Heros and Goats

©Charles M. Schulz

There are two kinds of people in the world: heroes and goats. Just one of the many lessons I learned from Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang.

For the record, we're Michigan fans. That's The University of Michigan. We bleed maize and blue.

I never miss Michigan football. At just 13 per games per season (when we go to a bowl game), it's an easy commitment to make. I've always liked Michigan basketball (in theory), but freely admit that the season is just too long for me, with more than 30 games in the regular season and a bazillion tournament games.

But last year, our team nearly got blown off an airport runway and then went on to win the B1G (Big Ten) Championship, and I got sucked in. It was a great story. And then we won the B1G again this year, and that was just plain fun

Basketball is fun, at least college basketball, and March Madness is … mad. It's one of the few times in life when you feel like anything can happen. And, according to my brother, it usually does. The youth, the adrenaline, the superstitions, the speed of the game, all add up to a level of unpredictability that can change the momentum in a literal moment.

It's a time when a school no one has ever heard of—University of Maryland Baltimore County—becomes the trending hashtag #UMBC as the first ever 16 seed to beat a #1 team in the NCAA tournament

It's a time of upsets, broken records, Cinderella stories, and buzzer beaters.

It's a time when fans (even only sometimes fans, like me) are on the edge of their seats. I had a great time watching Michigan's buzzer beater against Houston last Friday night. It was particularly sweet because I got to watch it with my own Michigan junior, who came home for the weekend. We ran around the room cheering, like the team ran around the court after watching Jordan Poole arc that perfect winning three-pointer into the hoop at the last second.

The last two minutes of a basketball game are all that really matter (blasphemy, I know, but it's true). This was certainly true of the Michigan-Houston game. Watch those two minutes in the clip below and you can see the "hero", Jordan Poole and his winning shot. You can see the "goat", Houston's Devin Davis, miss his last two free throws, which should have won the game.

You may have already seen a clip of that shot. I wouldn't be surprised. It's been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

But have you seen this clip? Maybe not. These seven seconds were caught by Jeffrey Parsons just a few seconds after the buzzer beater. Michigan's forward Mo Wagner stopped mid-celebration to console Houston's devastated Corey Davis, Jr. The photo at the top of the article shows Wagner giving a conciliatory pat to Devin Davis—the guy who missed the free throws.

Or how about this one, University of Virginia coach Tony Bennett, who could have been the goat after his team's historic loss.

Everyone wants to be the hero. Jordan Poole and his "overdose of swag" certainly does. He's practiced for it and that's great.

No one wants to be the goat. Certainly not Devin Davis, who has overcome a lot in his short life, and shouldn't get derailed for two missed free throws.

It's a world of heroes and goats. But I like the way Wagner and Bennett are redefining things for us. Maybe a hero is not just the guy who made the winning shot, but the guy who took a second to recognize another's pain. Maybe the goat is a hero in disguise, teaching us the most important life lessons.

Because everyone has the potentialities of a hero or a goat.

Because, despite what we see in the world, in politics, and in business—in life, it is how you play the game.

#GoBlue

You Just Never Know

Laura Munson at a reading sponsored by the wonderful Book Stall of Winnetka.

You never know when or where or how you are going to meet someone who will touch your life in a meaningful way. I "met" the lovely and talented Laura Munson through an online writing forum called SheWrites. We struck up an e-mail conversation, which resulted in a phone conversation and then a real life meetup last month when she traveled from her home in Montana to visit family in Illinois and promote her touching, best-selling memoir, This is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness.

While she was in town, Laura spoke at a benefit and shared the podium with Dr. Gary Hammer, director of the adrenal cancer program at The University of Michigan (go blue!). Laura posted about her personal experience with adrenal cancer on her blog These Here Hills. The post, "Rare Cancer, Rare Doctor" also ran in the Huffington Post on 10/18/10.

Because this is such an important message, and because Dr. Hammer's hypothetical letter to a hypothetical patient is a powerful treatise on the doctor-patient partnership, and because the post includes a beautiful Two Kinds of People reference, I am honored to include it here today as a guest post. Please read and share.

Rare Cancer. Rare Doctor.

by Laura Munson

Amazing people have come into my life lately, and I can’t help but feel a deep knowing that it is nothing close to coincidence. Doctor Gary Hammer is one of them.

Dr. Gary Hammer

I met Gary because my sister-in-law was dying of a rare cancer that was supposed to kill her within months of diagnosis. Adrenal Cortical Cancer, or ACC for short. Doctors looked at her gravely. Mayo threw up their hands. There are only 300-600 cases in the US annually. That’s 1 to 2 per million. There was no cure. There was very little research being done. It looked hopeless. This is a cancer that often times lays dormant, wreaking silent havoc in the stomach, often caught too late. It goes where it wants. There’s little to radiate or chemotherapize. She was going to die, and fast. Five kids under 16. A woman who never drank alcohol, did drugs, smoked. An athlete, a practitioner of positive thinking and positive being, the definition of community leader, Sandra was that “one.” The one who defined the difference between the “two kinds of people: the ones who think about things, and the ones who do things.” Sandra was a doer.

So when she was stripped of her future, she caught her breath, and then she did the impossible. She lived for another nine years. She lived on will and positive affirmation and love. And then eventually, the cancer came back, and the only hope fell in the hands of a man who has devoted his life’s work to finding a cure for ACC. Gary Hammer, who is the University of Michican’s director of their adrenal cancer program. He is one of the only doctors in the US doing research on her kind of rare cancer. One of the only people in the world. When she barely had the energy to walk down the stairs of her home, Sandra participated in his clinical trial, travelling week after week with a family shepherd from her home in Ft. Collins to Denver to Chicago and back in the same day, processing the side-effects of the treatment, which is essentially a pesticide banned in the 1950s for use on crops. Because who wants to put money into such a quick killer of so very few. If you ask her children this question, they’ll try to find grace, because that’s what they learned from their mother. But inside they feel mad, ripped off, and beyond shocked that they live in a country that even still has expendable populations. How are they supposed to find trust again? How are they supposed to find faith after this tragic loss?

Gary Hammer is their link to making sense of loss, tragedy. It’s doctors like him around the globe who are blazing new trail, despite the odds, and in-so-doing, become the gatekeepers to new terrain. I am so inspired by Gary and his work, and also by his spirit. He has not detached from the heartbreak of his chosen field. He has moved deeper into it. He learns from his patients and has much to teach us about finding freedom even, and especially in the most challenging times. He is the sort of person who reminds us to have faith in the things that matter right now, wherever we are in our lives. My nieces and nephews can’t regain their mother, but they can rediscover faith.

My book is about rediscovering faith. Faith in yourself, against the odds. Mine were different odds. But finding faith in yourself is fundamental, whether it’s in death or love or both. For we all face both. In my book, there is a section that has to do with clear vision in the midst of crisis. The crisis, as you may know, had to do with my marriage, but on a deeper level, it had to do with my husband’s relationship with himself. Like me, he had rigged it that his personal worth was only as good as his career success, and though he worked so very hard, he wasn’t seeing financial results. He went into a crisis of self in which he questioned his love for me and our marriage. I felt that this was a crisis of his own self, and felt in my gut that the best thing I could do was to get out of his way. To not engage the drama. To focus on what I could control, and let go of the rest.

There began a time of soul searching for my husband that came together with crystal clarity when he went to be the family shepherd, assisting his sister on the long trek from her home in Colorado to the clinical trial here in Chicago and back again. He called me from the waiting room with a tone in his voice I hadn’t heard in a long time. He was flattened by the weight of cancer all around him. Whatever fears he had about our finances and his job were washed upon the shores of his own good physical health, and his relationships. “It’s who you love and how you love,” he said, as humble as I’d ever heard him. That was his sister’s gift to him. To us. She passed away a few months later. And in her dying, she taught those of us who loved her how to live.

Her message was to find the freedom of the present moment. To affirm life in all its abundance right where you are, whether you’ve been given months to live, or if your husband has announced that he no longer loves you. Her message was and is one of empowerment.

Gary has written something that is ground breaking. He debuted it last week in Chicago at a hospital fundraiser where we were the keynote speakers. You could have heard a pin drop, but for the tears. I would like to share it here. I have never known a doctor to show this sort of vulnerability. Here is his hypothetical letter to a doctor from a patient diagnosed with cancer, and his hypothetical repsonse. This is the very definition of empathy. I am honored to have him in my life and to call him friend. Please pass this along to everyone you can think of who would benefit from it. It gives us hope.

To that end, here is what appeared the night my sister-in-law died. Over her house, for all of us to see. I’m going to believe that it is possible to make rainbows if we want to deeply enough.

Dr. Hammer, then, is making rainbows in acts like [this open letter to cancer patients] (get out your tissue).

-------------
Thank you Laura. Thank you Dr. Hammer.

Comments welcome comments here.

Go Blue!

There are two kinds of people in the world: Michigan Fans and everybody else.

We are an obnoxious bunch, no doubt about it. Even after our humbling season last year (ugh, 3-9) we have not learned humility. Even though we're not crazy about our new coach, Rich Rod is looking a quite a bit shinier since our glorious win over those overweening Irishmen (affectionately known in our family as "they who must not be named").

I'm not quite sure why I love Michigan football the way I do. Sure, I was raised on maize and blue, watching my father and our Buckeye next-door neighbor exchange insults and carry out ridiculous bets. But my brother and my dad are sports fanatics. They would watch competitive tiddly winks if ESPN broadcast it. None of that carried over into my adult life — only football, specifically college football, more specifically Big 10 college football — but those other teams really only count insofar as how the outcomes of their games affect Michigan's ranking.

I could say my passion stems from my college days in Ann Arbor, during the height of the Bo years (the winningest coach in Michigan history), when I cheered on Rick Leach, Anthony Carter, Butch Woolfolk and my favorite kicker, Ali Haji-Sheikh. But, truth be told, as much as I loved going to the games, I often sold my tickets for much-needed cash. I could always count on announcer Bob Ufer to make me feel like I was at the game, though thankfully, I did not miss Anthony Carter's amazing catch against Indiana in '79 — I was there for that one.

Part of the allure, of course, is Michigan Stadium. There is no place quite like the Big House to watch a football game. More than 100,000 people file peacefully in and out every home-game weekend, where there's not a bad seat in the house, and you sweat together in September and freeze together in November. I remember the first time my dad and I took my daughter to see a game when she was about 8 year's old. We tried to explain beforehand that more people would be in the stadium that day than the entire population of our hometown of Evanston, IL. When she saw the crowd, her jaw dropped; when she watched the wave circle the stands, she clapped in delight; and when the 150-member Michigan marching band took the field, she danced and shimmied right along with them. Michigan football games are just plain fun.

Though I believe children should be encouraged to think for themselves, since the minute they were born, I've worked hard to indoctrinate my kids into the cult of Michigan. Their father has had nothing to do with it (what can I say, he went to Northern Illinois). We have pictures of every one of my babies in onsies, sweatshirts, baseball caps and Ts all emblazoned with big block Ms. If it's possible to have two favorite colors, ours are maize and blue. I actually wrote a letter of protest to the Crayola company when they tried to eliminate maize as one of the colors in the big 64 box of crayons.

The Victors was the first song I learned to play on the piano, and the first song I taught my kids to sing. On my daughter's third day at kindergarten, she came bursting through the door after school saying: "Mama, Mama, guess what I learned to spell today: G-O  B-L-U-E!" That's my girl.

So what is it about this team that makes us into such True Blue fans? How can go into the last game with a 3 and 8 record (as we did last year, in our worst season ever) and still show up for the Ohio State game hoping to win and knowing it will be a good year if we can only beat the Buckeye's during this final, best and always most important game? Why do we TiVo the games and cast the evil eye if someone threatens to be a spoiler before we can get home to watch the game ourselves.

It's a magnificent obsession, a heady curse that brings us Wolverines together on a dozen Saturdays each fall to experience once again the joy of victory and agony of defeat as only Michigan football can bring it. This year, we are trying to convince ourselves that this is still a transitional season, that it will take time for everyone to get used to the new coach and to build a new program. My brother claims he'll be happy with eight wins, a victory over one of our big rivals (Notre Dame, Michigan State and Ohio State) and no more scandals. He's lying. Even though we beat the Irish, like the rest of us, he won't be happy unless we beat Ohio State to become the undefeated champions of the Big Ten. 

This year, we start the season 2-0. We feel good. We've got force in our QB with Tate Forcier. We've got another great kicker with a kick-ass name — Zoltan Mesko! We've even got our gloat back. Go Blue!

Where are your loyalties? Do you have a favorite team you cheer for, win or lose? Or do you think spectator sports are a waste of time? Do you have some other inexplicable passion or loyalty? Click here to show us your colors (Buckeyes need not apply). And if you want to see a real True Blue fan in action, do not miss Bob Ufer in the clip below, who had "never been so happy in all his cotton-pickin' 59  years," even after broadcasting 327 ball games. Now that's a fan!

Children and Religious Diversity — CMB Post

Originally posted on the now defunct Chicago Moms Blog.

We are a very liberal household. We chose our community in part because it is diverse — racially, ethnically, socioeconomically and, presumably, politically. Many residents who have the financial ability to live almost anywhere frequently cite our city's diversity as a major draw.

Yet few of us are naive enough to believe that we have achieved true integration of these diverse populations. There is still a pronounced achievement gap in most of our schools. There are neighborhoods that are considered "better" or "safer" than others. Children who play together in preschool and elementary school drift apart in middle school and high school — often along racial lines. Still, we try. At least our children know that not everyone looks alike or comes from the same background.

In our home, we talk a lot about tolerating differences, even within our family. My children are so different that I sometimes think they aren't even members of the same species. But we strive for acceptance (except when it comes to college football, as we are devout Michigan fans). So imagine my surprise when my middle boy came home in second grade and asked if it was OK that he was friends with someone who didn't believe in God.

I was stunned by the question. We are Jewish and our children attend religious school, but we are not particularly observant and have certainly never implied that we had a corner on the religious market. In fact, within our own extended family we have plenty of believers of different faiths, as well as our fair share of nonbelievers.

"Of course, you can still be friends," I assured him, and we had a wonderful discussion about how freedom of religion also includes the freedom not to believe. The First Amendment suddenly made perfect sense to this logical child and he moved on to being intolerant of his brother touching his stuff. I patted myself on the back for another parenting job well done.

So imagine my surprise when, a few years later, my youngest child encountered an even more disturbing form of religious intolerance at school — in third grade! A big playground brouhaha arose when ugly words were hurled at a child who said that his family did not believe in God. Parents and social workers were called in, and the school conducted a "Cool Tool" lesson in the classrooms about tolerance. I was proud of the school for addressing the issue directly, and yet something still did not sit right. I was particularly struck by the fact that both these instances of intolerance were directed at children and families who did not believe in God. Differing religious beliefs did not raise an eyebrow, but non belief seemed to be a huge issue.

One of the things I like about Judaism is that the religion itself encourages questions, debates, even arguments (at least within the Reform community). There is a constant quest for knowledge and understanding. We made the conscious choice to bring our children up within this religious setting because most of the people I knew who were raised without any religious affiliation grew up to believe in nothing. We felt it was important to give our children some background that they could learn about, rebel against, embrace or reject — but come to their decisions from a place of interest, knowledge and questioning.

I worry now, however, that by providing specific religious instruction, even in a tolerant congregation, we may inadvertently be teaching them that our beliefs are somehow "right", which almost by definition implies that different believers must somehow be "wrong." I hope this is not true. I hope these examples of intolerance will lead to more discussions, more growth and more tolerance. I hope my children continue to question — us, their religious teachers, their friends and their community — and I hope they do it in the spirit of achieving true diversity.

This is an original Chicago Moms Blog post. When Susan isn't pondering the big questions of religion and politics, she can be found writing at Two Kinds of People and The Animal Store Blog.

Photo courtesy of Jeanne Levy via flickr.com; the chalk art was done by Liza White and Kary Taylor at the Forest Grove Chalk Festival.

Ballet and Baseball

 

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who move through it with grace and those who don't.

I'm a natural born klutz. I believe I may be the only preschooler in history to have flunked out of tiny tot ballet. As a result of being, shall we say, somewhat coordination-challenged, I have had more than my fair share of weird injuries. If I can drop it, fall off of it or trip over it, I will.

For example, on a family camping trip when I was about eight, my dad took us fishing. We couldn't possibly fish close to our campsite, because clearly the good spot was through the woods on a narrow path that included crossing a creek on a log. When we arrived, my dad set up my pole with a lure. Before casting off, I leaned the pole against my shoulder while I slapped at the mosquitoes that also thought this was a good spot. During one slap, I managed to catch the lure between my palm and my arm, driving the barb of the hook deep into my hand.

Poor dad threw me over his shoulder and carried me all the way back to the campsite. A helpful ranger informed him that all he had to do was push the hook through so the barb would poke my skin a second time, cut the barb off and pull the hook back out the other way. My dad turned sheet white, mumbled something about how he couldn't mutilate his baby, and drove me some sixty miles to the nearest hospital. We waited through the results of a bad car crash before the ER staff could help me, at which point they numbed up my hand a little and did exactly what the ranger had suggested.

More recently, I was walking with my foot half on the sidewalk and half on the grass. In a complicated choreography, usually attempted only by the most accomplished prima ballerinas, I managed to fall off the sidewalk and into a cast. "Yep, yep, there it is," said the ortho guy, pointing to a small fracture on my x-ray. This time: six weeks in a boot, followed by months of physical therapy. (Hey, at least the therapist was cute, and the foot massages were fabulous.)

As you can tell, my body does not travel nimbly through space — at least not on land. I must have been a sea creature in a former life, for my body in water moves and reacts in ways that make me feel graceful and in control. The only thing that can be said about my land-based performance is that I have good posture.

I tell you these tales of woe by way of explanation for my blog's dry spell. A few weeks ago, I had a fight with a piece of Corning Ware and lost. The casserole slipped, and in my clumsy effort to save it, it broke into a few sharp pieces, slicing into the base of my left pinky. I knew it was bad; several hours in the ER and a consult with the ortho guys confirmed it: I had severed one of the pinky's two arteries and a branch of the ulnar nerve. While I could feel the pain of the cut, I could not feel the outside half of the finger.

So, they stitched me up and sent me to the hand surgeon, who did his thing a week later. Fortunately, I'm right handed, but now even more clumsy, between the pain and the nerve damage. Though my chances for a full recovery are excellent, it will take eight months to a year before I get all the feeling back in that finger. It seems nerves get very crabby when you slice and dice them. The worst part is an annoying pins and needles sensation, and vastly reduced typing speeds — a serious handicap for a writer.

Now for the grace and a little bit of baseball. In the '80s, a guy named Jim Abbott went to The University of Michigan (my alma mater) on a baseball scholarship. Jim was born without a right hand. I had the thrill of seeing him pitch once — he was a vision of fluidity and athleticism. Here's how his official Website describes his style:

"On the mound, Abbott wore a right-hander's fielder's glove at the end of his right arm. While completing his follow-through after delivering a pitch, he rapidly switched the glove to his left hand so he could handle any balls hit back to him." (Click here for a video clip of Jim in action.)

This entire operation happened in a matter of seconds. He knew where every part of his body was in space at all times. Abbott went on to play for the Yankees (but we won't hold that against him), where he had a winning rookie season. He also played for the US in the 1988 Summer Olympics, won myriad awards and even pitched a no-hitter for the Yanks in '93.

My question is, can he type more than 100 words per minute? Jim, if you can, I could use some help over the next 8-12 months.

Any other klutzes out there? Do you athletes and dancers want to weigh in? Click here to leave a comment or email me at 2KoPeople@gmail.com.

Photo by: Pointe by binababy12 via Baseball photo by: paintlady 101 via webshots.com.

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