Mail Art Call

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Art by Michael Harford, 2010

I’ve been on the blogs a while now. I think I actually started in 2005. That means I’m going on my sixth year. I deleted my blog once, and cleaned it out pretty good another time, leaving only posts I thought had significant value. The oldest I have posted on my current blog is from March of 2007.

Some of the sites on my side bar have been there for a long time as well. I haven’t visited everyone in a long time. One of these days I’m going to sit my butt down and go to every blog and make a comment.

Lately, my own blog has made a sort of transition and I dabble in the art of haiku and very amateur photography. In browsing around from here and there, mostly by clicking on a commenters name that I might see often at a blog I might frequent, I have found some fantastic sites and made many new friends.

But I still have many old friends. Some of whom I have had the honor of meeting in the flesh either when I was traveling, or when they were traveling, and stopped over in my neighborhood. On an upcoming journey, I have plans to hopefully meet two or even three or four bloggers that I have only “met” here on these pages.

One such blogger friend is Michael. He calls himself Coffee Messiah. Michael garnered that name as he used to be in the coffee business and has the eye and nose for this important beverage.

A creative selection from Coffee Messiah from his blog

Years ago, I used to sell freshly roasted top quality coffee beans on Ebay, and the name of his blog, also Coffee Messiah, caught my eye. We exchanged back and forth and have been for years now. Last Fall, Michael was in the Minneapolis area and we met for coffee at the J&S Bean Factory, a coffee shop and Roastery in St. Paul that is owned by a very good friend of mine.

Just like I have changed, or rather evolved, from the way I used to blog to the way I participate in blogging now, so has Michael. I’ve been visiting his blog lately and I see he has taken to doing artscapes, or art scenes, cut and pasted on post card sized stock.

Another Messiah original

I went down his side bar and found a blog called Scrapiteria. It is about the art of collage and goes as far as to call the people who do this form a collagist. Scrapiteria is only interested in cut-and-paste artwork. No digital forms. I know I’ll be going back there for more of a look.

In the meantime, Michael, the Coffee Messiah, has put out an Art Call for Mail Art. Mail Art can be found all over the world. It could be called a cultural movement and has been around since the 1960‘s. It involves sending visual art (but also music, sound art, poetry, etc.) through the international postal system. Mail Art has also been called Postal Art or Correspondence Art. In its basic form, I see Mail Art as a post card size work of art. HERE is another site I found with some history and great examples of Mail Art.

At first, when I saw Michael’s Mail Art Call, I didn’t have a lot of interest. But lately, through Michael posting submissions for the call on Facebook, I have seen more and more of it and I kind of like it.

Here is The Coffee Messiah blogsite. He mentions the 2011 Mail Art Call in the first post, but scroll down and see some of the collagist style art that has been submitted or found by Michael. Make sure you scour the side bar and check out the links as well.

Then, go to the Mail Art Call site. It is called The World is a Town. Those words are described as being found in some very old Russian transcripts that date back to the 11th Century. The theme is described and the call is made. Submissions are starting to be delivered to Michael and he is posting them. The ultimate destination for the submissions is an art show, but maybe more might become of it all. More shows, possibly international shows.

I was talking with my twelve year old Grand Daughter. She is the oldest. I showed her the sites about Mail Art and she took off. I had things all over my desktop. I finally put them all into a folder so she could keep all her work together. She is eagerly creating a Mail Art piece to submit to Michael’s call. I have never seen her so enthusiastic about anything, and I love to see her this way.

It was funny how I came to introduce her to Mail Art. A month or so ago, she was drawing these round faces. She was using recycled paper, lined paper. In fact, the paper was the large wide margined lined paper that an early elementary school child might use when first learning how to print.

Anna's first attempt at Mail Art which I find quite impressive

I recalled Ledger Art as done by the plains indians. I told her what I knew, that is, there wasn’t much in the way of paper to draw and paint on, so these resourceful people took to using old ledger book pages. This site has some wonderful examples of Plains Indians Ledger art.

My Grand Daughter’s art looked kind of like the ledger art,or at least mimicked the form by using what she could find, in this case, the lined paper. She had created a series of what she calls, Anna’s faces. Here are a couple of examples of her work.

Ringo the Lizard

I mentioned the Mail Art Call and put the two together. Using her faces to create a submission. She hasn’t stopped yet and is furiously working at creating a piece for submission.

You can tell she is so mature, she uses our names and not Grandma and Grandpa

I am considering taking a shot at creating a piece of Mail Art myself, and since I now have so many ties to some fabulous artists on my own side bar, I hope that they’ll read this, go to Michael’s site and make a submission themselves. From what I have seen over the past year is such marvelous creativity from individuals and art colonies traveling and working together on collaborations and themed projects.

I’m looking forward to seeing the submissions that Michael posts on his blog and anticipate I might recognize some names of the contributers from my own blogroll. I know I’ll see at least one from my Grand Daughter Anna. I’m also hoping that The Coffee Messiah reads this and comments with more information about this project.

It was really good to meet him face-to-face. I’ll be heading down through his neck of the woods one of these days. I’ll have to visit and have a cup of coffee, or maybe tea.

Take care and be well.

Peace

Pondering on a Cold Sunday Morning

A woman and her companion, sizing up the snowy trail

It's cold out there this morning. 15 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Let's see, that's -26.1 on the Celsius scale. The high today is going to get to 13 degrees above zero according to The NOAA Weather Service. They are also telling us that it will be sunny all day. I'm glad I have a trip planned to get me to New Mexico soon. I'll be leaving in two weeks. I like the idea of a sharp contrast in weather and temperatures to break up the monotony of the long cold snowy northern Wisconsin Winter.

County Highway M, headed West out of River Falls

Notice I didn't say "bad" weather. I try to do that on purpose. The weather is only bad if what you're trying to do is hampered or made dangerous by it. Today, sitting around the house and eating the delicious home made minestrone soup along with some grilled cheese sandwiches will not be hampered by the weather, in fact, the cold temperatures will enhance the experience.

My daughter, profiled along the Kinnikinnick River

We do have a lot of snow on the ground. We've had a couple of good dumps as well as the one inch here and one inch there over the past couple of weeks. My daughter took her dog out on one of the local trails the other day and took some fabulous photos. I didn't get her permission to use them, but she used my camera, so I downloaded all of them on my iPhoto. She always had a knack for an artistic touch in drawing and photography. Maybe someday she'll get back to that as she has loads of talent.

Breaking Trail

I just want to post a few Winter scenes here. Might give my friends in New Zealand, who are sweltering right now, with excessive heat and humidity, some relief. You know, look at the cold when it's hot, and vice versa.

Crosby Dogge, he has his own Facebook page

Her dog, named Crosby after the star hockey player for the Pittsburgh Penguins, is a Husky. He likes the snow and cold, but lies around the house all day on the sofa. He might be a dog, but he isn't dumb. Remember, it's cold outside!

Snowshoes by Spadoman

Enjoy the Winter scenes. I will too, because they will motivate me to start packing for more Southerly destinations.

Peace

In The Wind

Haiku My Heart

Friday January 7, 2011

It’s Friday. I get creative on Friday mornings. I started writing Haiku. I had heard of it before, but really don’t understand much about it. I guess I know this style originated in Japan. Most of the time, I don’t understand poetry. Maybe it’s my lack of my ability to concentrate, but I have always found it hard to “get” it, poetry, that is.

My friend, Rebecca, who pens the recuerda mi corazon blog, started this meme some time ago and I took part in it. In Spanish, recuerda mi corazon translates to Remember My Heart. It is so fitting to write a weekly post of Haiku that comes from the very heart that we hold in our bodies, remembering what it has been through. 

This meme then, to write a haiku from your heart, and post it on Friday. I tried it and liked it. Some kind souls have told me they like what I write from time to time. I have an easier time of haiku because it is only three lines. Three lines of poetry is much easier for me to fathom than a long poem.

I’d like to tell you about the how and why of what I wrote for today's Haiku My Heart Friday submission if you’ll bear with me. I knew it was Friday and I knew I wanted to write haiku for this meme. I needed a subject.

Well, I’ve been planning a Winter trip which is actually going to be two trips. I am excited about getting away and traveling down to the Southwest and into California. I’m so excited, in fact, that planning and thinking about these trips is all I do. So I found a photograph of my motorcycle, fully loaded, from when I was on the road and in New Mexico last September.

Okay, I have a subject and inspiration. I have a photograph. I decided to make this a happy joyful post as the idea of traveling and taking my motorcycle is just that for me. And lately, I have been visiting old memories and some of life’s ugliness has been in the forefront. I want to push that stuff behind and write about something I love, traveling, and especially travelling on my motorcycle.

That’s where I’m coming from. There is no way, I believe, that I can write three lines and tell you all of this. So you see, I still don’t “get” it. But I’m having fun. By the way, click on the highlighted words Rebecca’s Blog and see more examples of Haiku My Heart Friday. There are some very creative people out there.

Rebecca's Blog

My Triumph Tiger, loaded for a road trip, waiting patiently for a rider

Rushing wind through me

Taking with it the struggle

Healing my own soul

I cannot explain further how being on the motorcycle soothes and heals and takes away any pain.

I also want to mention that I have added some blogs to my side bar. My side bar is not in alphabetical order, and some of the names I use are not the name of the blog itself, but rather a nickname I use when I talk about these blogs. The new ones I have recently added are Hey Harriet, Ms. Moon, Ms. Pie, Meri's Musings and Going Incognito. If you care to, find these in the side bar and give them a look.

The first trip will leave in a little over two weeks and take me to New Mexico. More about the itinerary in the days ahead.

Take care and be well, all of you, and enjoy Peace in your hearts.

Peace

Reefer Madness

If this 1930’s propaganda film can teach you anything about pot, it’s how to laugh at people who smoke too much of it.

This story was written in July of 2007

It was early in the 1970’s. We had just moved from Chicago to Minnesota. After we tried the rural life and found it too hard to just jump into, we moved to St. Paul and rented a place. We had one daughter back then. Numbers two and three hadn’t arrived yet.

There was a young couple, unmarried, co-habitating hippies, living above us. I guess we were living the hippie doctrine as well, we were married though. Howie and Paula, the folks upstairs, were nice people and back in those days, at least for us, we had no extra money and never strayed too far from home and the macaroni and cheese.

A very youthful Spadoman with Mrs. Spadoman, circa 1971, at the High Falls along the Pigeon River on the Canadian/Minnesota border

We shared a lot of dinners with those guys. Paula worked for a turkey research farm for the University of Minnesota. She’d bring home flats of fresh turkey eggs and we’d scramble a bunch or make these surrealistic oversized deviled eggs. Four eggs would make a loaf of French Toast.

Due to our vice habits of smoking way too much pot, the large turkey eggs and copious quantities of anything we made for dinner was suitable. Seems like we always had enough money for a little reefer. If we didn’t, then one of our friends did. This was the social life of just about everyone we knew. Go to work and come home and sit around and smoke dope. We’d eat, then crash, and do it again the next day. On weekends we’d just skip the work part and get high all day. Oh, and listen to a large, loud, blasting stereo playing the Allman Brothers or “In-a-gadda-davida”.

Laughing Joe, I wonder what was so funny

Howie and Paula were from a small town called Spooner, Wisconsin. Howie was working for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad and was transferred to the St. Paul yard in Minnesota from Wisconsin. They both still had family and friends back home. These friends would come and visit once in a while and their friends became our friends quickly, mostly because of our pastime. We were all very kind and happy people.

Many of these folks from Wisconsin also worked on the railroad with Howie. One of them found that there was a plethora of Cannabis Sativa growing all along the railroad tracks. They called it ditch weed and it was ripe for the plucking. Steve picked a larghe trash can sized bagful of this ditch weed and dried it out to get it into smokable condition.

Try as we might, we smoked and smoked and never got the tiniest sense of a buzz from the ditch weed. That was too bad. For we had enough of that stuff to keep us in tall clover for a long time and even the possibility to make a few bucks in the process. But from resourcefulness came an even better idea.

Steve’s girlfriend, Laurie, took some of the ditch weed and ground it up in a blender and made it into a powder that had the consistency of flour. She added this “flour” into a chocolate chip cookie recipe and fed them to the hungry mouths of the munchie driven masses, that’d be us.

Low and behold, the ditch weed worked wonders when baked and the results were an everlasting blast of euphoria which came on exactly one and one-half hours after swallowing the first bite. We used that green flour in everything. Cookies, cake, mashed potatoes and the ever popular chocolate fudge walnut laden brownies sprinkled with powdered sugar.

One time I was on the road being a truck driver and brought a batch of these cookies with me. I was laid up in Walla Walla, Washington and spent the evening late into the night in a place called the Zodiac Bar. I met some folks over cold beer and the conversation led to the ditch weed and the fact that I had some of these magic cookies in my possession.

I left town in the morning, but not before dropping off a few of the baked morsels to my new found friends from the Zodiac. I told them to call me sometime and tell me what they thought of the cookies. When I returned home from a west coast run, I had gotten a phone call and this fellow tells me how much he enjoyed the ditch weed delights.

You gotta remember, this is in 1976 and there were no cell phones and long distance was still expensive. This guy was so impressed he made the high buck call to thank me and wanted me to mail him some more cookies.

Another time, when Howie and Paula decided to tie the knot and get married, we went to the wedding which was held in Paula’s Mom and Dad’s back yard back in Spooner. A beautiful place along the Yellow River. The dinner, if you will, was a keg of beer and these beautiful loaves of cranberry orange nut bread made with locally grown Wisconsin cranberries, and laced with the "green" flour. A tub of butter for slatherin’ was on each and every table.

We ate and ate this bread and drank and drank the beer and nothing happened. I guess the recipe, being different from the cookies and brownies, made the impact time longer. We ate so much of that sweetbread that by the time the high kicked in, we had ingested enough to keep us high for a week!

We partied all night, slept eight hours, got up, ate breakfast, then ate lunch, and found ourselves still holding the buzz. It was so out of control that we just decided to roll and smoke one big fatty because we couldn’t wait any longer to come down from the cranberry orange nut bread fiasco.

Well, the ditch weed cookie craze went out of favor after a while and we went back to good old pot smoking again. Time went on and many years and many a joint later, I happen to be on an Amtrak with a very good friend. I was older now and had more sense. Well, maybe just older.

I got a hold of some pot and baked a half dozen cookies. Since we couldn’t smoke pot or even cigarettes or cigars on the train, we ate them cookies and drank good gourmet coffee that we had brought from home and brewed in the snack car, getting free cups of hot water from the attendant.

We sat in the scenic vista car as we rode the tracks through the Rocky Mountains, all the world taking on a new light. Each of us giggled and laughed like the old days and we talked of the memories of those days of our lives. This experience was also many years ago.

I guess now, as I approach geezer hood, it might seem a bit odd to divulge to you, my readers, escapades of my youth that were illegal and to some of you, immoral. But I’m just taking the advice from a friend that says I need to laugh at least once everyday while I go through life’s progressions. Recalling bits and pieces of the pot head days made me laugh and brought back the pleasant thoughts of old friends.

A few years ago, we were at a Pow Wow near Spooner, WI. A lady sat behind me and recognized me by my voice. She tapped me on the shoulder. It was Paula. We hadn’t seen each other in 28 years. We sat and caught up on who died and who was living with who, and we laughed about our antics.

Today January 4, 2011

The time stamp on this story said July of 2007. I don’t think I ever posted it until now. I probably didn’t think I should tell people about such raucous behavior. I’m going through a stage where I’m digging through old writings and posting them and this one brought back fond memories and laughs. Besides, I also realized that a lot of my past could bring you down, especially if I posted things back to back like I have recently. So this is a part that is laughable. And it's all true.

Memories of my over-the-road truck driving days, memories of the early days when we moved from Chicago to Minnesota and memories in general of a life well lived, for hiding what I did would be hiding from the truth. 

You all know by now the byword at Round Circle, The Truth is Spoken Here.

I might want to mention that the first time I ever saw pot and smoked it was sometime during my time spent in the American war in Vietnam. Turned on by a friend named Mike, it changed the reality of a very ugly portion of my life. Might not be a good excuse for my behavior, but this fact is also the truth.

In any event, I can’t help but look back and smile. I’m still with the same woman and we’re still in love. That’s enough of a blessing for anyone to have, and when I recall old memories, I can share them with at least one of the people who made them with me, and sometimes more, as many of my old friends are still around. That is truly priceless, and these things we did, no matter how foolish, made us who we are.

I just can’t wait to hear the pot stories from you, my faithful readers. I’ll be checking my e-mail as I know you’ll want to stay flyin’ low, below the radar.

Peace

Tugging at My Heart Strings

This was originally written on March 11, 2003 on a laptop computer as I recovered from my second heart bypass operation. Stanford VA Hospital Palo Alto, CA

I was  36 the first time it happened. Around July sometime in 1985, I was playing softball in Hinckley. I played for the Alpine Inn team and we had a game one evening. I had been the pitcher and batted cleanup for all the time I had played for Alpine Inn. They were a Class B Minnesota State Softball Association sanctioned league team.

Danny what's his name, the owner of the Pine City bakery where Barb worked, had played for Alpine Inn for a number of years. I guess there were plenty of teams around. guys getting together to play softball, having fun, re-creating.

But there were only two really well known teams in East Central Minnesota, Alpine Inn and Bob’s Standard. Bob’s Standard, sponsored by the local Standard service station, was a really good Class B team. Nobody hardly ever beat them. Alpine Inn, the other well known team was good too, no-one hardly ever beat us either except Bob’s Standard! I always thought of Bob’s as a really serious team, and Alpine as the bunch of guys who wanted to have fun, laugh, joke around, go out after the games and get drunk, that sort of thing.

So Danny, remember the bakery owner, had seen me play on a very recreational church league. He played left field for the Lutherans. I played wherever the born again christian Evangelical Free Church would ask me to. 

At one of the church games, Danny in left, me up to the plate, I whacked one over his head for a homer. Next time I was up, he backed up, and I whacked another over his head. This happened a third time and I wish I could remember a fourth, but definitely three times in a row. After the game, Danny asked me if I’d be interested in playing for the Alpine Inn team. I was flattered. things like this happened rarely in my life and I enjoyed being appreciated.

I had played for the team probably about two years, it was a hot July night, we were playing in Hinckley and I was up for my first at bat.

It was a hot grounder easily played to short with a routine throw out to first. As I had made it to the team, I would end my career, because this happened three times in a row, just like the homers over Danny’s head.

Each time I hit the ball and ran to first, I got a sensational pain in the middle of my chest. I was 5’8” and weighed in at about 260, maybe a few pounds more depending on the weekend I had. I had never experienced heartburn very much, but I thought that’s what was happening. I’d run to first as fast as I could, just like Pete Rose always did, I’d get the pain, rest and it went away. Well, almost all away, the third time it lasted for a while longer.

My rest took me to the bench then to the ground where I chose to lay down and just stop moving. After a few minutes, I got up and the pain was gone. I was still trying to get something for heartburn because this was bad and I didn’t want to start getting heartburn and not being able to do anything about it. I was on a kick of drinking a bottled sparkling water called “Lacroix”. I wanted some now because a burp would feel so good. I think someone actually went to the store and bought me one. It wasn’t a good evening at the old ball park. Mighty Casey was going down and he didn’t even know it.

A school teacher on the team suggested I see a doctor and have myself checked out. I should have listened. No one else could care less. I’m sure many of them wondered how I could do what I did being as big as I was. I must have looked like a water buffalo running around the bases.

Some time, a few months later in September, I was playing some touch football at the high school field. I remember scoring two or three touchdowns. I also remember laying on the ground like I had to do that July night playing baseball. I don’t remember the heartburn type of pain, but it took laying down flat on my back for me to recover.

Now just a minute here. This story isn’t about how good I was at sports. I mean, I wasn’t when I was a youngster. I was just hitting a stride and living up to my potential and had a few good years back to back.

The next day was Sunday and it was the day to go over to the Pine City municipal liquor bar and store and do the weekly cleaning. I ran a small business called, what else, “Joe Spado Maintenance Service”, and I had a few accounts around town. The “Muni”, municipal liquor store, was my biggest account and my pride and joy. I often went over on Sunday, the only day in the week they were closed, and did a super clean. I tried to get Barb to help me often. She hated it. It was my job. I solicited it, I got it, but I always thought she should help me do it, and she did, a lot! I realized many years later that I should have been fully responsible for getting it done and that without her help I was doomed. She held the account together and managed the business when I was away with health problems. Thanks for everything, Barb.

Well, on Sunday, September 22, 1985, I was there cleaning with my oldest daughter Maggie. That “heartburn” came back again. I had done everything and saved the vacuuming for last. I used a large upright bagger and was pushing this thing around with precision. I was strong, so, I was able to direct its path with my muscular arms and wrists. I was close to being done, maybe another ten minutes or so when the “chest pain” came on. I picked up the pace because my nature tells me to get the job done so you can get home and get some relief, even though I don’t know what I wanted to be relieved from. As I hurried to finish, the pain got worse. I’m sure I drank a bottled sparkling water or two to try and burp to relieve the heartburn. We finished and headed for home.

When I got home, I laid down on my bed, clutching my chest. I don’t remember doing this or how it actually happened, but I’ve been telling the story this way since it happened so I’ll stick with it, and that is, my oldest daughter Maggie, let’s see, she would have been 12, came to my bedside and said,” Gee Dad,  you don’t look so good, maybe you oughta go to the doctor!”. (or, words to that effect). Our foster son, Joe, was there and he was old enough to drive. The pain was not letting up and I asked him to drive me to the hospital emergency room in Mora, 23 or so miles away.

We pulled up to the emergency room entrance, I walked in. When someone asked if they could help me, which was immediate, I said, “Yeah, well, er, I don’t know. I got this pain in my chest and I got some real bad heartburn or somethin.” There was a doctor close by, he had heard me. He looked up and told me to come into the room and lay down right away. Soon a flurry of activity around me was taking place with blood being drawn, shirt taken off, wires with leads pasted to my chest, and a little white pill was given to me and I was told to hold it under my tongue.

It was only a moment later that the pain disappeared completely. The doctor had given me a sublingual nitroglycerine pill. it is used to relax the blood vessels and relieve angina pectoris, the “heartburn” pain I had been experiencing. My doctor, Doctor Wilson from Pine City, showed up soon after. He told me about the pill and that he thought there might be something wrong with my heart. Only minutes later, he spoke to me and told me the blood test results bore out that I had experienced a mild “MI” or, a heart attack, a Myocardial Infarction.

Now up until this point, I had not put together the instances of chest pain and how they related. I soon realized that they were all connected. the ball park, the football field and the vacuuming.

My life would change forever, I was 36 years old.

After that,  it was a trip to the big hospital in Minneapolis, the one that specialized in heart problems. They put me in an ambulance and sent me on my way. I got an angiogram first. They put a tube up into your heart through an artery in your groin. They inject die through the tube and take X-rays. Any blocked areas show up on a TV monitor. You are awake the whole time and don’t care because they inject you full of valium so they can do what they want and you don’t care. (Could use some of that at times, seems like it takes care of stress for a spell) When they find the blockage, they insert a balloon into the tube and inflate it, flattening the blocked area into the walls of the artery. This opens you up so the blood will flow again freely through the arteries. They used the balloon in 1985, now, they use something called a stent.

I went through this procedure in September and again in December. You see, the one I had done to me in September collapsed. They call it restenosis. My angioplasty procedure restenosed in December and was done again. That procedure also restenosed in late January and the doctor then told me that it would do no good to keep trying the angioplasty procedure. I needed to have a heart bypass operation. So now I was admitted to the hospital and had this bypass operation. This put me on recuperation for about a year. I did have some luck and recovered nicely.

These photos are of my heart, from an episode in 2001 at the Minneapolis, MN VA hospital

Before. The black lines bracket the blockage, the pretzel shaped lines are the wires that hold my breastbone together from the surgery I had in 1986

It was time to make some real changes in my life. I had already started to do this since the first onset of the heart problems, now it was time to get serious.

After. The stent installed in the blocked area, opening my arteries for good blood flow

I must change the diet entirely, add exercise to my life and get rid of stress. Let’s see, change the diet; 36 years of eating like a pig must come to an end. Let’s see, start exercising; start walking or biking or something, I’d never done this before. Let’s see, get rid of stress; yeah, right!

That brings me to today, January 4, 2011

I wrote the above article in March of 2003. Today, it is January of 2011. When I looked at the date I wrote it, it was exactly one week after my second heart bypass which took place in Palo Alto, CA at the Stanford VA hospital. In fact, I was in the hospital recovering when I wrote it. I need to also tell you that I had another heart episode in 1993. I was living in Grand Junction, CO. I had the same chest pain sensation and the nitro pills didn’t take it away. I laid in a hospital bed for about a week with an intravenous nitroglycerine drip. When the pain finally went completely away, they took off the drip and tested me. They told me I had a small piece of my heart tissue die. They told me it was on the right side near the back of my heart.

The funny part of all this is that here I am, 25 years later, and I have the same issues as I had when I was 36 years old. I carry too much weight, I eat poorly, I don’t exercise enough and sometimes not at all, and although I am making huge inroads on dealing with stress, I still haven’t got a handle on it completely.

Still, I awake everyday in hopes that I will have a good day and do something good for my body, something that will make a difference. I thought getting involved with The Longest Walk II in 2008 would help me make some real life changes. I did lose over 20 pounds and bring my blood sugar levels to normal levels. But I soon slipped back into the old habits as I’ve done numerous times.

I lost weight and had normal blood glucose, (the amount of sugar in the bloodstream, a measurement familiar to all with diabetes), readings a few times. On a trip to California in 2000, while at the VA in Hot Springs, SD in 2005, on the Longest Walk in 2008 and again after I went to an in patient program at the VA in Cleveland in the Winter of 2009. 

Like a freakin’ yoyo. I’d get healthy, but never stay there.

As I get older, it gets harder and harder to change habits and do what I know I need to do to help my own self out. On the face of it, the stress factor seems different than ever before. I am much more relaxed and willing to accept that it will take time for me to get out there to start exercising, and that I’ll get answers to all I anticipate when I start to add important dietary changes into my life. I have already started a trend where I don’t eat certain foods and I am much more active than I have been this past year. So, seems like I am off to a good start for this challenge.

We’ll see as time goes on. It sure is a strange thing. I know that my poor behaviors, as far as eating and exercise are concerned, can be harmful and even fatal to me since I already have heart disease and I am a diabetic. Yet like the smoker that is dying of emphysema, he must have that cigarette. I tempt fate with my style of living. Fast paced, stressful, worrisome. I wonder how riding the spirited Triumph motorcycle affects me. Add to that the lack of any significant exercise and a diet full of sugared and salted fat, red meat and heavy carbohydrates and you have the makings for another heart episode. I can not have a third heart bypass surgery. If I don’t die from my arteries closing up, then I certainly will spend the rest of my life in a wheel chair with an oxygen tube in my nose.

The Jolly Roger is still flyin' folks. Don't count me out just yet, Mateys

So, here I go. Like the druggie, alcoholic or compulsive gambler, One Day at a Time. Maybe today is the day I turn the corner, or die trying.

Peace to All