Behold, the Power of Twitter

Behold, the power of Twitter! I arrive at a store at 6:55pm to grab an essential item for #HIMSS. Door locked, employees inside ignoring my pleas. I type the following the following message on my iPhone: "Employees at #[NameofNationalChain] in Germantown decide to close early and won't let me in the store." Held my phone against the front window and knocked until one of them finally came over to read it. "Don't make me hit send," I say through the glass. Two minutes later, I'm out of the store with my item.

On Life and Making Other Plans

This is the last of a three-part posting about my dance with the love of my life, my wife Kym. You may want to read Part I, Shall We Dance?, then Part II, Romance, Meet Reality, and see Regina Holliday's post on the remarkable Walking Gallery paintings she made for us.

Our Wedding Day - Summer Solstice 2000

John Lennon's famous quote--life is what happens when you're making other plans--aptly describes our experience shortly after we exchanged vows on Kaua'i's Shipwreck Beach as the sun set behind us. We had quickly fallen in love with The Garden Island and had worked out a five-year plan that included the goal of owning homes in Boston and Kaua'i so we could experience the best of both worlds.

That five-year plan lasted about two weeks.

We came home from our honeymoon to the news that Kym's stepfather--a man I never met because Kym was no longer on speaking terms with him--had died that very day.

His funeral was held in Canton, CT (where Kym grew up) just a few days later. It was a very strange and sad event.  Strange because most every conversation we had in the receiving line went something like "I am so sorry for your loss... and congratulations on your marriage!" And sad because there wasn't a single person among the few who attended the service who was sorry to see him go. They dug up a drinking buddy to do the eulogy and the one remotely positive thing he could say of Kym's stepdad was that he was smart.

But, as Kym had already told me, he used his intellectual powers more as a weapon than a force for good. I got to see this firsthand as we sorted through his meager personal effects with Kym's mom and found a pile of editorials--written for no apparent purpose other than his own amusement--that were full of misogynistic sentiments and spiteful words shrouded in clever turns of phrase. We read a sampling before throwing them all in the trash.

The funeral was a painful way to start our marital bliss. As we returned from Connecticut a couple of days later, Kym felt physically and emotionally spent.  Her significant difficulty walking up the stairs to our second-story apartment was inexplicable given her commitment to personal fitness.

Even though she hadn't yet been "late," I thought she should check the box and get a pregnancy test. Two lines. An OB friend loaned me the keys to his office so we could get early ultrasound confirmation of her positive test. The grainy image of a tiny sac left no doubt about the result--or the timing of conception... our wedding night.

Putting all of the pieces together, we ultimately figured out that the Pill had been the culprit causing many of the symptoms that led to Kym's C/T scan... that led to the (incorrect) diagnosis of a recurrence of Hodgkin's Lymphoma... that led to our decision to set a wedding date sooner than later... that led to that magical evening on the beach. The Pill had also thrown off her schedule so she had no idea our wedding night was right in the middle of the baby-making window. Clearly, Kym's radiologic oncologist had succeeded in preserving her fertility.

I had already started down the path of finding a urologist so I could get "snipped" about three weeks after our wedding. Some say our son's conception during that brief window of opportunity was fated; others say it was an act of God's will. Whatever the source, you could make the argument that the vehicle for either option was the Pill--a conclusion made even more ironic by the fact that I was trained as an OB/Gyn.

Understandably, this seminal news left us stunned. The deer-in-headlights sort of stunned. It took us a good bit of soul searching to figure out what to do with this fork in the road. We hadn't looked at each other with the co-parenting lens for longer than it took us to laugh at the absurdity of it. Now we had to look deep into our own hearts and make a decision about something for which neither of us were truly prepared.

In the end, it came down to some simple calculus. We went to a local golf course--Kym had been giving me lessons on one of her greatest passions--and talked through it all while strolling though that idyllic setting. We concluded that, as much as we weren't ready to be parents, having a child could be an incredibly healing and enriching experience for us both. We knew the opportunity to share this particular journey together would almost certainly never come again.

So we chose to accept it as a gift and prepare to take a whole new direction. Gone were my visions of being a "kept man" so I could work on longer-term goals, inventions and creative works. I needed a "daddy" job with health insurance and a steady paycheck.

The pregnancy had its difficulties, with some early tests indicating that all was not well and some emotional challenges for Kym as she struggled to fully embrace motherhood during her pregnancy. All our concerns were assuaged when a very healthy, 10-pound 2-ounce Taylor used his well-developed lungs to let us know he was more than okay and none too happy about his emergence.

Fast forward almost 11 years. Kym and I have had our rough spots. Our marriage has been far from perfect and there have been at least a couple of times when we wondered why we were together at all. Today I can say that Kym and I are both happier than we've ever been--not just since our wedding day, but in our lives. Though I wasn't looking for a "real" job--I've found a meaningful and rewarding career in shaping the future of healthcare in my consulting work. It is demanding, but it still leaves room for family and creative pursuits. Kym has had time to focus on raising Taylor, completing her MBA at UConn, and, in the last several months, finding peace in her new-found Christian faith. And Taylor is thriving--blogging about his inventions, making increasingly impressive videos, and becoming a Black Belt in karate. We both continue to become more whole as individuals--my geek side would say we're asymptotically approaching wholeness--and Taylor has been a profoundly important part of our personal journeys.

What started as a passionate romance has grown into something even more powerful--a family.

Thanks, Regina, for inspiring me to look back at those early years so we could appreciate where we were when we started and how far we've come.

Romance, Meet Reality

This is Part II of what will likely be a three-part posting of the story of my dance with the love of my life, my wife Kym.  You may want to read Part I, Shall We Dance?, first and see Regina Holliday's post on the remarkable Walking Gallery paintings she made for us over the weekend.

Regina Holliday's Walking Gallery Painting:
"Knowing the Score"

In December of 1996,  I left Ohio and a very fiscally appealing if not somewhat limiting job as an Obstetrical house physician intent on getting Michael Crichton's job--or at least becoming a recognized screenwriter/novelist/physician like Dr. Crichton.

I packed up a few things in the largest U-Haul trailer my Saab could pull and left for Southern California, where I planned to pedal my screenplays and musicals while supporting my writing habit as a healthcare consultant.  I had a six-month MHA residency set up at PacifiCare of California, a few good connections in Hollywood that I had been fostering for a couple of years, and a belief that I could make it happen if I continued to hone my craft and remained patient.

A friend gave me a card on my departure--on the front, a child-like drawing of a simpleton wearing a goofy smile and dunce cap, carrying a flower, and stepping off of a tall cliff with ravenous wolves positioning themselves beneath for the kill.  The caption read "A Romantic steps out into the world..."

I looked at the card and smiled.  My friend knew me well.  So I said, "Yeah, but you're assuming that the guy in the picture will fall."

Yes, I am a romantic. But I like to think that my romantic notions are not unteathered from reality, but are based on a different way of seeing reality--one that is not so dependent upon conventional wisdom or even the conventions of time and space.  I am generally patient--to become a physician, you have to be well-versed in gratification deferment (even more, the developer of technical standards for health IT).  So to me, even the definitions of success and failure are supremely dependent on the time frame or on how far you pull the lens back.

The story of what happened to me in the Land of Tinsel and Lies is better told another day.  My point in sharing this snippet is to convey my willingness to look past the immediate and keep my eyes on opportunities that may seem improbable but worth the effort.

The story I do want to tell now is about how Kym and I started off as a couple and came to be a family...

On Millennium Eve, I proposed to Kym after knowing her for just six weeks.  There were several reasons why this didn't seem all that rash a decision to me at the time.  We had both been married before, so we had a sense, at least, of what we weren't looking for.  We weren't going to have children, so that was a huge set of considerations we didn't have to consider.  We were in our mid-thirties, so we were grown up enough to be reasonably formed into our long-term selves, having worked through at least a good portion of youthful angst and forethought-less actions.

We also shared one very basic feature that was so important to me that it took precedence over all others: we both--Kym especially--valued personal growth.  Kym had no illusions that she was perfect or that she had life completely figured out, but she was deeply committed to looking inside of herself with those dark, unflinching eyes, taking personal stock of what she saw and didn't like, and doing whatever it took to work it out.

In other ways, we weren't what you would call a perfect match.  I was all about music and magic; Kym, sports and success.  Even in these, we found ways to be interested in one another's worlds and interests.

The one thing that scared me more than a little was what we came to call the psychiatric joke of our relationship:  She had OCD and I had ADD, so she would make rules I could never remember.  Her obsessive-compulsive behaviors probably developed as a response to her experience of growing up in a home with alcoholic parents and getting Hodgkin's at 17.  As a result, she had a serious need to control her environment--especially related to concerns with cleanliness.  I literally had to learn entirely new ways of engaging with the world, our home and Kym in order for us to share space and bodies.

Kym's experience of dealing with my ADD was no picnic either. ADD is a real two-edged sword: it makes it possible for me to connect dots that others can't even see and to create music, catchy lyrics and magical moments; it also creates real problems that can make a mess of the simplest tasks.

When the impact of those omissions just affect me, I can build the losses and delays into the cost of doing business. One of the ways I've learned to cope with my ADD is to spin lots of plates--if I'm distracted by something else I'm supposed to be doing, the net effect is productivity, even though an occasional plate gets neglected long enough that it comes crashing to the ground. If you're just looking at the net effect--the number of plates spinning at once, it looks pretty impressive. But if you happen to be one of the less fortunate plates, it feels like a roller coaster ride of near misses at best and a shattered disaster at worst.

In our relationship, it was easy to interpret some of my forgetfulness, speak-first/process-later words and actions, and mismatched stated versus realized priorities as neglect, passive-aggressive behavior, or overt hostility. Add to this the fact that extreme emotions--from both stress and elation--tend to increase my ADD-ness, and it's not surprising that our first early relationship was strongly impacted by moments that required lots of 'splainin' on my part.

So it was clear that I was going to need to work hard to make changes to my routines and way of thinking in order to make this work. From my perspective, the investment in adjusting my own behavior to share a life with this remarkable woman seemed more than worth it.  She was very successful in her work as a financial software sales executive and had many professional and personal ambitions that meshed well with my own.  I was in the middle of an ambitious start-up project, was writing and consulting--lots of promise but not a lot of immediate gain.  So she kept the lights on while I was swinging for the fences.

Soon after our engagement, Kym moved up to be with me in Boston.  Our small Brookline apartment had everything we needed, including our dining room/office, which had three phone lines and as many computers.  We were just a block uphill from Beacon Avenue and all the bustle (and excellent dining options) of Washington Square, while enjoying the quiet of a well-heeled residential neighborhood.  We had the flexibility to make our own schedule, though our passion for working hard for our goals eventually forced us to set business hours--we declared the dining room/office closed after 6pm, otherwise we would have worked until midnight every night.

We were enjoying our lives and each other.  And while we were in no particular hurry to tie the knot, we knew it would happen eventually, so we didn't much stress about it.

It's part of the punishment of the cancer survivor: you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop, so you have to be diligent about every sign and symptom and "check the box" to be sure it's nothing to worry about.  Kym was the picture of health--she was very careful about the food she ate and how it was prepared, what supplements she took and the kinds of exercise she did.  And she listened to her body.  So when Kym started having night sweats and some other troubling symptoms a couple months after we were engaged, she promptly connected with her oncologist in Connecticut who ordered a C/T scan as a precaution.

The evening she came back from Connecticut, I remember running from our living room to the hall to greet her, doing some silly imitation of Edith Bunker welcoming Archie home.  Kym's jaw was clenched and her eyes sullen.  I can't recall her exact words, but her countenance said more than words could express.

Ever effective in the art of persuasion, Kym had managed to get the radiologist to, against protocol, give her his reading of the film rather than make her wait for it to come from her oncologist.  He said, "I'd prepare for a recurrence if I were you."

Recurrence.  That meant Hodgkin's Lymphoma, which meant chemotherapy.  Kym had already had radiation nearly 20 years before and had had an exploratory laparotomy and splenectomy.  So chemo was an almost certain fate.  And the prognosis for a recurrence was not good.

More than once, someone has told me that they could never see themselves marrying a cancer survivor--it's just too scary.  I never really thought about it that way.  Life is what it is and we don't have guarantees of anything.  How can you know that anyone you marry won't have problems or an accident.  I once met a woman whose husband died in a shark attack while swimming on their honeymoon.  Being "healthy" is no guarantee.

So we put our energies into getting as much information as we could and putting ourselves in the best position for a positive outcome.  "Be prepared for the worst; hope for the best" was something Kym liked saying a lot.   Having just finished my informatics fellowship at Harvard Medical School, I was able to quickly get Kym connected with a doctor who had literally written the book on Hodgkin's at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

After two weeks and around $10,000 worth of tests, including a gallium scan, the verdict was in.  Kym didn't have cancer.  Her symptoms were probably caused by something else and her initial diagnosis was likely the result of an overzealous reading of her C/T scan that really showed nothing more than scar tissue from her prior radiation.  Had the radiologist been able to access her old films, all of the pain and cost of those age-inducing weeks could have been avoided.

We took it all in.  We had dodged a bullet, for sure, but it gave us pause.  Life is short--even a life with a longer-than-average lifespan.  We decided our best response was to say, "Let's make every day matter."  Which for us meant getting married as soon as we could pull it together.

Our wedding took place on Summer Solstice 2000.  At sunset.  On the beach.  In Kaua'i.  It was so beautiful our wedding pictures look fake--like an Olan Mills backdrop that could have been swapped out for library shelves with the pull of a cord.

And then, as we would soon learn, we got pregnant on the same beach about six hours later.

As with the year before, I wrote Kym a Christmas poem a la Seuss, that pretty much sums up in seven stanzas what took me over 1500 words of prose...

Oh, the year we have had! with its jostles and bumps
We’ve been high on the Rooftops! And down in the Dumps
Just when we thought that our future was clear
We’d turn 'round a corner and Change would appear
With his old pal Uncertainty one step behind
All the This-Way-Then-That-Ways became quite a Grind!

Just writing a poem about this year’s events
Creates quite a story that’s rather intense!
We started the year with the Best New Year’s Yet
I popped the question and you said, “You Bet!”
We partied all night at a Y2K ball
And, according to F.J., your gown beat them all!

We moved you to Boston to start a new life
And prepare for the day we’d be Husband and Wife
But our hopes for the future were dashed when we learned
That your Hodgkin’s, so long in remission, returned
For two weeks we viewed your prognosis with terror
When finally we found that the test was in error!

A lesson emerged from that troubling event
Each day must be lived to its fullest extent
We made a decision on that very day
That we should get hitched without further delay!
A few short months later we flew to Hawai’i
And, witnessed by loved ones, were wed on Kaua’i
But wait! That’s not all that occurred on that day!
For that very same night we conceived Taylor Jay!

Talk about Changes! These DINKs 'til their day’s end
Were suddenly thinking of Pampers and Playpens!
And Sippy-Cups! Strollers! Au Pairs and Papooses!
Barneys and Pokémons! Potters and Seusses!
Our image of just you and me quickly faded
We “Saabed” on that fateful day Cloe got traded
But no doubt, this all will be worth all the Fuss
The day we see Taylor’s eyes looking at us

There’s just not the room to depict all our plans
Of Start-Ups that didn’t and Möbius Bands
Of Legal Frustrations and Selling Sensations!
Of New Jobs and Old Saabs and Small Tribulations
And next year – Look Out! We’re just getting started!
We may move from Boston to places uncharted

But one thing remains – be there Change or whatever
My love for you grows every day we’re together
And one other thing remains Certain, my wife –
I still cherish the night you danced into my life

The story (at least this chapter of the story) wraps up in my next post...

Shall We Dance?

Regina Holliday's Walking Gallery Painting:
"Love is an Ever-Fixed Mark"

The incomparable Regina Holliday is, as I write this post, painting a portrait on one of my wife's jackets as part of her Walking Gallery collection of images depicting patient-centered care issues. She finished my jacket, pictured above, earlier this evening.  It captures her interpretation of the story of how Kym and I met, fell in love, married and became a family.  As with her other Walking Gallery paintings, no doubt Reggie will write in her blog about what it all means -- I recognize most of the imagery, but I'm not yet sure about the cells across the sky or the deeper meaning of the title she gave it: "Love is an Ever-Fixed Mark," but I'm looking forward to reading about it and seeing how Kym's jacket reflects the images painted on my own.

We've talked of doing this for many months and I finally got our jackets to Reggie as our paths crossed (through a helpful hotel concierge) at the 2011 mHealth Summit where she was painting at a booth and I facilitated a session on mobile health standards.  Today she tweeted about needing to fill in some of the details of our story so she could paint.  So I called and shared our story again.  She said she had tried to find the answers on my website and blog and came up short.  "You're such a wonderful writer," she said.  "I wish you would write more."

That made me realize I had never really written out our story, though I've told it many times.  It's a lovely tale worth repeating and today is a perfect day to do it.  Not because of some magic of the day (though Reggie's paintings do provide a wonderful backdrop), but more because it's not been a particularly magical day.  Kym is preparing to return to work after a ten-year hiatus and, in talking about sharing responsibilities and managing the mundane tasks of living life, I confess to being irritable and not particularly pleasant to be around.  Taking the time to reflect on and put fingers to keys to document our early days is a perfect reminder of what is important and how much we have to celebrate.  So let us go back to an evening, November 13th, 1999 in Burlington, Massachusetts...

I was a little over a month away from finishing my fellowship in medical informatics in Boston and had taken up ballroom dancing.  I had always enjoyed dancing and wanted to learn enough to be able to lead on the dance floor--that last bastion of chivalry.  I entered a Fred Astaire competition with my instructor as a novice.  It's a bit of a racket and I've seen people spend thousands of dollars on lessons, costumes and entry fees, but it's also great fun and a way to forget about troubles--like not being able to find the woman of my dreams.

I'd been married once before--to a med school classmate--a marriage that was an extreme roller coaster ride of an experience and not something worth recounting here.  It left me pretty bewildered and defeated, but enough years had passed that I finally felt ready to begin again and not so damaged that I couldn't believe in finding a soulmate.  My aspirations weren't all that outrageous--simple really.  There were only four criteria for my "ideal" partner: East Coast sensibilities, West Coast attitude, and Midwest values in a package that's easy to look at.  Only trouble is I was having a very hard time finding all four of those qualities in a woman--at least one that wanted anything to do with me.

So by the time of my first (and, as it happens, only) ballroom dance competition, I was no longer intently seeking out a soulmate, but had resigned myself to the fact that I may be alone for a good while longer.

The competition was good fun.  I receive first place in all of my dances (where I competed with other novices) and enjoyed watching the showcases and getting to meet other people from other studios.  I also had a show that weekend at a Starbucks in Brookline, so I had brought my guitar to practice that Friday afternoon.  I ended up playing for a woman and her teenage daughter as they took tickets at the hotel ballroom.  Then I drove back to Boston, did my show and came back the next day for my final rounds of competition and the after-party--which is pretty much like a wedding reception except that everyone actually knows how to dance.

During the after-party, I was dancing in a conga line with a truly massive woman who hurried over to join her friends as soon as the song had ended.  This was fine with me because one of those women was someone I had noticed earlier that evening from across the dance floor.  She looked stunning in her black gown, with short dark hair swept back and a long, graceful neck that was poised just so on her dancer's shoulders.  She reminded me more than a little of Audrey Hepburn.

This was, of course, Kym.  She had come to the competition to root on a friend and had just started taking lessons herself.  We were introduced and, after a few minutes of chatting, the other three women made themselves scarce.  The only thing left to do was dance.

Kym had been learning the Latin dances--salsa, rumba, cha-cha--and hadn't really gotten into the smooth dances--the waltz, tango, foxtrot.  So we spent some time in an on-the-fly lesson.  My lead was just strong enough to get us through it, though I recall stepping on her dress once or twice.  I was taken by Kym's grace, powerful presence, her dark brown eyes--"as close to black as brown dare go" as I recall one writer describing a similar pair--and her "regal bearing," which is the way Craig Robinson, the best man at our wedding, described Kym.  I remember that night, as I walked Kym off the dance floor so we could find a quieter place to continue our conversation, commenting that I felt like royalty as I placed her left hand over my right and led her off (the competition was over, but the rules of propriety and etiquette still applied).

That conversation lasted until well after two in the morning.  One of the first things Kym told me was that she was a cancer survivor--she'd been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma when she was seventeen--and that being a survivor was the most important experience in her life.  She had also survived a pretty shitty childhood as an only child of two alcoholic parents and had recently ended her second marriage.  She also felt compelled to tell me (not that we were ever going to even date, mind you) that she wasn't going to have children.  I think she figured I must have wanted a half dozen of them because of my past profession as an obstetrician.  But the radiation that took her to within an inch of her life in order to save it had done quite a number on her.  She both doubted that she could have a successful pregnancy and feared that the health risks (melanoma in particular) were too high to risk it.

I was more than fine with that--even with her insistence that she was in no way looking for a relationship.  I actually believed her.  But I also saw that she was everything I was looking for in a partner and was willing to wait it out and see where this could take us.

By the time we parted for the evening, the morning was just a few hours away.  She would be heading back to Connecticut with her friends and I back to Boston.  There was a breakfast in the morning for which neither of us had purchased tickets (see earlier comment on Fred Astaire and racket), but she said her friends were going and she would be down there with them.

The next morning, I get to the breakfast and find the same woman who had been my practice audience on Friday afternoon taking tickets for the meal.  I told her that I didn't want to eat anything; I just wanted to meet someone in there who was expecting me.  She was resolute: no ticket, no entry.  But, come on--you can trust me.  Hadn't I sung you all those wonderful songs just the other day?  No ticket, no entry.  Finally, I was desperate.  "Look," I said.  "The woman of my dreams is in there right now and I really need to see her."  "How can you be sure she's the woman of your dreams?"  "How can I find out if you don't let me in!"

Finally, she relented.  I found Kym (who had had no difficulty getting past the same sentry despite her own ticketless state) and we had a brief conversation, exchanging phone numbers and email addresses.

Phone calls continued most every day from that point, with Kym still insisting that she wasn't looking to get involved with anyone.  I still believed her, but continued to hold hope that things would change in time.

Time went a lot faster than I expected.  Within a couple of weeks, she invited me to come visit in Connecticut so we could go out dancing together at a Latin club.  Then Thanksgiving came around and her plans of sharing the holiday with a friend and her kids fell apart when they all got the flu.  She also learned that weekend that a high school classmate had taken his own life.

So Kym was feeling pretty alone when I called her from Ohio, having just arrived at my parents house to celebrate the holiday.  As we talked, it was my mother who, having overheard some of our conversation, suggested that Kym come have Thanksgiving with us.

This was the clincher for me.  Anyone crazy enough to fly to Ohio on a moment's notice to share a holiday was someone worth spending a life with.  She looked into flights for Thanksgiving morning (a pretty slow day in the midst of an otherwise chaotic travel weekend) and arrived in Dayton about 12 hours after we spoke.

Christmas followed in short order and we shared another magical holiday together.  There was now no doubt that we would share many more holidays and I told Kym that I wanted to marry her in a shop in Harvard Square right around that time.  I also wrote this poem for her, modeled after her favorite Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places You'll Go!:

Oh, the places We’ll go! With hopes flying high
We’ll soar through the air! Our limit, the sky!
Except when you fall and Deep Troubles brew
But when life is its darkest I’ll be there for you
And wouldn’t you know it? The opposite’s true!
When I’m in the Pickle you’ll bail me out too!
For life is just Grand! Despite the Rough Parts
And life’s even better when shared as Sweethearts
So here’s to the Journey! And our yet-revealed Fate
I’m honored to walk the unknown as your Mate
And as we go forward as Husband and Wife
I’ll cherish the night you danced into my life

We were officially engaged on Millenium Eve, just six weeks after we first met.  We didn't set a date for a wedding as, having both been married previously, we weren't in any particular rush.  But soon after, she was able to convince her company to let her keep her job as a financial software sales executive (where she was a top performer) and work remotely.  We moved into an apartment just above the one I'd had in Brookline and set up shop.

It is late and there is much more to the story, but it will have to wait for the next post, Romance, Meet Reality.  Stay tuned...

Remembering 9/10 and the Days that Followed

On this day of remembrance, only the most unaffected among us can help but reflect on where they were and how time in our minds has forever been cleaved into two parts: before the morning of September 11th, 2001 and after. 

Like everyone old enough to retain a memory of that day, I have very distinct memories of where I was (on the Metro North train heading to Grand Central Station) and how the day unfolded. (I was lucky and never made it into the City).

As indelible are the memories of that day--making it home after a time to the juxtaposition of my then six-month old beamish boy Taylor and the images that repeated on the television screen--what I think of more is the night before the world changed.

My friend Peter Frishauf invited me to see Les Paul perform with his trio at one of his weekly gigs at the Iridium. I had to go uptown from 42nd street and got caught in an flash downpour that made every cab in Manhattan vanish, leaving me to walk about 10 blocks. My umbrella was no match against the torrent, the rain bouncing up from the ground to leave me completely drenched.  But even that was a treat as it gave me an excuse to trade my sopping wet dress shirt for a Les Paul t-shirt.

The show was remarkable in so many ways - Les' obviously arthritic hands couldn't play some of the furious riffs of his former years, but his gift for music was still undeniable. Even more, the field of musical gravity that pulled talent from the furthest reaches into his orbit. More than one famous rocker was in the audience that night, there to pay him homage, which he repaid by handing over his guitar and letting them sit in. Suddenly this big, bearded rock star turns into a little boy who has just been handed Superman's cape by the Man of Steel himself and told to try it on for size. I thought he might cry. Instead, he played it with reverence and skill--like the little drummer boy, repaying a gift he had been given with every ounce of his being.

It was an exhilarating, cathartic experience.  One that provided profoundly needed perspective for what followed.

My strongest memories of what followed are from the Friday of that first week--my first day back at work in Manhattan. No one worked, really. We all spent time making sure that everyone was okay and keeping mindful of the continuing uncertainty of when and where the other shoe would drop. Grand Central Station had dramatically changed.  Before 9/11, it represented to me the left ventricle of the world, where hundreds of thousands of people of all colors, shapes and dress traversed each day, pulsed with energy that seemed to flow from sheer momentum to the farthest corners of the world. Now it was a terrorist target, crawling with heavily armed police and soldiers and surrounded by large military trucks to protect it against bombs or chemical attack. 

Since there wasn't much in the way of real work to do, I decided to venture out to see how close I get to ground zero on foot. I had been to the World Trade Center many times, taking my nephew to the observation deck just a month before and attending a two-day conference at the Windows of the World about a month before that. But I had didn't have any true perspective on how close it was from my daily grind.

So I started walking south. The first thing that struck me was how the character of New Yorkers had fundamentally changed. These people notorious for being abrupt and avoiding eye contact with strangers, were purposefully looking directly into one anothers' eyes. "Are you okay? Really, are you? I'm here for you" were the unspoken words exchanged.

Walking through Greenwich Village and Washington Square was perhaps the most surreal part of the journey. The candlelight vigil that had spontaneously formed that first night in the square had grown into an organic memorial of remembrance. And the Village, known more for its only-in-the-Big-Apple unique form of rebelliousness that was distinctly American but hardly patriotic, was shrouded in more American flags than I could possibly count. 

But my first true sign that we would rise from the ashes of this tragedy came at the end of my journey: Houston Street, where a makeshift plywood barrier had been erected that kept all but those involved in the rescue and recovery efforts. There was a carnival of humanity--people milling about slowly, some still clearly in shock, others moving more purposefully. Within this milieu was an unmistakable sign of hope--just three days after this day of unimaginable horror, enterprising merchants had already created buttons and t-shirts commemorating the day. My favorite was one had been created in such haste that the grammar wasn't even correct: "I Survive the Attack" it read.

On further reflection, though, I decided that the use of the present tense was more reflective of our true condition. We do survive the attack and continue to persevere as Americans and as world citizens. Even now, as the long-term repercussions of that fateful day continue to make casualties of our economy, our soldiers and our psyches, we endure.

After 9/11, I wrote "United, We Stand"--one of my Infinite Poetry pieces--as a reflection on the day. You can find a hastily constructed video and recording of the song that I wrote several years later on YouTube. It says simply:

...United, we stand
   Standing, we rise
   Rising, we soar
   Soaring, we're free
   Free, we unite
   United, we stand...

Beginning as it ends, it is designed to continue on in a virtuous cycle that reflects our better selves as Americans. It is this aspect of the American spirit that I continue to strive to emulate. Even in the face of challenge and even decline, we can remain true to what has made us a great nation and people--our unity, our perseverance, and the freedoms we enjoy, which make it all possible.

Spending that night before the world changed with good friends, a soaked shirt, and Les Paul, continues to inspire me to live my life in a manner honoring the spirit of that night and I am ever grateful to have had that special moment.

RobotBoy2001 Creates New Series - Zibit Wipeout!

My ten-year-old son, known on the Internet as RobotBoy2001, has been working diligently on a video project he calls "Zibit Wipeout!" - it combines two of his favorite things: Zibits (a small, radio-controlled robot toy) and the TV show Wipeout.

Dad helped out a little, but I need to emphasize that I didn't spend much time on this one - it was T's project from the start and he did nearly all the designing and editing. Mom and Dad occasionally helped out by working on the obstacle courses and holding the camera when he was the talent (along with his neighbor friend, Andyman2001), but otherwise it was his project from beginning to end. Today, T and I worked on the boring task of rendering the final video and posting it to YouTube. Because of YouTube's length restrictions, we had to cut the 30-minute video into smaller chunks. But they can all be seen on the playlist below.

Hope you enjoy the show! Let T know what you think by posting a comment on YouTube or on his blog, http://robotboy2001.wordpress.com/.

Click Here to see all five parts of Episode 1 of Zibit Wipeout!

The Legend of Bob the DERF

Cross-posting from informatimusicology.blogspot.com

 

From the ACMI Archives:

The Legend of Bob the DERF

Click here to listen to the song

The College has received several solicitations from potential members - requesting reviews of health IT related lyrics or recordings.  We thought it would be instructive to bring out some of the original works that led to the establishment of the College.  There is no better place to start than at the very beginning...

The National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP), is an ANSI-accredited standards development organization focused on pharmacy-related electronic information transactions headquarted in Scottsdale, Arizona.  In 2005, Dr. Ross Martin offered to compose a song for NCPDP for their Annual Conference.  His offer was accepted and a sponsor stepped forward to support the recording and reproduction costs for a CD.  Special thanks go to Lee Ann Stember, NCPDP's President, for sponsoring the song.  The lovely and talented Eric Schwartz (WARNING: he is brilliant, but uses his powers for evil, so his site is not for those of sensitive dispositions) produced and recorded the song, adding many of the vocals and most of the instrumentation.  Dr. Martin performed the song twice at the conference and several hundred copies of the CD, now considered a collector's item among devoted informatimusicologists, were distributed.  

The song, "The Legend of Bob the DERF," tells the tale of how we moved from our darker days of winner-takes-all standards setting to our current consensus process.  Those unfamiliar with NCPDP and its methods may be curious of the meaning of the term DERF.  It stands for "Data Element Request Form" and is the main document used in the NCPDP standards development process to establish or modify a standard.  Many who heard the song and are familiar with the history of NCPDP opined that the two characters depicted in the song - Bob the DERF and Margaret, aka, The Wacker - bore striking similarities to two long-time members of NCPDP, Bob Beckley of Surescripts and Margaret Weiker of EDS, both of whom are known for their strong leadership and equally strong opinions, which have occasionally put them at odds with one another, creating some of the more tense moments experienced at workgroup meetings.  Their southern accents and Margaret's diminutive stature (she is rumored to be around 4' 5" tall, though no one has had the kahunas to actually measure her or ask) provided reinforcement for some of these opinions.  In fact, the characters portrayed in the song are not based on any known individuals, living or dead.  Anyone who says otherwise is itchin' fer a fight!

The Lyrics:

Way back a hunert years ago
In a desert land devoid of snow
’Fore Scottsdale started dottin’ any maps
Snake Oil Salesmen roamed the West
Pitchin’ potions from their treasure chests
And shaftin’ any sucker wearin’ chaps

There was one man who had a dream
’Bout raisin’ druggists’ self esteem
By protectin’ the apothecary’s turf
He saw that standards were the key
For improvin’ drugstore quality
That man was known by all as Bob the DERF

Now any tale worth bein’ told
Includes a woman, guns or gold
Our hero’s rival ponied up all three
Margaret was her given name
But winnin’ gunfights brought her fame
So the name “The Whacker” fit her to a tee
And ev’ry time The Whacker flashed her gold incisor in a grin
The undertaker knew he’d soon be callin’ next of kin

CHORUS:
Hoo-ee ’n’ Yippee-ki-ee
Before the NCPDP
Consensus was a notion seldom found
Hoo-ah ’n’ Yippee-ki-yaw
The fastest shot laid down the law
The other laid down six feet underground

Now The Whacker had her standards too
And had in mind just what to do
To make sure things got done by her own rule
She called on Bob the DERF and said,
“You lily-livered pudd’nhead
It’s my way or the highway, ya’ dang fool!”

She knew her taunts would be enough
To razz him so he’d call her bluff
He slammed his whiskey down as if on cue
“Well we’ll just see ’bout who’ll be number one
High noon, tomorrow – bring your gun
But I’d skip town tonight if I was you!”

The bookies laid odds eight-to-five
The Whacker’d make it through alive
Her dead-eye aim was known throughout the land
It’s true that Margaret had her chance
But once they started in to dance
The DERF felt sure he’d be the last to stand
And so they set the stage to see whose standards would prevail
One slinger’d see sweet victory – and one the gates of Hell

REPEAT CHORUS

The clock chimed twelve – the wind was still
Too scared to see red rivers spill
And learn who’d bite the dust who’d survive
The two stepped out into the street
To face their fate at fifty feet
Then in a flash their pistols came alive

Bob the DERF’s resolve came through
His steady hand shot straight and true
A normal foe no doubt would have been dead
But one fact he failed to calculate –
The Whacker stood at four-foot-eight
And so her Stetson flew clean off her head

The DERF’s luck went from bad to worse
Didn’t even have a chance to curse
As The Whacker’s dental work gleamed through her smile
Her single shot was on the mark
It pierced his heart – the sky went dark
Right there he fell into a bloody pile
And as he died, The Whacker cried, “Oh, help me, Lord above!
All in the name of standards, I’ve just killed my one true love!”

REPEAT CHORUS

She lay her pistol down and swore upon her golden tooth
Consensus now will be pursued in healthcare’s quest for truth
“No longer will our blood be shed for standards to be set
We’ll gather round and talk until a compromise is met”

So now you know just how we formed the NCPDP
And how this modern standards settin’ process came to be
And after endless hours of meetings why my eyes will glaze
I’m dreamin’ ’bout how things got done back in those glory days when…

REPEAT CHORUS

Words by Ross Martin
Music by Eric Schwartz and Ross Martin
Lead vocals: Ross Martin
Background vocals: Ross Martin and Eric Schwartz
All instruments and sequencing: Eric Schwartz
Produced and engineered by Eric Schwartz, Claritone Music
Special thanks to Kevin So

Ross Sets New Pen Spinning World Record

In his relentless quest to achieve eminence through hyper-specialization, Dr. Ross D. Martin, MD, MHA, FACMI*, President, Founder and Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatimusicology (ACMI), has been officially recognized as the world record holder in over-the-thumb pen spins in one minute, completing an astonishing 48 spins in a minute on August 26th, 2008, hereinafter known officially as Dr. Ross "Pen Spinmeister" Martin Day.  A video of this monumental achievement can be found at the Universal Record Database website at http://urdb.org/wr/over-the-thumb-pen-spins-minute.

 

Dr. Martin is equally proud of his son, known to the blogosphere as RobotBoy2001 for setting several records on that very day, one of which has been officially recognized by the officials at URDB:  Most bounces on BOSUs by Two Boys in One Minute.  Other RobotBoy2001 records are currently under review.

Greatness clearly runs in Dr. Martin's family.  Someday, perhaps, his son will follow in his footsteps and become a great informatimusicologist like his father.  The world waits with great hope and anticipation for that day and will rejoice should it come...

*Fellow, American College of Medical Informatimusicology

United, We Stand - Reimagining an Anthem for Our Nation

A couple of weekends ago, PRI’s Studio 360 asked listeners to think about updating a couple of our traditional icons as we approach our annual 4th of July celebrations. One was Uncle Sam – what would a “mascot” for our nation look like today? The other, our National Anthem (which, according to one pole, 27% of Americans believe has a last line of “And the home of the brave… Play Ball!”).

I personally like our National Anthem a lot – it is a beautiful song with brave and poetic lyrics. But it is undeniably a challenge to sing for all but the upper tier of vocalists, with its greater than 1½-octave range (for perspective, Madonna never sings anything with more than a one-octave range, not that this is a shining example, but I hear she has made some money as a singer).

So last weekend, I posted a reimagining of the National Anthem in response to the Studio 360 challenge based on some Infinite Poetry® I wrote after 9/11. Let me know what you think… The song and a quickly assembled video are posted on YouTube:



It’s a simple song with only five lines that intuitively cycle back on themselves, so they are easy to remember:

…United, We Stand
Standing, We Rise
Rising, We Soar
Soaring, We’re Free
Free, We Unite
United, We Stand…

The simplicity of the song makes it easy to add parts, variations on the theme and personal interpretations—which reflects, to me, the bedrock of what makes our nation such a compelling and inspirational place: simple principles that allow for diversity and creative growth to live in harmony.

If you like it, please vote for it (you may have to join the group to vote). You can also leave a comment or “like” the video (you will need a Google or YouTube account).

Thanks for taking a look. If my submission is one of their favorites, it will be mentioned on the show this holiday weekend. Fame and fortune are sure to follow, so my future is in your hands...

;-)

Happy 4th!

To Dr. Ida Critelli Schick, Dean of Xavier's MHA Program, On Her Retirement

Word of your retirement escaped the ever-expanding pile of unexamined mail in my office. It gave me pause to reflect on the tangible and lasting impact your diminutive powerhouse of a self has had on my own. Your academic mentoring, your words (and letters) of support, your example of integrity in its purest form, your comforting words of assurance during a dark passage of my life—all speak of an investment you made selflessly.


As I rough out the calculus and consider the hundreds upon hundreds of lives who have similarly passed through your gravitational field and continued on to their own places of influence and investment, I can see that your impact on the human condition in general—and the ethical delivery of healthcare in particular—exponentially approaches the immeasurable. Even as you close this rich and meaningful volume of your life's work and begin scribing the next, your clarion contributions will continue to resonate and empower those like me who were so fortunate as to hear the sounding from its origin.

With highest regard and gratitude,

Ross

To the Design Engineers at Thermos

I know I'm a geek, but I just wrote this note to the design engineers at Thermos:

It's not often that a product as routine as a water bottle gets me motivated enough to write a letter to the company about it.  Your intak bottle, however, is worth the trouble.   

My wife picked four of these up for our family a few weeks ago.  We go through water bottles like we go through, well, water.  Most of them do the job, though occasionally you wonder how anyone could be shameless enough to create such a lousy product.   

But when I saw the intak bottle, I was immediately struck with the quality and ingenuity of the design.   Click, it's open, with the lid back out of the way--where it stays until you shut it.  Snap, it's closed tight.  Flip the latch, no fears of leaks.  It's easy to clean (which, as Chief Bottle Washer, is a must-have feature), easy to carry and hold, and--oh, yeah--it has just the right sized opening for drinking--without spills and without having to suck and slurp and make a bunch of noise.   

In a word, this bottle is brilliant.   

I'm not an engineer, but have always appreciated the simple elegance of a good design where it is evident that the designers actually dug into the lives of the people they were designing for.   Keep doing what you're doing and I'll keep telling everybody I know about how great these bottles are.

David & Goliath on YouTube

GreenPaperMonster's posting of my March 1st debut of The Meaningful Yoose Rap at the HIStalk Reception at HIMSS broke the 1000 view mark on YouTube in the last 24 hours Click here for the video and here for the lyrics.

For perspective, while that may not seem like many when comparing it to something like the 5million+ views of the Old Spice “I’m on a horse” commercial (a work of pure marketing genius in my view), the rap is a bestseller in HIT-land. We HIT aficionados are all so deeply immersed in the details of meaningful use and EHR adoption and HIT news of the day fills our inboxes--it seems surprising when we lift our heads and see that the rest of the world is thinking of a thousand other things.

But in our little world, when looking at all the other HIMSS-related videos, no other 2010 video comes even close. And only two videos from any year surpass it--a Cisco video from 2008 (1100 views) that looks like it had all of its employees watch it (lots of links from Cisco sites) and Eric Schmidt’s 2008 keynote (73k hits), but how can you really compete with Google when they… well, they’re Google…

That’s pretty cool when you think about it… I love that little more than some clever thinking and a grainy video clip can still run circles around the marketing machines of all the behemoths on the HIMSS exhibit hall floor.

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Meaningful Yoose Rap

Maybe I'll finally get around to posting stuff on the Medical Informatimusicology blog. Here's one...
http://informatimusicology.blogspot.com/

World Premier of Spot and Peanut in Lost at Sea!

World Premier of Spot and Peanut in Lost at Sea!

About six weeks ago, Kym is away on a business trip for the weekend. Son, Taylor, now eight, asks if he can fill up the Jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom. In his hands is a "boat" - several pieces of wood from my workshop hot-glued together. Turns out, he wants to make a movie starring his guinea pigs, Spot and Peanut (aka, "the gigs"). He's written a story about them going on an adventure.

Now, you have to understand, Taylor has clearly inherited the wild imagination gene from his dad. He already has more ideas than he'll ever be able to actually execute on. So I end up both working to encourage his creativity and manage his expectations about what we can pull off. (A few weeks before this episode, he told me he wanted his own website so he could create games and post pictures of his inventions. We settled on a blog: http://robotboy2001.blogspot.com/.)

So when I see what he's up to, I didn't want to say, "No, T, you can't put your guinea pigs on a boat in the tub to make a movie." Instead, we talked about how we might make a movie in a way that was safer for the gigs using some movie magic - green screen. We spent the entire weekend in pre-production - working on the story, deciding on a budget, planning, etc. Over breakfast out, we talked about all the different movies we liked and what made Pixar so good at making amazing movies (it's all about the story). Taylor drew up storyboards for each scene. A few days later, I come home and he's typed out most of the script on our Mac.

Throughout the process, I've been very impressed that Taylor has finally come to understand that the idea is just the beginning of the process. He really got into learning how to use the editing tools and saw the value of working hard to make little changes to make things funnier or move along.

Our goal has been to get this project finished by Christmas so we can share it with the family. We got enough done this weekend, though, to post a cliffhanger of a first episode. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did making it. We still have a lot to learn about technique, but it's been great fun!

Les Paul

Les Paul and the Night Before the World Changed

Les Paul will be forever linked in my mind with life before the world changed. My friend Peter Frishauf invited me to see Les Paul perform with his trio at one of his weekly gigs at the Iridium. I had to go uptown from 42nd street and got caught in an flash downpour that made every cab in Manhattan vanish, leaving me to walk about 10 blocks. My umbrella was no match. But it gave me an excuse to trade my sopping wet dress shirt for a Les Paul t-shirt.

The show was remarkable in so many ways - Les' obviously arthritic hands couldn't play some of the furious riffs of his former years, but his gift for music was still undeniable. Even more, the field of musical gravity that pulled talent from the furthest reaches into his orbit. More than one famous rocker was in the audience that night, there to pay him homage, which he repaid by handing over his guitar and letting them sit in. Suddenly this big, bearded rock star turns into a little boy who has just been handed Superman's cape by the Man of Steel himself and told to try it on for size. I thought he might cry. Instead, he played it like the little drummer boy - repaying a gift he had been given with every ounce of his being.

It was a magical night. It was September 10th, 2001. One last evening of innocence before nothing would ever be the same.

Thank you, Les. I hold onto that memory like a priceless treasure.

HITECH: An Interoperetta in Three Acts

The American College of Medical Informatimusicology is pleased to bring you an original work written and performed by ACMI's founding member, Dr. Ross D. Martin, MD, MHA, FACMI:

HITECH

An Interoperetta in Three Acts

Who knew you could learn so much about the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act in under four minutes?

The Story Behind the Song

I had been thinking about writing a song for HITSP, CCHIT and AHIC for a couple of years, figuring it was time to tie a bow around the four other standards songs I've written - for NCPDP ("The Legend of Bob the DERF" - country & western tune about the standards-setting gunslingers of old), HL7 ("The Patient is Waiting" - a rock ballad), MedBiquitous ("The MedBiq Song" - a la Gilbert and Sullivan) and X12 ("The X12 Song" - R&B pop tune). All these songs are available on my MP3 page.

The inspiration for structure of the song, though, is actually about 20 years old. A classmate from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Dr. John Weigand, did a brilliant skit at our annual student talent show, sung by "The Weigand Trio," about his med school experience. It was three songs in one, just like this one; John used cassette recorders to "perform" the three parts at once. It was hysterical. So when it came time to write a song about three components of harmonizing standards, his idea seemed the perfect vehicle. I hadn't spoken to John since med school, so I looked him up on Google, emailed to make sure this was his original idea (it was) and make sure he was okay with me borrowing it (he was).

I wrote HITECH during a quick family vacation in Florida - mostly on the plane rides - back in March. Kym and Taylor are quite happy it's done so they don't have to listen to me running through the same 35-second song over and over again.This was probably one of the most complex songs I've ever written. Each verse had to layer on top of the other, syllable by syllable. Usually, I write lyrics in a little notebook, scratching out lines and words until it's just right. This one was just too difficult to write a verse at a time, so I had to literally do it on a spreadsheet so I could get it all to line up properly. I snapped a picture of it:

Writing the song turned out to be the easy part. The recording was done on a Zoom H2 (what a great little multi-track recorder!). Since HITECH at Deloitte is keeping me busy more than full time in "real life" work, I did most of the recording, videotaping and editing in the wee hours (just like I'm writing this blog post - after 1am). I did the audio editing using Audacity, the elegant and simple open source multi-track software tool, and the video editing with PowerDirector, the software that came with my JVC Everio, a good-enough camcorder. It was the editing that took forever - getting the timing just right, adding the scrolling captions, editing the audio so everything was balanced and the "sound effects" came out reasonably believable.

In the end, there were a dozen things I would want to do better - especially on the vocals front, but I just didn't want to spend any more time than I absolutely had to to get a decent result. So it is what it is and I hope you enjoy the video. Please let me know what you think - either by posting a comment here or on YouTube or by sending me an email. And if you need some real, serious work done around HITECH, my colleagues and I at Deloitte Consulting would be happy to help. Just send the Deloitte HITECH Response Team an email.

Who links to my website?

Working with YouTube

Working with YouTube

This is a test video so I can learn how to post.



That was the video. How does it look?

That was ridiculously easy!

Stories of My Father

Stories from My Father

Joseph Gordon Martin
September 1st, 1930 - January 29th, 2009

Yesterday, we celebrated the life and mourned the passing of Joseph Gordon Martin - otherwise known as "Joe Gordon" to his kin back in Big Stone Gap, VA, "Captain Martin" to his Air Force colleagues, "Your old uncle Joe" to the people he called up on the phone during his long career in real estate, and just plain "Joe" to most of the people who grew to know and love him throughout his life. For me, he was "Dad."

His memorial service, held in the multi-purpose room of the Fairborn St. Luke United Methodist Church (it wouldn't fit in the sanctuary) was not your typical, somber affair. It did begin with a moving presentation of an American flag to my mother by an Air Force color guard in honor of Dad's service to the country he loved. The standing room only crowd (we're thinking around 300 attended) was perfectly silent as taps played.

Then things got to hopping! We sang "How Great Thou Art" with gusto - one of my dad's favorites. Dr. Stuart McDowell, Chair of the Wright State University Department of Theatre, Dance and Motion Pictures, introduced a group of students to sing selections from their recent production of Smokey Joe's Cafe. Mom and Dad have been long-time supporters of the theatre department and helped fund a student scholarship there. I had asked Stuart if they might come and sing, hoping for two to agree. Instead, eight singers and a pianist entertained us with powerful versions of "Loving You" and "Stand By Me," the latter song bringing claps and cheers as their joyous vocals filled the room.

We then had a time of sharing tributes by friends and family. I started by asking folks to raise their hand if they had ever:

• Had a real estate dealing with "your Old Uncle Joe"
• Attended church with Joe
• Seen Joe in the Fairborn 4th of July parade
• Been publicly embarrassed by my father

For each question, hundreds of hands shot up. To me, these questions really summarized the public face of my Dad. Always with a smile and a story or something funny to say.

There was one question I didn't ask - how many of you have ever benefited from my father's generosity? I learned only in the last year or so as he began disclosing some of his financial dealings with me, that he had made so many personal loans to folks when they couldn't get credit or were going through a particularly difficult time. He shared this information with me with some pangs of regret as the current economic hardships have made more than a few of his debtors default. He was watching the nest egg he had put aside for his "first wife" Sonia (as he called her for their entire 52 years of marriage) suffer along with everyone else's and worried that he hadn't been prudent enough. I reassured Dad that Mom would have more than enough to live comfortably for many years and still have some leftover for his kids and for the charities he cared about.

During my sister's beautiful comments, she mentioned his quiet generosity and live-within-your-means style, saying that the world wouldn't be in its current economic state if we all behaved in this way. He gave us a wonderful example to follow - one that I hope I can live up to and that my own son will grow to appreciate.

I wrapped up my own comments with a poem by John Updike, who passed away the same week as Dad:

Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market —
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

That's my dad.

Many others shared stories of his humor, community service and love of life. I'm sure as the service was closing, had my father been standing in the back, he would have been shaking his wristwatch and putting it up to his ear - playfully signaling the preacher that it was time to stop.

Lest anyone imagine him a perfect man, let me assure you I do not. Nor was he a perfect father. I know that there have been at least three reasons I haven't shed tears with his passing. One is that his death was a blessed release from the pain and suffering we were all experiencing as cancer ate away at him. Another is that it is very hard to have a conversation with someone who knew my father without laughing about one of his stories or something he said or did to make a perfect moment - and he would love to know that this is so. We are all so grateful that he took the time to put some of his best stories in a book, The Life and Times of Joe Gordon (to the best of my recollection), more about which is available here.

But there is a third reason I haven't really mourned his passing. My relationship with my father was pretty much the same as everyone else's. He was (mostly) kind and supportive; I never doubted that he loved me or that he was proud of me; if I got into a bind, he would loan me money (with interest); we took family vacations to interesting places. But there was no real connection of the father-son kind. I have a solitary memory of throwing a ball with him when I was about four. No camping trips or father-son outings, though a couple of times he did take my sister, Melissa, and me to Rainbow Lakes - a theoretically stocked mudhole of a lake outside of Fairborn that, in retrospect, seemed more like an abandoned minefield than a place to actually catch fish.

As I've read about Ronald Reagan and the relationships he had with his children, I strongly resonate with those experiences. What you saw was what he was, with no ulterior motives or hidden resentments. But he was not a man with whom his children had much of a personal relationship. Like Reagan, my father was a product of his generation and didn't seem to have much of a capacity to explore his inner self or connect with others at a deeper level.

Helping him write and publish his book was the closest I came to having heart-to-heart conversations as he grew nearer to death and acknowledged some of his fears about what happens next. So in a very real and somewhat sad way, I haven't lost my father at all because the man I knew and the relationship I had with him are pretty much encapsulated in his book. For me, he was his stories. I was rarely, if ever, a character in them, and then played only a bystander role. So if I'm mourning any loss, it is that I know that this is the full extent of my ever knowing and having a father.

If this sounds like a judgment against my dad, it is not. I can think of many, many examples of fathers that make me so very grateful for the one that I have had. Joe Martin was a very good man, one I am exceedingly proud to say was my father, and one who lived a full, no-regrets sort of life that I would be happy to be able to say that I emulated when my own life story comes to a close.

Taylor's 2009 New Year's Card

Taylor's 2009 New Year's Card

Oh-Eight is a wrap -- and I say Good Riddance!
Dad's 401(k) is now worth a mere pittance
The stock market's tanking; our future looks dark
Our country's transmission seems locked up in Park
I'm feeling most pensive and now as I ponder
The future, I see all the warnings and wonder
If my generation will be the last one
To have childhoods loaded with laughter and fun

But then I remember -- a New Dawn is near
It heralds the triumph of Hope over Fear
Our nation decided to Change its direction
By checking "Obama" in last year's election
Even before he's been sworn in, it's clear
We're returning to principles we once held dear
We now have the green light to lead many nations
From a place of True Strength that eschews isolation

But enough with political pontificating
The New Year is here and it's worth celebrating!
Forget the bad news -- things will turn out just fine
And I have Big Plans for Two Thousand and Nine
Like making more movies on Daddy's old Mac
And adding new lines to our Christmas train track
I'm building inventions with solder and saw
And working toward earning my black belt -- Hai-YAH!

My folks are both making their own big plans too
Dad's joining Deloitte on their consulting crew
Mom the "Nutritioner" makes meals a treat
And counsels her clients on good foods to eat
They're P90X-ing and getting real buff
And love ballroom dancing and other fun stuff
There's much more to tell you before this poem ends
But it's done -- HAPPY NEW YEAR
Dear Loved Ones and Friends!

Click the links for Taylor's New Year's reflections of yore:
2007
2006
2003
2002