ideas : People : stories.
the Human Being stuff
These videos always inspire me, for a variety of reasons. Most of the time, when finished, my brain thinks, “We should move to Alaska!” Because it looks beautiful and fun and full of adventure.
But so too is where I live. If I want it to be.
But also, they gloss over (or ignore) the hardships which is why it looks so dreamy. I, on the other hand, can call my hardships by name because they keep me up at night.
Just as they would in Alaska.
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I came across Kim’s story while listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Wild Ideas Worth Living. The specific episode, FACING FEAR WITH KIM CHAMBERS has become one of my favorites. “If you want to do something that changes your life,” Kim states, “surround yourself with people who believe in you . . . normalize greatness.”
The documentary isn’t my favorite, but her story is. She’s pretty awesome.
Kim Chambers was 30 years old, an athlete and a powerful executive, when she slipped and fell down a set of stairs. The injuries she sustained changed the course of her life. Not only did she prove doctors wrong about being able to be an athlete again, but she became one of the most accomplished marathon swimmers in the world, after never swimming competitively in her life before the injury.
In 2014, she became the sixth person (and third woman) to complete the Oceans Seven, which is the marathon swimming equivalent of climbing the Seven Summits, with each swim chosen for its treacherous conditions. Then, in 2015, Kim set a new world record when she became the first woman to swim thirty miles from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, a swim that’s incredibly dangerous. It’s full of strong currents, extremely cold water temperatures, big waves, and a large population of great white sharks. But Kim didn’t let fear stop her.
Today, the accomplished swimmer uses her platform to inspire women (and men) of all ages to appreciate their bodies and to pursue their dreams even if they seem unrealistic. While she continues to set new records and battle more challenges herself, she remains a master at teaching people to face fear, even to say yes to it, and push through to achieve their goals (via).
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“If making my detox public is gonna help somebody, even, literally, just one person, I’m all for it.”
With so much detachment and insincere living, I feel like these types of videos and “putting myself out there” moments will become more and more the norm. Which means the pendulum will be swinging into radical realism.
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Alex Honnold has become “the first person to ever free solo climb Yosemite's 3,000ft high El Capitan Wall. With no ropes or safety gear, he completed arguably the greatest feat in rock climbing history.”
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"This is my dad as he appears in my mind - in the woods, ready to cut firewood, pipe in hand."
(Guest post by Jenny Mashak)
A few years ago, a friend lost his father, somewhat unexpectedly. The father was elderly, his health had been in decline for awhile but he had been more or less fine one day and then the next, he was not. He was gone within three days, barely enough time for my friend's brothers to travel and say goodbye to their father. We attended the funeral and my friend spoke about his dad. He told stories and related memories of his father, and talked about how much his father influenced his own parenting. It was a very typical funeral, I imagine, but it stuck with me because it was a friend who had lost his parent and because my own father had had a major health issue very recently.
In July of 2013, my dad nearly died from an aortic dissection. By all accounts, he is one of the luckiest people alive right now. The typical lifespan for someone who suffers what he did is twelve seconds. He was incredibly lucky in that the aneurysm did not fully rupture but started leaking into the layers of his aorta. It was painful and required a life flight and emergency surgery, but he lived. The doctors who performed the surgery told us initially the best case scenario they could foresee was paralysis from the waist down. Not only did my dad live, he walks and lives normally. About two years ago, he also had a bout of lung cancer. His tumor was discovered in the course of looking for other issues and so was caught long before he had any symptoms. He received a partial lung resection from a world class surgeon and did not have to undergo radiation or chemotherapy. While speaking with his surgeon, his aortic dissection came up and the surgeon was amazed at my dad's story. Weeks before, the surgeon had performed a double lung transplant but he said my dad's survival was miraculous.
I have a lot of memories surrounding Dad’s triple A, from the white-knuckle, completely silent drive to Rapid City, to the sudden realization, after two days of staring at them, that there were posters on the walls of the ICU waiting room. Most of it has faded to the point that I no longer get panic attacks watching medical shows on tv. But what has stuck with me is how completely unprepared I was for the thought that my father might die. From the moment I finally heard the phone ringing at 3am, to the moment the phone rang in the waiting room to tell us Dad had made it through surgery, I did not believe he could actually die, even though the various doctors and surgeons tried to make it clear that his death was not only possible but probable. During the long night after his surgery, we took turns keeping vigil, monitoring the beeping from the twelve machines and thirty two different tubes keeping him alive. We all spoke of what we would need to do to accommodate possible disabilities, preparing ourselves for my dad not being able to care for himself. We did nothing to prepare ourselves for the possibility that he would die.
In the immediacy of his medical emergency, there were things to be done, things to be researched, things to take care of. But none of us ever brought up the things that needed to be said. And in the years since, I don't think any of us have really taken the steps we need to deal with our emotions for and about each other.
When Dad got his cancer diagnosis, he initially misunderstood his diagnosis and spent an entire day convinced he had mere weeks to live. He was preparing himself to do the paperwork necessary to take care of my mom and then off himself. In a strange way, it gave my sister, who has always had a somewhat fraught relationship with our father, an opening to talk about the things he needed to talk about and give her an insight into what kind of man he is. She spent several hours with him, listening to him and actually hearing him, for the first time perhaps. A lot of the things she had believed about our dad weren't necessarily wrong or false, but skewed and colored by her own life.
Here's the thing about my dad: he doesn't talk about himself much. He has a big personality and lots of opinions but he loves to argue enough that you can never really know which opinion is his truest. He is also often overshadowed by the personalities of his wife and three daughters. The four of us are border collies, constantly in motion, herding everything and everyone towards a destination. My dad is a Great Pyrenees, blending in, looking like he's sleeping but aware of everything around him, ready to roar into action if something threatens his charges.
A few months ago, my sister, who is a counselor, was messing around with the Meyers-Briggs personality evaluation. She asked me to take the evaluation- my type has been pretty consistent for over 20 years. Hers was predictable as well and for kicks, she asked our parents to take it. We were able to predict my mother's type pretty well but neither of us had the slightest idea of what my dad would be. He still hasn't taken it, or at least, hasn't told us that he's taken it. I think the fact that I can't predict if my father would be an introvert or extrovert probably indicates that he tends toward introverted, but it also says something that I don't know for sure.
All of this comes together in my head in a morbid way- what would I say about my dad at his funeral? There are things I know about my dad, like how old he is, or that he tells everyone he is 5'10" when he is most definitely not. There are things I think about my dad, like that he is incredibly stubborn and I get my tendency towards clutter from him. There are also things I remember about my dad, like how he used to climb trees when we played hide-and-seek with him so he was impossible for us to find. Or how he told us his blue eyes would turn brown if we forgot to kiss him goodnight. And then there are things that were filtered through my mother, like how he could barely handle when each of us started dating. He never said a word to any of us about what he was thinking or feeling but according to my mother, he hated it and would have kept us penned up at home until we were 30.
For Father's Day, my sister purchased tickets to take my father to a Beach Boys concert. She invited me to go with so it would be just the three of us. The only other memory I have of just the three of us was in our old green Córdoba, on the way to pick my mom and new baby sister up from the hospital. I was two, my older sister was five and my dad was 29. That was 37 years ago.
The concert was fun and we had a great time. I had always known my dad liked The Beach Boys but listening to them and watching the videos they play as accompaniment to the music seemed to awaken memories and feelings Dad hadn't thought about in years. He told us about his first car, a 1936 Ford he'd picked up somewhere when he was twelve. It didn't have a title and he drove it around the farm where he worked. Now he wishes he hadn't been so rough on it and had kept it. At intermission and any breaks in the music, Dad talked about listening to The Beach Boys as a kid and in high school- he liked that they sang about cars, even if the hot rods they sang about weren't as popular in rural Wisconsin as they were on the West Coast. He told us stories of driving around with his brothers and friends, usually doing something legally dubious, but they were just kids having fun.
I haven't yet found the words to articulate the emotions that night brought out in me. Part of it was watching The Beach Boys, live and the memorialized versions in the photos and videos playing on the large screen behind them as they sang. They are clearly old men now, with a career starting in 1961. It was somewhat heartbreaking to see the photos and videos from 57 years ago, peopled with the old men on stage and their friends who didn't make it to old age. The larger part of it was seeing and listening to my dad, and thinking about all of what he's been through in the past six or seven years, realizing that at one point, he was one of those vital young men who has now aged into an old man.
On the drive home, Dad said that he could check seeing The Beach Boys off of his bucket list. Until he said that, I had no idea that seeing The Beach Boys with my father was on my bucket list but it turns out it was and I am grateful that I was able to check it off.
As I grow older, and my dad older still, I realize there is so much I don’t know about him. I don’t know that we can learn to communicate at this stage of either of our lives, through the membranes of long history and our own reticent personalities and emotional repression, but I do know that I want to at least push the barriers a little. Because one day, I will stand at his funeral. I will shake hands with people who knew him, hug those who loved him and hear unfamiliar stories about him. I will also have a chance to share my stories about my dad and I want to have more than just enough to say. Because he deserves it. Because he’s my dad. And because his eyes never turned brown.
If you have a story or link or something you'd like to share, let me know!
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-N- Stuff : Fatherhood : On Parenting
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Former Disney illustrator Gary Andrews started to "doodle diary" on his 54th birthday. He was happily married and a father-of-two and wanted to remember the joy and beauty of family. Within 3 years he was a widower. Joy, his wife, had passed away from sepsis.
Struggling with ways to cope Gary "opened up his notebook and let his emotions pour out onto the pages" (via).
I was crying so hard it was difficult to focus on the page. I was drawing through tears. Joy had been my soulmate for 19 years. She was beautiful, kind, generous and funny. We did everything together. When I lost her, I felt half of me had gone (via).
Gary has published his work in hopes of raising "awareness for an illness that is often regarded as an afterthought for many doctors. Its symptoms, including fever, sickness, blotchy skin and dizziness, are often mistaken for other illnesses and not recognized until too late. If captured early on, it can be treated with simple antibiotics" (via).
After spending a weekend celebrating my 35th birthday and considering the many (hopeful) boxes I have to fill in, this story and these drawings had me all sorts of choked up.
May we treasure the time that we've been given.
This one is my favorite because, as I've heard it said before, "Laughter is the manifestation of hope." I can imagine how often Gary felt heavy and depressed and just so alone - especially when his girls crawled into his lap and cried for Mom. But then, moments like these, and perhaps, seeing a bit of his wife's humor and hope shine through his little girls, his spirit was lifted.
Wrong caste
Wrong culture
Wrong religion
Wrong everything.
This American Life posted an episode today, 20 Acts in 60 minutes, which told 20 different stories in 60 minutes. This was a huge deviation from their regular 3-4 stories in an episode and at first, I didn't like it. But then I got used to it, and by the third or forth story, I was laughing out loud with David Sedaris and crying with the teenage girls from a detention center who performed a song of apology for their parents. It was fantastic.
Just like the short clips from the interracial couples. We don't see them long, but it doesn't matter. In their short moments, both together and separate, they all just humans. Which seems so obvious, but the fact that short clips are being made about them points to the reality that it isn't. There aren't any videos of white couples or two Indian couples talking about their marriages. Because that's just marriage.
Not so with interracial marriages.
Why do we have to put the tag on it, as interracial marriage. Shouldn't it just be marriage?
Yes it should. Because it's just marriage. Between two people. And race shouldn't matter.
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-N- Stuff : Fall in Love in 36 questions : Choosing more than a Heineken
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When was the last time I was in Vietnam?
It was last night. It was this morning. It was five minutes ago.
And I will probably go back tonight.
A Veteran's Story, as told by a veteran's daughter, Kara Frame:
I first knew my dad, Tom Frame, was different when I was young, but I didn't know exactly how. Every year when he marched in our Memorial Day Parade in Doylestown, Pa., I stood on the side of the road waving my tiny American flag with so much pride.
He was my dad, my veteran.
As a teenager, I began to learn about his time in Vietnam during the late 1960s. I heard about fallen men, fierce battles and something called post-traumatic stress disorder. I still didn't fully grasp at that time what my father was living with, and it wasn't until my late 20s that I was ready to dive into a project about my dad's PTSD.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 30 percent of all Vietnam veterans have suffered from PTSD, and the effects can last many years.
When I began this project in 2014, I knew it would give me insight into my dad and his experiences in his early 20s, when he was fighting in Vietnam. I never anticipated the depth of understanding it would offer me into my mother and her life — standing by a veteran with deep-rooted trauma — and the role PTSD has played in their marriage.
The documentary project follows the lives of my father and several other Vietnam veterans from his Army unit, the 1st Battalion, 5th (Mechanized) Infantry, 25th Infantry Division, who served together.
The veterans recount a terrible ambush at a rubber plantation in Ben Cui on Aug. 21, 1968. And their wives open up on how PTSD has affected their marriages in the decades since (via).
You know what I think PTSB is, at root? I think it's a spiritual wound, and I don't think it can be treated with medications necessarily. I think it requires some spiritual healing with people. Some meaning making again. Some reconnecting with your values and your morals and your ethics.
Now that you've sort of seen the other side of life.
I love that, "spiritual healing with people." Not alone, not in prayer, and not alone in prayer, but with people.
And I love that.
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-N- Stuff : WWII Vets, "Former enemies now friends" : Oldest Living Vet
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Tania Georgelas, the ex-wife of the highest-ranking American member of ISIS, reckons with her extremist past and attempts to build a new life (via).
This is her story.
And in many ways, it's ours too.
The dual transformation of John and Tania is the most American part of this story. What is America, if not a promise of infinite possibility, and ability to transcend one’s origins? John grew up wealthy, Christian, and patriotic; now he is poor, Muslim, and full of hate for his native land. Tania’s metamorphosis has taken the precise opposite form, as if the universe demanded symmetry in their stories, and decreed that she resume the prosperous suburban life that he left behind. They met in the middle, trading fates. His ending is probably already written. Her life, if she’s lucky, is just getting started (via).
What stuck me most about this story is the assurances of truth. John and Tania, on either sides of their transitions, are so very confident in what they know and how they know it, allow it to guide and direct their lives, even to the point of radicalism.
Which isn't all that different from so many of us. We may not be joining ISIS, but we are just as confident in our truths and way of life - we too have certainty in what will happen when we die, and it guides and directs our daily lives, even to the point of radicalism.
What we know can change in an instant, shifting the ground beneath our feet and bring our fortresses of faith and understanding crumbling to the ground - SMASH!!!
Then nothing.
But the chance to rebuild.
Because truly, no one really knows anything for certain. And it is that understanding, that weight of uncertainty that should encourage us all to talk less and listen a whole lot more. To be kind and patient and less judgmental, and to truly consider the holes in our damns because really, we don't know, even when we think we do.
And for many of us, the damn is about to beak.
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-N- Stuff : Real People : After 90 years, a Jewish woman eats bacon for the first time
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To see things from a different perspective is one of the most difficult things we have to do.
- Jeannette Armstrong
“We Are Witnesses,” is a project of nineteen short videos, each between two and six minutes long yet, together, provide rare 360-degree portrait of the state of crime and punishment in the United States (via).
More importantly though, these short videos also portray the raw totality of humanity - the ugliness, the imperfection, the forgiveness, and the hope. Because life isn't perfect, filled happy endings and right now, in-the-moment decisions are terrifying and full of error.
And at then end of the day, everyone just wants to make it home safe.
If we allow ourselves to see life and circumstances and the people around us - especially those filled with stereotypes - with even the slightest bit of compassion and empathy and understanding, we can, day by day, all be saved.
Even if it is the most difficult thing we have to do.
It became more and more important for me to convey to him . . . uh . . . to convey this idea that we were each gonna get a second chance.
And you should do something with that.
That's when more things started changing with me. The compassion, the love, the understanding, being human again - trying to be human again.
To love another human being that you really don't know or show compassion to someone you really don't know, that's all new to me. And that's what saved, saved me.
Nine-five percent or more of the cops who work out there are just decent, hard working people, try'n a go out, try'n a do the best they can, and go home in one piece at the end of the night.
I think people don't realize how difficult it is, night after night after night, having to make split second, life and death decisions, and always have'n to be right.
I felt like, wow. In my saddest moment when I didn't know how to feel and I seen all these people out here for my dad . . . that just made me feel, empowered in a way.
Because we can all be more than mere witnesses to the crime and punishiment in America today. We can also be the hope, if we want to be. If we choose to be.
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-N- Stuff : Giving Back to Society, from Prison : Chris Paul forgives the kids who killed his grandfather
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"Filmmaker Christian Schultz tells the story of Finn Muedder, a 3-year-old boy who suffers from from Hunter’s Syndrome, a rare disease affects about 500 boys in the U.S., an estimated 2,000 worldwide. Researchers believe they are close to a cure, but not without expensive new research -- money Jon doesn't have -- he used what he knew to get the world out" (via).
It's not just about our family, it's about all these other families, and doing everything we can so that Finn and these other boys have a better chance at life.
He may be the first generation of boys who really has a cure.
Or, he may be part of the story, of boys, who brings the cure after him.
Finn and his family have established a GoFundMe page where people can contribute to curing Hunter’s Syndrome once and for all.
They need to make hit their $2.5 million target by November. Otherwise, important experiments won’t happen.
Currently, they $640,000.
To escape Auschwitz, Klara Prowisor, now 92, left her father to die in the hands of strangers. Decades later, she got a message from. This short film, directed by MATAN ROCHLITZ, is her story.
Who knows how future generations will perceive the Holocaust and the extent to which it will figure in history. Perhaps in due time it will be just another event in the troubled timeline of our species. It is far beyond the scope of this film to engage with the enormity of these questions. All I know is that we are the last generation who will be able to meet Holocaust survivors in person, and I consider that a tremendous responsibility (via).
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-N- Stuff : Humanity : History : WWII Vets Reuniting with Japanese Soldiers
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Tom Sitter won The Moth in Madison StorySLAM at the High Noon Saloon February 13, 2017. Tom scored our first ever 10 with his winning story tonight. The memory of the girls he carefully selected to give his five valentines to in 1933 was strong enough that 84 years later he still knew their names.
The Moth StorySLAMs are open-mic storytelling competitions. Storyteller hopefuls put their names in a hat. During the evening ten names are picked, and one by one, storytellers take the stage. The ten featured stories are scored by teams of judges selected from the audience. Each StorySLAM generates a StorySLAM winner. After ten SLAMs, the winners face off in our GrandSLAM Championships.
I think we can all remember some of the first girls or boys that stole our hearts, or distracted our minds. Unfortunately, some of us even have names burned into our memory that we'd like to take for walks, next to busy intersections.
I don't have any such names. But sadly, I think I am several people's name.
And that's pretty embarrassing.
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-N- Stuff : The Moth : Real People
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"To be precise, 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds was how long it took Shiso Kanakuri to finish the race — not that the time, which was only ever recorded as a joke, matters. It’s Kanakuri himself who is important, because when he set off on that infamous run, {a little over} 100 years ago in Stockholm, he was one of just two athletes representing Japan at its very first Olympic Games"
"Sport had not been a particularly popular pastime in early 20th-century Japan. Fledgling clubs catering to various physical activities had popped up at schools and universities, but, as the historian Kazuo Sayama has written, 'there had been martial arts in Japan, but they were very different to the French idea of sport. (In the early 1900s) few Japanese had awoken to sport’s real meaning.'"
"The French reference is crucial, because it was that country’s notion of sport that informed the 1896 revival of the Olympic Games in the modern era. Part of that idea, as promoted by the International Olympic Committee’s inaugural chairman, a Frenchman named Pierre de Coubertin, was that sport was a progenitor of peace, and hence the participation of all the races was to be encouraged."
"After the London Olympics of 1908, Coubertin decided it was time for Asians to join the fray, and so he arranged for a Japanese representative to join the IOC. The man who got the nod was the well-respected judo wrestler Jigoro Kano (later known as the “father of modern judo”), who shortly set about holding athletics trials for the next Olympics, which would be held in Stockholm in 1912."
"The trials for the marathon were held on Nov. 19, 1911, and one of the competitors was a 20-year-old student from the Tokyo Higher Normal School named Shiso Kanakuri (his name is sometimes rendered Shizo Kanaguri). Originally from an area of Kumamoto Prefecture in Kyushu now known as Tamana, his initial approach to running, as reported by Sayama in a biography published last year, was indicative of the lack of experience among his countrymen."
"'There was a belief at the time that perspiration made runners tired,' Sayama explains, before noting that 'Kanakuri’s initial approach was to abstain from any drink at all, at one time making himself sick.'"
"Fortunately, by the time of the trials, Kanakuri had come to appreciate the importance of proper hydration, and he flew around a roughly 25-mile (40.2 km) course in 2 hrs. 32 min. 30 sec., well ahead of his rivals."
"Kanakuri was thus in the team, and he was soon joined by a short-distance specialist named Yahiko Mishima from Tokyo Imperial University (forerunner of the University of Tokyo). With the addition of Kano, as Chef de Mission, and also physical-education specialist Hyozo Omori, as team manager, the party that would travel to Stockholm was complete."
"On May 16, 1912, The Japan Times noted their departure with an article that both lowered and raised expectations: 'As this is the first time Japanese runners (or any Japanese athletes) have taken part in these world-contests, it is impossible to say what they will achieve. But both are full of grit and nerve, and may be counted upon for doing credit to themselves and to Japan.'"
"But lack of experience was not the only thing working against the Japanese runners. There was also the fact of the 10 days to be spent on the Trans-Siberian Railway, when opportunities to train would be at a minimum. "'Kanakuri took to running around each station that they stopped at,' Sayama writes."
"At Stockholm, things didn’t improve. Omori soon fell ill, and so Kanakuri, the youngest in the group, ended up spending more time looking after him than training. (Incidentally, Omori is now known as 'the father of Japanese basketball,' because, in 1908, he brought back that sport from the United States, where he had studied.)"
"The day of the Stockholm marathon, July 14, 1912, was a scorcher. A photograph of the 68 runners at the start line shows them all wearing hats or towels around their heads — a somewhat quaint attempt to deal with the 32-degree heat."
"According to Sayama, Kanakuri later recalled how the other runners had been surprised at his footwear: tabi, the two-toed canvas shoes still worn by some workers on construction sites. Although Kanakuri’s were fortified with extra canvas on their soles, they wouldn’t have afforded much protection."
"Still, they were probably better than spikes, which is what the Japanese media somehow decided Kanakuri had worn as they later tried to explain the disaster that was about to unfold."
"Somewhere around the 27-km mark, Kanakuri collapsed, probably from hyperthermia (in simple terms, extreme overheating). It is believed he briefly lost consciousness before being taken to the house of local residents who assisted him."
"Kanakuri’s withdrawal from the race was hardly unusual. After all, only half the 68 starters ended up finishing the race. What was unusual was that he didn’t notify the event officials. They duly listed him as 'missing.'"
"The Japanese runner was likely too dispirited by his failure to worry about filling in the proper paperwork. Sayama reports that in his diary Kanakuri lamented bringing 'shame' to his countrymen, but at the same time he struck an optimistic note: 'This failure will beget success,' he vowed."
"Although The Japan Times was among the media that blamed Kanakuri’s failure on an erroneous assumption about his footwear, it was nevertheless kind to both him and Mishima (who failed to get through to the finals of his 100-, 200- or 400-meter races)."
"'It will be unfair to deal harshly with these young athletes for their faults,' an unidentified scribe wrote on July 21, 1912. Instead, that same writer dealt harshly with a system that had sent unprepared athletes onto the world stage in the first place."
"Noting that the ultimate winner of the marathon, Kennedy Kane McArthur of South Africa, had spent 2½ years preparing for the race, the writer demands that no more athletes be sent abroad "'except with the most serious determination and all possible preparedness.'"
"Kanakuri seems to have agreed. On his return to Japan, he immediately began preparing for the Berlin Olympics, which were due to be held in 1916. However, World War I put paid to that athletics festival, and another four years later, at age 28, Kanakuri competed in the marathon at the Antwerp Olympics in Belgium — finishing a creditable 16th. In 1924, he competed in Paris, too, but had to retire halfway through the race."
"In the meantime, Kanakuri achieved what is now his greatest legacy: the Hakone Ekiden, the 218-km team relay contested by universities from around the nation each New Year’s. Kanakuri played a key role in establishing that race officially known as the Tokyo-Hakone Round-Trip College Ekiden Race, which ever since its inauguration in 1920 has helped popularize long-distance running among Japan’s youth."
"Then in 1967, when Kanakuri was 75 years old and no doubt reflecting on a long and illustrious career, he received an odd invitation. The Swedish National Olympic Committee wanted him to return to Stockholm to participate in the 55th anniversary celebrations of the 1912 Olympics."
"Kanakuri should have realized that 55 was an odd anniversary to celebrate. Upon his arrival in the Scandinavian country he was informed that he had become known there as 'the missing marathoner' — the man who had vanished without a trace all the way back in 1912."
"And thus, for the benefit of the local media and the Swedish NOC, which was then trying to raise funds to send athletes to the following year’s Olympic Games in Mexico, Kanakuri was asked to 'finish' the race."
"Judging by press reports of the proceedings, the elderly gent was only too happy to oblige, running jovially around the last corner before charging through a special ribbon."
"His time was promptly read out — 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds — and, according to Sayama, the elderly racer then responded: 'It was a long trip. Along the way, I got married, had six children and 10 grandchildren.'"
"The apparently modest Kanakuri could have boasted of having another 'child,' too. After all, by then he was known in his home country as 'the father of Japanese marathon'" (via).
I just love this story.
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-N- Stuff : Real People : Humanity
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Every now and again, a seemingly random idea or theme will emerge, in various forms, over a short period of time. I've written about it before. This week, it happened again.
A few days ago, on my way to work, I listened to a podcast from This American Life and instantly had to tell a few Shakespearean fans about it.
Take a few minutes (okay, more like 60) and listen to why Jack Hitt, A Shakespeare enthusiast and critic, who has seen Hamlet a dozen times, staring people like Kevin Kline, Diane Venora (three nights in a row), and "Ingmar Bergman's production done in Brooklyn, performed entirely in Swedish," say "this production was different. Because this is a play about a man pondering a violent crime and its consequences performed by violent criminals living out those consequences. After hanging out with this group of convicted actors for six months, I did discover something. I didn't know anything about Hamlet" (via).
Soon after, and about a month after teaching Hamlet for the first time, I came across this, from Great Big Story.
"According to the prison commissioner, 97% of the people locked up today will someday join us on the outside. Manuel is leaving for a halfway house in 48 hours. He could have been out weeks before but chose to stay in prison so he could finish the play. Hutch has a scheduled date for release. And a few more of the cast have parole board hearings coming up to decide whether they've changed enough and should be allowed to mingle with us on the outside. To that extent, this whole night, including the cast party, is just another rehearsal" (via).
Jack Hitt said he didn't know anything about Hamlet until watching it performed live, in prison. I wonder if he also learned about those living behind bars, those whom society considers only outcasts, criminals, and non-contributors. I wonder if he knew nothing about them too, just like me.
You can read more about Teaching Shakespeare in a Maximum Security Prison or watch some behind the bars footage of prisoners performing Shakespeare.
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-N- Stuff : Real People : Do we not bleed!
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I came across this article almost six years ago. It was before school started, but the second I finished, I printed several copies and read with my then 7th grade English class then shared it with everyone I taught or coached or spoke with. When life shifted to China, I forgot about it. This morning, my brother in-law referenced it and I had to find it again.
In all of sports, this might be my most favorite story.
by Rick Reilly - espn.com
Wednesday, April 27, 2011 :
On the moonless night of Nov. 15, 2002, five young boys ran across a park, jumped a 61-year-old man, bound his wrists, duct-taped his mouth, and beat him with pipes until his heart stopped.
All for his wallet.
That man was Nathaniel Jones, the grandfather of future NBA star Chris Paul.
Today, those boys are men, sitting in prisons across the state of North Carolina, some serving 14-year terms, some life. On the TV sets in their prison rec rooms this week, the Hornets point guard has been wrecking the Los Angeles Lakers, averaging nearly a triple-double, the shiniest star of these playoffs.
The five are all about the same age as Paul, same race, same height, and from the same hometown.
They have one other thing in common with Chris Paul: All six wish they were free.
It's something Paul told me during a "Homecoming" episode once on ESPN, and every time I watch him play I can't get it out of my mind. Paul, now 25, said: "These guys were 14 and 15 years old [at the time], with a lot of life ahead of them. I wish I could talk to them and tell them, 'I forgive you. Honestly.' I hate to know that they're going to be in jail for such a long time. I hate it."
Whose heart has that much room?
"Chris Paul hates it?" says Geneva Bryant, the mother of one of the five, Christopher Bryant. "Well, so do I. My boy is 23 now. He's been in since he was 15."
Chris Paul is overcome with emotion while talking about the death of his grandfather to students at West Forsyth High in Clemmons, N.C.
Her son has six years to go. Dorrell Brayboy, 23, has six years to go. Jermal Tolliver, 23, has seven. Two brothers -- Nathaniel Cauthen, 24, and Rayshawn Banner, 23 -- are in until they die.
Paul's attitude stuns one of the defense attorneys who appealed the verdict and lost.
"I've probably tried 30 homicide cases," says Paul Herzog, of Fayetteville. "It's very rare for a family survivor in a murder case to feel that way. You just don't see that ever. That's incredibly generous of Mr. Paul."
To understand how generous, you have to know how close Paul was to his granddad.
The man everybody called "PaPa Chili" was the first black man to open a service station in North Carolina and both Chris and his brother worked at it. PaPa Chili was known to let people run tabs when times got tough. Plenty of times, he'd hand people money out of the cash register to get by. Paul called him "my best friend."
The day Paul signed with nearby Wake Forest, the first person to put a Demon Deacons hat on him was his grandfather.
The next day, he was dead.
None of the five boys were particularly hardened criminals. Only Cauthen had been previously arrested -- twice for running away and once for stealing his mom's car. They decided they wanted to rob somebody. Around the corner, in his white van, came that somebody -- Jones. He'd closed the filling station and was now getting grocery bags out of his van. "Let's go get him," one of them said. They sprinted across Belview Park and jumped him.
Using tape they'd bought that day at a drugstore, they bound his head, neck and hands and began a "relentless, remorseless, conscienceless" attack, according to the judge who sentenced them. Jones died in his carport.
His grief was bottomless. Every national anthem in college, he'd hold his grandfather's laminated obituary in his hand and pray. And now he wants the murderers set free?
Paul, a high school senior, was so woebegone he was literally sick. Two days later, he scored 61 points for West Forsyth High School, one for every year of Papa Chili's life. He purposely missed a free throw at the end, then collapsed into the arms of his father in tears.
His grief was bottomless. Every national anthem in college, he'd hold his grandfather's laminated obituary in his hand and pray.
And now he wants the murderers set free?
"Even though I miss my granddad," Paul told me, "I understand that he's not coming back. At the time, it made me feel good when I heard they went away for life. But now that I'm older, when I think of all the things I've seen in my life? No, I don't want it. I don't want it."
This is the kind of man Chris Paul is: He was president of his high school class all three years. When LeBron James' girlfriend had a baby, James made sure Paul was there. He's so humble that if you didn't know who he was, you'd swear he was the pool man.
So what can Paul do?
He can appeal to the governor of North Carolina, Bev Perdue, and ask for their sentences to be commuted. North Carolina is not big on commuting murderers' sentences, but I'd put nothing past the powers of Paul.
This kid floors me. Not just with the way he can dominate an NBA playoff game at 6 feet tall in elevator sneakers. Not just for the way he can twist Kobe Bryant into a Crazy Straw. Not just for the way he'd rather pass through a doughnut hole than take the shot himself.
No, what floors me about Chris Paul is his humanity. If strangers had bound my weak-hearted grandfather, beat him for no reason and killed him for the cash in his wallet -- strangers who to this day have not shown a thimbleful of contrition -- I'd want them in prison 100 years after they were in the dirt.
Chris Paul once wrote that his grandfather "taught me more things than I could ever learn with a Ph.D."
One of them must've been love.
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Richard Overton fought in the South Pacific in World War II, is 109 years old, still drives, sometimes drinks whiskey with breakfast, smokes 12 cigars a day (but doesn’t inhale), and still lives in the house he built himself in 1945. In this video from National Geographic, Overton talks about his military service, his faith, his long life, and soup. Overton’s short summary of World War II:
"It wasn’t good, but we had to go."
I don’t really care to live to 100, but if I had Overton’s spirit and attitude, perhaps I’d consider it (via).
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-N- Stuff : Real People : Humanity
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If looks could kill, then a camera aimed at an unwilling subject is an instrument of torture.
Marc Garanger knew this in Algeria, in 1960 when he was tasked by his commanding French army officer with snapping ID photos of their female prisoners. France was six years into supressing a guerrilla war for independence in the north African colony, and Muslim and Berber villagers were being arrested en masse for suspected ties to the insurgent National Liberation Front. As his regiment’s official photographer, Garanger made thousands of portraits of rural women against their will. Many of them were forced to remove their headscarves and veils for the photo, revealing themselves for the first time to the hostile gaze of strange men.
Their observer, Garanger was also their oppressor.
For more of this article and Rian Dundon's work, click here.
Laura Olin runs the Everything Changes mailing list for The Awl and she asked her readers “about a time they’d been brave” (or perhaps when they’d wished they had been). Here are some of their answers.
I was raised in a pretty abusive household. When I was 14, I found a boarding school three thousand miles away, applied in secret, got a full scholarship, and left home. I haven’t lived at home since and have made it ten years later fully supporting myself in a city I love, a job I love, friends/community that I love. I sometimes think about that now, packing up everything and moving across the country without any support and building a new life for myself through a lot of luck and other people’s help, and know I probably couldn’t do it again. I left the worse place for paradise, both handed-out and self-made, and there’s nothing I’m prouder of.
Some regretted not having courage at times:
A few months ago, some coworkers made some antisemitic jokes in a team chat channel. I quit the channel and started looking for (and since found) a new job, but I didn’t say anything. I’ve thought about that time I didn’t say anything literally every day since. I wish I had been a better person.
