Grey Matters

Grey Matters is in print.  You can purchase it through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or through this link:  www.createspace.com/3416990

I'd love to have you read it.  Thanks for the support.

In Sickness and In Health

I was hit by a truck this week.  I could barely make out the license plate as it sped away: H1N1.

I had spent the last six weeks dodging germ traffic in my clinic, having diagnosed several dozen patients with the much hyped Swine Flu.  But my luck could only hold out so long.

My symptoms were mild at first, causing me to believe I may have contracted some lesser virus.  But, being a much better doctor than patient, I pushed it too hard through the weekend, and then crashed on Sunday night.  Still in denial on Monday morning, I loaded myself up with ibuprofen and tried to make it into work, only to have my nurse make an executive decision and send me right back home. 

And then I truly crashed.  Through the floor.  Plummetting towards the dark ugly bowels of the earth.

Being several days into the illness at that point--too late for tamiflu--I decided that as long as I was home, I wasn't going to mask my symptoms with ibuprofen.  If this illness was telling me to lay prostrate in bed, then that's what I was going to do.

My lungs were on fire.  My sputum was the color of pond scum.  My sinuses were turgid with pressure; I thought if I could stick a needle in them, they would pop.  My head throbbed.  My skin bristled at the slightest pressure of even my clothes.  I had no appetite. But mostly, my entire body was overpowered by a profound malaise, the likes of which I have never before known.   I lacked the strength to read, to even hold up my head.  I lay in bed and moaned for hours and hours, like a cow crazy with disease who stumbles in a winter pasture, thrashes, and then lies still, the only sound the mournful, wheezing bellows of its lungs as snow begins to slowly cover it like a white sheet in the morgue, like the blizzard that dropped two feet of snow in Denver that night.

I thought, so this must be what it is like to die.  This is what happens when an insult utterly saps my body of vitality, and I succumb finally to the malignant entropy of the universe, wave upon wave of disease and pain crashing over me as I flounder, thrash, and then relent.

Forty eight hours passed in unmitigated misery.  My lovely wife was an angel, Florence Nightingale bringing me soup, covering me up with blankets, and holding down the rest of the fort.

Just past the point where I thought my body had lost the fight, I began to heal.  My sinuses cleared.  My cough lessened.  My brain fog lifted.  But mostly, I felt energy returning to my bones.  I felt a rush of exhilaration.  "I have taken your worst shot, you dreadful Pig Flu, but I'm still standing."

Today, I went and played basketball, wary of whether or not my convalescing body could handle vigorous exercise yet--if ever.  As I drained three pointer after glorious three pointer, I knew that I was back.  Me.  My body.  My soul.  My deadly long range jump shot.

I deal with suffering people everyday of my life.  I sympathize with them as I try and coax them back to health.  Lucky for me, I don't often personally experience pain or physical suffering.

But I have renewed empathy now.  An illness such as this is a reminder of how miserable it is to lose our precious health, how our physical suffering threatens our emotional strength, and of how amazingly frail, yet marvelously resilient, our bodies are.

The sky is blue today. The snow is melting.  Life is beautiful again.  Hallelujah.

The Power in Sean's Palm: A Short Story

     Evening breeze, indigo sky pierced by early stars, sharp and shimmering. This is August in Colorado, just past dusk: cool, dry, and violet. I make my way up the trail from the culvert, across the field and towards the car, with Sean at my heels. No flashlights. He pants and shuffles along, struggling to keep up. He's a foot shorter than me, and as is his custom, he keeps on talking. 

     ". . . and then the ghost waved his arms and because the Indian was afraid of ghosts he jumped on his horse. . . "

     Sean talks, but we rarely converse. These excursions of ours across the expansive meadows at the edge of suburbia are exercises of his legs, tongue, and imagination--and my ears. I take him on these hikes by choice, but not for the conversation. I feel some sense of obligation towards Sean, though I’m not sure why. Maybe it's my inner nice guy. Or maybe it’s just fatigue that makes me relent to his constant requests, because I have a hard time saying no. But something tells me the real reason has little to do with Sean. These trips are for me, too. An imperfect antidote for loneliness. On a otherwise perfect Friday summer night, it’s either Sean, or no one.

     Sean has a syndromic appearance: short stature, misshapen face, mild developmental delay. But either through denial or bravado, his parents don’t acknowledge that he is different, determined that he be treated as absolutely normal. Since they moved onto our cul-de-sac two years ago, they've never made mention of him being different—playing catch in the front yard, inviting me over to watch movies, going to football games. Or encouraging him to ask me to go on these evening hikes. Sean is eighteen years old, a year older than me, on track to graduate from high school next year in the special ed program. He is nearly "normal" enough that at times I've wondered if he has any true handicap other than being slow. He is nice, harmless, not unpleasant in any way. But his small size, compact facial features, and thick gaze mark him physically. I took the cue from his parent's and became his friend, treating him as normally as possible. He sits with me at lunch. But what does normal mean to Sean? He’s still talking,  

     “. . . then the chief shot the arrow straight through the heart and then the Indian . . .”

     I’m ready to change the narrative. “Hey, Sean,” I interrupt, and we stop walking. I point upward. “Look at the stars tonight.” Sean continues to blithely tell his story for a few more steps until he collides with my leg and his narration trails off.

     “What?” he asks, stumbling backwards through the weeds. He sees that I'm pointing and looks up. “What?”

     “See that really faint cloud up there?” I feel like a museum guide. My elaboration of random facts is another standard feature of these treks. I continue, “That's really a billion stars or more that are so far away that to us they look like a cloud of light. It's called--”

     “--that's the Milky Way,” he finishes for me, matter-of-factly, staring at me now rather than at the stars he’s just named. I cross my arms and look back at the sky.

     “Yeah,” I say, “you're right.” Sometimes he knows more than I expect. I breathe deep and feel the cooling, dusty air in my nostrils, and for a moment I feel like I'm breathing in stars. So vivid, so far away. The breeze glides open and vast across my face.

     “Mark,” Sean calls, “do you know what stars are?” He has yet to lift his eyes off of me, continuing with that thick gaze. I look down at him, waiting for his answer, preparing a gentle correction. He concludes emphatically, “They’re burning planets.”

     A thin smile escapes my lips. After a second, I respond smoothly, “Well, kind of, Sean. They're actually huge balls of gas that burn super hot. They're like the sun, just farther away.” 

    "What makes them burn?" he asks. 

  

    "Well, let's see, when gravity pulls the gas into the star, it starts to heat up, I think. And then . . ." Now it's my voice trailing off as I realize I don't have any depth of knowledge about what's next or why, and I'm also highly doubtful that Sean cares about anything more specific anyway. I could say whatever I want, but instead I just stop talking. His gaze remains unbroken. In the starlight, I can't tell what he's focusing on—my nose, my cheeks—but it’s not my eyes. Silence. I wonder if he is thinking or if his brain is just on pause. We're only few feet apart, but suddenly it seems there is a great distance between us. I glance towards my car a hundred yards away and start to walk towards it.

     “Mark . . ." I turn my head back around and see Sean holding up his palm. He whispers, “Wait.”

     I stop walking and turn to face him, wondering what he's going to do. He is breathing deeply and closes his eyes, bending dramatically forward. He squats and brings his palm down among the weeds, passing his stubby hand back and forth a few inches off the ground. He whispers, “I can feel them.” I say nothing. A moment passes, and he tries again. “I can feel them,” he repeats, adding, “They were here.” He grabs a handful of dust and pebbles and lets them sift slowly out of his thick fingers. He soulfully turns his gaze back to me and begins to speak.

     But I beat him to it.  “Who?” I ask. The line between reality and imagination is thin for Sean. Apparently I have run out of patience for tonight. “Who was here?”

     Sean theatrically sweeps his gaze across the fields, to the mountains and back, fingering the dust. With his eyes on me again, he intones, “The Indians.” Tension mounts in his voice. I wonder what movie gave him this idea. “Six of them. They died on this ground, because of. . .” Once again, his eyes sweep to the ground, back to me. "Because of . . . the white man."

     He says "the white man" with an affected, introspective guilt, as emotionally raw as an 90’s TV Western. When he pauses again, I blink and turn away, walking briskly towards the car. Sean churns his legs and stumbles through the weeds, struggling to keep up. The drama intensifies in his voice. “Mark, I can FEEL them.” He waits for me to say something, but I don't. He grabs my arm, but I'm not stopping. “You don't believe me, do you?” I have little desire to respond and can’t think of anything to say. We have reached the car. I walk over to the driver's side door. Sean follows me around, watches as I slip into the driver's seat, and then walks back around to the other side. I turn the ignition as he opens the door and plops down. The radio comes on loudly, and I turn it down to a murmur. Sean stares forward and asks again, “You don't believe me, do you?” 

     I roll down the window and put the car into drive. I glance at Sean, then back to the road. What should I say? “Sure,” I shrug, “there used to be lots of Indians around here. Utes, Arapahoe, some Cheyenne, I think . . .” Then I stop, realizing I don’t really know any more beyond that. What do I really know anyway, except for things that other people tell me? How do I know what Sean knows, or doesn't know?

    The lights from the suburbs shine across the fields. In the daylight, I can pick out my house from the crowd, but at night they all meld into a wash of sodium lights and empty spaces. The cool Colorado air flutters through the open window, drowning out the radio.  I reach over to turn up the volume. I look at Sean. His head is bent over like he might be asleep, but I catch a wet glint of the distant lights reflecting off of his dull eyes. He's awake, staring at his open palm like a Bible.

After Apple Picking

We're up to our ears in apples.

We have two apple trees, and our neighbor has three, and he said that if we picked his apples, we could have them. Well, I'm a sucker for anything free, so I have--rather recklessly-- risked life and limb in climbing to the flimsy upper boughs of the trees to pluck from them the last tantalizing, crimson-blushed green apples. (Where's Waldo in the above photo?)

The kids have been great helpers. Joy is a skinny little tree monkey who can slither onto branches I can't reach, and Grant is my right hand man on the ground. We've all come away scratched and scarred, but we're now enjoying the fruits of our labors. The apples are small and tart, but perfect for baking, and Elizabeth has made apples pies, apple sauce, even apple pizza.

It all reminds me of a favorite Robert Frost poem, After Apple Picking. Like all of his best work, it's full of rustic imagery, subtle symbolism, and whimsical melancholy. It evokes thoughts of hot apple cider, autumn frost, and the irrepressible encroachments of time that fatigue our best intentions.

Enjoy!

After Apple Picking
by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

The Best They Can

I work with a great nurse, an RN with years of ER and OR experience on her resume. She maintains a healthily humorous view of needy patients, exhibiting some of the hardened exterior that most of us health care workers eventually develop out of experience and necessity. But beneath the tough veneer, she has a gigantic heart and displays gentle acceptance of even our most difficult patients, and face to face she always gives them the best of her compassion and kindness.

On the very first day we worked together, she came out of a room with a patient who was, to put it mildly, a train wreck: a damaged body with a defeated soul, at the end of their rope, whose health and social situation was as depressing as it was desperate  She came into my office, put the chart in front of me, and said with a sigh, "Dr. Foster, they're a mess. But you know what? They're doing the best they can."

I looked at her for an explanation. She continued, "You know, they didn't wake up this morning and say, 'I want to fail at life today, so I'm going to ruin my health and my relationships and do bad things that hurt other people.' We're all doing the best we can. I guess this is what that looks like for her."

The best they can. Over the succeeding months, she and I have repeated this phrase like a mantra when dealing with our challenging patients. (However, we have decided that there are exceptions, and that some of our patients are indeed not doing the best they can, and in fact are intentionally failing out of the school of life. But these are rare exceptions.)

By and large, it holds true. At the least, this mantra forces me to perceive needy patients in a more compassionate light. Isn't it true, I tell myself? Don't most people, within their capacity and experience, try to succeed at life? The narcotic addicts, the hypochondriacs, the borderline personalities, the depressed and defeated: isn't the fact that they're breathing, sitting in the doctor's office and seeking help--doesn't that mean they're trying to get better, to do better, to be better, taking the debris of their lives and attempting to refashion something usable, even beautiful?

We all have survival instincts, and many of us are stuck permanently in survival mode. The frantic, abrasive mother who slaps at her children as she begs for pain meds may be tough to deal with, but after all, she's a single mom, abused herself as a child, and she is trying in some dysfunctional way to carve something better out of her life for her and her children. She's seeking love, safety, acceptance, and peace on very basic levels, and when these appear too elusive she turns desperately to unhealthy avenues to fulfill her needs, like stoning herself with oxycodone and sedatives every day and living with an abusive man who at least pays her some attention. This probably represents the best way that she can figure out how to cope. She's doing the best she can. And sadly, so is he.

The best they can. I keep repeating it to myself as she slaps at her two year old again and becomes more insistent of her absolute necessity for narcotics. She needs them like she needs air. She might die without them. On a scale of one to ten, her pain is, like, a bazillion.

I'm not sure I believe it, but luckily I've got a nurse who reminds me to look at her with compassion, even if I refuse to enable her addictions. Maybe with time I'll learn to be more naturally accepting and kind.

Forgive me if I'm not there yet. I'm doing the best I can.

Lincoln

Greatness takes many forms. It is typically easy to recognize and quantify, and we celebrate those who achieve such heights. Roger Federer's fifteen grand slam titles, for instance. Neal Armstrong walking on the moon. Warren Buffett's wealth and sagacity. Dealin' Doug's hairpiece.

But rarely do we find greatness in a place that matters most, embodied in a person whose values, vitality, and vision become intertwined indistinguishably with our own identity, our own survival. These most rare people represent a near perfect incarnation of our highest ideals. There are probably only a handful of them in the history of the world--great men and women who perform their greatest acts on the grandest, most critical stages--and unfortunately, they tend to be assassinated. But their greatness doesn't fade with time, but rather grows, and we justly carve their faces onto mountains, build monuments to them in the nation's Capital, or write them into scripture.

At the very top of my list of great ones, behind only Jesus Christ and the Buddha, is Abraham Lincoln. I just finished Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and my mind is overflowing with gratitude and admiration for the backwoods prairie lawyer who freed the slaves and saved the Union.

The book is tirelessly researched, referenced, and comprehensive in its scope, nearly eight hundred pages long, and honestly I have so many thoughts floating in my mind about Lincoln that I don't even know where to begin. I think I'll just start by naming, in no particular order, attributes that Lincoln evinced and why they are so resonant with me.

• Magnanimity: this is, to me, his overarching and most remarkable character trait. He had such a generosity of spirit about him that he was able, nearly always, to set aside petty, selfish concerns and do what was best for the greater good. Time and time again, he promoted talented men who had personally insulted, slandered, betrayed, and undermined him to positions of responsibility and trust. In kind, these men proved their worth, and eventually became trusted, diligent advisors, indispensible to the Union's war effort. This is most evident in Lincoln's relationship with Henry Seward, the man he defeated for the Republican nomination in 1860. Initially embittered and aghast that he had been defeated by a non-deserving hick, Seward went on to become Lincoln's most trusted advisor, most able stateseman, and his closest friend. Likewise was Lincoln's relationship with Edwin Stanton, the lawyer who humiliated Lincoln at a trial in 1858 but went on to become his irascible, indefatigable, and ingenious Secretary of War, his second closest advisor and friend. There are dozens of other examples, not least of which was Lincoln's liberal and forgiving attitude towards the South and Reconstruction, which he was never able to implement due to his assassination.

• Strength of purpose / Confidence tempered with humility: Lincoln's magnaninity sprung from his rock-solid, healthy self-confidence, a powerful ego tempered to perfection with humility. Where his confidence sprung from is anybody's guess. His mother died when he was young, and he had virtually no formal education. He was tall and physically powerful , but awkward and not good-looking. He endeared people to himself with humor and meekness, but was not in any way socially dynamic. No person had any reason to believe that someone of his background and education could become President, rid the nation of its original sin of slaverly, or save the Union. But somewhere inside Lincoln's mind and heart, he was aware of his own powerful mental and moral faculties, and came to believe in his own essential goodness and importance. That accurate self-awareness and internal fortitude propelled him into election after election, through defeat after defeat, and eventually self-actualized during his presidency and within the crucible of the Civil War, when he put all his skills to the maximum test and maximum utility.

• Courage: doing the right thing for the right reasons in the face of tremendous adversity and personal (or political) danger was Lincoln's hallmark.

• Wisdom: he possessed a folksy wisdom. Similar to Jesus and his parables, he had an intrinsic gift to relate anecdotes--usually humorous--that would lucidly define a principle or succinctly illustrate a complicated argument. It's probably hard for us to completely understand the social and political environment in which his reasoning was required. How do you reason with a society that has been attempting to justify enslavement of other human beings for hundreds of years, and that is correctly wary of the extinction of their way of life should slavery be abolished? Lincoln did it--if not successfully--then at least convincingly.

• Humor: he was a funny man, consistently conjuring humor to rouse the spirits of those around him, and even more so to lighten the impossible sorrows that burdened his own shoulders. He was always self-deprecating, in great contrast to most of the preening politicians of his time. Here's a favorite Lincoln anecdote that he once relayed:
  
  A man encountered Lincoln in the woods. Lincoln saw that the man was carrying a rifle, and tried to charm him. "How do you, sir" he asked.
  The man gave a half smile but said, "Friend, I have no quarrel with you, but you must now prepare to die, for I must shoot you, for I have vowed if I ever encountered a man who is uglier than myself, I would kill him."
  Lincoln ripped open his shirt and exclaimed, "Sir then fire away directly for my heart, for if I am uglier than you, I do not want to live!"
• Eloquence: derided by the self-important bloviators of his time as too plainspoken and simple-minded, he nevertheless wrote and uttered some of the most articulate, logical, poetic, and essential words in national and world history. At Gettysburg in November of 1863, following a three hour speech by the preceding verbose speaker, Lincoln arose and gave an address that was shocking in its brevity--less than three minutes. The gathered crowd could scarcely believe it as he folded his paper and sat down. Some didn't even know he had started yet, much less finished. Pundits of the time ridiculed him or professed offense at the breach of proper etiquette. But as we all know, the words he spoke are among the most important, concise, and resonant words of all time. He would go on to top that speech (in my opinion) with his second inaugural address 18 months later as the war drew to a close.

And if I didn't have anything better to do with my time, I could go on and on: Determination, Ambition, Resilience, Honesty, Social Intelligence. Lincoln possessed all of these qualities in more abundance than most any other human ever has.
Weeks before his assassination, he had a portentous dream foreshadowing his own death. But he was at peace with that. He had said many times that should he die but the Union be saved, he would die a happy man. Around that same time, he was on a ship sailing toward Virginia when a terrible squall rattled the rest of the passengers and crew. Lincoln emerged hours later from the hull of the ship, stretching his arms after having slept peacefully through the storm. Just five days after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomatox, John Wilkes Booth put a bullet in Lincoln's head. It was the night of April 14th, 1865, Good Friday.
The parallels to Christ are eery and unmistakable. Forgive me if my praise of Lincoln borders on being reverential. Certainly, he was only a man, in full possession of human flaws. But it is not hard to see the hand of divinity working in his life. raising him up from obscurity, placing him in position to be savior of our fledgling republic.
Not everyone we call great deserves the honor. But Abraham Lincoln does, a reminder of the greatness of our nation, the greatness of the human spirit, and the greatness we each harbor within ourselves.

The Back Nine

"Golf is a good walk spoiled." --Mark Twain

I think I'd have to disagree with Mr. Twain on this one.

Maybe that's because I usually play golf with my Dad, and we always get carts. Can't spoil a walk when you're riding.

But even when we do walk, and in spite of the fact that I'm a pretty lousy golfer, in spite of the fact that I routinely lose, and in spite of the fact that it costs a lot of money and takes an exorbitant amount of time, I've learned to love golf.

Especially on a day like today, when we had the back nine at Foothills pretty much to ourselves, and the morning sky was flawless blue and the green grass was still dewy wet. Even the fact that I collapsed on the final hole and lost to both my brother and my Dad barely even phased me. I still came home relaxed and smiling.

I owe my love of golf primarily to two men. First, Dr. Dave Smith, a mentor and golfer from my residency in Greeley. "Dr. Foster," he persuasively told me, "Part of becoming a doctor is learning how to play golf, and I'm going to teach you how." Thus, he dragged me to Greeley's handful of courses on many occasions, and under his tutelage, I finally overcame the threshhold of total humiliation that had always precluded me from improving my skills. I've learned that once you get past the point where you can hit at least half of your shots decently and a few shots well, golf starts to get fun.

The other man is my aforementioned Dad. We never golfed until I was done with medical school, but we've golfed a ton over the past six years. I'll admit, he's paid more than his fair share of green fees on my behalf, and my old excuses of "I'm a poor starving resident with young and hungry children," or "I forgot my wallet. Again," no longer apply. (My latest in the age of cell phones is, "I'm running late. Would you pay for me and I'll meet you at the teebox?" This still works pretty well on occasion.) We're both at points in our careers where we can take Friday mornings off, and it doesn't take much persuasion for either of us to meet up at the links. Dad's better than me, but not by too much, and so we always have pretty competitive rounds, with neither of us having a clear advantage.

But as I mellow with age, the competition is no longer the thing for me, at least on the golf course. I enjoy the scenery, the air, the quiet. I enjoy the momentary concentration prior to each shot, the precision required of all my muscles, limbs and breathing acting in unison, and the glory of striking the ball perfectly--as smoothly as slicing soft butter--and watching it sail through the shadows and sky and land within feet of exactly where you were aiming.

Okay, so that doesn't happen very often for me, but when it does, I'm telling you, it's sweet.

The momentary glories of golf don't always obscure its myriad frustrations. Sometimes I still feel like pulverizing some bystanding goose when I skull a chip shot into the lake, or twisting my putter into a knot and chucking it into the bushes when I rim out a five foot gimmee.

But for the most part, I refrain from demonstrative frustrations now. I take a deep breath, look at the surrounding lush foliage, and remind myself that "Hey, this is a game, and it's better than working."

It's a great game, and one I hope to grow old with. I've put my kids in golf lessons early with the semi-selfish hopes that, for at least the next forty years, even when I'm an old, crooked man, we'll be able to play golf together.

I see myself chuckling softly as I sink a putt to ice the round against my middle-aged son, and not minding a bit that he unaccountably forgot his wallet. Again.

(Here's another favorite poem, this one a sonnet by Timothy Steele describing the exquisite serenity of a languid summer afternoon. Enjoy.)

Summer

by Timothy Steele

Voluptuous in plenty, summer is

Neglectful of the earnest ones who’ve sought her.

She best resides with what she images:

Lakes windless with profound sun-shafted water;

Dense orchards in which high-grassed heat grows thick;

The one-lane country road where, on his knees,

A boy initials soft tar with a stick;

Slow creeks which bear flecked light through depths of trees.

And he alone is summer’s who relents

In his poor enterprisings; who can sense,

In alleys petal-blown, the wealth of chance;

Or can, supine in a deep meadow, pass

Warm hours beneath a moving sky’s expanse,

Chewing the sweetness from long stalks of grass.

Classic Punchlines from the Mick

(A late Father's Day entry.)

I have a strange sense of humor. My sister Megan believes (depending on the day) that I am the funniest person in the world. Sometimes, I am funny by being either intentionally unfunny or excruciatingly annoying. I do have, occasionally, some pretty good comedic timing and delivery. But often, I am the only one who laughs at my own jokes. (My kids think I'm hilarious, but they're sort of a captive audience.)

At any rate, whatever sense of humor I have owes much to my dad, the Mick. The Mick loves a good joke more than anything, heavily favoring the corny pun variety. From an early age, these jokes were fed to me at the dinner table, like a sticky dessert that you may not fully enjoy, but hey, it's better than no dessert.

In homage to the Mick, I am going to reproduce the punchlines only of some of his after-dinner classics:

• "That's ketchup, and that's mustard, but worchestershire sauce?"
• "You can't eat a pig like that all at once."
• "I'm a frayed knot."
• "It's a knick knack, Paddywhack. Give the frog a loan."
• "Crossing the state lion for immortal porpoises."
• "The Czech is in the male."
• "Bob and Bill checked out okay, but that Oink is sure one ugly fellow."
• "The pig liked the zoo so much that now we're going to the movies."
• "Remember the Alamo!"

Any others you all can remember?

Terrible and Terrific

My son Justin is a force of nature. He is now two years old, and he will not--cannot--be ignored. You must deal with him.


He is a walking paradox. Let me explain:

He is exceptionally cute. He is incredibly frustrating.

He never eats anything of substance. All he desires is cheese and juice.

He is inconsolable. He is sweet and tender.

He is a monster in a boy suit. He is a boy in a monster suit.

He loves his Daddy. All he wants is his Mommy.

He expresses understanding that this is the last book before bedtime. He always wants another book anyway.

He lets you know when he has a stinky diaper. He poops in the bathtub anyway.

He is a restless bundle of wiggly energy. He falls asleep within seconds of the car starting.

He never wants to take a nap, when what he needs more than anything else is a good nap.

He loves a good joke, but he's not buying that old schtick this time.

He is two years old, a complete (though very small) person with a unique jumble of traits.

He's my son, and I love the little dude to pieces.

Cult of Personality

My clinic staff and I recently participated in a corporate-sponsored personality test. Each of us individually answered a hundred or so multiple choice questions online, and a few weeks later we received a visit from a very nice motherly human resources woman armed with pages of read-outs to discuss the results.The results placed each of us into one of four main groups: red, green, blue and yellow personality types, then a hundred or so sub-types. The results graphically represented our conscious and unconscious personalities, and then churned out several pages of commentary describing us, as well as descriptions of how our personalities interact with others. (Apparently, the company that administers these tests is based out of Ireland, and they claim to have a global database of several million personalities, and a "98% accuracy rate", whatever that means.)I was skeptical. How could they discern anything about me from just a hundred formatted questions?

But then I read the personalized commentary. It was actually a very strange feeling to read a print-out of something that seemed like an intimate tour of my own mind. What I mean is, it pinned me to the wall--exactly. Now, I'm very aware of our human tendency to over-interpret and over-personalize generic data. Think of how many people are convinced of their astrological tendencies based on a few loosely worded vagueries in the daily horoscope.But this was 10+ pages of dense, highly specific paragraphs. I had to laugh out loud several times as we read through our results. Yeah, I thought, this is how my brain works. They had me convinced that their method of testing had pinpointed my personality traits.

Then things turned slightly surreal. As the staff took turns sharing some specifics from their profiles, the nice human resources lady looked at my read-out long and hard, and then said, "Wow. That's really unique, Dr. Foster."

"Yeah," I mumbled. "They got me pretty good."

"No," she said, looking past the words to the graphic representations. "I've never seen somebody with this combination of traits." She pointed to a page that showed a series of graduated arrows pointing up and down in both the conscious and subconscious areas. Most people, she said, had equal arrows clustered in one specific area. Mine, however, had scattered dominant arrows jutting in opposite directions, and particularly my conscious and unconscious arrows were mirror-imaged. That means, she continued, that you have totally opposite traits that manifest themselves in vastly different ways in public versus private. And the size of the arrows means that it takes a lot of internal psychological exertion, both publicly and privately, for you to manifest your personality.

"Are you tired a lot?" she asked. "Do you have a hard time sleeping?"

Why, yes. I do.

"I'm not surprised," she said. "It can be psychologically exhausting to have to exert yourself in each direction. Most people's personalities choose the path of least resistance, but your pattern looks like the path of most resistance."

So that means I'm crazy, right?

"No, not at all. It means you’re incredibly unique. I've done thousands of these, and I've only seen one other person whose profile resembled yours. He's one of our most successful CEOs at our biggest hospital in California."

Well, I'm not CEO material.

"Maybe not. But he is an accomplished sculptor and painter. You're obviously a skilled doctor, but do you have creative interests?"

I'd like to fancy myself a writer. I just finished a novel.

"There you go," she said. By now, the rest of our staff was honed in on our conversation, and it was a little uncomfortable, but she remained intensely intrigued. "You are just very unique. One in a million, or at least one in ten thousand. Just very special."

Now, I must confess that, at this point, I was getting weirded out. I felt like I was being set up for a practical joke, or like I was John Locke from LOST being told by an imposter that I was very special just so I could be manipulated for nefarious purposes. I deflected the conversation back to the other staff, and then ruminated in silence on the significance of this silly test.

I felt skeptical, but strangely hopeful. Here was somebody telling me what I've always ineffably felt, that I'm a totally unique personality, and a big jumble of contradictions. The truth is, I am vastly different in public and in private. Just ask my poor wife or my co-workers to describe me, and you'd probably think it was two entirely different people.

And I do get psychologically exhausted at work, and sometimes at home, too. I've always felt uneasy being a part of a large group where I don't have a defined role, or just being one of the guys in a large group. But I also do very well at relating to people one-on-one, or at performing or speaking to large groups, or in carrying out my accepted role as a leader. I don't let people into my "circle of trust" very easily, but once they're in, I become a fiercely loyal and dependable friend. I'm spacey and idealistic, but sometimes pragmatic and perfectionistic. I'm religious and skeptical, a liberal conservative, an author and a gardener and a doctor.

I've always known those traits in myself. But here was a test and another person confirming it. The test may be totally bogus, and it really doesn't change anything about who I am or how I behave, but I went home feeling validated, like somebody out there, or at least some test, understands me and appreciates my uniqueness.

Then, of course, I started criticizing myself for being so susceptible to feelings of validation from a darn test. I think my wife, and even my kids, are probably the only ones who see all sides of me and still love me completely, and isn't that validation enough?

But we humans always seek more, don't we? Why this longing to be understood and appreciated? I'm reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and even he, one of the all-time great humans, repeatedly remarked that his driving ambition was to be deemed "worthy of the esteem of his peers." If you think about it, a person who was completely detached from consideration of his peer's esteem and appreciation would be bordering on anti-social, and that’s not a healthy thing.

At any rate, if you're still reading this, and you know me, then you might be thinking one of three thoughts: 1) Dude's weird; 2) That’s the Mark I know; and 3) I guess I don't know him as well as I thought.

Right on all counts. And now I've got a fancy graph to prove it.

Up and a Che'

Over the past two weekends, I've seen two very different masterpieces of sorts.

The first was Evita, performed live at the Arvada Center. It was a perfect setting--comfortable theater, exquisite scenery--and we had the perfect seats, front and center. The acting and singing were superb, bolstered by the excellent source material. Forget Madonna and Antonio Banderas: Evita is a gripping tour de force of the human condition. It's really so many things: a classic rags-to-riches story, a fable about the perils of ambition, a geopolitical epic, a haunting love affair, a poignant tragedy.

But I think the true genius of the story is in the character known only as Che'. Che' floats in and around Evita throughout her mercurial young life, sardonic at times, sympathetic at others. He is sort of a conscience, sort of a narrator, sort of a pest. He is not Che' Guevera, though his name is clearly meant to evoke the revolutionary ghosts of South America. In the opening scene, which inauspiciously is at Eva Peron's funeral, Che' emerges indinstictly out of a crowd of mourners, and the meaning is clear: he is the embodiment of the People, the common masses from whence Evita herself came. He sings, voice dripping with sarcasm:

"Oh what a circus, oh what a show
Argentina has gone to town
Over the death of an actress called Eva Peron
We've all gone crazy
Mourning all day and mourning all night
Falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right

Oh what an exit, that's how to go
When they're ringing your curtain down
Demand to be buried like Eva Peron
It's quite a sunset
And good for the country in a roundabout way
We've made the front page of all the world's papers today

You let down your people Evita
You were supposed to have been immortal
That's all they wanted, not much to ask for
But in the end you could not deliver."

The second masterpiece was Up, Pixar's new film. It's a crazy tale about a bitter old man and a chubby boy scout who float their house to South America for one last chance at adventure. It's a risk--really, an animated movie starring an old curmudgeon?-- as most Pixar movies are, but it's one that works on every level. It's hilarious and slap-sticky for kids; it's rich and adventurous for escapists; it's poignant (but not overly sentimental) for the dreamers and lovers in all of us. It was deeply symbolic and metaphorical without being heavy-handed. I left with the feeling of exhilaration you have when you've allowed yourself to be swept away in the powers of a master story-teller.

"Adventure is out there," the movie says. Regardless of age or personal history, you can chase your dreams and yet find joy and meaning in whatever your current circumstances. And you might meet up with some mad scientists, goofy dogs, and prehistoric birds along the way. Or maybe you'll realize the true adventure was in giving all of your heart and soul to the woman you love.

I'll tell you what: nothing is more certain in this life then a Pixar movie being nearly perfect in every way. They are visual feasts, computer animation that is both crisp and lush, expressive and human. The voicing and characters are always spot on. But their true magic is in their storytelling. The Pixar guys get it. Their multi-layered stories are able to delve into the heart of the human condition in ways that few other movies can. They maintain their child-like wonder at the world around them, and yet give voice to some of our deepest adult fears and hopes.

Every single Pixar movie, at some point, hits you right in the heart. I have trouble even narrowing the list of my favorite five. I guess I'd have to go with Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Wall-e, Toy Story 2, in that order. And now I might have to vault Up to the top of that list. That's pretty good company to be in.

Going for the Goal

I'm going to be a terrible soccer parent. I already am. Not in the "beat up the other players' dads" sort of way, but more in the "living vicariously through my children" way. It's pathetic, I know. But I'll be honest with you: few things get me more excited than watching my children excel at sports.

This Saturday was a watershed moment. After a series of early season snow-outs, both Joy and Grant have had good spring soccer seasons. I am Grant's assistant coach, and he's made his Daddy proud, scoring numerous goals in his three-on-three, no-goalie league. He is naturally aggressive and competitive, and his success has given him bragging rights at home. Joy is also competetive, but she tends to subvert that quality in deference to her underlying niceness. That's not a bad thing, but it results in her struggling to be aggressive, and as I've learned, aggressiveness is the whole enchilada when it comes to kids' soccer.

This is Grant's first year playing, and Joy's third. When she was four, she dominated her little soccer league, once scoring ten goals in a single game. But her last experience in Worland was very poor when, as a five year old girl, she was competing against eight-year old boys twice her size. She hardly ever touched the ball, and became quite timid as a result. For most of this season during games, that timidity persisted. When all the girls would bunch up around the ball, she would back away rather than rush in, and though she has a strong leg, she would pull the string on her kicks and never get much power into them.

This was very frustrating for her Daddy to watch, and it has led to numerous backyard soccer sessions. After struggling to find a way to motivate her to release her inner beast, I conjured up this little motivational gem: the Thunder Crack. "Rush to the ball," I enthused. "Plant your left foot, swing your right foot like a hammer, and then crack the ball with thunder." For whatever reason, she seemed to get this, and her kicks took on a lot more power.

But it wasn't translating into shots-on-goal in her games. Ironically, part of the problem was that she was doing a particular soccer skill too well: playing her position. She would linger in her lane on her side of the field rather than pursue the ball, which is good, but her teammates would be unable to pass her the ball.

So much of soccer is about timing, and taking advantage of opportunities when they arise. Joy and I started a little mental imagery game: Imagine that you're playing your position, when the ball pops out of the crowd and rolls in front of the goal. You rush to the ball faster than anyone else, and without stopping, you plant your foot, crack it with thunder, and it rockets past the goalie and curls into the back of the net. I'd have her close her eyes, breathe deep, and try and make this scene come to life. We did this last Thursday morning on the short ride to school. She giggled and rolled her eyes, but played along.

Skip to her make-up game that night. She played well as the right striker, though her team was losing. Mid-way through the second half, the ball was on the other side of the field trapped in a gaggle of girls. Joy stayed true to her position, when suddenly one of her teammates broke away with the ball and made a nice (and unexpected) crossing pass. Joy broke free. I could sense in her body language the rush of realization: this was her image come to life. She burst towards the ball as it crossed forty feet in front of the goal. Without slowing, she planted her foot and cracked the ball. It shot underneath the goalie. Joy watched the ball curl in the back of the net and stared in disbelief for a split second, then leaped off the ground in pure exuberance. It wasn't just a good goal. It was a great goal, an actual pass and a thunderous strike. Her teammates were rushing in a bouncing herd to hug her when she looked up to catch her parents on the sideline, where her Daddy was trying to keep his tears hidden.

But that wasn't the watershed event . That came two days later in her final game of the season, when she came crashing out of the gate like a little woman possessed. Having tasted goal-scoring glory, it was clear she wanted more. She smelled blood in the water. In the first half, she had four solid shots on goal that narrowly missed. But early in the second half, she upped the ante in aggressiveness. The ball bounced in front of the goal, and the goalie came out to grab it. It was a play that, nearly 100% of the time, the other girls back off the ball, nobody pursues it, and the goalie just scoops it up. But not this time. Joy rushed in, got to the ball a split second before the goalie and cracked it again. It careened off the goalie's legs and bounced into the net.

She still wasn't done. For the rest of the second half, she relentlessly pursued the ball and got a few more good shots on goal. She looked like a one-girl wrecking crew out on the field. With just a couple minutes left in the game, she stole the ball from deep on her side of the field. She juked, dribbled left and right and wove through the entire defense, and when she got to the right side of the goalie box, she angled a shot in stride that ripped into the near side of the net. It was, to me at least, a spectacular play: speed, dexterity, athleticism, aggressiveness, tenacity, timing, and power all rolled into one long, glorious run down the field. She celebrated, but this time seemed to be a tad subdued, the calmness of a girl who's already done that, and who plans on doing it again and again.

Four nights later, I took her to see the super-talented Chatfield girls soccer team win the state championship, (with the winning goal scored by none other than the speedy Callie Hancock, daughter of our former next door neighbors, Ralph and Robin.) As we watched the girls dance on the field with the championship trophy, Joy looked at me and said, "I'm going to do that someday."

A father can only dream. But a little tiger lilly might make actually make it happen.

You go, girl.

"The Good Flesh Continuing"

Here's an all-time favorite poem: post post-modern, plaintive, aching, nostalgic, evocative, insightful . . . what more could you want in a poem? Every time I read it, it makes me want to run off to the woods, eat blackberries, and write poetry.

Meditation at Lagunitas

by Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.

In this it resembles all the old thinking.

The idea, for example, that each particular erases

the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-

faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk

of that black birch is, by his presence,

some tragic falling off from a first world

of undivided light. Or the other notion that,

because there is in this world no one thing

to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,

a word is elegy to what it signifies.

We talked about it late last night and in the voice

of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone

almost querulous. After a while I understood that,

talking this way, everything dissolves: justice,

pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman

I made love to and I remembered how, holding

her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,

I felt a violent wonder at her presence

like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river

with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat,

muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish

called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her.

Longing, we say, because desire is full

of endless distances. I must have been the same to her.

But I remember so much, the way her hands dismantled bread,

the thing her father said that hurt her, what

she dreamed. There are moments when the body is as numinous

as words, days that are the good flesh continuing.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings,

saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Blowing the Lid Off The Can

Twelve hours later and my nerves are still buzzing. Last night, I lucked into some sweet tickets to the Nuggets' playoff game against the Hornets. The hospital CEO, confusing me with somebody important, invited me to the game, along with the Vice-Prez of the hospital, and five prominent Denver surgeons. (Which one of these things doesn't belong?) The CEO bribed our way past the forty-five minute wait at the restaurant when he slipped the greeter a wad of bills. I feasted on a New York Strip steak, sipped my Mormon lemonade while most everyone else drank beer, and talked some shop with the surgeons.

Then we were walking into the Pepsi Center, or "The Can," as it's known. Electricity crackled through the crowd as we jostled into the entrance and were given our white rally towels. The player introductions were ridiculously extravagant and five minutes long, complete with thumping music, flamethrowers, and Rocky the Mascot riding a motorcycle. The arena was whited out with waving towels.

The game was tight for two and a half quarters before the Nuggets blew it open with a barrage of three pointers and then galloped to a twenty point win. There were high fives all around us, including to the drunk stranger sitting in front of me. As electric as the crowd had been before the game, it doubled in intensity at the end. MVP chants for Chauncey Billups reverberated through the arena, as did "bird calls" for the Birdman, Chris Anderson, the shot blocking, tatoo-covered, mohawked microwave off the bench. The crowd chanted in unison, We Want Dallas! Confetti fell from the ceiling (which seemed a bit much, as this was only the first round). It was so loud, I couldn't hear myself screaming. I'm still hoarse this morning.

Even after the game, spontaneous chants erupted from the concourses and spilled into the parking lot. Some dude began spontaneously cleaning my windshield with his Nuggets sweatshirt in an illogical act of alcohol-induced, fan-frenzied fraternalism.

A couple of thoughts: first, the Nuggets are not just a good team, they are a great team, and (dare I say it?) a championship caliber team. And I mean team in the best sense of the word. They have top-level talent and scoring in Carmelo Anthony and JR Swish. They have ahtletic big guys in Nene and Kenyon Martin. They have hard-nosed defenders in Dahntay Jones and Chris Andersen. They have a energizing bench. And most of all, they have a level-headed, tough-as-nails, hometown hero and leader in Chauncey Billups. Before Chauncey was traded to them early in the season, they were a fragmented collection of underacheiving talent. But he has molded the team in his image, and they have synergized to a new level. Their role players accept their roles gladly. The team plays cohesively and with joie de vivre, feeding off the crowd. Chauncey's impact on the team cannot be overstated, and somewhere in there is a lesson on true leadership. Corporate world, book him now.

Second: what is it about big games that are so thrilling? In my life, I've only been to a handful of events with last night's electrical charge: two World Series games (Arizona 2001, Colorado 2007); some of the Chatfield-Columbine basketball classics; a thrilling BYU Men's Volleyball game at the Smith Fieldhouse; a handful of BYU basketball and football games. I remember distinctly the soul-shrieking electricity of my own state tournament basketball games, chest bumping in the bowels of McNichols Arena, the Pepsi Center's fated predecessor. But honestly, last night may have topped them all.

What about last night was so special? For starters, the Nugget's playoff drought has been fifteen years long, ever since Chauncey was still playing at George Washington High. And the city of Denver has been in desperate need for something to cheer about for a while, after the Bronco's epically collapsed last fall, then lost their idiot-boy QB in a national controversy. The Avs and Rockies have been losers as of late, and the college sports programs are all in disarray. So Denver has been in a sports drought, and last night a thunderstorm broke in the Can.

But it was more than just a sports drought. Colorado, like the rest of the world, has been battered by the recession and the relentless negative news as of late. Throw in the Columbine anniversary, the recession, the gloomy spring weather, and the swine flu, and you have a city that is itching for something to cheer about. Last night, they got it.

The truth must be that we live vicariously though our sports heroes, and that in our fractured political and social world, we seek for a common identity, a bond that unites us. When our local heroes--our soldiers, our gladiators, our valiant young men-- taste glory, we taste it with them. If they are winners, then so are we. When else can 19,000 strangers make fools of themselves in front of each other and chant their way into euphoria? Now that one of our own, Chauncey, is the team leader, it makes that connection all the more tangible.

It was a perfect storm of desperate thirst, athletic excellence, and local familiarity that exploded inside the Pepsi Center last night. I feel lucky that I could trick the big-wigs into thinking I was important enough to be there and be a part of that vibrant communal energy.

Go Nuggies!

Columbine

On a clear and windy day last fall, I took a break from writing at the Columbine Public Library and ambled out into neighboring Clement Park. I was eating a packed lunch when the wind blew my sandwich back across the lawn. I chased it down and found myself staring at the entrance of the Columbine Memorial. I had never visited it.

There was a logical reason for my neglect: we had been living out of state when it opened, and had only recently moved back. On any of our numerous family trips to our favorite park, I had been aware of the memorial's presence, but hadn't yet made the effort to enter. The kids are with us was a convenient excuse. Or the timing wasn't right. Or I wanted to be able to give it more time.

But truthfully, I had been avoiding it. I was afraid the only thing I would find there would be pain, reminders of death and senseless evil.

It was ten years ago today when I had just finished one of my final final exams at BYU and walked into my off-campus house. I would be graduating within the week, and I was relieved. But my roommate was glued to the TV.

"Dude," he said, "Have you seen what's going on in Colorado? You're from Littleton, right?"

I couldn't believe what I saw. CNN kept flashing the same images and trying to make real time sense of the carnage, but all that was conveyed was fear and chaos. Two (or more) gunmen had assaulted Columbine High School, and there were twenty, thirty, fifty dead. Nobody knew.

I watched, first stunned, then disbelieving, then intensely angry. I was also scared. I called home. Two of my brothers were in a lock-downs at schools just a few miles away. Was this something that could spill over into other schools? It was so surreal. Here was my community, my home flashing across the screen: blue and red emergency lights, pools of blood on the concrete, kids falling from windows, hysterical parents.

I remember pacing the floor, cursing that the monstrous, unknown killers had ever been born, punching our refrigerator and scattering magnets and tupperware across our kitchen. Eventually, I called Elizabeth, who had been back from her mission for only a month, to commiserate, but it was no use. Words couldn't convey my anger, my disbelief, my fear, my sorrow.

This was Columbine, the high school I loved to hate in a friendly way. They were our arch rivals, the only team to beat us my senior year in basketball. In their gym. The same gym that was now a war zone, a killing field.

And now this is ten years later. Littleton is an idyllic place, an island of comfortable suburbia with sublime weather, mature neighborhoods, good schools, the last place in the world you would imagine could be home to one of the most horrific, jarring, senseless atrocities in our nation's history. It was no different ten years ago, only more innocent.

I didn't go to the memorial service tonight. I figured it would be a zoo. But I've been thinking about it all day. Today was a gorgeous spring day in Littleton, with a warm spring sun melting off the last of the weekend's slushy white snows. Suddenly, everyone's grass looks green and lush, reborn after the brown and gray of winter.

I'm glad I went to the Memorial last fall. I was alone on that day. I paced the beautifully understated circles for an hour, read the stone-etched quotes from parents and survivors who were shredded with grief and anger or resolute with faith and purpose. I meditated, remembered, acknowledged, grieved. I wept quietly, bitterly, poignantly, heavily.

Tonight, I tried to explain in careful tones to my children what all of the recent commotion has been about. But how do you explain the inexplicable? They were visibly shaken. I tried to reassure them, but how can you sugarcoat such a thing? How could something like that happen? they asked. Why didn't somebody stop them? Why didn't their parents protect them? Why did the killers do it?

I didn't have an answer. There isn't one.

The Rise of the Rest

I just finished an excellent book, The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakaria.

It's a discussion of America's unprecedented global economic, military, and political power, and how it will play that hand in the near and distant future.

He suggests that America will remain strong and continue to be the leader of the world, a beacon of capitalism and democracy, but will see a relative decline of its power due to the rise of emerging nations, namely China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa. He coins this emergence of other powers "the rise of the rest," which heralds a new, multipolar international order. Ironically, this global rise, sometimes cloaked in anti-Americanism, is actually a fulfilment and globalization of American ideals.

But you don't want to hear me talk about it. Here's a brief synopsis of the book from his website:

• "This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. He describes with prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

He uses the rise and decline of the British Empire as an apt analogy. In the late 19th century, Great Britain was the Empire of the Sun, with unrivaled power that stretched across the globe. Due to hubris, ill-conceived wars, and even more so over-extension, their decline became inevitable. Yet even as they declined, their former colony, the United States of America, put into practice its British democratic heritage and economic structure, and thus became the greatest power in the history of the world, the first ever "hyperpower." And in this way, British power and influence survives in the legacy of its former rebellious colony.

The book is engaging, well-researched, and convincing. For a book about some fairly obtuse topics, it is extremely well-written, even a page-turner.

What's my personal opinion about his ideas? I think he's spot on, the same way a commentator speaking at the height of the Roman Empire would have been right if he'd said, "You know, this unequaled power thing ain't gonna last forever. Time to adjust."

But I don't take his book to be a repudiation of the Bush Administration's policies, or of the necessity of the Iraq War and prosecution of the War on Terror. (Zakiria, like many other pundits, actually endorsed the invasion of Iraq at the time, but now does a fancy two-step. He was for it before he was against it . . . The book was published in 2008--I wonder if his opinion has changed again by now.)

Perhaps I'm a little too idealistic, or inclined to determinism, but to me, things have unfolded pretty much as they should have. One hundred years ago, America rose to prominence at a time when it, joined at the hip to the declining British Empire, was destined to turn the tide of two world wars and the Cold War, defeated Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, and then, when Islamic Fundamentalism and Terrorism posed its suicidal threat to a globalizing world, to call it evil to its face and defeat that menace, too.

And now, as America's world-saving century is nearly complete, it's time to step down from the mountaintop and make room for the rise of the rest. Or perhaps a better analogy would be that America's new destiny is to reach out to emerging nations, expand the size of the mountain-top, and pull them up alongside us, sharing our wealth, freedom and power. I think President Bush was perhaps the only man with enough stubbornness and idealism to stand strong against the swell of anti-Americanism and choose to exercise American power in one last battle against tyranny, sowing (some would say force-feeding) the seeds of democracy into a dangerously dysfunctional but pivotal part of the planet.

And now, I believe President Obama is the right man to ride into the inevitable chaos produced by that clash of civilizations and repair relationships, heal wounds, listen and build trust, once again allowing America to lead by inspiration, though of necessity in a lesser, more collaborative role.

I look forward to a not-too-distant future where I and my children can travel safely to the Great Wall of China, or the Pyramids of Egypt, or tribal lands of Pakistan (okay, maybe not there), without fear or shame. I believe in the greatness of our nation and our ideals. Sometimes, we have to fight for those ideals. But sometimes, we simply have to live up to them.

Tooth Fairy Inflation

What's the going rate for the Tooth Fairy these days? Go ahead. Make a stab.

Twenty-five cents? Maybe a dollar? If you're like me, your only frame of reference is what the Tooth Fairy used to give you, some twenty-five plus years ago. I was lucky to get a dime, if she remembered. (Hey, I'll cut my parents some slack. With six boys at home, the deciduous pearly whites must have added up quickly.)

But the question has suddenly become pressing, as now my kids are losing teeth left and right, up and down. We're down three teeth in the last month, with two more wiggly ones on the way. Joy's first one hung on by a literal fleshy thread for what seemed like weeks, and then it finally, mercifully plopped out. She was taking too much pleasure in grossing her doctor daddy out, anyway.

But late one evening, out it came, the first one ever in the family, and there we were. After the general excitement (and strange poignancy I felt about my oldest losing a body part) subsided, the next exclamation out of Joy's mouth was, "That means the Tooth Fairy is coming tonight!"

Now, I'm not entirely certain that Joy believes in the Tooth Fairy, anyway. She seems to have an innate skepticism about these things. (See this entry from two years ago: one of my personal favorites). She's been inventing pretend notes from Leprechauns and leaving them around our house, and she has the neighborhood kids all boondoggled.

But believing in the Tooth Fairy is now to her immediate and monetary advantage. So after her exclamation, Mommy and Daddy shot furtive glances at each other that silently asked the same question that started this post. (Sorry, I just wanted to throw in an utterly recursive link.)

A few minutes later, I slyly, desperately asked Joy, "Now, how much money does the Tooth Fairy leave under your friends' pillows?"

"Most kids get, like, five dollars," she said sweetly.

My jaw dropped, but I covered. "Five dollars? That's a lot more than the Tooth Fairy used to give."

"Really?" she asked. "How much did you get?"

"I think I used to get ten cents, maybe a quarter."

"Well, some kids only get two dollars. But some kids get toys and treats and books, or, like, lots of money."

I wasn't digging this newly affluent Tooth Fairy, which must be a reflection of the generally mid-to-upper class Denver suburbs, so I sought to tamper down expectations. "Two dollars still sounds like a lot to me, sweetheart."

"Yeah, I guess so," she replied.

And two dollars is what she got, after I had to make a late run to the ATM and then the store to get some change. Grant got two dollars last night after he popped himself in the face with a basketball and his loose tooth tumbled out in the bloody aftermath.

Two dollars still seems high to me, but we couldn't go lower than my daughter's conception of the lowest-going rate. Wouldn't that make our kids think they were less important? But we didn't want to give in to the Tooth Fairy Stimulus Package, either, with ever-escalating premiums and expectations. So we settled on two bucks, and to me, that still seems fair. Hey, it's a 2000 % increase over the last twenty-five years, which isn't bad at all.

Those of you who have kids or will soon have them, what do you think? What's the Tooth Fairy's rate in your area?