Exorcising a ski run

This story is an attempt at an exorcism of sorts. I'm writing it with the hope of getting out of my mind the experience I had skiing with some friends yesterday at Park City/Canyons.
Two days before Darlene, Linda and I had skied Grande, a double black rated run off the Tombstone Chairlift. The snow had been great, not untracked, but nice and soft. The run is challenging because it requires skiing in tight trees to reach an open bowl that is quite steep but easily manageable. Above the bowl is a is rocky face un-skiable by anyone with a working brain. Last Friday, the rock face was roped off and with a yellow sign with an arrow pointing to skier's-left to avoid the rocks. With deep snow, it is a great run.
Yesterday at the end of a great ski day with Darlene and Linda, we decided to ski Grande again as our closing run. We entered the run too far at skier's-right without noticing that the rope above the rocks was missing. As we started traversing to the left looking for more familiar terrain I found myself on the rock face with Linda closely behind. I barely managed to bushwhack my way above and out of that mess, back to safer terrain. There, I noticed that we were well below the familiar yellow arrow-sign above the rock face and that the orange out-of-bounds rope had been pulled and thrown behind a tree by some irresponsible fool. Linda, instead, was still stuck on the frozen rocks with her skis tangled in barbed-wire-like low bushes of scrub oak. In the hope of freeing herself from the bad spot,

Memories From A Tech Startup (back in the stone age)

My story, below, was prompted by reading that an Atari video game cartridges from a 1980's landfill sold for $37,000.  The past rushed back at me as I re-lived an earlier very dramatic time of my life. Brace yourself.

If your first video game console was a Nintendo, this story might as well be about dinosaurs or the Roman Empire or The Middle Ages.  If you are older than that you might find some memories and may notice that little has changed since those times except the absolute speed of change (the relative speed of change has not and more of that later). In hindsight, the risks of high-tech startups do not seem to have changed much and the planning to deal with it requires the same considerations today as it did then. The roman-candle story of RomLabs Inc. may give us a glimpse into it.

The business environment

It's 1983, the first "video games bubble" has been running since 1980-81 and it was a classic "bubble" unbeknownst to all industry participants.  The key players of the second generation of video games devices included video game console (VGC) makers Atari, Intellivision, Coleco (also Commodore, Radioshack, Texas Instruments) and third party developers (game software only) Imagic, Activision and Electronic Arts and a host of other minor participants.

Ryan Scobby - Musician

We had waited a long time for our son Ryan to find time and means to come and visit us in Park City.
 Finally, hurrah! he came. It was to be a visit of learning and discovery.

Let's start with the learning part: shortly after his arrival I jokingly asked Ry if he had already found a hook up in town using Tinder.
[Side bar: That was my opening to tell him what I had read about Tinder in a post on Vanity Fair,
which presumably would make me look current and well informed. I had read the story describing the users of Tinder and the fast hook up culture in NYC, which, shared with my late middle-age women friends at a recent party, had generated great surprise, curiosity, laughs and, for some, horror]

I feel like a total idiot

I am here at my laptop reading the usual daily dose of posts on science, technology, medicine genetics, food science, etc. that make me the eternal optimist that I am. Earlier I finished my daily reading of geopolitics, global economics, Grexit, Iran, ISIS, Middle East, oil shortages, famines, US Presidential Elections, etc. that sorely test my belief in optimistic outcomes.

Along the way, with whatever I read, I code posts for subject, interest, and whatever keywords may help me find the post at some later date. I've done it for years. Unable to remember correctly all details I encounter, I resort to coding all I read for retrieval to recall and quote correctly. Some friends think I have a great memory - I wish. I just have a retrieval system designed to support my curiosity of virtually anything that the internet provides. That's a lot. But, I just found a simple system that helps my mediocre memory look smart to those that do not look behind the curtain.

Janus and Vision

Janus was the Roman god with two faces: one faced forward to see the future and one faced backwards to see the past. Seeing was clearly a big focus of Janus'. I always found the image of Janus intriguing, perhaps because vision has been a big part of my life. Vision, the kind that describes imagination has been a big motivation for much that I have tried to do, but here I am looking at Vision, the kind that lets us physically see things.
The former moves us to imagine and pursue whatever we imagine - one former US President called it "the vision thing" and everyone knew instantly what he was talking about. The latter, the ability to see our surroundings is considered the most complex and most important development in the history of animal evolution.

Most people do not give vision much thought unless they lose it to some degree or completely. Throughout my life however I have repeatedly dealt with serious vision issues and have stayed ahead of disaster only thanks to a few wizards and the just-in-time evolution of technology. So here is my chronology of dodging the bullet and my reason for wanting to spread rose petals in front of my eye surgeons.

 Troubles started in my teens needing eye glasses like many other kids. By the time I was 19 and finished three years in the Italian Navy, my condition, keratoconus (in both eyes) had deteriorated enough that I could no longer be in the military since vision correction could be done only with special contact lenses. In 1970 I moved to the US and was rejected for the then compulsory draft for the same condition, A young optometrist at Indiana University, Barry Gridley, took my case as a mission and became a wiz at hand grinding my hard contacts to custom fit. Without him I probably would have never finished my MBA and started my career. That was the time when I started being a "special case" that students would come and look at to see the "real thing" described in their textbooks.

A Great Ski Season (despite the snow)

For all the years I can remember skiing in Park City the 2014-15 season has to be the worst. We seemed to live through an eternal Spring that sent little natural snow and temperatures high enough that our snow-making-wizards at Canyons were seriously limited in performing their magic. Despite all this, we are closing as planned on April 12. So a few closing thoughts

Skiing comes in many forms

My mother was fast in the GS on the Italian Olympic Team in 1938

I am slow but l can dance

Skiing - A continuing Quest

My passion for skiing has been documented in prior posts. It is stoked by the fact that after 60 years, I am still learning in the quest of better technique.
Over the years PSIA has helped me improve with its requirements for Instructor Certification (now Level 2), and the theory it publishes in its Technical Manuals . The Canyons Ski School (Park City UT), where I teach, provided me great training opportunities. So, to share the gifts I received, here is my Summary of Technical Skiing and the graphic below that shows what happens when the activities in the Summary are performed correctly.
Do you have questions or need to know how to read it? Book a lesson at Canyons (877-472-6306) and let's go play together.

A new author joined our team

Editor's Note 1 - Anyone can see that I have been remiss posting on this blog. To remedy this matter I decided to hire a freelance writer, my grand daughter Mandy Hansen (age 7) to contribute her stories.

She is also an artist so I bought ($4.50) the worldwide copyright to one of her paintings for publication here.


Fishing with Grandpa

And here is Mandy Hansen's debut as a freelancer. Her newest story was purchased at the rate of cents 1 per word.

A Day with Granpa (7/13/2014)

One morning I siad to my grampa how bout we go plases like Smith's and gite ickereem and walmart so we went smisth and got iscrim and then we wentto walmartand on the way bake (back) I fel of my bijicl bot it was only a little scrach so we still went to the pserve (the Swaners' Nature Preserve in Park City UT) and we did not no that we were going on varee long grass so we went home and grama was sleeping so I plaid the peeanow and grapa went on the computer.

The end.

Editor's Note 2: Since the writing quality is definitely college freshman level the original was published as written by the author.

Why I am afraid

From The Atlantic

The Single Best Overview of What the Surveillance State Does With Our Private Data

Oct 9 2013, 6:00 AM ET theatlantic.com

Even though the people being spied on are often totally innocent, the government stores their information for a very long time.

The U.S. surveillance debate is constantly distorted by the fact that national-security officials hide, obscure, and distort so much of what they do. Occasionally a journalist is able to expand the store of publicly available information, most recently thanks to Edward Snowden's indispensable NSA leaks. But even public information about government surveillance and data retention is difficult to convey to a mass audience. It involves multiple federal agencies with overlapping roles. The relevant laws and rules are complicated, jargon is ubiquitous, and surveillance advocates often don't play fair: They use words in ways that bear little relation to their generally accepted meaning, make technically accurate statements that are highly misleading, and even outright lie, as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did before Congress.

57 years in the making

We never achieve anything totally on our own.  Somewhere along the way someone planted the seed of whatever accomplishment we may check off our "bucket list".

One item on my list, long in the making was "become a ski instructor".  I am not sure I know why it was important, but it was.  Perhaps I wanted to have at least one thing in my life that could be "certified" top in class.

What a night with Lipbone Redding and the Dogs of Santiago

It happens only once every few years, but when it does, wow! It feels like magic. Tonight (9/17/2010), in Park City, I went to a small party, two dozens people or so. The invitation promised live music by  Lipbone Redding.  Never heard of them before.  Marginal expectations at best. As we helped ourselves around the buffet in a beautiful mountain home set on the side of  a hill turning into the stunning colors of the Fall in PC, a treo, not much of a band if you asked me, was tuning up on the terrace.  One guitar, a bass and a bongo with cymbals.  Minimalist was the motif and so were my expectations.
 First surprise: Lipbone Redding had an extra secret instrument you could not see.  Watch this video and listen to the music: there is NO Brass, no trumpet, no sax, no trombone - what you hear is the "voicestrumentalist" sound of Lipbone Redding - Sachmo would be impressed.  When Lipbone just sang, Fats Waller would have stopped to listen with a big smile.  I was in heaven, could hardly stand still. Second surprise: Lipbone and his friends could have stolen the show at last night's final of 2010 America's Got Talent.  May be not from Jackie Evancho (should have won by a landslide!), a 10 year old girl with a heavenly voice,  but in my book would have buried winner Michael Grimm hands down. Anyway, you be the judge.  The range of styles is broad, all impeccably delivered after being made their own like Sixteen Tons, to all the rest original compositions, all with a crips natural happiness of beat I had not heard since Rafa Mora in Costa Rica (see that post and listen). These guys are in a league of their own with a style, technique, a natural voice-trumpet and a tongue in cheek perspective of life like the Dogs of Santiago.  Remember NO horns only a voice - Wow !

1. Lipbone Redding Live in Park City
2. Dogs of Santiago
3. Travelin' Light
4. Indian Rose
5. Closing Time
6. Picnic Basket
7. Tuscaloosa Suntan
8. Old Flame
9. Hollywood & Vine
10. Love Is the Answer
11. Follow the Money
12. Sixteen Tons

   Do not pass up a chance to see them yourself if you are so lucky they go through your town. The Lipbone Redding Orchestra Lipbone Redding - Voicestrumentsls, Guitar Jeff Eyrich - Upright Bass, Backing Vocals Rich Zukor - Drums/Percussion, Backing Vocals http://lipbone.com  or  http://facebook/citizenonemusic

Columbus all over again

Food for thought

When Columbus landed in North America it took months for his closes back-home associates to learn about it.  Europe's literati took years to hear about it and nearly a century passed before the proof that the earth was not flat sunk into people's consciousness.  Some wits would say that even today some people are only marginally aware of it (Austria and Australia are still indistinguishable to same).

Well we are at that point again. Today's announcement is as momentous if not more so.  The information will travel faster, but, still, real consciousness of its significance will lag, luddites will deny it (e.g. the moon landing was a video scam), some (ostriches) will ignore it, some will be horrified by it (and try to put the gene back in the bottle), all will be directly or indirectly affected.

The impact will be not only in the practical consequences (medicine, industrial, etc.), which have been in the making for years, but mostly, in the psyche of homo sapiens.  I do not know when it happened (lags still exist even in the information age), nor how long it will take to sink in, but today's announcement is "Columbus all over again".  Write down the date; it will matter when you'll say "I remeber when..." to your grandchildren, to whom the whole affair will have become as common place as TV remotes and cell phones.

Today homo sapiens made life, not a human, not without some minor procedural shortcuts, not "new" life only a duplicate, but synthetic self duplicating DNA based life just the same. The world and we as a species will not remain the same.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/21cell.html

May 20, 2010

The genome pioneer J. Craig Venter has taken another step in his quest to create synthetic life, by synthesizing an entire bacterial genome and using it to take over a cell.

Dr. Venter calls the result a “synthetic cell” and is presenting the research as a landmark achievement that will open the way to creating useful microbes from scratch to make products like vaccines and biofuels. At a press conference Thursday, Dr. Venter described the converted cell as “the first self-replicating species we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”

“This is a philosophical advance as much as a technical advance,” he said, suggesting that the “synthetic cell” raised new questions about the nature of life

Other scientists agree that he has achieved a technical feat in synthesizing the largest piece of DNA so far — a million units in length — and in making it accurate enough to substitute for the cell’s own DNA.

But some regard this approach as unpromising because it will take years to design new organisms, and meanwhile progress toward making biofuels is already being achieved with conventional genetic engineering approaches in which existing organisms are modified a few genes at a time.

Dr. Venter’s aim is to achieve total control over a bacterium’s genome, first by synthesizing its DNA in a laboratory and then by designing a new genome stripped of many natural functions and equipped with new genes that govern production of useful chemicals.

“It’s very powerful to be able to reconstruct and own every letter in a genome because that means you can put in different genes,” said Gerald Joyce, a biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.

In response to the scientific report, President Obama asked the White House bioethics commission on Thursday to complete a study of the issues raised by synthetic biology within six months and report back to him on its findings. He said the new development raised “genuine concerns,” though he did not specify them further.

Dr. Venter took a first step toward this goal three years ago, showing that the natural DNA from one bacterium could be inserted into another and that it would take over the host cell’s operation. Last year, his team synthesized a piece of DNA with 1,080,000 bases, the chemical units of which DNA is composed.

In a final step, a team led by Daniel G. Gibson, Hamilton O. Smith and Dr. Venter report in Thursday’s issue of the journal Science that the synthetic DNA takes over a bacterial cell just as the natural DNA did, making the cell generate the proteins specified by the new DNA’s genetic information in preference to those of its own genome.

The team ordered pieces of DNA 1,000 units in length from Blue Heron, a company that specializes in synthesizing DNA, and developed a technique for assembling the shorter lengths into a complete genome. The cost of the project was $40 million, most of it paid for by Synthetic Genomics, a company Dr. Venter founded.

But the bacterium used by the Venter group is unsuitable for biofuel production, and Dr. Venter said he would move to different organisms. Synthetic Genomics has a contract from Exxon to generate biofuels from algae. Exxon is prepared to spend up to $600 million if all its milestones are met. Dr. Venter said he would try to build “an entire algae genome so we can vary the 50 to 60 different parameters for algae growth to make superproductive organisms.”

On his yacht trips round the world, Dr. Venter has analyzed the DNA of the many microbes in seawater and now has a library of about 40 million genes, mostly from algae. These genes will be a resource to make captive algae produce useful chemicals, he said.

Some other scientists said that aside from assembling a large piece of DNA, Dr. Venter has not broken new ground. “To my mind Craig has somewhat overplayed the importance of this,” said David Baltimore, a geneticist at Caltech. He described the result as “a technical tour de force,” a matter of scale rather than a scientific breakthrough.

“He has not created life, only mimicked it,” Dr. Baltimore said.

Dr. Venter’s approach “is not necessarily on the path” to produce useful microorganisms, said George Church, a genome researcher at Harvard Medical School. Leroy Hood, of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, described Dr. Venter’s report as “glitzy” but said lower-level genes and networks had to be understood first before it would be worth trying to design whole organisms from scratch.

In 2002 Eckard Wimmer, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, synthesized the genome of the polio virus. The genome constructed a live polio virus that infected and killed mice. Dr. Venter’s work on the bacterium is similar in principle, except that the polio virus genome is only 7,500 units in length, and the bacteria’s genome is more than 100 times longer.

Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, denounced the synthetic genome as “dangerous new technology,” saying that “Mr. Venter should stop all further research until sufficient regulations are in place.”

The genome Dr. Venter synthesized is copied from a natural bacterium that infects goats. He said that before copying the DNA, he excised 14 genes likely to be pathogenic, so the new bacterium, even if it escaped, would be unlikely to cause goats harm.

Dr. Venter’s assertion that he has created a “synthetic cell” has alarmed people who think that means he has created a new life form or an artificial cell. “Of course that’s not right — its ancestor is a biological life form,” said Dr. Joyce of Scripps.

Dr. Venter copied the DNA from one species of bacteria and inserted it into another. The second bacteria made all the proteins and organelles in the so-called “synthetic cell,” by following the specifications implicit in the structure of the inserted DNA.

“My worry is that some people are going to draw the conclusion that they have created a new life form,” said Jim Collins, a bioengineer atBoston University. “What they have created is an organism with a synthesized natural genome. But it doesn’t represent the creation of life from scratch or the creation of a new life form,” he said.

Social Media and a 2010 Boston Tea Party

At the risk of being stoned, I admit it: I believe that web social media, so far, has been a phenomenon of a solution in search of a problem,  businesses are wasting tons of money hoping to figure out a way to make money with it, and marketing consultants are the only ones doing so. This conclusion is in part supported by statistics like: over 90% of Twitter traffic is generated by 10% of the registered users; in other words relatively few people with time on their hands chatting with similarly busy people.  The assessment specifically excludes news media people and services who cleverly use it to let the "10% crowd" do some news sleuthing for them, or to generate following for their programs.

Well, I was WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Businesses beware!   There may not be easy money to be made out of social media, but lots to lose by treating customers with contempt in an age when that news can be circulated to the world effectively and effortlessly.

To wit, the below email I received from a friend says it all.

(For wared email)
A musician named Dave Carroll recently had difficulty with United Airlines.
United apparently damaged his treasured Taylor guitar ($3500) during a flight.

Dave spent over 9 months trying to get United to pay for damages caused by baggage handlers to his custom Taylor guitar.

During his final exchange with the United Customer Relations Manager, he stated that he was left with no choice other than to create a music video for YouTube exposing their lack of cooperation. The Manager responded: "Good luck with that one, pal". So he posted a retaliatory video on youtube.

The video has since received over 5.5 million hits.


United Airlines contacted the musician and attempted settlement in exchange for pulling the video. Naturally his response was:  "Good luck with that one, pal".

Taylor Guitars sent the musician 2 new custom guitars in appreciation for the product recognition from the video that has lead to a sharp increase in orders.Here's the video .....  http://www.youtube.com/watchv=5YGc4zOqozo&NR=1>

 --------------------------------------

You read it right 5.5 million hits and counting.  I guess the days of telling customers to blow off are ending and social media is lending a hand. 

Well done Dave Carroll, cool song too.

Haunted

Music is big part of this story - Listen while you read

1. Cuerdas Sentimentales 1
2. Cuerdas Sentimentales 2
3. Cuerdas Sentimentales 3
4. Cuerdas Sentimentales 4
5. Cuerdas Sentimentales 5
6. Cuerdas Sentimentales 6
7. Cuerdas Sentimentales 7
8. Cuerdas Sentimentales 8
9. Cuerdas Sentimentales 9
10. Cuerdas Sentimentales 10
11. Cuerdas Sentimentales 11
12. Cuerdas Sentimentales 12
13. Cuerdas Sentimentales 13
14. Cuerdas Sentimentales 14
15. Noche Inolvidable 01
16. Noche Inolvidable 02
17. Noche Inolvidable 03
18. Noche Inolvidable 04
19. Noche Inolvidable 05
20. Noche Inolvidable 06
21. Noche Inolvidable 07
22. Noche Inolvidable 08
23. Noche Inolvidable 09
24. Noche Inolvidable 10
25. Noche Inolvidable 11
26. Noche Inolvidable 12
27. Noche Inolvidable 13
28. Noche Inolvidable 14
29. Noche Inolvidable 15
30. Noche Inolvidable 16
31. Noche Inolvidable 17
32. Noche Inolvidable 18
33. Noche Inolvidable 19
34. Noche Inolvidable 20

Have you ever felt haunted by a promise you made?  This is my story. It has been with me since March of 2008 when I vacationed in Costa Rica.  The travel log of that trip will wait for another day although I brought back photo memories of that magnificent country that you can see here (suspend the music player if it is playing by pressing the space bar) - you’ll have to dream up your own explanations for the photos, but the feel for that enchanting  country will come through nonetheless – stay in touch and the travel log will come).

This posting is really about being haunted by a promise. This is, in a small way, my first step toward buying my freedom from that promise.  Time will tell if it works.  I may have to travel back to Costa Rica to try harder than this, and that would not be bad at all.  So, here it goes:

The trip

In 2008 Darlene, my wife, and I wanted a trip to a warm place with a direct flight from Phoenix AZ.  We’ve seen much of Mexico, another lovely country of wonderful people, so we were looking for another destination.  My boss Rich, an accomplished world traveler and bon-vivant, told me that he had invested in Costa Rica to develop property near Dominical.  He sang the glories of the country and we decided we had to see this jewel often called “Switzerland of Latin America” for its orderly government, peaceful people, high productivity and dependable banking. As a former international banker I was most curious to see it.
We traveled there in March 2008 just before the rainy season would come.  In one week we drove all over the North and West of the country and saw a volcano up lose (Arenal), high altitude cloud forests, sea level tropical forests, and more monkeys, sloths and butterflies than we had hoped. The Costarican people proved to be all they were promised to be: friendly, helpful, well educated and with a joi de vivre hard to find at home in our hurried culture.  Check the photolog  (suspend the music player if it is playing) and go see for yourself.

 A monkey on my back

In this wonderful country full of monkeys, I managed to put one on my back in a most unexpected way. The last stop of our Costa-Rican west coast exploration was the famous surfer village of Dominical, well known to all “real surfers” that dream of an “endless summer” lifestyle.  We are not surfers, so we were looking mostly for a laid back village where Rich had been developing property for sale to vacationing and “expat” gringos.  We were enchanted enough to even go talk to realtors about property, but in the end that was just daydreaming.

We stayed at the Hotel Domilocos, a grand hotel by surfers standards, but more of a motel-6 sort of place. It was just what we try to travel by: basic, clean, convenient, friendly, well priced accommodations you do not need to book days ahead, the kind that are mostly a lucky find.  That day we were lucky, the more so because in it, at the edge of the village, at the end of a dusty road, they were said to have a high end Italian restaurant.
The restaurant opened quite late, was an untested quantity, looked suspicious with high prices at the end of that dusty road and the front desk announced that the chef had just left to Italy on vacation. We decided to go for fish tacos at the local surfers’ hangout under the nearest palapa surrounded by broken surfboards.

Late in the evening on our way to our room we found the restaurant at Domilocos packed, lively and with great music.  We stopped for a nightcap and got a seat right in front of the single musician that sounded like a whole orchestra. Over a cognac and a banana flambé’ in Grand Marnier we discovered that the restaurant was indeed top class despite the vacationing chef.

As we listened to the music I felt transfixed. The latin rhythm, the romantic songs and a musician that could switch from piano to keyboards to accordion to acoustic guitar and  guitarron were too much to leave.  We stayed until closing, whenever that was.

During a couple of intermissions I met the musician, bought a couple of his CDs for souvenirs and bought him a drink. Rafa Mora was his name (he is from Costa Rica, there is a musician in Spain by the same name).  I learned that he had tried to introduce his music into the US with the help of a friend in NYC, but the friend had gone bust, his CDs were gone and no contacts had come from the effort.  Rafa asked what I did for a living and I explained my work at Maricopa College Small Business Development Center.  Instinctively, and as I did with just about anyone in those days, I offered to help him develop his business by tracing his friend and see what could be done to reopen his web site.  I was willing to host his site along with several of my own ones if we could get it transferred without too much trouble.  At that news Rafa gratefully gave me a copy of all his other CDs that I had not already bought and wished me well in my endeavor.  The rest of that evening he pulled all the stops off performing for us as if I had been the most connected music industry mogul in LA.

Upon our return I made a few searches over the net, but never found his former friend. I had no time to develop a site for him, besides I did not have any local contact for him in Dominical since he never followed up to send me his email address. Life happened, I took up some demanding projects that took all my time and eventually I left the MCSBDC to chase a success chimera to the moon.  Over the months, I listened to Rafa’s music often as a crutch in tough times to make me smile again remembering that happy night in Dominical.  His captivating music has a joi de vivre that beats any antidepressant and on a romantic soul it works wonders.

All this musical bliss has not come free of charge, however.  Every time I hear Rafa sing and play a little monkey on my back gets agitated and whispers in my ears questioning if I did enough for those free CDs I got.  They had no cost to me and I could not sell them for more than I paid, but to Rafa they were a significant cost and investment in his future as a musician or so says the little monkey.  So, today I had to take a step, at least a little one, to quiet the little miserable bastard on my back:  1.  I wrote this posting, 2 I am streaming Rafa’s music for you to hear.  May be it will be my luck that some music industry connected reader my “discover” Rafa and lend a hand.  In time I’ll do more, starting with tracking down Rafa by email back in Dominical – I doubt my monkey will rest for long.

In the meantime you can enjoy Rafa’s magic.  Look him up if you are in Dominical, Costa Rica. The Hotel Domilocos will be a good place to start and  everyone in town should know Rafa Mora musician and singer extraordinair.  Happy travels.

Mucho gusto mi amigo Rafa – El mejor a Costa Rica

Songs and arragements copyright of Rafa Mora

Saved BY (not from) the Swine Flu

This is not a story of medical details, but one of people, their courage and the difference they make

My blog is not only for proclaiming my opinions (I probably do too much of that), but is a world-sized wall where I can write, for the world to see, of the bad and the ugly in search of a fix, and the good: my tribute to the people that cross my life and make a difference - sometimes the give the gift of living a better rest of my life.

What follows are facts with medical details only for context. All the names are true. To those whose names I omitted, I apologize for my poor memory and the hospital's policy to not give me the names.

National Michael Phelps Day

Since the start of the 2008 Olympics we've seen Phelps smiling, Phelps yelling, Phelps cheering, Phelps concentrated, Phelps sleeping, Phelps spitting, Phelps swimming, Phelps winning, Phelps awarded, Phelps whatever.

Congratulations Michael Phelps! It's a tremendous feat so far, and perhaps to become more so.

So here is a proposal: lets make a National Phelps Day - we all go swimming for a day and honor the hero. Along the way we may also give thought to what the networks seems to have forgotten:

1 We have dozens of other athletes competing, if not as successfully, at least with as much effort and determination. From that, we may remember that it's harder to continue to compete day in and day out when you are not at the top but while you struggle to get there, and don't make it, and try again.
2 There are hundreds of sports that once in four years we could admire and learn something about. Not football, not baseball, not basketball, not golf and even not tennis, but all those sports that promise no professional high paying careers to heir stars, those sports that participants pick just for the sake of competing, those that have no incentives to use drugs to win because winning unfairly would be no win at all.

Those are the sports that some of our children who did not make it into the high school popular sport team may have picked to learn about sportsmanship, about good manners in winning and losing, about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. The sports that are still just sports.

There are more than the gold-medal-count obsessed networks are letting us see. Buying a monopoly on broadcasting obviously is a ticket to do what you please, yet I wonder if along with the power there isn't a moral responsibility. In this case a responsibility to: sportsmanship, to the values of fair play, struggle, persistence, graciousness in winning, graciousness in defeat.

Every four years, for so brief a moment, one someone somewhere has the opportunity to decide for us all what we'll see and understand and remember of hundreds of sports and competitors, either with a broad mind or a narrow provincial view. We'll just have to wait another four years for another chance.