The Blaisdell Blog

On April 26, 1954 the Salk polio vaccine field trials began.   It was the first time a “double blind” trial was used for a drug.   The now standard double blind study (where neither the patient nor the doctor know who is getting the real medicine as opposed to a placebo) involved almost 2 million children.   It began at Franklin Sherman Elementary School, an integrated school in McLean, Virginia.   The expanded study involved children from the United States, Canada and Finland.             I think the trials conducted in an integrated school reflect the largesse and truly humanitarian thinking of Dr. Jonas Salk himself.   The son of immigrant-Russian Ashkenazi Jews, Salk knew what mindless prejudice and institutionalized bias looked and felt like.   Salk was a risk taker.   He used a dead virus when common thinking assumed a live but weakened virus was better.   He tried the vaccine for the first time on himself and his son.   When it proved successful he refused to patent the v

I met Barbara Bush just once.   She and her husband were passing me in a hall on their way from a private luncheon and going to a campaign event.   They both greeted me with a brief moment of graciousness while hustling down the corridor.   My immediate impression of the moment was that the camera was not kind to Barbara Bush.   She always seemed so much older than her tall, slender, chiseled husband.   Yet, when seeing them side by side in person they looked much more “of an age.”   George looked older, Barbara younger, thinner, with bright skin and an aura of vitality.   She looked me in the eye, extended her hand and said, “Thank you for all of your work on the campaign.”   She even waited for my response instead of the patented “come and go” handshake of the seasoned politician.               It was October of 1992 and Washington University in St. Louis had been selected as the site of the first debate between President George H. W. Bush and Gov. Bill Clinton.   I had been a

Carmina Burana is an intense piece of music.   It is both sensuous (of or having to do with the senses) and sensual (erotic).   On Friday evening, April 6 th , the Valley Symphony Orchestra and Chorale presented Carmina Burana and gave full play to both those aspects.   But this is not an article about their exquisite performance.   This is about a twist added to their production that was all RGV, all inspiration and all that any one could ask for.   But, I am getting ahead of myself.             The first thing to know is that I am totally unschooled and unskilled in all areas of music.   I took violin lessons for two years while in elementary school, carrying my precious school-issued violin to and from school in the middle of Colorado winters without ever realizing what the cold was doing to the strings.   I would get home and saw away at that poor, innocent violin for hours without ever realizing that the fiddle was grossly out of tune.   At the end of the second year the ins