Klezmer band. Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 2005 By William Meyers
SOUNDTRACK FOR THIS PHOTO: “FREYLACH #8” BY KLEZMER JUICE (re-post from 2012)
By Paul Goldfinger, Photography editor at Blogfinger.net.
Every once in a while I will post a guest photographer segment which might be about a famous artist or just someone who sends us an image. Or, as in this case, it could just be a photographer whose work I stumbled upon. I don’t know William Myers personally, but I saw one of his images (above) recently and I saved a copy for this post. I can’t even recall where I saw it, but his work has been exhibited and published extensively.
William Meyers was born in 1938, and perusal of his web site indicates that he shoots mostly black and white, and mostly in New York City. His themes include NYC lifestyles, music subjects, and Jewish life here and in Israel. He seems to like music and his photos seem to like women. In that sense he is like one of his heroes Garry Winogrand, a pioneer of street photography.
Meyers has been a photography writer for the Wall Street Journal as well as a successful photographer.
I am drawn to some of his work because his sensibility seems to be similar to my own. In 2015 he published a book of images from the outer boroughs of New York. Those black and white photos are all made with film, and all his photos are silver gelatin darkroom prints. Myers does not do digital.
Darkroom work is exhausting to do and requires great skill and is very time consuming. For those photographers who have gone digital, many consider the new technology to be a relief. The finished product is said to be indistinguishable from a dark room print, but others, including myself, would disagree. William Meyers has first-rate printers do his prints for him. Many famous artists in the past including Cartier-Bresson did the same. In my case, I did my own, but these days I mostly show my work on the Internet, but lately my prints are digital done by an expert lab.
“Busker” Union Square Subway Station. NYC. Feb. 2011. William Meyers
San Francisco Girls Band. Photographed at Banjo Jim’s on the Lower East Side. November 2011. William Meyers
Deborah Rosenthal, painter. New York City. 1998. William Meyers
This post is repeated from 2016. Don’t forget the Princeton Art Museum if you have time for a day trip, and there is parking and there are some terrific eateries by Palmer Square. And, if your SAT’s are really high, and if you have good activities (such as finding a cure for the common cold) then you might be admitted to become a Tiger. Click on Blogfinger below.
Princeton University, August 11, 2016., from the current exhibit “A Material Legacy” By Paul Goldfinger, Photography Editor @Blogfinger.
Carl Hoffman and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Princeton University Art Museum. They have a superb collection of photography donated by David McAlpin, Class of 1920 (1897-1989.) He began his collection in the 1920’s and he knew many of the greats personally including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keefe and Eliot Porter.
The current exhibit, celebrating the legacy of McAlpin, consists of 43 prints from the collection including one of the most famous images “Moonrise Over Hernandez”—1941 by Ansel Adams. We posted a piece about that (see link below—“Vanishing Magic.”).
Image by Evelyn Nesbit (1903) of “Gertrude, a Gibson girl.”) Edward Stieglitz was featured in the exhibit. He published the magazine Camera Workwhere all the images were beautiful photogravures and which are collectibles today. He was Georgia…
This topic is currently caught up in a tangle of controversies and guideline wars.
British Medical Journal. 2012.
By Paul Goldfinger, M.D., F.A.C.C. Board Certified cardiologist/internist, Editor of Blogfinger.net, and Dean of the Blogfinger Offshore School of Medicine in Ocean Grove, NJ. Closed on Sunday mornings until noon.
PART I: WHAT ARE THE ISSUES?
We wrote a series of this type before, but there are some important issues to discuss now based on changes of guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of high blood pressure, i.e. hypertension.
Hypertension is a condition which threatens huge numbers of people around the world. The prevalence among adults in the U.S. used to be quoted as 32%, but since the new guidelines came out with new definitions, the number is now estimated to be 46%. And that number goes up with age, so that 76% is the prevalence in adults ages 65-74; and rises to 82% in ages 75 and older.
The measurement of BP is obtained using an electronic device—a sphygmomanometer. 120/80 is the classic normal, but even that is controversial. The top number is called the systolic, while the bottom is diastolic. If either number or both is consistently elevated, then a diagnosis of hypertension is obtained. But there are different degrees of severity, and the risks of the disease go up as the numbers go up.
What is clear is that bringing the blood pressure to normal will reduce the risk of devastating vascular problems such as heart attack, heart failure and stroke.
Where the guidelines differ is in the cutoffs for making the diagnosis of hypertension, cutoffs for choosing various therapeutic approaches, and cutoffs having to with target readings when therapy is established.
But the world-wide healthcare establishment has yet to agree about how to correctly diagnose and treat hypertension. And the matter has other ramifications:
a. Many people with the disease have no idea that they have a problem
b. Of those who have been diagnosed and treated, a large percent have failed to reach desirable BP goals. And many who know that they have a problem are in a state of denial and do not go for evaluation or they receive inadequate followup, or they do not reliably and correctly take their medication.
In addition, physicians often fail to deal with hypertension properly, as defined by guidelines. In fact, some doctors ignore guidelines altogether, deciding their approach based on instinct and ignorance.
I have always thought that guidelines were a great idea since most doctors don’t have time to read all the research, so why not take the advice of experts? But there is a caveat: The doctor-patient relationship must be preserved, and the physician must be allowed flexibility in his decisions. However, if guidelines become inviolable laws, then doctors will rebel, and quality care will decline. In medicine, one size does not fit all.
c. There currently is a war of sorts, between the Americans and the Europeans regarding guidelines which determine how to diagnose and treat this important disease. No, it’s not like the D-Day invasion, but it is bad enough that both sides have published their own guidelines: the Americans in 2017 and the Europeans (let’s include Australia in this group) in 2018.
For years, the National Institutes of Health took on the task of issuing hypertension guidelines in the form of the Joint National Commission reports. The last time they did so (JNC8) was in 2014, but then, probably for political reasons, they retreated to their Bethesda headquarters, turning the job over to a combined committee from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology (disclosure: I am a “Fellow” of both organizations.) And the Europeans have the European Society of Cardiology and the European Society of Hypertension.
To tell the truth, I not only prefer their croissants, their wine, and their beachwear, but I also prefer their hypertension guidelines. However we will get into that later.
d . And why can’t they totally agree? It’s because there have been hundreds of credible research trials on the subject done around the world, many recently, and because there are some philosophical differences between the two sides. And because medicine is a mixture of art and science, and no matter how much doctors try to practice “evidence based” medicine, there always is room for good judgement, style, and experience.
And don’t forget the incursions into medical practice by the bottom-line oriented health corporations, government, “Big Pharm,” and insurance companies; and by many physicians themselves who have been coerced into leaving private practice to become puppets of their employers—large hospital “health” systems.
Along the way, some of these doctors have compromised their standards in exchange for less stress, less administrative duties, more time off, and more cookbook medicine that can torture and break the traditional doctor- patient relationship. And the growing use of physician extenders to replace doctors introduces perhaps more efficiency and more money, but, in my opinion, greater chances for mistakes in patient care. As the hypertension guidelines become more complex, the involvement of physicians gets less.
I’m going to try to penetrate the layers of complexity of all this for you . You would be surprised if you knew how deep those layers go.
Feel free to comment by looking down and finding the comments button.
See you soon for Part II (I hope I can remember my Roman numerals.)
THE MARVELOUS WONDERETTES. And if you think that medicine and music don’t mix, just walk into an OR sometime during major surgery.
a. We are now receiving addresses for those who will participate in the May 11 Town-Wide Yard Sale. Today we have gone from zero to 7. This is only the beginning, and we would like to reach at least 60 addresses, preferably 100. Don’t forget that Township permits are needed $5.00 each at Town Hall. Send us your addresses at Blogfinger@verizon.net and don’t forget to tell us you nearest cross street.
The list of addresses can now be found in the Yard Sale page tab (on top of this home page). Just scroll down to the bottom. We will update the LIST as the addresses come in and add the items for sale about one week before May 11.
As we build our list, the addresses will be posted by locations in town so that sales can be grouped together for shoppers. Ask your neighbors to consider joining the fun.
Shoppers: Please do not contact our sellers until the day of the sale.
As noted, sellers can provide their sale items to us whenever they are available, but those items will not be announced until about one week in advance of the sale.
b. 2 days ago , when our report on the Mayor’s behavior at the last Committee meeting, was published, we had 1,000 visits to our site. Even though most readers do not comment, we know that they are interested.
c. Send us an email (Blogfinger@verizon.net) and tell us which is your favorite Chinese restaurant which delivers to Ocean Grove. The Chinese New Year (year of the pig) ends on Feb 19. We will post all the suggestions.
3 6.5 ounce cans chopped clams, drained. Save the liquid.
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
1/2 large sweet onion, diced
1 medium potato, peeled & diced
1 small red bell pepper, diced
2 ears fresh corn; remove kernels from cob (or 2/3 cup frozen corn) optional
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
7 cloves of garlic, minced
4 tablespoons tomato paste
5 tablespoons fresh parsley, minced
1 cup clam juice
4 cups chicken broth
1 28 ounce can of whole San Marzano tomatoes, drain liquid (crush tomatoes with hands)
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes (more if you like very spicy)
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 bottle beer
Don’t panic at all the ingredients. Most are already in your pantry and most are added to one pot.
Clam preparation:
While preparing the soup base, place fresh clams in a large bowl of cool water with 2 tablespoons of corn meal mixed in. This will clean the shells and cause the clams to disgorge any sand they may have ingested. Discard any clams that are cracked or open.
Soup preparation:
In a 5 quart Dutch oven, heat butter and extra virgin olive oil on medium heat. Then add onion, carrots, celery, pepper, potato, and cook for 10 minutes. Next add clam juice, tomato paste and garlic; stir and cook for another 10 minutes. Add chicken broth, corn, parsley, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and San Marzano tomatoes. Stir and cook at a simmer for 15 minutes . Make sure the potatoes are fork tender.
While the soup cooks, prepare the fresh clams. In a 12” fry pan add the contents of a bottle of beer and bring beer to a boil. Lift clams straight up and out of the water that they have been sitting in. This leaves any sand they have expelled on the bottom of the bowl. Place them in the boiling beer, cover the pan, and cook for 5 minutes. Remove cover, and as the clams open, remove them with tongs and set them aside on a plate. If they cook too long they will become tough, Discard any clams that do not open.
While these clams are cooking, add the 3 cans of chopped clams to the soup and stir. Use the saved broth to add to the soup if it becomes too thick.
Assembling:
When all the fresh clams have opened, ladle soup into bowls and place equal amounts of fresh clams with shells on top. (or remove clams from their shells and add the clams to the soup.)
Serve with a rustic bread.
This recipe will serve 4 people as an entré or 8 as an appetizer.
Video by Jean Bredin, Blogfinger reporter and photographer. Elsie is Jean’s Mom. She lives in Fort Lee, and Jean visits her frequently. Elsie is someone who enjoys her routines. Breakfast is always the same consisting of half a grapefruit followed by oatmeal, always made the same way.
During breakfast Elsie loves to listen to music, but it is always her favorite performer Englebert Humperdinck.
