60 Minutes

"We've heard no decision yet. Everybody is milling around on the FIELD—AND THE BEARS!! THE BEARS HAVE WON! The Bears have won! Oh, my God! The most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heart-rending... exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football! California has won the Big Game over Stanford! Oh, excuse me for my voice, but I have never, never seen anything like it in the history of I have ever seen any game in my life! The Bears have won it! There will be no extra point!" Cal Broadcast Reporter

In the famous college football game between Stanford and Berkeley on November 20th 1982, 'The Play' ranks among the most controversial and compelling football stories of all time. With four seconds on the play clock and poised to lose a key game to the Stanford Cardinals, the Bears recieved a squib kick and, won the game by completing five lateral passes and eventually scoring the winning goal. While the film footage has been viewed and reviewed thousands of times I am most impressed by what the Berkeley Bears coach said to his winning team after the game was over.

Coach Joe Kapp gathered his team in the locker room after the game and reportedly said to his elated players, "A football game lasts for 60 minutes, not 59 minutes and 56 seconds. The game lasts for 60 minutes." This statement is significant and I often think of it as a metaphore for the hardships that often occur in life. While it is too simplistic and naive to hope that patients suffering losses and struggling with disease could hope to draw strength from this phrase, there are moments when doctors need to help their patients rally and fight. Sports metaphores are often helpful in this regard because cheering for our favorite athletes and teams offers us a vehicle for self introspection and our heroes are often a source of personal pride.

The game of life does not end at 59 minutes and 56 seconds.

The game of life lasts for 60 minutes.

Click here to see 'The Play': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fZCCAqoSwY

Caravanserai

Beyond the daily commute and the crowds of people who work every day in all of our cities and towns, there exists a vast sea of invisible aid workers out there who work under adverse conditions and often risk their safety to help people in the US and in developing countries and who are the victims of war and natural disasters. The American Red Cross, the Peace Corps, the International Red Cross, Partners In Health, Flying Kites Global, Doctors Without Borders, Catholic Relief Services, Amnesty International, UNICEF, AMREF and thousands of other relief organizations help hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people recieving little or no thanks and often laboring for years in obscurity.

Recently, one of these organizations has decided to give something back to the volunteers and relief workers. This organization has decided to set aside a plot of land and build a retreat for their own aid workers and have offered this service to workers from other organizations. I hear that in the woods of New Hampshire a small farm or community will be developed solely to create a place of respite and a place to heal for the men and women who have given so much to others. Post traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, depression and family discord are often the reward these workers recieve for months and years of living among the poorest and most desparate people in the world. These workers often surrender any hope of living a normal life after some of their experiences and need a place to meet and regroup before heading out to live and work among the poor again.

A 'caravanserai' is a designated place where generations of Asian and African nomadic traders and travellers would stop and restock their stores, trade goods and share news of the road ahead. While we all need some type of place to go when the stress gets to be too much, those tens of thousands of invisible samaritans who live and work to bring hope, food and medicine to the refugees, victims of war, political instability and the economic hardship need a place of their own more than any of us. These workers see things and experience a level of human tragedy that we in America can only imagine. I for one am glad to hear about this type of resource to help support aid workers and I hope that this effort on their behalf leads to more support for their important work abroad.

Photo: S. Butler: Beersheva, Israel 1980

The Daddy School

I think I'll start the Fundamental School for New Dad's.

The New Dad's daily schedule and curriculum of classes will look something like this:

8:00am: Speed Diaper Changing 101

8:30am: Coffee Break (and call home to see how your wife is doing).

8:45am: "Goo Goo, Ga Ga" -Basic Communication Skills

9:00am: How to Power Nap

9:15am: Power Nap Practice Session

10:00am: Coffee Break (and call home again).

11:00am: Exercising with Your Baby (former title; Basic Rough Housing)

11:30am: Sports, Fighting and Aggressive Posturing

12:00: Lunch (and call home again).

12:30pm: Daddy Fundamentals -

Compassion and Respect for the In Laws

Goofy Faces and Other Stress Relievers

1:30pm: How to say, "Yes Dear" (like you mean it) with practice time.

2:30pm: Baby Culture Sessions:

Stroller Etiquette - Tricks for Going Uphill and Downhill

Pacifier Sharing - Learning How to Spot the Sucker.

Ketchup for All Seasons - The Perfect Food Group

Vegetables are Our Friends - Mr. Broccoli and 'Here Comes the Airplane!"

Professor the Messer - a symposium on baby food flinging techniques

3:00pm: 'Drool, Pee and Poop' - Bodily Fluids and Their Hidden Dangers

3:30pm: How to Shop for Groceries

A Guide to Searching the Entire Store for One Lousy Item

4:00pm: Homework Assignment, Evening Prayer and Dismissal...then call home...again.

5:00pm: Drive home to begin the evening shift but bring a coffee for the road to stay awake.

Rasta La Vista, Baby!

My daughter came up with this great 'Rasta la Vista' slogan today so I had to write it down. The kids and my wife lived on a Caribbean island for seven months when they were five years old and knew many rastafari there. Sometimes, these men and women would bring small gifts to the children and they were always evident in the town, in parades and on the media. Bob Marley is like a god in many parts of the Caribbean so followers of the Rastafarian faith identify powerfully with his music and legacy. My daughters even had Caribbean accents by the time they came home after living there and going to the local school with the island children.

Stepping off the plane on one of my visits, I would be absolutely enchanted by my nut brown little girls scampering towards me with their little sandals and platinum blond hair hugging me tightly and squealing, "Daddee! We miss yoooo!" Those days are thankfully over and we have been all together again for several years back home.

If Bob Marley were alive today he would probably have smiled and nodded in appreciation at how his music and culture still impact visitors and island experiences. Rastafari are a small group and are marginalized in many Caribbean cultures but to my little family for those months these men and women were always kind and thoughtful towards us during our long, hot, sleepy visit to a beautiful leeward island.

A Job Well Done

"I feel like I'm pretty much who I am, for better or worse, whatever that is. I'm trying to coach a football team. I'm trying to get them ready to play and...win. That's what my job is."
Bill Belichik - Head Coach of the New England Patriots

"We could be heroes, just for one day."

Heroes - David Bowie

As a husband, father, brother, son and doctor I have had to come up with a way to compartmentalize my life so that my day can run smoothly and all of the tasks and projects can be completed efficiently.

Job: My 'job' can best be described as the way I choose to conduct my life. My job in life is to be; healthy, be a good husband and father, to be productive, creative and to basically look out and protect my physical and emotional health for the longest time possible. This is the most important category because if I do not conduct the fundamental aspects of my life in a healthy way then the other two parts of my life will not work. My 'job' includes; exercising, eating correctly, sleeping soundly, taking time to laugh, spend time with my family and cultivate meaningful relationships.

Business: My 'business' is running my medical practice every day. This is what I do to generate income for my family, and it is where I work closely with other people. My business is what I do every day in the community that require people skills, management skills and conflict resolution skills. The business is the venue where I practice my profession and spend capital I have built in the life that I have created by doing my 'job'.

Profession: My 'profession' is to be a medical doctor. This required years of study, sacrifice and comittment to achieve. Now my 'profession' requires daily practice and dedication to constant learning and development within this complex and demanding line of work.

Summary: We are all given a set of gifts, skills and opportunities in life. We all face challenges, defeat and disappointment from time to time. Some of us are born into wealthy families, some into poor, chaotic and dysfunctional families. Many people are exposed to drugs, violence and abuse and face tremendous obstacles in life. The manner in which we conduct ourselves and our attitude towards our life work and our personal journey helps to determine our life choices, our health, success and happiness.

Shut Up and Eat Your Snowshoes!

"Laughter is a strange response. I mean, what is it? It's a spasm of some kind! Is that always joy? It's very often discomfort. It's some sort of explosive reaction."

Madeline Kahn

Many films and television shows are created to be funny and I often think that visual media is how many of us experience humor. When you are tired of watching TV and are ready for a good fun read, I have a book for you. 'Shut Up and Eat Your Snowshoes!' by Jack Douglas is long out of print but this guy was a comedic genius. Douglas was a sought after writer in his day for the Jack Paar Show. He had traditional Japanese wife named Reiko and together, they bought a home in the snowy wilds of Canada. If you are familiar with the television, radio and film celebrities of the 1950s you will recognize the cast of characters that parade through the home in search of cocktails, broads and a swingin' swell time away from the stress of Hollywood and New York. The next time you are tired of watching 'Family Guy' and 'The Simpsons' on TV see if you can get a copy of this book and sit down for a good old fashioned belly laugh.

Be Brillig!

"`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe."

Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll

This famous poem has been studied, dissected and analyzed for years in high school english and college english literature courses. The poem is loaded with nonsensical words and phrases that nontheless paint a picture of the legendary mythical monster and describe the fear and terror of the beast in vivid (if abstract) detail.

Fear of the unknown is one of the most powerful and crippling forms of terror. Fear, anxiety and panic are thought to be neurochemically driven responses that are encoded in our DNA as a survival mechanism. It has been said that the body retains no memory of pain. We can recall pleasant times when we felt relaxed, calm or secure but to call up an accurate memory of physical pain is difficult. Ask a mother if it is easier to relive the pain of her baby's delivery or remember the feeling she had watching the sun set from the deck of a cruise liner she was on many years ago and she will recall the pleasant memory much faster. Fear, has an achilles heel.

To me being 'brillig' is to be on guard, to draw a deadly weapon, wait calmly for an attack and to be the first to strike when the monster lunges. I don't know if it is an adjective or a noun. I don't really care (and neither did anyone else in my high school english class). The poem is still a classic.

Never mind the mome raths!

BE BRILLIG!!