This billboard in Georgia offered spirited conversation during our road trip.

My son Gregg the younger was the impetus for my most recent road trip–a trip to Florida for his Spring Break. Nineteen and a half hours on the way there, and several additional hours on the way home because I gave my gps credit for being smarter than I am.

There we were, in Georgia, driving along at a southward speed slightly less than the fastest BMW on the road, me thinking the BMW will get pulled over in the event anybody’s watching, and as we clear through another breathtaking rock-splitting road-cut onto a massive iron structure of a bridge, we see in the distance a billboard begging the question “Who is John Galt?”

This left Gregg begging the question, “Dad?”

“Yes.”

“Who is John Galt?”

“Well Gregg,” I began, “you know that bridge we just passed over?”

“Yeah.”

“John Galt designed the structure and fabricated the steel to build it in his factory.”

“Oh.”

“John Galt had a lot of great ideas, and he had the ability to make those ideas happen. And he was able to sell those ideas. Just like he sold that bridge design to the Georgia Highway Commission, he was able to sell his ideas and steel to the railroads, the military, and the prison industries.

“John Galt is what you would call an industrialist.”

“Wow!” said Gregg. “I want to be like him.”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

“Why?”

“Because John Galt is a fictional character in what just might be one of the greatest hoaxes in American Literature. A brilliant woman named Ayn Rand created John Galt and his girlfriend, Dagny Taggert to paint a grand illusion of the rugged individualism we fancy as the backbone of American progress.

“In truth, the only lasting creation that can be credited to them is that of the gated community–only their gated community was a commune tucked deep inside the Rocky Mountains.”

Then Gregg asked, “Why do you call it a hoax?”

“Because Atlas Shrugged presents the fantasy to justify a class system in America based on a few individuals’ ability to create enormous wealth.”

“What’s wrong with wealth?”

“Nothing is wrong with wealth, but the notion that the individual created it is simply not true–especially in the transportation and steel industries.

“You see, Gregg, in the United States, indeed in all the world, people live together in community. Our community here has created one of the greatest systems of fairness ever known to the world, a system designed to be keepers of the high moral values we profess as well as keepers of the immense natural resource values we hold known as commons–community property held for the benefit of all. Think of the national, state, and local parks we enjoy; think of the highways and the bridges we drive on; think of the schools, your school among them, and the colleges and universities created because our community has historically placed a high value on human potential; think of the immense wealth buried beneath our public properties: the oil and gas and minerals. These are all properties that you and I and everybody else in our community, by virtue of our Americanness, own, and yet we elect representatives of ourselves to give it all away.

“Perhaps the greatest lie in Atlas Shrugged is the notion that a magnificent railroad network came into existence with no contributions from the commons and with no community to serve. Taggert Transcontinental Railway, featured in the book, was created through the transfer of massive amounts of property from the community to private individuals; how else could have railroads been built? This transfer set in motion the demand for steel, the other great accomplishment of Ayn Rand’s individual–none other than John Galt.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, son.”

“Did John Galt really design that bridge we just drove over?”

“No, Gregg, that bridge was inspired by the community of the State of Georgia, and designed and built by someone in that community to serve you and I on our way to Florida.”

“Where is John Galt now?” I began to realize that Gregg, the younger, was grasping the figurative dimension of our (my) ramblings.

“Oh, he has learned that our ‘keepers of the commons,’ those folks supposedly representing us, are for sale. He’s moved into oil and gas industries, knowing he might have to purchase the rights up-front, but he’s purchased those same representatives votes to give it  back in subsidies when he starts mining or drilling. He’s heavily invested in the defense industry, with retired generals on the John Galt payroll drumming up public support for this or that fling into far regions to test his latest and greatest and most profitable deadly equipment. He’s now investing in the prison industry, playing heavy on the immigration card and interacting with–directly funding–representatives of the commons to influence high-profile, ‘war-on-crime’ sentencing guidelines. Understand this, my son, that when your government, your representatives of the commons that both you and I possess and belong to, begins selling it off for personal gain, they have committed an act of treason.”

“But dad, you said he created the gated community. That’s a good thing, right?”

“Think for a moment Gregg, of the incredible sense of sadness one must overcome to separate himself or herself from the community that created, the community that fostered, the community that nourished his or her divinely-inspired purpose in the world. No, Gregg, I am not convinced that inventing the gated community is a good thing to be remembered for.”

All Gregg could say was, “Wow! I feel sorry for him.”

I’m growing a bit numb.

My one-way ticket from Melbourne, Florida to Grand Rapids cost $175. The fellow next to me on the leg from Atlanta to Grand Rapids was heading home for his grandpa’s funeral. Delta’s bereavement special for his round-trip cost $1,100.

The airline industry has a mind-numbing business model, with a great number of their costs–security, for one–borne by the US Taxpayer.

We call this Homeland Security.

And speaking of security issues, it is now March. I’ve been telling anybody who’d listen over the past six months to wait until February. February was the month that the State Department came out with a warning, directed especially toward college students, about traveling to Mexico. If you missed it, it will be updated next February. Sure, there’s a lot of murdering going on in Mexico, but it’s cops and robbers stuff–tourists are not and have never been the targets of this violence.

We call this the War on Drugs.

We have a numbing, 24-hour stream of reasons to fear others, otherness, and not-American places, designed to keep us firmly planted on our own soil. Heck, we keep a higher percentage of our population, nearly half again what the second highest nation, Rwanda, incarcerated–demonstrating a fear even of ourselves, if we rule-out the profit motive behind those incarcerations. We’re even moving toward incarcerating illegal aliens because, well, because it’s good business.

We call this the War on Crime.

Before we departed on our 4 1/2 year circumnavigation of the world on a sailboat in 2003, we were told by people close to us, “You’re going to a lot of places where they don’t value human life like we do.” As Americans, we knew that statement to be true–mostly because of that numbing, 24-hour stream. It took us the first two years of our journey to learn that that statement was simply not true. People in every place our travels took us value human life as much as we do–sometimes more, for while we value human life, so long as it’s American humans we’re talking about, others have a broader definition of what it means to be human (no, I’m not referring here to Mitt Romney’s “corporations are people” baloney).

A numbing effect arises when one’s nation has never waged peace during one’s lifetime. My life has witnessed body counts of American military casualties since my youngest days, yet these counts are nothing compared to the repressed counts of civilian casualties in those areas where we send our young men and women to ‘help.’

Most of our ‘help’ in recent years has been directed toward Iraq and Afghanistan.

We call this the War on Terror.

At fifty-five years old, there has never been a time in my life that America has been at peace. I grew up watching Vietnam on the six o’clock news, I was thirty-five when the Cold War ended, freeing our resources to be used in the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, Haiti, and Yugoslavia, before turning our attention to punishing the innocent for a crime committed on our soil.

Now, with Americans such as myself becoming fatigued with war, and with nearly half of the globe’s expenditures on defense providing a firm bottom line for American corporations in the defense industry, we must find new target.

We call this a nuclear Iran.

Never mind that Iran has no current plans to build a nuclear weapon. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said as much two weeks ago. Decisions during the current and past administration leading to continued war suggest Defense Department intelligence or any other intelligence must be sacrificed to the whims and emotions of our leaders. This coming Monday, these whims will be driven by Israel’s President Netanyahu. He is then scheduled to meet President Obama.

We call this cronyism.

Now, President Obama, I realize you have a lot on your plate right now. The jobs picture is made brighter by your continued spending on Homeland Security and Defense–maintaining the profitability of these corporations probably doesn’t hurt your campaign coffers too much either . Sure, having the AIPAC not against you (chances are, they’ll never be for you) would only help your job security, but jeesh, have you seen the guys the other party is propping up?

I know the deck is stacked against peace in my lifetime, but it sure would be nice if when you meet on Monday, you would tell your counterpart that should he take his country into military action against Iran, his country will be doing it alone. That position by the United States is what will stop this madness.

That is something we could call leadership!

Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home is now available in Kindle format !!!

Self-promotion is the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Please personalize my book for:

 

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon.

That’s why when my middle-school son Gregg came home from school with information about Science Olympiad, I agreed to accompany him to the Science Olympiad Invitational at Allendale Middle School.

Thornapple Kellogg Middle School offers a broad array of extra-curricular activities for students to experiment with.  Coaches of this competition or that struggle recruiting students to fill events. My son, has been playing basketball and is now wrestling and has missed all of the afternoon Science Olympiad meetings. The Science Olympiad ‘Build’ competitions are more of the ‘do-at-home’ type, and the Science Olympiad coaches asked if he would enter a ‘Tower.’ (At last year’s regionals, he took first place on a wonderfully handcrafted tower. I informed him on the way home from that competition that in the future, he would take a larger role in the building process.)

A couple of months ago, Gregg and I attended a seminar on the ‘build’ events where he built a tower, which meant that he didn’t have to think too much about the upcoming competition until this past Friday. The Invitational was Saturday. Friday was also a snow day at Thorapple Kellogg Schools and  Gregg thought it a good time to build another Tower. “Okay,” I responded, “but I’m not going to help you too much.”

The glue we learned of at the seminar has amazing qualities, and later that afternoon, while Gregg was using one of those razor-sharp X-acto Knives to extract his finger from the bowels of his halfway completed tower, I was using prayer to ask God to remove my left thumb and forefinger from a ticklish spot on my right earlobe. By the end of the day Gregg had a respectable Tower ready for the morning’s competition.

We arrived in Allendale earlier than his team. When they did arrive, his coaches wore the harried look of whew, I forgot how long a one-hour bus ride with middle-schoolers could take, but I love my job! 

Preparing the Tower for loading.

We soon learned that the Thornapple Kellogg Middle School entry in the Tower division was to be judged at 9:40, and Gregg and I clenched our respective sphincters accordingly. Watching the Tower competition is fun, because it usually involves breaking the tower. Gregg’s Tower refused to break during the loading–making for an extremely boring video (that I am being kind enough to not upload to this post)–and we both thought he had a good chance at winning until we saw the performance of other towers.

I watched as one school’s Tower was measured, 68Cm+, thent weighed-in at 8 grams+ (Gregg’s weighed 19.01 grams and we thought his was light!). I then watched the students load this tower to the maximum allowable 15Kg, just like Gregg’s. Holy Cow! I thought.

I naively moved toward the Mother cheering the loudest during this event to satisfy my curiosity. I foolishly believed Science Olympiad to be a competition to foster the exchange of ideas, so I asked her what kind of wood was used in ‘her student’s’ Tower.

“It’s secret,” she said.

Later, I took Gregg over to where this school’s staging area to look at their Tower. I said to this woman, “I know you won’t tell us what kind of wood you’re using,” to which she said, “Secret,” I continued, “but can he take a look at that tower?”

“No.”

I spend much time in a state I call dumbstruck, so this wasn’t a new sensation to me, but at a Science Olympiad Invitational?

This team entered one more Tower, and because only two teams can enter from each school, had a third Tower tested for exhibition purposes only. Oddly, this same woman during one of these tests, asked the man next to me to not take photographs of the Tower. Then, after the third Tower shattered during testing, an even odder thing happened. This woman excitedly instructed her students to pick up every last piece of the Tower. Unfortunately, these kids are middle-school-aged, and they missed some of the pieces. A few moments later, these same children nervously returned to the Tower Testing Site to scour the area for any scraps they might have left behind. Apparently, at somewhere between 10 and 14 years of age, they were learning the threat of industrial espionage.

My mind climbs to elevated curiosity when confronted with secrecy.  I must now determine what this material is. In looks and appearance, it is the same balsa wood that Gregg used, but in feel, both by weight and compression, it is different–far lighter and spongier.

I fail to understand the aura of secrecy this woman brought to the Towers competition. Imagine for a moment that the secret she was teaching her children to hold was a cure for a devastating disease, or a solution to world hunger–but then, these are proprietary problems to be solved in utmost secrecy while the expenses for research are paid for by society. After all, this is America.

Perhaps it is Gregg and I that should be the ones to learn something from this day, but I’m wired with a bit more of the naivety and sharing I learned in Kindergarten.

So here it is:

Sure, the quality could be better, but that would take longer to load and play. I hope you enjoy it. If you like it, I ask you to help me share it.

Any suggestions are welcome as comments or email me at gregg@faithofholland.com

Thanks

It seems that every subject we speak on has an uncanny ability to slither back into the narrow confines of a political discussion, one followed by a bit of laughter and us looking at each other wondering how we got back here. Dad and I are close, but political discussions do not foster a great sense of bonding, mostly because his opinions (or mine) are based on misinformation.

He watches Fox News, which easily identifies where his misinformation lies (are told). I get my own set of ‘fair and balanced’ from all sorts of unreliable sources and a few highly reliable sources on the internet; the trouble is that, with exception, I can’t easily discern that which is reliable from that which is not.

So there we were, driving along, feeding on the sandwiches that mom packed for us, and feeding each other healthy doses of strongly-held snippets of misinformation to bolster our opinions. Clearly, an outsider witnessing these convictions would find it quite comical.

And yet, we do enjoy rare moments of clarity when one of us hears something the other says and a gee, I never really understood it that way moment occurs.

Last year, on our way home from Florida, I experienced my gee-type moment. One issue both dad and I strongly agree on is that corporate bailouts for the failures and/or crimes of those corporations’ management is wrong. In rare moments like these, when we do agree, we must poke and prod a bit deeper to find something to dance a dialogue around. A quite natural area for us to land on the topic of the General Motors bailout was for dad to blame legacy costs and labor unions for GM’s failure, and for me to blame a management so inept they could kill a brand like Oldsmobile and a failed health-care industry that is largely responsible for those legacy costs.

“What part of Obama’s plans have helped your Carpenter’s pension fund?” Dad asked.

“Nothing that I’m aware of, why?” I responded. (I possess a Carpenter’s pension from a previous life.)

“That’s right, and while nearly every retirement account and pension fund in the United States has suffered, the UAW’s fund has been made whole through the bail-out.”

That was a slippery move, I thought. “Hmm,” I said, “that’s not right.” (By not allowing GM to go through the process of bankruptcy, and to negotiate solutions for their failure with creditors, including the pension fund, the bailout that gained momentum under the Bush administration, and was completed in the early days of the Obama administration, had preserved those legacy costs.)

I voted for Obama. I believed in hope and change, but by the time dad and I had this conversation, I had already given up on him. The hope and change promised was simply more of the same.

This year, while driving to Florida with dad, we again pounced upon several subjects of a political nature–so we blathered on and on with dad blaming the democrats for the nation’s ills, and with me agreeing about the democrats and including the republicans. I continued during our southbound journey to talk about the massive amount of corporate money funneled into Washington and voiced my opinion that the whole of our leadership had been purchased. Dad continued to remind me that that money was in response to union moneys pouring into Washington. I told dad that unions were corporations, so was the AARP, the NRA, and every other non-human entity peddling influence in this once great bastion of democracy. We were having a grand old time at it.

It wasn’t until we were settling into dad’s and mom’s condo in Florida that dad’s gee, I never really understood it that way moment occurred.

As we left Starbucks that first morning, I mentioned something forgettable about Super-PACs (Political Action Committees). Dad said he’d heard about Super-PACs, but didn’t understand what they were all about.

I then began to disseminate the misinformation as best I understood it about the Supreme Court, the Citizen’s United case and the idea that so long as a loosely defined ‘arms-length’ arrangement between the PAC’s management and the candidate’s, contributions could be made anonymously by any individual or corporation to impact the paid-for information flow in the democratic process we hold so dear in the United States.

With the three words dad uttered on hearing that, I knew his gee-type moment was occurring.

“That’s not right.”

Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home is now available in Kindle format !!!

Self-promotion is the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Please personalize my book for:

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon.

Yod and I in Thailand shown for comparison of skin tones. (Photo, smart-phone camera with sweaty-lens filter)

While in Chiang Mai, Thailand, this past year, those places exposed while wearing my t-shirt, shorts, and thongs (the sandal-type–not the stringy-thingey intimate wear) began to develop a nice tan. One positive outcome of the smog trapped by the temperature inversion the mountains create is that it adds some degree of protection from the harmful rays of the sun–I never experienced that crispy sensation one get’s following too much exposure,  yet I was in the sun all day and every day.

There I was in Thailand thinking a tan on my face and arms would be a good thing–maybe if I could tan to the color of a Thai…

My fear was of losing the progress I had made so far–I popped into a convenience store for some skin moisturizer to help preserve my tan from peeling before my return flight to the United States.

I found a surprise packaged with skin creams in Thailand–they have whiteners in them! Something is seriously out of kilter when I believe the right color of skin is Thai, and Thais believe the right color is mine. I read the labels, expecting these products to be of local origin, but all of these products were from the same multinational companies found on American shelves–Nivea, Unilever, and P&G. These companies that taught me that having the skin color of a Thai was a good thing are here teaching Thais the virtues of whiteness. How can that be? Perhaps we should prepare ourselves for a great racial flip-flop.

In 2004, we visited the remote island of Saumlaki, Indonesia, where television was in its infancy. School children with whom we were building relationships exclaimed, “We never knew what we didn’t have!” Somewhere in fancy global trade agreements are clauses that give American television programming the same rights to airspace as local productions.

Yet, whatever threads of culture remain after the homogenizing effects of product marketing and television are wholly lost in some geographic areas. These areas are found where economies previously rooted in agriculture or production have been replaced, rebranded, and repackaged as tourism destinations. During our family’s travel on Faith, as we sailed into thirty-eight different countries, a common theme prevailed: in areas heavily reliant on tourism, culture takes the shape of the tourist.

When one of these babies shows up in your village, the culture changes!

Within one month of commencing our journey on Faith, while still in the Caribbean, we began to shun ports where cruise ships called, favoring anchorages several miles away from such ports. An identifiable difference in residents and those residents’ acceptance of us as visitors existed. Tourism had taught those in the cruise ship ports a new and only income source, and taught them that we were visiting for no other reason.

This phenomenon was witnessed not only in the Caribbean, but throughout our travels on Faith. The greater the degree of tourism as a portion of the economy, the less the ability to identify the uniqueness of character of the members of a culture.

The new picture of American ingenuity. (Courtesy: Back to the Future II)

Perhaps it simply must be so to survive for both hosts and travelers, especially travelers not accustomed to too great a degree of otherness; yet sadness accompanies cultural exploration in the face of tourism–sadness for the hosts chasing dreams of Western origin, and sadness for the travelers robbed of the opportunity for  genuine interaction.

While it is easy to identify such characteristics in the cultures of others, the same change is occurring at home. The selling of tourism in my home of Michigan shares a strong inverse correlation with the loss of productive work associated with the manufacture of, among other products, the great motorcars. More recently, as the selling of landscapes and museums and parks and beaches reaches saturation, the new and great phenomenon called Casino gambling is moving in to truly bolster the economy and replicate the values once achieved through manufacturing a thing of value.

Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home is now available in Kindle format !!!

Self-promotion is the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Please personalize my book for:

 

 

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon. 

Strictly Sail – Chicago

Gregg II and I visited Chicago this past weekend to check-out the offerings at Strictly Sail Chicago. We were here for fun. Gregg II has watched as his sisters, his mother, and I, have traveled the globe this past year, and he has not gone anywhere. Taking in the show allowed him and me to do something fun for and with him.

So here we were, traipsing around the sailboat show, and talking to just about anybody who’d listen. A highlight of the day was having our picture taken with Tricia, the 2011 Loop Rock Girl, in a conversation poorly disguised as us just visiting the booth set up by the The Loop 97.9 Radio Station. “By the way, you’re into promoting stuff, and I suck at self-promotion, so I want to give you a copy of my book if…” Once they heard our story of sailing around the world, and of Gregg II having been on the boat with us, all three of the young women at the booth agreed–either to help promote my book, or that I really do suck at self-promotion. I didn’t ask. (Tricia blogged about our visit here!)

We later ran through an equally pathetic round of self-promotion with Dave Fogel, who came to represent 94.7 WLS.

The boat show was great, but we tired of walking back and forth and by 3:30, we were checking into the hotel. Once there, Gregg II longed for a pair of shorts or something to wear in the swimming pool. Apparently, his mother had helped him pack for the weekend, and suggested that winter clothes were stylish for this time of year.

After he informed me of how cool it was just to be in a hotel, and that he didn’t want to go anywhere, I told him we should go for a walk. I asked if he knew what the Magnificent Mile was. He didn’t.

Greggii with a woman too tall for him

We went down to look at the pool and he drooled as he watched all the fun things that fun people were doing there. Then we walked to the Magnificent Mile. We stopped long enough for some photographs of Gregg II standing as tall as the right calf of a magnificent statue of Marilyn Monroe. Welcome to Chicago!

Then we explored some of the shoppes along this major trade route: Starbucks, Eddie Bauer, Niketown, and the Gap. We went into Nordstrom where he purchased a pair of shorts, and returned to the hotel for an afternoon of me reading my book on the pool’s beach while he batted a beach ball around with a couple of families from Sarnia, Ontario–also in Chicago for the Strictly Sail Show.

Then, we went to dinner.

A Change of Plans:

On Sunday morning, we planned on a repeat performance of yesterday’s fun, but while I was dressing and encouraging Gregg II to start doing the same, he kind-of rolled over to the port-side of the bed, and began to rise using one side of the hotel’s easy chair for support. Then he slumped to his knees on the floor supported by one arm on the bed and one arm on the easy chair.

Thoughts of maybe he’s still asleep, or maybe his leg fell asleep, or maybe there’s a good explanation for all of this rang through me as I tried to help him up. A good dose of what the hell? was coursing through my veins.

I sat him on the bed and he looked at me. I was scared when he smiled at me when I saw only the right side of his face smiling. Gregg II was waving his left arm around, saying he felt funny, and he couldn’t feel it and he was becoming increasing anxious. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked, as fear replaced the anxiety.

“I don’t know.”

I called hotel security to summon an ambulance, and the EMTs arrived at our room within five minutes to package Gregg for transport to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The trip took all of another five minutes.

Gregg II’s symptoms trumped all, and the waiting room was not on the agenda this morning. We were taken immediately to a room where two doctors and one nurse awaited. Gregg II needed an IV installed, and following his IV episodes over the past year during his appendicitis, this was probably the scariest part of the morning for him. Jeff, the nurse, was good at this, and proved it with success on his first attempt. A CT Scan was ordered and administered, and very early in our moments at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, our fears of any of the scariest of outcomes–a stroke–were allayed. Once that fear was removed, they arranged transport in another ambulance to take us to Children’s Memorial Hospital, where we were once again whisked into emergency care.

In the ambulance, I was in the front seat looking at a developing mayhem, Gregg II looked out the back window to see the results. On arrival at Children’s Memorial, we agreed that riding a speeding ambulance in full emergency mode through the busy streets of Chicago was a cool thing to do.

Wired with an electrode ponytail for the EEG

Once a stroke had been ruled out, the doctors began to suggest that a migraine could also have resulted in Gregg II’s symptoms. The doctors hemmed and hawed and Gregg II and I were escorted to a refrigerated room where an MRI was performed. The MRI indicated that a tiny vein on the surface of Gregg II’s brain had clotted. Gregg II was admitted to a room on the third floor, three west I believe, where neurology practiced their arts and sciences on young patients. I indicated my preference to take Gregg II to Helen Devos Childrens Hospital in Grand Rapids, but Dr. Epstein cautioned against it, suggesting instead the overnight observation remain here in the event of another occurrence.Throughout this process, we were kept well informed of what was going on. Apparently, it is quite rare for this tiny-vein thing to occur, and Gregg II was wired for an EEG to be performed overnight, with the results to be scanned in the morning by a team of neurologists.

Gregg II looking like a deer in the headlights during his 'video EEG'

On Monday morning, a barrage of young scientific minds came in teams of two or three to assess Gregg II’s neurological functions. Chicago Children’s Memorial Hospital is under the umbrella of the Northwestern University Medical system, and as such, is a teaching hospital. Gregg II’s condition must have thoroughly intrigued all these young wizards judging from the attention he was receiving.

A hematologist, Dr. Liam, was summoned early in the afternoon to address and assess the clotting that had occurred on that tiny vein. A round of blood work was ordered for this purpose.

Then, late in the afternoon of Gregg II’s second day in the care of Childrens Memorial, both Dr. Liam and Dr. Epstein paid us a visit. Dr. Liam referred Gregg II to a hematologist he had studied with or otherwise knew well, and Dr. Epstein referred Gregg II to a pediatric neurologist that had been trained at Childrens Memorial, both of whom practice now with Helen Devos Childrens Hospital.

The staff at Childrens Memorial Hospital is eager to move into their new building downtown when it is completed.

The outcome: Gregg II is a healthy thirteen-year-old boy in need of some follow-up work in Grand Rapids to continue to rule out possibilities. We have no reason to believe anything scary is on the horizon.

The whole purpose of this post is to thank every individual we encountered at both Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Children’s Memorial Hospital for their care and treatment of Gregg II these past couple of days. And here I am, writing a book about medical tourism in Thailand, and once again being shown how happy I am for the services available to my children here in the United States.

A world of gratitude is also in order for all of the people praying for Gregg II, for me, and for Gregg II’s doctors, nurses, and other professionals, while he was in the hospital. Thank you all…and above all, Thank you God for your presence and for surrounding us with such great talent and great family and friends!

An advertisement:

I alluded to the fact that Self-promotion is not something that comes naturally to me, but self-promotion is the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Please personalize my book for:

 

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon. 

Pigs not wanted on the world market.

I began writing about a positive development on the food front, but my enthusiasm was curtailed by the the following news. (As for the positive note, read on.) Apparently, somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of pigs in the US are raised on feed supplemented with the drug ractopamine hydrochloride. Minute traces have been found in meat deemed fit for human consumption. The drug is intended to hasten the pigs’ ability to produce lean meat but  has the annoying tendency to make the animals sick and quite often die–more than any other livestock drug.

Helena Bottemiller reports in the Food and Environment Reporting Network, ”Growing concern over sick animals in the nation’s food supply sparked a California law banning the sale and slaughter of livestock unable to walk, but that law was struck down by the Supreme Court Monday.” Federal law, according to the Court, takes precedence over a state’s desire to protect either consumers or animals.

Many countries, The European Union, China, and Taiwan, among them, have banned ractopamine, limiting US meat exports. This sounds eerily similar to many of these same countries’ leeriness of importing American harvested genetically modified crops.

The things we do to food (Wikipedia)

To protect American consumers from thinking about GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) in our food, the FDA took the cue from the GMO industry–do not tell the consumer about it. A spokesperson for Asgrow, a subsidiary of Monsanto, said, “If you put a label on genetically engineered food, you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.” We now live in an age where branding and product awareness are king, and seed manufacturers actually believe such product awareness is somehow akin to the universal symbol of poison or motorcycle gangs.

Europe has been accused by US trade officials of interfering with free trade by requiring labeling of GMO food there. In response, Europe contends that free trade can occur only if the consumer has the ability to make an informed choice. In our own household, such informed choice requires knowing what crops come from genetically modified seeds and avoiding ingredients derived from those crops (see list below or article here). In addition to corn, soy, and cottonseed one of the more recent additions is sugar beets; we have switched to cane sugar. A GMO seed has been introduced for sweet corn, which makes it even more important to know your grower.

The positive note is that consumer awareness and demand is having an impact on product offerings.

Consumer awareness and demand has already seen milk labels emerge that this or that product was produced from “cows not treated with recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH).” Yet, 17% of dairy cows in the US are still given rBGH. Reading the labels on milk and cheese is the only assurance of purchasing the 83% not so tainted and let the 17% go somewhere else. That somewhere else is probably in every nook and cranny the agriculture industry can tuck it–after all, that’s what the corn industry did. When American farmers bought into the idea of GMO corn, and when the export market for that product collapsed because of the ‘unfair practices’ of our trading partners, American corn producers went so far as to demand we burn their product in our fancy motorcars.

Pepsi throwback uses real sugar

To prove that I am not wholly anti corn syrup, we use it at least once, often twice a year. My wife makes a mean pecan pie. Oh, I know a lot of people like slathering it over melting butter on top of pancakes and waffles, but I grew up believing that maple flavored corn syrup is a poor imitation of maple syrup.

Consumer demand is now bringing change to sweeteners. Sufficient information is becoming available on corn syrup, especially high fructose corn syrup, (which sounds redundant to me), that consumers are limiting corn syrup’s presence in their shopping carts.

Walking through the aisles of a local, well, not really local, but regional supermarket the other day, tucked between mountains of Coke and Fanta and Pepsi and Schwepp’s and storebrand products, I spied it. On the label of the narrowest display a twelve-pack of cans can take, a classic Pepsi logo beckoned my attention. Pepsi Throwback–Made with Real Sugar.  What a concept! It also happens to be the first twelve-pack of any type of soda that has entered our house in the last five years.

No high fructose corn syrup!

Apparently the folks at Pepsi figured a consumer demand for ‘Not Corn Syrup’ exists. Some consumers, including me, were purchasing Coca-Cola imported from Mexico for precisely that reason–it is made with ‘Not Corn Syrup.’

Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola are both modified water products–90% water. Yet consumer demand for ‘Not Corn Syrup’ leads us to purchase imported water products from Mexico. Yes, that’s right, good old “don’t drink the water” Mexico. It is incredible the lengths we go to provide their families with ‘Not Corn Syrup’.

Ketchup is another area where consumer demand is leading to product innovation. Both Heinz and Hunt’s have two choices–Heinz Ketchup, and Heinz Organic Ketchup, and Hunt’s Ketchup and Hunt’s No High Fructose Corn Syrup Ketchup. (For ingredients of popular Ketchups.)

I began reading ingredients of food in 2008. At that time, our family had just returned from spending 4 1/2 years abroad in 38 different countries. Food in the US tastes different, not only from cultural variations on cooking style, but in the raw materials. Certainly, a large degree of the variation is attributable to our fast-food mentality. For flavors to be uniform in thousands of outlets, a blandness must be bred into the ingredients–case in point, chickens. As American consumers, we’ve been trained to accept this inferiority.

Jams and jellies, breakfast cereals, sausages, things that looked like sausages, candies, salad dressings, and all manner of products were cast upon us of lesser quality than we experienced abroad and certainly of lesser goodness than I remember as a child.

No high fructose corn syrup

I grew up putting Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup on ice cream and using the powdered stuff called Quick (now called Nesquik) to make chocolate milk. Sugar was a big thing back then too. Once I began reading ingredients in 2008, I knew that we had purchased our last bottle of Hershey’s syrup. My son and I were in the supermarket the other day, and next to the Hershey’s display was that of Nesquik. Prominently on the bottle of Nesquik Syrup are the words: “No High Fructose Corn Syrup.”

It is because of consumer demand that these products exist and are packaged in such fashion. The irony is labeling that points out the inferiority of an ingredient so prominent in all of their other products. These three examples–Pepsi Throwback, Hunt’s Ketchup, and Nesquik Syrup–are not brought to us from small, mom and pop-type, establishments–these are major multinational corporations. Their sole business purpose is to provide a profit to their shareholders. For Pepsico, ConAgra (which owns Hunt’s Ketchup), and Nestlé to package products based on consumer demand for ‘not corn syrup’ speaks volumes on the power consumers wield by voting with their shopping carts. So long as the FDA continues to be a rung on the ladder of a career in industrial food processing, the shopping cart is the only protection consumers have.

Consumers, keep up the good work.

Read below for the list of GMO crops.

An advertisement:

Self-promotion seems the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Please personalize my book for:

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon. 

List of Genetically Modified Foods (Source: Richard William Posner)

Honey from bees collecting pollen from GMO crops (this has shut down exports of Canadian honey to Europe), sugar beets, soybeans,  corn,  sweet corn, canola and canola oil, some potatoes, papaya from Hawaii, some squash, cotton seed oil, meat and dairy products usually come from animals that have eaten GM feed, cooking oils, oleos and margarines used in restaurants and in processed foods in North America are made from soy, corn, canola, or cottonseed. About 22  percent of cows in the U.S. (other studies cite 17%) are injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH). Vitamins – Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is often made from corn, vitamin E is usually made from soy. Vitamins A, B2, B6, and B12 may be derived from GMOs as well as vitamin D and vitamin K may have “carriers” derived from GM corn sources, such as starch, glucose, and maltodextrin.

Kuna the Cat, aka BD, aka Braindead

Only the three of us live here now–me, Gregg the younger, and Kuna the cat–unless we’re supposed to count the rodents skritching in the walls and ceilings in their attempts to escape the frigid Michigan winter. Gregg the younger and I have renamed the cat Braindead–BD for short.

Gregg II and I have only one commandment to follow in the girls’ absence–keep the living things living. It’s a take, I’m sure, on the whole Thou Shalt Not Kill thing. Gregg II and I failed on that commandment the day the girls boarded their flight and the only thing we learned was that squirrel hair does not enhance a wild game dinner. More recently, we failed again.

In addition to the three of us, there’re the fish. Two Chinese fighting fish condemned in separate bowls to look at each other and think macho thoughts of what they’d do to each other if either ever had the courage to leap out of its own bowl and into the other’s, and one bug-eyed goldfish in its own bowl of water and squishy fish food and decomposing fish poop. Every now and then when they look particularly lethargic, I change the water.

The girls never said anything about doing the laundry, or doing dishes, or supplementing our food intake with anything resembling nutrition; no, our only job was to not let the plants and animals in our house die–presumedly this applied to the fish.

The Dead Fish

So imagine the horror when I found the bug-eyed one staring at me through his only remaining eye–and that occurrence a full fifteen feet from where I last fed him. And so I thought, what series of events could have led to this? as I picked him up by the crispy-dried tail to dispose of him. Then I saw it–a glass bowl that used to be this fish’s home, shattered and dry on the windowsill next to the two cowardly Chinese fighting fish.

The Broken Fish Bowl

Now, that bug-eyed goldfish was about two inches long, and had travelled a full 90 times his body length without a pool or puddle in the path–a pool or puddle from which a breath of fresh water could have been taken, and which quite possibly, could have prolonged his suffering. How could such a thing as this have happened? What the heck? (Note on writing style: I could self sensor ‘heck’ and say ‘what the **ck?’ and let people think that I’m either a bit edgier than I actually am or that I’m Australian.)

Anyway, Gregg the younger and I found ourselves buried in a perfectly fine mystery since neither of us recall personally placing that fish 90 body lengths from his shattered bowl. Gregg the younger pointed out what looked like a gunshot hole on the fishbowl, but closer inspection revealed this to not be the case; what we were looking at was simply the point where the victim’s bowl made contact with the adjacent fish bowl–contact that caused the shattering to occur.

For now, we have the suspect under house-arrest for a few hours every day when he’s not outside killing others of his friends. Thought has been given to the idea of throwing him in lock-up in the attic, but we’re afraid the skritching would only rise to a crescendo and cause our peaceful bachelor-type surroundings to be lost. Such a time will come soon enough.

BD was unavailable for comment.

An advertisement:

Self-promotion seems the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Every time I return to Lansing, a flood of memories stirs. Childhood memories. Mostly pleasant, like childhood memories are meant to be.

Mt. Hope United Methodist Church

Sundays were for church and the church that mom and dad dragged us to every Sunday was Mount Hope Methodist. Somewhere along the line we became United Methodists, which even at my young age, sounded redundant. We were already Methodists uniting at the Methodist Church every Sunday. Apparently, there was something larger than my understanding going on, which is a good thing when you’re talking about church.

Talk about faith of our father’s, church for us was like a weekly family reunion; Grandpa and Grandma, dad and mom and us five kids, dad’s two brothers and their wives and each of their four children all attended Mt. Hope United Methodist Church. After church, if we behaved, which was never, or if mom didn’t yet have dinner started, which was often, we’d go out to eat. (Church links: contemporary and traditional.)

The restaurant, that clean, white building with the green shutters–Bill Knapps—provides a story of restaurant success and failure in the same sentence. Dad and mom would prance the five of us kids into the front door where we waited (never too long for waiting too long with five children is a test of nerves) for a table to be readied for us.

Bill Knapps restaurant logo

Most Bill Knapps buildings are gone now, though some have been made-over to operate under new names.

As restaurants go, that’s what happens when the marketing department matures with the clientele. Maybe they took their cue from GM: This is not your father’s Oldsmobile, a dramatic reinforcement that the Oldsmobile brand was targeted to not my generation (though had GM not managed to destroy the brand, I am finding myself growing into that generation.

1957 De Soto wagon, ours may not have been a '57, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't red.

It was my father’s Oldsmobile. Other than the De Soto that I have no right to remember on account of my young age, all I remember dad driving was Oldsmobiles. It was a measure of pride in Lansing and pride in the car and the company that helped build Lansing. Time was then that a new car could be afforded every year by some–dad included. With proper engineering by the auto manufacturers, ‘planned obsolescence’ they called it, the actual life of a car was not too much more than that. Dad drove our family around Lansing in less than one-year-old Oldsmobiles for most of my childhood.

Spare time in the springtime found me on my bicycle, fishing rod slung across the high handlebars, with a bucket dangling from the banana-seat and a worm-container stuffed in my jacket pocket. Colonial Plaza to Pleasant Grove to Mount Hope to Boston Boulevard to Moores River Drive, then across Logan Street to where a small patch of grass and trees was trapped on the east side of Logan Street, between Moores River Drive and the river.

Not my father's Oldsmobile, but he had one like it.

This patch of grass and trees was called a park. The river, The Grand River, eddied in front of the park and yielded a small number of bluegills large enough to clean and a massive quantity of little tiny ones. Beyond the eddies, the river ran, though not with any great force because of the dam—hydroelectric it was—just downstream. The product of the dam was used to power the factory and the city.

Over my bobber, beyond the eddies and the river, built above the concrete seawall stood Plant 1. On the wall of the building facing me from my fishing hole was a sign you could be proud of–Oldsmoble, home of the Rocket Engine V-8. Maybe I got the exact wording wrong, after all, it’s been nearly fifty years, and I can’t find an image of that building to confirm my memory.

Not the same sign, but it demonstrates the Rocket-Engine theme

Wow! Rocket Engine! Can you imagine that? That’s what my dad drove—an Oldsmobile—and to think they made that car right across the river from where I fished!

We lived in the city. My brother Gary and I were separated in age by thirteen months (we still are and he’s older) so we shared the friends acquired as much by our small pocket of geography as any other sense of relational pull. One common bond among friends is shared interests, and as we walked to Lewton Elementary School we’d talk about the Monkees (Gary’s and my favorite) and the Beatles (Jeff’s and Scott’s favorite) and the Rolling Stones whose edginess was beyond anything our years could yet comprehend. An interest in fishing wasn’t shared, and I found myself fishing alone as often as not, which was okay.

Click on the image for a look at Lansing's sledding hills. Photo used without permission, thanks Ariniko.

As winter settled in and the chore of riding bicycles overcame the pleasure, we focused our attentions on greater things. Winters were better then. More snow fell and stuck, the temperature froze the skating rinks solid, and we took advantage. Quentin Park was several blocks closer to our home than my fishing hole, and we could often get a ride from either ours or Jeff’s mom or dad. Scott’s mom and dad got a divorce which was something I certainly didn’t understand, and something that was spoken of in our house only in hushed voices leading me to further confusion.

Quentin Park hosted an outdoor ice rink on a flooded field. The only technology used to freeze the rink was the weather. The park was closed when demanded by nature. I doubt nature has allowed skating at Quentin Park for several years, but the park’s other great attraction for ambitious boys with too much time on their hands continues to be the sledding hill.

When nature or parents wanted us closer to home but still not underfoot, we congregated in one of our backyards to engage in other enterprises–most notably, using God’s abundant raw material–snow–in the production of missiles. Enemy combatants were deemed by us to be anything or anybody that wasn’t us. Cars were our favorite targets. We had a fenced-in backyard on a corner lot so that our offensive could be made from behind the cover of the fence. Occasionally, while we’d be so engaged in the backyard, mom would be meeting a neighbor from down the block at the front door. We provided mom with a lot of opportunity to meet our neighbors.

Looking east, at northbound MLK Blvd. and beyond where stood the Oldsmobile Plant. The river is to the right and runs past the Otto E. Eckert power station.

I recently drove into Lansing, past the gas-station-convenience-store built on a site that used to be Bill Knapps, and I remembered, and what I remembered brought anticipation. I wanted to once again look at my old fishing hole and at what was left of the once great production facility of fine motorcars–The Oldsmobile Plant. Logan Street is now Martin Luther King Boulevard, and divided into two one-way bridges. The landscape has changed to such an extent, what with the new bridge and all, that I couldn’t pinpoint the exact tree that competed with the bluegills for my baits.  Across the river near where I used to fish, in that spot once occupied by Oldsmobile, is a fenced-in field of concrete complimented with weeds sprouting new life in the cracks.

As for the Waverly Municipal Golf Course, there’s talk of re-purposing the property into a municipal cemetary.

An advertisement:

Self-promotion seems the reality of writing, and I ask for your help. Help me promote my work by sharing. Help me build a platform of readers by telling others. Help me survive by donating here or by purchasing my book below. Thanks

My book, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home, is a finalist in the Family and Relationships genre in 2011 Forward Review’s Book of the Year awards, and the Multicultural genre in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. I ask you to purchase a copy, and email me at gregg@faithofholland.com, I will be happy to sign a copy or several copies for you. 

Please personalize my book for:

Additionally, Sailing Faith: The Long Way Home in Print Edition and in Kindle format are available through Amazon.