April 26, 2007 - The New Normal

I read something the other day in Leroy Sievers' blog that got me to thinking about my own situation (Leroy is the NPR journalist who’s been blogging, and broadcasting radio updates, chronicling his cancer story). Leroy – like me, a cancer patient in remission – described his situation as “the new normal.”

When you finish an experience like cancer treatment, you don’t just return to where you were so many months before, and pick up right where you left off. Cancer is a life-changing experience. Once you’ve been awarded the dubious title of “cancer survivor,” you can never go back. Even the people who call themselves “cancer free” – having completed so many years following treatment, without further symptoms – usually continue to live with a certain, low-level fear that the cancer could recur.

It’s more complicated that mere anxiety, though. I don’t mean to give the impression that I’m paralyzed by worry. When I look ahead on my calendar and see a doctor’s appointment, I don’t feel swamped by a wave of dread. Dr. Lerner has been upbeat from the very beginning, observing that my type of lymphoma typically responds well to treatment, and that remissions tend to be long-lasting. I have every reason to expect that his prediction (or, at least, his statement of the law of averages) will prove true in my case. The observation I’m making is more existential than emotional in nature. Cancer changes you. You’re not the same person you were before. It’s hard to describe what I mean by that, other than saying that’s how things feel.

“The new normal” is a phrase some of Leroy’s blog readers have been using in responding to his recent postings, and it’s one that speaks to me, as well. I’d love to be able to say I’m now “back to normal” – indeed, friends and family would very much like to hear me say it – but I can’t. What is “normal,” anyway? Normal is a moving target, these days.

I'm glad I'm no longer where I was a year ago, dealing with chemo. But, on the other hand, I feel that the door back to where I was, pre-diagnosis, is closed and barred. The new normal is the country I now find myself in, and I’m still exploring the terrain.

When I was in the midst of chemo treatments, there was a very clear map to follow. I went from treatment to treatment, weathering the more-or-less predictable side effects. Now, I find myself in a country where many of the old landmarks are no longer recognizable. It’s a better place to be than where I was a year ago, but I’m still trying to figure out how it compares to the place I was in, when I commenced this cancer journey.

The ancient Sophist philosopher, Heraclitus, memorably said that you can’t step into the same river twice. Once you step out of your ordinary, day-to-day life to undergo a season of chemotherapy, when you do finally get back to that river, the waters that once carried you have moved on. There’s a certain continuity, of course, but things feel different, also.

The challenge is letting go of the old normal, and embracing the new.

April 23, 2007 - The Value of a Life

I’ve been thinking – as many others have, as well – of the horrible incident on the campus of Virginia Tech University, as Seung-Hui Cho, a deeply disturbed young man, randomly murdered 32 of his fellow-students and professors. Accounts are now emerging that portray the shooter as a lifelong loner, who had difficulty discerning reality from fantasy. He told roommates, for example, he had a girlfriend who was a supermodel who traveled by spaceship, and that he had recently vacationed in North Carolina with Vladimir Putin. The projects he submitted in creative-writing class were filled with dark fantasies of violence. An English professor who tutored him (after another professor had ejected him from her class for strange behavior) felt so uneasy in his presence that she arranged a code-word her administrative assistant could use to summon police. From a very early age, Cho was so sullen and withdrawn that his family expressed amazement at the diatribes on the video he’d mailed to NBC News. They had seldom heard him speak in such complete sentences.

When all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled, it seems clear that Cho was suffering from serious mental illness, and had been for some time. Everyone knew he was troubled; they just didn’t know how much. The second-guessing is likely to go on for a very long time: why the counselors who worked with him didn’t try to commit him, why he was permitted to purchase guns. But, there may never be any satisfying answers. Cho was a cipher. No one, it seems, had seen all the puzzle-pieces that made up his twisted personality. No one fully understands him, even now.

Thirty-two people – 33, counting him – is a large number. So are the numbers coming out of Iraq daily, as the suicide bombers and the mortar attacks exert their grisly toll. I’ve been through months of very costly medical treatments, aimed at saving my life. It’s disconcerting to hear of how many otherwise healthy lives can be snatched away, in a few brief moments of random violence.

I find it ironic, and sad, that some members of the human race can work so hard to save lives through medical treatment, while others can – with such apparent ease – slaughter so many others. We can all agree that cancer is an enemy that should be fought with every resource at our disposal. Yet, why are we so reluctant to work equally hard to uproot the causes of violence?

The experiences I’ve been through in recent months have focused my thinking very intensely on the value of a human life. So many good people – from the researchers who developed my medicines, to the doctors and nurses who administered them, to the radiologists who puzzled out the images on my scans – have devoted their lives to saving people like me. Life is precious, and worth that kind of effort. When a young man in Baghdad straps plastic explosives around his waist, or another young man in Virginia methodically buys guns, bullets and chains to bar the doors of a building, it seems to negate that good work.

My life is of no more value than those who have fallen in Blacksburg or Baghdad. Why I am still alive and they are not is a mystery. Call it survivor’s guilt, but it’s very real to me these days.

21mm photos from Tokyo

I had just an hour Saturday morning on my last day in Tokyo to relax and take some photos. The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space is two streets from my hotel in Ikebukuro. Here are a few shots using the 21mm "pancake" lens and K10D from this brief walk-around .

(04.18.07) Recommends:

A VC.

I don't know what it is exactly about this blog of a New York City Venture Capitalist that has me obsessed, but I probably check this thing twenty times a day. He is a VC who focuses on the internet and technology sector (probably that's just one sector? internet is technology, right?). He's a big music fan. He's very enthusiastic and seems genuine and gentle. I rarely understand the business behind what he's talking about, but I'd say once a week I feel like I learn something, or glean some insight. Like I said, I've become obsessed with it.

(04.17.07) Recommends:

A Reflection on Taxation.

Today we will hear lots of noise regarding the tax debate. They’re too high and they stifle an efficient flow of labor and capital! They’re too low and they prevent an equitable and just society! The debate has been ongoing for decades, and will continue to rage on for decades to come. And really, at this point, the debate is by and large boring, because it’s not a really a debate. Rather, it's a series of rants supported by ostensible facts and wholly dismissive of the other side. And of course, we all know that the facts don’t matter if you don’t agree on the issue.

So today, on this Tax Day, I want to leave the traditional tax debate behind. Instead, I would like to share with you all something I came across recently. To me, this video demonstrates the value of taxes. Not only that, it demonstrates the awesome potential of this country of ours. It demonstrates that while we may be in the midst of fighting a War on Terror, no fucking terrorists can ever destroy the spirit of this country. It demonstrates that while we’re entering the beginning stages of a shitstorm of a Presidential campaign in which both sides will insist that this is the Most Important Election of Our Time, the winner ultimately does not matter, because it is the people of this country who gives this country of ours its awesome strength.

In April of 1973, Stevie Wonder appeared on Sesame Street. The following video is the blistering result. This video to me is such a beautiful and strong distillation of the power and potential of our country that watching it literally brings me to tears. Here is a blind, black man invited to be the musical guest on a show that features a reality where humans interact with all manner of strange puppets. It’s a show that features a monster who eats – but cannot swallow – cookies. It’s a show that features two puppets – one orange and a lover of duckies, one yellow and the wearer of a unibrow – who might be roommates, or who might be gay lovers, or who might just be puppets made out of cloth. It’s a show that features a monster who lives in a trash can and is generally angry, yet always shows patience and compassion for his pet worm. It’s a show that features a big bird (Big Bird), and a big dog (Barkley) and a big wholly mammoth thing (Snuffleupagus). I could go on and on about the wonderful and charming characters, but it’s what those characters have done that’s even more remarkable. They’ve taught generations of children about letters and numbers and spelling and friendship and emotions and that it's okay to be a little weird or odd or a freak or an outsider or disabled or to be from a different country or to be a different color. It's taught about having and dealing with imaginary friends (the type that aren’t physically there) and imaginary friends (the type who you think are nice to you, but really aren’t). They’ve taught about tolerance. They’ve taught about the incredible power of language.

Fact: I remember the first time that I saw the “Letter B” skit, where a band of puppets sings “Letter B” as a play on the Beatles’ “Let it Be.” I remember watching this at maybe age three or four. And I remember realizing that language could be taken, and tweaked, to humorous effect. I was three or fours years old and I've tried to use that lesson every day of my life since. Are we really willing to say that TV does nothing but rot the brain?

And my god, look at the kids dancing in this video! The show has also taught generations of kids to get down with their funky selves! Stevie Wonder, a black man born blind in Michigan in 1950. He shows up on Sesame Street and puts on a performance, at age 23, that can unit kids and adults, puppets and people. White sax players and black drummers. This is the kind of thing that changes the world.

All of this goodness from Sesame Street. And how does this show get funded? Well, it gets funded from many different sources, but – and here’s the point of today’s lecture – lots of the funding comes from the Federal Government, and the Federal Government gets lots of its money from our tax dollars. So today, I am happy to give my Hard Earned Dollars to the Government. Because I know there is waste in the government. And I know there is inefficiency. Do I care about this? I do care. But my god, I want to give because every time I give it allows for the possibility of the funding of something as beautiful as Stevie Wonder performing “Superstition” on Sesame Street in 1973 to happen. The tax system isn’t perfect, and the government isn’t perfect, and Stevie Wonder isn’t perfect, and Sesame Street isn’t perfect. But, let's all remember the goal of the Founding Fathers in the preamble of the Constitution (this will be convenient since I’m sure you people already have your Constitutions out in order to justify your belief in the necessity or illegitimacy of taxation): they wanted to create a more perfect Union. More perfect. Perfection might always be out of the reach of us mere humans, but Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street in 1973 made things more perfect.

(04.16.07) Recommends:

Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage? by Duncan J. Watts.

Duncan Watts, a sociology professor at Columbia, describes his research thusly:

My research centers around the development of new models of large, complex networks that capture the general features of networked social systems, and a coherent set of metrics for characterizing them. The overall goal is to explore the role that network structure plays in determining or constraining system behavior, focussing on a few broad problem areas in social science such as information contagion, financial risk management, and organizational design. I am concerned with issues such as systemic robustness and stability with respect to cascading failures, efficient distributed information processing, and effective procedures for conducting global searches in networks using only local information.

Luckily for us, he takes that dry-sounding knowledge and applies it some of our most pressing issues, like How did Justin Timberlake become this generation's Michael Jackson? And how might the next generation's Justin Timberlake come about? This NY Times article is a mixture of Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Levitt, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and Paul A. David (whose article "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY" on path dependence in the adoption of the QWERTY keyboard is easily one of my favorite academic articles of all time and really should be required reading for anybody who has ever pondered how a society arrives at choices it makes), and signals the arrival of Watts on my radar screen. I look forward to checking out his books and reporting back on them in this space.

"Pancake" Travel Bag

Any photographer that's honest with themselves will admit to another addiction besides lenses. In my case, I've struggled with CBO (camera bag obsession) for many years, and as my wife likes to remind me, it seems I have more bags in my closet than she does.

In response to the frequent posts on various forums by folks asking what is the ideal "travel" bag, let me give you some advise. There is none. Selecting a camera bag involves so many variables that it's unlikely you'll be able to find and live with one bag for long. Manufacturers know this and that's why we're overwhelmed with what seems like an never-ending selection of slightly different bags to test our will-power.

I've been doing alot of travel with my K10D, and have been struggling with how to travel light...only carrying my three "pancake" lenses (21mm, 40mm, 70mm) and my must-have 50mm f/1.4. Having done alot of travel in the past with Leica rangefinders and three Summicron lenses, I've been using my Billingham "Hadley" case.

I just arrived in Tokyo, and as usual, could not sleep through the first night. So rather than do my Bill Murray impression of "Lost in Translation", I brewed some coffee and took a few photos of the bag for anyone that's interested in seeing the Billingham. It's a beautifully crafted bag using high-quality canvas, leather trim and a nicely designed padded insert. The bag measures approximately 14.5"W by 5" D (when full) and 10" H. As I like to switch lenses frequently, I configured the insert so I can store the K10D body in one pocket and all the lenses in the larger side of the insert. In addition to the body and lenses, I can easily pack the K10D battery charger and cord, a large Giotto blower, a small pouch with all my SD cards, and a 360 flash just in case I need some extra light.

I realize this bag might be a bit too large for those of you that want to go very minimal with just enough space for a body and one lens. That's ok. I've been happy with this set-up for my recent travels. And remember, only you can determine what's the right bag for your needs. Enjoy the obsession!

(04.15.07) Recommends:

The Jock Exchange, by Michael Lewis.

Portfolio is a new business magazine that Conde Nast is launching this month. Michael Lewis is one of our most interesting and thoughtful writers. His first contribution to the mag is a look into creating a stock exchange on which professional athletes are bought and sold. For regular readers of Lewis, there isn't much new ground covered here. But Michael Lewis could write a grocery list, and I'd still recommend reading it.

April 15, 2007 - The Only Constant

I've been struggling for a while to put into words what I'm feeling, as a cancer patient in remission, but it's like nailing the proverbial jello to the wall. I'm no longer sick, but I can't declare with complete confidence that I'm well, either. Not while I'm still going for scans every three months.

What is remission, anyway? It comes from the Latin remissio. Its primary meaning is forgiveness: the remission of sins. It can also mean forgiving or canceling a debt – or, a prison sentence. (In the hackneyed words of the film noir ex-con, does that mean we patients-in-remission have "paid our debt to society" – or, more accurately, to the stern gods of modern medicine?)

Running my finger down the list of alternative definitions of "remission" in my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, I come to these ominous words:

"A reduction in force or intensity; a decrease or abatement of a condition or quality, esp. of heat or cold. MEDICINE. A lessening in the degree or intensity of an illness; the temporary disappearance of symptoms."

Oops. I wish I hadn't read that. I don't like seeing that word, "temporary" – not when it's closely followed by "disappearance of symptoms."

Of course, some cancer remissions go on for years and years, until finally – like some hide-and-seek kid emerging, blinking, into the light, hours after the seeker has given up and gone home – there comes the cautious assessment that there's nothing temporary about this remission at all.

Now that I've got my hair back, and have returned to my normal activities, I've been hearing more and more people ask, "You're cured, right?" (Some folks are very eager, indeed, to hear the "cure" word.)

I usually correct them, saying something like, "No, it's still too early to use that word. I'm in remission. I go for scans every three months. So far, so good." (I wonder, will I ever be able to use that word?)

I've been reading Jonathan Alter's political columns in Newsweek for years. I didn't know, until I saw one of his more recent contributions to the magazine, that he's a non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivor (in his case, it's the mantle-cell variety). Like me, he's in remission. His words capture the odd, in-between state I feel like I'm in these days:

"The only constant in cancer is inconstancy; the only certainty is a future of uncertainty, a truism for all of modern life but one made vivid by life-threatening illness. According to the latest projections, a third of all Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes, most likely when they're old. Many will never achieve remission at all, while the lucky ones like me get to live with a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. A friend compares his semiannual scans to visiting a parole officer. When the scans are clean, it's worth another six months of freedom, though with no guarantee of extra time for good behavior."

"Lucky," you say – with the sword of Damocles dangling over your head? You call that luck?

In truth, it is. For most blood-cancer patients, the doctors simply don't possess a rubber stamp with the word "cured" on it. My medical file is fated to grow thicker and thicker. Let's just hope it bulges with reports of clean scan results, rather than tracking sheets for new chemotherapy or radiation protocols.

You're right, Jonathan. For people like you and me, the only constant is inconstancy.

(04.14.07) Recommends:

N = {fb(cm)*fb(tc)} + fb(Ts)+fc*ta.

Okay, this is too perfect to be real, but too ridiculous to be fiction. The NY Times has recently revealed the Perfect Bacon Sandwich. If somebody goes out tomorrow and discovers WMD or the whereabouts of Bin Laden, one might argue that such discovery could not possibly be as relevant or important as what the Times is bestowing upon us. This is the Rosetta Stone of modern nutrition. Open your umbrellas; a weary nation weeps in joy:

April 13, 2007 - The Stem-Cell Mess

Every once in a while, I have the uncanny experience of reading about myself in the news – not some story in our local weekly, but the national news. Today’s article doesn’t mention me by name, but I’m in there, nonetheless.

The article – an editorial in the New York Times – is about stem cells. I’ve long followed the stem-cell debate with great interest – long before I was diagnosed with cancer. It’s a fascinating case, from the standpoint of Christian ethics: rock-ribbed, inflexible moral absolutism vs. cutting-edge medical science that could save lives.

Which is the lesser of two evils? Destroying a frozen embryo that could – if implanted in a woman’s uterus – develop into a viable human being? Or, holding off on medical research that could result in life-saving treatments?

President Bush believes the first option is the worse evil. The Times editorial doesn’t mince words in saying how wrong the newspaper’s editors think he is:

“...one man, President Bush, and a minority of his party, the religious and social conservatives, are once again trying to impose their moral code on the rest of the nation and stand in the way of scientific progress.... The restrictions on federal financing have led to absurdly complicated and costly maneuvers. Scientists are forced to buy extra equipment and laboratory space with private money to perform off-limits research while using equipment and supplies bought with federal money on the permitted stem cell research. In a shocking example cited during Senate debate, a California researcher who had been cultivating stem cells in a makeshift privately financed lab suffered a power failure but was unable to transfer her lines into industrial-strength freezers in another lab because they were federally financed. Two years of work melted away because of this inanity.”

I said, just now, that I’m mentioned in this editorial – but only by implication. As a blood-cancer patient, I stand to benefit from stem-cell research, big-time. Every once in a while, that realization hits me like the proverbial ton of bricks. The anonymous patients who can benefit from stem-cell research are people very much like me: in fact, I am one of them.

Earlier today, I sat in the nurses' room at Dr. Lerner’s office, waiting for my monthly port flush. There were two elderly men sitting on either side of me, both there to get shots: one in his arm, the other in his stomach. What were the medicines they were receiving, through those hypodermic injections? Were they developed through cultures taken from stem cells? If so, were the cells harvested before the Federal research ban? Or did they come from one of the approved “lines,” that the Bush administration has determined can still be grandfathered in, under the law?

This isn’t some moral abstraction. There are lives that will be saved, if the restrictions on stem-cell research are dropped. Real, human lives. Maybe the lives of some of the people sitting beside me in the doctors office. Maybe even my life.

No, for me this is no abstraction. It’s personal.

(04.13.07) Recommends:

Concert Photography, Vol. 8.
The Photo Atlas
Popscene, San Francisco, Calif.
04.12.07

I previewed the show the other day. Now I'm back with evidence from the crime scene. This band isn't for everybody, but I gotta say, they are a very tight unit live. I judge a band by whether they can blow the roof off of a small bar on a random weeknight. And these guys whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Plus, what I really loved, was that in this day of indie rock lead singers wearing massacre or girl jeans or too cute outfits, this lead singer appeared to be proudly wearing an indie-rock double chin. I, for one, can totally get behind that fashion statement. Have a look:














As always, click to enlarge.

April 12, 2007 - Running for President, with NHL?

My, but this has been a time for celebrity cancer revelations! Today's newspapers tell of Fred Thompson, former Senator from Tennessee and a star on the highly-rated Law and Order television series, announcing that he has NHL, and is now in remission.

Thompson is also saying he's considering a run for the presidency. A conservative Republican, with national exposure from his TV role as the gruff, politically-savvy district attorney on the popular crime show, he figures he may be just the person to fill the present void in the Republican presidential stable.

What's interesting to me, of course – and, surely, to anyone else with cancer – is that Thompson doesn't seem to think his illness is any impediment to his political ambitions. He's had the disease for over two years. Diagnosed after discovering a swollen lymph node in his neck, he was treated with Rituxan and some localized radiation only – no chemo.

The Washington Post reports that he's got "marginal zone B-cell lymphoma, a relatively rare form that accounts for about 10 percent of all lymphomas diagnosed in the United States." His physician, Dr. Bruce Cheson, of Georgetown University Hospital, says, "His prognosis is excellent. We have patients out for years, leading totally normal lives, doing whatever they want, including running for president." According to Elizabeth M. Adler's Living With Lymphoma – the book I've found most useful in learning about my own situation – marginal zone lymphomas are one of the indolent types of lymphoma: slow-growing and generally responsive to treatment, but not typically characterized as curable.

So, what's Thompson's prognosis? The Post article continues:

"The longest study evaluating the usefulness of rituximab as sole initial therapy for lymphomas similar to Thompson's looked at the experience of 46 French patients. Seven years after treatment, four had died. Fifteen percent of the group were still in remission, with no evidence of disease, which is Thompson's current state. The average time until disease recurred was two years."

As cancer odds go, that does sound pretty good. Still, as a political story, this news is unprecedented. We've just seen a flurry of controversy in the media, over whether or not John Edwards should drop out of the presidential race because his wife is stricken. Now, we see a candidate himself announcing he's got cancer.

I'm glad to see that Fred has been so forthcoming about his disease. Wherever his presidential aspirations may take him, he joins Elizabeth Edwards, Rudy Giuliani and others as a role model of how to keep on living with cancer.

(04.12.07) Recommends:

Kid 606's contribution to the Xiu Xiu cover/remix compilation "Remixed and Covered" (Kill Rock Stars, 2007).

I tend to receive a disproportionate amount of messages about East Bay music, and the other day I was pointed to Kid 606. I'll let Wikipedia do the introduction. Anyway, Kid 606 contributes a track to "Remixed and Covered," an album full of bands, well, remixing and covering the songs of Xiu Xiu. Kid 606 tackles "Fabulous Muscles" and the result is pretty mesmerizing.

Kid 606 - Fabulous Muscles - mp3.

(04.11.07) Recommends:

Meeting up at Popscene.

You've been to Popscene[1], right? Tomorrow night The Photo Atlas, the indie-pop-punksters from Denver, grace the stage at 330 Ritch Street. I'll be there slurping up Red Bulls, desperately trying to stay up past my bedtime. I'm not quite sold on the Photo Atlas just yet. I've heard their debut "No, Not Me, Never," and I gotta say, parts of it really rock. But other parts of it seem too emo or pop-punk for my tastes. But I'm going to give them a try live, because sometimes I can "understand" a band better once I see them live. Does that make sense? I'm not sure. So let me try an example. British Sea Power. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with "The Decline of British Sea Power" the first time I heard it. But then I went and saw them play[2], and everything made sense. I doubt a month now passes without me listening to BSP. I don't think we have Arcade Fire's "Funeral" or their live show, without "The Decline of BSP" and BSP's live show.

And, for that, I'll give the Photo Atlas a chance. Plus, plus, plus: rumor has it that everyone's favorite blogger-turned-music mogul will be flexing her iPod goodness as guest DJ.

So, show up. I might even buy you a drink.



[1] "San Francisco's premier indie nightclub." Okay, I don't know exactly what that means. Popscene's more of an idea, isn't it? (Almost) Every Thursday, the people behind Popscene present an up-and-coming indie bands and after the show, samesaid Popscene peeps then take the party to the DJ decks and spin jams for the kids. It all goes down at 330 Ritch Street, a really cool space. But 330 Ritch is a space independent of Popscene, right? And anyway, sometimes Popscene is at a different venue. This is why it confuses me that Popscene calls itself a "nightclub." Why not call it San Francisco's premier indie-music party? But anyway, semantics aside, it's a fun way to pass a Thursday.

[2] A band called Kaito opened. What the hell happened to that band? They were awesome.

April 11, 2007 - Life Is Short(er)

There's a rather extraordinary interview with Elizabeth Edwards in the April 9th issue of Newsweek. She talks frankly about what it means for her to know that, because of her cancer recurrence, her life will be significantly shorter:

"When I was first diagnosed, I was going to beat this. I was going to be the champion of cancer. And I don't have that feeling now. The cancer will eventually kill me. It's going to win this fight. I come from a family of women who live into their 90s, so it's taken something real from me. There was a time during the day when we were getting test results when I felt more despair than I ever felt in any of the time I had the breast cancer. I have a lot that I intend to do in this life. We're here at the house. I'm going to build paths through these woods so we can take long walks that I intended to take when I was 80. And I have a 6-year-old son. I was going to hold his children someday. Now I'm thinking I have only a slim chance of seeing him graduate high school. How do I accomplish, in what time I've got left, all that I'm meant to do?"

When I was first diagnosed, I went through a lot of that sort of thinking. No sooner did I hear the word, "cancer," than my mind went racing off to the most dire possibilities. I wondered if I'd live out the year. I wondered if I'd ever get to meet the people my kids will marry. I even wondered if it made sense to keep going to the dentist.

Now that I'm in remission, I spend less time in such fatalistic thinking. In my case, it was just borrowing trouble; in Elizabeth's case, with her revised prognosis, it's simply realistic. When people ask how I'm doing, I typically say, "I'm in remission, and we have every reason to expect it will last for a very long time."

But will it? Will the cancer remain at bay, allowing me to live out a normal lifespan? Will I make it to the biblical "threescore years and ten?"...

"The days of our life are seventy years,
or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;
even then their span is only toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away."
– Psalm 90:10

It's impossible to say. I'm only 20 years away from that landmark age of 70. Nowadays, with all the centenarians running around (well, maybe not running), even 70 seems way too soon to roll up the awnings. It was different back in biblical times, when life expectancies were shorter. Seventy seemed like a ripe old age, and 80 was serious geezerhood.

Not so, anymore. My mother's going to turn 80 this summer. She just returned home to her retirement place in North Carolina, after an Easter visit with us. She drove her own car all the way up here and back. My grandfather (her father) died a few months shy of 101. He played his last game of tennis on his 80th birthday. When he fell out of a dogwood tree at age 93, breaking his ankle (having climbed a ladder to prune some branches), we kidded him, saying, "Grandpa, you've got to stop climbing trees – it's not like you're 80 anymore!" That sort of longevity was unimaginable, in biblical times.

Do I have the MacKenzie longevity gene? Whether I do or whether I don't is perhaps moot, now that cancer has come into my life. The knowledge of its life-shortening potential, lurking in the shadows of my consciousness, is part of that "toil and trouble" of which the psalmist speaks.

In the film, The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West turns over a large hourglass, and tells Dorothy that when the sands run out, it's curtains for her. I can remember, watching that movie as a young child, feeling terrified by that scene. Some kids were scared of the flying monkeys, but to me there was something far worse. It was that hourglass: the gruesome inevitability of it.

I suppose the filmmakers meant that, once the sands ran out, the witch would return and do Dorothy in. Yet, with the sort of concrete thinking typical of young children, I thought the witch had cast an evil spell over the hourglass itself: as the last grain of sand ran out, Dorothy, too, would slump over, lifeless.

Elizabeth Edwards finds herself contemplating a similar hourglass, these days. I haven't seen that vision yet, myself (despite my early spell of panicky fatalism). I have tremendous admiration for her courageous realism. The sands of her days are slipping away, but her life isn't falling apart, either. She's determined to live as well as she can, for as long as she can.

It's all any of us can do.

(04.10.07) Recommends:

Laura Veirs, Saltbreakers (Nonesuch, 2007).

Tuesdays have been particularly good to music fans in 2007. Today I've been fawning over the newest release from Laura Veirs. She is based out of Portland, OR and this album of restrained indie-pop music will immediately resonate with fans of other Northwestern bands (The Decemberists, Death Cab, The Shins, M. Ward, and on and on and on...). Here's the video for "Cast a Hook in Me." I think this is my favorite track off of the new album.



Her homepage.
Her myspace.

(04.09.06) Recommends:

Stumbling upon Joshua Bell busking in a Washington, DC subway station.

Here's a really cool article from the Washington Post.

April 8, 2007 - Touching Base, On Easter

If last year was my cancer year, then this is my survivor year. What I've been doing, particularly when it comes to milestone celebrations in the liturgical year, has been touching base.

A cardinal rule of baseball is that a runner has got to touch all the bases. If you miss one, you've got to go back and rectify your error. I feel like there were a lot of bases I missed last year, so as I come upon them again, I've got to make sure I touch them.

If the liturgical year is a baseball diamond, then Easter is surely one of the bases. While I haven't referred to my medical situation in most of my sermons, as I come up to a base like Christmas or Easter, I feel I've got to make some reference to it. Partly this is because I know the "C & E" crowd is different from the folks I see on a typical Sunday. Many of these are people I know, though not well. Many of them are aware of my recent medical history, but haven't been here to see that I'm really doing OK. I said something about being a cancer survivor in my Christmas Eve sermon, so now as I come up to the Easter base, I feel like I've got to touch it, as well. This is particularly true of Easter, because that was the one major holiday I missed completely, because of my illness.

Here's some of what I said in my Easter message:

"As many of you know, on Easter last year, I was sitting in the Manse, too sick to come across the street. I could see many of you, though, through the curtains, coming and going in your Easter finery. On the Wednesday before last Easter, I spent eight hours sitting in a lounge chair in my oncologist's office, as chemotherapy drugs dripped into the port I still have implanted in my upper chest. By the time Easter Sunday rolled around, I felt so weak, I probably couldn't have sat upright in a church pew for an hour, let alone stood here at the pulpit and delivered a sermon. You all muddled through without me – you did just fine, as a matter of fact – and now, a year later, I stand here before you: a witness to the resurrection.

When I say that, I don't mean to claim I had any mystical visions of Jesus. Nor do I mean to say that God healed me in some spectacular, supernatural way. God used all the tools of modern medicine to put my cancer into remission.

What I do mean to say is that I've learned some things, in the past year or so, about resurrection faith. I can't stand up here today and present incontrovertible historical evidence that, round about the year 30 A.D., a dead rabbi by the name of Jesus got up and walked out of his tomb. I believe that he did, but I can't prove it to you. But I can tell you something I have learned: that the story of his rising is true for me, now more than ever."

We preachers are in a dilemma, when it comes to Easter. How do we convey the truth of something that happened centuries ago, for which we have no credible evidence, only secondhand testimony? Recently, I read an article by Diana Butler Bass, who was addressing this very question. Coming out of a liberal Protestant background, whose preachers tended to treat biblical miracles figuratively, she recalled being curious about what one particular preacher, Episcopal Bishop Daniel Corrigan, would have to say about the resurrection. Surprisingly – after what she'd heard him say about other miraculous events – he affirmed its truth, unequivocally. When someone asked him if he believed in the resurrection, the bishop replied, "Yes. I believe in the resurrection. I've seen it too many times not to."

I guess that's where I am, too. I've seen resurrection in other people's lives. I've felt its power in my own. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not so much a historical reference, a single point in time, as an ongoing process. We can spend all our time peering into an empty tomb, if we want – discussing the details of what may or may not have happened there – but there's no real future in that. "He is not here, but has risen," say the angels to the women, in Luke's Easter account. Sooner or later, we've all got to decide whether we wouldn't do better to look for the risen Lord not among the tombs, but rather in human lives. There is where we find him. There, he continues to be active.

That's what I'm about these days, anyway, as I round another base.

(04.08.07) Recommends:

Fountains of Wayne, the track "Fire in the Canyon" from "Traffic and Weather" (Atlantic, 2007).

I don't know too much about Fountains of Wayne other than every time they put out a new record there are one or two tracks of nearly perfect alt-country-pop-rock. "Fire in the Canyon" is the newest piece of awesomeness that will soon be lodged in your brain. Enjoy.

Fountains of Wayne - Fire in the Canyon - mp3.

New Tomato Season

Talking about tomatoes might seem off topic for a photo blog, but in my case, my passion for tomatoes and photography over the years has been intertwined. With so many "heirloom" tomatoes available for gardeners to choose from, it's really difficult to distinguish one plant from another during the growing season. Every variety of tomato has a slightly different leaf structure, and if you happen to lose the tag or not mark the tomato stake with the name of each variety, you end up having to wait until the plant bears fruit to remember what varieties you had grown,

I've made a habit out of taking photos of my plants during their growth stages throughout the season and then matching these plant photos up with photos of the fruit. I had one major heirlooom tomato grower here in Southern California tell me that there really wasn't any extensive source that shows backyard gardeners detailed photos of both the plant and fruit. He even offered that I could come to his gardens and photograph all the varieties of his plants to build this collection of photographs. After thinking this would be a fun project, I realized it would take a tremendous amount of time, and therefore I much prefer just documenting the various tomato plants we grow each season and enjoy the fruit of my labor.

As end of March or early April in California is typically when we can put plants in the ground, I've recently started my 2007 crop of tomatoes. As I wanted to take some early photos of the plants, I used the DA* 50-135mm lens with my K10D to photograph both the plant structure from the side and a top down view of the leaves.

The four photos below were all shot at ISO 200 in RAW at 100mm; f/8.0 at 1/15 to 1/20th second. As it was a really overcast, cloudy day the only processing I did when I converted from RAW to JPEG was to set my white balance to "cloudy".

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Soldacki.
Heirloom tomato from Poland. Dark pink fruit with mild, super sweet flavor.


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Black Tula.
Heirloom tomato from Russia. The fruit is blackish-red with green shoulders. Chocolate flesh is rich and sweet.


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Since far too many folks only know of the hybridized, perfectly round red and tastless tomatoes sold in supermarkets, here are a few photos taken several seasons ago that give you an idea of the vastly different look of "heirloom" tomato varieties. Photos not taken with Pentax gear, but I wanted to include them for illustrative purposes.