Hi, I'm Sam Lemley, Curator of Special Collections in Carnegie Mellon University Libraries. If you're a student at CMU and have come to Special Collections or perhaps you've come to an event, whether online or in person, you will have seen me handling rare books with my bare hands. Now, this almost always invites comment, right? Why am I not wearing gloves? Surely objects of such rarity should be handled with more care, but the fact is that among experts, the consensus is that the best way to handle rare books is carefully and with clean hands. Using cotton gloves introduces a number of risks, right? So for one, with a barrier of fabric between page and skin, you lose that sort of tactile immediacy of touch, and you're far more likely to tear a page. And ironically, cloth is far more likely to carry dirt and grime from one page to the next, essentially dirtying the book, which is what we want to avoid. And besides that, gloves can make your hands, certainly my hands, sweat, which introduces moisture precisely where you don't want it. But perhaps most importantly, if you ever try picking up a leather-bound book with cotton gloves on, you'll find very quickly that the book is incredibly slippery and you're at risk of dropping it, which of course isn't good. Now there are exceptions to this rule, right? If I'm handling photographic prints or metal artifacts, I will probably wear gloves, but in the case of books, like this one, the best approach is clean hands and caution. Good evening, everyone. I hope you enjoyed that expert commentary on the dos and don'ts of handling rare books. It was prompted by our most frequently asked question. I'm Keith Webster, Helen and Henry Cosmer, Jr. Dean of University of Ireland. Our Special Collections Library serves as an interdisciplinary workshop where humanistic modes of inquiry combine with innovative tools to study historical technologies, books, and artifacts. Our diverse collections fuel transformative exhibitions, groundbreaking research and other programs that bring students, scholars, and members of the public into Special Collections and into CNU's libraries. We've been delighted to share our collections with you in a series of events and recordings, which are all available on YouTube. Tonight we welcome you to Fine and Rare 3, musical marvels of Special Collections Unveiled. As always, I wish to thank the team at the library who have been working to bring this and other events focused on our collections to you. I'm particularly grateful to Sonia Wellington, our Events Manager, who looked after all of the logistics for this evening's event, as well as our entire external relations team. I also appreciate our partnership tonight with colleagues from CNU's Wonderful College of Fine Arts and the School of Music. Now it is my pleasure to introduce our speaker this evening, Curator of Special Collections, Dr. Sam Lamley. Dr. Lamley has a PhD in English Literature and a Master's in Library Science with a Certificate of Concentration in rare book and Special Collections Library Friendship. Sam has also held research fellowships at the Houghton Library, Princeton University Library, the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology and the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He's also the editor of a forthcoming book featuring essays by reading scholars of Shakespeare and print. Joining Dr. Lamley later this evening is Mary Ellen Poole, the Stanley and Marcia Gumburg, Dean of the College of Fine Arts. Dr. Poole is a professor of music and a musicologist. Almost recently served as the director of the Sarah Dowst Butler School of Music in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas Austin, where she also held the former Selma Hall's Centennial Chair in Music. We're thrilled to have Mary Ellen join us this evening. If you enjoy this event, please consider supporting the wide cruise with a gift to the Special Collections Acquisitions Fund. Your donations allow us to enrich our collections, making possible transformative exhibitions, research and other programs that bring students, scholars and members of the public into special collections. Before I leave you, let me alert you to the next installment of Fine and Rare, Inside CMU Library's Special Collections, which will take place on January 25th. At this virtual event, Sam will share newly acquired objects and books from the wide cruise collections. Learn about areas of collection strength, ongoing research and instructional programs at Carnegie Mellon's Special Collections and get a sneak peek into the collection's exciting future. Thank you again for joining us today. Without further ado, I'll turn things over to Sam. Good evening everyone. I'm Sam Lemley. I'm the curator of Special Collections in Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and welcome to this next installment of Fine and Rare, which is a series in which I share some of the many treasures in Special Collections at CMU. So tonight we're actually going to look specifically at rare musical treasures in the collection, and that's a bit of a departure from what we've discussed in the past. As I've mentioned, the strength of the collection is really in the history of science and technology, but because of some early donations that we received, we also have some spectacular things in the history of music going back to the 14th century through the 19th and into the 20th. And that's really another example of the collection reflecting the commitments and interests of its donors. So if you saw the last installment in which I talked about the copies of Shakespeare's Folios that we have in the collection, I talked about Charles Rosenblum. And Charles Rosenblum was an entrepreneur, financier in Pittsburgh and a trustee of Carnegie Mellon University. And his wife, Lucille Johnson Rosenblum, was actually an incredibly important harpist. She taught at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester and actually was a harpist in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and also had played in the NBC Symphony under Arturo Toscanini. So she was incredibly accomplished and I think after they were married she played a really important role in kind of guiding how and what they were collecting. She and her husband. So when Charles Rosenblum died in 1973, a large part of his collection came to the University and with that came a number of the rarities they had collected in the history of music. So I think with few exceptions, most of the things I'll be showing tonight are from that gift. And I'll talk more about specifically Lucille's influence and her role in forming that collection. But we're going to begin actually starting early on in the collection. I'm going to move chronologically. I wanted to share some fragments of very early music that we have in the collection. So I'll start here.  So it's an animal skin. And this is a bifolium. So two leaves taken out of a 15th century manuscript that was an antiphonal. Antiphonals were large books of liturgical music that would have been used in sort of liturgical practice, devotional practice in a church. And I often share this with students because it's fascinating to see a piece of animal skin used in this way. We don't really know what species this would have come from. A parchment could have been made from sheep or cow or even goat. So this, as I said, it's a leaf or a bifolium from an antiphonal. The way that the musical notation is made on the page is pretty conventional for this period. So you have the red staff lines and then the black notes added after. So this would be kind of two stage, right? One scribe would be responsible for the staff line. Another would be responsible for adding the musical notation. And then you have the text underneath the music that would be sung with sort of lyrics. This is, it's headlined the Sunday. I think it's the 18th Sunday after Pentecost. So this would be a particular occasion in the liturgical calendar. This song would be sung. And it's the Dapakam Daminae. So give peace, O Lord. The interesting thing about this text, I mean, given the history of liturgical practice in the Catholic Church, contemporary composers still use this text to write liturgical music. So for example, the modern composer Arvo Peret famously has a piece that uses this same text in a song. You know, one theme though that I really want to explore tonight and will become increasingly clear is just how the technology of recording musical notation changes over time. So we obviously begin with manuscript entirely done by hand and then we're going to move into various kinds of printing technologies that makes it, if not easier, certainly more efficient. So one kind of tragedy in the history of the book is that one of the most abundant kinds of artifact that survives from the medieval period are in fact fragments of music on the parchment vellum. And the reason for that, there are several, but the first is that, you know, musical culture changes pretty rapidly in the early Renaissance and so a lot of the music, like the leaf that I just shared from the antiphonal, might have become obsolete or might have needed to be replaced as it was kind of used to death, used to pieces. But another reason why these pieces of music on parchment were recycled is that eventually the material, the animal skin became more valuable than the content they held, right? Parchment as a material was fairly labor-intensive to make. You'd first, you know, skin the animal, you'd have to raise the animal of course, you'd skin it and then you'd treat it and stretch the hide and scrape it until it was ready to receive ink, whether through printing or with pen or quill. And so a lot of times, given the value of that material, you see it being recycled in really interesting ways. So this book, it's actually a 17th century book on astronomical instruments by Johannes Kepler. You might know that name. And I won't talk about the content of the book because I'm really only interested in its binding. But if you look closely, you'll see that the binding is music. You have very similar to the leaf I shared earlier. Musical notation, it's a little bit more rudimentary. This is a bit earlier than that leaf I shared first. We think probably about 14th century. But you can see the musical notation on the red staff lines and the text underneath. So same kind of layout. And what's amazing is that through the middle of the front board, and also through the middle of the backboard, you see the fold and holes where the sort of cords would have been stitched in to hold this piece of vellum into its original binding. Of course, what's happened is it's been removed from that context, removed from that binding, and reused as what's called binder's waste. It's been turned into a binding for this 17th century book. And what's incredible is the historical spread involved here. So I mentioned that this is probably a 14th century manuscript, but it's on a 17th century book. So it had a 300 year life before it was repurposed in this way. Another thing I'll say about this particular piece of music is, this is kind of speculative on my part, but if you read the text, it's a Marian hymn, so a hymn, a song in praise of the Virgin Mary. And on the front cover, the text reads Ave Prichlara Maristella, which is hail, shining star of the sea, which is another way that, you know, liturgical music referred to the Virgin Mary. But there's an astronomical theme there, right? They're referring to a star. I think it's really kind of cool that the book is discussing instruments that would have been used to take astronomical observations. So again, speculative, kind of fanciful on my part, but I do like to think that the binder, when he was looking at his stock of vellum to use for this binding, might have seen that and thought, well, this makes sense, right, on this particular book. I'll show you the back here. There's this spectacular decorative initial S, which is just beautiful. And this, to me, this is why I think this is actually a pretty early leaf. This is, I think, 14th century. But again, I'm not a Coda College, I'm not a manuscript specialist, so I'd like to show this to someone who really understands the history of manuscript music. The last thing I'll say about this particular book is this stamp in the middle, just because I'm sure I'll get questions about it. This is the coat of arms of Yorgi Lipet, who was an Hungarian Jesuit bishop, I believe. So that tells us that this book was part of his collection. And we know that he was collecting mainly books in the history of science in the early 17th century. So that's his mark of ownership there. But again, this is just another example of how fragments of music from the medieval period resurface, and really a large part of what survives of pre-Renaissance music survives in this kind of state in fragments, sometimes on bindings. Having discussed manuscript and having mentioned print, this looks, I think, probably pretty familiar. Again, you have the red staff lines, the black musical notation, and the text underneath, liturgical text underneath. I think this is a leaf from a gradual, so just another liturgical book with music that would have been used as part of mass specifically in this case. But what's interesting is that even though this resembles the leaf I shared earlier, red and black, same number, or one fewer staff line, but very similar in layout and design, this one's actually printed. If you look really closely, you can actually see where there are breaks in the staff lines, and I think the way this was manufactured, it was in two passes through the press. So you'd have, first, the red staff lines were printed, then the black text and black musical notation was laid on the press, and the same piece of paper was run through the press again in a second time. But the complexity there, it's difficult to communicate without showing you how a press worked in the period, but it was just a technical challenge, and I think printers spent a lot of time and energy trying to figure out. And for those of you that read music, you'll know that musical notation is incredibly complicated, graphically, or can be. If you're talking about a standard text in a European language, for instance, you have relatively constrained visual vocabulary of 23, 26 individual letters that are all lined up on a shared baseline. That's pretty easy to print, more or less. But when you talk about music, you suddenly introduce verticality into that equation. You have to indicate pitch based on the position of a note higher or lower on a system of staff lines. And that's, take my word for it, that's incredibly difficult to do on the printing technology that they had at the time. And I'll say that this leaf, it's one of the earliest examples of music printing. This is from the Junta Press in Venice, probably early 16th century, 1510, something like that. Because the leaf has been separated from the book, I actually haven't succeeded in identifying what edition it came from. But so this is very early, it's very rudimentary. You can see that the scale or the range of pitch is fairly constrained to the staff that's on the page here. You'll see that there's also like kind of rudimentary indications of bar lines. So some indication of measure. But I don't think that there's any real indication of how long specifically individual notes are supposed to last. So that's something you know, menstrual, measured notes. That's something that's introduced a little bit later. But as music becomes more complex, you know, as you introduce things like complicated counterpoint and, you know, overlapping harmonies and polyphony, you know, multiple voices and one line of music, you expand that range and quickly it becomes really, really difficult and impossible to represent the new specifically secular music that's coming out in the 16th century, eventually the 17th century. And we'll talk about some of the technological solutions that were introduced to deal with that challenge in a moment. So this next thing I'll share is this book in this spectacularly ornate red Morocco and guilt binding. This is a Charles Rosenblum gift. So would have been in the collection of Charles and Lucille Rosenblum. This is a book printed in Milan in 1518. It's by the musical theorist Frankino Gaffurio. And I'll just show the title page here while I talk briefly about it. So Gaffurio is kind of an interesting figure. He was a composer himself. He's also interesting because he was in Milan at the same time that Leonardo da Vinci was. And we know from correspondence and references that they make in their writings to each other that they were actually very close. In fact, there's a portrait painted by Leonardo da Vinci of a musician roughly at this time. And it was originally thought to depict Frankino Gaffurio. It's now thought to be just an unknown musician. But you can see in the illustration that he's holding a piece of music in his hand. So it's kind of a fascinating example of how Leonardo da Vinci was involved in musical culture at this time. So on the title page here is this really wonderful image. It's probably one of the earliest printed images of a music class. So there's Frankino at his lectern with a book open. There's actually looks like an hourglass next to him.  And there's a banner kind of coming out of from Kino's mouth. And he's defining harmony. And this book is actually about harmony and the theory around it. So he's saying, harmonia es discordia concord. Harmony is bringing what's discordant into concord, making it harmonious. And there are illustrations here of pipes from an organ showing intervals of pitch. But this is one example of some of the really spectacular illustrations that are in this book. I'll show you at the very end. This is a famous illustration. The same woodcut, the same illustration appeared in another book by Frankino Gaffurio a little bit earlier. But this is the very first time that printed image of a keyboard instrument was issued. So this is kind of an important moment in the history of the book as well as the history of music. So you have a figure there sitting on a three-legged stool playing an organ at a keyboard. I'll show you a couple more images and then we'll move on to more music. This image I find completely fascinating. So it's this sort of allegorical representation of the music of the spheres, which was this ancient Greek theory I think introduced by Pythagoras. So it's a Pythagorean theory. And basically the idea was that each kind of planetary sphere starting with you have down here earth. So it says Terra and then you have the moon, Luna, Mercury, Venus, the sun. Of course, this is a Pythagorean cosmos, so earth is at the center. But each level of celestial ascent is associated with a particular mode of music and each one is separated by a tone or a semitone. So you have a semitonus or a tonus, tonus, semitone all the way up to the sphere of the stars and the highest form of music, which this illustration associates with the Greek god Apollo and Urania. So just a fascinating illustration and also hints at the complexity of theorizing and sort of mystical thinking around musical theory in the period. But that's the really important point about this book and sort of this moment in music history. You know, Frankino Garforio is one of the first to really suggest that music deserves a place in kind of learned culture, and specifically secular culture, right? So again, this sort of starts a really radical and radically important trend in European culture around music theory and kind of the mathematical concepts that inform that theory over the next several centuries. So with this next object, we're going to be jumping forward into the early 19th century, or really the middle of the 18th century with one of the most important classical composers in the 18th century. And that's Johann Sebastian Bach. So this is a first edition of his work, The Well-Tempered Clavier. And it's one of the most important works in the history of classical music, certainly in piano performance. It's what it is, is a set of 24 pairs of prelude and fugue, so 48 pieces total in all of the keys, major and minor of the chromatic scale, beginning with C sharp major. So the idea was that, you know, if a piano instructor were working with a student, you'd have a piece to practice your fingering basically all the way up the scale on the piano forte. And its origins, this piece's origins and instruction, or piano instruction is important, because the person who prepared this particular version of Bach's work was Christian Gottlob Neffa, who was actually Beethoven's piano instructor. Beethoven was kind of like a generation and a half younger than Bach. But Neffa, of course, knew Bach's work and used it, no doubt, probably this version in manuscript, to teach Beethoven piano, which is really spectacular. You start to see these kind of genealogy of influence in the history of classical music, so reading from, you know, Bach through Mozart into Beethoven. And we're going to be looking at some Beethoven in just a minute. But I want to kind of linger on this addition in particular, because it is fully engraved. So we've seen an example of printing from the early 16th century that was made using individual pieces of metal type that would be set on the press, inked and then pulled. And you saw that with the Junta press example, that would have involved two passes to the press, right? First the red staff line, then the black notation. And I mentioned that as music becomes more complicated with counterpoint, harmony, polyphony, etc., that kind of restrained range and that, you know, those four or five staff lines becomes inadequate. I'll actually open this just to give you an example of what I'm talking about. So probably the best instance of that complexity that made printing so difficult is a chord. So those of you that know music, forgive me, I'm not a musician, but, you know, a chord is basically stacked notes, one on the next to make a kind of harmonic whole. And to represent those on staff, you actually stack the notes. That's what tells the player what chord it is that you play. So that arrangement of multiple notes one on top of the next is next to impossible or very, very difficult to do with sort of conventional typographic printing.  So hundreds and hundreds of pieces, it becomes difficult to put it lightly. So one alternative technology was engraving. And the way that that worked is you'd take a plate of metal piece of metal flat piece of metal and engraver would actually in size lines into the surface of the metal. Once you did that, you'd then rub ink into those lines, clean it off so that only the ink could remain in the incisions you made. And then you'd run the plate through a rolling press at really high pressure with a piece of paper. And you'd get, you know, a printing of whatever it is you engraved on that plate. So the advantage of that, as I've been hinting, is that you can be much more fluid in the style of your notation. And you're not constrained by the pieces of type that you have available.  And you can see that here. I mean, it looks, it looks much more balanced and almost looks hand-done. And early on in music engraving, it would have been done on copper plate. Copper is very expensive and fairly rare. So eventually, and certainly in this period, the plates they used were actually made of metal, which is a kind of lead alloy. So it's soft enough to be cut fairly easily or punched.  So the other advantage of engraving music, you know, the level of demand for pieces of music was relatively low or inconsistent. So you didn't really know how many copies, as a publisher, you wouldn't know how many copies you would sell of a particular print run. So the advantage of engraving is that once you have that engraved plate, you can run off, you know, probably 4,000, 5,000 copies before the plate starts to wear down significantly. So you could print 100 copies initially, store the plates for later use, sell those 100 copies and then print more when you need them. Typographic printing, you had to print as many copies as you expected or hoped to sell from the very beginning because once you set the type on the press, once you once you printed that page or that sheet, you'd have to disassemble it. So you couldn't, you know, set it up, print one copy and then disassemble it, that would be incredibly wasteful. So that's the advantage of engraving. It's kind of an economy of the technology that I think a lot of scholars had recognized and a lot of publishers certainly recognized at the time. And it kind of reverses things. So the cost of engraving was highest upfront. It was quite expensive to invest in the metal and to pay the skilled labor to make the plates. But then once you had those, it became kind of an asset that you could then redeploy depending. And what's really interesting on that topic with this piece of music in particular is that the publishers who are based in Bonn, Germany, Simrock, you can say, you can see that name on the title page. We know that they kept these plates in storage for 80 years because they were still, they're still selling copies of this particular work in 1880. So 80 years after its period. I don't know if I mentioned that, but this first appeared in 1801, 1802. So again, that just gives you an example or an idea of how important the technology of music engraving was in the history of music. So this next work is another example of engraved music. This is Beethoven's Sonata Quasi Una Fantasia, better known today as the Moonlight Sonata. So this is one of the most famous, well-known, most frequently played pieces of piano music really in the history of music. And that name Moonlight Sonata actually Beethoven never suggested that that would be the title for this piece of music. It was actually coined by a German poet named Ludwig Relschdub quite a bit later in the 1820s when he compared the piece of music to kind of moonlight shimmering on the surface of a lake. You can see on the title page, which is in Italian, it's distinguishing this piece of work as a sonata, which comes from the Italian sonare to sound, or perhaps suonare to play. So it's specifically instrumental, and it says it's for the clavicembalo or the piano forte, so either the harpsichord or the piano forte, which is standard piano. And that's kind of the first interesting point about this piece of music. When you look at early editions of music, you get clues as to how the composer intended it to be performed. And if you were to look on Spotify or YouTube for a recording of this music, this piece, nine times out of 10, it would be performed on a piano forte. But I think it's interesting that Beethoven left this open to the performer, the interpreter, which instrument would have been used. And that's partly because at this time, you know, harpsichords might have been more available, as opposed to piano fortes. It's kind of what you had in the house to play. At the beginning, you see this really interesting instruction, which is basically telling the player in Italian that this entire piece, tutto questo petso, should be played with the utmost delicacy and without mute. And we know this piece of music fairly well, and it has that sort of lingering, sonorous quality to it. So that's interesting. It's something that Beethoven intended from the very beginning. So this is another famous work by Beethoven, as I mentioned in the last segment. This is the first edition, first printing of the Fifth Symphony. And I often turn to the first page because you have the violin part and those famous first four notes, which have been referred to as the fate motif, because people have imagined that it's kind of the sound of fate knocking at the door. So this was printed from engraved plates again in 1809. This is kind of a famous moment in the history of Beethoven's career. It's one of the most frequently performed symphonies in the Western Canon. This copy, though, this is another Rosenblum gift, is really interesting for a number of reasons. So I mentioned that the, our copy of the Well Tempered Clavier, that Bach piece, is annotated by an early performer. The same is true with this piece. This copy, I think, would have been used in a number of performances in the 1830s and 1840s. And the reason why I say that is at the very beginning on the title page, there's this inscription in German that indicates that it was in the collection of the Karlsbad Music Hall or Symphony Hall in 1843. So more than likely this copy was probably in the collection of that symphony and would have been used by the musicians of that symphony in practicing or in performance. So that, that leads me to believe that these parts were originally loose and they could have been distributed. I think they were later gathered together and bound as a complete set. And this binding is quite a bit later. This is a 20th century binding. So the set might have been gathered for sale when someone recognized its value as a first addition. I'll point out too that, you know, in addition to all of the annotations, there are these really grubby corners on almost every page and there's that the edges are starting to fray and tear. So what's wonderful is that this is evidence of the musicians. They're sort of dirty hands having handled their instruments, turning the pages of the piece as they were playing. So there's evidence of its use kind of encoded in the fiber of the paper, which I love. The piccolo or a piccolo player at some point in the past decided to doodle in the bottom margin and they drew a fox. So there's fox's head and the fox's tail.  Piccolo isn't called for very frequently on the Fifth Symphony. They had a lot of time on their hands and would have used that, I guess, to draw a fox in the bottom margin. So again, just this evidence of its use, the history of this particular copy, I think is spectacular and a lot of fun. So this next piece is truly unique to Carnegie Mellon in that it's a manuscript in the composer's handwriting. So that's called a holograph, right, when it's a manuscript by the author or by the composer. And because of that, it's incredibly rare. I mean, we've been looking at editions which are rare given their age and the fact that they're the first, but editions exist in multiple copies. This is the sole copy given that it is a holograph. So this is by Giacchino Rossini, who was an Italian composer, kind of major figure in the Golden Age of Italian opera in the 19th century. He's perhaps most well known for his operas, The Barber of Seville and William Tell. But he also wrote a lot of occasional and more minor pieces. And this is an example of that category. So there are two pieces. One is 22 measures and another is 64 measures. They're both written for harp. And they're important because this manuscript, as I've said, is really the only kind of example or only surviving form of this particular composition. And it wasn't edited and printed until 2008, so fairly recently. But it's an interesting example of how Lucille Johnson and Rosenblum guided the collecting of a lot of the important musical works that Charles and she acquired over the course of their lives. So as a major harpist in her own right, she would have been with the interest in this piece of music, and certainly could have played it. My colleague, Kristen Heath, who's the music librarian in the library, who is a musician herself, assures me that it's not a complicated piece of music. So this would have been in some ways under Lucille's abilities, but nevertheless, as an historian of harp performance, she would have been fascinated by this. And I think that's why they acquired it for their collection and then ultimately for CMU. But it has lyrics. So the text is actually a libretto that was written by little librettist Pietro Metastasio, an Italian 18th century Mozart used a lot of his librettos for his operas. But you have the musical notation for the harp and the handwritten text underneath, as you might expect. The context of this piece of music is kind of interesting, the historical and biographical context you have at the end, an inscription that's signed Jacchina Rossini, and it's actually made out to Cecile. And we don't know who this Cecile was. She's kind of an obscure character. We do know that at this point it's also inscribed in Bordeaux, May, I think 14th, May 1832. We know at this time that Rossini had fled Paris because it was experiencing a bout of plague. So he went to the South of France, leaving behind his wife. And we know that their marriage was not exactly at its strongest point, and there's some speculation that Cecile might have been someone and with whom Rossini was romantically involved. We just don't know. There's also the chance that Cecile was the harp player that Rossini wrote this particular piece for. So it's kind of an interesting biographical mystery that I think scholars haven't yet solved. So this is the first piece. If you turn the page, you have the second longer piece. And what's interesting about this is that, you know, it's, as I said, it's 67 measures, 64 measures, has harp there to indicate another instrument. And then the instructions for how it's to be played, it gives the adjective brillante, right? Sparkling. So you can kind of imagine what a piece of music would sound like if a harpist were instructed to play it with a kind of sparkling manner. But the reason why that's fun with this particular piece of music is that the ink actually has what I think are mica fragments in it. So it sparkles. It's like an early example of gel ink from the 1830s, or sparkly ink. So I don't know if you can catch this in the light, but when you look closely, you can see how the ink, the surface kind of sparkles. So in some way, the inscription of the notation kind of reflects that sparkling character of the music. So I mentioned, I've been talking about Lucille Rosenblum, Lucille Johnson Rosenblum throughout tonight's event. But she actually issued an edition of this piece of music in the 1970s, I think 1978. So she in her own right was a musicologist and music historian. And she played a major role in bringing this piece of music, this fairly obscure piece of music to light for the first time. This last pair of objects brings us up to the 20th century in the 1960s and 1950s, to the work of a living composer. And that's Philip Glass. So Philip Glass is perhaps most well known as one of the defining figures of musical minimalism. He's written a number of award-winning film scores in operas and is, I think, brightly considered one of the most successful living composers working today. What many people don't know is that before that, before he sort of found his signature style, which is minimalist, or what he calls music with repetitive structures, he came to Pittsburgh. So he was a student at Juilliard in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And when he left Juilliard, he was awarded a Ford Foundation grant to be a composer in residence with the Pittsburgh Public Schools. And that was kind of a major kind of professional appointment at the time because public schools and music groups and public schools are really well funded. So when he arrived in Pittsburgh, there was a really diverse array of musical groups in the public schools. And this is in the city of Pittsburgh, in the north and south suburbs. He was kind of responsible for writing music for all of these groups. And some of these pieces actually survive here in the collection. So the first thing I'll share is actually this convention overture, which Philip Glass wrote at the end, tail end of his residency as a composer in residence for Pittsburgh Public Schools. So it's a fairly long and elaborate piece of music with multiple parts, multiple instruments. And this was performed at the sort of end of year All City concert by the All City High School Orchestra. So this, even though it looks like it's handwritten, it's not. It's what's called a diazotype copy of Philip Glass's holograph. So he did all this by hand and then took it to a print shop and had it produce with diazotype, which is like a chemical process that predates Xerox. And I'll open it up. You can see that, you know, as you might expect, there's the staff lines. And then each part is indicated here. This is the full scores. This is what Philip Glass probably would have used or consulted when he was conducting the piece or teaching it with the group. And what's really amazing is that after the diazotype was made, he went in with pencil and made a number of corrections. So if you look on this page, this is in fact in pencil. That's his handwriting. He circled things making corrections, you know, adding instructions for the musicians, something that he might have, he might have instructed them verbally during practice to watch out for. And then he's inscribed where and when the piece was completed. So you have his signature, or not signature actually, it just tells where the piece was finished or composed. So it says Imperial Beach, California, and Pittsburgh PA from July to September 1962. And Philip Glass actually ended up publishing a memoir and he writes about his time in Pittsburgh. And he made the point that he was producing vast quantities of music and sometimes very short spans of time. So he would get a request from the commissioner of the public school music system for a particular type of music type of composition. And in a couple of weeks, he would sort of churn it out or even in a single week, he would churn it out and deliver it to be performed. So it was an incredibly productive time for Philip Glass. And he actually returned to CMU in 2014, I think a group in the College of Fine Arts performed one of his string quartets. And he remembered his time in Pittsburgh as a young man, fairly fondly. And I think during that occasion, they played a recording of one of his early pieces. And he kind of joked about how, you know, it's better than than he remembers. But the really, I ended up this earlier, but the really interesting thing is how different stylistically this music is from Glass's current music. And the reason for that is that when he left Pittsburgh, he talks about this in his memoir, he was kind of upset or frustrated by the level of his musical training and his abilities, he felt that he hadn't yet mastered some of the basics of musical composition. So after Pittsburgh, he got another grant to go study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, who was a major instructor in the period. And eventually he went to India to study with Ravi Shankar. So kind of very diverse musical influences that kind of led him to discover his really typical and characteristic musical style. And because of that, because he didn't really develop that characteristic style until, you know, later, a lot of this music hasn't been recorded, hasn't been performed. So here's the other piece by Philip Glass, we have in the collection, it's another diazotype copy. It's a string quartet that's dated 1959. So this is when Glass was still at Juilliard. And same, you know, chemical process of copying here. But Philip Glass's first string quartet, as according to his numbering, wasn't actually performed or recorded until 1966. This one's 1959. So there is that break, right? He's not really ready to start presenting his compositions to the public until he feels like he's found that characteristic style. And because of that, what was really his first string quartet is not even numbered, right? It's not part of that sequence of string quartets that he would go on to compose. But I wanted to close with these and share these because it's of course relevant to Pittsburgh, City of Pittsburgh, and to CMU. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, which is just down the road for us, has several more of these early scores by Philip Glass. And they actually have on vinyl, a recording of this concert in which the convention overture was performed. So I was actually able to listen to the students in the 1963 concert perform that work. And it's really was fun to hear that. But again, just drove home the fact that it's so different from what Glass is now known for today. Sam, thank you for letting me nerd out with you tonight. It's really taking me back to my days as a young musicologist in the archives. There's nothing like holding something in your hands. So I, we just have about 10 minutes to talk. So maybe two or three questions. But I'm going to use my prerogative as moderator to ask the first one. What is so fascinating to me is the nature of our special collections, which are about the history of science and the history of technology. And yet we have this outlier Rosenblum collection in a way. But it's not really an outlier because the history of science, the history of printing, the history of dissemination of music, the economic history of middle class households that could afford to have a harpsichord or an early piano forte is all bound up in this. What, what do you say about that? Yeah, that's a brilliant point. And you say it so well. Yeah, I mean, the Rosenblum gift is interesting for a number of reasons. I think in, in part, it's a demonstration of how culturally vibrant Pittsburgh was at the time and continues to be. And I talked about the Rosenblum gift in the last fun and rare, but he was a Yale alum. And it was kind of an unusual arrangement in that when he drafted his will, he instructed that his books be given to Yale unless they already had a copy in their collection. So they didn't want, you know, duplicate, they didn't want duplicates to go there. And all the duplicates would go to CMU and special collections. So, and I get the sense that there might have been some exception to that for the music books, because we got so many of the really choice things that they had in their collection. But again, I mean, it just, it just points to the fact of how important philanthropy is to growing university special collections and we really owe all of that to them. But yeah, otherwise, you said it so well. I mean, the, I think of the Gafferio piece, that's such a great demonstration of how music is not just musical performance, it's all of the mathematics and mysticism and, you know, the cultural depth of music in the period is so vibrant and it's all there. So absolutely. Well, and I think, you know, now some of my sorted past as a student was marked by my trying to get as far away from math and science as fast as I could. But I will say that the Greeks and all of the Renaissance theorists who followed the Greeks were absolutely opposed to that notion and they understood that music was or they felt, they sensed that music was somehow related to astronomy, for example, to physics, to philosophy, all the things that to cognition, behavioral science, all the things. And I think it's that that undercurrent of music's power that kind of makes this collection so special. But I have a, I have a fantasy question for you. And that is just in case the next Rosenblum family is in the audience tonight. What do you dream of as the next acquisition in the music collection? Would it be somebody like an Italian futurist, composer, or would it be somebody who did early computer music? Would it be somebody, would it be the opera that Haydn wrote about going to the moon? I mean, how can we keep this science and music connection going? Yeah, that's that's a great question. Yeah, computational music, electronic music, I think is really fascinating. And there's a lot of really wonderful books that were published, particularly in the 50s and 60s on that topic. So that's, that's actually an area that I purchased a couple of things for the collection in that field. But, you know, what's probably obvious to the audience is that so much of our musical rarities are from, you know, the European classical tradition. And, you know, electronic music is so much more than that, just for example, music in general is so much more than that. So one thing that I'm always trying to do as a curator is expand the collection beyond those those boundaries that maybe donors might have been working in. But obviously that, you know, you and I and the students that we work with work outside of. So, you know, things outside of that tradition, I think would be wonderful. But yeah, I mean, you raise a good point. I think there's so much crossover in the history of music and the history of science, like there's some there's some something there, right, that that I might be able to tap into with that acquiring things in the future. How how do our students use the collection? Yeah, that's a great question. So I teach fairly frequently with the with professors in the School of Music. So every spring semester, for example, I host the music history one course, which is a required course that MFA students take. As I'm sure you know. And that's really fascinating because that they usually have two sessions in the collection and that goes from the medieval period all the way up to the classical period. So they're able to see most of the things that were shared tonight and other things as well. So yeah, there's there's that sort of instructional encounter that they have as part of the class. But that also extends to research, there was actually an undergraduate in the School of Music, who came in sort of unprompted to look at our Philip Glass materials. Because he had found, you know, a record of the items in our library catalog and was curious and was really excited. He's a big Philip Glass fan. And he talked about actually transcribing some of that unpublished, unrecorded music, and just trying to find a way to hear what it sounded like. So it runs the gamut. And I really have had some of my best encounters with students around the music materials in the collection. So could anybody make an appointment with you? Could an alum perhaps make an appointment to come in? Members of the public? Anyone? Yeah. Yeah, reach out to me by email or by phone. And I'm always happy to open up the collection for interested folks. And a friend named Lynn has a question. This is going to be speculation because I think neither of you know the, neither of us know the answer to this. But she's asking, do you think that the engravers were also trained musicians? Because we know the monks were, right? The monks who were transcribed. I'm curious, you know, what your answer to this question would be, but from what I've read. So the consensus is that, you know, people setting text just, you know, in language, you know, spoken language, they might not speak or read Greek, but they could still set Greek type because that's what they were trained to do. But from what I've read, music engraver was an acknowledged profession fairly early on. And these are, you know, specifically music engravers. There were engravers that did other kinds of imagery. But because of that, because of that specialization, I think that most music engravers did have some baseline musical training, because they would have to interpret and convert, you know, the manuscript that they got from the composer into engraving. So I think that they were, they'd have musical training. They weren't professionals by any means, but they knew what they were doing. But have you, have you read anything about that, Mary? You know, that, that had never occurred to me. I know that some of, once you start getting into publishing houses in the 19th and 20th centuries, that the publishers would often be either amateur musicians or have some kind, they'd be failed professional musicians. And so but I would think that depending on how mechanized it becomes, you probably get farther and farther away from people who actually need to know. I'm sure they had proofreaders, you know, too, because errors, we've all played a piece with lots of errors in the score. But it's just such a fascinating window into the past. And I think that, for me, what I would love to see in our collection, and this is, you know, just again, just again, pure speculation. But I would love to see more of that tied to social and economic and scientific history. Because I think that's where CMU really shines. That's where our students really shine. And that's where they've got curiosity. Absolutely. Yeah. So thank you so much for spending this time, Sam. And for your expertise, your beautiful video. Next time, we're going to have more musical examples, right? I want to thank the audience for spending time with us this evening, learning more about CMU Library's amazing special collections, and how they are used by the School of Music and just by friends of music. If you're in Pittsburgh, check out the current display of music books. It's called Music and Diversity. That really means any music outside the European classical tradition. And don't forget to register for Fine and Rare 4 on January 25th from 6.30 to 7.30. Sam's going to share at that event lots of highlights from the special collections and areas of strength, ongoing research, and how they interface with our instructional programs. If you enjoyed this evening, you should consider donating to the Special Collections Acquisition Fund to support his work. There's a link in the chat. And this will make possible all sorts of transformative exhibitions, research, and more acquisitions along the lines of those you've seen tonight. So again, thank you very much. This is Mary Ellen Poole, signing off.


Good morning everyone. My name is Tony DeFalco. I'm the Vice President of International Services at BES and I run our international ops serving our fellow vets around the world and this is Dr. Bill D'Atnes and we're going to introduce ourselves when we're here in a second. We want to get started and do an overview really to start the conversation of the contract, the conversation of the pension exam process and once we're done talking we're going to get a new Q&A which I think will be really helpful and give you a whole chance to ask questions about that process as well. So we appreciate everybody coming. You know, it's kind of like the standard governance slide. We'll learn about the military here you can see. We've got Entros. We'll talk a little bit about our new parent company Maximus and about Veterans Evaluation Services. The names you all probably know now for the last 14 years. Do a quick C&P overview and then like I said a Q&A session here. My name is Tony DeFalco. I'm the VP of International Ops. I'm also proud of the life member of the BAB and it's good to be back doing these again after the last couple of years. It's great to see everybody in person. It's great to be here with you all again. Just getting out there. It's been great meeting folks. I'll apologize at the front. I'm a little jet lagged. I got in at about 1am this morning. I was overseas from Mosnia. Didn't have to connect to Germany and things were delayed. All that stuff you hear in the news about the flight and the chaos. It's true. I'm highly caffeinated and if I have a hard time or something then not below me out here. But everybody that's been great at going around the door seeing everybody. Actually there was a breakfast. Folks having a very intense conversation about which service that the coolest former members and coolest most famous members. That's the kind of stuff that's really important. And obviously it's Air Force because we have really awesome engineers. Half the place was setting these technologies. So it takes me a while on these slides here. We're going to talk about Maximus who's been around a long time and is our proud parent company now. They acquired VES in May of 2021. They're the largest provider of government-sponsored benefit field programs in the U.S. And we've got over 40,000 employees around the world. Not to mention our over 2,000 VES now following the Maximus umbrella to help serve our fellow veterans. And Maximus has brought a lot to the table for us. Expanded IT infrastructure, call centers. We're going to be ramping up and rolling out a new webpage. It's going to look a lot more modern than the one we have now. Which is going to be great to help serve veterans and offer better feedback from all immediate contact. And it's brought a lot to the table for us to help expand our services to the veterans. With VES we've been doing this since 2008. We have literally helped hundreds of thousands of vets and service men and women receive their hard earned disability benefits that they deserve. With global network providers, which I talked about, it's not just in the U.S. You serve honorably. You get those benefits wherever you live. It's a great challenge. I've enjoyed it. I've been running our international ops and seeing sessions all year ago.  I mean, we just did some x-rays of one in Tehran, for example. We just got some done in Baghdad. We even got vets in the Ukraine right now that were keeping track of and thankfully they're all safe. So we are literally around the world helping vets here. And really, our sole bread and butter VES is to conduct those MPEs, those medical disability evaluations, and get those EDQ forms. You'll hear that a lot today, EDQ, disability questionnaires. For those of you that aren't familiar with that, and a doctor is much more of an expert on that than I am, and he's going to talk about that. And with that, I will introduce the doctor, because you want to hear him talk, not me. And he can introduce himself and all the right sides. My name is Dr. Davis. I'm a family practitioner. I've been working as a Phoenix for about nine years now. We're a little out of the world. We're happy to have you. All right, how's that? All right. Sorry about that. My name is Dr. Bill Davis. I'm a family physician at Phoenix. And I've been with the VES for just a little bit over nine years now. I tried to count on the last time. I think I've done about 7,000 of these DBQ cases. So I had a little experience doing some of these, and really enjoyed it to the point that I actually sold my practice to do this more full-time. It just came down to a matter of the way you burned out the family vests on Sunday night going to a clinic. It was always difficult to go to see veterans. The night before, actually, was a better thing. So I chose, you know, a better life now to help you guys out over my practice.  We'll talk about the difference between a CMP exam and what I did as a family practitioner. A little bit of a continuity period that sometimes we miss, but I'll be honest, the way things are changed in life, is to get thank you to you guys. I don't get something like that in practice anymore, so thank you guys for all that. So we'll go over what a compensation and pension exam is, and how it's a little bit different than what I would do as a family practitioner. And you might be neurologists, psychiatrists, all the different kinds of physicians, nurse practitioners, PAs, et cetera. So our main goal, how I kind of translate this for veterans and for new people who are training, our job is to translate the information from what's going on in your medical file, what's going on with you, what you tell us is going on to what the VA is looking for in their DVQs. So we're not treating, we're not there to prescribe medications. It's just hard a little bit sometimes for new providers as well as new veterans as well. But we're there to translate and give the VA the picture of what's going on in drugs. So there are certain exams that we don't have to do a full exam. Again, there's a difference, right? Somebody comes in to the office and you talk about having a heart attack, I'm not just going to go, okay, you said you had a heart attack, right? There's more to it, more testing. With these exams, we might not have a full exam, but the perfect example is someone who comes in and complains about reflux. We have a lot of reflux, right? We're going to go based on what's called the subjective history. So we'll be discussing with you what the symptoms are, how the medication you took didn't help. That's going to give us an idea of what's going on versus I'm not sticking a scope down your throat in the office, everybody wants that. As far as who's conducting the exam, all of us are trained. The VES recently, Maximus, recently started up a new training program for our new providers, which has been kind of nice because we have a lot of variants in how we do things. And the DBQs, the CMP exams are a really different language than what most of us are used to. So being able to kind of get everybody together at the same page has been very helpful. And just to piggyback on that, some questions that came in ahead of time. I can touch on one now. We get this a lot from veterans that they call in. Why can't I just go to my doctor down the street? Well, as the doctor said, we have to vet, train, do a background check. There's all sorts of foods to jump through to get providers qualified to join our network. There's a full background check. There can't be any sort of body fraud or hits or anything of that nature. There's robust training and DNA process that the VA runs that all the doctors have to go through. Then they go through another training with us at VES. So that's part of the reason why you can't just, for our exams, go down to any old doctor. Now we'd love to get your doctor on our network if they're good. So feel free to give us their contact info and we can have a recruit reach out. We're always looking to recruit great doctors. But one of the most common questions, why can't I just go to my doctor? That's why. They have to go through the vetting and training to understand the uniqueness of that process. And our providers in our network have already gone through that. So what do you all have to do here for this? I'm going to say the main thing for me, when I come in, we have most of the records. I say most because I just never know what to do. So whatever you bring is always helpful. It's never a negative. I've always said to people that we're training, if I were to bring something in that they think is important, it's kind of your duty to at least look at it. I know some people just want to go based on what they see in the computer, but this is your life. This is your record. Nobody knows your body better than you. So if you bring me a piece of information, I want to at least take a look and see how that might affect the case. Otherwise, honesty is the best policy. I've always talked to a couple of vets who accepted me before talking about a back exam. They'll say, do you want me to stop when it hurts? Or do you want me to push through what you want? And I said, listen, I don't want you to stop because it's going to end white-hunt. But I also don't need you to give me that extra 5-10 degrees that's going to drop when it needs you. I want to see a good daily effect. How do you feel? What's your back like during the work, during the day, during the long day? I'll push you back with your wife, et cetera. I don't want you to think too much of it. I just want you to do the best I can. And I think that's where sometimes there's a little misconception at least some of the matters. It's there to hurt right here. I get that. I get where it hurts. But there's a section in the DBQ that says here's the range of motion that you gave us. What would it be if, what's your estimate, what's your medical opinion? How would it be if you did too much work during the day? So I'll be there to compensate that number and change that number is to hear how I feel a further effect and more repetitive useful effect. So for you guys, it's just a matter of just do your best for these exams. That's all I have to ask. Okay, so we've talked about this. We reviewed the file. It's difficult sometimes. When some people have 10,000 file pages, it's hard to go through every piece of the file completely beforehand. But I've looked at the most I can, especially imaging past exams are very important. So we'll go through as much as I can before and then I'll finish up the rest afterwards. Every now and again, that prompts a question. So I'll have to work a lot. Hey, I just saw something that, you know, what's the point when we talk about, we'll be cut away and explain this to them. So that doesn't happen too often. And then we'll have the physical assessment, the assessment of that. That's the range of motion testing, hard lung exam, et cetera. Time wise? That's a rough one. I've been in exams that have been as short as 10 minutes and I actually haven't wanted to look at it next Thursday. It's probably a day by six hours. The complexity. How many different kinds there are. And for some people, I mean, like I said, we're easy. We can discuss that really quick. But when the back leads to the hips, the knees leads to the ankles, that's a little bit more complex. So the story has just started at a different time. So again, fingers crossed on that six hours. The vet manager got lunch together probably. And that's another question that came on the FAQs. I'll jump in now. Exactly, we get questions. Well, my exam is only 15 minutes. Well, and then we look at it and it was a scar worksheet that, you know, you have the scar and they look at it to measure it. That's a very quick exam, for example, where it's something like diabetes or other things that are going on as the doctor said it takes longer. And also, frankly, doctors have been doing this a long time like Dr. Gatnes. They're quicker because they know the forms of water. They're all vetted and trained the same way. For all of us, once you've been doing something for a long time, you can't get more familiar with those forms and everything. So you can see a slight difference in exam times based on each individual person, how often they are, what's in their records, and things of that nature. But don't be alarmed. If you ever have a question about that, please ask the provider while you're there. Some of our younger vests, especially sometimes are afraid to ask questions. The biggest takeaway, giveaway I can tell those folks is please ask the questions. Ask, ask, ask. If you forget afterwards, call us. We have a dedicated call so we have real people that answer the phone and real people on emails. Let us know because we want to sort it right then and there and not have it, you know, way longer. So please, please, please tell your fellow vests that they have any questions. Ask. And Dr. Bill, when you get a lot of questions, you know, as far as the questions are concerned, I know that's difficult for a lot of people even in regular medicine, you know, especially guys, like, you know, or way different. That's why when you heard the response comes with it, I always call the spouse the truth zero. But especially for guys. It doesn't matter military. I don't know, I don't want to know yet. But I always handle all my cases with how do I do, do I gloss over anything, anything I forgot or any questions. Do we have to kind of give people the opportunity to take out that question or give them the little anxiety that you might have to ask a question? I consider myself a regular person. I know sometimes people are gonna be like, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. I just don't see that anymore. They do this for a long enough time. But I don't see it and I forget that I think there's not on the table sometimes we do. So try to make it as easy going as we can. And to go back to that question about the time wise, we don't get to see a lot of the better ones to be here. I had one brother in the kingdom for the start of the EQ and it was a matter of the start of the Olympics. Super simple, went through the exam, we talked for a little bit, talked about his experiences, believes, that comes back a month later with that McDonald's EQ. And he says, I've been mad at you for a month. I said, well, what did I do? And he said, I told you it hurts. And at the start of the EQ you wrote that there was no discomfort. And I said, yes. The start of the EQ asks, is there pain on the scar? So when I rubbed on the scar, there was no discomfort. On the endowment of the EQ it says, is there pain in my coach? So now we're here for a different EQ. So sometimes that gets lost in time, but as you can say, I've been mad at you for over a month, but I'm glad you got back to me so we can talk about this and then we have a great conversation on that. So again, we're answering questions. The difference between private practice and doing these worksheets are specific questions we have to answer that only pertain to one subject versus when you're in the office seeing me as a private practitioner, the whole body matters. Here we're working with specific body parts, so certain questions don't transfer. So after the exam, and here's again where we all differ, something else that I forgot being here for nine years, I can do these DQs in my mind, so I can actually pick up the questions in my mind. So I do go a little faster than some of the new people who we train, and I might take them an hour to do the reflex Q and Q. But what happens afterwards, this is for all the information that we have put together. So anything I haven't seen from a file that I might need, old records, maybe something from the service, maybe something else that I need to create a nexus to say, hey, you've had this problem in my case, I've been here for eight years, proof that it's still there, 85, we're here today, that all goes together. There's a process with the EPS where there's some checks, all the work that we did right, follow the guidelines, make sure that you go right, right on one side, left on the other, I've done that before, and you flip everything around. And then once everything looks well, follow the guidelines, and we're happy to sign off and we'll get it sent off to the EPS. And everything for us is electronic. Since the beginnings, if you start this in 2008, we digitized every DQ form that the VA has, and that's in our system. So we don't use any paper, it's kind of like if you're going in and booking an airline ticket or something, it won't let me go if you don't put a certain cost, and that's to help make sure that providers don't accidentally miss anything, they aren't human too. And the goal of course is to get a quality, complete, readable exam back to the VA in a timely fashion, so you all get your benefits faster, and then that opens up the world of treatment faster, and all those good things that come from the DQ. So all that's digitized, and as the doctor said every single case that comes in, we quality check. We have a team of 500 plus QAs that are quality analysts that go through, and they're trained, it takes months for them to get trained with our providers to go through and check those reports.  But if the doc says left from one and right from the other or maybe, you know, they'll send an email and say, can you check on this? Is this what you meant to say? Because they know what the VA needs that we're able to report and the doctor will look at it and say, yeah, I meant that, I know you're right, let me let me fix it. And that way, we have far through reverence and have to come back to setting exams where the VA gets back to the board or anything like that. So that really helps get a reasonable report to the RDSRs and the VA faster for you all. I don't know if it's forced at all here. Yeah, nothing worse than wasting time and having things start over for some reason. Adam and Simon, on these 10 takeaways, it's very important to attend your CMP exam. Please, please, please attend your CMP exam. If you can't make it, call us and let us know. We don't want to have to report people as a no-show. That's never good for anyone. And I'm not thinking on younger vets. I used to be one, I guess I'm not anymore. But they, we had a vet, it was like long-going fishing. Let's reschedule that and get you in to do this important exam so you can get your benefits. And every case that comes in to us, the first thing we do is attempt to contact the veterans, call a day one call. We email and do a phone call to the info that the VA has given us to get the veterans scheduling availability so we can plug it in as close as possible to their home within that time frame. Now the VA wants us to get these things done in less than three weeks. So we are on the rest of our time. That's what sometimes the vet tells us, well, I'm out of town for two months or something. Then we have to send that back to the VA and then they'll resubmit it two months later, for example. But that's very important to attend the exam. If you need to reschedule, as I said, call us. Please make sure the VBA has your current contact information, both the VHA and the VBA. Those systems do not always talk to each other. And the VA, that's a direct quote from the VA. It's not a spear, it's just how the VHA and the VBA work. Frankly, they never talk to each other in a way. Because we'll get vets and say they were just at the VA medical center. Why just gave them my new address? Well, that didn't blow over to the VA regional office, for example. So when you're updating your addresses, keep coming to the VA, make sure VHA gets it and VBA. For those who don't know, VHA, the better teleministration around those hospitals curing everybody, treatment, etc. VBA benefits administration side, handles the money and benefits and everything in the home loans and GI bills and most important what we're talking about today, the C&P process for you all. So they don't always talk to each other. So please, please, please let them know that. Don Ray talked about the medical history. He had submitted the evidence and everything. Multiple appointments. We want to hit on that. Some vets are like, well, I just went to the appointment. If you've got a large plane or something from like Agent Orange that's going to trigger an OPTO exam or other exams, we're going to schedule you with multiple specialist based on what the VA sent in. So you'll see Dr. Daphnis for the general medical part, but then you might go to an ophthalmologist for the division test and all that gets packed together and you can see that. Yeah, along with first TBI has to be a neurologist or a physiatrist, etc. so yeah, dental vision, which I think psychiatry, what else do we do? Yeah, dental, audio, work though, TBI's are all specialists for that and of course the gym beds. Now, that's another question we can get. Why are I seeing specialists? Well, for the most part, the VA considers the doctors in these DOs first and then specialist second. So for our contract, any doctor that's qualified can do these and the VA in 99.8% of the cases does not request a specialist to do those in two forms. So that's why, you know, if it's a scar or a cheek, you're not necessarily going to see a dermatologist in fact, I guarantee you're not going to see a dermatologist. You're going to see a gym bed provider that's been trained on everything and you can go through and do that and that's the way the VA has the system set up. Now there are some appeal cases and some others that come in where the VA will ask us if we have a specialist and then we work to find one in our network to get the veterans there. But that's a big question. Why am I going to see, you know, this kind of specialist? It's not how the VA has CMP contracts in the process of gym meds or gym meds first. And here's where the not treating part comes in, right? It fits. I don't know what's a good example is, but if we're talking with a specialist, well, I'm not going to do surgery in the office so you don't need a specialist. We're just kind of traveling and putting everything together. As long as your provider knows this ability with the medicine, what gets radiation cameo therapy that's a cancer, for example. And I think there's a question about time just before we had a burning order in Phoenix. We were breaking out of the dieters. So nothing was better than to the veteran coming in and is, what do you use a dieters? Go on my heart. I'm like, not a dieters. We're just branding out space. And so, yeah, I understand that question, but I think it's a matter of understanding that we're not going as deep as a specialist would need to. We're trying to get the superficial point to making sure we understand how treatment went, how you're doing right now, etc. Absolutely. And that's another, we get those questions, because we, yes, we try to get the exams as close to the veterans as possible. So we have a network of breaking order actual clinics. It's APS on them in major cities all around the country and in a couple spots in the world, in the long and how influential some other places. But in areas of lower volume, we will go out to smaller communities and rent that, you know, podiatrist office, because maybe they're only using it three days a week or even some other facilities where we come in and take it over, we have a portable exam tape and all that. So we'll actually travel to doctors around the West Texas as a good example. We've got a kind of circuit doctor to go to San Angelo, we've got an office, we've got an airport space and we go to Abilene, we've got a separate space in North Midland, Odessa. So Monday and one, Tuesday and another, Wednesday and another. That's how we get closer to the veterans. So you won't have to travel as much and we can get things done but then have free time for it. So just because you go up to a building that looks like a business, it doesn't look like a doctor's office, that's okay. Once you get in there, you're going to see the clinics, you'll see a provider with all the equipment and everything they need to do that exam and that's very common for us around the country, especially in old rural areas. We don't touch on them right, be truthful and honest when answering. Number nine, get this a lot. Our doctors don't know the status of your lines and we don't either. Other than we can tell you when we send the completed report back to the VA. You can call us and ask us that anytime and we'll be happy to walk you through it. But once we get it back to the VA, it's in the VA's hands. Now I can tell you the VA is working very hard and we've seen this over the years they've gotten much better. They're bringing in more staff and as they've outsourced the C&Ps now they have more staff to rate them. Their goal is to get it rated as quickly as possible and the feedback we get from our fellow vets is that wow, we've got that rating in a few weeks usually and that's a great thing. But once we send it back to the VA, we don't know how long it takes to rate it. We do not control in the money or the rating percentage as that is, while that is a VA function there and so we call them for those updates because they're welcome to call us to find out when the report was sent. Also vets I want a copy of my report. We are not allowed to give a copy of the Q and Q directly to the veteran. That is a VA contractual thing and it's because the VA legally is a custodian of records is the way they explain it to us. So sometimes vets like oh you got to give me a copy of that. We are prohibited by the VA from doing that. That final copy goes to the VA and we are entitled to a copy of it and our teams get this question a lot and they've got contacts where they can direct you to get that copy but you have to get it from the VA. We cannot give you a copy of the report. That's not what we don't want to that's just in black and white and how they've had that contract in the past 14 years. Now there are some diagnostic testing that you all do. We can give you copies of that. Let's say a surgeon, blood work, or an x-ray. You want to copy that to your doctor. Absolutely. It's called and we can get that to you because that's the diagnostic testing. The actual electronic PDQs we do go to the VA and then they have to provide you a copy once you ask for it. And we talked about the exam links as well.


The team keep it clean. We know just how powerful and influential the media is, especially when it comes to Lamar Jackson. We've seen it so many times when the media will wanna prop up a player, specifically a quarterback and they'll do that, but in the process, they will be tearing down Lamar Jackson. We've seen it time and time again. We've seen it year after year after year. That's why when I saw this, I was surprised because it was actually that being done, but in reverse order. And I'll explain in a bit. PFF, PFF who we know they have a grading system that is 1,000% accurate. They never make any mistakes. They never have any controversial grades that they give to players no matter how great or no matter how bad players play. PFF, their number system is always on point, wink. But anyway, PFF, they put out a tweet and it says, which of these QBs deserves the biggest contract? And it is contract time for some significant quarterbacks in the NFL. And the QBs that were pictured from left to right, it was Jaylen Hertz, Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert and Lamar Jackson. And you could make a case. You could make a case for any one of these QBs being deserving of the biggest contract. For Jaylen Hertz, you could say, hey, Jaylen Hertz, he literally just took his team to the Super Bowl and he did so much to where he put his team in position to win. They did have that fumble that they lost. It ended up being a touchdown. But still, Jaylen Hertz, he got there and that matters. Then you could go to Joe Burrow. You could say, oh, Joe Burrow for every season that he's finished, he's had his team competing to either play in a Super Bowl or actually in a Super Bowl. Last year, well, this past season, they went to AFC Championship. In the previous year, they were actually in the Super Bowl. And then you go to Justin Herbert and you could say, well, he puts up a lot of passing yards. So that's nice. And then you move on to Lamar Jackson. You could say, hey, when Lamar Jackson, he finishes the season. The Ravens are guaranteed a spot in the playoffs. And Lamar Jackson is asked to not only be the leading passer, but the leading rusher every single year for his Baltimore Ravens. And he does a lot more with a lot less. He's asked to do a lot more with a lot less weapons around him, especially than these other quarterbacks have. So depending on who you ask, they can make a case for each of those four quarterbacks and why they are deserving of the biggest contract. But CJ Gardner Johnson. I don't know what his story is. I don't know what his situation, I don't know what it is, but for some reason, wherever he leaves, whatever team he leaves, it's like a bridge is burnt or something like that. He left full, got traded from New Orleans. And I see a lot of New Orleans fans, they just are not feeling him at all. But then really for recently with the Eagles, there was a lot of discrepancy about what happened with him and the Eagles and his departure from the Eagles that they offered him this contract, but the contract wasn't exactly what he said it was. Then he ended up only taking like a one year deal to sign with the Lions. And he has been taking some shots at the Eagles back and forth and whatnot. I don't know exactly what went wrong, but something went wrong. And he ain't feeling feeling no more. But anyway, he had quote tweeted this PFF tweet and again, the one it asked, which of these QB deserves the biggest contract? And he said Lamar Jackson. Now, that he could be saying Lamar Jackson for one of two reasons. First reason, actually one of three reasons. First reason, one because he believes that Lamar Jackson is deserving of the biggest contract out of these four quarterbacks. He could believe that Lamar Jackson should be next up. He should be the highest paid and he deserves his bread. That could be him really believing that and it could also be him just advocating for the player because we know Lamar is up against a lot right now. A whole lot right now. So this could be CJ Gardner Johnson just really having his back. Or number two, it could be him taking another shot at his previous team, the Philadelphia Eagles. And because again, it didn't end so sweet there. It really didn't. And then number three, it could just be a combination of both. He could really believe that Lamar Jackson is deserving. But at the same time, he wanna let the world know like, hey, it's not Jalen Hertz, it's Lamar Jackson. That's why I felt like this was interesting because it's like, again, we're so used to the media propping up one guy and tearing Lamar Jackson down. That this, somebody is propping up Lamar Jackson but it seems like there's no confirmation. But if you read between all the lines that CJ Gardner Johnson has been drawing recently, then you can see like, it seems like he's propping up LJ, which is great, but he's tearing down Jalen Hertz in the process. Now my opinion, you don't gotta tear anybody down just to prop somebody else up. I don't think it's right when people would do it with Lamar Jackson, other quarterbacks and even on a flip side, I don't think it should be done for Lamar Jackson with other quarterbacks too. If somebody deserves their props, hey, get them their props, get them whatever praise, whatever accolades and whatever recognition, so to speak, that they deserve. Give them that. But, and that's just in life in general.  For what? For what? If you feel like somebody is good at something or greatest, hey, you're great at what you do. I really appreciate your work, I admire you, da-da-da-da. That's cool. You ain't gotta tear nobody else down in the process. You can continue to build each other up but I just thought that this was interesting from Mr. CJ Gardner Johnson. And then, at the same time, the graphic, the graphic stuck out to me because, which QB do y'all feel deserves the biggest contract out of those four? Cause all of them are up. I don't know why they ain't put two on this list two, I mean, two was eligible for a contract extension as well, you gotta include it in them two. But anyway, which QB do y'all feel like deserves the biggest contract? Put it in the comment section. I'm curious to know everybody starts on that. And be honest, be honest, cause I wanna hear it. Team QB Clean, I love y'all, I appreciate y'all. We out.