25- Empty stools in empty lab rooms

With apologies to Claude-Michel Schonberg, Herbert Kretzmer, and Cameron Mackintosh and the original singers of this adapted song.

I speak of course of Les Misérables.

All of the albums, the 1985 cast album, The 10th anniversary Dreamcast, and the 2012 movie soundtrack, have been on near repeat in my head and in my speakers since the first No Kings protests. I’ve written about it before but something about the failed revolution speaks to me in these WTF times.

My favorite song has always been Empty Chairs at Empty Tables when the survivor of the barricade, Marius, sings to the phantoms of his friends. It is hard to be a survivor of atrocities. I imagine it is harder yet to be among the survivors desperately trying to salvage what they can at the CDC. Because of the grant pulling and the firings and the August 20, 2025 attack on the CDC itself where a police officer died.

I was driving home from baking Christmas cookies with my mom when I started humming this song. I started changing the lyrics right then. I tried to stay true to the original cadence of the song and I changed some words.

Empty Stools in Empty Lab Rooms
There’s a rage that can’t be spoken
There’s a fear goes on and on
Empty stools in empty lab rooms
Now my friends are fired and gone

Here they talked of exploration
Of possibilities
Here they talked about diagnoses
And the diagnoses never came

From the laboratory in the hallway
They could see a germ defeated
And they rose crying Eureka
And I can see them now
The very science that they had worked
In the lonely lab at dawn

Oh, my friends, my friends, forgive me
That I work and you are gone
There’s a rage that can’t be spoken
There’s a fear that goes on and on

The lonely faces on the screen
Phantom shadows on the Zoom
Empty stools in empty lab rooms
Where my friends will work no more

Oh, my friends, my friends, forgive me
That I work and you are gone
There’s a rage that can’t be spoken
There’s a fear that goes on and on

What scientific advances won’t be made? What cancers will grow out of control because there is no one to stop them?

How people have to die because this is happening?

Post-it Sunday 3/9/25- 29 ways

The post-it reads “29 ways to make it to the hospital”.

This is, of course, in the reference to the Marc Cohn song 29 Ways to Make it to My Baby’s Door. Yes, the same Marc Cohn who sang Walking in Memphis. Both songs are from his debut album in 1991.

Marc Cohn was the first bar concert I ever saw. I want to say it was in 1996 and in a small bar in the college town near where I grew up. Between 1993-1996

In the song, the protagonist lists off the ways he can make it to his baby’s door. Near the end of the song he sings that if she needs him real bad, he can find two or three more.

I know that people already think that I have an unnatural attachment to the hospital. I don’t, I swear. I do have an unnatural attachment to work, though I am trying my best to overcome it.

But I was thinking of mass casualty events when I wrote this post-it. Probably after one of the hospital shootings we’ve had nationally for a lot of years. Or being the second runner up to Oklahoma City when I was at Creighton. If that is even true, we talked about it in clinical just after it happened.

However, if the hospital needed me in a hurry, and they have, I could get to it, at night, in less than 5 minutes. This depends on hitting the lights right and no traffic.

However, I thought about it and counted the many ways I know how to get to the hospital during the day. I counted at least 10. And I only live 3 miles from the hospital.

Those are the 10 that I have found. There is probably more.

It just depends on how badly they need me.

And the traffic lights.

School Me Saturday 11/30/24- Push on through (to the other side)

The song starts with a short cymbal warm-up.

Then the guitar starts laying down a beat.

Then the vocals.

“You know the day destroys the night,

night divides the day.

Tried to run, tried to hide.

Break on through to the other side.”

I am, of course, writing about Jim Morrison and the Doors and one of their best-known songs. It was the opening track on their debut album.

It is nearing the end of the semester. Perhaps you listen to music while you are studying. Or not. Perhaps you listen to music to wind down. Or not. But think about this song with me.

“Made the scene,

week to week,

day to day,

hour to hour.

The gate is straight, deep and wide

Break on through to the other side.”

I can take you all back with me to Peg Garner’s Advanced Placement English class in my junior year of high school, where I learned about poetry. In 1992. And how to analyze poetry. Because music is poetry. Or maybe they are complementary arts. I will let the philosophers decide.

However, music can teach us about ourselves. How to study, the cadence of songs helps here. It also helps if you are so familiar with the song that it ceases to be new and amazing and just becomes like elevator music. But you notice when it is gone.

Then a song like Break on Through (to the Other Side) speaks to you about endings. Because the semester is ending. It is nearly time to put up the books, and to put away the paper and pens and pencils. It is too early to worry about next semester; it is too late to worry about this semester. All you have to do is break on through. Finish the final papers, take the final tests. Do what you have to do to get through. Whatever it is.

Reflection is helpful here at the ending of one thing and not yet beginning of another thing.

Reflect on the semester and what went well and what didn’t. You can promise yourself to do better next semester.

Because there will be a next semester until you are finished with the degree program. And maybe even after that.

You might not be able to quit school.

But that is a problem for future you, isn’t it?

School Me Saturday 10/26/24-Study Music: yes or no?

This past Wednesday I titled the post “Mister, are you tall?”

This was about one of the songs that I used to listen to at Creighton and my first nursing program. Dr. Demento’s songs made me smile and I found them easy to listen to while learning.

When I was writing the post (which was about height differences in the operating room), I vaguely remembered that there was a height reference in one of the Dr. Demento songs. I was pretty sure the song was “Existential Blues” by Tom “T-Bone” Stankus but I had to relisten to make sure.

This led me down memory lane. So many silly songs. So many not very politically correct songs. It was a great afternoon and I listen to a lot of songs while I was folding laundry. What a great afternoon. I finished folding the laundry and cleaned the kitchen while tripping down memory lane. I remembered some of the songs that I listened to while writing a presentation on 1993 Rawanda or learning anatomy.

The point of this post is to encourage all adult learners to find what inspires them to focus and learn.

There has been interest in recent years about listening. I am writing, of course, of ASMR. Which is defined as autonomous sensory meridian response. If you Google the term lots of information pops up. Some people find it relaxing and stress relieving to listen to.

Those people aren’t me. I find most ASMR content mildly infuriating. Kind of like how I find all stress balls infuriating. So ASMR is not for me.

It might be for you, which is okay.

As an adult I confess I don’t listen to music when I write or study. I am not sure when it got away from me.

On Thursday as I was preparing for a presentation I had to give Friday, I decided to listen to Dvorak. Specifically Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”. I wanted to see if it would work as presentatin preparing music. It is one of my favorites after all.

I found it distracting. I wanted to conduct.

I tried a different classical music, one that was recommended by a writing group member.

No go. My brain kept picking out the repeating parts and it would be jarring when the music didn’t follow pattern.

More evidence that working through a global pandemic and working in ORs for 23 years with its music has changed my brain.

The overall point of this post is to find something that calms your brain and lets you think and learn and write.

This might be silence.

This might be ASMR.

This might be classical.

This might be old TV shows on repeat.

Listen to whatever speaks to you in that moment.

As with so much of being an adult learner you get to choose what works best for you.

I’ll be over here in the office, writing in silence, listening to the taps on the keyboard.

I guess that might be a form of ASMR. And I found a playlist that was entirely cats’ purring. I bet that might work for some people too.

Keep exploring until you find what works for you. It might be dusty CDs from your own high school years.