Susie's room, and I agreed
that she could get herself organized, and I would return at 9, to help her take off her legs. As
Mike had predicted, there was no embarrassment involved. Her prosthetic legs were attached to a
waist harness. Susie showed me how to undo the clamps, and the legs were duly removed and
placed by her bedside for morning. She snuggled down in bed with her trunk showing two little
sprouts of legs with a few toes here and there. I needed to take Susie's key with me, because she
wouldn't be able to let me in in the morning. When I arrived at 7.30, she was in a panic to use the
bathroom, so I carried her in, and then out again when she was done. We reattached her legs,
without any hitch, other than the one required. She managed to dress herself, and then we went
into the main hospital for breakfast, meeting Father Mike, as he had turned back into his
uniformed self in the meantime.

The Midwife program was set in 1961, but in 1965, Susie had already lived with her
condition for at least 12 years. I did some research on the subject, and found that Thalidomide at
its worst happened first in Germany in 1957 with tens of thousands of victims – but Susie's
mother would have had to have had her medication years before that. 60% of the children whose
mothers took the medication for morning sickness didn't survive. Then doing more reading on
the subject, it turns out that the German pharmaceutical company had shared the drug with a
French company many years before – so the dates are possible if her mother somehow had
contact with their medication. The US Public Health Service Hospital was responsible for US
military in the Coast Guard and also merchant seaman. So medication from Europe would not
have been unlikely to be accessed through the men who travelled regularly abroad.

But now that I have remembered Susie and how well she coped, it gave me hope for the
baby in the Midwife program. She was more disabled, not having arms either, but she did have
the advantage of a family who loved her and would do their best for her.

Socio-historical Context
A Walk in the Sun
By: George Levy
  Sergeant Preston did not feel optimistic. He fought Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart all
the way to Gettysburg last year, boxed him in, and smashed him up. Then, General Meade
transferred his veteran cavalry regiment to Sherman’s Army of Tennessee in the Atlanta
campaign. Now, he struggled out here with General Joe Wheeler looking for him.
        Trouble started when he rode out of Atlanta on 15 November 1864 with the city in flames
and led by a half-crazed general lighting his way to the sea. Guerillas hung on the army’s
coattails, killing any man that fell out, while General Sherman made war on civilians, including
women and children, and turned the state into a wasteland. This proved a dirty business, with
Sherman’s bummers, criminals really, plundering the state. Truly, they had been recruited from
gutters, saloons, and low dives of New York City. Worse his colonel often assigned him to escort
duty, protecting them against guerrillas or outraged farmers. 
          Preston applied for a transfer to General Grant’s army in Virginia. Denied. He was out
there by himself today because his colonel sent him to look over a plantation near Savannah and
put Negroes to work for the U.S. They were Sherman's slaves, now. Then, some fifteen miles
outside Union lines, he ran into a Division of Confederate cavalry moving toward Savannah. A
nasty surprise. He cursed New York’s 1st Cavalry supposed to patrol all the way back north to
Milledgeville. He quickly turned his horse around, but General Joe Wheeler’s men shot it out
from under him and now searched frantically. Wheeler did not want him to escape and warn
Sherman.  Capture meant death, as Wheeler took no prisoners. Romantic notions of chivalry died
early in this filthy war. No one could have been crueler to Americans than Americans
themselves, he believed.       
        He should like to abandon his carbine but intended to give Joe Wheeler a bloody nose
and a black eye. He did hide his heavy wool jacket before moving rapidly through some woods
headed south and keeping his eyes on open land to the north.  He spotted some buildings in his
front and needed a horse. Preston raised his binoculars and looked down on a farmhouse and
barn. Brown and flattened fields stretched all around. He saw many farms like this in the south.
He thanked God his family farm in Pennsylvania was safe, its green fields filled with corn and
cows mooing their way to a freshwater stream. This was a foreign land down here whose people
were no more his fellow citizens than Cossacks from the plains of Russia. Sixty-eight thousand
blue coats rampaging through Georgia made him believe the Union was a mistake, to begin with,
and the wrong side won at Yorktown eighty-three years ago. If so, what is he fighting for? What
nation is left to preserve? Well, too late. It is now his private war, this 25th day of December
1864, somewhere near Savannah, Georgia. He checked his revolver and headed for the barn,
watching the house closely. Suddenly, a thin elderly man about eighty years old in ragged
coveralls came screaming out.
      "She is all I got left! She is all I got left damn you!”
       He approached with face quivering like straw in a wind. Preston saw faded blue eyes in a
faded face atop a faded body. "Don't make me hurt you old man. I need to see what you have in
the barn.”  He smiled at what he found, a mare about five year old slick as a newborn baby. She
can easily outrun Wheeler's tired cavalry; only the old man threw himself in front of her
stall. "You will have to kill me! You have taken everything from me! She is all I have left in my
life. I can’t live without her!” “Look, old man, I got four months pay, seventy five dollars in
gold. Just take it and I will be gone." "Don't you understand you damn Yankee? Gold is no good,
in hell. Georgia is dead. Hope is dead.”
        Preston saw the old man stood ready to die for this horse. He could not stomach the
idea of beating him down, and his hand tightened on the .52 caliber revolver. The old man's
faded blue eyes searched for him in the darkened barn, and Preston realized they were failing,
and will soon be sightless. He remembered another pair of blue eyes belonging to a skinny
teenager he sabered off his horse at Gettysburg, and how they, too, became sightless as he looked
down on him. Who sent children to die like this? He had wondered.  However, he never killed an
unarmed man. General Sherman is about to make a murderer of him. Did it matter in the human
course of events in Georgia, 900 miles from home?
“Move! Get out of the way!”  “I won’t, goddamn you!”
            He will blow this frantic bag of bones to hell, his head split into jagged pieces like a
rotten watermelon! He knew the damage his pistol could do. Suddenly, without warning,
memories came flooding back. Preston did not know where they came from. He did not want
them or need them. The girls he loved snuggled down deep in a hay wagon breath to breath and
soul to soul, his good old dog that slept with him through the years, his mother’s loving smile,
his father’s warm embrace, an old teacher who opened up the world for him. Now! Shoot the
bastard, now! And be on your way!
          Sergeant Samuel Preston, age twenty-two,  7th Pennsylvania Cavalry, a veteran of every
battle fought by the Army of the Potomac and the Atlanta campaign, wounded twice, up for
promotion to captain of his own company, recommended for the new medal Congress is
awarding “meritorious enlisted men,” raises his pistol, aims at the old man’s head, and thumbs
back the hammer. Meanwhile, ominous shadows blot out the horizon from corner to corner. It is
darkness at noon. Finally, Sergeant Preston slowly lowers his weapon and eases down the
hammer.

Philosophical Context

Passing on the Wisdom of Professor Corey

By: Jerry Ryan

Many years ago when my son was about to enter the University of Rochester and before
we became estranged, I took him to see a screening of Plan Nine from Outer Space which also
included a seminar from the world's foremost authority, Professor Irwin Corey. I thought this
intellectual voyage would orient him to the next level of learning. The Professor made his usual
sartorial statement; a shabby tuxedo jacket, a pair of too short black pants and a pair of beat up
high top black sneakers; a delicate juxtaposition of whimsy, functionality, non-symmetrical and
casual comfort...the epitome of elegance, sophistication, collision and formality. The beat up
sneakers represented the duality of nature and the interplay of convention/ rebellion, I guess.. 

His tuxedo jacket was once the epitome of elegance, sophistication, and all things formal.
It's a garment typically associated with grand events, black-tie affairs, and prestigious gatherings.
It exudes a sense of style and refinement or at least it might have before all the kegs. I understand
that after the seminar the Professor made his way to Nick Tahou's on West Main and devoured a
garbage plate. On the other hand/foot,  his battered sneakers,  were the embodiment of casualness
and practicality. They were meant for leisurely strolls, athletic pursuits, and everyday
comfort. By combining these seemingly contrasting elements, Corey embraced the duality of life
itself—the interplay between seriousness and lightheartedness, tradition and innovation,
convention and rebellion intended to accentuate the Professor's blend of absurdity, wisdom and
nonsense or something like that while cutting down on the overhead of production costs.

I had the honor of asking the Professor a question. I took the microphone from the host
and addressed Corey. I was a little intimidated about transacting with a man of such exponential
wisdom. "Thank you Professor for this opportunity. To be or not to be....."

The professor cut in; "Now that's what I call a question. Let me elaborate. Ah, the quandary of
existence! Should we endure the hardships and challenges that life presents, or should we rise up
against them, wielding the dull tools and pointless spears of our determination and will? This
question, strikes at the heart of the human experience, challenging us to examine the purpose and
meaning of our being. To simplify, I will ask another question. Should we just get another beer
or keep screwing around. And leave us not forget the next few lines.

'To die, to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand
natural shocks That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished'. Oh yeah, the
allure of rest and release from the burdens and constipations of life! The contemplation of death
as a soothing slumber, an escape from the pains and tribulations that accompany our mortal
existence. And yet, in this final slumber, what dreams may come? The mystery lingers, and we
are left to ponder.

I related my dreams to a quack who posed as a psychiatrist and was later arrested for
attempting to eat his office with a spoon. He gave me an ink blot test. He said I had a filthy mind
but I reminded him that he was the pervert with the sick pictures. Let me tell you a little secret.
Life's meaning is like a banana peel—elusive, slippery, and prone to causing unexpected falls.
Furthermore, it's like a rubber chicken sitting on a whoopee cushion...it's a fowl gag that makes a
lot of funny noises yet doesn't smell as bad as it sounds. What was the question again."

Even though I'm using quotation marks, I paraphrase. It was a long time ago. I have no
idea how to punctuate this experience. I gave the microphone back to the emcee. The professor
thanked me for my question whatever it was and went on to the next seeker of truth a gigantic
man with tiny hands who was wearing a "party till you puke tee shirt." I remember this
night in a bittersweet way. I haven't spoken to my son in almost twenty five years. He zigged and
I zagged. I have a grandson that I've never met. Perhaps, my son has told my grandson about the
evening which has to pass for any semblance of wisdom that I might have or could have or
should have passed on to the young lad myself. Maybe he'll read this but I doubt it.