Why Doctors Write*

ofri bookBeacon Press director Helene Atwan explores the relationship between editor and author with Danielle Ofri, a practicing physician and the editor of the Bellevue Literary Review, a literary journal focused on illness, health, and healing.

How does writing change Ofri’s practice of medicine?  How does editing the Bellevue Literary Review inform her view of her hospital and her patients?   How has Helene Atwan’s sense of the power of writing changed through her work with Danielle Ofri?

Danielle Ofri  is an Associate Professor of Medicine at New York University School of Medicine but her clinical home is at Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the country. Her newest book is What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine.

Helene Atwan has been director of Beacon Press since 1995.  She serves on the board of PEN-New England and the National Coalition against Censorship.

Recorded March 26, 2014   This program in our series  My Life Touched by Art, is supported by a grant from the Cambridge Arts Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

* Here are seven  reasons why doctors write!

Remembering Herb Vetter

Herb VetterHerbert Vetter created Cambridge Forum in 1967 when he began his service as Minister-at-Large at First Parish (Unitarian Universalist) in Cambridge.  Designed to provide a space for public discussion of touchstone social and political issues, in its early days Cambridge Forum hosted such controversial figures as then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara discussing the war in Vietnam. Other early speakers included Buckminster Fuller, Derek Bok, Shirley Chisholm, Norman Lear, and John Kenneth Galbraith.  The roster of speakers at Cambridge Forum from its beginning is truly outstanding and a tribute to Herb’s vision of the important work of the Forum to engage individuals in a deeper understanding of the forces at work in 20th-century American society.  His insights and his dedication to that vision created enormous respect for Cambridge Forum, an invaluable legacy for a small independent non-profit.

Herb was deeply committed to advancing several important discussions;  the anti-nuclear movement  and the environmental movement remained close to his heart throughout his life.  He also loved poetry, a love which shone clearly in his programs about Japanese Haiku, the poetry of Khalil Gibran, and the prayers of Rabindranath Tagore.  A forum he always wanted to present, but never found a way to justify under the Cambridge Forum mission, would have featured Duke Ellington’s music.

Pat Suhrcke, former CF director writes:

“I became director of Cambridge Forum in 1997, almost a decade after Herb had retired as director of the Forum and was beginning his work on the Harvard Square Library.  So I did not work with him on a daily basis, but he was unfailingly supportive and helpful.  He made it very easy to follow in his footsteps; he introduced me to a number of cultural organizations in the Boston area and clued me in to the history of the forum and its relationships with the Lowell Institute, the Veatch Foundation, the Harvard Chaplains, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.  He used his work with the Harvard Square Library to promote Cambridge Forum.  His enthusiasm and his faith in the value of both projects bubbled over.  And his clarity of vision–about what was important, about who had something worthwhile to say–never wavered.  I remember an early conversation, when Herb told me he really wanted Cambridge Forum to produce an annual program on :”God in the Modern World.”  I was pretty certain that the kind of speaker he imagined fell somewhere between Cotton Mather and Friedrich Nietzsche, but I didn’t know Herb well enough then to guess where in that rather large gap he might be headed.  So we chatted a little while longer while I tried to divine his goal.  Finally he told me, “You know, there are some pretty punk gods out there,” and I knew then that he wasn’t interested in dealing with any punk gods.  They were no challenges for the modern age or for him.

I treasure the notes Herb would send me telling me how much he enjoyed the Forum programs I was putting together.  One in particular I remember thanked me for finding a way to introduce more arts programming into the Cambridge Forum schedule.  Maybe now there is a way to present that Duke Ellington Forum.”

Framing Military Occupation: Close-Ups of Daily Life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Occupied TerritoriesThe media give us views of the Middle East influenced by politics, international law, and distance.  But what does life in the Middle East feel like on the ground?  Physician Alice Rothchild of American Jews for a Just Peace – Boston leads a panel discussion on living under military occupation in the occupied Palestinian Territories.  Panelists Dr. Alan Meyers, Tali Ruskin, and Laila Bernstein from the AJJP Health and Human Rights Project present their observations of daily life in the West Bank and East Jerusalem made during their visits as part of human rights delegations over the past decade.

Recorded March 5, 2014

Co-sponsored by the Middle East Education Group of First Parish in Cambridge.