The Chicken Heart!

BOO!

Did I scare you? I thought that since October has begun, I'd ease into the Halloweeny spirit. Halloween has fast become like Christmas in as far as it's becoming a month long celebration. People are even decorating their houses early (albeit a bit scarier) to drag the "holiday" out as long as possible. 

I love this time of year. Not just for Halloween. In the Midwest (well, before global warming) one can expect the temperatures to start dropping just as readily as the leaves did from the trees. The air becomes crisp, the days shorter, the threat of winter is upon us. It is a perfect day for a celebration like Halloween.

So I think I'll pop in every so often with a bit of Halloween spice. Today, we'll start with something I found particularly fun. 

A few years ago, when I was moderating the Pioneer Pageturners online book club for Pioneer Press, I chose as one of the books The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

A fantastic book, highly recommended. There are a number of issues going on in the book, including the issue of race, medical ethics, and the ethics of DNA research, but the main imputes of the story involves a woman named Henrietta Lacks who went to the hospital in 1951 and discovered that she had cervical cancer. It would eventually claim her life. Doctors, however, took some of the cells that they had scraped from her cervix and cultured them for later tests, as often happens in hospitals. What they discovered was that these particular cells did not die. They were termed "immortal", continue to divide and were named HeLa (after Henrietta Lacks) cells. The HeLa cells have been used in any number of experiments. In some respects, Henrietta is still with us, decades after her death.

The notion of these cells that wouldn't die caused a bit of a stir early on (of course this sort of research was in its infancy). Some found the idea creepy and in fact, the story of the HeLa cells inspired a story called "The Chicken Heart" that was heard on a radio show called "Lights Out Theater."

Now, I happen to know of "The Chicken Heart" story because of a bit that was on a Bill Cosby record I had as a kid. Cosby was brilliant at infusing humor into the story of his childhood and in this bit he told a story about being alone at home one night as a child and listening to "The Chicken Heart" being played out on "Lights Out Theater."

At the time I thought it was just a fake broadcast he made up for the bit. Thirty years later, while reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks I discover that there was indeed a radio play called "The Chicken Heart" and you know what...it's pretty creepy. It relies heavily on the listeners imagination and can at times fall into melodrama, but if indeed you're able to allow yourself to fall into it and really imagine the possibility, it's a scary concept. It may well have been the inspiration for the 1958 movie "The Blob."

That could of course never happen. Or...could it? 

So for fun I thought I'd kick off the Halloween posts with something I found on YouTube while doing research for a post on the Pioneer Pageturners' blog. It's the broadcast of "The Chicken Heart" on "Lights Out Theater" with animation from the person who posted the clip. 

Enjoy...if you can. Muwwwahahahahahahaaaa!!!!!