What Is That?

Posted on June 18, 2012 by russtowne

A touching reminder to parents and to grown children.

For parents who regret how they parented, this could be a wonderful time to begin to build or re-build your relationship with your child/children.

For children who grew up and have regrets about the way their parents were treated or too often forgotten, this could be a wondeful time to
begin to build or re-build your relationship with your parents. And if your parents are already gone, to take a moment to say thank you and remember all the sacrifices they made for you. That will honor them, and I believe it will help to comfort you and them.

http://biggeekdaddy.com/miscvideos/Inspirational/Sparrow.html

Russ

Posted in Gratitude, Growth/Learning, Healing, Parenting, Relationship Lessons Learned, Vids & Stories That Touched Me | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Posted on June 18, 2012 by russtowne

This just became one of my favorite poems. I love the message and the way the poet expresses it. Thank you, Gina for sharing it at your wonderful blog!
Russ

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Loma Prieta Earthquake: The BIG One (So Far) Part 3 of 3

Posted on June 18, 2012 by russtowne


The aftershocks kept coming, sporadic and of varying intensity. We decided to see if any of the radio stations had come back up so we bundled everyone and went out to my car in the garage and sat in the dark with the radio on; the only light was from the radio dial. Eventually we found a station that was able to broadcast, and we listened carefully for every scrap of news we could get.

It was surreal to be in a car in our darkened garage with the light of the dial reflecting off of our faces. Eerie even, but also a good reminder that although we looked ghost-like in that light we were all very much alive and well.

A warm feeling of gratitude came over me, but also sadness as the bad news kept trickling in. Part of a bridge had indeed fallen but not the whole bridge as we’d heard earlier. Sadness and gladness again. A part of the highway had collapsed on itself. More sadness. How bad was the damage or high the death count we silently asked ourselves? No one new.

As exhaustion overtook us, we went back to the house, as I carried our sleeping youngest son in. I believe we all slept in the same bed that night. The aftershocks continued but seemed to lessen in intensity.

One of the toughest parts about big earthquakes is not knowing whether they are the biggest one of that swarm of quakes or just a large foreshock to an even larger one. That tends to make for anxious hours, and sometimes days.

When we awoke, the sun came up as always, birds sang, things looked remarkably peaceful, and the same as any other day. But things were far from normal. We had no electricity or telephone service. We knew that loved ones around the country were getting news showing the worst of the damage and death counts. (Sure enough, we heard later that the way the news mdia portrayed it huge swaths of the Bay Area were devastated—-which was far from true.) We were frustrated that we couldn’t tell people that we were all safe.

Finally, our telephone service returned and we started spreading the word that we were OK, and learning the fates of local love ones. Everyone we knew had made it through safely. We felt a surge of relief and gratitude for the good news.

We figured the infrastructure might be pretty messed up and although we had quite a bit of food and water, I decided to go to the neighborhood market to get more supplies just in case we would be on our own for weeks. The medium-sized market was only about 3 blocks away. What I saw when I got there shocked me.

Much of its merchandise had been thrown to the floor by the quake and every aisle was covered in broken glass and was a wet, sticky, gooey, dangerous mess. I would not have been surprised if the manager had closed and locked the store and posted guards, but to his credit he chose to keep it open so people could buy emergency supplies.

He limited the number of customers in the store at one time and assigned them escorts for safety in the darkened store, and I think may have limited quantities of certain purchases to head off hoarders and ensure that more families had access to vital supplies. He also didn’t raise prices at a time when greed could have driven him to gouge the people who badly needed critical things.

He and his hard-working employees were quiet heroes in my eyes. And my neighbors responded with patience and understanding. There was no looting. I was—and remain–proud of my community.

It took quite awhile for the telephones to begin working again. But it was the power and other utilities that were of particular concern. Strangely, while most of the houses on our street had their power restored within a day or two, a cluster of about 8 houses went without power for a lot longer. Guess which group our house was in?

I think we didn’t get our power back for about 5 days—an excruciatingly long time since we had a refrigerator full of perishables and a large standalone freezer full of rapidly thawing food.

A camping stove was used to cook on and our camping lanterns came in handy at night.

We thought our house had come out of the quake intact with only a couple of things that had fallen off the wall and broken being our only damage. We were wrong. Twice.

We soon discovered some relatively minor-looking cracks inside our fireplace, which is in the center of our home, so I called out a fireplace expert to inspect and ensure it would be safe to use, and if not to repair it so we could begin having fires in it again.

The expert decided to check the chimney while he was there and climbed onto our roof. Our chimney rises above the wall that on one side has our master bedroom and on the other the living room. He yelled down and asked me to come up so I could see something. What I saw sent a cold chill down my spine.

He wrapped his arms around the part of our chimney that stuck up above our roof line and without much effort moved the towering brick structure as it wobbled precariously. It was clear to see that any little tremor could have shaken that heavy brick and mortar structure crashing though our roof into one of the busiest rooms in our house or into the room in which we slept. It had cracked all the way around right at the rof line!

Suffice to say that it was fixed right away and reinforced in such a way to keep that from ever happening again.

We’d survived a BIG quake with the help of several quiet heroes. And for each of them, and for the safety of my family, I’m eternally grateful.

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Loma Prieta Earthquake: The BIG One (So Far) Part 2

Posted on June 16, 2012 by russtowne

As I made my way down a dark expressway in very heavy traffic I noticed something truly extraordinary. At all the major intersections that would have become gridlocked like the one it had taken an hour for me to get through, ordinary people had stopped, were standing in the dark in the middle of the intersection and with the help of a flashlight or flare were directing the flow of traffic!

They were risking their lives to help others! And equally wonderful was that the public responded by following their directions! The traffic was actually moving at an almost-normal pace. It was amazing! I’ll never forget the kindness, consideration, and courage of those people. Because of them, I was able to get home much sooner than I expected.

I pulled into our driveway and ran into our house. It was an enormous relief to see that that my family all safe. My beloved wife had even had time to check on her parents who lived about 5 blocks away and they were safe too.

That quake had a lot of aftershocks, and some were alarmingly large. We sometimes huddled under our very sturdy dining room table for safety. It was there, by flashlight in the dark, with the earth trembling, that I saw the photo for the first time of the miracle that was soon to be our infant daughter. The photo we’d been waiting for had finally arrived in the mail earlier that day.

I’ll never forget that magical moment. We’d been waiting and working for months and jumping through all kinds of hoops put in place by the U.S. and Chilean governments so that we could adopt a little girl. We thought we were doing it in large part to help a little girl and the world, but we soon quickly discovered that we were getting far more than were giving.

But those are stories for another day. So I’ll just say that that moment sitting under our dining room table in the dark looking at her photo by flashlight was one that I’ll always cherish.

Gotta run. Part three hopefully soon!

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Loma Prieta Earthquake: The BIG One (So Far)

Posted on June 16, 2012 by russtowne

Gina’s comment regarding my most recent post reminded me that although I’ve spent relatively little time at our local convention center, that site was also where I was when the terrible Loma Prieta Earthquake that killed so many people and wreaked havoc around the Bay Area struck.

I was upstairs in a restroom walking toward a sink when it hit. The room swayed quite a bit and I staggered and leaned forward to grab a sink and stabilize myself. I remember thinking, “Wow, that’s a pretty big earthquake, but thankfully not as big as the one I’d recently experienced in the dead of night at home.”

I couldn’t have been more wrong. It turns out that if you’ve got to be in an earthquake, being in a public restroom is a great and relatively safe place to experience it. Everything is bolted down, there is usually very little if anything that is likely to break or fall off a wall, etc. Who knew?

I got a much better taste of just how bad the quake had been when I went downstairs in the convention hall where a career event was taking place. A crowded job fair, with a hundred companies and thousands of people, and where almost everything is a temporary setup (including booths that are quickly put together with lots of stuff hanging off their walls, and piles of collateral materials everywhere)is an ideal place to NOT be during an earthquake. Debris and chaos, and panicked people were everywhere.

Booth walls and everything that had been hanging on them had fallen. Several acoustic ceiling tiles had shaken loose and had either dropped to the floor or were hanging precariously. Some people (mostly out-of-towners who had never experienced an earthquake) were screaming, and many people—-both locals and those who’d flown in for the event–were heading for the exits. I remember one Texan swearing, “I’m never coming to California again!” At that moment I couldn’t blame him.

One of the owners of the job fair production event company—who I’d known for years—-came up to me, and to avoid panicking folks, whispered in my ear that he’d just heard that both the Bay Bridge and a key highway had collapsed, and it looked as though a lot of people may have died. Hundreds, perhaps thousands. The top part of a double-decker freeway had collapsed onto the bottom part and both the bridge and the highway were jammed with commuters). In shock, my instinctive reply was, “You’re kidding!” But it was clear that he wasn’t kidding and I’ve regretted and felt shame about my reply ever since.

The job fair was canceled and everyone headed for their cars at the same time as we all tried to call loved ones on our cell phones, which of course completely jammed all the phone circuits so almost no one could get through.

Thousands of cars headed for the same 12-way intersection at the same time. The quake had knocked out all for the traffic signals. At rush hour. With the cross street a major commute artery and with everyone anxious to get home to their loved ones. A perfect recipe for complete gridlock.

As we all sat in that mess, more aftershocks rumbled, and we tried to find out what was happening via our car radios. But there was only silence. Not just silence from one or two of our many local radio stations. ALL of them. The transmission towers had all been knocked out by the quake or its aftershocks. That was an eerie and scary feeling. Drivers opened their windows and asked each other if they could get any radio stations. No one could.

A little later I heard a faint voice come over the radio. I’ve forgotten some of the details of what the man said all those years ago but I’ll never forget the gist of his message:

“This is KXXX from (some city in) Nevada sending our love and prayers to all of our brothers and sisters In California who are being affected by the big earthquake that just hit the San Francisco Bay Area.”

His message sent chills down my spine. I was grateful for that voice from so far away, and for his message, but was also alarmed that so much infrastructure must have been knocked out between Nevada and me that I could hear his radio signal from so far away.

It took an excruciatingly long hour to get through that single intersection. It was now dark and I had a long way to go before I could get home. The signal lights at many othe intersections betwen where I was and where I wanted to be were also out. I was afraid for my wife and young boys, but comforted by the knowledge that our home was built on solid bedrock (the best foundation for a quake), and sturdily made out of wood–which, like the branch of a willow tree tends to bend rather than break or crumble when the ground shakes.

It was a good thing that I didn’t know at the time that the epicenter was fairly close to our home and that the main street of a town only about 5 miles away was largely in ruins (because many of its old buildings and/or their facades were made of bricks and other masonry and had collapsed.)

This post is getting long, so I’m going to end it here. I hope to be able to finish this story in the next few days.

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Family Nights

Posted on June 15, 2012 by russtowne

Picture if you will all the noise and people during rush hour in Grand Central Station, the commotion and energy of a busy dog park, the love and joy of a raucous religious revival, the laughter and entertainment of a circus, and a meal fit for a king but large enough to feed an army, and you begin to have some idea as to what it is like to be at our house on most Sunday nights.

That’s because we celebrate Family Night on Sundays, and all of the above is usually generated by just my immediate family. And our dogs. Six dogs.

It’s also a bit like a mini United Nations (without all the rancor, bickering, and squabbling) as my immediate family represents races from three continents–four if you count my nephew and his family who often join us.

If I ever needed a reminder as to how much abundance and love is in my life, Family Night would serve that purpose.

Family Nights now include 3 and sometimes 4 generations, as our first grandchild has arrived, and my in-laws are also sometimes able to join us.

Speaking of our grandson, he has of course become the star of the show. Even our wonderfully entertaining dogs all enthusiastically playing together can’t compete with this latest attraction.

We also often have a conference call with Younger Son who is in the U.S. Air Force and stationed in Coco Beach, Florida (in the same building where TV’s Major Nelson character from “I Dream Of Jeannie” worked by the way). And Younger Son’s wonderful wife who lives and works in Ohio (but that’s a story for another day) also often joins us on the calls.

I’m an introvert and large crowds and loud environments tend to build up like a toxin until they kind of overwhelm me. (I call my reaction stimulation overload, and if ever there was a place to experience stimulation overload Family Night is it.) But despite all that, Family Nights are one of my favorite experiences of the week.

In the midst of all the noise and activity, I often sit back and soak it all in, savoring every second of our time together, feeling incredibly grateful to be blessed with having so many wonderful people in my life who know all my faults and love me anyway.

Posted in Abundance, Dogs & Other Wonderful Creatures, Family "Fun", Grandparenting & Grandkids, Gratitude, Humor, Parenting, True Stories I've Written | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Posted on June 15, 2012 by russtowne

Sounds like great advice to me! Thank you GYA Today for sharing this post with the world!
Russ

Paul Mark Sutherland's avatarGYA today

Want to sleep more soundly and restfully than you usually do? Here’s how. Accomplish everything that you planned to accomplish today …plus, go out of your way just a bit and help another who is struggling. You accomplish, they accomplish, you win, they win.

Your beliefs do not make you a compassionate person, your behavior does.

Pleasant dreams!

photo credit: Dynamite Imagery/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Strongest Dad In The World

Posted on June 15, 2012 by russtowne

I’d read some prior articles about this incredible father but learned much more about this dad and his son in this heart-warming article.

Russ

Strongest Dad in the World
Rick Reilly for Sports Illustrated

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars – all in the same day.

Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much – except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life,” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”

But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.”

“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.”

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”

That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”

And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway. Then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”

How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 – only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life. Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. “The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”

Sports Illustrated Issue date: June 20, 2005, p. 88
To see the inspiring website of Team Hoyt: http://www.teamhoyt.com/

To see a photo gallery of Dick and Rick Hoyt (click on photos to enlarge), click here

Posted in Courage, Creativity, Growth/Learning, Healing, Inspiring, LIfe Lessons, Optimism, Parenting, Vids & Stories That Touched Me | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Who Would Do Something Silly Like That?

Posted on June 15, 2012 by russtowne

In nearly 40 years of driving I think I’ve only locked my keys in the car twice, but when I do something I tend to go all the way, impacting innocent people all around me, including total strangers. Case in point:

Many years ago I’d volunteered to take a car load of stuff that my employer needed for the booth of a job fair to our area’s convention center. When I arrived I noticed with frustration that the road leading to the dock was long and narrow, and that there was an even longer queue of drivers waiting to unload their vehicles one by one as each eventually became the first in line at the single unloading point.

When I saw the line, I looked at my watch and sighed. Based on how slowly the line seemed to be moving I estimated that if I was lucky I’d probably just barely be able to unlod, park my car, and get the booth set up in time for the stampede of thousands of job applicants waiting outside the front doors for the event to begin.

Finally, as my car reached the unloading area I saw a fellow emplyoye on the dock signaling that if I carried the stuff from my car to him he’d relay it to the place where the booth was to be set up. Good plan!

Because it would not take long to unload the car and we were almost out of time–and in consideration of those waiting in line behind me–I left my car’s engine running as I jumped out to begin unloading.

Out of habit and in my haste I locked the door as I got out. When I went to open a rear door it wouldn’t budge. Then it hit me! I’d locked my keys in my car with the engine running and a lot of people counting on me to unload and get ot of their way!

I didn’t quite panic yet. Thinking quickly I began to check all the doors. Maybe I’d be lucky and one would be unlocked. Nope. My heart sank as I knew right then that it was going to be THAT kind of day.

I silently screamed to myself as I sized up the potential disaster I’d just created not only for myself and my company but for everyone around me.

My adrenaline surged as I tried to figure out how I was going to get out of this mess.

I looked for a spare key in the off chance my beloved wife had put one under the car and that I might have forgotten that one was there.

My luck was holding. No spare key.

By now I was getting desperate and the glares of the people around me went from impatience to feelings that I’d prefer not to mention or even think about in mixed company (but if looks could kill I’d have used up more lives than a herd of cats–or is that a pride of cats as in a “pride of lions”?–well whatever large groups of felines are called, I was in a bad situation that was rapidly deteriorating.)

I came up with the idea to break the glass on my driver’s side window, but I couldn’t find anything to smach it with other than my fist or elbow. That glass suddenly looked thick and intimidating. I rationalized that I wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors if I slashed an artery while shattering the window, what with all of the emergency vehicles they’d have to send, etc. So, that not-so-brilliant idea was quickly scratched off my very short list of options.

I ran to the drivers of several cars who were queued up behind me and explained the situation. I don’t recall their exact words at this wonderful news but betwen their rolling eyes and comments muttered under their breath I had a good idea that I’d just become their least favorite person on the planet, and probably the universe. If tar and feathers or a rope had been handy I think they’d have used them on me–and I can’t even say that I’d have blamed them.

Remember those scenes from the old westerns when the wagon train master yelled instructions and the information was shouted from one wagon to the next on down the line so that everyone would know what to do? That’s about what it sounded like as I turned and raced back to my still-running car–except the tone of the modern day drivers was a LOT less friendly than the ones I remember in those movies.

I silently pleaded with my car, “Please, PLEASE don’t overheat!”

People started to feverishly unload their cars and trudge the heavy equipment and boxes all along the line of vehicless as they tried to get their booths set up in time. They had to walk right by me. I apologized, but that didn’t get the job done–theirs or mine.

OK, one option left, and it was a long shot. I raced to a phone (I don’t remember whether we had cell phones back then but I don’t think we did) and dialed my home phone number. I remembered that my beloved wife had planned to run errands with our two young boys that morning, so I knew that she probably wouldn’t be home to answer my call. “Be home, BE HOME”, my brain screamed.

After several rings, Beloved answered. The conversation went something like this:

Me: “Uh, honey, uh could you drop everything and bundle the kids into your car and rush down to the back of the convention center with the spare key to my car, then park your car, and with the boys in tow walk the spare keys over to me?”

Beloved: (Silence.) “Why? Did you lose your keys?”

Me: I answewred, “No. I never lose my keys!” I responded with my best “Who would do something silly like that?” tone in my voice. Then sheepishly said, “I locked my keys in the car…”

Beloved: “Can you wait for awhile, the convention cetner is 40 minutes away and I’m right in the middle of…”

Me: “…with the car running. At the loading dock. With a line of cars and a bunch of angry people stuck behind me.

Beloved: “Oh…” (More silence–but this time I’m pretty sure I distinctly heard the sound of her eyes rolling.) “OK. I’ll be right down…”

Have I mentioned lately how much I love that woman?

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Posted on June 14, 2012 by russtowne

I think there is much wisom in these words, and I love the photo! Thank you for sharing it Jolyn!
Russ

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