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Matinee: 'Profiles Of Courage'
27 June 2020
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 350th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Nantucket Magazine's Profiles Of Courage.
This 44-second slide show of portraits of the staff of Nantucket Cottage Hospital by photographer Kit Noble promotes the Nantucket Magazine article Profiles Of Courage written by Jason Graziadei.
The sound track of this YellowProductions piece appropriately features Hold It All Together by CHPTRS. Because that's what this collection of people is doing.
They represent many thousands more healthcare workers around the globe doing just the same thing.
At the nine-second mark, you get a glimpse of Noble in his studio shooting a portrait. He's wearing a mask and staying six feet away, backed up against a wall.
Ten seconds later, we see a succession of subjects having their portraits taken. Hundreds were taken over the three-day shoot.
But for most of the 44-second clip we see the faces of the people who are, as the song says, holding it together.
Nantucket Magazine calls the story as "a look behind the scenes" at the hospital. You don't get that from this clip, but Graziadei tells that story in words.
It's the story not just of an institution but of a community:
- A former Navy environmental health officer who, as a new CEO, tapped a 30-year local physician to be interim chief medical officer
- A physician assistant working on the drive-through testing line who is asthmatic and a new mom with a one-year-old baby boy
- A charge nurse impressed by the staff's volunteer spirit, stepping into new roles to cover shifts and get things done
- The 26 people trained in contact tracing protocols
- The retired ER nurse manager who came back to work
And it's a story of sacrifice. Putting one's own interests aside to care for the greater good.
Which is itself a lesson on what makes a community -- and a country -- great.