Here’s a photo from my friend John’s 60th birthday celebration back in March:
The folks in the photo (L to R: Art, Sheila, Patty, BD Boy John, Suzanne, Phil, and yours truly) all went to Xavier waaay back in the 80s. (Hence the “X” poses.) It’s where we met – and in the case of Patty & John and Suzanne & Phil, it’s where they fell in love. (Art and Sheila both went to X at the same time, but didn’t connect until after we graduated.)
Hard to believe we’ve been friends for more than 40 years now. And in those 40 years, I think I’ve called John by his real name only a handful of times. An upperclassman dubbed him “Loew Junior” because he looked like another Muskie named Loew (or Lowe… not sure… it’s been a minute) and that quickly morphed into “LJ” and that nickname stuck, as college nicknames tend to do. Heck, at this point, when someone calls him “John” it throws me for a loop.
Here’s a photo from a very different celebration for LJ yesterday:
He just finished 30 rounds of radiation for brain cancer. Patty invited his friends — including his XU buddies who served as his “Uber drivers” to get him to several of the appointments (Art, Phil, Tom, Brian and me) — to be there when he rang the bell to mark the completion of treatment.
Here’s what we know:
LJ had a tumor in his left frontal lobe. He was diagnosed in May when it started impacting his speech. Doctors removed the tumor.
The form of cancer he has is aggressive.
They’ll do another MRI in a month, and map out next steps based on results.
Cancer sucks!
Here’s what we don’t know:
What the future holds.
Here’s what else we know:
LJ is in great shape.
He has a positive attitude.
He has a family that loves him… and grandkids who adore him.
His faith is strong.
His support network is deep and wide — relatives, neighborhood friends, church friends, even a bunch of knuckleheads from college.
[Phil, LJ, Brian, Dubbatrubba, and Art – Uber driver Tom wasn’t able to attend, but his wife Jodi was there.]
LJ’s world was turned upside-down between his birthday party in March and his diagnosis in May. The blink of an eye for someone who is 60. The best of times; the worst of times.
If anyone can beat the odds — and people DO beat the odds — it’s LJ.
We hope. We pray. We believe in miracles. And we cherish the time we get to spend with him.
We don’t know what the future holds. That’s not just true for LJ. It’s true for all of us.
Steven Pressfield is a great writer. And a fantastic motivator of other writers. That may seem strange to say about someone who has written a book called Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t. (Trust me, it’s great!)
His advice is geared toward writers/artists/creators, but this nugget from a recent blog post of his applies to people from all walks of life:
Unlearning. Losing the baggage. Shedding the expectations and labels that others put on us. It sounds so simple… but it’s super-tough, and it can take us years to even come close.
In the end, it’s YOUR voice. No one else’s. Dropping your baggage can free you up to find it.
When I was growing up in Arkansas (back in the Mesozoic era), we’d see TV commercials for a grocery chain called The Mad Butcher. Every commercial ended with a caricature of “the Mad Butcher” accompanied by some maniacal laughter, straight out of the Vincent Price bag of tricks:
My dad could imitate that laugh perfectly – it cracked us up as kids.
We’re not laughing anymore.
This was a week ago. In Fordyce, Arkansas, a town of 3,000.
Normally the folks roaming the aisles of a small-town grocery store are called “shoppers.” In the blink of an eye, they became “targets of opportunity” and “victims.”
The perpetrator didn’t really have a criminal record. It’s doubtful tighter gun restrictions would’ve prevented this tragedy. Meanwhile, closer to home last weekend:
This one could’ve been prevented.
A bottle of water. Kids arguing. It should’ve been nothing more than a petty squabble. But add a gun to the equation and it ends with a teenager dead. Yet the story gets even sadder:
[Full story from the Cincinnati Enquirer is here.]
Three generations of gun violence. We can do more to stop the cycle. We should do more to stop the cycle. We must do more to stop the cycle.
Our grandkids aren’t old enough to know better. What’s our excuse?
The “Heat Dome” has descended upon the Midwest. Welcome to the Terror Dome.
Meanwhile, Southern Florida got flooded last week.
We have only ourselves to blame, really. By ignoring the warnings from scientists. By turning a blind eye to alternative energy sources instead of incentivizing them at scale.
“Given that we’ve seen an unprecedented jump in global warmth over the last 11 months, it is not surprising to see worsening climate extremes so early in the year,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck. “If this record pace of warming continues, 2024 will likely be a record year of climate disasters and human suffering.”
And the ones who suffer the most are the poor and elderly.
Help is on the way. It just needs to get here sooner. Here’s an excerpt from the 6/1 post on Bill McKibben’s excellent — and aptly named — Substack called “The Crucial Years”:
But here’s the thing: At the exact same moment—the same string of months—that the planet is beginning to unravel, human beings are finally accelerating the only real response we have: the rapid rollout of sun, wind, and batteries. The rate at which we’re adding renewable energy capacity jumped fifty percent last year. A new report this week found that wind and sun aren’t just growing faster than fossil fuels—they’re growing faster than any electricity source in history.
The rise of wind and solar has been stemming the growth of fossil fuel power, which would have been 22% higher in 2023 without them, Ember says. This would have added around 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO2) to annual global emissions.
Nevertheless, the growth of clean electricity sources needs to accelerate to meet the global goal of tripling renewables by 2030, Ember says.
Meeting this goal would almost halve power sector emissions by the end of the decade, and put the world on a pathway aligned with the 1.5C climate target set in the Paris Agreement.
Even in India, the share of electricity generated by coal dropped below 50 percent for the first time since 1966. There’s every sign that, globally, 2023 saw the peak in global emissions; all those solar panels are not just accounting for growth in energy demand any more, but beginning to cut into the actual consumption of fossil fuels. Now the job is to make the decline so steep that we build enough momentum to begin catching up with the physics of global warming.
It is a terrible story, almost unbearably tragic. But its ending hasn’t been written yet.
The more we harness the sun, the fewer unbearable heat waves we’ll have to endure. The more we lasso the wind, the fewer destructive hurricanes we’ll have to witness.
Easy to say, easy to remember… but really tough to put into practice. The vast majority of social media can make us feel inferior – it engenders a lot more envy than empathy. And most advertising is designed to make us want “more” when what we already have is more than enough.
Maybe less content (noun) will make us more content (adjective).
Happiness – it’s not a pursuit, it’s a state of mind.
[Shout-out as always to Grateful Living for the great gratitude reminders via their daily email.]
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
Thomas Kuhl on We’re alive, because nothing happened.: “That is why we should celebrate every day when our feet hit the floor. Another to enjoy and share with…” Jun 25, 04:33
Thomas Kuhl on We’re alive, because nothing happened.: “This simply explains why we should celebrate every day our feet hit the floor. Another day to enjoy and share…” Jun 25, 04:31
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