A nurse accused of putting a patients glass eye in a drink at a hospital says she was only having a joke. Christine Mitchelson, above, 52, of Denton Burn, Newcastle, is facing a complaints panel over her conduct while at Newcastles Royal Victoria Infirmary. Today Mrs Mitchelson, who denies acting improperly, said the claims have caused her so much stress she rarely leaves home.
Richard Edlow, is the need for reading glasses among an aging population.Of people ages 45 and above - a large slice of Baltimoreans, as baby boomers age - 98 percent require reading glasses, Edlow said. And no one is more likely to forget their spectacles while rushing out of the house than someone who needs them only for reading, he added.We run into instances with patients we see, they come in and say, I forget my reading glasses all the time. Its a problem especially when Im in a new restaurant trying to read the menu, Edlow explained. And as a consumer, I see people all the time borrowing somebodys glasses. We thought, wouldnt it be a neat idea to join together with a number of restaurants and provide it for the public?About a month ago Katzen launched its MenuMates program, providing to each restaurant four pairs of reading glasses contained in a wooden recipe box. The glasses represent the four most common lens strengths, and the box includes a chart with different sizes of print to help patrons select the prescription they need.Five restaurants are on board with the program so far - Liberatores Ristorante, with locations throughout the area, Cosmopolitan Bar Grill in Canton, Cafe Troia in Towson, Vaccaros Italian Pastry Shop in Little Italy and the Brass Elephant on North Charles Street. Jack Elsby, co-owner of the Brass Elephant, said his establishment has seen so many squinting diners he has kept glasses on hand to offer them in the past. Were the kind of restaurant - upscale - where the lighting can be dark and ambient and romantic, Elsby said. And our clientele tends to be 35 and above, those who might [need reading glasses]. We have customers asking all the time.Katzen provides the glasses to restaurants free of charge, and will replenish them if guests wander off with them - a habit that quickly depleted the Brass Elephants supply when Elsby purchased the glasses himself. The cost to Katzen is minimal, according to Edlow.Its a nice touch, he said of the program. Its a community service that helps both our patients and others.And, of course, theres the prospect of increased name recognition for Katzen, he acknowledged.MenuMates targets upscale restaurants, the COO added, as those are most likely to have attentive waitstaff who would notice when a guest is struggling with the menu. Katzen hopes to have 25 or 35 participating restaurants within the next six months, and maybe as many as 100 in a year. The program could even expand nationally if it proves popular, Edlow said, or even to other establishments like golf courses. For Elsby and the other restaurateurs, MenuMates gives them another opportunity to enhance their guests dining experience. A quality atmosphere is all about the details, Elsby explained.I think it just gives them bit more comfort, which makes evening go better, he said.
Swathed from top to toe in bandages, a young woman looks up at the sky. True to her prediction, the plane she is waiting to observe crashes shortly after take-off, killing 127 people. The boyfriend accused of causing her dreadful burns should have been on that flight, but his remains cant be found in the wreckage. Instead, the play discovers him in the middle of the desert in the company of a figure wearing an identical suit. The missing mans skin is baked. He has lost all sense of identity. What, this drama asks, would it be like to go through a gradual dream-like process of rediscovering the horror of who you were and to realise that, through the fluke of survival, you have been punished by not being punished? A metaphysical mystery story; an existential memory play; a psychological study of blank indifference; a pitch-black jest - Tear From A Glass Eye manages, beguilingly, to be all of these things and in Erica Whymans splendid production at The Gate, these various elements achieve a brilliant artistic unity. Runway lights flash forebodingly along Soutra Gilmores zig-zag wing-like set, which has just the right denuded, abstract feel and pointedly offers no hiding place for Ian Drysdales terminally perplexed Titus, who is drawn back into his past by an enigmatic alter ego (Darrell DSilva). The mixed tone of the play suggests that life is both an ineffable nightmare and a down-to-earth practical joke. The drama is haunted by the eponymous symbol whose significance we learn from flashbacks. Returning from the War, Tituss amputated father (a superbly anarchic James Hayes) tries, counterproductively, to rush intimacy with his young son. As a curiosity, he gives the boy a glass eye he found next to a dead body in the desert. Made of sand, this object, with its changeless unconcerned stare, comes to represent a different kind of desert - that state of emotional indifference which is Tituss hell. It is a poetic image of which the young T.S. Eliot might not have been ashamed.
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