Jimmy V

I tuned into a college basketball game tonight (Davidson vs. West Virginia - great game), and, as it happens each year, turned out to be watching the Jimmy V Classic, the memorial tournament held at Madison Sqaure Garden in honor of the former North Carolina State coach who died of cancer in the mid-1990s.

I watched the end of the first game and then, as usual, ESPN showed Valvano's acceptance speech for receiving the Arthur Ashe award for courage in 1993. The speech is one you can't turn off. I remember watching it live, and now, I watch it every year. (It is re-shown during the intermission between the 7 and 9 o'clock games.) Valvano was, and still is, an inspiration. His messages are important. He says to spend some time every day doing three things: laugh; spend time in thought; and be emotional. When he gave the speech, he had cancerous tumors throughout his body, so his message was profound, coming from someone who knew his time was limited.

But what amazed me tonight, beyond his message, was thinking about the amount of money raised for cancer research. The Jimmy V Foundation claims to donate 100 percent of its donations directly to cancer research, and over the last 15 years, it has raised $80 million. I'm not sure what exactly that has helped to fund, but you hope it's being used intelligently and in a useful way.

I thought that it is unfortunate in a way that a private organization has to raise money for a deadly disease, to help seek a cure or at least better treatments. I turned to my wife and said, "Man, why can't the federal government fund cancer research better?"

And she made a good point: the federal government is busy bailing out banks and car makers.

I'm not sure we have our priorities straight on this.

The Jimmy V Classic is an important fundraiser, and Jimmy V has inspired millions to give money to help this cause. More people should spend time in deep thought, particularly lawmakers and government officials, to figure out ways in which public money can be used to fund new treatments and research, without having to rely on private funds.

But as I was telling my wife - perhaps the government isn't doing enough about chronic and fatal diseases like cancer because, if cancer was wiped out, there wouldn't be a need for as many cancer doctors, and ultimately the health care system would suffer the effects of this lack of treatment, from body scans to chemotherapy. I'm sure hospitals make a lot of their money because of the disease itself. Take it away, and it's a huge financial loss.

Santa's Run

Today, I ran in my first official "race", the 3.5 mile Santa's Run in Glastonbury, amid flurries, 32-degree breezes, worthy of stinging my ears and hands, and 1200 other runners, some of whom were dressed up in holiday garb, including more than a few Santas.

I finished at 29:50-something (only about 12 minutes off the winning time!). I was sprinting toward the finish line and didn't look up at the clock to see the exact time I finished. But I was pretty satisfied with my performance, given that I hadn't ever run in a race before, and on Thursday, during a practice run, finished the course in 31:34. I set a goal for myself of finishing under 30 minutes, and achieved it, so that was cool.

Running is hard. Especially running beyond a mile, for me. The first mile, which I completed in 7:46, wasn't bad. The second mile was tough, as the course meandered through some neighborhoods with slight hills that weren't as gentle as they appeared. I finished the first two miles in 16:30. The last mile and a half were, interestingly, not as difficult as the second mile, or so it seemed. I attempted to sprint for short stretches, as someone suggested, and perhaps that helped my pace, I don't know. Every time I sprinted I felt like I went a lot slower than I had run before the sprint.

Many, many people beat me, which of course I knew would happen. But many people ran faster than me who I wouldn't have thought would beat me. You can't base someone's running time on appearance, but there were people one a half times my age or older who passed me without great effort. I suppose they practice. You have to give older runners a lot of credit, regardless of where they finish.

I now know that I should have worn gloves on such a cold day. And a better hat - not a baseball cap. My mp3 player was missing an earplug so that wasn't ideal. I had to hold the thing in my hand. My shoelaces came untied once, so I had to stop and tie my sneakers, which took off about 10 seconds, possibly. I probably should, if I ever run again, invest in running shoes and not run in my cross trainers.

I did make a special playlist on my mp3 specifically for the run. Strangely, the songs repeated themselves instead of moving to the next one, which could have been the mp3 player resetting because of the bouncing or perhaps I hit the back button without knowing it. For the record, though, here's the music mix I made for the run. As always a lot of pride went into making this.

Times Like These - Foo Fighters
Training Montage - Rocky IV
Superman Kryptonite - Three Doors Down
I am the Highway - Audioslave
Dreams - Van Halen
Right Now - Van Halen
Baba O'Riley = The Who
Learn to Fly - Foo Fighters
Burning Heart = Survivor
Streetcorner Symphpony - Rob Thomas
Everlong - Foo Fighters
Everybody's Changing - Keane
You're the Best (Around) - from the Karate Kid
Supernatural Superserious - REM
Tom Sawyer - Rush
515o - Van Halen
Mean Street - Van Halen

Running, I can tell, can be addictive, particularly if you get caught up in wanting to beat your previous time, or placing in the top 10 in your age category. It's interesting, in that obviously people have physical limitations, and here are thousands of people, millions nationally, who push their limits, despite headaches, sore feet, a dry mouth, cramps in their ribs, sore legs, and general exhaustion. That, I think, is what's cool about it. Bunches of people showing up to do something that they know won't be easy, yet they do it, anyway.

I hope to run more next year, in a few 5k type events, anyway. Although I can't see myself running for serious competition, I liked the scene of the race and the feeling of accomplishment I had when I finished it.

Christmas trees and buying cars

You might not think that purchasing a Christmas tree has much to do with buying a car, but, I'm telling you, they are more similar than you might think.

True, my Christmas tree that I bought today cost $40. The average price of a new car is between $25,000 and $30,000.

But what I have found is that you approach the purchases the same way - wanting to get the best possible product, and spending some time to get it. Buying a car takes research - test driving, comparing prices, maybe even going to Consumer Reports to see their recommendations.

Buying a tree involves a lot of observing, picturing these trees in your house. Will they be too wide, too tall? What about that gaping hole in the back? Some needles might be dying already. The tree could be growing crookedly.

And then, after a lot of wandering around a tree farm in the cold - equivalent to weeks of visiting car dealers and tolerating their salesmen - you grow tired of the process. It gets late, you grow irritable, and then you end up cutting down a tree that you walked by four times. But now, you're impatient about the whole thing, and the tree suddenly looks good. If you had chopped it down in the first place, you could have saved an hour of your December afternoon.

Same thing happens with buying cars. You start off very excited about the prospect of a new car. But after weeks of searching for the right car at the right price, you're pretty satisfied with your old car.

I guess it's this way with any purchase. Or maybe some people can actually make up their minds relatively quickly and move on.

Laundry baskets

We have a number of laundry baskets in our house - I think it's about four. Most of them are up in our bedroom, on the floor, full of clothes. But, increasingly, it is getting harder and harder to determine if the clothes are clean or dirty.

This happens because Alison, our 15 month old, likes to pull clothes out of the baskets onto the floor. She loves emptying her dresser drawers, her brother's dresser drawers, and taking the pots and pans out of the cabinets in the kitchen.

We keep a laundry basket in our bedroom for dirty clothes. And sometimes, there are two laundry baskets full of clean clothes, waiting to be put away. The laundry problem wouldn't exist if we were better at doing this. But this takes time, even if it's a few extra minutes, and often, just bringing clean laundry upstairs is an accomplishment. Putting the clothes away is just another thing that we don't feel like doing.

We've certainly rewashed clothes that have been clean that we have thought we dirty, and we've also probably worn dirty clothes. The other day, I was trying to figure out if a shirt was clean, so I smelled it. Deodorant smell is an obvious give-away, but sometimes it isn't that easy.

The shirt I was holding didn't smell, nor did the others around it, so I wore it. It may have been dirty, who knows.

I wonder if anyone else lives like this, or are we truly slobs? Perhaps I don't want to know the answer.

Dinosaurs!

One of the charming things about having very young children is the hilarious remark that will often pop out of their mouth.

Take today, for instance.

We were at a Christmas-type store, looking to purchase a Department 56 piece for our Christmas village. (I almost wrote "holiday" village - shame on me!)

We were looking to purchase a new building to add to our collection, which has been a tradition each year. We'll usually purchase an accessory, little figurine people, or a building. This year, in honor of our son, Ethan, who loves fire stations and anything involving emergencies or sirens, we were looking specifically for a fire station.

As we surveyed the display of tiny villages and buildings, suddenly Ethan says, "Look! Dinosaurs!"

Confused, I turned to see what he was pointing to. (Surely, there are no dinosaurs in the Dickens village...)

A camel. Ethan was looking at a camel in a nativity scene.

A classic. He thought the camel was a dinosaur.

This ranks up there with the comment he made the first time we brought him to the beach.

"Look!" he said. "Chickens!"

And of course what he saw were seagulls.

I wonder what a seagull would taste like in my sandwich.

James Taylor at Tanglewood

There is nothing quite like seeing JT perform at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Mass, framed by towering spruce trees, the Berkshire Mountains and Stockbridge Bowl, the local lake.

And next summer, in August, he will put on four shows - two mainstream concerts, an "Evening" with his band, in which he plans to talk about his songs and play them, kind of like VH1 Storytellers, I presume, and then a final performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which I think I'll skip. But two of the four are definitely warranted, especially the "evening" with the band, which will be in Ozawa Hall, not the main shed.

Another bit of good news: Garrison Keillor leads the Prairie Home Companion at Tanglewood again, in late June 2009.

Unfortunately, the July 4 performer is Diana Krall, whom we've seen there before and is a bit too low-key for an Independence Day party. And Wilco, who we saw play Tanglewood last year, is not on the schedule. Would love to see Cake perform at Tanglewood, but I'm afraid they wouldn't draw the kind of crowd Tanglewood normally targets.

Here's the Tanglewood link:

http://www.bso.org/bso/mods/perf_detail.jsp;jsessionid=KGRRFFKMAYZPQCTFQMGCFEQ?pid=prod2880038

Crappy places to live (and send your kids to school)

People talk about the widening of the so-called "achievement gap" in the academic performance of city kids vs. suburban kids, which, unfortunately, boils down to, in large measure, minority kids vs. white kids.

This is a problem, but consider this. The top 2 news stories in yesterday evening's local news were:

1. A boy who was arrested for bringing a loaded gun to Weaver High School in Hartford

2. A man who flashed an elementary school classroom in New Britain


Now, these two stories are taken from one day's news, and I am making somewhat of a generalization. However, how is the achievement gap ever going to close when you have incidents like this happening in city schools? I know I couldn't focus on learning if a classmate had a gun, or some dude opened up his trenchcoat my classroom.

The thing is, if you compare graduation rates, test scores, grade point averages, crime, DCF referrals and a whole bunch of other criteria, it is sad to say, but you'd be a fool to send your kids to these low-performing, crime-ridden communities. The problem is, people can't afford to move anywhere else. What can they do, other than hope for a magnet school slot in a better town? What can they do, other than be good parents, and instill in them good values? I guess you cross your fingers and do a lot of hoping.