Sums

Live as if your were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever. -- Gandhi


Sum. The total of numbers added together. They could be our days. Sum is an exact figure.

Some. A quantity of items, things or thoughts. These could be our actions or deeds during the sum of our existance. Some can be a group of many or few, without an exact sum. A bit undefined.

The sum total of a man perhaps ends up as undefined as the word “some.” The many experiences that make our existence special and profound in its own unique way are difficult to measure. I try to look at how I would attempt to define my own use of the Earth’s resources and pound for pound can’t justify it in a material way. Not in a measurable unit at least. But in a spiritual way, it is possible that I do give back more to the planet than I devour. You may need to ask that question to those that are close to me. Hopefully, they will humor me with their thoughts.

To truly reach the sum of our lives, or the summit of our human happiness, may be a pipe dream. Truly we must always be trying a bit harder, even as the spiral is slowing as we are allowed to seek happiness with age. At the least, that seems to be my own experience. I never seem to get closer to the answers to my many questions. The numbers just don’t seem to be adding up. Would I struggle for my last breath of air? Our life here is so extraordinary, it is impossible for me to grasp being asked to leave it, let alone have it taken from me by the will of fate. I would wish to run from the final counting of my days.

I doubt if I would walk into the light, more than likely I would lightly step away. Which way would the answers in reality lie? The choice would be something to have to make.

I will have to work on my questions some more. Some day I will face this. This, a final sum.

The Demise of Cookie Monster As We Knew Him

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint." -- Mark Twain

I am now going to write about what I have no official training to speak of. But that may be the point.

A health topic. Specifically, “The Childhood Obesity Epidemic.”

Mis-information seems to abound these days. My incredibly knowledgeable wife Karen, a Registered Dietitian with a Masters Degree in Human Nutrition from Case Western University, as well as writer of the blog “The Wellness Writer”, where all nutrition truth in my life flows from, is getting pretty irritated these days. For her to experience this emotion—or reaction—is somewhat entertaining to me and provides countless issues to talk about. Firstly, because I and my habits aren’t responsible, and secondly, she rarely lets actions and opinions of others bother her. She has a profound understanding of the proper approaches to child nutrition and though patient with most people, is beginning to let the “idiots” (my word for the people who are questionably proposing solutions for problems that perhaps are not problems until they have created them as so) get under her lovely and patient skin.

Here is my example of the seriousness of the situation. The producer of Sesame Street, Carol-Lynn Parente is quoted as saying, “Childhood obesity is at an epidemic. We feel we have a responsibility to do what we can to address it.”

So the character of Cookie Monster has a newfound nutritional awareness and is expressing it with a new anthem, “Cookie is a Sometime Food.” No longer will Cookie Monster suffer his single-handed obsession over cookies.

I guess Ms. Parente feels that they need to use Cookie Monster, a stuffed animal puppet character, the essence of childhood entertainment, as a role model. So Sesame Street is shifting Cookie Monster to a healthier lifestyle, by including and enjoying more fruits and vegetables in his diet.

Maybe a better approach would be for Cookie Monster to tell the kids watching his show to shut the TV off and go outside and play.

Now we got Senators like Sen. Tom Harkin stating the line that “The incidence of childhood obesity is now at epidemic levels.” Jumping on the obesity bandwagon are movie stars, professional athletes, writers, medical professionals and even First Lady Michelle Obama, telling us that our kids are fat and need to be put on diets.

So Karen wrote a letter to First Lady Obama. I warned her that she would now be on “The List” right next to my name. After all, I own guns and voted Republican.

Then I had my own flashback. I remember my Middle School wrestling coach telling my parents at an end of season banquet that if I could just drop a few pounds that I would be more competitive at a lower weight class. Now I had a little extra weight on me, but I was active and liked to eat. Cookies that my mom made were part of the diet, but so were the family meals that we shared every night and the Cap’n Crunch cereal that was my breakfast. So I just ignored the weight loss advice and continued to lose wrestling matches to starving, leaner and very angry young athletes. I did not drop from the 95 pound weight class to the 90, or even 85 pound weight class. When I look at that now, it seems absurd that it was even suggested to me.

I recently came across a quote from James Baldwin where he stated “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” It doesn’t mention childhood obesity at all but sums up what may be the true underlining problem our children are facing.

And that is their parents.

Have some fun with this…Join the Facebook page “Back in my day, the cookie monster actually ate cookies, not vegetables.” At last look it had over 108,500 fans.

Why Do I Have To Fix It?

There was a time when Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase saw President Abraham Lincoln shining his own pair of shoes in his office at the White House.  Secretary Chase asked, "Mr. President, why are you blacking your own shoes?"  Lincoln responded to him in his own clever wisdom, "Whose shoes would you have me black, Mr. Secretary?"

I try to remember this little story when I tackle odd projects in my life.  I feel a great deal of satisfaction with the act of creating things.  And by creating, it doesn't have to be art or music or the building of new things. It can be giving new life to something old and broken. It can involve fixing something with my own hands that I may normally have asked a professional to do. Our family cars come to mind. I have become somewhat of a fix-it person and have become courageous at attempting repairs that I encounter.

I recently ran into a problem with a chainsaw, it just didn't run. I tried all the obvious stuff--bad gas, spark plug, air filter--to no avail.  It seemed like the problem was one of not getting gas to the motor. I had never torn into a small engine such as this and by the time I realized I may have gone to far, I had a workbench entirely covered with little, big, rubber, plastic, and aluminum parts. I discovered a few deteriorated rubber hoses that had grown brittle with age, (after all the saw was 20 years old) and a very dirty carburetor.  I cleaned the carb but I had to get some replacement gas line from the hardware to replace the bad stuff. Unfortunately it had grown to late to get to the store, so it would have to wait for the reassembly process to begin.

Then I forgot about this project for a couple weeks and moved on to other things (at least that's the story and I'm sticking to it).

I had put the gas line on a list of some other things that I needed to pick up from town, and I came across that while out and about one Saturday and picked it up from the local Ace Hardware Store. Which I might add, we are fortunate in Mason, to still have a hardware store, even two of them that darn near sit a block apart.

My first thought when I took the hose to the bench was "How am I going to remember the places all these parts go when I get ready to re-assemble it?"  I felt a large bit of frustrated fear, though the chain saw was already broken, I had now furthered that cause along even more. I also thought I could have just bought a new saw for $150 bucks and not had to worry about tearing this one apart and putting it back together again.

Ah, but where is the satisfaction in that?

Well, I tore into the job, slowly, looking at each part that I picked up like it was a new species that I had just that moment discovered. I began to make sense of the job and was able to put it all back together right the third time (twice I had to stop and back-up to put in a part that I overlooked). To my amazement, the darn saw fired up with just a few pulls and ran as good as it ever did.

When I look at my need to fix broken things, create a bit of new life in old, worn objects, I believe it stems from the basic fact that we grow fond of the landscape of our lives. And that landscape includes those items that have serviced you for a time. Cars, tools, bikes and even clothing become part of that very fabric (no pun intended) of the world we live in.

And right now, I am not ready to trade in all the stuff that I work and play with. Things now may be improved to be lighter and stronger and shinier, but they don't have the captured soul of "Me" dwelling inside them. This may be why Super Glue, JB Weld and Duct Tape are so popular, it holds our soul together as well as our old fishing pole.

"Tranquility Lost"

“I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness…” – Dalai Lama

Sometimes you go out seeking the right thing but end up looking in the wrong place. That happened to me this past Saturday when I went for a kayak trip down the Looking Glass River with a group of mostly strangers.

The last 4 months have been a grueling schedule of meetings around Michigan, talking with groups and meeting with our membership. I had just spent the last 2 days with a statewide collection of a group of great people, Michigan dairy farmers and others that are connected to the industry. Our Annual Meeting is the opportunity to personally meet and talk about the many innovative programs that we had undertaken for them over the past year. And if you are not at all familiar with what our dairy farmers—especially in the dairy sector—and what they have gone through in 2009, things were pretty damn awful.

I was not four paddle strokes down the river when the guy next to me started to sound-off about a dairy farm that “killed” a river he was going to kayak this summer. He didn’t know me or who I worked for and launched into his, what I like to refer to as, “the Kool-Aid Induced Psycho-Environmentalist Rant.” I could tell right away, even though I knew a hundred times more about what happened on that river, that if I even opened my mouth he wouldn’t hear a word I said. That was even if he would have let me say it. I know it was a teachable moment and I should have jumped at the opportunity, but my state of mind only allowed me to slow my paddling pace and drop back where his voice slowly faded away to where I could know longer hear him. He did not even know I was gone for several minutes.

I could once again hear the birds singing.

But then this lady paddled up to me and asked me what I did. I should have said I was a philosopher and maybe she would have paddled by and away from my kayak. But, I said I worked for Michigan’s dairy farmers and she proceeded to explain how she would only drink “organic milk and how could farmers blah, blah, blah…”

I almost missed seeing a muskrat gliding along the river's shore. What else was I missing as my brain was being assaulted by this person?

This happened three more times before I retreated in the knowledge that today I would not reach what I needed in the department of “Peace of Mind.” I was missing what I came for, that fierce feeling of spirit that I succumb to when I am on the water with nature.

But I finally dropped back to the tail-end of the group and put a substantial distance between the others and caught a glimpse of what I came for before land was forced under my feet once again.

I saw the first bluebirds of the year.

Note about the above photo: You will notice the green "nose" of my kayak in the lower left corner of the picture and that the photo illustrates the distance I put between myself and the others.