Where the Columbines Grow

In 1915 the new Colorado State Song was officially adopted, Where the Columbines Grow. It seems fitting that the Cragmor inmates would have sung it and helped popularize the tune (although it never caught on and was superseded by John Denver's Rocky Mountain High in 1972.

Here is the real anthem arranged in Sanatorium style, as though for their Cragmor Follies entertainments, when they let their hair down a bit. This is a mock up of the full version, with recorded track and live instruments approximated. These include:
• Swigging and hooting from medicine bottles as microtonal whistles
• Deflating balloon larynxes (for those who had TB of the throat)
• Tongue-depressor kazoo chorus
• Audience participation: shakers of pill bottles

This started as a Lab Symphony with repurposed medical apparatus but ended up as the climax to the Cragmor Talent Show portion of the evening. It will provide a bathetic high just before going into the Germ Requiem.

A TB Slideshow

So after culling the internets for images relating to TB, consumption, sanatoriums, former residents at Cragmor, public health campaigns, and medical images of pneumothorax, I have posted a slideshow. This might be shown in the Waiting Room as the audience enters for the Sun Palace performance to give an idea of the forgotten world of TB sufferers.