by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
Just when I thought I wasn't going to have a politics based blowout this week, Facebook struck again this morning, and I am off to the races.
My target this week is once again the Democratic Party's Presidential Race. I'd pick on the Republicans, but frankly that's WAY too easy, plus, they're doing a much better job of making themselves look ridiculous than I could ever do, so I'll pass on that job, at least for this week. And just to remind everyone where I'm coming from, I was born and raised a moderate, "Rockefeller Republican" ... a group of people who were very unceremoniously exorcised and kicked out by the religious right/neo-conservative movement because, well, basically because we weren't batshit crazy enough for them. There are quite a few of us, and we're now called conservative Democrats but, as you can imagine, it's a marriage that isn't without its disagreements ... which brings us nicely to this week's PROW (Political Rant Of the Week).
The supporters of Bernie Sanders are, at the moment, riding high and being quite "loud and proud" about their candidate in the race. I'd like to first go on record as saying that, like most Americans, I like Senator Sanders. He has a kind of "America's nice grandfather " quality to him. In this way, Sanders is not unlike our current Vice President, although Biden is more like America's slightly crazy Uncle. You know the one, he's the one you love dearly and always want to sit next to at Thanksgiving and whose heart is always in the right place, but who also occasionally says things that are "off the reservation" in strange and usually hilarious ways (which, let's face it, is a big part of why you want to be sitting next to him). But, with no disrespect to Biden, Sanders is different; he's far more of a policy wonk. He also comes off as smarter and, more importantly, he combines that intellect with an overt passion for his ideals. Agree with him or not (and I actually agree with him quite a bit), there is much to like and respect about Bernie Sanders as a politician and a person.
But with that said, I have a real problem with the Sanders campaign. Well, no I don't. I don't have a problem with the Sanders campaign, I have a problem with a lot of the campaign's supporters. What bothers me is how a candidate who is obviously this smart can have supporters, many of whom are otherwise also thoughtful and intelligent people, who can somehow simultaneously be so naive, ignorant and just plain stupid when it comes to the political realities of how our system works. This is especially strange to me because, again, many of them are otherwise pretty bright folks who hold well thought out and logical positions on a variety of issues that we actually agree on. But when you put them in a room with Sanders, or you place them in front of a news feed story showing Sanders addressing a crowd of thousands, it's like they all switch off a huge part of their brains.
To be specific, I'm already incredibly tired of hearing about how Sanders could win and how much Secretary Clinton is "just like those big bad Republicans." Is it possible for Sanders to win? Of course it is. It's also possible that I could decide to run and win. But in order to get from "could" to "will," you need something that America's political left has been short on lately; votes.
Elections are about who gets the most votes. Fortunately, there's not a single Sanders supporter I know who would argue that particular point with me. Now, as I noted in last week's PROW, the 2016 Election comes down to 270 electoral votes, and given that New England and the west coast will certainly go all blue and that the "heartland" and deep south will certainly go all red, in order to be the next President, Sanders would need a majority of the votes in enough of the remaining swing states to reach 270. And here we see the biggest problem the Sanders campaign faces: they lack the money, the organization, and most importantly, they lack the VOTES to win in those states. And, in some cases, it's not because there aren't enough potential voters out there, it's because the overwhelming majority of those potential voters DON'T VOTE. In fact, only about half of the eligible voters in this country bother to even register, and only about half of those people vote. Remember Reagan's win in 1984? Biggest Electoral blowout in history. Well, keep in mind when you think about that victory that about SEVENTY PERCENT of America's eligible voters DIDN'T vote for him. So the bottom line is that those people got the government they deserve (sadly, so did the rest of us, but that's another rant).
The fact is that our system ISN'T broken, at all. It CAN function just fine the way it is. It too often DOESN'T function properly due entirely to the manner in which it is taken advantage of (or, much more accurately, the manner in which it is NOT taken advantage of) by the people.
Since we don't disagree that elections are won with votes and that most people don't vote, hopefully we can all agree that it follows that politicians, in order to get elected, have to appeal to the majority of people who ACTUALLY VOTE. They DON'T have to espouse certain policies so that they will excite the public and get them to vote, that's LITERALLY BACKWARDS to how the system works. This may feel counterintuitive to the way things are or "should be" to many people (including a lot of my Sanders supporting friends), but here in the real world and not in the make believe, fictitious world of how things should be, in order to get elected and change anything for the better (and that doesn't mean all the way, that's in increments, that's "two steps forward, one step back", THAT is how Republics WORK), you have to get a majority of the "highly likely" voters to turn out and vote for you. THAT is what politicians have to do.
The problem facing the Sanders campaign right now is that the people who show up to rallies and cheer on Sanders and complain about Clinton are not in these swing states and are not high likelihood voters (if they were, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in). And the problem for the Democrats as a whole is that the Sanders campaign, contrary to the stated (and I believe VERY sincere) wishes of the candidate himself, stands a far better chance of dividing the party than uniting it. My liberal friends are ALWAYS upset and always complaining about having to "hold their nose" and/or going with the "least worst" option when voting ... but that's literally a necessary reality of living in a society like ours ... because not everyone thinks like we do (and/or not enough people who do think that way vote). Also, while I'm ranting on this particular subtopic, let me add that the argument that "people don't vote because they don't feel they have anything to vote for" is about the dumbest f***ing thing I've ever heard and is a 100% GUARANTEED way to end up in a dictatorship.
So this is what we get back to: liberals want to change the world, but they refuse to understand that elections are about votes and Republics are about compromise. They also have a HUGE problem with understanding that voting once every four years (which is what far too many of them do ... and you can "not like" that fact all you want, but statistics and election results don't lie) and winning the White House is, in the grand scheme, a LOT less important than controlling City Councils, School Boards and, most importantly, State Legislatures (you know, the ones that are currently gerrymandering the shit out of our Congressional districts and are responsible for the lopsided and dysfunctional mess we currently call Congress). The Republicans figured that out a long time ago, and that is how they're screwing up our country. I spent a LOT of time during my last run for the US Congress in 2006 screaming about how important it was to take the State House (and I remain especially grateful to those who credited me with helping some of those people who were "downballot" from me and won while I did not), but the Democratic Party has consistently showed that, when it comes to arrogance and ignorance, the Republicans aren't the only game in town.
Anyway, where liberals go SERIOUSLY astray is when they get all whipped up by the idea that Sanders can win. Senator Sanders has very little chance of winning the nomination and essentially ZERO chance of getting elected. And that's not because of ideas or rallies or anything else, that's because, in order to be President, you need to win 270 electoral votes, and to do that you have to win the majority of votes in battleground states ... and (again, as I went over last week) there's NO political mathematician (e.g. Nate Silver, who called 49 of 50 states correctly in 2008 and FIFTY of 50 states correctly in 2012) out there who thinks there's a snowball's chance in hell of that happening. Sanders DOESN'T now have and isn't ever likely to have the money, the organization, the support or the VOTES (of the majority of high likelihood voters) to win in those states.
So the problem for the Democrats is that when the Sanders supporters eventually get smacked in the face by reality, many of them will become disillusioned and depressed and say "Clinton is no different from the Republicans" (a statement which is, incidentally, about the biggest load of bullshit I've heard lately ... Secretary Clinton is FAR from my ideal candidate and she has some very real negatives that her campaign seems to have a dangerous blind eye about, but she's certainly not in favor of turning our nation into some sort of twisted oligarchical theocracy, and I am CERTAIN that we would be FAR worse off with whichever Republican nominee emerges). And then, as the completely dysfunctional and backwards result of their reality induced depression, they quiet down and stay home ... and then, before you know it, you really are living in a dictatorship.
So, if you want to support Sanders for the nomination, vote your conscience, go for it, have a great time ... but be ready to hold your nose later and support Clinton as the party's nominee. She IS, statistically, VERY likely to be your nominee, she IS better than the alternative, and failing to get on board with those facts WILL leave you worse off than you are now.
I feel like Kevin Bacon in A Few Good Men; these are the facts, and they are not in dispute.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
How I lost 50 pounds and kept it off
by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
I had no idea what to write about this week, and then a friend of mine suggested that I tell this story. For those who don't know me personally, while I have never been obese, I struggled with my weight for many years and was rarely happy with my appearance. Fortunately for me, like many young people, I could simply work out more and work out harder to keep my weight under control (and merely be classified as "slightly overweight" for my height etc.). That plan worked well for me until my late 20s (which is when my metabolism slowed down and I learned the painful lesson that we all learn about having to start giving a crap about what we put in our bodies). To give you exact numbers, I maxed out my height just barely short of 6' 2" (I'm now, thanks to age and compressing discs, back to 6' 1") and, at my heaviest, I weighed in at about 232 pounds. So, to be clear, I was not in anywhere near the condition that too many Americans find themselves in today, but I was far from healthy too.
I was further "lucky" in that I needed life saving surgery at 32 (early 1998). The "lucky" part of this was that the illness which preceded my surgery caused me to fall to just 187 pounds. Following that surgery I managed to mostly keep my weight under 200 for the next 13 years.
In 2011, I traveled to Europe to have multiple, Artificial Disc Replacement (ADR) surgery (this surgery followed a long and very painful few years as Degenerative Disc Disease first destroyed my L5/S1 disc (2008) and then my L4/L5 disc (2010) ... but that, is a different story all on its own).
As I laid on the cart waiting to be wheeled into the Operating Room for surgery that morning, I came to grips with the small (about 1 in 200 apparently) chance that I might die during the procedure (ADR surgery is pretty amazing stuff and requires slicing you open, removing all of your internal organs that are in the way (so they can access the spine), then putting everything back in ... hopefully in the right places and in the right order ... I assume they make a list or something). Anyway, one of the thoughts that crossed my mind that morning was wondering what I would regret if today was "it" and I didn't survive the surgery. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but my mind can be a little goofy, and it's big on using humor as a means of alleviating stress. As a result, one of the first thoughts that came to me when I asked myself that question was, "man, I wish I'd had more milkshakes." The thought amused me and lightened my mood in those last minutes of consciousness, and I resolved that, if I survived, I would take the time to have more milkshakes.
Obviously, I survived the surgery, and my "time of milkshakes" began (the hospital nurses in the UK were really wonderful and even made a makeshift one as best they could for me before I left).
Flash forward to a conference I was at in Minneapolis the following spring (May 2012). I woke up early and headed to the conference center's fitness room and got on the treadmill. I had noticed that it had been getting more difficult to do some things (like put my pants on) in the last few months and frankly I was starting to feel some pain in my artificial discs and associated areas (I would later learn that this was directly related to my weight gain). When I finished my workout, I went over to the scale and found that I was tipping the needle at about 215 pounds. I wondered for about half a second how that was possible and then, in the back of my mind, a voice said, "you're kidding right? Time of milkshakes. Remember?" Well, it was suddenly obvious where that was getting me, and I knew I needed to knock that shit off right now.
Now, all of us have moments in our lives where we say, "no more." Many of us mean it too. I'm different (in many ways obviously), and what I mean by different is that I'm one of those driven, focused, disciplined "A type" personalities who can and has made 100% shifts in lifestyle or habits in a single moment (there are, of course, other adjectives to describe this ability of mine ... these include stubborn, anal, maniacal ... but these are merely semantical differences).
So my first steps towards weight loss were the easiest. No more milkshakes, reduced frequency of desserts, portion control, obvious things to lower my caloric intake (my back limits the amount of caloric burn work I can do, but I found ways to increase my burn later as well). I also started doing research into losing weight. One of the "tricks" I employed early on (that really seemed to work for me) was to eat an apple about 20-30 minutes before lunch and dinner meals. The article I read noted that the bulk of the apple in your stomach essentially tricks your brain and body into believing that you're already more full than you are when mealtime comes around. Basically, the apple performs like an artificial portion control assistant. A month later, with virtually no other effort, I had lost just over 5 pounds.
Like many parents, I am blessed in that I have wonderful kids. My kids have been very supportive and helpful with everything I do, and losing weight was no exception. They saw me make the effort, and for Father's Day they went out and bought me a special, "Biggest Loser" scale that measures height and weight, tracks what your caloric equilibrium should be for that weight, etc. etc. Well this was the "Game On" moment for me. I am German by descent. In fact, my wife calls many of the characteristics I refer to above as "the German in me." And if you give that part of me something to measure and track? Oh boy, get out of the way, because here come the spreadsheets and I am into it now!
Suddenly, my effort to lose a little weight became a series of hyper-specific, quantifiable goals with timeframes and schedules (these things make me happy in a very strange way). My diet got addressed first. In March of 2009 my "cooking gene" turned on, quite literally overnight (with NO prior cooking experience or real interest in the field, I very suddenly began waking up in the middle of the night, every night, after dreaming of preparing elaborate meals ... I quickly took to sleeping with a pad of paper and pen at my bedside so I could turn the light on, write the meal idea out, and then go back to sleep ... it was the only way I could go back to sleep). I had always enjoyed baking (cookies, my brownie recipe), but suddenly I went from kind of being afraid of regular cooking (and, when I had to, militantly following recipes and instructions in great fear of doing anything wrong) to frankly needing to cook (and in fact getting grumpy when I didn't) every day. I would read through and then mercilessly change recipes I'd never made before because I just suddenly knew how to amend them in ways that would be different and fun and better. I also just plain made stuff up based on groups of completely different recipes I would find online.
Understandably, my wife was thrilled. To this day, her joke is that she got to do the cooking for the first 20 years of our marriage, and now I have the next 20, which makes both of us very happy.
It was in this time that I started to realize that there were things in my diet that I thought were healthy that might not be (e.g. soy milk), so I eliminated them. I was also cognizant that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, but I was frequently in too much of a rush at that time of day to eat adequately. I stumbled on a brilliant solution that I use every morning to this day. My breakfast is
1 Banana (sliced)
4-6 Strawberries (sliced)
1 handful of frozen blueberries (fresh when cheap enough and in season)
1 small Apple or half of a large one (in slices)
(in season I add raspberries or peach or other fruit here)
1 glass of orange juice
A splash (several tablespoons) of Bolthouse Farms "Blue Goodness" (which, incidentally, is an AWESOME post workout drink for me, I can literally FEEL the nutrients plowing through my body)
2 *large* spoonfuls of lowfat vanilla yogurt
3/4 cup (roughly) of Kellogg's SmartStart cereal
1 Sprig of Kale
1 small handful of walnuts
NOW, put all of that in a bender and blend the beejeebies out of it. This is your complete breakfast, now in an "easy to take with you" liquid form.
For lunch, I would have an all veggie salad (lettuce, tomato, mushroom, cucumber, carrot) with an either low fat or no fat dressing. And for dinner, a light and small serving of protein (never beef or pork, always bird or fish) and a non-starch veggie medley (frozen green beans, peas, spinach, cauliflower, etc., all cooked in about a tablespoon of butter with onion salt, black pepper, and McCormick's Veggie Delight spice mix sprinkled in while cooking). For snacks, I had extra carrots or a small bowl of dry SmartStart (which I would munch on like nuts or chips).
I militantly avoided processed foods (I cooked my own food using fresh or frozen ingredients (NOTHING pre-prepared), steered away from breads (though wraps were OK), and anything that was high in artificial fats (candy, ice cream, etc.). NO FAST FOOD EVER (in fact, I rarely eat out ever anymore). I drank ONLY water, at least 80 oz per day (which was about right for my height and weight). And for exercise, I walked every day (usually twice/day), and I swam at least 3 miles/week (which I also still do).
Now, let's be clear about this next fact; the first six weeks of this routine were really hell. I was very grumpy and hungry basically 24 hours/day. I frequently felt like actually gnawing on my own desk at work sometimes ... but I stayed with it and I did so for one incredibly obvious reason; I began consistently losing weight. My original goal had been to lose 20 pounds and get safely under 200, with a stretch goal of losing about 25 and getting back to the weight I had when I had surgery in 1998. But by the end of the summer (Labor Day), I was blowing through even my stretch goal and suddenly I had visions of losing 30, maybe even 40 pounds (to get back to a weight near where I was in the Navy ... that, I thought, would be cool).
I need to note one other thing about the late summer. My body reached a point where I had been treating it well enough for long enough that a lot of the bad stuff that it had been holding on to for a long time needed to go ... including a significant amount of bile that my liver had apparently been storing for God knows how long. I include this detail only to prevent others from being afraid of a large, one time expulsion from the body that is decidedly, well, green in nature. If that happens regularly, see a Doctor right away because it can be an indicator of a very serious problem, but if you're dieting and losing a significant amount of weight and it happens once, and after that your whole body seems to be telling you, "damn! I feel better now!" then it's a good thing.
As summer became fall, my weight fell into the low 180s and then, in November, into the high 170s, a weight I hadn't seen since shortly after graduating from college. I maintained a fairly militant adherence to my diet (I did have a nice meal at each holiday, and a piece of pie etc.) and by New Years, I was in the low 170s.
For many years, one of my companies had a store on the Big Island of Hawaii. One of my wife's sisters and her husband also lived there, so we had business and personal reasons to visit every year. As was normally the case, my wife and kids would stay for a shorter time than I would (and I would stick around to do additional work for the company and to enjoy a couple of extra weeks on the island after the kids had to return for school. While in Hawaii, not surprisingly, my caloric burn rate took off (there's good news and bad news about working on a mainland business while in Hawaii ... the bad news is that you have to be up and working by 6am, because that's already 11am on the east coast and 10am in the midwest (where our HQ was) ... but the good news is that, by 2pm every day, the business basically shuts down and you have half the day to go swimming, diving, etc.). With my diet in tact and my caloric burn going off the charts, my weight continued to drop until I reached a low point of 162 pounds, literally lighter than my high school graduation weight ... and this was the moment when my body said, "umm hey, this is too far." I began to feel pain again because I was now at the lower limit of what my weight should be to be healthy. Fortunately, that was pretty obvious, and it led very quickly to the pattern I've been living with for the last two and a half years; maintaining.
The first thing I did when I reached the lowpoint and my body clearly reacted badly, was to significantly increase my caloric intake (eat more). Fortunately, that's a pretty easy thing to do, and I gained 6 pounds (to168) very rapidly.
Once you've hit your weight target, maintaining your weight is easy, and you can "cheat" (have a donut, have some ice cream, have some fries) whenever your weight is on the low end of your range, and then simply dial back to your diet routine when you hit the high end of your range. I have a four pound range (two pounds on either side of a center line) that I have been sitting in since I lost the weight that I did. And I have found recipes that allow me to enjoy things (tastes) that I used to love without the caloric or fat overhead (e.g. a cauliflower crust pizza ... where you cook a cauliflower head in a microwave for 4-5 minutes, then put the florets in a cuisinart with a couple of eggs and some spices and whip it into a dough like mixture (that's your crust ... a carb free and healthy crust BTW) cook it, then add sauce and fresh toppings (mushrooms, zucchini, spinach, tomato, onion, etc. etc. ... and yes, cheese), and cook it).
I understand that weight loss is far more difficult for some people than it was for me, and I have great compassion and understanding for those who have pituitary gland issues or other genetic issues that make weight loss extremely difficult ... but for the significant majority of us, at the end of the day, losing weight comes down to a pretty simple formula; you have to burn more calories than you take in. Most of us have a limit to the amount of exercise we can do (we're constrained by time or age or, in my case, the limits of my artificial parts), but we should do what we can do, and for the rest, we simply need to adopt a diet that's less than the amount of calories burned, and if we do that then we WILL lose weight.
There's no feeling in the world like the feeling you get when you step on a scale and see the number you've been working for, or look in the mirror and see the person you want to see. If you're reading this essay and you want to get there, I have good news; for the vast majority of people, you can do it! Please feel free to comment or write me. I'm happy to be your cheerleader and happier still to see your success. All you need to do is start.
©2015
I had no idea what to write about this week, and then a friend of mine suggested that I tell this story. For those who don't know me personally, while I have never been obese, I struggled with my weight for many years and was rarely happy with my appearance. Fortunately for me, like many young people, I could simply work out more and work out harder to keep my weight under control (and merely be classified as "slightly overweight" for my height etc.). That plan worked well for me until my late 20s (which is when my metabolism slowed down and I learned the painful lesson that we all learn about having to start giving a crap about what we put in our bodies). To give you exact numbers, I maxed out my height just barely short of 6' 2" (I'm now, thanks to age and compressing discs, back to 6' 1") and, at my heaviest, I weighed in at about 232 pounds. So, to be clear, I was not in anywhere near the condition that too many Americans find themselves in today, but I was far from healthy too.
I was further "lucky" in that I needed life saving surgery at 32 (early 1998). The "lucky" part of this was that the illness which preceded my surgery caused me to fall to just 187 pounds. Following that surgery I managed to mostly keep my weight under 200 for the next 13 years.
In 2011, I traveled to Europe to have multiple, Artificial Disc Replacement (ADR) surgery (this surgery followed a long and very painful few years as Degenerative Disc Disease first destroyed my L5/S1 disc (2008) and then my L4/L5 disc (2010) ... but that, is a different story all on its own).
As I laid on the cart waiting to be wheeled into the Operating Room for surgery that morning, I came to grips with the small (about 1 in 200 apparently) chance that I might die during the procedure (ADR surgery is pretty amazing stuff and requires slicing you open, removing all of your internal organs that are in the way (so they can access the spine), then putting everything back in ... hopefully in the right places and in the right order ... I assume they make a list or something). Anyway, one of the thoughts that crossed my mind that morning was wondering what I would regret if today was "it" and I didn't survive the surgery. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but my mind can be a little goofy, and it's big on using humor as a means of alleviating stress. As a result, one of the first thoughts that came to me when I asked myself that question was, "man, I wish I'd had more milkshakes." The thought amused me and lightened my mood in those last minutes of consciousness, and I resolved that, if I survived, I would take the time to have more milkshakes.
Obviously, I survived the surgery, and my "time of milkshakes" began (the hospital nurses in the UK were really wonderful and even made a makeshift one as best they could for me before I left).
Flash forward to a conference I was at in Minneapolis the following spring (May 2012). I woke up early and headed to the conference center's fitness room and got on the treadmill. I had noticed that it had been getting more difficult to do some things (like put my pants on) in the last few months and frankly I was starting to feel some pain in my artificial discs and associated areas (I would later learn that this was directly related to my weight gain). When I finished my workout, I went over to the scale and found that I was tipping the needle at about 215 pounds. I wondered for about half a second how that was possible and then, in the back of my mind, a voice said, "you're kidding right? Time of milkshakes. Remember?" Well, it was suddenly obvious where that was getting me, and I knew I needed to knock that shit off right now.
Now, all of us have moments in our lives where we say, "no more." Many of us mean it too. I'm different (in many ways obviously), and what I mean by different is that I'm one of those driven, focused, disciplined "A type" personalities who can and has made 100% shifts in lifestyle or habits in a single moment (there are, of course, other adjectives to describe this ability of mine ... these include stubborn, anal, maniacal ... but these are merely semantical differences).
So my first steps towards weight loss were the easiest. No more milkshakes, reduced frequency of desserts, portion control, obvious things to lower my caloric intake (my back limits the amount of caloric burn work I can do, but I found ways to increase my burn later as well). I also started doing research into losing weight. One of the "tricks" I employed early on (that really seemed to work for me) was to eat an apple about 20-30 minutes before lunch and dinner meals. The article I read noted that the bulk of the apple in your stomach essentially tricks your brain and body into believing that you're already more full than you are when mealtime comes around. Basically, the apple performs like an artificial portion control assistant. A month later, with virtually no other effort, I had lost just over 5 pounds.
Like many parents, I am blessed in that I have wonderful kids. My kids have been very supportive and helpful with everything I do, and losing weight was no exception. They saw me make the effort, and for Father's Day they went out and bought me a special, "Biggest Loser" scale that measures height and weight, tracks what your caloric equilibrium should be for that weight, etc. etc. Well this was the "Game On" moment for me. I am German by descent. In fact, my wife calls many of the characteristics I refer to above as "the German in me." And if you give that part of me something to measure and track? Oh boy, get out of the way, because here come the spreadsheets and I am into it now!
Suddenly, my effort to lose a little weight became a series of hyper-specific, quantifiable goals with timeframes and schedules (these things make me happy in a very strange way). My diet got addressed first. In March of 2009 my "cooking gene" turned on, quite literally overnight (with NO prior cooking experience or real interest in the field, I very suddenly began waking up in the middle of the night, every night, after dreaming of preparing elaborate meals ... I quickly took to sleeping with a pad of paper and pen at my bedside so I could turn the light on, write the meal idea out, and then go back to sleep ... it was the only way I could go back to sleep). I had always enjoyed baking (cookies, my brownie recipe), but suddenly I went from kind of being afraid of regular cooking (and, when I had to, militantly following recipes and instructions in great fear of doing anything wrong) to frankly needing to cook (and in fact getting grumpy when I didn't) every day. I would read through and then mercilessly change recipes I'd never made before because I just suddenly knew how to amend them in ways that would be different and fun and better. I also just plain made stuff up based on groups of completely different recipes I would find online.
Understandably, my wife was thrilled. To this day, her joke is that she got to do the cooking for the first 20 years of our marriage, and now I have the next 20, which makes both of us very happy.
It was in this time that I started to realize that there were things in my diet that I thought were healthy that might not be (e.g. soy milk), so I eliminated them. I was also cognizant that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, but I was frequently in too much of a rush at that time of day to eat adequately. I stumbled on a brilliant solution that I use every morning to this day. My breakfast is
1 Banana (sliced)
4-6 Strawberries (sliced)
1 handful of frozen blueberries (fresh when cheap enough and in season)
1 small Apple or half of a large one (in slices)
(in season I add raspberries or peach or other fruit here)
1 glass of orange juice
A splash (several tablespoons) of Bolthouse Farms "Blue Goodness" (which, incidentally, is an AWESOME post workout drink for me, I can literally FEEL the nutrients plowing through my body)
2 *large* spoonfuls of lowfat vanilla yogurt
3/4 cup (roughly) of Kellogg's SmartStart cereal
1 Sprig of Kale
1 small handful of walnuts
NOW, put all of that in a bender and blend the beejeebies out of it. This is your complete breakfast, now in an "easy to take with you" liquid form.
For lunch, I would have an all veggie salad (lettuce, tomato, mushroom, cucumber, carrot) with an either low fat or no fat dressing. And for dinner, a light and small serving of protein (never beef or pork, always bird or fish) and a non-starch veggie medley (frozen green beans, peas, spinach, cauliflower, etc., all cooked in about a tablespoon of butter with onion salt, black pepper, and McCormick's Veggie Delight spice mix sprinkled in while cooking). For snacks, I had extra carrots or a small bowl of dry SmartStart (which I would munch on like nuts or chips).
I militantly avoided processed foods (I cooked my own food using fresh or frozen ingredients (NOTHING pre-prepared), steered away from breads (though wraps were OK), and anything that was high in artificial fats (candy, ice cream, etc.). NO FAST FOOD EVER (in fact, I rarely eat out ever anymore). I drank ONLY water, at least 80 oz per day (which was about right for my height and weight). And for exercise, I walked every day (usually twice/day), and I swam at least 3 miles/week (which I also still do).
Now, let's be clear about this next fact; the first six weeks of this routine were really hell. I was very grumpy and hungry basically 24 hours/day. I frequently felt like actually gnawing on my own desk at work sometimes ... but I stayed with it and I did so for one incredibly obvious reason; I began consistently losing weight. My original goal had been to lose 20 pounds and get safely under 200, with a stretch goal of losing about 25 and getting back to the weight I had when I had surgery in 1998. But by the end of the summer (Labor Day), I was blowing through even my stretch goal and suddenly I had visions of losing 30, maybe even 40 pounds (to get back to a weight near where I was in the Navy ... that, I thought, would be cool).
I need to note one other thing about the late summer. My body reached a point where I had been treating it well enough for long enough that a lot of the bad stuff that it had been holding on to for a long time needed to go ... including a significant amount of bile that my liver had apparently been storing for God knows how long. I include this detail only to prevent others from being afraid of a large, one time expulsion from the body that is decidedly, well, green in nature. If that happens regularly, see a Doctor right away because it can be an indicator of a very serious problem, but if you're dieting and losing a significant amount of weight and it happens once, and after that your whole body seems to be telling you, "damn! I feel better now!" then it's a good thing.
As summer became fall, my weight fell into the low 180s and then, in November, into the high 170s, a weight I hadn't seen since shortly after graduating from college. I maintained a fairly militant adherence to my diet (I did have a nice meal at each holiday, and a piece of pie etc.) and by New Years, I was in the low 170s.
For many years, one of my companies had a store on the Big Island of Hawaii. One of my wife's sisters and her husband also lived there, so we had business and personal reasons to visit every year. As was normally the case, my wife and kids would stay for a shorter time than I would (and I would stick around to do additional work for the company and to enjoy a couple of extra weeks on the island after the kids had to return for school. While in Hawaii, not surprisingly, my caloric burn rate took off (there's good news and bad news about working on a mainland business while in Hawaii ... the bad news is that you have to be up and working by 6am, because that's already 11am on the east coast and 10am in the midwest (where our HQ was) ... but the good news is that, by 2pm every day, the business basically shuts down and you have half the day to go swimming, diving, etc.). With my diet in tact and my caloric burn going off the charts, my weight continued to drop until I reached a low point of 162 pounds, literally lighter than my high school graduation weight ... and this was the moment when my body said, "umm hey, this is too far." I began to feel pain again because I was now at the lower limit of what my weight should be to be healthy. Fortunately, that was pretty obvious, and it led very quickly to the pattern I've been living with for the last two and a half years; maintaining.
The first thing I did when I reached the lowpoint and my body clearly reacted badly, was to significantly increase my caloric intake (eat more). Fortunately, that's a pretty easy thing to do, and I gained 6 pounds (to168) very rapidly.
Once you've hit your weight target, maintaining your weight is easy, and you can "cheat" (have a donut, have some ice cream, have some fries) whenever your weight is on the low end of your range, and then simply dial back to your diet routine when you hit the high end of your range. I have a four pound range (two pounds on either side of a center line) that I have been sitting in since I lost the weight that I did. And I have found recipes that allow me to enjoy things (tastes) that I used to love without the caloric or fat overhead (e.g. a cauliflower crust pizza ... where you cook a cauliflower head in a microwave for 4-5 minutes, then put the florets in a cuisinart with a couple of eggs and some spices and whip it into a dough like mixture (that's your crust ... a carb free and healthy crust BTW) cook it, then add sauce and fresh toppings (mushrooms, zucchini, spinach, tomato, onion, etc. etc. ... and yes, cheese), and cook it).
I understand that weight loss is far more difficult for some people than it was for me, and I have great compassion and understanding for those who have pituitary gland issues or other genetic issues that make weight loss extremely difficult ... but for the significant majority of us, at the end of the day, losing weight comes down to a pretty simple formula; you have to burn more calories than you take in. Most of us have a limit to the amount of exercise we can do (we're constrained by time or age or, in my case, the limits of my artificial parts), but we should do what we can do, and for the rest, we simply need to adopt a diet that's less than the amount of calories burned, and if we do that then we WILL lose weight.
There's no feeling in the world like the feeling you get when you step on a scale and see the number you've been working for, or look in the mirror and see the person you want to see. If you're reading this essay and you want to get there, I have good news; for the vast majority of people, you can do it! Please feel free to comment or write me. I'm happy to be your cheerleader and happier still to see your success. All you need to do is start.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Political Rant Of The Week: The 2016 Election, The Democrats, and Jim Webb
by Duane N. Burghard
© 2015
So I've been thinking about doing this sort of thing with my blog for some time now, and today is the day. Periodically I see or hear something on the news or on Facebook (or in this case, both) that really gets me going for a few moments, and I have to say something in response. It's not REALLY related to the sorts of things that I write about on my blog, but it needs to be said. To make it easier on my regular readers, I'm going to call these posts "Political Rant Of The Week" (which I will almost certainly eventually shorten to "PROW" ... because I was in the military and we're contractually obligated to abbreviate almost everything for the rest of our lives). It is my intent to make these posts "in addition to" my regular writing, but we'll see how that goes.
So what sent me over the edge this week? The 2016 Election. Now I know that many of you were hoping that we could avoid this topic until, oh say, NEXT YEAR, but obviously the media is having none of that so I'm conceding defeat and hopping in.
The first thing that sent me around the bend was an article about how one particular group of voters (in the case of the article in question, black voters) was likely to be the critical factor in the 2016 Presidential Election. This statement/assertion shows a depressing lack of understanding of how Presidents are elected, so, at the risk of boring the crap out of the rest of you, let me be clear about the ONLY thing, and by that I mean, quite literally THE ONLY THING that is important in a Presidential election.
270.
That's it. There's nothing else. The candidate that gets 270 electoral votes or more wins the Presidency. Period. There are no other measures, NOTHING else matters. Now, with that as "2016 Election Fact #1," let's move on to Fact #2: Pretty much no matter what happens between now and Election Day 2016, the outcome of the Presidential election in MOST of the United States is essentially a foregone conclusion (it's VERY unlikely (statistically) that the outcome isn't already known). To be clear, you could essentially run a used beer can as a Republican or Democrat as your candidate in most states and that beer can would defeat the nominee of the other party. And why? Because the politics of the majority of people in that state are such that they will NOT elect a candidate from the other party in 2016.
Those are the facts, and if you're going to dispute them then you should stop reading right now and go do something else because we already have a zero percent chance of having an intelligent conversation on this topic (because you're out there with climate deniers and people who think Adam and Eve were out riding dinosaurs 6K years ago).
As a result of these facts, we can conclude that, for all intents and purposes, the 2016 Election IS ALREADY OVER in the majority of the United States. It's "turn out the lights the party is over" done. The Democrats are NOT going to win in states like the Dakotas, Idaho, Oklahoma or Alabama, and the Republicans have ZERO chance of winning basically any state in New England or the west coast.
So the path to 270 is already well underway, and when you look at the cold, hard political realities, the fact is that the Democrats already have a significantly easier (though far from guaranteed) path to 270 than the Republicans do. And THAT, is where the facts end. Now, there's nothing wrong with political speculation and opinion (per se, although it's a little troubling that the industry around this field seems to be so heavily populated with idiots), but to me, speculation that doesn't start with the above facts and work outward from them is FAR more likely to quickly veer into the stupid or absurd ... so I'm going to work my way out from what we know and see where that leads us.
The Republicans, by most educated guesses, have NO path to 270 that doesn't include winning the state of Ohio. Now, obviously this is national politics we're talking about, and things do change, but these numbers don't change THAT much and, right now, there's not a single mathematician in the country that I'm aware of that has ANY (realistic) Electoral College map for the Republicans reaching 270 in 2016 that does NOT include the GOP taking the state of Ohio (it's obviously not impossible, just statistically very unlikely as there are far fewer realistic combinations of states). The majority of Republicans these days are many things (and I should quickly add that, for many of the early years of my life, I was one of them and, as a result, I'm particularly critical of the neo-conservative, religious right, theological oligarchs who have, in my opinion, destroyed the party). You could (and I occasionally do) argue that they are short sighted, sold out ideologues who are hell bent on nothing less than the end of our Republic as we know it and replacing it with some sort of twisted, disgusting theological oligarchy. HOWEVER, they ... which is to say their political strategists, are NOT stupid. They are VERY aware that they have basically NO chance of winning back the White House in 2016 without Ohio ... and they, like the rest of us who can look at polling data and add, have known this fact for some time. That's why the GOP convention in 2016 is going to be in Ohio, and that's why the party is (and we switch here from fact to my opinion again) carefully grooming Governor Kasich (a reasonably popular Ohio Republican with massive statewide name recognition) to be the Vice Presidential pick of virtually anyone who becomes the nominee (and, on the topic of the nominee, let me quickly quiet all the "harumphing" going on about Donald Trump ... I'm sorry to disappoint all the paid Trump fans and late night talk show hosts out there, but it isn't going to be Trump ... don't get me wrong, I love what Trump is doing to divide, polarize, disrupt and cost the Republicans money right now, but it can't and won't last).
On the other side of the race, unlike the Republicans, the Democrats CAN win the Presidency without winning Ohio, it's just harder (there are a higher number of possible combinations for the Democrats to reach 270 without Ohio than there are for the Republicans). Like the Republicans, the Democrats are also many things (and you'll hear me use words like disappointing and frustrating a lot here), but they (and by "they" I again mean their high level, intelligent political strategists) are also NOT stupid. They have been staring at the same political maps that their Republican counterparts have been staring at for a long time too, and they know that Ohio is going to be an incredibly expensive and close slugfest, and one which, particularly given its importance to the GOP, they could definitely lose. Since losing Ohio is a legitimate possibility, without conceding that race in any way, it makes a great deal of sense for them to be working hard on a backup plan.
And this is where Jim Webb comes in.
Webb's entrance into the race (and some of the things he's said to separate himself from the left wing of the party) have already caused many in the party to cast aspersions at him. Many are calling him names, saying he's a "DINO," calling for him to drop out, etc. This reaction is, to me, beyond stupid and shows again that many Democrats also lack the kind of pragmatism that is NEEDED in any successful Democratic Republic. For the record, I think that, like Gov Kasich, Senator Webb's entry into the Presidential race is largely symbolic. It's about generating name recognition and putting him in a position to be the Vice Presidential nominee (in fact, I would argue that Webb is already the de facto VP pick for whoever the Democratic nominee is). Why? Because Webb is a popular southern Democrat who can likely deliver Virginia (which is REALLY important if the Democrats lose Ohio) and places North Carolina squarely back in play (in case any of the only 5 people left on Earth who don't know how to use Google are reading this article, Obama barely won NC in 2008 and Romney barely won it in 2012). So left leaning Democrats can call Webb names as much as they like, but when they do, they should be prepared to add "Vice President" to the list.
Webb is particularly important to the Democrats if Secretary Clinton is the nominee as he can pick up at least some support with middle aged, Democratic leaning southern white males (a group that is something of an endangered species at this point, but they're out there and they are "high likelihood" voters, and in a very close state like North Carolina, if enough of them vote for the Democrats, that could change the outcome) ... and this brings us back to the original article about constituencies. As I hope I've demonstrated, the question of whether or not black voters or women voters or "insert demographic group here" voters come out for one candidate or another IN GENERAL is largely irrelevant. For example, if every black voter in Massachusetts stayed home, Clinton (or, again, a used beer can running as a Democrat in that state) would almost certainly still win MA. This is not, of course, to say that black voters are irrelevant. In fact, black voters in Ohio (if they turn out and vote in significant numbers) could VERY easily all but guarantee a Presidential victory for the Democrats. My point is that this election isn't about ANY demographic group overall, it's about a BUNCH of those groups IN (and ONLY in) key battleground states. So the REAL question is whether or not enough historically lower turnout voters (whether that's black voters, women, hispanics, whatever) come out in the very few key battleground states and vote.
So what have we learned today. Well first off, we've learned that, if you live in Ohio, you should either be preparing to move out of the state or at least be canceling your cable subscription and removing your mailbox now ... because you are about to be at "Ground Zero" for the biggest, most expensive and most intrusive political war of our lifetimes. So stock up on dry goods, get those "No Soliciting" signs plastered all over your property, get a Netflix account and know that the rest of us (with no offense) are just happy it's you and not us.
The second thing we've learned is that people (in this case, Democrats on my left) who get all riled up about ideological purity fill me with a mixture of amusement and depression. I am amused because their ignorance (willful or otherwise) of the pragmatic realities of our political processes, especially when combined with the fact that this is a democratic REPUBLIC, which means that EVERYTHING is about COMPROMISE and NOT about getting what you want, causes them to advocate things that will almost guarantee that they will lose more than their "side" would gain if they would simply pursue a more pragmatic solution. And I am depressed because, to be honest, I often find at least some of what they seek to accomplish as laudable and worthwhile, and it's depressing to watch them fail (for themselves and those they advocate for) because they allow their religious devotion to their ideology to interfere with the accomplishing of at least some of their goals ... and the fact that this makes them similar to the people they most despise is just an extra bit of ironic pain to throw on the top.
/End PoliticalRantOfTheWeek
© 2015
So I've been thinking about doing this sort of thing with my blog for some time now, and today is the day. Periodically I see or hear something on the news or on Facebook (or in this case, both) that really gets me going for a few moments, and I have to say something in response. It's not REALLY related to the sorts of things that I write about on my blog, but it needs to be said. To make it easier on my regular readers, I'm going to call these posts "Political Rant Of The Week" (which I will almost certainly eventually shorten to "PROW" ... because I was in the military and we're contractually obligated to abbreviate almost everything for the rest of our lives). It is my intent to make these posts "in addition to" my regular writing, but we'll see how that goes.
So what sent me over the edge this week? The 2016 Election. Now I know that many of you were hoping that we could avoid this topic until, oh say, NEXT YEAR, but obviously the media is having none of that so I'm conceding defeat and hopping in.
The first thing that sent me around the bend was an article about how one particular group of voters (in the case of the article in question, black voters) was likely to be the critical factor in the 2016 Presidential Election. This statement/assertion shows a depressing lack of understanding of how Presidents are elected, so, at the risk of boring the crap out of the rest of you, let me be clear about the ONLY thing, and by that I mean, quite literally THE ONLY THING that is important in a Presidential election.
270.
That's it. There's nothing else. The candidate that gets 270 electoral votes or more wins the Presidency. Period. There are no other measures, NOTHING else matters. Now, with that as "2016 Election Fact #1," let's move on to Fact #2: Pretty much no matter what happens between now and Election Day 2016, the outcome of the Presidential election in MOST of the United States is essentially a foregone conclusion (it's VERY unlikely (statistically) that the outcome isn't already known). To be clear, you could essentially run a used beer can as a Republican or Democrat as your candidate in most states and that beer can would defeat the nominee of the other party. And why? Because the politics of the majority of people in that state are such that they will NOT elect a candidate from the other party in 2016.
Those are the facts, and if you're going to dispute them then you should stop reading right now and go do something else because we already have a zero percent chance of having an intelligent conversation on this topic (because you're out there with climate deniers and people who think Adam and Eve were out riding dinosaurs 6K years ago).
As a result of these facts, we can conclude that, for all intents and purposes, the 2016 Election IS ALREADY OVER in the majority of the United States. It's "turn out the lights the party is over" done. The Democrats are NOT going to win in states like the Dakotas, Idaho, Oklahoma or Alabama, and the Republicans have ZERO chance of winning basically any state in New England or the west coast.
So the path to 270 is already well underway, and when you look at the cold, hard political realities, the fact is that the Democrats already have a significantly easier (though far from guaranteed) path to 270 than the Republicans do. And THAT, is where the facts end. Now, there's nothing wrong with political speculation and opinion (per se, although it's a little troubling that the industry around this field seems to be so heavily populated with idiots), but to me, speculation that doesn't start with the above facts and work outward from them is FAR more likely to quickly veer into the stupid or absurd ... so I'm going to work my way out from what we know and see where that leads us.
The Republicans, by most educated guesses, have NO path to 270 that doesn't include winning the state of Ohio. Now, obviously this is national politics we're talking about, and things do change, but these numbers don't change THAT much and, right now, there's not a single mathematician in the country that I'm aware of that has ANY (realistic) Electoral College map for the Republicans reaching 270 in 2016 that does NOT include the GOP taking the state of Ohio (it's obviously not impossible, just statistically very unlikely as there are far fewer realistic combinations of states). The majority of Republicans these days are many things (and I should quickly add that, for many of the early years of my life, I was one of them and, as a result, I'm particularly critical of the neo-conservative, religious right, theological oligarchs who have, in my opinion, destroyed the party). You could (and I occasionally do) argue that they are short sighted, sold out ideologues who are hell bent on nothing less than the end of our Republic as we know it and replacing it with some sort of twisted, disgusting theological oligarchy. HOWEVER, they ... which is to say their political strategists, are NOT stupid. They are VERY aware that they have basically NO chance of winning back the White House in 2016 without Ohio ... and they, like the rest of us who can look at polling data and add, have known this fact for some time. That's why the GOP convention in 2016 is going to be in Ohio, and that's why the party is (and we switch here from fact to my opinion again) carefully grooming Governor Kasich (a reasonably popular Ohio Republican with massive statewide name recognition) to be the Vice Presidential pick of virtually anyone who becomes the nominee (and, on the topic of the nominee, let me quickly quiet all the "harumphing" going on about Donald Trump ... I'm sorry to disappoint all the paid Trump fans and late night talk show hosts out there, but it isn't going to be Trump ... don't get me wrong, I love what Trump is doing to divide, polarize, disrupt and cost the Republicans money right now, but it can't and won't last).
On the other side of the race, unlike the Republicans, the Democrats CAN win the Presidency without winning Ohio, it's just harder (there are a higher number of possible combinations for the Democrats to reach 270 without Ohio than there are for the Republicans). Like the Republicans, the Democrats are also many things (and you'll hear me use words like disappointing and frustrating a lot here), but they (and by "they" I again mean their high level, intelligent political strategists) are also NOT stupid. They have been staring at the same political maps that their Republican counterparts have been staring at for a long time too, and they know that Ohio is going to be an incredibly expensive and close slugfest, and one which, particularly given its importance to the GOP, they could definitely lose. Since losing Ohio is a legitimate possibility, without conceding that race in any way, it makes a great deal of sense for them to be working hard on a backup plan.
And this is where Jim Webb comes in.
Webb's entrance into the race (and some of the things he's said to separate himself from the left wing of the party) have already caused many in the party to cast aspersions at him. Many are calling him names, saying he's a "DINO," calling for him to drop out, etc. This reaction is, to me, beyond stupid and shows again that many Democrats also lack the kind of pragmatism that is NEEDED in any successful Democratic Republic. For the record, I think that, like Gov Kasich, Senator Webb's entry into the Presidential race is largely symbolic. It's about generating name recognition and putting him in a position to be the Vice Presidential nominee (in fact, I would argue that Webb is already the de facto VP pick for whoever the Democratic nominee is). Why? Because Webb is a popular southern Democrat who can likely deliver Virginia (which is REALLY important if the Democrats lose Ohio) and places North Carolina squarely back in play (in case any of the only 5 people left on Earth who don't know how to use Google are reading this article, Obama barely won NC in 2008 and Romney barely won it in 2012). So left leaning Democrats can call Webb names as much as they like, but when they do, they should be prepared to add "Vice President" to the list.
Webb is particularly important to the Democrats if Secretary Clinton is the nominee as he can pick up at least some support with middle aged, Democratic leaning southern white males (a group that is something of an endangered species at this point, but they're out there and they are "high likelihood" voters, and in a very close state like North Carolina, if enough of them vote for the Democrats, that could change the outcome) ... and this brings us back to the original article about constituencies. As I hope I've demonstrated, the question of whether or not black voters or women voters or "insert demographic group here" voters come out for one candidate or another IN GENERAL is largely irrelevant. For example, if every black voter in Massachusetts stayed home, Clinton (or, again, a used beer can running as a Democrat in that state) would almost certainly still win MA. This is not, of course, to say that black voters are irrelevant. In fact, black voters in Ohio (if they turn out and vote in significant numbers) could VERY easily all but guarantee a Presidential victory for the Democrats. My point is that this election isn't about ANY demographic group overall, it's about a BUNCH of those groups IN (and ONLY in) key battleground states. So the REAL question is whether or not enough historically lower turnout voters (whether that's black voters, women, hispanics, whatever) come out in the very few key battleground states and vote.
So what have we learned today. Well first off, we've learned that, if you live in Ohio, you should either be preparing to move out of the state or at least be canceling your cable subscription and removing your mailbox now ... because you are about to be at "Ground Zero" for the biggest, most expensive and most intrusive political war of our lifetimes. So stock up on dry goods, get those "No Soliciting" signs plastered all over your property, get a Netflix account and know that the rest of us (with no offense) are just happy it's you and not us.
The second thing we've learned is that people (in this case, Democrats on my left) who get all riled up about ideological purity fill me with a mixture of amusement and depression. I am amused because their ignorance (willful or otherwise) of the pragmatic realities of our political processes, especially when combined with the fact that this is a democratic REPUBLIC, which means that EVERYTHING is about COMPROMISE and NOT about getting what you want, causes them to advocate things that will almost guarantee that they will lose more than their "side" would gain if they would simply pursue a more pragmatic solution. And I am depressed because, to be honest, I often find at least some of what they seek to accomplish as laudable and worthwhile, and it's depressing to watch them fail (for themselves and those they advocate for) because they allow their religious devotion to their ideology to interfere with the accomplishing of at least some of their goals ... and the fact that this makes them similar to the people they most despise is just an extra bit of ironic pain to throw on the top.
/End PoliticalRantOfTheWeek
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Lessons at the Half Century Mark
by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
This past was a big week for birthdays in our family. Last Saturday, the United States turned 239. I have no idea what an appropriate gift is for a 239 year old Republic, but the Supreme Court appears to have given it an excellent one in the end of gerrymandered districts. If I could afford it, I’d take away SuperPACs and give it publicly funded elections too … but evidently none of us can afford that (sigh).
Also celebrating a birthday on July 4 was my Mom (so, Happy Birthday Mom). And then on Sunday, July 5, I completed my 50th solar orbit and celebrated birthday number 50. Since this is my 50th birthday, and since I was apparently supposed to have learned some important and valuable lessons by this point in my life (whoops), I understand that it’s appropriate for me to stop here, reflect back, and see if there’s anything I can share that will be of value. So, in no particular order (and with a staggering lack of premeditated forethought), here are some of my random thoughts on life on the occasion of my 50th birthday.
One of the rules that my Mom had for us growing up (one that I really didn’t like at the time but have since come to genuinely appreciate) was that my younger sister and I weren’t allowed to watch TV (other than the rare instructional TV show and the Sunday night routine of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom followed by the Wonderful World of Disney). We were, however, allowed to read as much as we wanted to (and did, voraciously plowing through a fairly ridiculous number of books). This “no TV” rule lasted until I was 10 years old (at age 10 I was allowed to choose a show to watch … I chose the Six Million Dollar Man because … well because Steve Austin is cool that’s why). As a result, I spent the first decade of my life having to make a lot of my own entertainment as opposed to being fed it. Mom was also a big believer in the “get out” method of parenting (as in, “get out of the house and don’t come back until I ring the bell for dinner”). As a result, I had a LOT of time in the backyard and in our neighborhood to run around and entertain myself. There’s no question in my mind that the imagination I have today is a direct result of this rule and the time I spent wandering around and just making stuff up to pass the time.
So here’s one of those totally obvious things about life that most people REALLY don’t pick up on until about age 30; you know that body you were born with? Yeah, well it’s the only one you get, and it has limits. Sadly, I was NOT a child who had respect for my body. My attitude was that it was a tool to be used and abused as needed to accomplish whatever it was I thought I wanted to do. And, to paraphrase the Emperor, I have paid quite the price for my lack of vision. As I noted in my blog some weeks ago (while writing about my business life), you can in fact work yourself nearly to the point of death … at 32. All it takes is overwork, poor diet and punishing workouts and you will be right there on the Operating Room table just like me. Of course, this is not entirely our fault. Most of us are born with bodies that can take a lot of punishment, especially early on. This is because nature has been making young humans for quite a while now and it’s gotten pretty good at making most of them pretty durable. Unfortunately, many of us take that gift from nature and incorrectly learn that it’s OK to punish and abuse our bodies because they will recover (we can simply work out harder to lose that weight or take some extra time off later to recoup and start over). For most of human history, this mistake wasn’t terribly costly because, well, we tended to die before what were doing to ourselves came back to bite us in the butt. But lately (which is to say in just the last couple of centuries, and really in the last 100 years in particular), a funny thing has happened; our bodies have suddenly been called on to last far longer than nature is used to having to keep them around. The good news is that nature made us incredibly adaptable, and given the speed of this change, we’re doing remarkably well. But nature needs your help. If you’re a young person reading this essay, know that there’s an increasing likelihood that you’re going to live to be far older than you may think and the ability your body has to just recover and rebuild itself? Yeah, that slows down … a LOT, and everything you’re doing to it now will make it harder for it later. Plus, there are going to be things you can’t predict. You might end up with Degenerative Disc Disease that’s so bad that you end up needing multiple artificial disc replacement surgery (that would be me again). Fortunately for me and some of you, science is doing an impressive job of helping us out. I have an awful lot of titanium holding my lower spine together these days, and there are many things that, at 50, I’ll never do again, but the fact is that, as a result, I take a walk around my neighborhood every morning and not a wheel around it. Bottom line; science can help, but no one can do more for your health than you.
Along the same lines, as you grow up, try to remember that you only get to be each age once, so try to take advantage of as many opportunities as you can at each stage. I don’t know anyone who was in more of a rush to grow up than I was. Until recently, no matter what age I was, I always wanted to be older, but in my rush to “skip to the end” I missed a few things that I probably shouldn’t have. As I’ve gotten older, I find that I admire friends who did things that seemed totally crazy at the time. One high school friend left a promising career on Wall Street and went into the mountains of South America to teach math to poor children for a few years. Another friend who is a teacher left his job and decided to teach English to prison inmates. And in one of the craziest yet coolest examples, I have another friend who just decided to go to Thailand for a year, and when she got tired of that, signed on to a cargo carrier as a crewman so she could get to Australia. There were a lot of reasons that most of those things wouldn’t have worked for me when I was younger, but if I could be younger now, I have to say, the ideas are a LOT more interesting to me. The bottom line to this point is that getting going right away on money and a career etc. is nice, but you can’t buy certain experiences, so have a few.
Few humans are more of a “creature of habit” than I am. I dig routines. I’m not afraid to experiment, but when I find what I like I tend to stick with it. The problem is things constantly change. That restaurant you love? It won’t be there forever, or if it is, there will come a time when it won’t be the same anymore. When cool stuff happens, when you find that place, that moment, that group of friends, make sure to appreciate it in that moment, because it is in the nature of things that it is temporary. I have a lot of “food” based examples of this lesson. I’ll never forget the dessert cart that American Airlines experimented with on the Chicago to Portland run over a decade ago. Seriously, this was a thing (I have no idea if it was sponsored by the Portland Chamber or something, but what an AWESOME idea). They literally had a cart that they brought down the aisle, and every passenger who wanted one, got a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a little bowl with whatever toppings they wanted (the cart had chocolate, caramel, strawberry). It was a crazy good idea, and as much as I wanted it to, I knew it wouldn’t last, so I tried to enjoy every bite. Life is full of cool moments that won’t happen again. You can be sad about that fact later if you want, but when you’re there, love it.
This one is pretty obvious so I don’t have to say a lot about it. As an adult, I’ve become one of those people who is a gatherer of past friends, and knowing where they are and that they’re OK is important to me. Perhaps the single coolest thing to me about Facebook and other social media is its ability to create a sort of virtual room where all of our friends can be found. It’s a place where they periodically check in and say hi. You know that they’re alive and safe (or having a challenge and need you to reach out to them), you see what they’re up to, what they’re thinking about, every now and then you see a picture, it’s a good thing. But having friends that you can and do talk to and listen to is an incredibly important part of being human. Don’t miss that part.
This is a tough one because you can succeed or fail at marriage without that success or failure necessarily having that much to do with you. I will have known my wife for 32 years next month, and we’re only a few months from our 26th Anniversary. Our marriage has, at this point, “worked.” But why it worked is the thing I want to get at. There’s a saying that “women marry men thinking they’ll change and they don’t, and men marry women thinking they won’t change and they do.” In my observation of people over time, I find that it isn’t so much that we were all lying to each other about who we were (when we got married in our 20s), it’s more that we had no idea (and had no way of knowing) who we were going to be as people decades later. The truth, of course, is that we ALL grow and change over time. And the further truth is that here are, in fact, lots of things you CAN do to help your marriage. One of the best pieces of advice my wife and I ever got came from our interview with the Minister who married us. We both did a bit of an eye roll when he insisted on this meeting (we’d known each other for over 6 years already, had lived together for over 2 years, we kind of figured we had all that worked out and that it was a waste of time), but we were wrong. One of the things the Minister talked about was using “I” messages. For example when you’re upset about something … so you don’t say “you did this,” or “you make me feel terrible when…” but rather, “I feel like this when that happens.” It may seem like a subtle change in semantics, but we’ve found it to be a really helpful tool in getting through difficult conversations. But while there are things you can do (and by the way, if you get married, DO THEM), ultimately, when you get married you really are just making your “best guess” and hoping that the two of you change and grow in ways that are compatible. So make your best guess possible and then hope you grow together.
Have you ever gotten a little cut or something that stings like a sonofabitch and then you look at it and there’s basically no blood and no mark at all. This always depresses me and makes me feel like a wimp for complaining (or just feeling pain). I prefer the accidents where there’s a scar, this way I have a story to tell. But what I really mean by this lesson is that, especially if you’re like me, crazy crap IS going to happen to you. Readers of this blog know that, in the Navy alone, I was nearly killed by helicopters twice, and I ended up being part of a nuclear weapons mishap and a riot in the same 24 hours. None of those experiences seemed particularly fun at the time, but they sure do make great stories now. Basically, the point is that life is often FULL of adventures, and at this point I’ve gotten better at recognizing that today’s disaster stands an excellent chance of becoming tomorrow night’s harrowing, exciting and interesting dinner story.
I kind of assume that everyone has a little voice, and if you don’t, I’m not sure how you’ve made it this far. My little voice has been talking to me since I was a child. I don’t always listen to it, but I’m ALWAYS sorry when I don’t. My little voice told me that I should move to the desert southwest when I left the Navy half a lifetime ago. I didn’t listen (until two years ago, which was long after I nearly died from exposure to stacchybotrys and subsequently discovered that the desert is where my body is healthiest and happiest). My little voice told me to get out of the stock market in October of 2007. I didn’t listen. That little voice inside you, the one that knows whether you should or shouldn’t say or do something … it’s almost always right, and NOT listening to it can even cost you your life. When I was 15, I was walking to school on a snowy day and, being the rather careless idiot that teenagers often are, I was amusing myself (as I walked under the Winnetka Ave. train underpass) by walking with my right foot on the sidewalk and my left foot in the road. As I got to the far side of the underpass my little voice shouted at me “STEP UP!” It was so forceful that I did so. About one second later a skidding station wagon came up from behind me and hit the curb at about 25 mph. The car came so close to me that one of the rivets (that had held the missing detailing on the side of the station wagon’s doors) actually grabbed and tore a whole in the left leg of my jeans. The force of the interaction also spun me and threw me into a snowdrift immediately in front of me. My friend who was walking with me to school that day (E.B. Dangerfield) was a few steps behind me and saw the whole thing (I, obviously, didn’t) and was amazed I wasn’t killed. Not all of the things the little voice tells us to do are so life and death of course. Many times the little voice is just your “gut instinct.” Well, my advice is to go with it. In my experience, your instinct about the right thing to do is going to be right a LOT more often than any other input you have. This is especially true when you’re contemplating a big decision and seeking advice and input from others. Most of the time, you already have an idea about what you should do, but you’re not sure, so you seek out “experts” and others to either confirm or deny what you think. If you truly have no idea what to do, that’s fine, but most of the time, somewhere in that process, your little voice will start talking to you. When it does, LISTEN TO IT.
If you’re like me, you punish yourself for your mistakes. You relive them a ridiculous number of times and wish more than anything for a time machine so you can undo them. I am still learning that this effort is a complete waste of time, but at this point in life, even if I haven’t quite learned to stop beating myself up entirely, I at least intellectually understand the futility and stupidity of doing so. You WILL make mistakes. Some of them will be BIG ones. If you’re like me, some of them may render you permanently disabled in some way. Others may cost you a literal fortune. They’re valuable lessons (provided you don’t repeat them) and I’m saying you should forget them, but even if you think they’re your “fault,” try to let them go and let yourself up (see lesson 7 above).
This is another HARD one that I’m still working on, but as you hit my age and mortality starts to become more real and you start to realize that “this is it,” the importance of NOT waiting for some later time to enjoy your life starts to really hit you. It’s a good thing to have a bucket list, but it should be a “living document” that changes, and it changes because you’re occasionally knocking stuff off of it. I don’t want you to blow your entire savings account tomorrow or to be completely irresponsible, but don’t wait for “someday” … because someday is TODAY.
©2015
This past was a big week for birthdays in our family. Last Saturday, the United States turned 239. I have no idea what an appropriate gift is for a 239 year old Republic, but the Supreme Court appears to have given it an excellent one in the end of gerrymandered districts. If I could afford it, I’d take away SuperPACs and give it publicly funded elections too … but evidently none of us can afford that (sigh).
Also celebrating a birthday on July 4 was my Mom (so, Happy Birthday Mom). And then on Sunday, July 5, I completed my 50th solar orbit and celebrated birthday number 50. Since this is my 50th birthday, and since I was apparently supposed to have learned some important and valuable lessons by this point in my life (whoops), I understand that it’s appropriate for me to stop here, reflect back, and see if there’s anything I can share that will be of value. So, in no particular order (and with a staggering lack of premeditated forethought), here are some of my random thoughts on life on the occasion of my 50th birthday.
1. Develop and Use Your Imagination
One of the rules that my Mom had for us growing up (one that I really didn’t like at the time but have since come to genuinely appreciate) was that my younger sister and I weren’t allowed to watch TV (other than the rare instructional TV show and the Sunday night routine of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom followed by the Wonderful World of Disney). We were, however, allowed to read as much as we wanted to (and did, voraciously plowing through a fairly ridiculous number of books). This “no TV” rule lasted until I was 10 years old (at age 10 I was allowed to choose a show to watch … I chose the Six Million Dollar Man because … well because Steve Austin is cool that’s why). As a result, I spent the first decade of my life having to make a lot of my own entertainment as opposed to being fed it. Mom was also a big believer in the “get out” method of parenting (as in, “get out of the house and don’t come back until I ring the bell for dinner”). As a result, I had a LOT of time in the backyard and in our neighborhood to run around and entertain myself. There’s no question in my mind that the imagination I have today is a direct result of this rule and the time I spent wandering around and just making stuff up to pass the time.
2. Take Care of Yourself
So here’s one of those totally obvious things about life that most people REALLY don’t pick up on until about age 30; you know that body you were born with? Yeah, well it’s the only one you get, and it has limits. Sadly, I was NOT a child who had respect for my body. My attitude was that it was a tool to be used and abused as needed to accomplish whatever it was I thought I wanted to do. And, to paraphrase the Emperor, I have paid quite the price for my lack of vision. As I noted in my blog some weeks ago (while writing about my business life), you can in fact work yourself nearly to the point of death … at 32. All it takes is overwork, poor diet and punishing workouts and you will be right there on the Operating Room table just like me. Of course, this is not entirely our fault. Most of us are born with bodies that can take a lot of punishment, especially early on. This is because nature has been making young humans for quite a while now and it’s gotten pretty good at making most of them pretty durable. Unfortunately, many of us take that gift from nature and incorrectly learn that it’s OK to punish and abuse our bodies because they will recover (we can simply work out harder to lose that weight or take some extra time off later to recoup and start over). For most of human history, this mistake wasn’t terribly costly because, well, we tended to die before what were doing to ourselves came back to bite us in the butt. But lately (which is to say in just the last couple of centuries, and really in the last 100 years in particular), a funny thing has happened; our bodies have suddenly been called on to last far longer than nature is used to having to keep them around. The good news is that nature made us incredibly adaptable, and given the speed of this change, we’re doing remarkably well. But nature needs your help. If you’re a young person reading this essay, know that there’s an increasing likelihood that you’re going to live to be far older than you may think and the ability your body has to just recover and rebuild itself? Yeah, that slows down … a LOT, and everything you’re doing to it now will make it harder for it later. Plus, there are going to be things you can’t predict. You might end up with Degenerative Disc Disease that’s so bad that you end up needing multiple artificial disc replacement surgery (that would be me again). Fortunately for me and some of you, science is doing an impressive job of helping us out. I have an awful lot of titanium holding my lower spine together these days, and there are many things that, at 50, I’ll never do again, but the fact is that, as a result, I take a walk around my neighborhood every morning and not a wheel around it. Bottom line; science can help, but no one can do more for your health than you.
3. DON’T Be In A Hurry
Along the same lines, as you grow up, try to remember that you only get to be each age once, so try to take advantage of as many opportunities as you can at each stage. I don’t know anyone who was in more of a rush to grow up than I was. Until recently, no matter what age I was, I always wanted to be older, but in my rush to “skip to the end” I missed a few things that I probably shouldn’t have. As I’ve gotten older, I find that I admire friends who did things that seemed totally crazy at the time. One high school friend left a promising career on Wall Street and went into the mountains of South America to teach math to poor children for a few years. Another friend who is a teacher left his job and decided to teach English to prison inmates. And in one of the craziest yet coolest examples, I have another friend who just decided to go to Thailand for a year, and when she got tired of that, signed on to a cargo carrier as a crewman so she could get to Australia. There were a lot of reasons that most of those things wouldn’t have worked for me when I was younger, but if I could be younger now, I have to say, the ideas are a LOT more interesting to me. The bottom line to this point is that getting going right away on money and a career etc. is nice, but you can’t buy certain experiences, so have a few.
4. NOTHING Lasts Forever, So Enjoy It When You Have It
Few humans are more of a “creature of habit” than I am. I dig routines. I’m not afraid to experiment, but when I find what I like I tend to stick with it. The problem is things constantly change. That restaurant you love? It won’t be there forever, or if it is, there will come a time when it won’t be the same anymore. When cool stuff happens, when you find that place, that moment, that group of friends, make sure to appreciate it in that moment, because it is in the nature of things that it is temporary. I have a lot of “food” based examples of this lesson. I’ll never forget the dessert cart that American Airlines experimented with on the Chicago to Portland run over a decade ago. Seriously, this was a thing (I have no idea if it was sponsored by the Portland Chamber or something, but what an AWESOME idea). They literally had a cart that they brought down the aisle, and every passenger who wanted one, got a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a little bowl with whatever toppings they wanted (the cart had chocolate, caramel, strawberry). It was a crazy good idea, and as much as I wanted it to, I knew it wouldn’t last, so I tried to enjoy every bite. Life is full of cool moments that won’t happen again. You can be sad about that fact later if you want, but when you’re there, love it.
5. Friends Are Important
This one is pretty obvious so I don’t have to say a lot about it. As an adult, I’ve become one of those people who is a gatherer of past friends, and knowing where they are and that they’re OK is important to me. Perhaps the single coolest thing to me about Facebook and other social media is its ability to create a sort of virtual room where all of our friends can be found. It’s a place where they periodically check in and say hi. You know that they’re alive and safe (or having a challenge and need you to reach out to them), you see what they’re up to, what they’re thinking about, every now and then you see a picture, it’s a good thing. But having friends that you can and do talk to and listen to is an incredibly important part of being human. Don’t miss that part.
6. Marry Well
This is a tough one because you can succeed or fail at marriage without that success or failure necessarily having that much to do with you. I will have known my wife for 32 years next month, and we’re only a few months from our 26th Anniversary. Our marriage has, at this point, “worked.” But why it worked is the thing I want to get at. There’s a saying that “women marry men thinking they’ll change and they don’t, and men marry women thinking they won’t change and they do.” In my observation of people over time, I find that it isn’t so much that we were all lying to each other about who we were (when we got married in our 20s), it’s more that we had no idea (and had no way of knowing) who we were going to be as people decades later. The truth, of course, is that we ALL grow and change over time. And the further truth is that here are, in fact, lots of things you CAN do to help your marriage. One of the best pieces of advice my wife and I ever got came from our interview with the Minister who married us. We both did a bit of an eye roll when he insisted on this meeting (we’d known each other for over 6 years already, had lived together for over 2 years, we kind of figured we had all that worked out and that it was a waste of time), but we were wrong. One of the things the Minister talked about was using “I” messages. For example when you’re upset about something … so you don’t say “you did this,” or “you make me feel terrible when…” but rather, “I feel like this when that happens.” It may seem like a subtle change in semantics, but we’ve found it to be a really helpful tool in getting through difficult conversations. But while there are things you can do (and by the way, if you get married, DO THEM), ultimately, when you get married you really are just making your “best guess” and hoping that the two of you change and grow in ways that are compatible. So make your best guess possible and then hope you grow together.
7. If it doesn’t kill you, it’s going to make a great story, (and either way, make sure it leaves a mark)
Have you ever gotten a little cut or something that stings like a sonofabitch and then you look at it and there’s basically no blood and no mark at all. This always depresses me and makes me feel like a wimp for complaining (or just feeling pain). I prefer the accidents where there’s a scar, this way I have a story to tell. But what I really mean by this lesson is that, especially if you’re like me, crazy crap IS going to happen to you. Readers of this blog know that, in the Navy alone, I was nearly killed by helicopters twice, and I ended up being part of a nuclear weapons mishap and a riot in the same 24 hours. None of those experiences seemed particularly fun at the time, but they sure do make great stories now. Basically, the point is that life is often FULL of adventures, and at this point I’ve gotten better at recognizing that today’s disaster stands an excellent chance of becoming tomorrow night’s harrowing, exciting and interesting dinner story.
8. ALWAYS Listen to your “little voice” (especially when it runs counter to “advice”)
I kind of assume that everyone has a little voice, and if you don’t, I’m not sure how you’ve made it this far. My little voice has been talking to me since I was a child. I don’t always listen to it, but I’m ALWAYS sorry when I don’t. My little voice told me that I should move to the desert southwest when I left the Navy half a lifetime ago. I didn’t listen (until two years ago, which was long after I nearly died from exposure to stacchybotrys and subsequently discovered that the desert is where my body is healthiest and happiest). My little voice told me to get out of the stock market in October of 2007. I didn’t listen. That little voice inside you, the one that knows whether you should or shouldn’t say or do something … it’s almost always right, and NOT listening to it can even cost you your life. When I was 15, I was walking to school on a snowy day and, being the rather careless idiot that teenagers often are, I was amusing myself (as I walked under the Winnetka Ave. train underpass) by walking with my right foot on the sidewalk and my left foot in the road. As I got to the far side of the underpass my little voice shouted at me “STEP UP!” It was so forceful that I did so. About one second later a skidding station wagon came up from behind me and hit the curb at about 25 mph. The car came so close to me that one of the rivets (that had held the missing detailing on the side of the station wagon’s doors) actually grabbed and tore a whole in the left leg of my jeans. The force of the interaction also spun me and threw me into a snowdrift immediately in front of me. My friend who was walking with me to school that day (E.B. Dangerfield) was a few steps behind me and saw the whole thing (I, obviously, didn’t) and was amazed I wasn’t killed. Not all of the things the little voice tells us to do are so life and death of course. Many times the little voice is just your “gut instinct.” Well, my advice is to go with it. In my experience, your instinct about the right thing to do is going to be right a LOT more often than any other input you have. This is especially true when you’re contemplating a big decision and seeking advice and input from others. Most of the time, you already have an idea about what you should do, but you’re not sure, so you seek out “experts” and others to either confirm or deny what you think. If you truly have no idea what to do, that’s fine, but most of the time, somewhere in that process, your little voice will start talking to you. When it does, LISTEN TO IT.
9. Let Yourself Off The Hook
If you’re like me, you punish yourself for your mistakes. You relive them a ridiculous number of times and wish more than anything for a time machine so you can undo them. I am still learning that this effort is a complete waste of time, but at this point in life, even if I haven’t quite learned to stop beating myself up entirely, I at least intellectually understand the futility and stupidity of doing so. You WILL make mistakes. Some of them will be BIG ones. If you’re like me, some of them may render you permanently disabled in some way. Others may cost you a literal fortune. They’re valuable lessons (provided you don’t repeat them) and I’m saying you should forget them, but even if you think they’re your “fault,” try to let them go and let yourself up (see lesson 7 above).
10. Enjoy it
This is another HARD one that I’m still working on, but as you hit my age and mortality starts to become more real and you start to realize that “this is it,” the importance of NOT waiting for some later time to enjoy your life starts to really hit you. It’s a good thing to have a bucket list, but it should be a “living document” that changes, and it changes because you’re occasionally knocking stuff off of it. I don’t want you to blow your entire savings account tomorrow or to be completely irresponsible, but don’t wait for “someday” … because someday is TODAY.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Oh Dear God, Not ANOTHER Article About SCOTUS and Marriage Equality
by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
If you haven't yet heard about the Supreme Court's decision last week which legalized same sex marriage in all 50 states, then I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you back to our solar system ... because you have clearly been in another part of the galaxy for the last several days.
I've been reticent to weigh in on this issue, not because I don't want you to know how I feel, but because I'm reasonably certain that just about every perspective possible has been blasted out across the Internet already. Nonetheless, I am adhering to my "Facebook Rule" this week. My Facebook Rule is as follows: if I post a comment on some topic on my personal Facebook page and I don't think it's any big deal but I get a bunch of likes and comments and shares, then clearly I am wrong about the importance and relevance of the topic and people do want to hear more.
Before I give you my reaction to the decision, let me explain the perspectives that I'm coming from. First, I was twice a candidate for national office. As a result, I had to articulate a position on the issue (a position that, incidentally, managed to please no one, so I'll be sure to cover that again for you in a moment because, apparently, I'm short on my quota of people I need to piss off today). Second, while I am currently more of a spiritual explorer who has taken an increasing interest in Buddhism recently, the fact is that I spent several years of my life as a lay minister in a Christian denomination (I personally delivered two sermons/week for over 5 years) ... this is why Jesus and I remain close friends (please see my blog essay from last Christmas for confirmation). Third, while less unique, I do have several friends and at least one relative (that I know of) who are gay, and one (the family member) lives in what is technically the south and was thus directly affected by this decision. The point here is that I have political, religious and personal feelings about this decision, which I admit puts me in a category that is roughly as exclusive as the white pages (for my younger readers, the white pages refers to ... you know what, it just means everyone).
So let's start with my political reaction. When I last ran for Congress (2006), I had what I thought was a very careful and well thought out position on marriage equality ... so it shouldn't be any real surprise to anyone that no one liked it and almost no one understood it ... but I'll try again. I've actually LONG been of the opinion that government shouldn't have ever been in the marriage business in the first place. My feeling is that marriage was and is, basically, a religious institution. As such, the state really shouldn't be involved. Ideally, I believe our Republic should have an "iron curtain" like "Wall of Separation" between church and state. In other words, we should have as secular a society as possible, and in such a society an institution like marriage would clearly be entirely separate from the state. But with that said, I would also quickly agree that the state does have a compelling interest in both the existence, health and maintenance of family units, and in having a legal framework which allows for quick, efficient, easy and humane estate and asset management ... aka an infrastructure for civil unions.
HOWEVER! The majority of the people in our Republic have LONG since decided NOT to go with my "ideal" plan above (i.e. we don't have a long standing, well developed and well defined "civil union" infrastructure, other than marriage). We have instead decided that the term marriage is to be used to represent both the religious institution and the civil union legal infrastructure. So my bottom line is this: I support marriage equality. Here's why: in addition to being a religious institution, marriage was, is and will continue to also be the de facto civil union infrastructure in our society (the important point being that the term marriage in our society has two components and it serves both purposes). And this is truly the heart of the disconnect I have with some of my conservative friends: the Supreme Court's decision last week had nothing to do with any religious part of marriage. Instead it had everything to do with establishing the equal rights of same sex couples with respect to the law, and I believe that, on that basis, the Court made the right decision.
It is at this point that a significant number of my conservative friends start taking their long walk off a short pier and end up in the biggest, most ridiculous and frankly most hyperbolic tizzy I've seen since the Court told them that they had to start sharing drinking fountains. They are upset because they apparently don't (or perhaps more accurately don't want to) see and accept the dual role that the term marriage plays in our society. As a result, they choose to see the Court's decision as an attack on the religious definition of marriage, when in fact the Court was merely establishing that the legal part of marriage should treat same sex couples in the same way as it treats opposite sex couples. I think this misinterpretation of the decision (intentional or otherwise) is kind of ridiculous, but I think lots of things are ridiculous, and it's still a (mostly) free country where people are absolutely free to think (and even say) ridiculous things.
Now, you might stop me right there and say, "Duane, you're accepting of the fact that certain people in certain religions may oppose same sex marriage." You're right, I am. "But," you continue, "they're discriminating and that's wrong." Absolutely, you're correct again. Look, I agree that people who run around decrying homosexuality as evil and a sin, and talk about how marriage equality is a sign of the apocalypse etc. etc. are all, well, they're at best ignorant and intolerant (and at worst bigoted and mean) and that they're just plain wrong, but this is America, and one of our freedoms is the freedom to be idiots (it's one I wish we exercised a lot less, but I swore to support and defend everyone's rights to think what they want, not just the people I agree with).
Unfortunately for me, in just these last few days since the decision, my basic philosophy about how marriage and civil unions would ideally be handled has been co-opted by America's neo-conservative far right. This obviously frustrated me because, until the hours immediately following the Supreme Court's decision last week, NO ONE was talking about having separate institutions for the religious and legal sides of marriage except for weirdos like me ... and the ones who are suddenly talking about it now are overwhelmingly people whose motives I distrust. These people, who are suddenly rushing to support what would otherwise be an acceptable idea to me, are clearly doing so exclusively because they're looking for any hustle or dodge which will allow them to get around doing something they don't want to do (which is to accept the equal status of same sex couples). Until last week, the overwhelming majority of people (including the overwhelming majority of conservatives) were completely fine with the dual roles that we had assigned marriage in our society. And that was OK with me. It's not what I think is ideal (again, I prefer a more secular society and clearer separation) but it's really NOT THAT BIG of a deal. I don't have a problem with society's decision to have essentially morphed the definition of the word marriage to include both religious and civil institutions .. and again, conservatives didn't either, until the SCOTUS decision ... and THAT, is why it's hard to take them seriously now (because it's obvious that they didn't mind the dual use of the term until one side of it included rules they don't like).
So politically, I support the Supreme Court's decision because it protects and expands the rights of people to participate in the legal institution that we've chosen to call marriage.
Now, as a religious person, I REALLY don't understand the "freak out" from those who are obviously using religion in general (and Christianity in particular) as the basis for their objection. For those who don't know me, I am often a critic of a group I call "CINOs" (Christians In Name Only). These are individuals who, in my opinion, basically bastardize the words and works of Jesus Christ. They pervert them into positions that have nothing to do with what Jesus came to say and do for humanity. They are not only not Christians, they are accomplishing the opposite of what Christ stood for. They sell, espouse and spew hatred, intolerance, bigotry and everything else that is the antithesis of what I believe it is to be a Christian. But what really scares me about these people is their insistence on attempting to legislate their (in my opinion) deeply skewed view of morality and to impose it on everyone else. To me that is antithetical to what Jesus wanted AND what the framers of the Constitution intended for our Republic.
And boy are the CINOs out in force now! But rather than focus on the negatives of what these people are talking about, let me instead point to what I feel is the Christian way to view the decision.
First, let me hit on the incredibly obvious: Christianity is in NO way "under attack" by virtue of the Court's decision. For the Supreme Court's decision to be an attack on Christianity, the Court would have to have intended or taken a direct action which prevented people from being Christians. Now again, I consider myself, at best, to have been a CIT or "Christian In Training" (because, I gotta be honest, Jesus and I talk all the time, and there are definitely times when he's telling me to do stuff that I have a hard time with) ... but to me, the single most important thing that Christians are supposed to do is to love one another. I'm pretty sure that Jesus was very specific on this point: loving each other was the number one thing that he felt would define people as Christians. So here's the thing: NOTHING in the Supreme Court's decision says or does anything which prevents anyone from loving anyone else.
Jesus was also big on kindness, understanding and forgiveness. In re-reading Justice Stevens' opinion, I find nothing in there that keeps me from doing any of that. Jesus also encouraged us to feed the hungry, clothe the poor and heal the sick. Checking the decision again ... nope, nothing in there that prevents me from doing any of that. Perhaps it's an attack on my ability to go to church. Well, if it is, then enforcement so far is really lax (of course, I do live in Arizona now so ....).
So nothing about this decision prevents me from being a Christian and it doesn't appear to be an attack on Christianity in any way. What it does do, however, is make me look more closely at how I view the religious institution of marriage, and when I do, I see only the opportunity to increase the number of people who are taking part in an institution that we hope is a benefit to families and society. To me the decision is inclusive and loving and ... well, kind of Christian really.
Personally, I'm an egalitarian by nature. In fact, egalitarianism, the idea that humans should have equality in social, political and economic affairs, is definitely one of the most fundamental of my core beliefs. Basically, it's a sense of fairness, and this decision seems fair and right to me. I also believe that our Court system, and in fact our Republic as a whole, does its best work when it is expansive and inclusive in its application of rights and benefits to all of its citizens. It also seems morally right to me. It establishes that it is wrong to stigmatize (and even criminalize) people based on who they want to share their lives with. Further it encourages us to be more loving and inclusive of all people. So I suppose you could argue that I personally support it because the political and religious parts of me support it, but I see it as the right thing from all three perspectives.
Finally, as I indicated, I have a number of gay friends. One of them is a member of a family that has been close to my family for generations. She and her partner have two children. Another is a high school classmate of mine. He and his partner have a daughter. And there are a number of others with no children. Additionally, I have a close family member who is gay (and engaged). As I have seen their reactions to this decision (and the reactions of other friends and members of their community), I see only good and normal people who want nothing more than what all families want, and I am grateful and happy to see them get it.
©2015
If you haven't yet heard about the Supreme Court's decision last week which legalized same sex marriage in all 50 states, then I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you back to our solar system ... because you have clearly been in another part of the galaxy for the last several days.
I've been reticent to weigh in on this issue, not because I don't want you to know how I feel, but because I'm reasonably certain that just about every perspective possible has been blasted out across the Internet already. Nonetheless, I am adhering to my "Facebook Rule" this week. My Facebook Rule is as follows: if I post a comment on some topic on my personal Facebook page and I don't think it's any big deal but I get a bunch of likes and comments and shares, then clearly I am wrong about the importance and relevance of the topic and people do want to hear more.
Before I give you my reaction to the decision, let me explain the perspectives that I'm coming from. First, I was twice a candidate for national office. As a result, I had to articulate a position on the issue (a position that, incidentally, managed to please no one, so I'll be sure to cover that again for you in a moment because, apparently, I'm short on my quota of people I need to piss off today). Second, while I am currently more of a spiritual explorer who has taken an increasing interest in Buddhism recently, the fact is that I spent several years of my life as a lay minister in a Christian denomination (I personally delivered two sermons/week for over 5 years) ... this is why Jesus and I remain close friends (please see my blog essay from last Christmas for confirmation). Third, while less unique, I do have several friends and at least one relative (that I know of) who are gay, and one (the family member) lives in what is technically the south and was thus directly affected by this decision. The point here is that I have political, religious and personal feelings about this decision, which I admit puts me in a category that is roughly as exclusive as the white pages (for my younger readers, the white pages refers to ... you know what, it just means everyone).
So let's start with my political reaction. When I last ran for Congress (2006), I had what I thought was a very careful and well thought out position on marriage equality ... so it shouldn't be any real surprise to anyone that no one liked it and almost no one understood it ... but I'll try again. I've actually LONG been of the opinion that government shouldn't have ever been in the marriage business in the first place. My feeling is that marriage was and is, basically, a religious institution. As such, the state really shouldn't be involved. Ideally, I believe our Republic should have an "iron curtain" like "Wall of Separation" between church and state. In other words, we should have as secular a society as possible, and in such a society an institution like marriage would clearly be entirely separate from the state. But with that said, I would also quickly agree that the state does have a compelling interest in both the existence, health and maintenance of family units, and in having a legal framework which allows for quick, efficient, easy and humane estate and asset management ... aka an infrastructure for civil unions.
HOWEVER! The majority of the people in our Republic have LONG since decided NOT to go with my "ideal" plan above (i.e. we don't have a long standing, well developed and well defined "civil union" infrastructure, other than marriage). We have instead decided that the term marriage is to be used to represent both the religious institution and the civil union legal infrastructure. So my bottom line is this: I support marriage equality. Here's why: in addition to being a religious institution, marriage was, is and will continue to also be the de facto civil union infrastructure in our society (the important point being that the term marriage in our society has two components and it serves both purposes). And this is truly the heart of the disconnect I have with some of my conservative friends: the Supreme Court's decision last week had nothing to do with any religious part of marriage. Instead it had everything to do with establishing the equal rights of same sex couples with respect to the law, and I believe that, on that basis, the Court made the right decision.
It is at this point that a significant number of my conservative friends start taking their long walk off a short pier and end up in the biggest, most ridiculous and frankly most hyperbolic tizzy I've seen since the Court told them that they had to start sharing drinking fountains. They are upset because they apparently don't (or perhaps more accurately don't want to) see and accept the dual role that the term marriage plays in our society. As a result, they choose to see the Court's decision as an attack on the religious definition of marriage, when in fact the Court was merely establishing that the legal part of marriage should treat same sex couples in the same way as it treats opposite sex couples. I think this misinterpretation of the decision (intentional or otherwise) is kind of ridiculous, but I think lots of things are ridiculous, and it's still a (mostly) free country where people are absolutely free to think (and even say) ridiculous things.
Now, you might stop me right there and say, "Duane, you're accepting of the fact that certain people in certain religions may oppose same sex marriage." You're right, I am. "But," you continue, "they're discriminating and that's wrong." Absolutely, you're correct again. Look, I agree that people who run around decrying homosexuality as evil and a sin, and talk about how marriage equality is a sign of the apocalypse etc. etc. are all, well, they're at best ignorant and intolerant (and at worst bigoted and mean) and that they're just plain wrong, but this is America, and one of our freedoms is the freedom to be idiots (it's one I wish we exercised a lot less, but I swore to support and defend everyone's rights to think what they want, not just the people I agree with).
Unfortunately for me, in just these last few days since the decision, my basic philosophy about how marriage and civil unions would ideally be handled has been co-opted by America's neo-conservative far right. This obviously frustrated me because, until the hours immediately following the Supreme Court's decision last week, NO ONE was talking about having separate institutions for the religious and legal sides of marriage except for weirdos like me ... and the ones who are suddenly talking about it now are overwhelmingly people whose motives I distrust. These people, who are suddenly rushing to support what would otherwise be an acceptable idea to me, are clearly doing so exclusively because they're looking for any hustle or dodge which will allow them to get around doing something they don't want to do (which is to accept the equal status of same sex couples). Until last week, the overwhelming majority of people (including the overwhelming majority of conservatives) were completely fine with the dual roles that we had assigned marriage in our society. And that was OK with me. It's not what I think is ideal (again, I prefer a more secular society and clearer separation) but it's really NOT THAT BIG of a deal. I don't have a problem with society's decision to have essentially morphed the definition of the word marriage to include both religious and civil institutions .. and again, conservatives didn't either, until the SCOTUS decision ... and THAT, is why it's hard to take them seriously now (because it's obvious that they didn't mind the dual use of the term until one side of it included rules they don't like).
So politically, I support the Supreme Court's decision because it protects and expands the rights of people to participate in the legal institution that we've chosen to call marriage.
Now, as a religious person, I REALLY don't understand the "freak out" from those who are obviously using religion in general (and Christianity in particular) as the basis for their objection. For those who don't know me, I am often a critic of a group I call "CINOs" (Christians In Name Only). These are individuals who, in my opinion, basically bastardize the words and works of Jesus Christ. They pervert them into positions that have nothing to do with what Jesus came to say and do for humanity. They are not only not Christians, they are accomplishing the opposite of what Christ stood for. They sell, espouse and spew hatred, intolerance, bigotry and everything else that is the antithesis of what I believe it is to be a Christian. But what really scares me about these people is their insistence on attempting to legislate their (in my opinion) deeply skewed view of morality and to impose it on everyone else. To me that is antithetical to what Jesus wanted AND what the framers of the Constitution intended for our Republic.
And boy are the CINOs out in force now! But rather than focus on the negatives of what these people are talking about, let me instead point to what I feel is the Christian way to view the decision.
First, let me hit on the incredibly obvious: Christianity is in NO way "under attack" by virtue of the Court's decision. For the Supreme Court's decision to be an attack on Christianity, the Court would have to have intended or taken a direct action which prevented people from being Christians. Now again, I consider myself, at best, to have been a CIT or "Christian In Training" (because, I gotta be honest, Jesus and I talk all the time, and there are definitely times when he's telling me to do stuff that I have a hard time with) ... but to me, the single most important thing that Christians are supposed to do is to love one another. I'm pretty sure that Jesus was very specific on this point: loving each other was the number one thing that he felt would define people as Christians. So here's the thing: NOTHING in the Supreme Court's decision says or does anything which prevents anyone from loving anyone else.
Jesus was also big on kindness, understanding and forgiveness. In re-reading Justice Stevens' opinion, I find nothing in there that keeps me from doing any of that. Jesus also encouraged us to feed the hungry, clothe the poor and heal the sick. Checking the decision again ... nope, nothing in there that prevents me from doing any of that. Perhaps it's an attack on my ability to go to church. Well, if it is, then enforcement so far is really lax (of course, I do live in Arizona now so ....).
So nothing about this decision prevents me from being a Christian and it doesn't appear to be an attack on Christianity in any way. What it does do, however, is make me look more closely at how I view the religious institution of marriage, and when I do, I see only the opportunity to increase the number of people who are taking part in an institution that we hope is a benefit to families and society. To me the decision is inclusive and loving and ... well, kind of Christian really.
Personally, I'm an egalitarian by nature. In fact, egalitarianism, the idea that humans should have equality in social, political and economic affairs, is definitely one of the most fundamental of my core beliefs. Basically, it's a sense of fairness, and this decision seems fair and right to me. I also believe that our Court system, and in fact our Republic as a whole, does its best work when it is expansive and inclusive in its application of rights and benefits to all of its citizens. It also seems morally right to me. It establishes that it is wrong to stigmatize (and even criminalize) people based on who they want to share their lives with. Further it encourages us to be more loving and inclusive of all people. So I suppose you could argue that I personally support it because the political and religious parts of me support it, but I see it as the right thing from all three perspectives.
Finally, as I indicated, I have a number of gay friends. One of them is a member of a family that has been close to my family for generations. She and her partner have two children. Another is a high school classmate of mine. He and his partner have a daughter. And there are a number of others with no children. Additionally, I have a close family member who is gay (and engaged). As I have seen their reactions to this decision (and the reactions of other friends and members of their community), I see only good and normal people who want nothing more than what all families want, and I am grateful and happy to see them get it.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Why I Haven't Written About Politics (My Life As A Radical Moderate)
© 2015
by Duane N. Burghard
I am very proud of the fact that there are now thousands of people who read my blog. Most of them don't know me personally. At best they've read my little bio on my blog page or maybe they've gotten really motivated and actually Googled me (this act would allow them to read about me on Wikipedia or see one of several campaign videos that are still floating around from my last Congressional campaign in 2006). So for most of my readers, the question "Why Don't I Write About Politics?" isn't one they normally ask. But among my friends who know me and read my blog, it's a very common question. Fortunately for them (and you), I don't have anything else to write about this week, so I'll tackle it for you.
For the record, I do have very specific and (I hope) well thought out political positions on a wide variety of social and political issues. For those who know that I have twice run for the U.S.House of Representatives (twice nominated, zero times elected), that's pretty easy to understand and believe. But when I decided to become a writer last year (OK, let's back that up a bit, when my wife got tired of me not writing all the stuff I had in my head and essentially badgered me into taking myself seriously as a writer and to begin writing as a profession) I specifically decided to avoid writing about politics, and for one key reason; our society is now so incredibly divided along ideological lines that it has become basically impossible to write about any political or social issue without alienating or irritating 50% of the people reading it. That's a real shame, because it didn't used to be like that and it doesn't have to be now.
There are many examples in American political history of people with widely divergent political views still managing to maintain close personal relationships. And it is still possible to do so. I am quite proud of the fact that I have many friends who are both more conservative and more liberal than I am ... but it's absolutely NOT the norm anymore. I have some ideas about why that is (the polarization of American society is based on the desire to separate and divide us, which then makes us easier to divide and conquer), but many people have become so completely attached to their "side" that the moment they read or hear something that sounds like it's critical of their "side" the shields go up and that person and whatever they're saying are immediately dismissed as nothing more than the rhetorical nonsense of "the other guys." And that's a lot more than "too bad." A Republican Democracy (like the United States) requires compromise in order to function correctly. The "best" solutions in our government are the ones that no one is entirely happy with. Nobody gets the solution they want, but everyone gets something they can live with. When we see ourselves as one nation, that becomes a lot easier to accept, but when we're constantly bombarded with "we" and "they" ... when ALL the inputs we're exposed to seek to accentuate the things we don't have in common instead of the things we do (and worse, when we're conditioned to believe that these differences are dramatic, Earth shattering, cataclysmic differences that require us to scream red faced into the face of whoever disagrees), then it becomes impossible to see compromise as a victory.
I have often described myself as a "radical moderate." I genuinely enjoy the fact that my conservative friends think I'm a bit too liberal and my liberal friends think I'm a bit too conservative. I tend to be a social liberal (pro-choice, in favor of marriage equality etc.) and an economic conservative (I do support getting rid of the Bush tax cuts (which all true fiscal conservatives should BTW), but I also think the Fed's policy of QE was necessary in 2009 and 2010, but it's now gone on way too long and that it's causing more problems than it's solving).
Now stop.
How many decisions about me did you just make? Sadly, the closet sociologist in me knows that a bunch of people just tuned out of my writing forever (or at best they will see it forever more through a preconceived lens), and that's too bad. As a writer, I do have something to say about politics and society and I would like to calmly and rationally discuss those issues with both the people I agree with and the people I disagree with. And I'm going to start doing it. I am persuaded by my friends who have argued that my not speaking up about things that I think are very important to us as a society isn't right either. I hope that the people who disagree with me will stick around, and for this reason; I want to be correct when I espouse a political or social position (and I've usually thought my place out pretty well), but I'm far more married to my search for truth than I am to any political or social position, and if I'm wrong, I want you to make your case and tell me why. If your answer is "well, because ... God," ... well, then we might have to agree to disagree (because we might disagree about God's position on the subject), but if you can logically show me an empirical truth that I'm overlooking that would change how I view something, I really do want to hear it.
Another reason I want everyone to stick around is that I also have other things to say. Politics is, and should be, just one small part of our lives together. I am deeply fascinated by astrophysics, and the nature of time and space in particular (my essay "Umbrellas, Spaghetti and Spacetime" is, by far, the most popular and most read essay I've ever written ... I have recently expanded it and may post the whole thing again here soon). I have also had some pretty wild life experiences in my life that I have enjoyed writing about. And I just had my very first novel published (and I'll be publishing an excerpt from that here on my blog in the next few weeks to), a science fiction story called Gopto. To date, everyone has been able to enjoy all of that without associating a particular ideology to me as an author, and I resisted writing about the issues of the day because I enjoyed being able to talk to as broad an audience as possible without having people make assumptions about me as a person.
But the truth is that politics does exist, and while it does play too big a part of our lives, having it play NO role in our lives (or in my writing) isn't right either. If we're going to survive as a nation, we're going to need to learn to disagree again without it being the end of the world and without it so separating and dividing us that we can't agree on or accomplish anything. That's a pretty tall order, but it has to start somewhere. I'll start. You join in when you're ready.
See you next time ... I hope.
by Duane N. Burghard
I am very proud of the fact that there are now thousands of people who read my blog. Most of them don't know me personally. At best they've read my little bio on my blog page or maybe they've gotten really motivated and actually Googled me (this act would allow them to read about me on Wikipedia or see one of several campaign videos that are still floating around from my last Congressional campaign in 2006). So for most of my readers, the question "Why Don't I Write About Politics?" isn't one they normally ask. But among my friends who know me and read my blog, it's a very common question. Fortunately for them (and you), I don't have anything else to write about this week, so I'll tackle it for you.
For the record, I do have very specific and (I hope) well thought out political positions on a wide variety of social and political issues. For those who know that I have twice run for the U.S.House of Representatives (twice nominated, zero times elected), that's pretty easy to understand and believe. But when I decided to become a writer last year (OK, let's back that up a bit, when my wife got tired of me not writing all the stuff I had in my head and essentially badgered me into taking myself seriously as a writer and to begin writing as a profession) I specifically decided to avoid writing about politics, and for one key reason; our society is now so incredibly divided along ideological lines that it has become basically impossible to write about any political or social issue without alienating or irritating 50% of the people reading it. That's a real shame, because it didn't used to be like that and it doesn't have to be now.
There are many examples in American political history of people with widely divergent political views still managing to maintain close personal relationships. And it is still possible to do so. I am quite proud of the fact that I have many friends who are both more conservative and more liberal than I am ... but it's absolutely NOT the norm anymore. I have some ideas about why that is (the polarization of American society is based on the desire to separate and divide us, which then makes us easier to divide and conquer), but many people have become so completely attached to their "side" that the moment they read or hear something that sounds like it's critical of their "side" the shields go up and that person and whatever they're saying are immediately dismissed as nothing more than the rhetorical nonsense of "the other guys." And that's a lot more than "too bad." A Republican Democracy (like the United States) requires compromise in order to function correctly. The "best" solutions in our government are the ones that no one is entirely happy with. Nobody gets the solution they want, but everyone gets something they can live with. When we see ourselves as one nation, that becomes a lot easier to accept, but when we're constantly bombarded with "we" and "they" ... when ALL the inputs we're exposed to seek to accentuate the things we don't have in common instead of the things we do (and worse, when we're conditioned to believe that these differences are dramatic, Earth shattering, cataclysmic differences that require us to scream red faced into the face of whoever disagrees), then it becomes impossible to see compromise as a victory.
I have often described myself as a "radical moderate." I genuinely enjoy the fact that my conservative friends think I'm a bit too liberal and my liberal friends think I'm a bit too conservative. I tend to be a social liberal (pro-choice, in favor of marriage equality etc.) and an economic conservative (I do support getting rid of the Bush tax cuts (which all true fiscal conservatives should BTW), but I also think the Fed's policy of QE was necessary in 2009 and 2010, but it's now gone on way too long and that it's causing more problems than it's solving).
Now stop.
How many decisions about me did you just make? Sadly, the closet sociologist in me knows that a bunch of people just tuned out of my writing forever (or at best they will see it forever more through a preconceived lens), and that's too bad. As a writer, I do have something to say about politics and society and I would like to calmly and rationally discuss those issues with both the people I agree with and the people I disagree with. And I'm going to start doing it. I am persuaded by my friends who have argued that my not speaking up about things that I think are very important to us as a society isn't right either. I hope that the people who disagree with me will stick around, and for this reason; I want to be correct when I espouse a political or social position (and I've usually thought my place out pretty well), but I'm far more married to my search for truth than I am to any political or social position, and if I'm wrong, I want you to make your case and tell me why. If your answer is "well, because ... God," ... well, then we might have to agree to disagree (because we might disagree about God's position on the subject), but if you can logically show me an empirical truth that I'm overlooking that would change how I view something, I really do want to hear it.
Another reason I want everyone to stick around is that I also have other things to say. Politics is, and should be, just one small part of our lives together. I am deeply fascinated by astrophysics, and the nature of time and space in particular (my essay "Umbrellas, Spaghetti and Spacetime" is, by far, the most popular and most read essay I've ever written ... I have recently expanded it and may post the whole thing again here soon). I have also had some pretty wild life experiences in my life that I have enjoyed writing about. And I just had my very first novel published (and I'll be publishing an excerpt from that here on my blog in the next few weeks to), a science fiction story called Gopto. To date, everyone has been able to enjoy all of that without associating a particular ideology to me as an author, and I resisted writing about the issues of the day because I enjoyed being able to talk to as broad an audience as possible without having people make assumptions about me as a person.
But the truth is that politics does exist, and while it does play too big a part of our lives, having it play NO role in our lives (or in my writing) isn't right either. If we're going to survive as a nation, we're going to need to learn to disagree again without it being the end of the world and without it so separating and dividing us that we can't agree on or accomplish anything. That's a pretty tall order, but it has to start somewhere. I'll start. You join in when you're ready.
See you next time ... I hope.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
A Million Ways to Die In The Midwest OR Why I Moved to Tucson
by Duane N. Burghard
©2015
Before I start, I need to apologize to my regular readers and explain the reasons for my several weeks long hiatus from writing this blog. There are three reasons for my disappearance. The first reason is because a very important and very cool thing has happened: I have finally finished and now published my first novel (Gopto). Unfortunately, getting it ready for publishing, production etc. ended up consuming basically all of the time that I normally dedicate to my blog. Finishing the novel and having it published is a BIG deal in my life and I'm VERY excited. You will see ads for the book soon and there will probably be a number of upcoming blog posts where I talk about it.
The second reason is a little more complex. The fact is that my recent essays focused on my business life have not been nearly as popular as those which preceded it. To be clear, I have intentionally spent these first six months as a blogger writing about a wide variety of topics. I wanted a high level of diversity in subject matter so that I could learn what "works" with people who like my writing style (and what doesn't). An unfortunate side effect of my strategy is that one audience would find my blog because of one essay they like, but then I would move on to something different and they would go away. The series I've been working on lately (my business story) is, evidently, a lot less interesting to my core readers than essays like "Umbrellas, Spaghetti and Spacetime," or "How I Came To Be Interrogated By Soviet Authorities At Age 11." The message is now pretty clear: I need to get back to writing the sorts of things that "worked" for many of my readers.
Finally, the third reason for my delay is that this particular story is a lot harder one to tell. I will try to tell it with as much humor and lightness as I can, but this chapter of my life contains a pretty serious, life threatening and life changing illness. It permanently changed my life and I sometimes find it difficult to find the right way to "frame" it as a story. In any case, the experience is also an excellent opportunity to "skip to the end" of my business story and morph it into the story of how this particular illness reshaped my life and led me to my current home in Tucson, Arizona.
As always, thank you for visiting and reading my blog. My normal blog will resume next week, and I promise to focus more on the things the majority of you have found interesting.
Now ... where were we? Oh yes ......
The second reason is a little more complex. The fact is that my recent essays focused on my business life have not been nearly as popular as those which preceded it. To be clear, I have intentionally spent these first six months as a blogger writing about a wide variety of topics. I wanted a high level of diversity in subject matter so that I could learn what "works" with people who like my writing style (and what doesn't). An unfortunate side effect of my strategy is that one audience would find my blog because of one essay they like, but then I would move on to something different and they would go away. The series I've been working on lately (my business story) is, evidently, a lot less interesting to my core readers than essays like "Umbrellas, Spaghetti and Spacetime," or "How I Came To Be Interrogated By Soviet Authorities At Age 11." The message is now pretty clear: I need to get back to writing the sorts of things that "worked" for many of my readers.
Finally, the third reason for my delay is that this particular story is a lot harder one to tell. I will try to tell it with as much humor and lightness as I can, but this chapter of my life contains a pretty serious, life threatening and life changing illness. It permanently changed my life and I sometimes find it difficult to find the right way to "frame" it as a story. In any case, the experience is also an excellent opportunity to "skip to the end" of my business story and morph it into the story of how this particular illness reshaped my life and led me to my current home in Tucson, Arizona.
As always, thank you for visiting and reading my blog. My normal blog will resume next week, and I promise to focus more on the things the majority of you have found interesting.
Now ... where were we? Oh yes ......
“We’re goin’ to the End of The Line” (apologies to my beloved Traveling Wilburys)
As I noted in the last chapter, by the spring of 2001, about a year after renovations had turned more than half of our house into office space, the business was continuing to grow and Mara and I were realizing that, even though we had rarely used the rooms in our house that had now been 100% taken over by the business as office space, we still had in fact used them from time to time and we did in fact want to have that space. Additionally, there really wasn't any more space in the building to put any more people (unless we wanted to give up the kitchen (which was already shared with employees) or the bedrooms ... no). So we faced the reality that we had simply outgrown the house and began looking for a new one. On a whim, while driving around and house hunting one day, we turned in to a neighborhood and began driving along a street that served as a dam for a lake. Across the lake were several large, beautiful homes, one had an enormous dock on the lake. And I thought to myself, “I wonder how old I’ll be when I can afford a place like that.” I have simply GOT to STOP asking questions like that because, as we pulled around the corner and by that street, we both saw, to our stunned amazement, that the exact house we were dreaming about was for sale. As a JOKE, I decided that we should pull up. I fully expected the price to be WAY out of our range, and wanted to look at it, show it to Mara, have a laugh, and move on. What I saw stopped me cold. It was just outside what we thought our range was, but from the sticker over the price on the brochure, it had already just come down $20K. My immediate thought was, “OK, what’s wrong with it?” So we walked around and looked in the windows etc. It was decorated in a very mod style (which is to say it looked like what we envisioned the 21st Century would look like back in the late 1970s ... odd given that the home was built in the late 80s, but whatever). We called the realtor (an occasional client of ours) to inquire about it and discovered that they had just dropped the price another $10K that day. It was now at the VERY high end of our range, but it was there. The house was well more than twice as large as our existing house. It had a 1,500 square foot plus walk out basement where we (correctly) estimated we could have up to 6 additional employees working without causing space problems. Our logic in making an offer was that, while it was more than the “next logical step” house we were looking for, it was the “End of the Line” house, the house we could live in for 20-30 years and retire from. Obviously we had no way of knowing how close it would be to becoming my “End of the Line” house in a far more literal (mortal) way. The sellers were desperate, they took our price and even agreed to let us rent the place for a month as a trial ownership period (and apply the rent to the purchase price).
What happened on the last week of the trial period was one of those completely bizarre moments that happen in life. At the time it seemed like a pretty hilarious and minor hiccup, but it very nearly cost me my life. The house had a water softener that clearly hadn’t been used in years, and I called a plumber to come look at what it would take to reactivate it (as well as some other items). When he arrived, we went to the utility room. The small closet which housed the water main as well as the water softener was on the far side of this utility room. There was an odd sound coming from the closet, and as I opened the door, and you couldn’t write something this slapstick funny, a stream of water literally shot out the door and began striking me in the face (soaking both me and my clothes obviously). The water main came through the foundation wall at about my eye height, and sometime shortly before the plumber arrived, the foundation had moved just enough to tear open the main pipe. As a result, the pressure of the water shooting through the narrow opening in the foundation was significant. In one of the truly comic moments of my life, I quickly slammed the door, looked at the plumber and said, “OK, that is NOT why I asked you to come out today.” The plumber quickly ran to the street and cut off the water coming to the house, but the seeds of my next near death experience had already been sown. The floor of the utility room suffered extensive water damage. The floor was pergo, wood ... very unusual for a utility room, but the previous owner’s son had been a musician and had converted the room in to a recording studio (he had laid the wood floor for acoustic reasons). The other piece of this tragic puzzle came several years before we ever saw the house. The house (more specifically, its driveway) sits on a curve on the road. The road and the driveway are both concrete, and the concrete was, unfortunately continuous. As a result, during the summer months, as the concrete in the road and driveway expanded, it would shove a good portion of the house (the garage to be precise) off its foundation. Over the years, the house had been moved by a couple of inches, more than enough to allow moisture to get into the walls in the portion of the basement under the garage. Over time, the insulation and drywall became infested with a particular type of mold. The mold is called Stachybotrys or stachy (pronounced “stacky”) for short. Stachy is bad for all humans, but it’s quite literally lethal to about of 15% of us (you know where this is going now). With spores in the air, and a wet wood floor, it was only a matter of time.
As the summer ended and fall began, we began closing up the house more and more, and then we started turning the heat on. The spores began blowing around the house. It's very hard for me to talk about and write about this part of the experience, not because it's so painful (although it's not pleasant) but because I literally don't remember a lot of it. I remember losing my voice, but it was fall and I figured I just had a cold. But then I started losing my mind, which is to say, I started losing access to my memory. This is a big deal because those who know me know that I have something FAR more than a normal memory. In fact, let's take a momentary diversion to find out how I knew that.
In the fall of 1984, the University of Missouri had one of their on campus job fairs. This particular fair was held along my Tuesday/Thursday walking route between classes. One of the vendors at the fair was the CIA, and as I walked by, the recruiter asked me if I had a moment to take a quick test. The test consisted of a reading sample and a few questions. I took the test, completed it and handed it back to him. He looked at it and then asked me if I would stop back by in two days. Since I knew I would be in the same place at the same time (same class schedule) I said sure. On Thursday, right on schedule, I showed up and the gentleman asked me to take a very similar but slightly different test, which I did ... and after he graded it he asked me if I would quietly step aside with him so he could talk to me about a career in the CIA. He explained to me what the purpose of the test was, and that it identified me as having a particular type of mind that they look for in researchers. He described the job of the researchers and I said, "like Robert Redford in Three Days Of The Condor?" and he said "yes," (in retrospect I think its odd that he would admit that since he must have been able to guess that I would then know that all of Redford's friends in that movie who are doing research jobs like the one he was telling me about ended up getting killed in the movie). We spoke for nearly an hour. He took the time to talk to me about how my mind could be trained to do far more than I was doing naturally. He then took the time to actually teach me a couple of mental games that I still play to this day to sharpen my memory skills and to pull information out of my head. The offer was frankly tempting, and their financial aid package was WAY more than what I was receiving from my NROTC scholarship ... but I didn't much care for the idea that I would have a super secret job that I could never talk to anyone about. Additionally, I did actually have some fear about working for the CIA. But ultimately, the fact was that I felt loyalty to the Navy and all of my friends in it and all that the staff at our unit had done to secure my full scholarship (and I had NO idea how easy it would have been to get out of it). After several post event phone calls etc., I thanked the recruiter for all he had done for me, and politely declined the offer. But I never forgot what he told me about my mind and what I could do. I had always known that I had a much stronger and more powerful memory than most people, but now I knew what it was, why, and how to better train and use it.
On November 4, 2001, I was watching the Chicago Bears play the Cleveland Browns. With about 3 minutes to play, the Brows scored a touchdown to go up 21-7. The game was OVER. So over that the announcers were listing and thanking the crew and wrapping up while the Bears were on their final drive. With 30 seconds to play, the Bears scored, making it 21-14. They recovered the onside kick and, as time expired, they scored AGAIN, tying the score at 21. They lost the overtime coin flip, but in that first Browns possession, the Bears defense scored on a "pick six" and won the game 27-21. It was one of the most insane finishes to a game I have ever seen.
And it's the very last memory I have for a VERY long time.
I can't tell you much about 2002. I remember having to fire an employee. I remember the birth of my daughter Jordan and helping my wife through labor. I remember getting into a really emotional argument with my Apple rep. But other than that. Nothing. For a man who can pull so many facts from his life out of his mind in incredible detail, I can't tell you basically anything about that entire year. I know that I was scared out of my mind. I know that I could barely talk. The poison in the house was causing the tissues around my vocal chords to essentially dissolve (and the area below my jaws was sensitive and ached constantly), so I had the ability to speak for about 30-60 minutes per day (which was incredibly hard on the business of course), but more importantly, I couldn't remember anything. In the years since all of this happened I have become friends with a prominent Neuropsychologist at the University of Missouri (our youngest daughters were best friends for years). He took an interest in my case and concluded that something about the toxin was keeping my brain from turning short term memories into long term ones, and only the especially traumatic or emotionally powerful stuff (e.g. Jordan's birth) got through.
Other family members and employees never got sick, so we didn't suspect the house. The Doctors I saw were confused. They had me taking very expensive and powerful medication for months on end. It kept me from getting worse and allowed me to work, but I got no better.
In January of 2003, we made our regular trip to visit Mara's sister out on the island of Hawaii. It was my third vacation since becoming ill. Each time I went on vacation I would seem to get noticeably better, but that seemed only logical (away from the stress of work? in Hawaii? duh!). But when we returned home from the trip, that very first night, I began to reel awful again right away ... and for the first time, I wasn't alone. Our then 3 1/2 month old daughter Jordan, who hadn't been sick a day in her life, showed signs of being sick. And even in my weakened state, I remember that being the day that I I thought, "it's in the house."
I contacted the EPA, and they put me in touch with an air quality testing firm. The firm came to Columbia a few days later. The man conducting the test walked in, and was in the house only seconds before saying, "I know what this is, and you've got it pretty bad." I've now been well for many years, and for the record, I can now do the same thing ... I can walk into your home and tell you within MOMENTS if your house is infected with stachybotrys.
Three days later I was up in Kirksville doing some onsite work for an important client. As I left the parking lot, my phone rang. It was the EPA guy. "Mr. Burghard, we have the test results from your home sir, and, well, we don't think you should go home tonight." Well THAT got my attention. They then told me that they were faxing the results to my ENT Doctor. The Doctor's office called me less than 10 minutes later and said "Dr. Denninghoff would like to see you first thing tomorrow morning." When I walked in he had the results in his hand. He said, "you know, a ton of people think they have this and don't, but you, this is the first thing that makes sense, THIS is what's wrong."
Within weeks we had a significant section of the house completely gutted. And more. The special contractors who did the removal washed down the concrete foundation with some kind of chemical wash, and they left a very odd device that had a particular type of light and made loud clicking noises running 24/7 for several days. Then the rebuilding began. I was militant about never allowing anything like this to happen to me or anyone who ever owned this house again. We installed a special "vapor barrier" along all wall and floor surfaces. The framing was done with pressure treated, mold resistant studs. The sheetrock was a special "greenrock" that is specially made to be mold resistant. Everything we did was focused on not just fixing the problem, but making sure it never happened again. In the end, it was about $25,000 worth of work (and that doesn't count the sweat equity of finishing work that we did ourselves), but when we had the EPA testing firm back out to test the results, they found less stachybotrys in the house than was naturally occurring in the air outside the house (and that is when you know you have it beat).
My health began to improve rapidly. Within 6 weeks I was on about 1/60th of the power of the medication I had been on (and very quickly down to just over the counter drugs to deal with the remnants). And on March 31, 2003, as I was driving back to the office at 8:30am after dropping Taylor at her nursery school, I pulled up to the corner of Forum and Stadium, and Jackson Brown's "Lawyers In Love" started playing on the radio. As I sat at the red light it suddenly occurred to me that I was singing the song in my head along with the music ... and I knew the words! I immediately began taking inventory of my "mind palace" quizzing myself relentlessly about whatever obscure details I could think of ... and it was back! All of it! Just like that, in a single moment, suddenly I had access to my mind again. And I started to cry.
It was the scariest experience of my life.
Yes, I did. So, what the heck does all of THAT have to do with how I got to Tucson? Well, as I said, with the house successfully remediated (and we sold it a year later ... mostly because the business had once again grown beyond those 6 more employees we figured on when we bought it), I got better fast. My medication bill quickly went from $300-400/month to about $60/month. My voice returned, my mind returned, I got better ... but I never did get all the way better. Now, I had been warned by my Doctor that some of my voice loss might very well be permanent (and in fact I did lose about 5 notes off the top of my singing voice range ... although oddly enough I picked up three more on the low end), and I had been further warned that it would take up to five years or more for me to really feel normal again, but since I was pretty close to normal within just a few months, I kind of accepted where I was as "the new normal." And the medication I needed was over the counter and cheap, so I kind of just accepted it and moved on.
In the fall of 2007, I attended the annual ASMC Conference in Tucson, Arizona (the ASMC is a consortium corporation of Apple Dealers and I sat on the company's Board of Directors for six years). It had now been four and a half years since we had discovered and removed the stachybotrys, and the fact that I was still on any medication was frankly annoying and bothersome to me. Periodically I would try to stop, and I'd invariably last a few days before I began to feel awful again, and then I'd restart ... but by the third day of the conference in Tucson, I felt so good that I forgot to take my medication ... and it literally wasn't until the day I left (day 5) that I noticed and realized that I had continued to feel not just fine, but really great.
Hilariously, I did not make the connection between my health and my location ... although, in fairness to me, I obviously did notice that I felt better. My rationale for the improvement came from my conversation with my Doctor years earlier (he said it would take about 5 years, and it had in fact been about about 5 years, so I thought, "that must be it").
I returned back to Missouri and, after a few days, felt the need to go back to the medication again, but now, instead of taking something every day, I was taking something every 2-3 days or so. This again was the "new normal"
I received a call from another Apple dealer in the summer of 2009. He had spoken with his Apple rep who had advised and encouraged him to contact me. His family had sold their company (a large electronics and household goods business, which included the Apple dealership) a couple of years earlier, and the company they sold out to had driven their business into the ground and into bankruptcy, so this person's family had come back and bought the company back from the Bankruptcy Court. However, in rebuilding their business, they didn't feel that they had the time, effort, energy or money necessary to rebuild everything at the same time, so essentially they wanted to outsource the Apple part of their stores to me. I, of course, was happy to help. A side effect of this takeover, however, meant that I would now be traveling to New Mexico (the two stores in question were in Albuquerque and Santa Fe) several times per year.
On my fourth trip to Albuquerque, I was paying particular attention to my mood and health ... and I was doing that because on my prior trip I thought I noticed that I seemed to be in an unusually good mood while I was in New Mexico, and that seemed to have happened before. Sure enough, after about 6 hours on the ground, I began to feel noticeably better. I felt healthier, stronger, I was in a better mood ... in just about every way I felt better. I called my wife and reported that, at this point, it seemed unlikely that this was a coincidence (I said something like, "look, I like Albuquerque, but I don't think I like it THAT much ... I think something else is happening here."
So a week or so later I made an appointment to go see my old ENT Doctor. I told him what I experienced, that it seemed like each time I went to New Mexico I would be there for something like half a day, and I would suddenly start feeling physically, mentally and emotionally better. He looked at me without emotion and said, "well, yeah, that makes sense."
Did you ever have one of those moments in life where someone says something and then there's a silent pause after that because what that person has just said makes complete and total sense to them but no sense at all to you? That's what this moment was like for me. After a long pause I said, "why is that?" The Doctor noted that I had suffered from stachybotrys poisoning years earlier. I said I knew that. He said, "well, some of the remnants of that are going to be in your bloodstream for the rest of your life."
"OK," I replied.
"Well," he said, "it's a toxin that gets all of its strength from moisture, so the drier the climate you're in, the less it will be able to mess with you and the better you'll feel." I had read a LOT about stachybotrys by this point. I knew that its global "superhome" if you will is in the Mississippi River Valley (it's worst down in the New Orleans and Deep South areas, but it comes all the way up into the midwest, and certainly into central Missouri). And by this time I had developed quite the schnoz for detecting it (like the inspector who came to our home years ago, as I noted above, I now knew exactly what it smelled like and could immediately feel its affects on me). But I had sort of assumed that some of it was pretty much everywhere. The idea that there were environments on Earth that were so hostile to it that it basically didn't exist hadn't frankly occurred to me until that moment.
"That makes sense," I said. Then, after a pause I added, "you know Doc ... um, just for future reference, that's a tidbit of information I probably could have had years ago." Important life lesson: what's intuitively obvious to you is not necessarily intuitively obvious to those around you.
I went home that night and said to my wife, "I love it here in Mid-Missouri. We've built our lives and our business here. We've raised our kids here, this is home ... but we live once, and if I can be that much better somewhere else, we should go." Ironically, she was as ready or more ready to go than I was.
We took the children to New Mexico during their Spring Break in 2012. We looked around Las Cruces, Albuquerque, Rio Rancho etc. and saw a lot of nice places. The girls all pretty obviously hated it. Oh well. The next year (2013), my Dad offered to take us and our children on a weeklong San Diego to Puerto Vallarta Spring Break cruise (he had done the same for the children of my siblings but not us), so we said sure ... and I asked the family if we could take 1-2 days on the way home and have a look at Arizona ... which we did ... and when we got to Tucson, we got the first "hey, this is nice" reaction from everyone ... and that was pretty much how Tucson became the target. We moved to Tucson in August of 2013. Our house is literally just down the road from the resort where the ASMC Conference was held in 2007 (total coincidence, had NO idea until after we bought it ... funny how life does stuff like that to you). I do miss things about Missouri, but the fact is that I'm much healthier and much happier here. The desert isn't right for everyone, but if ANYTHING I've written above about my experience sounds familiar to you. PLEASE have your house checked for stachybotrys and/or aspergillus IMMEDIATELY. I also recommend just visiting Tucson sometime. Come down for a few days, see how you feel (and if you hate the cold, as I do, pick sometime when it's really cold where you are and come enjoy the sun and comparative warmth we have to offer).
And by the way, several people who have come to visit us since we've moved here have also decided to move here. This wasn't the primary reason that my wife finally left our company and became a realtor with Keller Williams this year, but in case you come and want to stay, I know someone who would love to help!
And THAT is how I came to Tucson. Next week my blog will return with a completely new essay.
As the summer ended and fall began, we began closing up the house more and more, and then we started turning the heat on. The spores began blowing around the house. It's very hard for me to talk about and write about this part of the experience, not because it's so painful (although it's not pleasant) but because I literally don't remember a lot of it. I remember losing my voice, but it was fall and I figured I just had a cold. But then I started losing my mind, which is to say, I started losing access to my memory. This is a big deal because those who know me know that I have something FAR more than a normal memory. In fact, let's take a momentary diversion to find out how I knew that.
“We’d like to talk to you about a career in the CIA" ....
In the fall of 1984, the University of Missouri had one of their on campus job fairs. This particular fair was held along my Tuesday/Thursday walking route between classes. One of the vendors at the fair was the CIA, and as I walked by, the recruiter asked me if I had a moment to take a quick test. The test consisted of a reading sample and a few questions. I took the test, completed it and handed it back to him. He looked at it and then asked me if I would stop back by in two days. Since I knew I would be in the same place at the same time (same class schedule) I said sure. On Thursday, right on schedule, I showed up and the gentleman asked me to take a very similar but slightly different test, which I did ... and after he graded it he asked me if I would quietly step aside with him so he could talk to me about a career in the CIA. He explained to me what the purpose of the test was, and that it identified me as having a particular type of mind that they look for in researchers. He described the job of the researchers and I said, "like Robert Redford in Three Days Of The Condor?" and he said "yes," (in retrospect I think its odd that he would admit that since he must have been able to guess that I would then know that all of Redford's friends in that movie who are doing research jobs like the one he was telling me about ended up getting killed in the movie). We spoke for nearly an hour. He took the time to talk to me about how my mind could be trained to do far more than I was doing naturally. He then took the time to actually teach me a couple of mental games that I still play to this day to sharpen my memory skills and to pull information out of my head. The offer was frankly tempting, and their financial aid package was WAY more than what I was receiving from my NROTC scholarship ... but I didn't much care for the idea that I would have a super secret job that I could never talk to anyone about. Additionally, I did actually have some fear about working for the CIA. But ultimately, the fact was that I felt loyalty to the Navy and all of my friends in it and all that the staff at our unit had done to secure my full scholarship (and I had NO idea how easy it would have been to get out of it). After several post event phone calls etc., I thanked the recruiter for all he had done for me, and politely declined the offer. But I never forgot what he told me about my mind and what I could do. I had always known that I had a much stronger and more powerful memory than most people, but now I knew what it was, why, and how to better train and use it.
On November 4, 2001, I was watching the Chicago Bears play the Cleveland Browns. With about 3 minutes to play, the Brows scored a touchdown to go up 21-7. The game was OVER. So over that the announcers were listing and thanking the crew and wrapping up while the Bears were on their final drive. With 30 seconds to play, the Bears scored, making it 21-14. They recovered the onside kick and, as time expired, they scored AGAIN, tying the score at 21. They lost the overtime coin flip, but in that first Browns possession, the Bears defense scored on a "pick six" and won the game 27-21. It was one of the most insane finishes to a game I have ever seen.
And it's the very last memory I have for a VERY long time.
I can't tell you much about 2002. I remember having to fire an employee. I remember the birth of my daughter Jordan and helping my wife through labor. I remember getting into a really emotional argument with my Apple rep. But other than that. Nothing. For a man who can pull so many facts from his life out of his mind in incredible detail, I can't tell you basically anything about that entire year. I know that I was scared out of my mind. I know that I could barely talk. The poison in the house was causing the tissues around my vocal chords to essentially dissolve (and the area below my jaws was sensitive and ached constantly), so I had the ability to speak for about 30-60 minutes per day (which was incredibly hard on the business of course), but more importantly, I couldn't remember anything. In the years since all of this happened I have become friends with a prominent Neuropsychologist at the University of Missouri (our youngest daughters were best friends for years). He took an interest in my case and concluded that something about the toxin was keeping my brain from turning short term memories into long term ones, and only the especially traumatic or emotionally powerful stuff (e.g. Jordan's birth) got through.
Other family members and employees never got sick, so we didn't suspect the house. The Doctors I saw were confused. They had me taking very expensive and powerful medication for months on end. It kept me from getting worse and allowed me to work, but I got no better.
In January of 2003, we made our regular trip to visit Mara's sister out on the island of Hawaii. It was my third vacation since becoming ill. Each time I went on vacation I would seem to get noticeably better, but that seemed only logical (away from the stress of work? in Hawaii? duh!). But when we returned home from the trip, that very first night, I began to reel awful again right away ... and for the first time, I wasn't alone. Our then 3 1/2 month old daughter Jordan, who hadn't been sick a day in her life, showed signs of being sick. And even in my weakened state, I remember that being the day that I I thought, "it's in the house."
I contacted the EPA, and they put me in touch with an air quality testing firm. The firm came to Columbia a few days later. The man conducting the test walked in, and was in the house only seconds before saying, "I know what this is, and you've got it pretty bad." I've now been well for many years, and for the record, I can now do the same thing ... I can walk into your home and tell you within MOMENTS if your house is infected with stachybotrys.
Three days later I was up in Kirksville doing some onsite work for an important client. As I left the parking lot, my phone rang. It was the EPA guy. "Mr. Burghard, we have the test results from your home sir, and, well, we don't think you should go home tonight." Well THAT got my attention. They then told me that they were faxing the results to my ENT Doctor. The Doctor's office called me less than 10 minutes later and said "Dr. Denninghoff would like to see you first thing tomorrow morning." When I walked in he had the results in his hand. He said, "you know, a ton of people think they have this and don't, but you, this is the first thing that makes sense, THIS is what's wrong."
Within weeks we had a significant section of the house completely gutted. And more. The special contractors who did the removal washed down the concrete foundation with some kind of chemical wash, and they left a very odd device that had a particular type of light and made loud clicking noises running 24/7 for several days. Then the rebuilding began. I was militant about never allowing anything like this to happen to me or anyone who ever owned this house again. We installed a special "vapor barrier" along all wall and floor surfaces. The framing was done with pressure treated, mold resistant studs. The sheetrock was a special "greenrock" that is specially made to be mold resistant. Everything we did was focused on not just fixing the problem, but making sure it never happened again. In the end, it was about $25,000 worth of work (and that doesn't count the sweat equity of finishing work that we did ourselves), but when we had the EPA testing firm back out to test the results, they found less stachybotrys in the house than was naturally occurring in the air outside the house (and that is when you know you have it beat).
My health began to improve rapidly. Within 6 weeks I was on about 1/60th of the power of the medication I had been on (and very quickly down to just over the counter drugs to deal with the remnants). And on March 31, 2003, as I was driving back to the office at 8:30am after dropping Taylor at her nursery school, I pulled up to the corner of Forum and Stadium, and Jackson Brown's "Lawyers In Love" started playing on the radio. As I sat at the red light it suddenly occurred to me that I was singing the song in my head along with the music ... and I knew the words! I immediately began taking inventory of my "mind palace" quizzing myself relentlessly about whatever obscure details I could think of ... and it was back! All of it! Just like that, in a single moment, suddenly I had access to my mind again. And I started to cry.
It was the scariest experience of my life.
“Didn't you say something about Tucson?" ....
Yes, I did. So, what the heck does all of THAT have to do with how I got to Tucson? Well, as I said, with the house successfully remediated (and we sold it a year later ... mostly because the business had once again grown beyond those 6 more employees we figured on when we bought it), I got better fast. My medication bill quickly went from $300-400/month to about $60/month. My voice returned, my mind returned, I got better ... but I never did get all the way better. Now, I had been warned by my Doctor that some of my voice loss might very well be permanent (and in fact I did lose about 5 notes off the top of my singing voice range ... although oddly enough I picked up three more on the low end), and I had been further warned that it would take up to five years or more for me to really feel normal again, but since I was pretty close to normal within just a few months, I kind of accepted where I was as "the new normal." And the medication I needed was over the counter and cheap, so I kind of just accepted it and moved on.
In the fall of 2007, I attended the annual ASMC Conference in Tucson, Arizona (the ASMC is a consortium corporation of Apple Dealers and I sat on the company's Board of Directors for six years). It had now been four and a half years since we had discovered and removed the stachybotrys, and the fact that I was still on any medication was frankly annoying and bothersome to me. Periodically I would try to stop, and I'd invariably last a few days before I began to feel awful again, and then I'd restart ... but by the third day of the conference in Tucson, I felt so good that I forgot to take my medication ... and it literally wasn't until the day I left (day 5) that I noticed and realized that I had continued to feel not just fine, but really great.
Hilariously, I did not make the connection between my health and my location ... although, in fairness to me, I obviously did notice that I felt better. My rationale for the improvement came from my conversation with my Doctor years earlier (he said it would take about 5 years, and it had in fact been about about 5 years, so I thought, "that must be it").
I returned back to Missouri and, after a few days, felt the need to go back to the medication again, but now, instead of taking something every day, I was taking something every 2-3 days or so. This again was the "new normal"
“Would you like to take over a couple of stores?" ....
I received a call from another Apple dealer in the summer of 2009. He had spoken with his Apple rep who had advised and encouraged him to contact me. His family had sold their company (a large electronics and household goods business, which included the Apple dealership) a couple of years earlier, and the company they sold out to had driven their business into the ground and into bankruptcy, so this person's family had come back and bought the company back from the Bankruptcy Court. However, in rebuilding their business, they didn't feel that they had the time, effort, energy or money necessary to rebuild everything at the same time, so essentially they wanted to outsource the Apple part of their stores to me. I, of course, was happy to help. A side effect of this takeover, however, meant that I would now be traveling to New Mexico (the two stores in question were in Albuquerque and Santa Fe) several times per year.
On my fourth trip to Albuquerque, I was paying particular attention to my mood and health ... and I was doing that because on my prior trip I thought I noticed that I seemed to be in an unusually good mood while I was in New Mexico, and that seemed to have happened before. Sure enough, after about 6 hours on the ground, I began to feel noticeably better. I felt healthier, stronger, I was in a better mood ... in just about every way I felt better. I called my wife and reported that, at this point, it seemed unlikely that this was a coincidence (I said something like, "look, I like Albuquerque, but I don't think I like it THAT much ... I think something else is happening here."
So a week or so later I made an appointment to go see my old ENT Doctor. I told him what I experienced, that it seemed like each time I went to New Mexico I would be there for something like half a day, and I would suddenly start feeling physically, mentally and emotionally better. He looked at me without emotion and said, "well, yeah, that makes sense."
Did you ever have one of those moments in life where someone says something and then there's a silent pause after that because what that person has just said makes complete and total sense to them but no sense at all to you? That's what this moment was like for me. After a long pause I said, "why is that?" The Doctor noted that I had suffered from stachybotrys poisoning years earlier. I said I knew that. He said, "well, some of the remnants of that are going to be in your bloodstream for the rest of your life."
"OK," I replied.
"Well," he said, "it's a toxin that gets all of its strength from moisture, so the drier the climate you're in, the less it will be able to mess with you and the better you'll feel." I had read a LOT about stachybotrys by this point. I knew that its global "superhome" if you will is in the Mississippi River Valley (it's worst down in the New Orleans and Deep South areas, but it comes all the way up into the midwest, and certainly into central Missouri). And by this time I had developed quite the schnoz for detecting it (like the inspector who came to our home years ago, as I noted above, I now knew exactly what it smelled like and could immediately feel its affects on me). But I had sort of assumed that some of it was pretty much everywhere. The idea that there were environments on Earth that were so hostile to it that it basically didn't exist hadn't frankly occurred to me until that moment.
"That makes sense," I said. Then, after a pause I added, "you know Doc ... um, just for future reference, that's a tidbit of information I probably could have had years ago." Important life lesson: what's intuitively obvious to you is not necessarily intuitively obvious to those around you.
I went home that night and said to my wife, "I love it here in Mid-Missouri. We've built our lives and our business here. We've raised our kids here, this is home ... but we live once, and if I can be that much better somewhere else, we should go." Ironically, she was as ready or more ready to go than I was.
We took the children to New Mexico during their Spring Break in 2012. We looked around Las Cruces, Albuquerque, Rio Rancho etc. and saw a lot of nice places. The girls all pretty obviously hated it. Oh well. The next year (2013), my Dad offered to take us and our children on a weeklong San Diego to Puerto Vallarta Spring Break cruise (he had done the same for the children of my siblings but not us), so we said sure ... and I asked the family if we could take 1-2 days on the way home and have a look at Arizona ... which we did ... and when we got to Tucson, we got the first "hey, this is nice" reaction from everyone ... and that was pretty much how Tucson became the target. We moved to Tucson in August of 2013. Our house is literally just down the road from the resort where the ASMC Conference was held in 2007 (total coincidence, had NO idea until after we bought it ... funny how life does stuff like that to you). I do miss things about Missouri, but the fact is that I'm much healthier and much happier here. The desert isn't right for everyone, but if ANYTHING I've written above about my experience sounds familiar to you. PLEASE have your house checked for stachybotrys and/or aspergillus IMMEDIATELY. I also recommend just visiting Tucson sometime. Come down for a few days, see how you feel (and if you hate the cold, as I do, pick sometime when it's really cold where you are and come enjoy the sun and comparative warmth we have to offer).
And by the way, several people who have come to visit us since we've moved here have also decided to move here. This wasn't the primary reason that my wife finally left our company and became a realtor with Keller Williams this year, but in case you come and want to stay, I know someone who would love to help!
And THAT is how I came to Tucson. Next week my blog will return with a completely new essay.
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