Norman is here!

Here is an initial photograph of Norman.  The photograph doesn't do him justice.   I'll get a better picture of him up later this week.  Watch a video about Mary Larson the artist here.  She's painted what I see when I work with my patients.

Rainer Maria Rilke -- Do not write love poems;

Paris, February 17, 1903 from Letters to a Young Poet

...avoid at first those forms that are too facile and commonplace...describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some kind of beauty--describe all these with loving, quite, humble sincerity, and use to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory. If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses--would you not still then have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure house of memories? Try to raise the submerged sensations of that simple; your personality will grow more firm, your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling past which the noise of others goes by far away.

Coming Soon: A Mary Larson Painting!

I've been trying to get a Mary Larson painting for several years. She's always sold out! Today I was showing another artist friend/coworker her paintings and noticed that she had several up for sale, so I called immediately and asked to buy one of them. I got a call back within 1-2 hours from Mary Larson herself saying that the painting "Norman" was available. The price: 250 $5.00 Starbuck's cards. And worth every drop of all that coffee.

Mary Larson is a nurse employed at Seattle's Pioneer Health Clinic which treats many homeless people. Ms. Larson started painting portraits and selling them for donations of items needed for the homeless patients who come to the clinic.

I'm especially moved by these paintings because Larson is a nurse working at a clinic serving the homeless and many of my patients at the hospital are also patients at her clinic. I also love the eye for beauty she brings to each painting. Finally, she sells them for donations for concerns serving homeless patients. I was so excited that I was told I could get a painting that I wanted to leave work immediately and go get my starbuck's cards and figure out where I was going to hang the painting!

Inaugural Challenge

I've been thinking about the challenge to Elizabeth Alexander to write an inaugural poem for Obama. I am sure that she needs no help, but I think Obama deserves more than one poem.

I say, let's all write him one! Let's all give our poems the same title:

Inaugural, 2009

or something like that, and see what we come up with. According the NYTimes, Ms. Alexander has turned to W.H. Auden and Gwendolyn Brooks in order to write her "occasional" poem.

So how about it? How often do we get a chance to write inaugural poems like this!

My Heart!

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