Torn Over Tornado Reporting

I didn’t turn the news on when I got up this morning the way I usually do. I didn't want to hear 

Tornado history repeats itself in Moore, OK
 (photo from weather.com)

more about a mile-wide tornado that travelled twenty miles in about forty minutes through Moore, Oklahoma. I had followed the breaking news yesterday through the late night TV news broadcasts.

I had had enough.

I don’t mean I had had enough in a sated way or in a disgruntled way. I mean I had seen enough to have the horrible tragedy, like other atrocities of the recent past, now  ingrained in my consciousness. Sad to say I’m no longer surprised when bad events are experienced by undeserving peoples. Natural disaster and acts of random violence have nothing to do with whether or not  their victims have “it” coming to them. 

Resettling myself on the couch, in front of the TV, this morning , to repeated news clips of the same horrible moments of destruction or cries of despair I had seen last night,  over and over, would not have helped anyone in tornado-torn  Moore Oklahoma  or (as of this morning) calm Connecticut . What will help is, once again, a national community effort to support the people most impacted by the tornado.The Town of Moore OK website has already posted the best ways.

Text STORM to 80888 for Salvation Army.
Text REDCROSS to 90999 for Red Cross.
Text FOOD to 32333 for Oklahoma Regional Food Bank
At this time, PLEASE make financial donations only, until when and if other types of donations are requested.   

I hope my readers will join me in abiding this call.

Back to this morning, instead of turning on the news, I took an early ride to a my favorite garden center just over the Massachusetts border in Southwick. I think of the place as the Nursery of Eden. The sun shone strong over indoor and outdoor displays – and everyone was smiling

A good place to be, I  thought. 

I returned home with lots of coral geraniums and veggies and herbs. Through the early afternoon I assembled seven flower boxes for the porch. Then, in minutes, an ominous cloud cover rolled in and soon the heavens let loose with heavy. . . heavier . . . and then the heaviest rain I've seen in some time. So heavy. the dog and I had to leave the porch as the wind  sprayed the rain diagonally onto it. Inside, I turned on the TV to learn areas in my own state had been issued tornado warnings. I sure hope there will not be a call for help for my home state tomorrow.

Angie and Me

ABC Good Morning America photo

I never expected I would ever compare myself to Angelina Jolie. But after reading her Op-ed in the New York Times this morning, I’m feeling some really significant common ground.

Chances are we will both owe our future health (hopefully good health) to preventive medicine.

Jolie stunned the world today with the disclosure that she has spent most of this year undergoing a preventive double mastectomy to combat her high chances of developing breast cancer. A genetic test Jolie chose to take after her mother’s death from ovarian cancer assessed the actress’ risk at 87%.

With such high stakes, she decided to take action before the odds played out against her. No question. No reality show. She just halted her busy schedule as mother, actress, and philanthropist. Three months  of opted surgery may just have added decades to her life. Her odds of getting the disease are now less than 5 %.

My kindred story doesn’t involve genetic testing (which has been reported to have cost Jolie about three thousand dollars). Just yearly check-ups, which most health plans cover.

I left one of those yearly check-ups six years ago, expecting to not have to see the doctor again for a year. Instead, I got a phone call the day after my appointment. “There’s blood in your urine and your liver function is off,” he told me on the phone. “We’ve got to find out why.”

The next day a tumor the size of my fist appeared atop my right kidney on an ultrasound screen. There had been no pain, no bleeding perceptible to the eye (just microscopic blood cells in my urine sample on the day of my physical), and no palpable lump.

An MRI followed. Then a diagnosis: Late Stage Two kidney cancer. Yet, I was fortunate. Within weeks, major surgery removed the tumor and kidney - before the cancer had spread. My lymph nodes were clean.

Every year, at my annual physical, I still tell my doctor how thankful I am that he saved my life.

“Early detection,” my doctor replies. “Prevention is the way to go.”

I still get yearly physicals  - and yearly chest x-rays because of the kidney cancer. It always surprises me when women I know, smart women who have more than adequate health insurance, tell me they do not have "time" for physicals. Some say they are too  busy raising their children, juggling work with parenting, etc. etc. I hope these ladies stop to take a look at how a busy celebrity cleared her globe-trotting schedule for preventive medicine. I don't think she did it to prolong her movie career. More likely, the fear of leaving her children and fiancé without a mother and wife made her find the time to make an informed decision.

 I feel fortunate  that I only have to wonder what might have happened if I didn't start seeing a doctor regularly, in my forties. I'm glad Jolie will  just get  to wonder what might have happened if she didn't choose the preventative medical treatment this year.

I hope more busy women will take the time to detect medical trouble before it's too late to stop it .

 

 

Mother's Day - Revisited

I woke up today thinking about my mom, gone four Mother’s Days now. I decided to post her picture  -- in remembrance – on  Facebook -  This way, I knew my cousin network on FB would be reminded of her too.

I uploaded a photo of Mom with Dad, young newlyweds, pre- kids. In it, they look as if they do not have a care in the world.   Then I recalled the message a dear friend recently emailed me. Titled  flowers , the text read: Had a flashback to your mom today. On our way to Auburn, we saw a lawn with almost no green – it was all those “pretty yellow flowers.”

My friend and his wife live hundreds of miles away from me now. But they had read my memoir last fall and suddenly, out of the blue, found themselves remembering a story about my mother. I’m sure they were grinning ear-to-ear too.

The story recalls when I was eleven years old and my family uprooted from Brooklyn, NY to northern Connecticut. Mom, experiencing her first burst of spring in New England, went to the local nursery seeking seeds for “those pretty yellow flowers on everybody’s lawn.” Dandelions.

You’re grinning now. Right?

That's just the tip of Mom’s deep-rooted dandelion tale in the memoir, a tale that digs through generations of her Italian background.  Writing the memoir led me to discover the layers of that story. My friend’s email reminded me of the power of memoir, writing immersed in memory. “Full of Grace,” the piece about Mom in Staying Alive: A Love Story had not only made Mom present in my life again, it was making her present in others’ lives too, as spontaneously as on a ride through a suburban neighborhood. This unplanned series of events then made me more glad than sad– for the first time in years – on Mother’s Day. Ready to celebrate it with my own children and, for the first time, my grandson.

Let the Buyer Beware the Schwinn Jogging Stroller

I don't usually link to someone else's blog, but this needs to get around. Susan Campbell, writer and grandmother, posted this level-headed piece about injuries her son and grandchildren suffered while using the Schwinn Jogging Stroller.Seems the front wheel broke off in use.Now, as her son recuperates, she and her family are waiting to see if Schwiinn takes the product off the market before someone else gets hurt

Click here to read Susan's blog.

This is the defective stroller.

Belief Systems

I can’t believe it’s April 21, and it’s still cold enough to wear a winter coat.

This is not the same kind of I can’t believe as in I can’t believe the city of Boston virtually shut down commerce and community yesterday in search of a Boston Marathon Bombing suspect. The former is spoken in my head with casual indifference; the latter resounds echoes of assurance.

I wish I had been able to say I can’t believe someone or two would so violently desecrate the marathon’s finish line, six days earlier; but, these homegrown tragedies are occurring more frequently : Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora, Fort Hood, Tucson, Sandy Hook, and now Boston – on  busy and celebrated Copley Square, after the city’s namesake race.  I am once again stunned – but sadly, not surprised.

On the other hand, to have witnessed a city and its citizens’ everyday agenda frozen, like a DVD story frame, while city and federal officials intensified their active search for perpetrators.- that  was unprecedented. The kind of unprecedented that has given rise to the already mythic, “ if-a-city-could-talk affirmation” being bandied about today, in the drawl of a Boston accent:  We’re not terrorized – but we are wicked pissed . It speaks the difference between a  city   stunted by terrorism as opposed to one that refuses  to be victimized, instead deliberately putting life (as the city knows it) on hold, until the bombers were, at least, stopped in their bloody tracks..

More incredulities:  

 I can’t believe, fifty miles from the city I watched WBZ’s Boston coverage of the Watertown

stake-out –  being  aired from the street corner of my son’s Cambridge apartment – the designated media zone, a short walk from the war-zone tactics (house-to-house searches, sniper-like surveillance) being initiated a few blocks away.

 I can’t believe that once again, my daughter’s birthday – April 19 – commemorates another dark anniversary , along with the Oklahoma bombings, and the date's eerie proximity to the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings.

Still, among these disbeliefs  there is one huge assurance that I can believe in -  that a single, vigilant, hometown citizen provided the final link in the chain of organized efforts to make the streets of Watertown, Cambridge, and Boston safe again. He saw something - a bloodied tarp covering his motorboat - and said something, via a 911 call.

There, however, remains a cruel irony. Through the nation's focus on the bombing, the U.S. Senate lost sight of its bipartisan effort  to enact common sense gun reform that 90% of the American public agrees with  - expanding background checks (that would continue to honor the spirit of  the Second Amendment).That defeat  seems to have added insult to the deaths and injuries suffered from  tragedies past (Sandy Hook, et al), present (Boston), and future (who knows?)! 

We can help the victims of the Boston Bombing  by donating to One Fund Boston. We must also continue to work to make America safer from gun violence by repeating in word and action our Sandy Hook Promise to continue to work towards common sense reform.

Finally, I thank God that my son, daughter and I could be reunited today after this sad week. I pray for the peace and comfort of families grievously touched by the Boston Marathon bombing and aftermath who are not so fortunate.

What if Good and Evil Had a Race?

The Boston Marathon is one of more than 500 marathons run in the world every year. Most of the participants are recreational runners. The marathoners train for sixteen to eighteen weeks . The first month they alternate short runs of three or four miles with carefully calculated days off. They add a weekly double-digit run the next month or two, adding a mile or so every week.

Marathoners eat healthfully; they hydrate as they run. Marathoners learn how to fuel up on protein bars and sports beans. They may have to nurse a pull or sprain along the way, but eventually they get back on their feet and make up for setbacks– all to be able to cross the finish line that ends a 26.2 mile run in four to seven hours. Recreational marathoners do not need to win. They just want to finish.

Boston Globe photo

It’s very disturbing to think that as today’s Boston marathoners were putting themselves through the stress and strain of training, someone else was putting the finishing touches on a scheme to take some of them and a portion of the city down.  The  unknown perpetrator must have obsessed over the power and the placement of two bombs destined to be detonated at the finish line at about the same time marathoners were getting caught up with the rhythm of their breathing, the swing of their arms, the pace of the run.

I wonder why one individual decides to direct one’s passion  toward the light – and the other to the darkness. Is it something one says or doesn’t say, over a period of time? An environment? A chromosome? A price? Once again, that shift in perspective made a tragic difference in innocent lives today

My own son and nephew, both of whom work in Boston, were too close to the danger for my comfort, that’s for sure. Their beloved Boston will not be quite the same ever again – especially on Patriot’s Day,the  traditional day of the marathon. But, like a runner's injury, this incident was a sprain of sorts.  Boston will rehab and will come out stronger, the way NYC has; the way Newtown will.

If Good and Evil had a race, Good would be the Tortoise and Evil would be the Hare

I pray tonight for the comfort of the families most impacted by today’s tragedy, the lives injured and lost, and for the first responders who, once again, choose to run toward the danger rather than away., 

Getting Through College and The Canterbury Tales

The fourteen line prologue to  Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, posted yesterday, brought a couple readers back to their college days - their late 60s college days - when just about every student was required to take British Lit! No matter what their major. 

Now, English majors at Dartmouth aren't  required to take even Shakespeare. How culture changes culture.

Kathy,who graduated from high school with me, commented that she could actually read Chaucer's introduction ("with effort" ) thanks to a college professor who drove her crazy  - both years she attended her class! (I'm guessing that was in British Lit I and British Lit II, recalling the canon of the day). 

Jack, a fellow writer, recalled how beautifully his "Brit lit prof" recited those lines, back in the day. Recently, Jack read the entire poem, as bawdy as it is beautiful. (About the length of ten-chapter novel, it's available online free for Kindle users, along with other ebook readers, and audiobook formats).

Kathy and Jacks' Chaucer tales of their own bring me to mine. 

During the late 1960s, at my small, all women, Catholic college, every student had to take British Lit - I and II. In order to get through British Lit I, every one of those students had to memorize and recite the first fourteen lines of Chaucer's prologue.Even as an English major, I felt challenged! 

Practicing for days in my dorm, amidst  a backdrop of Beatles posters and the sounds of folk music, rock music, and a blending of both (thank you Bob Dylan), I discovered I could best learn and remember the archaic yet mellifluous Middle English when I sang the words to the tune of "Leaving on a Jet Plane," a John Denver song (most popularly covered by Peter Paul and Mary).

When I arrived for my "recitation appointment" I brought my guitar. Left it outside the good professor's office  until, after stumbling through a few, "Whan that aprill -s," I asked her if I could go get it. Use it. The poetry/music connection further intrigued her.

Strumming away I breezed through the fourteen lines. Still can - if I sing them!

Try it for yourself!

And, oh yes, here's the modern English translation of the prologue I posted yesterday.
How did you do?

When April with his showers sweet with fruit

The drought of March has pierced unto the root

And bathed each vein with liquor that has power

To generate therein and sire the flower;

When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,

Quickened again, in every holt and heath,

The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun

Into the Ram one half his course has run,

And many little birds make melody

That sleep through all the night with open eye

(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)-

Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,

And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,

To distant shrines well known in sundry lands.