Why I'm Putting On A Pink Bra...

Why I'm Putting On My Pink Bra and Making Strides

Okay, I am not really going to wear a Pink Bra. You know that, right?  Pink's not my color, really.  But the opener did get your attention, didn't it?  Glad it did.  This program that I am inovled in is important.  It needs the attention of anyone who loves a woman.  You love your mom, right?  Your daughter, niece, wife, aunt, nana, sister, favorite stripper?  Yeah, them; all of them.

The women of our lives have a 1 in 8 chance of being invaded by breast cancer.  The only other thing that kills more women each year is lung cancer (more on that later).  And it's not their fault or their families' fault; meaning it ain't in the genes.  Only about 5%-10% of the diagnosed cases each year have anything to do with genetic predisposition--which means 95% OF THE TIME YOU DON'T SEE IT COMING. 

By contrast, there are 13000 murders in the US each year.  Your odds of being murdered? ONE in TWENTY THREE THOUSAND.  Kinda makes you wonder what sort of REAL good we could achieve if we  diverted the passion and resources spent on gun control towards a more noble effort like, oh, I dunno,  SAVING THE TA-TAs.  

1 in 8 vs. 1 in 23000.  Where's the real threat? Just sayin'...

So, I got involved in this program, The American Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer.  I am going to Walk the Walk with the Woman and the Women I truly love  to at least show my support for them (they need me to carry the cooler.  It's a FUN walk) and for those we know who have or have had breast cancer (you do not Walk alone ladies), and to highlight the need for the preservation and conservation of a most wonderful natural resource.  See?  We can contribute to TWO causes here--breast cancer awareness AND resource conservation!  Damn, we're good. 

Are we collecting donations?  Yes, please, through this site we are.  Do you NEED to donate?  No, it is not compulsory.  In this fiscal / economic environment, any diversion of discretionary funds is difficult, I get it.   Despite the fund raising goal for me on this site ($250, of which I have already donated 33%--ahem), my true goals here are 1) To get me involved in a cause in which I have a significant vested interest---SAVING THE TA-TAs and 2) to get you think about an important issue without being all sappy and heart-stringy about it.   

If I made you think, cool.  If I made you smile and think, mission accomplished.  If you do decide to donate, you have my sincerest thanks because I know the effort and the money will make a difference.  To do so, please visit my Making Strides Page:
http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR?fr_id=47352&pg=personal&px=6055126

 Thanks for reading.  Think Pink!

Walking the Smiling Dog On the Slippery Rocks

“I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”
--Richard Dawkins (scientist, author)

"My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the universe."

--Albert Einstein (scientist, author)  

"In the places I go there are things that I see that I never could spell if I stopped with the Z. 

I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends.  My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!  So, on beyond Z!  It's high time you were shown that you really don't know all there is to be known."  --Dr. Seuss (scientist, author)

NOTE:  I have no idea why I wrote this except that of all the threads and potential posts running through my head these days, this thread has been screaming the loudest "Me!  Write Me!" So, without meaning to offend anyone or even spur debate on the subject, I bring this to the Chronicles.   When you're done you might find yourself asking "Jeez, what's next?  Politics and Sex?" I promise, neither of those is even the inkling of a thread for me here. Enjoy.  Or not.

You might remember a while back when I told of the man here in Key West who would stand on highly trafficked street corners and wave a sign about that read "God Hates..." And then sometime later how I had occasion on one of my lunchtime runs to stare down one of his colleagues carrying a similar sign--an Evil who thought he was powerful enough to stand in my path. I looked in his eyes and found him wanting. The God that I believe exists does not hate. He's not even fearsome (except in the enormity of His presence and my corresponding inconsequentiality) or vengeful or wrathful. He just is and that's all I will say about it except that I think She might have a sense of humor (examine my life's details to find out why I believe this) in hopes that you remember this at the end of this post that will spend some time on the notion of "God or not".
The quotes above are notable for me. Big minds spent on big thoughts came up with these ideas, and I will admit that I favor Einstein's notion and Seuss' admonition over Dr. Dawkins' perspective. More on that later.
To believe or not to believe, that is the question. I have friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues whose beliefs in the divine cover the full range of the faith and religion spectrum. I love and respect each and every one of them even when I cannot fathom the source of their assuredness. Don’t get me wrong: if you start handling a pit viper and mumbling ancient curses and verses, or you try to tell me that the universe is only 2000 years old despite the best scientific evidence to the contrary, or if you ridicule my family or friends for their devout practice of their religion, we will, at a minimum, engage in healthy debate.

I find myself in the role of "wonderer"; my perspective falls between the two ends of the spectrum, and what's interesting to me is that I see it as not so much a linear spectrum from faithful to atheist as I do a set of crossed axes--trust me, the imagery I just set out here of the cross was not intended but perhaps a Freudian call back to my Catholic indoctrination. I mean nothing more by it than a set of Cartesian axes, X and Y. In the X axis is faith, or belief in God, from a zero level, abject atheist, to full-on devoted believer in a Supreme Being that takes an active part in one's life. In the Y axis is religion.  The zero on this axis is the adamant non-practitioner of any religious practice of any kind.  The high end of the Y-axis is the devoutly dogmatic adherent to whatever practice to which he or she may subscribe.  Having described it this way, I think most people I know live somewhere on  the “45” between these two axes (I keep company with very few priests, pastors or mullahs--not for lack of want-to, we just don't move in the same circles).  I consider my own beliefs to be high on the X-axis and very near zero on the Y-axis.  I believe in a Supremacy—something bigger; much, much bigger--the presence of Whom actually leads me to questions about, well, everything, and the concept of Whom provides me a sense of "direction" as I wonder.  But I have almost no use for Man’s religions.  Many folks I know, atheist and believer alike, have a hard time severing faith and religion.  There is the thought from faithful folks that you cannot believe in God and not go to church and practice the rites and ceremonies that God demands.   And there is the atheist’s idea that both God and religion are inseparable because they are man-made myths and crutches for limited intellect.  I disagree with both notions as absolutes.  I will respectfully point out that there are a slew of different sets of rites and ceremonies and doctrines which describe a great many different religions, cults and practices, and you can find a different interpretation for most of them by simply going to the next city.  I am sincerely challenged to believe that God whispered separately in the ears of the likes of Jesus, Abraham, the Buddha, and Mohammed (or anyone else; I don't mean to exclude here), and gave them each completely different sets of instructions and then left them to "work it out among yourselves."  It's a recipe for chaos...seen the news lately? I will also point out that some of the greatest acts of care and kindness are more regularly dispensed as an act of one's faith than they are as a result of reason and rational thought.

Some of my friends might read this and say, “Yeah, that.  Exactly.”  Some will just shake their heads and sigh, “There he goes again.”  Yes, I did, didn’t I (you should know that I enjoy this type of discussion)?  Some will stop reading at the subject line and walk away (sorry.  Okay, not really).  And some from both sides of the debate will actually have issue with this.  The faithful will use doctrine and dogma to highlight my errant ways.  The atheists will try “logic” and “reason” and the “expertise” of celebrated others of their kind to highlight the flaws of my thought processes.  Believe me, I’ve easily spent half of my life considering this position. And what I’ve come up with in answer to both of you is simply “We do not and we cannot possibly know.”

The faithful by definition do not know if there is a God or whether their religious practices “work”.   But they believe, and that provides them comfort and fulfillment (something a ton of folks could use from day to day). That’s the nature of faith—the leap you take when your capacity to know falls short of your ability to understand.  In my mind, it is a beautifully uniquely human trait. 

Likewise, the atheist cannot possibly KNOW that there is NOT a God.  Sorry, smart as you are, rational and reasoned as you are, you aren't enough of either to discern your belief as FACT any more than the believers can discern theirs.  And so yours, too, is a matter of faith, which I respect no less than that of the believer.  But from my conversations with my atheist friends (and they are interestingly more numerous these days) I get the the distinct impression that their specific quarrel is not so much with God's existence but with the religion(s) used to acknowledge it.  Don't misunderstand, the atheist does not believe in God. But I know few of them who will get so worked up about that issue as they will about the practice of religion.  Dr. Dawkins' quote above is illustrative of this position.  I can site examples that make his statement ring true.  But as a credo for atheism, it falls short because it is far too absolute a statement. There are a great many scientists, philosophers, reasonable and rational people who are also people of devout faith in God and who adhere to one or the other of the world's religions.  In many cases, it their faith that drives them to be curious and to use their minds to the  maximum extent possible to answer the nagging questions we all have about life, the universe, and everything else. And though I am not one of these luminaries in thought and science (by a considerable margin), I do understand this perspective best of all because it best describes my experience.  

Neither side of this debate will ever be won. There will forever be the axes of faith and religion, and those who live their lives somewhere between them.  For my part, this is as much "witnessing" as you will ever get from me.  It is also no further persuasion than you will receive to the contrary.  I stand as he who is comfortable in the simultaneous presence of “that than which nothing greater can be thought”, the omnipresent and all-powerful wonder of “how it all works”, and without need for rite, ceremony, ruffle of flourish, to bring it all together. I believe, I wonder, I search and I think.  I can do it with complete cool rational thought processes as well as with the occasional suspension of disbelief in recognition of the fact that, for the time being, what I experience is beyond my ken.  And that for me is enough.  If at the End of Days I am wrong in this; if I truly did need a set of rites and ceremonies, then perhaps as I am brought to judgment (if Judgment there be) the acts of waking and drawing my first breath in thanks (for ALL of it), and walking outside and looking into the stars at dawn and wondering at (and respecting) the immenseness of it all, and smiling back at my dog who ALWAYS has a smile for me, will be seen as practice enough to render the honor due.

Warm Water, Percocet, And a Story Worth Sticking To...

Uncharacteristic of my life these days,  I found myself in a difficult situation yesterday. I was in a bar fight...with a toxic spike wielding ankle molester. 
It was a strange bar--the kind where there's a sign that says "WE don't serve OUR kind here..." I read the sign twice, did a quick inventory of myself and shrugged.  I needed to come in out of the salt and the heat, and since it was neither salty nor hot in the bar I felt relatively sure I would get served.   I ordered a Molotov with a twist--on the rocks, in the dirtiest glass they had. 
My would-be foe, the ankle molester, seethed in the corner, murmuring.  To get my attention he hissed at me, "Apparently SOME people cannot read the sign," he prolonged the "s's" and rolled the "r's" like some Irish snake that I just knew no longer existed.  He never made eye contact,  rocking slowly to and fro with his attention on the table in front of him.  I grinned, downed the last of my cocktail and chewed the "twist" clearing pulp from rind.  I tied the rind in a knot with my tongue (a trick I was taught by a Finnish postal clerk turned Asháninka shaman in the dark alleys of the fourth world where the haircuts come with a happier ending than American Idol with Steve Tyler as "talent" judge) and flicked it across the room towards Seether, the molester.  The rind nicked the corner of his table, which was waste high for me and required a bar stool for it to be neck high for him, and the ricochet angled the knotted rind slightly upward to bounce again off the molester's forehead and into his potato-leek soup causing it to slosh a bit onto the wooden table where he'd been carving his manifesto with the business end of his toxic spike.  "My mistake, mate," I offered, "I was aiming for the waste bin just there behind and above your left ear.  Certainly didn't mean to dampen your doodling. Say, that's quite a spike you've got."
Oddly, that was more than he could stand.  He turned a crimson I have only seen one other time in my life--the paint my wife chose for the color of the walls of our kitchen.  Alas, another place and time and too far away to matter.
In my momentary recollection of that kitchen my attention on the short-tempered ankle molester faltered.  In that brief moment he apparently disappeared!  Ahh, but the noise like that of a scampering rodent gave him away.  Not vanished, just operating below the threshold of normal eye contact.  He'd leaped from his bar stool and slipped beneath his table and was charging headlong at me slashing the air with his spike.  In the forty or so steps it took for him to cover the 12 feet between us he continued to sputter something about launching me like a kite.  Not understanding what he was meaning, and finding myself very much wanting to find out, I was left in the unfortunate position of having my guard down and reflexes slowed.  It didn't help that I had washed away the salt and the heat with a rather powerful cocktail.
The dwarfish ankle mauler closed the gap and thrust his spike upward at me.  Though it came close to finding its mark and rendering me a eunuch and lead falsetto of the choir, I was able to turn and follow his thrust upward to catch his energy sending the spike and the seethingly maniacal ankle demon into the overhead of the bar.  It was a strange bar; the ceilings were covered in memory foam that had imprints of body parts--a hand, a face and a fist with a hole in it--randomly scattered as a set across its surface.  Seether impacted the foam, first with the spike, by now dripping with a bluish iridescent toxin that smelled like Incheon harbor in late August, and then with his face.  He hung there for only a moment, dazed as he pulled his face, still kitchen wall red, out of the foam and looked down around the bar area for me.  Blinking twice, he used his free hand to push himself off the ceiling and free fall back to earth and the flagstone floor of the bar.  It was a graceful fall and I must compliment him on his acrobatic skills.  As he seemingly floated the 10 feet back to terra firma he oriented himself for another attack.  I'd had enough fun and was ready to return to the salt and the heat.  I didn't want to spend any more time with my new found diminutive friend.  So I looked for a solution to the problem that would occupy him for a time long enough for me to pay my tab and return to my day's activities.  The waste bin.  Perfect.
I stepped back to avoid the falling foot slayer, and let him pass by waist height on his way to the level of my knee.  I reared back and just as he lighted to earth, I let fly with a volley shot on goal relying on my experiences at playing football for Her Majesty's Club in West Hempheadshire.  Seether-come-Soccer ball caromed off my boot and into the waste bin.  When the dust settled and motion stopped I could see him peering out of the bin, grinning at me, pointing at my left ankle with the stubby fingers that once held the spike.  Right then stars exploded in my eyes, and a searing ribbon of pain writhed its way from my foot up to my brain causing every muscle to seize and every nerve ending to sing an excruciatingly painfully off key chorus of I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys.  Unbearable, and I was losing touch with my reality.  All my extremities tingled and I could feel my breath shorten and vision fade.  My last act was a growling yell at the severity of the pain, as if by yelling at it I could scare the pain and its toxic boy band out of my system.
I awoke some time later to an urgent need to use the restroom.  My foot was soaking in a bath of warm water and I was surrounded by angels--my wife and a couple of ER nurses who I will call Brandi and Destinee (I had a an odd dream just before I woke up, I guess.  Pity I never remember the details of those dreams).  The pain was gone and I was hungry.  Expertly bandaged and tutted over by Destinee, I was discharged in time for dinner.
Today I have a bruised and swollen foot.  The story I am telling everyone is that I got spiked by a sting ray while preparing to go kite boarding, that it was the most painful experience of my life, and that warm water is the single most effective treatment for the pain.  Really, the Percocet didn't affect me at all...

Goofy Thoughts and The Enchantment of a Child's Perspective on Disney

A few weekends ago, my wife and I traveled to Walt Disney World, in Orlando.  The purpose of the trip was for me to run in the Run Disney Half Marathon, but we used it as an excuse to make a weekend of it and have some fun.  And we did!  In addition to being a huge fan of Disney World, Jen is also a Disney Pin Trader.  You've seen these people, they walk around the park with their eyes at chest level looking for the lanyards of other traders to see if there are the collectible Disney pins there that might be traded to complete a set or just add to the overall collection.  Disney cast members have them as well, and the nice thing about their lanyards is that ANY pin on them is eligible for a trade.  If you ask them to trade, they cannot say no (they can always return to the Source to replace a pin lost in trade).  My wife is both addict and enabler of this practice.  She brings her trading set of pins to the park every time and spends a good portion of the day ogling the lanyards of park employees.  If I didn't know better, I think I'd be a tad jealous.  She also has an uncanny knack for getting other folks hooked on it, too.  She can get anyone aged 4 to 80 going on pin collecting.  It really is amusing to watch, and if it gives her the opportunity to be a kid in a place that brings out the child in everyone, then I am heartily supportive of the endeavor.

Oh, the run was fun, too.  The weather was a brisk 55 degrees and clear.  My goal was to beat my "split" time of my marathon from Thanksgiving weekend.  The marathon was the only other endurance race in my past, so I had to use the split as a gauge.  Because I am a "new" race runner, I had no "speed credentials" to offer Disney when I signed up for the race.  This meant that I would not be allowed to start in the first wave.  In fact it meant I would start in the eighth.  Wave 8 is no place from which to start if you want to compete against anyone, including yourself.  I tried nonetheless. By the end of the run I was passing folks who started in Wave 3.  It was a good run for me even though I only managed to tie my marathon split.  It was as fun a "training run" as I have ever had; to the point that I am seriously contemplating running the "Goofy" next year.  The Goofy Challenge is running both the Half and Full marathon (The Donald and The Mickey) across Saturday & Sunday.  Disney was  all-out on the course for photo opportunities and to highlight that the park really is one of the happiest places on the planet.

I am sincere in that sentiment.  You really have to work at not smiling and at being sour if, after an hour or two in any Disney park, you are not at least a little lighter of heart.  And if you still find this difficult then perhaps your perspective on the matter is skewed.

I am the first to admit that I do not smile near enough and that I look at things a tad more cynically than many of my contemporaries.  I'm a pre-geriatric curmudgeon in many respects.  But when I walk into a Disney Park--specifically Disney; not Kings Dominion or Six Flags, and not Universal--I can't help but grin and get caught up in...the lightness of it all. The adult in  me recognizes that Disney, the cast and staff members, all of them, do a great deal of very hard work to create an environment that makes it easy to be happier than you were the moment before you walked in to one of their parks (the kid in me simply thinks, "Cool! Disney!"). And for most of us that feeling lasts for the duration of our time in the park.  For a fortunate fraction of us, the "hangover" effect from that feeling lasts a bit longer than our stay.


Of course there are those for whom none of this applies.  Oh, they'll come into the park on an energetic high and they will no doubt "get" the momentary feeling of lightness, but they come to the park to conquer it, not enjoy it.  You know these folks, too.  They are the ones who must ride every ride, see every show.  One hundred percent of the park must be conquered in a single day or the day has no meaning and the "mission", a failure.  And if you missed identifying these folks as they came in the park with you, you'll know them before the day's end.  They are the zombies, the slack-faced-thousand-yard-stare-reverting-back-to-adult-reality (I submit that this reversion is inappropriate within the perimeter of any Disney venue) park wanderers who sense the futility of their mission and are wondering why they came to the park to begin with.  If your daily life patterns include supplication to a deity, then you should pray for these people, these lost souls.  Hope that they clearly see the tactical error of their ways and will one day return to a Disney park to enjoy it for its own sake. Otherwise avoid them.  Total buzz-kill....Luckily we had in our little group the ultimate defense against such people invading our day--a child.

So, after the race, I returned to the hotel to clean up and roust Jen for her day of pin trading.  Actually, we were set to meet with a dear friend from my squadron days. We've not seen each other in nearly a decade and she'd married and had a child in that time.  I was anxious to see her again and to meet her 4 year-old daughter (her husband and I met in Korea during an exercise there--"Small World", he thinks, as he writes in a Disney theme).

We met in the Epcot park just shy of mid-day.  It was a fine reunion.  My friend has found a life that is bringing her peace and joy in ample quantities to share (her attitude is infectious), and my heart was instantly stolen by her daughter.  Jen and I had been to Epcot before, and since little Chloe had not, it was decided that we all would simply let her drive the events of the day (with her parents' guidance, of course).  What a great day it was!  Disney was meant to be experienced through the eyes of a child.  And through that lens, you can only smile, feel the lightness of life and enjoy the ride.  We had a wonderful time together and, yes, "Miss Jenni" properly introduced Chloe to the world of pin trading.  At one point, 4 year-old Chloe was actively scouting cast member lanyards for a specific pin because she knew Miss Jenni wanted one more to complete a set.  Did I mention, this is a very savvy child?

From my arrival in the park to run the race at 0500, it was a 14 hour day to include a character dinner in "Norway".  We ate with all the Disney Princesses and got our group picture taken with "Belle".  Chloe was in heaven, the feeling contagious. We parted ways as night drew covers over the park.  Bedtime for Chloe meant the end of a terrific day; one to be remembered.

We slept in the next day, Jen and I.  Okay, I slept in.  Jen was up EARLY with me.  We went to breakfast at our hotel.  It was an unplanned character breakfast with Chip, Dale, Goofy, and Pluto.  Over eggs, bacon and coffee I found myself thankful that the effects of the 4 year-old's perspective had not yet worn off.  Time enough for that later.  We checked out and hit the road for home.  Happy.  I couldn't have wiped the smile off my face if I had wanted to.  And as I proofread and edit this post I am given pause to smile and imagine looking up at the face of my parents when I first stepped foot in Disney World.  That was 1975.  Right now, it's time for dinner.  I guess I should wipe this grin off my face....