You Should Know; American Heart Association and The Mikado

Good evening and welcome to the show this evening with Valentine's Day as close as it is. I think it's very appropriate that we're going to talk about the heart today. We're going to talk about the human heart and I have with me Dr. Robert Timmons and Wallace Maxwell. We're going to talk about the American Heart Association here in Portellus and some of the things that are going on. Wallace, I'm going to start with you. I understand we have a fun raising event coming up. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yes. On February 20th, beginning at 9 o'clock in the morning, we're going to have the jump rope for heart, I think traditional. This is my first year involvement with it but traditionally individuals who participate go out gather signatures and pledges and based on the number of or how long that they jump rope, they get a predetermined

pre-plaged amount of money but we'll be running from 9 in the morning until 11 on the 20th again and if people happen to be having nothing to do that morning, we invite you to come on out. I'm sure we'll have a couple of extra jump ropes. Okay, lots of fun and good exercises and things. Lots of good. They can expect to have usually children hit me up. Are there adults who participate in the team? We have some students that I managed to con into coming out there. Okay. A certain inducements that I use. I know it's always a lot of fun. Dr. Timins, why the American Heart Association? I mean, we keep hearing on television that's not the disease of choice anymore. We've got several others that we're talking about. We're worried about E. Coli and telephones that might hurt us and those kinds of things. How come we still need to support the

American Heart Association? Well done. Heart disease still is the leading killer in the United States and we are trying to make a real effort to control it and certainly to prevent premature heart disease and I was reading a report the other day that said we may not be too far away from keeping people living for 400 years. Of course, I'm not sure we want to live 400 years. But if we do that, obviously we have to control heart disease and I think the fact that the population is aging and in many instances aging very productively is still working. In fact, the government is thinking of pushing back the Social Security age and people now are employed well into their 70s. A lot of this is due to the fact of the efforts of the American Heart Association to begin to control heart disease to a greater extent. I think this came home to us during the Korean War when a number of young troops in 1819, 20, 21 years of age were killed in action and post-mortem examination showed that tremendous number of these young men had significant coronary artery disease at a very

young age and one would wonder if many of those deaths weren't cardiac precipitated other than some of the injuries they received during battle. We still haven't totally conquered this. I won't mention any names, but I know of two people just recently that have died of heart attacks at late 30s, early 40s. That's a very scary situation, I think. Well, I think we're beginning to recognize, in fact, there was just a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine that looked at a group of young people. The average age was 22 and they looked at, I think there were 7,000 individuals that they studied over up to 46 years and they found that those with higher cholesterol levels, i.e. those above 200 milligrams per desolate had a significant incidence of heart disease later in life and some of them even prematurely. So we can probably would begin to identify people fairly early.

Yeah, it might be a good idea to want people to. When you're young, if you happen to be really slender, that's still something you might have to worry about because I've seen my father died of heart problems and I've seen pictures of him when he was a young man in his 20s and 30s. He was very slender, very slim, still ended up with the complications and the problems. Very much so. We're beginning to learn through the contributions of the American Heart Association, the research, the educational efforts, a tremendous amount about the pathogenesis or the development of coronary artery disease and arterial disease in general. It's a very complex topic but we know a lot of factors and we haven't been able to reprogram individuals genes but we can sometimes reprogram the expression of those genes by altering the environment i.e. what you eat, how you exercise, how you live and so on. Speaking of altering the environment, we'll get Wallace back in the conversation here. You have an intermural program at Eastern. Do you think that's helpful for

these young people? Oh, absolutely. One of the themes I repeat over and over and over is it's very important to have some sort of activity that you enjoy. If you're doing something you enjoy you'll stick with it. Be that walking, jogging, participating in team sports, whatever happens to suit you. We encourage people to pursue that. We're in the early planning stages putting together a wellness program which will provide people instruction in nutrition and stress management as well as exercise. The total picture. We encourage people to find something and be active in it. Good exercise tends to be a habit and it's a good idea for them to develop it at a younger age like your college students. If I'm finding it's the students who don't do

anything that I'm concerned about. They sit in a dorm and watch TV and become wider and wider and more sedative. We want to find something to encourage those folks to come out and participate in something. If I don't offer it they're welcome to come by my office and if we don't offer it I'll start a program. It's totally winks. We'll start totally winks. We want them active. That's a good idea. Dr. Tim, you mentioned living 400 years. There are a lot of decisions I'd like to remake if I'm going to live 400 years. What are some new things in the field? You read the medical journals. What are some new things that are coming along in the field of cardiology? Well, cardiology has been for the past 10 to 20 years. A lot of technology has been

present in a lot of invasive type of procedures from the heart bypass procedures to the angioplasty and now they're looking and actually putting stainless steel stents and arteries. In fact, last night I read a report from one of the cardiologists in Lubbock and there's a patient I sent over who had had a bypass before. He said that he was a little reluctant to go back in and try to do an angioplasty or repeat bypass on this individual but he'd be a great candidate for one of these stainless steel stents which are just circular things that you just slip down into the arteries and push the plaque aside and kind of grows in the arteries so you can imagine in a few years you'll take pictures of someone's chest and they'll be a series of little round things circulating around or in the outline of the major vasculature of the heart. So that's an area. Lasers have been used to try to elude away plaques. Various other rotor

rotor type devices are available that they're working on. Of course, sometimes you can't get down into the real small vessels you know with these devices. There's good evidence that even strict dietary restriction, drug therapy, exercise can even at some points reverse atherosclerosis. In fact, there is an animal model, the salmon, which does reverse hardening of the arteries or atherosclerosis and coronary vessels within the fish at different times in its life cycle and researchers have been following that very carefully. So I think there's better drugs out there. There's newer drugs, more effective, less side effects which really do control cholesterol tremendously well and are going to make a real dent in the problem. Plus, I think people's awareness eating habits, the effort to try to develop chicken eggs that are very

low in cholesterol. I think a farm up in Minnesota that's pioneering that research in that area. So we're all clued in to what needs to be done. It's a matter of just getting it done and I would division that at some point in time we may be able to take care of all of this by giving you a little pill, clean your arteries out a couple times a year and you're off to the races. I'd like to go back to the laser and the artery. I've often thought about that as a possibility, you know, just shoot that stuff loose from the inside of those arteries. But a little chunk of cholesterol is there a possibility of that getting into the heart and maybe blocking some of the smaller vessels. Yeah, that's technically one of the problems because what happens in many of those things is that those little pieces that are laser to rotor rooted off by means of small high powered drills are sent downstream so to speak. So they yes can clog up very small vessels now.

They may be vessels that aren't of any significance or where they may cause a small myocardial infarction which you know wouldn't cause a sudden cardiac death and those are the kind of things you have to risk benefit ratio away and look at the technology to see how you can devise a system that will remove it and extract it at the same time. Okay. What sorts of things when we collect for the heart association what sorts of things do the monies go to help with in terms of the research and that sort of thing? Well the monies go you know to a major researchers throughout the country that apply to the American Heart Association for grants and that's you know all over the country. A good bit of the money goes towards education and that's where the money comes back into the local community in efforts. In fact I see you have some booklets there that are some of the things that the heart association would send out to people or make available to

people or if people requested from local chapters of the Heart Association different different types of educational materials that you would need in order to better understand and better regulate your life. I think you know the wellness program that Wally talked about are excellent ways of getting people involved in understanding you know what they can do. You know many of these diseases are things you can control yourself to a certain extent. And unfortunately once someone has a massive heart attack or once someone has the heart attack you know it's kind of regrouping and what can we do in this situation. We want to try to prevent that heart attack as long as we can. Do you get to see people that are kind of in danger of having a heart attack? Are you as a doctor able to get to them before this happens or is it usually an after-the-fact type of thing when you finally get to them? Well we're getting more to them

beforehand. I mean you know we do a stress test and that's an effort to try to identify people have a problem that we can get them evaluated and something done ahead of time before they have the heart attack. I think people coming to the office are much more tuned into chest pain various types of cardiac abnormalities that they may be experiencing and they need to seek medical help rather than sort of just passing it off as indigestion. So in a way in essence the education is working. I think the education is working tremendously people are aware you know what they have to do and sometimes they all can't do that. They aren't some motivated but I think most people are and I think you know you look at the statistics the incidence of death from heart disease is falling even on still extremely high. It's less than it was 10 years 20 years ago. Okay so the program's working. Well I want to thank both of you very much Wallace. Thank you. Hope you have lots of jump ropers over there. Yes, lots of people out there. And you folks out there support those

jump ropers when they come by to ask you to pledge you go ahead and pledge and Dr. Timons always have a pleasure to have you on the show. Dr. Timons is with Roosevelt General Hospital as well as a physician here in town. And thank you both very much. Good luck with the program. Thank you. And well we're on the subject of hearts. We have a romance story coming up at the University Theatre here at Eastern Mexico University. The Makado is being produced and Genie Wozencraft or Nellis has joined me here on the set and Genie what are the dates for? The dates we start Thursday the 18th run Thursday Friday Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon we have a matinee. Okay. How big a cast doesn't Makado? The cast is about I think 35. Big cast. That's a big cast. We have one of the strongest courses I've heard

in a long time. And some some people that folks in the area that have followed Eastern's music department for theatre might know as well. The Makado understand is Richard Cage and Marley Cage is doing Katasha and then Chuck Tipton from up in Clovis is doing Coco the Lord High Executioner. And a few more people Jesse Johnson was in once upon a Mantras last year. Carol Rethmell is one of our graduates who is singing Yum Yum. And then some other let me see Brad Bullock and Marcus Tharp, Jessica Foster, Andrea Divensonzo all make up a really strong cast. Okay. Let's talk for a minute about the genre. It's a British comic light opera. Yes. Written around the turn of the century. Yeah written during Victorian times and very much full of satirical commentary about Victorian society's foibles. About that time everybody was

fascinated with anything oriental. And so this operetta pokes a lot of fun at British stereotypes of orientals. How do they think about what orientals were like? Yeah, how ridiculous the British picture of. Okay. And of course written by Gilbert and Sullivan. Yes. And they did several of these light operas. They did quite a few. It was interesting. I was reading and Sullivan really thought of himself as a very serious composer. And he wrote a lot of serious operas. He wrote eyelengthy and a number of others. And they never went anywhere. Nobody wants to see the serious stuff. The thing they're well known for is the comic opera, the pattern songs. How fast can you sing how many words? It was it was it was as popular then as say some of our television sitcoms would be the Rosen hard to think of the Maccato as being the Rosen of the late 19th century. But

indeed the people hum the tunes. Oh yeah people would go around as a matter of fact one of the one of the warm-ups that I've I've learned long before I even know new who Gilbert and Sullivan work comes right out of the Maccato. It's a pattern to sit in solemn silence. And it's kind of a tongue twister. Yeah. And what what do you suppose a tribute to fact that this is still popular today? The Maccato is still being produced in a lot of places. Oh it is and take offs of the Maccato too. The cool Maccato, the swing Maccato, things like that. I think it's very very accessible. It's not it's not even really good music. It's just easily listened to music. You can listen to it. It's it's funny every time you hear it you hear another pun that you didn't catch the first time. It's just really really light-hearted and allows people to really laugh at themselves a lot.

You know it's it's not like going to an opera where you have to sit there and and know what's happening musically and you can go away humming little bits of the tunes and just really enjoy yourself. Now as a director your specialty is voice. Are you going to be working really hard on those vocal passages and things? Oh yes. What is interested in how a director approaches things? I like to watch the way a direct different directors. Are you working hard with the cast on their on their vocalization and those sorts of things? Yes. Gilbert and Sullivan really isn't terribly difficult music to sing. It's more difficult to act because within one song you may have five different moods, five changes of attitude or something like that and you have to have a quick tongue really fast mouth because the words go by so fast and so we work a lot on getting the words out even more than the music because the music came to the cast very very quickly. You know they

came back after Christmas vacation with most of their music learned so more important is working the dramatic elements into it. What about costumes? How are the costumes going to be? They are going to be gorgeous. Gary Burton is building all of the costumes and they are very very authentic in appearance and just front I've only seen little bits and pieces as they've been appearing in rehearsal and they are beautiful really stunning. I think visually it's going to be a gorgeous show. Set wise. Again I haven't seen the whole set just what I've heard of what Phil is doing with it. It's going to be a beautiful set. Okay we should mention that we're talking about Phil Missy. Phil Missy and Phil Design said has done some really gorgeous I think sets in the I think everything feels done. They've been really really very pretty and pleasant to look at. This is one of those shows when people come in a tender just they're going to kind of walk out and go

I can guarantee them that. I can too. Because of the way I know Gilbert and Sullivan and I know that y'all will do a wonderful job with it. We just want to kind of encourage people to participate in and stress that it's you don't have to dress up in your your furs and diamonds for a night at the opera. It's very much a fun night. You can dress in your kimono but. And what about a compliment? Okay we're going to use a pit ensemble with woodwinds which were Sullivan's favorite instruments. He wrote most of the score most of the fun stuff in the score for the woodwinds. We're going to be using woodwinds brass and synthesizer and percussion so it'll be a pretty full pit ensemble. Okay and they'll be down and we are at the big on the big stage. On the big stage with the orchestra down in the cellar. Lots and lots of fun. Thirty people on stage. That's going to be. Thirty people on stage. That's going to be really something to see. Let's talk for

a second about you as the director. You've been doing some really neat things here lately over the over the last few years. What are some of the singing engagements that you've had recently? Well recently I sang in the premier performance of the El Paso Opera Company. It's a new opera company that's gotten started down in El Paso and we opened it with the Gala concert and dinner in September and that was a lot of fun and as a result I have some performances in Mexico and for the Mexican government to do coming up. That's been a lot of fun and good. Do we have some good vocal students this year? A lot of new freshmen and sophomores who came in who are exceptionally talented and then of course my opera classmen who are talented as well. And there may be some young people out there that are considering various areas that they want

to go into. Does Eastern have a good program for vocal music? I think they do. Eastern has several advantages. Number one you get a lot of individualized treatment which you do in just about all of the areas here. Some larger universities you have classes of three and four hundred and here you have you can actually get to know your teacher and your teacher can get to know you. And then here also we are small enough that people have opportunities to perform a lot just about as much as they can want and yet large enough that we can do something that like the Makato and do it well. Okay so that's a really good opportunity for the students as well. Getting back to the Gilbert and Sullivan thing years ago I went to well I was in high school as a matter of fact I went to a production of the Pirates of Penzance at Hobart College in Geneva, New York and their production was just outstanding and it was partially because of that that I decided I want to be a theater

major. I thought it would be so much fun to do something like that. And I really really think the cast has had a lot of fun with this show. I think some of them when they were first cast thought me and an operator and I don't think this works but I really just watching them I think they've really gotten to enjoy themselves with it. When you do something like this you have the cast all set out. How do you go about getting everybody ready? Do you just block them with the lines first? Operators something I've done some musicals but not operators. Do you block them with the lines first and then do the music or do you do the songs first? How do you go about? Well really for this one we did the we did the music first because there's not much dialogue. Most of the dialogue is sung. Most of the action takes place in the songs. So we worked very very intensively on music first as a matter of fact before we cast it before Christmas so that people would have a

chance to learn it over Christmas and we had coaching sessions on the music with with anyone who wanted to come in so that they could come in and then second what we worked was the choreographer came in and worked the movement for the songs and then we worked the dialogue in last which there's not all that much dialogue but there's a lot of movement there's a lot of singing so it worked better that way. And who is working with the choreography? Kelly Westerfield is the choreographer. And I bet that's quite a that must be quite a task. Oh it is. It is you know having to remember that not only does she want people to move and make the pictures that she wants but they also have to sing at the same time and that's been a challenge for a lot of the the students who've never had to move and sing at the same time it's kind of like two in gum and walking. Not only that but when you add the costume which is about you said you've seen a few pieces

how long will it be before we have a full costume rehearsal? Probably this weekend I think the full costumes come in Sunday and they're having to deal with things like you can't take big long strides like you can in American costumes or in jeans you can't do that in a full length kimono so it's it's been interesting the ladies have had to learn how to walk with little teeny steps and long sleeves that get away and in the way and obi's that stick out behind you and things like that so it's it's been they've been working with parts of the costume all along so that they could get used to that. You've obviously done a lot of research as as directors have to when they do a period piece like this one would you say this has more of the of the true British flavor or have you tried to make it look a little more like real Japaners I would bet there'd be a temptation to to kind of straighten out some of the stereotypes the British might have had about Japanese.

Well I think you know I'm the musical director and so I'm not really the one who's had the concept but I really think that Dr. Rutgers concept of the show is very much to play on those British stereotypes we they look very Japanese and then they act very British and that's where a lot of the humor comes in is to see this person who really looks Japanese come out with this British yes with the Victorian image yes the Victorian moral attitude yes it's also fun because when they wrote this show they they really poked fun at Grand Opera they had you know they have this stereotypical ditzy soprano the wimpy tenor the the Lord high executioner you know who who can't kill anyone he can't even kill a fly the the cruel alto you know somehow the alto always gets cast in that role and that yet they've given her this really sappy you know poor me

area so it's been a lot of fun you know to to to poke fun at real opera yeah good well let's let's let's remind people of the dates one more time okay we open Thursday the 18th and we perform through the 19th and 20th and then Sunday afternoon the 21st we have a matinee and tickets are on sale at the box office now I believe great great thank you very much Jennifer talking with me and thank you for watching and we'll see you next week you

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