A Writer's Best Quotes of 2009

Bill Luchsinger, artist
“All art, all higher functions of the mind, is about time - our wish to control it, to stop it, to understand its triumph over all that we do.”

Dr. Dan Gervich, infectious disease specialist at Mercy Hospital in Des Moines

“ It’s as if Staphylococcus aureus were trained to understand human behavior and vulnerability. They gravitate to the end of the nose, between the legs and under the arms — great places to colonize. It loves serum and blood. That’s what we feed it in labs. Once it finds its way to them — even through floor burns or tiny abrasions — it celebrates. Bacteria are promiscuous, I’d even say bestial. Other species share genetic material with them, extra chromosomal DNA. Within that suitcase lurks resistance to much more than what’s obvious.”

Dr. Tara Smith, the University of Iowa doctor who unleashed MRSA on the mainstream media, and who has also been working on Streptococcus suis, a pathogen of swine which causes a rapidly fatal disease in neonatal piglets as well as sporadic disease in humans with meningitis, a common manifestation.

“All are zoonotic infections — microbes that can be transmitted between animals and humans. HIV has become established in the human population, and the animal reservoir is no longer needed to maintain transmission to humans. With E. coli O157 and ST398 (the “pig” MRSA), animals still seem to be the primary reservoir for these microbes, and humans become infected upon contact with the animals themselves or with contaminated food.”

Mike Callicrate, maverick cattle rancher and bane to Big Ag

“If we can get PAMTA (Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, a bill now in Congress and supported by President Obama that would end the prophylactic use of antibiotics in industrial agriculture) passed it’s the end of the CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) - because CAFO’s can’t exist without massive antibiotics. Without CAFO’s, all the other problems - human rights, animal rights, water pollution, environemental abuses, health issues - improve by leaps and bounds.”

John Phillip Davis, painter

Speaking about himself and three contemporary painters -


“We’re packaged quite differently but we are all afflicted with the same fetish - to make that which we love making and to figure a way to live off our labor.”

Michael Brangoccio, painter whose subjects frequently defy the laws of physics, with floating elephants and grounded birds.


“Floating is nearly always about grace, that unearned quality that just happens if you are in the right state.”

Tara Donovan, sculptor

“My attraction to materials and to their quantities comes from how they absorb and reflect light. I don’t see a straw, I see a tubular construction that sucks light. I work as much as a scientist as an artist. It’s all a process of experiment and discovery for me.”