Sitting Bill

Bullshit Mountain

Ahh, the Suprem Court

These are the conservative, "protecting personal liberty," judges, right?

(still alive)

So,

I don't write much anymore.

at all

It's sad, really. No time or desire. No fae muse to guide me. No life outside of the medicine: the sick people, the sterile rooms, the failing to thrive.

I've been thinking a lot lately about our need for relationships

that glue us together like pieces of one of those 3-D puzzle globes.

Kate and I always talk about therapy - counseling - as being less about intervention and more about our need to hear our deepest joys and fears being spoken in concert with another human being. We need to feel grounded to feel safe.

When we say someone is "grounded," we think of phrases like: "down to earth," "feet firmly planted," and other soiley metaphors. I think of electricity --> of that third prong on the plug. I think of the untamed energy of thunder clouds and it's insatiable need to crack down

back to earth. Back to the comforting - back to the stabilizing - presence of earth.

What most folks don't realize about lightening
is that it starts from the ground.
Unstable as the charged clouds may be
it's the earth that reaches out
to bring those stray electrons home.

Tonight, I find myself both charged and cloudy. Not with any of the passion of anger or the spiral of depression - just antsy. Uneasy. Uncomfortable in my own skin. I find myself eager to find my footing

in relationships that will last.

I feel exhausted by my efforts to find community in so many disparate circles.

My kingdom for a social Venn Diagram.
(I think Google is working on that.)

But, as I drift asleep tonight
to the sounds of my roommate's nightly battle against his epiglottis for air,
I believe
that we are puzzle pieces meant to fit
together.

And, myself: this buzzing cloud of anxious electrons --> all I need to do is wait

for the crack

and - embracing the blinding heat and light -

let myself be drawn back

to the pieces that make up my world. To those who ground me.

To those who, if nothing else, will echo back my deepest joys and deepest fears

wearing an expression that seems to fit.

Great Iran-Israel-US Comentary

On Israel and Palestine

On Christian Persecution

The Future Is Here

The Monty Python Moving Company Robot

Amazing.

Too Rambling to Podcast (World Peace)

--I wrote this over the course of a dozen underslept moments throughout the week and it was too spastic and disjointed to salvage in a podcast, so I'm posting my notes here for anyone interested. Thanks for not judging me too harshly. -- (Jon)

So I'm reading a book called "Love Wins" followed by the sarcastically avantguard, "A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived."

Let me back up.

Kate and I spent some time at the ashram of Amma, the Mother Theresa of Hindus, a woman whose spiritual moniker, "Amma," litterally means "Mother." It is a big place, a pink place, and a new world of spiritual dichotomy for Kate and I.

It was interesting seeing faithfulness played out in a different cultural setting. We would read a short maxim about selflessness outside the juice bar, only to have an Indian nun, dressed in white, push to the front of the line and - quite literally - put her needs before the needs of others.

As a former religious zealot, I remember how one personality can drastically alter an outsider's perspective of the faith she represents, so I try to withhold judgment. But, when it happens again, and I find myself muttering what we always do when someone breaks the unwritten code of the 'Q' or cuts us off in traffic, "Don't worry, she's obviously very important."

And then, the voice of a top-hatted and monicled cricket whispered into my ear,

"You're damn right she is!"

That drunk and belligerent hexaped is right. I thought to myself, and I remembered something in my wedding vows about "seeing the spark of divinity in all people."

Fast forward to today, I'm at the freaking Great Escape for grown ups. If you weren't privy to the evangelical Jr. High summer camp that is the Great Escape, you really are missing out. PFR Youth Ministries rents out college campuses around the country and holds week long "camps" where 6th-7th and 8th graders live in dorms, have the run of the college and generally wreak havoc. For scale, I've been to the Great Escape 6 times and loved every minute of it, even on either end when I wasn't really a crazy evangelical.

What was I talking about?

Oh, right: The Sivananda ashram. All of that was to say, this place is a Hindi-Yoga summer camp complete with lessons from holy books, a lot of exercise, not much sleep, food you eat with your hands, and singing and chanting that no one understands. To be fair the food here is more along the lines of water-rice and curry - making it all the more impressive - and the songs are in Sanskrit.

Oh, and if your curious what "water-rice" is, just say it out loud once or twice; whatever picture starts sloshing around in your head is probably accurate.

Ok, what's the point?

(I pause for a moment to scroll back to the top of the page and see where I was going with all this. If you're wondering too, it starts, " So I'm reading a book called "Love Wins" followed by the sarcastically avantguard, "A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived."

Hmm, I also meant to look up the correct spelling of "avantguard," but as this is a podcast, "Good News!" (More on that later.)

Man, with no ritalin these days and alcohol and tobacco forbidden by ashram decree, I feel more distractible than usual.

And with all this background, I can't remember the point.

(I look back at the what I last saved this as before my last session of shoulder stands and chest expansion.)

Oh right, World Peace.

I entitled this world peace, because all this---- (The bell just rang for more chanting. Back in two hours -- almost done; promise!)

--

Oh. Dear. Gosh.

Oh. My. Shanti.

Had I known, had I even suspected what would happen just moments after I left, I would have brought a videocamera.

I've seen a lot o crazy shit since coming to India, but nothing compared to watching the lights slowly flash on, one bye one after about 30 minutes of meditation and chanting, only to realize the next half hour would be

wait for it

a fucking talent show!

We are at summer camp!!!

It was like every talent show you've ever seen, a lot of musical numbers, some not quite inspiring modern art and a group performance of what appeared to be Indias version of the macarena.
Mew let me give you two-bits of advice if you yourself are thinking about getting yourself into a multiethnic talent show.
1. Don't tell stories. You'll spend all your time giving background information. All-of-a-sudden that Great Escape turd of a story becomes 6 times as long and we still can't understand your accent.
2. Do not under any circumstances do comedy. Never. Nope. I've never seen a talent show commedian who didn't make everyone in the audience feel awkward - now imagine that x 15 countries, dozens more cultures, an age range just shy of half a decade and english was a second language for more than half the crowd tonight. Oh, and did I mention that English was both (can you believe two idiots tried this?!) performers' not second but 3rd languages?! Not understanding cultural cu---

Ok, time out. Summer camp.

You got that.

Agree to conjure that feeling of awkward embarrassment at your last date with amateur standup glory, squirm around in it for a while and I'll stop writing.

I'll have to get back to "Love Wins" and where it, Amma, and this week at summer camp are what my own spiritual journey seems to be doing with them. I tried to link them all in a short, trite and mildly auspicious bundle, but the universe would not have it.

For now, though, you can know there is hope in India.

There is the best yoga of my life.

And there is the Napoleon Dynamite Dance performed tonight by a mustachioed and windbreaker clad Indian student, dancing on the alter to Krishna.

90 Second Counterstrain

We're traveling again - this time in India - and posting podcasts on 90secondcounterstrain.blogspot.com .

Thanks for listening!

Back to the Haiti!

We head out to the D.R. January 3 and cross over to Haiti soon thereafter on our way to the Partner's in Development clinic in Cite Soliel in Port-au-Prince. We're looking forward to leaving the safe reliability of the northeast and reuniting with our friends and patients in warmer lands. With any luck we'll even have internet and send out a few podcasts while we're there.

Thanks for waiting.

Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms | Video on TED.com

Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms | Video on TED.com

The Mercury-Poisoned Hatter

Written and performed from the discomfort of my sick bed in Concepcion, Guatemala.

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Engage with Grace

My former boss, Alex Drane, recently spoke at TedMed about the need for better conservations about end of life care and communicating with loved ones about the way, when the time comes, you would like to die.

I don't have access to the video yet, but here's what she said:

"So when I heard that I was going to be speaking with all of you about end of life, I was a little sad at first…even though end of life is an obsession of mine….because TedMed is such a sexy event, and speaking here is such an honor. I wanted to talk with you about something like vitality - feeling alive, being empowered, taking life into your own hands…but then it hit me… that’s what end of life actually is – that’s what it can be when it’s done well.

But … It’s not usually. 70% of people want to die at home, only 30% do.

Here’s another stat you might not have thought about recently – You only die once. Think about that for one second – You only die once. Not my words - Atul Gawande’s in his incredible essay on end of life – ‘Letting Go’- which I am now declaring as mandatory reading for each and every person attending TedMed.

End of life in the US has somehow failed to become personal. It’s like this thing we put on a shelf and ignore. And getting what you want at end of life has become synonymous with filling out forms and getting waivers and going to some lawyers office where you pay a lot of money and get excited when you get to keep the pen.

But that’s not what it’s about. Not at all. Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there was this extraordinary woman named Za – short for Rosaria. Za was first generation Italian, breathtaking to look at, driven to become a pharmacist – the first in her family to go to college – and of course she was also human…She loved to enjoy…spending money she didn’t always have, generous to a fault. She was madly in love with her husband John and her two year old daughter Alessia, the apple of her eye. Deep within Za welled this enormous sense of joy – a deep gratitude for the life she had. As it turned out, deep within her also lived cancer – and not just any cancer – but the terrible and unforgiving brain cancer Glioblastoma – described by one of her surgeons as whip cream in a sponge – virtually impossible to eradicate. The seven month battle Za waged against her illness was a mighty one – she endured two massive brain surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy, all the related humiliations – but the cancer didn’t really care.

Can you imagine being 32, being in love, being a new mum, loving your job, looking forward to standing up for your brother as he got married on New Years Eve – and instead of putting on your favorite sexy dress and highest heels, being ambulanced from one hospital to another because they had found a mass in your head? Can you imagine waking in a hospital bed surrounded by the very family that had flown in for this wedding – many all the way from Sicily - and hearing from them that you had a tumor in your brain? Can you imagine - after six exhausting weeks of radiation –sitting on this cot covered with a crinkly piece of paper, freezing in your johny, hoping your two year old wasn’t wreaking too much havoc in the waiting room where she waited with your mum – can you imagine hearing that the radiation hadn’t worked? That the cancer had actually grown? Can you imagine knowing you were dying? At 32?

I don’t know for sure that she did know that she was dying. Even though we were there with her almost every night over those seven months, I don’t know because we never talked about it. Death just wasn’t something you talked about in the family. And all those doctors that took care of her? In this hospital that was number one for this very type of cancer? They never talked to her about it either.

They did ask us what we wanted to do when the end was near, however. We didn’t know for sure, we hadn’t discussed it with her. Our gut was she would want to go home - So that’s what we told them. ‘We want to take her home.’

They said, ‘You can’t. Her case is too complicated. She needs to stay here in the hospital.’ Now I work in the healthcare space, and I am not a shy and retiring wallflower - But when the head oncologist looked down on us and said, ‘You can’t’ – I froze. Just caved. And Antonio – her brother, my man, who had spent most of those seven months embarrassed by how frequently I questioned her care team - he stood up, thank god, and said, ‘No. We are taking her home. We are absolutely unquestionably 100% taking her home.’

And so we did. And that night - after two months in the hospital, two months of her daughter feeling afraid to lie next to, or talk to, or even touch this mum she had stopped being able to recognize – on the very first night we had Za settled at home –– and safely surrounded by the comforts, the familiarities, the smells of those sacred four walls - Alessia crawled up next to her in the bed, and for the first time in eight weeks, gave her mum her medicine. For the first time since Za’s 2nd surgery, she tucked her head into the crook of her mum’s neck. And Za – who had not spoken or opened her eyes in at least a week, woke up fully, and looked her daughter square in the eyes, and loved her in the way that only a mum can. And the next night she died, peacefully, at home.

I wonder sometimes, who got the greatest gift that night? Was it Za? Who may finally have felt some peace, at home, finally able to connect with her daughter? Or was it really Alessia – who is now 7, and who to this day crawls into my lap to hear stories of her mum, and how she was the very last thing her mum saw – how her mums face had softened in unbelievable peace on that last night? Or was it really the rest of us – honored to witness that incredible moment – knowing we almost missed it?

Reinventing the way we deal with end of life is a gift for everyone – for each and every person alive today. And it’s something we have to do. Unquestionably, 100%, we have to do this better.

So we came up with this idea…a way to help get the conversation about end of life started – a way to Engage in this topic with Grace. Just five simple questions about our end of life preferences that we could all commit to being able to answer – for ourselves, for our loved ones.

The thought was this – if we could answer the questions for ourselves, if we could answer just these five questions for our loved ones, then we could focus on making sure the intent they represented was honored - No matter what. Take a quick look – do you know how you would answer? Could you answer for your loved ones? Let’s take number two - If you were in this state – would you want to be at home, or in the hospital? There is no wrong answer. It’s only wrong if no one knows your answer, and no one is willing to advocate for you.



Since we launched over two years ago, we’ve seen that once this conversation does get started, once we share these thoughts with each other, the lawyers, the affidavits, the system that intervenes to bowl over our intent– it stops being intimidating – we become empowered. You only die once – die the way you want. Make sure your loved ones get that same gift.

Our time together has mostly been about furthering health and wellness. I would argue that that’s what better managing end of life is all about – vitality. Za didn’t plan to get brain cancer – and none of us are planning for anything less than living forever – so until one of us here is smart enough to make that happen – let’s at least commit to this: we live our life with intent – we can end our life with that same honor. And we can make sure our loved ones have that luxury as well.

But if we wanted, we could do more than that. Since Engage with Grace went viral – it has made a difference, but it’s not enough. Make no mistake about it - The power in this very room right now could single handedly change the way we as a nation deal with end of life. You could get this conversation started in a real way – in a game changing way. You are an amazing group of individuals – and most of you do a lot of talking, a lot of influencing… what if you added this one slide to the end of your talks? What if you became an ambassador for getting this conversation going? This room’s currency is the social networks we all have – if everyone here shared this with their own circle of influence, by January we could probably have touched the entire US. Commit to being able to answer the five questions for yourself, for your loved ones. Commit to advocating for each other. Then commit to spreading the word – take this on as a mission. Just one slide – just five questions – just two minutes to spread the word. Think of the enormous difference we could make together.

Help us Engage with Grace."

Check out more at: Engage with Grace

Awkward Family Photos

Hall of Fame

"My Balls Itch!"

San Pedro and the whole Atitlan watershed is a polar combination of indigenous Mayan culture and ubiquitous Western influence. All the women and a few of the older men wear bright traditional, hand-woven garb. Many sell handi-crafts and traditional food on the streets.

Side by side with these are teenagers in blue-jeans, backward baseball caps and sneakers. In gringo havens like San Pedro, even many of the stores are owned by Europeans and a few Americans. (At our favorite ex-pat haunt, the drunk Irish owner literally paid me (5 Quetzales) to add a Colombian, anise-tinted, clear moonshine to my tonic water.)

Despite all the English we hear here, some of the slogan-laden English language T-shirts we find people wearing are truly epic.

Por ejemplo:

"My other body is a temple."

"I Don't Recycle."

"I'm from the land of misfit toys."

"Magic Isn't Real."

"I see your lips moving, but all I hear is 'blah blah blah."

"BOOBS"

And my personal favorite: scrawled across the chest of a well-to-do 55-year-old, stony faced and, I'd like to think, proud man:

"My Balls Itch!"

I thought about telling him, but quickly realized my Spanish wasn't nearly proficient enough to translate such a nuanced cultural statement.

So we let him go on his way, reasonably convinced that no one whose respect he cares about can speak English either.

Guatemalan Footpaths and Writing Repentance

Sitting at a breakfast table in San Pedro, Guatemala, I am taken aback by how little I've written lately. With the inception off out podcast (90secondcounterstrain.blogspot.com), travel, learning Spanish and general scheming, I've been a bit short on literary excellence and corporate processing.

So, to update:

July was Haiti, and just as hot, horrifying and fulfilling as you might expect. Most of our earlier podcasts revolve around our time in Puert-au-Prince

August started out by living vicariously through two Australians we met in Mexico who traveled to the country it looks like the US is pissing on.

Last weekish we took a series of night buses through Belize and onto Flores, Guatemala, where we checked out the ruins at Tikal before jumping on another "bus" to Antigua.

In Antigua, we began treatment for Typhoid (Kate and I eat far more street-meat than can be considered healthy or safe.) and rekindled our love-affair with internet-television.

30Rock consumed the next few days of high fever and rebellious digestive tracts. It was awesome.

Yesterday we took a harrowing van ride to San Pedro, a gorgeous part of Guatemala sitting on lake Atitlan, where we'll do language school for a few weeks.

If you're still reading the most boring blog entry I've written in recent memory (ok, the only blog entry I've written in recent memory), good for you. I'm sure your stamina and attention span has been rewarded in the corporate world. We appreciate your future sponsorship of our international endeavors.

Tomorrow, I promise, I'll bring you fart-jokes.

Buyer's Remorse

Have you ever thought,

"If I just lie down on this incinerator full of medical waste, I bet I can pick up that goat by it's head?"

Until tonight, I hadn't either.

On our way back to the tent tonight, Kate heard a faint bleating. "Awe, poor lost goat," she said, making her way toward our destination after an exhausting day in the clinic.

"Uh, we should probably go visit," I said, grinning. I am more nighttime than Kate and at the equator it gets dark early.

After a bit of looking, we localized the sound to an underground concrete cistern used to incinerate the clinic's medical waste. It was half full of absorbent (absorbed) blue pads, used needles and one lost baby goat.

Only in Haiti.

Glimpses of Star Wars characters trapped in the trash compactor spring to mind.

We open the 4 foot diameter cover, and I say to myself,

"If I just lie down on this incinerator full of medical waste, I bet I can pick up that goat by it's head."

Kate went for some fresh blue absorbent pads to lie down on while I waited with the bleating goat.

She had brought the flashlight with her, and in the dark I realized just how clean the medical waste incinerator really looked. I went for it.

---

Toes gripping the edge of the cement rim and bare chest scraping against the concrete, I feel as though I may have acted hastily.

Still, I was in it now, literally, and that goat was mine. I just needed to earn his trust...

After some coaxing, patting and a little bleating of my own, I palm the little can-eater's head like a basket ball and pull him to safety (Safety is a relative term in Haiti, but I'd at least call it an improvement.).

Kate returned with the flashlight soon there after, and I used it to examine my belly. I was covered with a thick layer of black - we'll call it soot -and a thousand tiny scratches.

My skin still burns from the alcohol bath I took to disinfect my body from EVERYTHING. While I was still soaking in what I like to think of as a micro-abrasion locator, though, I thought, "How appropriate."

Writing this, I can't think of how exactly it was appropriate, but I'm sure it will come to me.

And now I sleep.

Bon swa.

90 Second Counterstrain

Kate an I are in Haiti and already disastering with the best of em!

Today, I got to teach a young Haitian translator (named Showty - a self-made moniker named after "shorty," the prominently featured rap name for lil' ladies in the songs through which he learned English. I don't have the heart to tell him what his new name means...) to fix the PVC pipe he shattered, spilling our precious shower water on the barren land.

We made a jump-kit for travel to the "village" (6,000 person tent city - up from 3,000 when we were here in march), and introduced the medical records and treatment protocols Kate worked so hard on - both were met with much rejoicing.

We also published our first podcasts on 90secondcounterstrain.blogspot.com!!!

90 Second Counterstrain is "a record of our lives recoiled" in minute-n-a-half segments by Kate, me and a few other players to be named later we find along the way. Showty already has his eye on an episode.

We'll be in Haiti for a month and the world for the next 11 months. Our year off officially began 2 days ago, and thus far it has been a dream.

We'll keep you posted.