Gotta start listening to more Prarie Home Companion

Garrison Keillor, bless your heart. If only Generation iPod saw eye-to-eye with you. Scroll down to section in red (emphasis mine).

Pause to give thanks for simple things

Garrison Keillor, Tribune Media Services
Published November 23, 2005

Family, friends, good health (knock on wood), lots to be thankful for, including this $1.59 rollerball pen and its flowing cursive line that makes me feel as elegant as Michel de Montaigne.

Gratitude makes sense for an American. We occupy a bountiful country of great civility (yes, really) and robustness and freedom, and if not the No. 1 Country in the World, nonetheless it has some great stuff, including Lake Superior, the Supreme Court, the Four Tops ("Baby, I Need Your Lovin'") and the World's Largest Ball of Twine Ever Rolled by One Man (12 feet in diameter) in Darwin, Minn. Cawker City, Kan., claims a bigger one, but it's more oblong and was done by committee.

Truly, we should be thankful. And we do try to be. But the English language is so rich in terms of complaint and insult and groaning and rather sparse in the Exaltation Department, so the Lord doesn't get praised as he should.

Instead, we bellyache, we kvetch, we get our undies in a bunch. After all, we're descended from people who considered rejoicing to be bad luck: It tempts fate.

So they grumbled about the weather, politicians, children, popular music, new cars, anything modern, and complained about their health year after year until they died and went to heaven, where no doubt they are a little edgy even now--nice place, paradise--a little surprised at who else is here, harrumph, harrumph, but never mind--plenty of bliss, no tears and so forth--not sure how long it can last, but we shall see.

As for me, I am grateful for the functional. In our home, we are going through a series of malfunctioning coffeemakers that sputter and vomit quarts of hot brown sediment on the kitchen counter and floor, and that makes me grateful for things like this pen, which really is a pleasure. Or Google, which can bring up 2.3 million references in .03 seconds, none of which sheds light on the subject, but they distract you so that instead of writing about "The Mill on the Floss" by George Eliot, you get interested in dental hygiene.

I'm glad for the e-ticket, which frees us from standing in line at the airline counter so that we can swiftly go stand in line at the security check.

And let us all be thankful for the newspaper, a truly useful object. The press is the watchdog of a free society, and while TV reporters are styling their hair and practicing winsome facial expressions, newspaper reporters are on the phone, knocking on doors, doing the work, holding power accountable. And you read their work and absorb something from it, or not, and then you spread the newspaper out on the floor and it absorbs paint drips, or you pack it in a box around fragile objects, or you roll it up and swat cockroaches, or stuff it into cracks to keep the wind out, or stuff it under the kindling and light the fire--one simple thing with six distinct uses. Or you can recycle it and it will transcend into cardboard.

You can't do that with images on a screen.

These days I am grateful beyond words for a swimming teacher, Alyssa, who is a functional person of a very high order. Twice a week, she takes my sandy-haired, gap-tooth daughter in tow and puts her through her paces.

Alyssa is young, blonde, brimming with confidence, with broad shoulders and a car horn voice. She hollers, "Kickickickickickkick" and "GOGOGOGOGOGOGOGO," and the little girl puts her head down and swims for all she's worth.

A few months ago, she was timid in the water, like me, and now she is a fish, all thanks to her wonderful teacher, a taskmaster with a sense of humor, who is in the pool with her pupils, unlike the Schwimmfuehrer of my youth who strode alongside the pool and showered us with contempt and ridicule.

Alyssa's gift is enormous to us. My daughter gets a taste of discipline and success, and this makes me very happy. So much that is dismal and destructive in the world, but for me, the joy of a 7-year-old girl putting on her swim goggles almost makes up for it.

Thanks be to God for the teachers of the world.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Pre-Turkey day at the airport

I'm typing away at my laptop at Ft. Lauderdale airport like some kind of road warrior. The place has free wireless in all terminals as a male voice tells me over the PA system. The only catch is it's slow as molasses.
Fortunately, what's not slow as molasses is the security line I got through. I came to the airport about 1'45" before my flight, which is extremely unlike me. I normally like cutting it so that I join the tail end of my boarding group on the plane without ever needing to sit on some uncomfortable chair. But with the holiday flight and bad weather in the midwest and all, I figured better safe than sorry. This just goes to show I should continue getting to the airport with eight minutes to spare because I got through security in 52 seconds without a wait and my gate was mere feet away, on supposedly the worst travel day of the year. But I don't want to jinx it because we still have to go through Chicago.
BTW, for some reason I always order cranberry juice when I fly. Or ginger ale. I never drink either of those beverages when my feet are on solid earth. I wonder why. Is anybody else like that?

'cane time II

Right outside my porch....
These trees hit that nice pristine '65 Mustang that my landlady owns. But somehow it wasn't even scratched.
I didn't put the plastic lawn chair there for dramatic effect like some paparrazzi disaster photographer. That's where the chair landed.

'cane time

I didn't have this blog when Hurricane Wilma smacked South Florida but I figured I might as well blog it a bit. Of course, a picture is worth a thousand words so:
in the aftermath, here's a tree that fell right at my landlady's front door. That's the hurricane shutter on the right, the white awning there. It was lowered over the window before the storm so that any debris, such as that tree right at my landlady's door, wouldn't break the window and bring rain and hell's breath into the home. The neighbor put it back up for some reason after the storm passed. I couldn't even get from my front door to the front yard because so many trees had fallen on the path.

u b the cartoonist

I must admit I'm hooked on the caption contest on the New Yorker's Web site. Their cartoonists draw a new cartoon each week sans caption. You can submit a caption online, the staff select three and you vote for the funniest. Winners get a signed print of the cartoon. I know it's not a vacation to Aruba but hey, I've got walls that need decorating.

the cutting room floor 0'00'00'02

After Hurricane Wilma smacked us and knocked out the power and made some people homeless, I heard a city official mention a French family in town with a girl who needed to go to the hospital each day. The paper likes stories of how people cope after the hurricane, so I followed up with the family after the immediate aftermath drama stories came out.

The following is my exact draft to the editor. It is unedited. Note- checkmarks in the text just indicate that the name is spelled correctly. Below that is the printed version.

BY CHRIS YOUNG
STAFF WRITER
PEMBROKE PARK- At a white mobile home with green trim, a little girl named Margot sits at a patio table, coloring with markers. She draws an orange house with a red roof and clouds around it. She wears a pink and orange T-shirt, blue pants, and red Nike sneakers.

Margot calls out in French to her mother, Emmanuelle√, that she needs to go to the bathroom. Emmanuelle pulls her to her feet with both hands and walks her inside. Though Margot is 8 years old, she walks unsteadily, like a toddler.

Even this is an accomplishment.

Margot Simon√ was born two and a half months premature. She has cerebral palsy, damage to her brain that limits the use of her limbs. Doctors in France told her parents she would never walk.

But they were determined. They found a doctor at the University of Miami School of Medicine√ whose special therapy helps Margot learn to use her muscles and limbs. The Simons come to see him twice a year, three weeks at a time.

The trips aren’t vacations. They cost one-third of the family’s income. Father Jean-Pierre√ is a mechanic and Emmanuelle is a hairdresser. They worked extra hours to come out. A French foundation created in her name and an international service organization, Richelieu International√, support the family emotionally and financially. Richelieu hosted picnics in Pembroke Park where the supporters met the family and held a fundraising auction.

This trip, the Simons stayed at a home belonging to the past president of Richelieu. They arrived three days before Hurricane Wilma struck, and spent the storm in a safer house. For the next week they had no power, which was hard because Margot is afraid of the dark.

Each morning they went to therapy for an hour, had lunch in the hospital cafeteria, then went home to do exercises to strengthen Margot’s muscles. Sometimes they went to a nearby pool where Margot can walk upright in the water.

At the end of the third week, Margot is tired. She writes a message on the back of her drawing of the house, but not in cursive because her muscle control isn’t fine enough yet.

Emmanuelle, 34, says she does well in school. They fought to keep her in a regular school, not a school for the disabled. She likes to play outside with friends, study French, and read books, but not Harry Potter because that scares her.

A WORK-OUT
One Monday, a typical session, the Simons entered the Brucker Biofeedback Laboratory√ at the Miami Jewish Home & Hospital at 10 a.m. Bernard Brucker√, a man with a thick beard and friendly demeanor, motioned Margot to sit in a chair.

An assistant attached two pairs of electrodes to her sides on the muscles. The electrodes went through a thick black cord to a grey box with the words, “neuroEDUCATOR II”on the front.
Margot looked at a large computer monitor with two graphs on it. The upper graph showed her brain activity going to a muscle on her right side, the lower graph of her left.

There was a jagged line across each graph, a target level. Brucker, who pioneered the technique 25 years ago, held her by the shoulders and said, “Lift up your left leg.”
Margot unsteadily lifted her left. A jagged line crept up the graph toward the target line.

“Get the green line up!” Brucker said encouragingly.

Margot kept looking at the screen and lifting her leg. The lines eventually climbed higher than the target, indicating that somewhere in her brain, motor neurons were forming more connections to her leg muscles, forcing them to work more.

The first two years, Dr. Brucker says, Margot couldn’t stand or even sit up straight in a chair; she would crumple over. When they stood her up and held her stationary, she cried because her mind told her she couldn’t do it, he says.

He gave Margot her two custom canes with multicolored designs on the shafts that her mother made and backed away.

“Walk toward me,” he said.

Margot extended one cane, then took a tentative step with the opposite foot. She put out the other cane and followed with the other foot. She walked towards Dr. Brucker, then her mother, then across the room to her father.

“Her foot used to cross over the other, but she has learned to keep them straight,” Brucker said. “Her foot still drags but she’s learning to raise the knee higher.”

Brucker took the canes away, then stood her up, holding her by the shoulders.

“We’re getting muscle control for standing,” he said. With a word of encouragement he let go of her shoulders. Margot stood for an instant, then began to fall forward like a pole.
He stopped her fall.

“She never had the opportunity to learn balance,” Brucker said.

To Margot, he asked, “Do you think you will walk without canes?”

“I think yes,” she said in French.

“[The therapy] is absolutely superb,” Emmanuelle says later. “Thank God we were able to meet Dr. Brucker.”

JUST BEING
Back at the house, Margot takes her father’s hand and walks down the block and back. She is proud that she can walk 600 meters at a time, albeit with the canes or her parents’ support.

“She doesn’t want to use her wheelchair,” Emmanuelle says. “She wants to be normal.”

The parents want more results. At first, Emmanuelle says, the goal was to get her out of the wheelchair. When she did that, the next objective was, “let’s see how far it can go.” If she eventually can walk, they want her to be able to run. Margot says she wants to ski one day.

The parents want Margot to undergo surgery next spring to change the angle of her hips in her pelvis, a procedure French doctors are recommending. Brucker strongly disagrees, saying his therapy plus regular physical therapy is better.

If they go ahead with the surgery, it will be a year before Margot returns to South Florida.
Michael Soucy√, the family’s host, says every time he sees Margot she has improved.

“She’s our little angel,” he says.

Margot finished her drawing of the house with the clouds.

“I like being like everybody else,” she says.

The Brucker Biofeedback Laboratory is at 305-762-3882.
Chris Young can be reached at ciyoung@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7916.

FINAL VERSION
French girl learns to walk, thanks to Miami doctors

By Chris Young
Staff Writer
Posted November 12 2005

PEMBROKE PARK - Margot put down her drawing of an orange house with blue clouds and called to her mother. She needed to go to the bathroom. Her mother, Emmanuelle, hoisted her to her feet and, with both hands, walked her inside the house. Though Margot Simon is 8 years old, she walks unsteadily, like a toddler. Even this is an accomplishment. She was born 2 1/2 months premature and has cerebral palsy. Even at age four she couldn't stand or sit up straight in a chair; she would crumple over. Doctors in France told her parents she would never walk. But her parents found a doctor at the University of Miami School of Medicine with a special therapy. The Simons come twice a year, three weeks at a time, trips that swallow one-third of the family's income. Their most recent visit to South Florida ended Friday. Father Jean-Pierre, 38, is a mechanic, and Emmanuelle, 34, is a hairdresser. They worked extra hours to pay for the trip. A French foundation in Margot's name and an international service organization, Richelieu International, supported the family emotionally and financially. Michael Soucy, the family's host, said Margot improves every time he sees her. "She's our little angel," said Soucy, who let the Simons use a mobile home he owns in Dale Village. Each morning they went to therapy for an hour, had lunch in the hospital cafeteria, then exercised Margot's muscles at home. Emmanuelle said Margot does well in school. They fought to keep her in a regular school, not a school for disabled children. She likes to play outside with friends, study French and read books, but not Harry Potter because that scares her. During one recent therapy session, Bernard Brucker, head of the Brucker Biofeedback Laboratory at the Miami Jewish Home & Hospital, sat Margot in a chair. An assistant attached electrodes to her hips on the muscles, connected to a computer. Margot looked at the computer screen. "Lift up your left leg," Brucker said. Margot obeyed and a jagged green line appeared onscreen, inching toward a target level. "Get the green line up!" Brucker said encouragingly. Quickly the line shot above the target, indicating that in her brain, neurons were forming connections to her leg muscles. "Her foot used to cross over the other, but she has learned to keep them straight," Brucker said. "Her foot still drags, but she's learning to raise the knee higher." He asked Margot, "Do you think you will walk without canes?" "I think yes," she said in French. Back at the house, Margot finished her drawing of the house with the clouds. She took her father's hand and walked down the block and back. Emmanuelle watched from the patio. At first, she said, the goal was to get Margot out of the wheelchair. When she did that, the next objective was, "Let's see how far it can go." If she can eventually walk by herself, they want her to be able to run. The Brucker Biofeedback Laboratory is at 305-762-3882. Chris Young can be reached at ciyoung@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7916.

the cutting room floor 0'00'00'01

This is a feature I will call "the cutting room floor." Legend has it in the old days of film editing, one had to literally splice together one's lengths of film in stepwise fashion. The scraps that didn't make it fell to the floor.
On occasion I will post stories I wrote for the paper that either never made it to print, or were pared down by The Man (merciless editors) to the point you couldn't recognize them anymore.

Imagine you're Michaelangelo and the Medici family sends you a letter saying, "yeeeaaaaahhhh, you know what, we're only going to be taking half of your Pieta'.... yeaaaaaaaaaahhhhh. The other half we're going to crush and add to our driveway."

I'm not trying to put myself in the same company of Michaelangelo but hopefully you get my point. We all have stories that we KNOW deserve XX amount of space in the paper, or xx minutes on the air or whatnot. Or we labored so hard on them, outlined the important information to include, paid attention to pacing and story arc, added suspense or little nuggets here and there. And then when the editor gets it, he/she says, sorry, too long.

Then you have to go back and slice and dice and pare and take out everything including the kitchen sink to fit some heartrendingly small space requirement. This usually happens on deadline too. Who knows if the final story sounds anything remotely like the version you turned in.

Of course, I'll be the first to say that EVERYONE needs an editor. EVERYBODY. And almost without exception the final result is better. (this is one reason why I hate blogs. No editing.)
Anyway, whether the final story was better than the draft is not the point. The point is the feeling you get when The Man tells you to chop it in half for space. (The Man isn't necessarily your immediate editor but a person much higher on the org chart who makes the story decisions, in case my editor ever reads this.)

So here we go. See TC 0'00'00'02 for the first installment.

wow

Hello cyberspace,
This is my first blog entry on my first blog ever. woohooo! I have now entered the world of online publishing. What revolutionary technology! What democratic empowerment!
What mastubation.
Whoever's out there in blog-land, I resignedly join your ranks. I always thought having a blog was sort of presumptuous. If I just wanted a diary or journal for myself, there'd be no need to put it online. If I wanted to stay in contact with friends, I'd just call them on the phone. I guess there's a bit of showiness in us all, thinking that what we write is stimulating or witty enough that other people would hold up part of their day to read it.
Why would I want such satisfaction? I mean, I see my name every once in a while in the byline of a newspaper article; it's not like I'm new to information dissemination.

I think it's partly to give myself a new outlet for what George Carlin calls brain droppings. To perhaps punt around ideas for stories. and actually now that I think about it, to practice writing. Supposedly I'm a writer. Or at least I use words in my job.

In truth, I've been meaning to start a blog for a while. What held me up? I couldn't think of a name. Really, I could have started one up years ago if I had the right name. It's like getting a tattoo- I suppose I would get one if I knew what the hell I could choose that I wouldn't kick myself in the head for 50 years later. Yes, I know, a blog could be as temporary as the neurons in one's head after a night sparring with Mssrs. Jack and Jin. I guess I'm a little neurotic.

I had settled on "Cognitive dissonance" but somebody already took it. I liked cognitive dissonance in a pop-psychology kind of way. It has to do with resolving sets of conflicting beliefs in one's head. But I also like the word "dissonance" for its purpose in music. More on that at some later time.

Anyway, this first post is getting long enough.
I suppose I've reconciled my desire to have a blog with my previous scorn of bloggers and blogging.

You see, cognitive dissonance would have been perfect.