Stem Cell Symphony: A Novel

Stuart Matheson, 32, is trapped in a nursing home as well as his body, eerily immobile at the last stage of Huntington's Disease. Kelsey Raye is a science writer feeling guilty about the recent deaths of her parents. She volunteers for hospice and is assigned to Stuart. She's a PhD, he never finished school, but they share a love of rock music and disdain of religion. They instantly bond.

As Kelsey plays her iPod daily for Stuart, he improves - an impossibility - and when she misses a few days, he backslides. She deduces that Stuart's gains follow hearing U2 or their imitators. Kelsey, who writes about stem cells, thinks the frequency of the arpeggios is turning on stem cells in Stuart's brain. She shares her idea with researcher Peter Holloway, but evil Nurse Smithies overhears and outs them to a tabloid. Meanwhile, Peter scans Stuart's brain. He's getting better!

All hell breaks loose when the tabloid hits. The government shuts down Peter's lab and confiscates Kelsey's iPod, while anti-stem cell protestors harass them -- just as Peter discovers how music stimulates stem cells. Then something unexpected happens. Did science fail, or was it the anti-science forces?

The underlying love story and comical cast of characters propel this parallel tale of emerging spirituality and an evolving medical technology. Many of the characters and scenes are based on real people, and the science dead-on accurate - with the one tweak of the music turning on stem cells.

It could happen.
Customer Review: Entertaining, informative, and inspiring
It's very refreshing to read a novel that is so well grounded in science and real life. This book has all the fictional elements of a great novel, yet you learn some things about science along the way through the book. I particularly liked the section on Congressional testimony. And I can personally relate to some of the nursing home scenes. Great job!
Customer Review: A good read AND informative!
Ricki Lewis' novel is the story of a young science writer who, as a hospice volunteer, finds herself inexplicably helping a patient with an incurable disease. It is current both in terms of discussing the science of the stem cell technology we hear so much about these days, but also in its musical references, like U2 and Coldplay (two artists included in a recent planetarium show I visited in the Rose Space Center in NYC.) There is a love interest with a twist, and I found myself gripped by the unknowns presented in the thickening plots. The cast of characters was eccentric but believable. Their actions felt so real sometimes, I found myself wondering if portions of the story were based on real events. What I perhaps liked the best was that the uplifting ending suggested that the miracle of art (in this case music) can inexplicably have a profound scientific effect on our bodies in ways we have perhaps not yet discovered. If there are not medical researchers out there testing out Dr. Lewis' "novel" hypotheses- there should be! I found myself learning about science while enjoying the story. This was a good read- I highly suggest it!

Have you ever wondered how piano tuners learn their trade? Most tuners learn the business from a family member. In fact, piano tuning often spans several generations in a family, handed down from father to son.

There are good tuners and great tuners, but in any case they have to learn a craft that is several hundred years old and has changed little.

There are three distinct types of tuners: tuners, repairmen and rebuilders. Usually a tuner works their way up from simple tuning to the more difficult task of repair and then rebuilding.

A tuner can expect $100 per tuning, but if they work for someone else they may take home only half of that. Still, it is a job much in demand.

The average tuning takes at least an hour, and requires quiet and solitude, although the very best tuners, usually working for a large firm like Steinway, can expect to be on call for the most famous concert pianists.

These superstars of the piano business hover backstage at major concerts, waiting for the occasional string to break so they can vault out onto the stage and fix it in front of thousands of people.

One such tuner superstar is Franz Mohr, who was tuner and repairman for two legendary pianists, Vladimir Horowitz and Artur Rubinstein. As an employee of the Steinway Company, he was delegated to accompany either of these two great artists on their world travels, tuning hammer and pliers at the ready, in case something should go wrong, \he most dramatic being a string breaking during a concert.

Mohr became a personal friend of both Rubinstein and Horowitz, was part of their international entourage.

Mohr selected pianos for Horowitz, for Horowitz never took a "company" piano. By this you must understand that great concert pianists are sometimes forced to play on a variety of instruments in their travels. The only solution to this problem of inconsistency is to take a piano with you, and this is very, very expensive, requiring genuine superstar status.

Horowitz had his favorite Steinway 9 foot concert grand, and he kept it at home. When a concert tour came, the neighbors of his New York City Upper East Side townhouse were used to the sight of the immense piano being lowered slowly out the window and onto a waiting truck.

Mohr and other great tuners I have known like Steinway's Heinz Zimmerman were artists in their own right. To tune and repair a piano for a professional pianist is an extremely demanding job, for the results must in fact be perfect. Every key must feel exactly the same. Every key must feel, to the artist, as if they have the same weight, the same feel, the same speed. The process that achieves this at the piano is called "regulation," and may take several days to adjust the thousands of tiny moving parts

There is no better feeling to a great pianist than a great piano, perfectly tuned and regulated, waiting for beautiful music to be played.

By John Aschenbrenner Copyright 2000 Walden Pond Press. Visit http://www.pianoiseasy.com to see the fun PIANO BY NUMBER method for kids.

John Aschenbrenner is a leading children's music educator and book publisher, and the author of numerous piano method books in the series PIANO BY NUMBER.

latin music video