Oh My, Another Meme

Look out, here comes another meme.

More specifically ME has nominated me for a so-called “Thinking Blogger” Award which begs the question of what ME was possibly thinking (or smoking) when he did that.

But who am I to argue with His Lameness when a simple “thank you” should suffice? Of course, there are certain obligations to humanity which come with such heady accolades, and naming five more “Thinking Bloggers” is one of them, so here goes:

  1. Bill Gnade at Contratimes. Bill was one of my early acquaintances in the blogosphere and you’d be hard-pressed to find another wordsmith who paints such beautiful pictures with lyrical and soaring prose (and occasional poetry) like his.
… Read the rest

Vote for Boo–It’s the Right Thing To Doo

boo-ii.jpgWhen I was in high school, I had a teacher who made sure that we knew about the civil rights struggle in America. I’m thankful that I learned early in life about Medgar Evers, the Birmingham church bombing and the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. I can remember chafing and squirming when I learned how the perpetrators of those crimes had escaped justice and were still free to live their lives as they pleased.

Little did I know that the goofy, red-haired guy wearing the suspenders and top hat who used to do the announcements in chapel at Harding would be the one to help bring those scoundrels to justice.… Read the rest

Shut Up and Grieve

Among the more curious reactions to the Virginia Tech killings that I’ve seen bandied about in various circles is one that goes something like this:

The tremendous outpouring of grief over the death of 33 Virginia Tech students and professors is proof positive that Americans are selfish and egocentric and care more about their own lives than lives lost around the world everyday from other far worse atrocities, civil wars, preventable diseases, etc. Why not more outrage and grief over innocent lives lost in Iraq and Darfur, or the thousands lost to AIDs on the African continent? Stupid, myopic Americans; so much grief over their own kids, so much blindness toward the suffering of others around the world whose lives are just as important.

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Think I’m “Hokey?” Deal With It

Saturday I ran another half-marathon. My time was 1:50:40, a full five minutes faster than February.

But it wasn’t easy. Whereas in February I felt I still had a little gas in the tank at the end, this time I was running on fumes. My calves were knotting up as I slouched toward the finish, but finish I did. Of course, this morning I can barely move, but that’s the price a 45-year-old must pay for such “glory.”

I can remember several times thinking about how hard it was and about how it would be nice just to stop and hang it up and start acting my age.… Read the rest

Two Degrees of Separation

It’s been said that there are no more than six degrees of separation between every person on earth. But when I heard that 32 innocents had died in Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech, it hit me how large and complex that particular web of relationships would be and how far it would extend across the country and even the world. I grew up in Southwest Virginia and was a graduate student at Virginia Tech and a resident of Blacksburg for 2 years. One of my first thoughts when I heard the news was, that in this particular case, there would likely be no more than two degrees of separation between one of the victims and me.… Read the rest

Precious Memories

Precious memories, how they linger
How they ever flood my soul
In the stillness of the midnight
Precious sacred scenes unfold

–from the gospel hymn “Precious Memories”

Among the idle thoughts that rattled around in my brain driving back and forth to Birmingham this weekend was my earliest memory.

It must have been sometime in early to mid-1963 when I was around 18-20 months old. It’s the middle of the night and I’m waking up fussing and crying in my crib. I look up and my mother is standing over me, her hair matted and her eyes half-closed, and she hands me a baby bottle filled with Coca-Cola which I eagerly grab and begin to suckle vigorously like a new-born piglet on his mother’s teat.… Read the rest

One Man, One Slide

John had always told me, “Mike, when you walk into a room, you’ve got to make them believe that you’re the biggest gunslinger in the bar.”

He was referring to the way that I carried myself as I walked into the exam room. I guess he must have noticed the deer-in-the-headlamps expression on my face and the way that my jaw dragged along the floor as I encountered a dizzying array of eye disorders and diseases in those early days of my residency; nasty, often bloody, blinding stuff that never looked (or acted) quite the same way as the atlases and textbooks said it would.… Read the rest