DOCTOR WHO?

Doctor Who?

A True Story by Izzy Sommers, MD

About ten years ago, here in Welland, I started writing letters to the editor. Most of them were certainly pet peeves but some of them were complimentary to the city fathers regarding their sprucing up of the city and making it safer. After perhaps 10 letters published in as many weeks, including a Longfellow type, 50 line poem about a Sunday walk in one of our parks one Sunday morning, some of my acquaintances in town started calling me Joseph. They were somewhat disbelieving when I said, “No, my real name is Izzy, really.”

After about a year of this, I noticed that a frequent letter writer to the editor in the Welland Tribune was Joseph Somers. Joseph called me one morning and laughed. “I think I’m getting blamed for what you wrote and I’m sure you’re getting blamed for what I wrote.” Joseph and I have become good email friends in the meantime. About 3 years ago, I was getting little response from my letters and mentioned this to Joseph. He was very complimentary about my ideas and writing, and said it would be a great loss to him and the community, if I stopped. I still get little response except from Joseph, but now I also get little or no response from The Washington Post, The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Toronto Sun and the Toronto Globe and Mail, as well. It’s actually a lot of fun.

One of the reporters for the Washington Post did send me an email in response to some comments about Obama. It simply said, “well said!” It made my day, my week and my whole career as a letter writer. The most fun is the open Question and Answer forum on Canadian Yahoo! The feedback is often instantaneous and very funny. I have the unreasonable distinction of having had about 60 letters published in the Welland Tribune, over a hundred posts on Yahoo’s Q&A service and over a hundred letters posted in various electronic newspaper services, especially the Washington Post, which makes it most convenient to post one’s comments directly under the articles of the reporters, some of whom are very well known, like George Will and Armin Specter. I even have a published letter about zebras in the Canadian Reader’s Digest.


THE END

© Izzy Sommers, MD, retired, Welland, Canada, June 13, 2009

Nicotine Revisited

canadizzy wrote:
Dear Lyndsey Layton,

Thank you for your excellent reporting of this controversial subject.

I believe the push to stop folks from using tobacco, a source of nicotine, is like getting them to throw the baby out with the bath water. Nicotine, like caffeine, morphine and alcohol, have been used for centuries by entire civilizations to reduce stress and perform ceremonies. Nicotinic acid is a naturally occuring substance that comes from plants and is accepted by the brain and nervous system in a healthy, normal, physiological system. There are receptor sites, with which we are born that accept it in a kind of biological receptor site wherein the nicotine locks into the cell membrane and induces the cells to produce biologic substances which stimulate brain cell growth and brain cell function. The North American Aboriginals used the "Peace Pipe" to make discussions of conflicts and histories more acceptable to the participants, mainly within the elderly population. The medical community used nicotinic acid in the form of pills and elixirs to treat stroke victims with success in the early 20th century. Studies show that folks that use tobacco products have more brain pathways and play Euchre better that those that don't. The same is true of caffeine product users. In a nursing home, the elderly folks that smoke and drink coffee tea or chocolate, do crosswords better than those that don't. Cigar and pipe smokers live two years longer than those that don't, and so on. It seems to me the problem with cigarettes is their adulteration with nicotine and other substances and the use of cigarette paper which burns with the tobacco and produces toxins like carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. It is conceivable that cigarettes with unadulterated tobacco, wrapped in tobacco leaves, would be completely harmless and would provide the benefits of a natural, positive psychoactive substance. If cigarette manufacturers are not allowed to poison us with commercially driven additives, including the paper, then all would be honky-dory.

There is not enough space in the world of electronic newspapers to cover the wide spectrum of problems introduced by profit driven manufacturers who have no moral inhibition to make products that are untested and dangerous. I will only give as an example that before antihistamines were sold, no child ever died of asthma. In the past few years, the warnings for use in asthmatic children and adults have finally been heralded. I daresay that many more lives would be saved if strong alcohol, for which the brain has no receptor sites, would be banned, rather than cigars and pipes. Untold numbers of deaths are due to alcohol abuse with a resultant high cost to everyone else. Banning hand guns and gasoline engine cars would save more lives. Banning nuclear bomb manufacturing would save us from annihilation. Bringing back good beer and good wine, steam cars and hand to hand combat would be a blessing.

Thank you in advance for allowing me to post these humble comments right underneath your fine article.

Sincerely,

Izzy Sommers, MD, retired,
Welland, Canada
6/13/2009 8:39:09 AM

North Korea Says

THE WASHINGTON POST

washingtonpost.com > World > Special Reports > North Korea


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North Korea Says It Will Start Enriching Uranium
TOKYO, June 13 -- North Korea adamantly denied for seven years that it had a program for making nuclear weapons from enriched uranium.
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By Blaine Harden [USA and Stella Kim, Korea]
COMMENTS:

canadizzy wrote:
Dear Mr. Harden and Ms. Kim,

Hasn't anyone considered the great “solution” to the "problem" with North Korea, reunification of Korea. Like the split of Germany during the Cold War between USSR and USA and their respective allies, the split of North and South Korea has had little advantage in terms of progress of North Korea. Commercially, it seems to me, the South Koreans have been far more successful in world trade and politics than the North Koreans. I would never have believed how resistant the East German folks were to reunification, but then again, I'm sure I was not privy to all the information. And, I’m sure that my view of which is more successful is slanted by the political milieu in which I live. What I did know was that there were many Germans in the neutral country of Switzerland in 1968 that were politicking for reunification. Is there a movement for reunification for the Koreans? It would not be simple or uncomplicated. It would be hard work, internally and internationally. It would, it seems to me, to be the ultimate solution to the problems of Korea, both North and South. Certainly it would be better than annihilation. The "areas" of interest for the Russians and the Americans would best be dissolved, I believe, so that unreasonable leaders in one area are handled internally rather than by the people of the world at large. It makes sense to me. I'm not sure why it doesn't make sense to everyone else, on both sides. I’m willing to consider that I don’t know the feelings of the Koreans themselves..

Thank you in advance for this article and for allowing me to post my comments directly under yours. Canada and the USA split at the time of the American Revolution. The conflict with the English and their colonies was over taxes and land ownership, I believe. The continued problems between the USA and Canada still continue under the recent NAFTA provisions. Border crossings and trans-border trade are presently getting tougher, rather than better, but overall, the relationships between Canada and the USA have allowed both to flourish fairly well. Certainly the same can be said for the artificially divided East and West Germany and North and South Vietnam. Korea needs to be a united, successful country, as all countries do, solving its own problems with it's own cultures and its own language. The North and South Koreans would re-unite their families and work together for commercial success, better golfers, inner and outer peace and prevention of annihilation, I believe. This would allow the East and West to be more co-operative and help them out rather than remain antagonistic.

Sincerely,

Izzy Sommers, MD, retired, Welland, Canada.
6/14/2009 4:31:25 AM

Ahmadinejad Vows

Ahmadinejad Vows New Start As Clashes Flare

TEHRAN, June 13 -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared a "new beginning" for Iran late Saturday after he was declared victor in the presidential election, but as he spoke on national television violent demonstrations rolled through several areas of Tehran. Supporters of defeated candidate Mir...
By Thomas Erdbrink

THE WASHINGTON POST
TODAY'S NEWSPAPER
washingtonpost.com > World > Middle East > Iran

OPINION:

canadizzy wrote:
Now, this is what free elections are all about! Americans and Canadians should take note of the passions that can be fired by really good choices at election time. We could learn something of what enthusiastic elections and candidates could engender. This is "hot" stuff and gets everyone involved in the running of his own country. Of course, now they have to learn to run their own country and not try to run the countries of other folks... Thanks for listening.

6/14/2009 4:47:48 AM

The Chambermaid of Elsinore

A Silly Sonnette by Izzy Sommers


Methinks the governor of Elsinore
Adored the chambermaid from Corridor
Who loved the Spanish born Conquistador
Who yearned for Isidore, the Matador.

Suffice to say, one moonlit night of love,
The super novas, brightly from above
Shone for a busy Izzy’s turtle dove
When Ellsinore’s maid made a little shove.

The maid, whose name, Penelope entranced
The Governor who did a whirling dance,
Removing all his clothes when Penny pranced
With her Conquistador in Paris, France.

The maid was made by every man who dared
To pay high homage to the scared old Laird.


THE END



© Izzy Sommers, MD
Welland, Canada
June 2, 2009

Letter to The Washington Post re Palin

canadizzy wrote:
Dear Ms. Parker,

I'm not an American with a vote but I would vote for Palin without hesitation and without reservation. She’s fresh and painfully honest about her inability to toe the line and learn the language. She has her own language and her own agenda. She is unaffected by the likes of Cheney, Gingrich and McCain, who have the demonstrated power to blackball her.. If one of her Republican commanders would have recognized the value of a Palin to them, they would have smiled benignly and laughed along with everyone else including a tremendous crowd of fans that she accumulated. I judge her to be a stranger in the Promised Land, a Type B personality amongst a lot of Type capital A's and a master of being down to Earth. She speaks the language of the people and has shunned political rhetoric in favour of street, American English. The comedians of SNL recognized her value to their show and ran with it.

There's no doubt in my mind that she is a master at getting sympathy and votes from hard working, tax burdened citizens, a group not often touched by Republicans. As you said, she rivaled Obama for air time and newspaper space and fund raising and no wonder. Her attitude and aptitude attracts the common man and striving to be independent woman, not the bankers, administrators, brokers or insurers making all those bucks and hoarding all that gold. All McCain would have had to do was to lose his school teaching, fathering, preaching and moralizing attitude toward her and sat back and won the presidency. That's what I said last year and I'm saying it this year. Let her be and she'll win against Obama, easily. Try and make her into a Republican animal and she'll balk and refuse to participate. The Republicans would do well to get in line behind her instead of standing in front of her, impeding her successes and putting her in a protective pen.. At present, the old boys club of Republicans are going to be annihilated unless they see the writing on the wall. A fatherly, priestly, moralizing leader is not what the Americans require today. They need a free spirit and an honest, plain-talking one to lead them to the Promised Land and to a fulfillment of the American Dream for everyone.

Sarah Palin has the first historic Republican groundswell of admiring Americans for her spunk and honest values. She could win it all with very little help from her fellow Republicans. She’s not as smart as Thomas Jefferson, JFK or Bill Clinton, but she has the stuff of which Ben Franklin and Jimmy Carter was made and she seems to have more fun.

Thank you for listening and thank you for allowing me to post my comments directly under yours. Your reporting was excellent and I appreciate your candid observations. Best personal regards.

Sincerely,

Izzy Sommers, MD, retired, Welland, Canada.
6/10/2009 2:39:35 PM
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