By Steve Pfarrer
A SYMPHONY FOR SHELBIE
By Carl Vigeland
carlvigeland.com
Amherst author Carl Vigeland, who also plays piano and trumpet, has written a number of books about music, such as a profile of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and one of jazz great Wynton Marsalis. Library Journal said the latter book, “Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life,” offered “a very real, personal glimpse of Marsalis, as both musician and man.”
In his most recent book, “A Symphony for Shelbie,” Vigeland, who also has written for publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s and Boston Magazine, offers something of a hybrid: part profile of a leading pediatric oncologist and one of her patients, part memoir and part study of classical music, including a look at the Tanglewood Music Center in the Berkshires.
At the heart of “A Symphony for Shelbie” is Dr. Giannoula Lakka Klement, a Greek-born oncologist, now living and working in Boston, who rejects conventional approaches for fighting cancer such as heavy doses of chemotherapy; she uses individualized treatments for each patient that are designed to help them control the disease. Her process, known as metronomics, also aims to combat the blood vessels that feed tumors.
“I don’t want my patients living the disease,” she tells Vigeland. “I don’t want them to wake up in the morning being in pain…. [but rather] being grateful for being able to be with their children. To enjoy their grandchildren. To love their partners.”
Vigeland spends time talking to other doctors Klement works with, and it’s through her that he also meets JackieAnn Murphy, the mother of one of Klement’s former patients, Shelbie Murphy, the “Shelbie” of the book title. Shelbie Murphy died of cancer in late 2014 in Lowell at age 17. JackieAnn Murphy pieces together the story of her late daughter, who struggled with bone cancer for several years but continued to be involved with art, school and friends.
JackieAnn, writes Vigeland, is exceedingly grateful to Dr. Klement and her associates for helping preserve her daughter’s life as long as was possible. And Shelbie, her mother says, exhibited “such grace” at the end. “When she knew she was dying, she comforted me.”
Yet Shelbie’s mother is still grieved over her daughter’s death, and Vigeland feelingly describes the way cancer can touch so many people. In one scene, he writes of meeting one of Shelbie’s nurses, Laura Eagles, after the girl’s death and relates a last conversation they had. “What do you think heaven is like?” Shelbie had told Laura. “I am so sorry for my parents that I have to go there before they do.”
His conversations with Dr. Klement, JackieAnn Murphy and others lead Vigeland to reflect on past experiences in his own life — including losing his mother and an old friend to cancer — and to consider the way so many lives seem interconnected, including his and Shelbie’s.
Indeed, he feels the same grace notes from Shelbie that her mother felt, as he relates “the promptings in my heart that took me to all those other places only to find, finally, the ghosts of the past … transmuted in the poignantly transient present by the living, breathing, triumphant spirit of a brave, beautiful, extraordinary young woman who I never met.”
FLIGHT CALLS: EXPLORING
MASSACHUSETTS THROUGH BIRDS
By John R. Nelson
BrightLeaf/University of Massachusetts Press
Coming on the heels of a terrible news report last week — that North America has lost three billion birds in the last 50 years from habitat destruction, pesticides, industrial pollution and other causes — a new book from University of Massachusetts Press makes the case for protecting birds, delighting in their habits and exploring how the presence of particular species can show how land use changes over time.
“Flight Calls: Exploring Massachusetts Through Birds,” by John R. Nelson, a professor emeritus at North Shore Community College in northeastern Massachusetts, offers an extensive and often witty account of the author’s life as a bird enthusiast, a history of birding in the state, and a look at how past authors — Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — approached the subject.
Nelson, who has written extensively about birds for literary and birding magazines, lives in Gloucester, but he roams all over the state to report on avian populations and their distinct calls and habits. Among the places he visits are the Quabbin Reservoir, the town of Royalston north of it and Mount Holyoke, where he gets a clear view from the Summit House. He reflects on the fact that 180-200 years ago, Massachusetts was heavily deforested, with extensive farmland and cleared land that paved the way for increases in grassland birds such as Eastern Meadowlarks, Vesper and Grasshopper Swallows, and Upland Sandpipers.
Today, Nelson observes, with two-thirds of the state reforested and other parts heavily developed, Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee is strangely “among the best places in the state for grassland birds that need large territories to breed.” Various organizations, such as the Hampshire Bird Club, he notes, lead regular trips there to see species such as Upland Sandpipers, which now only breed in a handful of places in Massachusetts — those with with adequate grasslands.
He ends his interesting journey with a plea for bird preservation and protection that seems more relevant then ever give last week’s news. “The future of birds depends on our commitment to preserving them. Birds can’t know they’re endangered, and even if they could, they can’t defend themselves against pollution and rising seas.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.