Words have an impact. Whether the speaker is a politician, an entertainer, or a blogger, they must think about the words they choose–and choose carefully. I try to do that, but despite my scrupulous care, I made a blunder in my word choices in a previous blog and I want to apologize for it.

You may recall my last posting conveyed some thoughts on my profession, ranging from Sherlock Holmes to surgeon’s “fingerprints. And in a section dealing with statistics, I said “Some days every prostate I look at will be malignant and I feel like Dr. Death.”

I really should have known better. Within a few hours of posting, I received the following from Marty, a friend, and prostate cancer warrior:

What? 

No, no.  Better to realize you are giving these men (myself included!) a 2nd chance at life as they and their doctors learn that they now need to enter the “treatment phase” of their now discovered prostate cancer.  

And B’ruch HaShem may that treatment extend their lives for many productive years to come!
 

We MUST stay positive.

Marty was so right. The diagnosis of prostate cancer is absolutely not a death sentence. By far, most men diagnosed with prostatic cancer will live long and fruitful lives, enjoying careers, family, and free time.

So instead of referring to myself as Dr. Death, I should have chosen an honorific like Dr. Decision Tree (I know, I know, it doesn’t have much zing.) My diagnosis is a key piece of the data set that guides the patient and his medical team as to whether to treat (surgery, radiation, hormonal modulation, immunotherapy) or not to treat (active surveillance) the patient’s cancer.

(And while we are talking about prostate cancer, here is my annual plug for PSA testing. Ask your physician if it is right for you and the men in your life.)

Marty, you have improved my mindset. I will watch my words with the focus of a laser beam. You reminded me that, as one of my previous partners used to say, “We are pathologists. We save lives!”

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August Wilson, described as the theater’s Poet of Black America, is the playwright that Goodman Theatre brings to the stage in his first installment of a ten-play catalog known as The Pittsburgh Cycle explored 100 years of the African American experience; Gem of the Ocean. Most of August Wilson’s plays were set in the Pittsburgh Hill District, with only Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in 1927, Chicago.  

Gem of the Ocean is set in 1904, where Aunt Ester, a character seen throughout many of Wilson’s plays, claiming to be 285-year-old, is the matriarch. She owns a dwelling in the Pittsburgh Hill District at 1839 Wylie Avenue, allowing wayward people seeking peace and a clean soul to stay. We met Eli, Aunt Ester’s caretaker of the house, and Solly, Two Kings, a formerly enslaved person, and Eli’s comrade, who were Underground Railroad helpers for the Union Army. Solly has an unusual business of collecting Dog waste, which he called “Pure,” used for leather cleaning. Black Mary, Ester’s housekeeper, who she is painstakingly preparing as her Soul cleansing protege, is Caesar Wilks’s sister. Caesar is a baker, landlord, and oppressive negro policeman who believes it’s his civic duty to keep all the Negro’s in line. The last frequenter in Aunt Ester’s home is Rutherford Selig, a peddler that sells rocks, pots, pans, and anything he can get his hands on to sell.

The people know aunt Ester as a healer, so when a young man named Citizen Barlow does something that vexes his soul, he comes to her abode seeking a cleansing. Eli tells him to come back on Tuesday, but Citizen needs help now, so he sneaks in through a window and learns from Aunt Ester about a journey he must take on a legendary slave boat, Gem of the Ocean, to see the mythological City of Bones.  

The Gem of The Ocean tells the story of Blacks’ plight endured by white hands that caused riots across Pittsburgh’s Hill District. As one man refuses to confess to a crime of stealing a bucket of nails he didn’t commit, he jumps into the river and drowns. His refusal to take the blame, and a city already in chaos is drastically changed by the decision of two men in Aunt Ester’s home. 

Directed by the legendary, accomplished, and one of most influential directors in Chicago’s history, Chuck Smith, August Wilson’s Gem of The Ocean where we journey to the City of Bones, a spiritual grave within the ocean built from the bones of Africans who died aboard slave ships. Wilson, a fantastic storyteller, is like the Moses of history who uses his words to burn into our soul the horrific stain of America’s past that should never be forgiven. Smith pulled in several vets to the stage and Goodman Theatre with the cast of Lisa Gaye Dixon, Sydney Charles, Gary Houston, and Let’s Play, actor of the year for 2021, Kelvin Roston, Jr. 

In his debut at Goodman, Sharif Atkins, an accomplished theater and television resume, started as the soul-cleansing rascal of a man, Citizen Barlow. A.C. Smith is returning to his role as Eli, which he played at Court Theater. In addition, Smith and James A Williams, who brilliantly plays Solly, Two Kings, have performed in several August Wilson plays. 

Millions have seen August Wilson’s ten-play catalog known as The Pittsburgh Cycle, but for you first-timers, a spoiler alert below about the ending of the Gem of the Ocean. 

The play ends with Caesar accusing Solly of arson and eventually killing Solly, Two Kings. At the same time, Citizen carries on Solly’s journey taking his coat, hat, and walking cane to continue helping others to the (deceptive) promise of freedom. 

Goodman’s Gem of the Ocean starts slowly to the point where many seem indifferent and incurious; however, the ending scene sparked their curiosity before intermission. The pace increases in the second half of this three-hour and fifteen-minute play, highlighted by an astounding City of Bones performance. Goodman imaging featuring the faces of enslaved people who drowned floating from the walls was magnificent.

Regardless of how you feel about the pace of the play, the audience shouldn’t miss the timely message of August Wilson Gem of The Ocean. America needs to understand and accept what its ancestors’ did and face the truth about the crime of slavery and the wrong it played that still plagues African-Americans today.  

Let’s Play recommends Gem of The Ocean at the Goodman Theater.  

Goodman Theatre

Gem of the Ocean

By August Wilson

Directed by Chuck Smith

January 22nd – February 27th

He’s got a Chicago and Illinois connection.

I’ve never seen or heard a pianist play with such energy, determination, beauty and skill. Conrad Tao brought the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra’s house down with his performance of  Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor.

Here’s a review:

The concert opened with the Mozart concerto, featuring soloist Conrad Tao on piano. From the outset it was clear that Mr. Tao was approaching Mozart from a wide artistic perspective. Playing with an unapologetically big-boned sonority and deploying an extremely wide range of color and dynamics, Mr. Tao revealed Mozart not as a pretty porcelain figure on a pedestal, but as a passionate, turbulent, all-too-human composer whose emotional landscape sweeps from lofty serenity to deep fear, doubt, and even regret. This perspective shined a light into the more complex and difficult emotional side of this composer, which lesser performances all too often shy away from. As we have come to expect over the years, Music Director Courtney Lewis proved to be a sharp and responsive concerto accompanist, holding things tightly together and functioning as an equal partner with the soloist.  Following the concerto Mr. Tao treated the audience to an encore. It was a piece written in 2006 by American composer Elliot Carter entitled “Caténaires,” a highly chromatic and virtuosic tour de force which brought the audience jumping back to its feet with applause.  

Right, what he said. This is not what you might expect to hear during a regional symphony. But the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra is a mighty fine one, attracting performers, like Tao, from throughout America and beyond.

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Now even individual letters to avoid saying the entire offensive word are verboten.

 According to the Cook County Record:

A law professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago has fought back against a perceived attempt by university leadership, at the behest of certain allegedly offended students, to allegedly humiliate the professor into accepting punishments, including suspensions, denial of a pay raise and required diversity training, over his use of example redacted racial epithets in an exam question dealing with the law and racial discrimination….

According to the complaint, Kilborn, on the exam, had asked students to analyze a piece of evidence, an account from a former manager that the manager had “quit her job at Employer after she attended a meeting in which other managers expressed their anger at Plaintiff, calling her a ‘n —-’ and ‘b —-’ (profane expressions for African Americans and women) and vowed to get rid of her.”

So, these law students were supposed to analyze a case without knowing exactly what the plaintiff was allegedly?

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