The Wisdom in Water

Several months ago - perhaps even a year - Linda and I watched the movie Surfwise. "SURFWISE follows the odyssey of 85-year-old legendary surfer Dr. Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, his wife Juliette, and their nine children—all of whom were home-schooled on the beaches of Southern California, Hawaii, Mexico and Israel; they surfed every day of their lives, and were forced to adhere to a strict diet and lifestyle by their passionate and demanding, health-conscious father."

Surfers and some fans of surfing know well the Paskowitz story, but beyond that cultural subset  few knew of Doc or his story.  But perhaps I should first begin with my surfing history - brief as it is.

Frequent Ring Writes readers know that it's only been in recent years that I've developed some coordinated control over my long limbs.  Not always gangly, but rarely nimble, I stuck to games that relied little on eye/hand coordination.  Year by year, sport by sport, I was weaned away from the more talented players.  Sports like soccer, basketball, baseball, and football (we had no program in our town) were played in gym and I was amongst the last player picked..  Hockey  - skating and holding a stick to hit a puck - represented something wholly unimaginable.  Other than a bicycle, things with wheels were downright laughable; I nearly killed myself in attempts at skateboarding, roller skating or blading.  I looked like Gerald Ford coming down a jetway.  I tried skiing and remarkably never busted a bone though I took falls a plenty from Aspen to the Alps.

I soon learned that sports with repetitive movements were something that, with much practice, I could manage.  Bicycling, and running were two simple ones - one foot after the other.  I could even play a bit of golf (though never a great handicap) by grooving a swing that was serviceable.  In college I found crew and rowing to be the perfect complement to my skill set.  I sat on a seat, strapped my feet to a board, and simply inserted an oar into the water and pulled.  Over four years I honed my stroke, eventually making the 1st boat and winning a New England gold medal in our class.  And rowing gets us closer to water and closer to surfing.

It was through rowing that I became acquainted with Phi Mu Delta (PMD).  I joined the novice crew team and soon learned that several of the male rowers on the varsity team were in a fraternity.  I'd never thought that I'd want to be in a fraternity and didn't give it much thought at first.  I just wanted to be on the team.  I was an eager rower, if but a weak novice one.  I was so dedicated to the idea of making a go of it, that I convinced my novice coach to let me sleep at his rooming house over winter break so I could participate in the workouts.  (Deep down I think I also knew there was not a chance I'd perform them as well at home over a month long holiday break).   Living at the house, I grew to know the other roomers.  I soon found out I was living in an alumni crew house.  A couple of the boarders, though much older than I were still finishing their undergraduate degrees, others were taking grad courses.  There were former rowers, both from the men's and women's teams.  Though I was just a few months into my rowing career, I quickly absorbed much about UMass Crew in those few weeks.

One evening, two of the house dwellers, Jill and Michele - who rowed together on the women's team, invited me to drive up to L.L.Bean in Freeport, ME with two friend of theirs, Larry and Josh.  It was late, but Bean is open 24 hours and no one had classes or had to work the next day.  Jill had a behemoth of a station wagon and the five of us piled in and drove through the dead of a cold winter night to Freeport.  We drank beer and laughed most of the way and arrived at L.L. Bean at 2am.  We wandered the empty aisles, sat in display canoes, and even bought a few things.  Jill said she had a friend in Portland on whose floor we could crash.  We took many turns that Jill was guessing at which led us to a house she said she thought  was her friend's.  I am about 6'3; Josh and Larry are both taller and more solid.  The five of us tiptoed loudly into the living room.  Giant Josh laid claim to the couch and the rest of us huddled on chairs and on the floor.

In the morning, I heard people whispering, people I didn't know.  "Who is this?" the voiced inquired.  In a hungover haze, I became aware that these people were stepping lightly through and around us.  I felt sure we were in some stranger's house.  Finally, a person said, "I think that's Jill."  Relieved but still disheveled and embarrassed we demurely left and returned to Amherst.  Jill piloted the big station wagon to the other side of campus from where I lived and pulled behind a large boarding house on N. Pleasant Street that had Greek letters on the front.  The house was neither impressive or inviting.  It looked simply like a beat up boarding house.  From the car, I could see thick plastic covering the windows to keep the January cold out.  We said our goodbyes and Jill, Michele, and I returned to coach's house.  On the way back, I asked what the house was.  Michele and Jill both knowingly chuckled and answered, "It's the Mu."

I didn't know that much about The Mu, but soon learned that my coach was a brother at Phi Mu Delta and so was the lightweight coach.  I learned that nearly a couple of dozen current and former rowers that I knew were Phi Mu Delta's, some proudly and others less overtly.  I also learned there were plenty who were not.  That spring semester, I returned to my dorm, regular classes and continued to train with the crew team.  I was buried somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd novice boat, but still saw Josh and Larry among the rest of our teammates in the gym.  It was not long into the semester that I got a call in my dorm room from Josh.  He wanted to know if I was "interested in coming by the house sometime and meeting the guys."  I declined, politely saying that I wasn't really interested in fraternities.  But Josh is charming and persistent.  And standing several inches taller and weighing many muscular pounds more than me, he's an effective salesman.

He and Larry both, along with a few other PMD rowers made other entreaties.  Finally Josh told me just to come by for "an Exchange."  He explained that it was a small party, usually on Thursday nights in which a different sorority or two came over and we drank beer.  Josh said, "You like girls and beer, don't you? Come on."  Not wanting to go alone I convinced my closest novice rower friend, Russell, to come with me.  The details of my Phi Mu Delta experience are too numerous and at times too embarrassing to delve into here.  The summary is that I pledged that fraternity (as did Russell) and ended up living in the house for the remainder of my three years in college, rowing for the crew team all the while.   But what about surfing?  What about the ocean?  Yes, yes.  I will come to that.

Growing up in landlocked Mansfield, Connecticut, over an hour's drive to the beach, it was a special occasion when we went.  We'd drive to Ocean Beach Park in New London or Rocky Neck in Niantic, but soon we drifted eastward until Watch Hill, Misquamicut, and East Beach became the favorites.  It was out in Rhode Island where you were more likely to find bigger waves.  Though I'd proven myself able to tread water, I wasn't a natural swimmer.  It also so happens that my mother has always been quite protective.  The rule was that I wasn't to go out in water above my armpits. I did some body surfing, jumped around a bit, but when the waves got big, I was relegated to the shallows or the beach.  Sure, I sometimes went out over my head, but I had taken enough underwater tumbles in the rolling surf to know that I wasn't going to tempt the wrath of Poseidon.

While we day tripped to RI from time to time, it was summers that we, along with the masses, drove to Cape Cod for extended vacations.  When I was little we went to Craigville, and even into my early teens we often spent a week or so there.  We also had friends in Eastham and as a preteen (was I ever a tween?) that was the first time I can recall being cognitively aware of the Lower Cape.  We spent many days along bayside sandy beaches.  On clear days you could see the relic that was the Target Ship and sometimes all the way up to the Monument in Provincetown.  Our friends would take us sailing, fishing, and clam-digging.  We boated out to islands that disappeared when the tide came up.  On the ocean side, the water was colder and often there was more surf.  We'd go to beaches up and down the National Seashore - From Nauset in Orleans, up to Nauset Light in Eastham, Marconi in Wellfleet - and every Hollow beach along Cape Cod's forearm from Wellfleet to Truro to P'town.  Our beach visits were so precious that I can remember my sister and I huddled under a blanket on a rainy day as our mom pointed to a light patch of sky saying hopefully, "I think it's clearing!"

In my youth, I might have seen a surfer or two from those beaches.  I now know for certain they were there. But surfing to me then - standing on an unstable board floating on fast flowing waves that were, by definition, going to break - was beyond my mind's projection.  Like skateboarding and the then unknown to me snowboarding, I didn't need any "sport" to challenge my ability to stay upright.  Still, I learned to love the water and as I grew older and into a more confident swimmer, I swam out over my head, let big waves lift me up, and survived the times heavy water pinned me below the surface so long that I wasn't sure which way was up.  When I got scared, I took a break but always braved the waves again.  But I never surfed, knew little of it beyond goofy surf movies or Beach Boys songs.

What I didn't know as a young boy on the Lower Cape in the 1970s was that in late 1980s I'd be living in a fraternity with several guys who spent their summers and between semesters living, working, and playing there.  Beginning the first summer after college, I would make regular trips to the Cape to visit my friends.  Wellfleet was where they went and often that's where I could be found.  My friends worked at the Beachcomber, for the town, at the general store, and for the trash company.  I heard many outrageous stories of parties, girls, fights, thefts, garbage finds, and bonfires.  From what I saw on my weekend visits, I had no reason to suspect any of it as hyperbole.   After college I continued to make trips to the Lower Cape. Sometimes I'd go with family, other times with, or to see friends.  Though up to that point I'd never spent any more than a couple of weeks there, I began to feel comfortable in Wellfleet.  I began to recognize the same people - friends of my friends, people who'd spent the entire summer of their lives there.  And through my friends, I made new friends.  And yet throughout that time I still never surfed.

Flash forward to the mid 1990's.  I'm halfway through my two year graduate degree at UMass - Amherst.  I have the summer off and Steve successfully pitches the idea of me working in Wellfleet for the summer and living with him in what we call the "Suck Shacks" behind our friend Luke's family restaurant in S. Wellfleet.  The Suck Shacks consisted of 5 small cottages.  Some had two bedrooms, others were studios. Each shack was tiny and featured two-burner stinkolaters (sink, stove, refrigerator units).  Having never lived in Wellfleet for a full summer I jumped at the chance.  Our stinkolater was named The Diavlo 5000.

I got two jobs - as a waiter at a pricey Wellfleet restaurant and as a beach officer for the town.  As a waiter, I had to be at work by late afternoon and was done around 12am.  I reported to the beach at 830am.  My job as the assistant manager was to help assign sticker checkers to beach and pond parking lots, give breaks to the staff, and then spend the rest of the time driving around Wellfleet, issuing tickets to illegally parked or unstickered cars.  I was deputized and carried a badge.  And it was during this summer, 1995, that I finally learned about surfing.

Steve was - and still is - an avid surfer.  Though he grew up in Boston, he discovered surfing on the Cape and like so many was immediately hooked.  Our friend Luke (went to UMass, was a PMD, and whose parents owned the Suck Shacks) spent most of the summers of his youth (and still does) in Wellfleet.  Though Luke spent the school year in Foxboro on his skateboard, he spent the summers on the Cape on his surfboard.  By the time I rolled into Wellfleet in 1995, Steve and Luke had both been surfing for years and had already begun their ongoing efforts to surf all over the world.  (Luke is also an accomplished photographer and much of his work features surfing:  www.lukesimpson.com).

Courtesy of lukesimpson.com

Between Luke and Steve there were surfboards all over and in the Suck Shacks.  They were piled on roof racks, hanging in the rafters, leaning against walls - both in and outside.  From them (and other surfer friends of theirs who became friends of mine) I learned about the different boards, what the shapes and sizes were good for.  For years prior Steve had drilled quotes from Endless Summer and Big Wednesday into my head.  But now I was watching obscure surf videos, in Luke's Suck Shack, drunk at 2am.  The next morning, bleary eyed, Luke and/or Steve would wake at dawn to check the surf, the wind.  Sometimes I'd go with them and survey the waves.  "Blown out." "Choppy." Nice lines."  Rippin'".  I began to absorb the language.  Slowly I was being drawn in.  What was it about surfing that could consume my friends so?  Sometimes they'd try to explain it to me, but were rendered speechless only saying that it was too hard to put into words.

Other than playing on a board in small "long board" waves, I had yet to try it myself until that summer.  Steve piled a few boards on top of his ancient station wagon and we drove to the beach.  The waves were small but ridable.  I pulled on a borrowed and very tight-fitting 3/2 wetsuit and Steve handed me an insanely heavy longboard.  It could have kept King Kong afloat.  It was a good board for me to learn on.  The waves weren't so big that I couldn't paddle past them, but big enough for me to paddle into them (a condition I later required for any surfing excursion).  Eventually, I worked my way through the progression of going from my chest to my knees to my feet and then even popping from chest to feet (I bet it didn't look like I popped up, but I felt like I did). After many tries, I finally managed to catch a long ride into the beach. It was fun, and thrilling and I felt a sense of pride in the accomplishment.  Many life-long surfers begin this same way - one ride.  I am not one of those people.

Encouraged by my modest success, I continued to tag along with the surfers from time to time. I held no allusion that I was a natural or that I could begin to even approximate their skill, but I enjoyed it just the same.  I borrowed a board and a suit and managed a couple of other small surfing successes.  But when the waves got big, I got pummeled.  The water rose so quickly and crashed with such ferocity that I spent as much time drinking water as I did paddling through it.  My efforts to stand resulted in swift and impromptu dismounts.  I hung nothing.

Though I'd occasionally try my hand, a serious surfer I would not be.  Still having tried it, having caught a few waves, I did have an inkling of how addictive it could be.  I sensed the oneness with the water that riding a wave offered.  I saw the beach from the water, from well past the area where waves began to crest.  And having watched all those surf movies and having looked through all the surf magazines around the Suck Shack, I began to absorb some of what surfing meant to my friends.  And while I didn't achieve their surfing proficiency, I did come to imbibe the purity which it represents.

So back to this movie, Surfwise, which we watched a while back, but upon which I still regularly reflect.  The story is about this successful doctor who grows so unhappy in his professional life that he decides to chuck it all and live life to its fullest - in his small camper with his wife, his 9 kids, and their surfboards. I won't attempt to sum up the experience - leave that to the documentarians - but certainly Doc developed a philosophy to which he both fiercely subscribed and one which he also enforced in his family - not always to their liking.  Through all Paskowitz's experiences, he honed a life philosophy, summed it up in five elements:  A balance of Diet, Exercise, Rest, Recreation, and Attitudes of Mind.

The Paskowitz Family

Unlike Doc and instead of being surrounded by beaches and waves, I am, these days, mostly surrounded by lush green fields and dense woods.  And yet, like Paskowitz, I, too, endeavor to find balance between diet, exercise, rest, recreation, and attitudes of mind.  And like Paskowitz being near and in the water helps.  In the 15 years since that first Suck Shack summer I've managed to sneak in a Wellfleet weekend or two most summers.  And because I've made many friends there, I still see familiar faces.  Steve still lives there and so does Luke.  There are still boards atop their cars.

Last weekend I spent three days in Wellfleet with my wife and my son, staying with friends.  And this time I went to a beach that I'd driven past for decades, but never been to.  It's Mayo Beach - just down the road from the Wellfleet Pier.  It's a bayside cove and the waves don't get very big - perfect for my toddler son.  He splashed in the water while I stared at the dunes.  Toddlers can be bears and devils.  "No" is Max's favorite word.  Life - with or without a toddler - can be busy, stressful, and frustrating.  Finding time for a balance between "diet, exercise, rest, recreation, and attitudes of mind. isn't a simple task.  Wellfleet helps, wherever your "Wellfleet" happens to be.

One day we were driving down a windy dirt and scrub pine road.  The side view mirror was clipping branches as we followed Jack and Inga's car down the a narrow and wooded fire road.  Further and further we drove.  Surely we were on private property, surely we were lost.  On a piece of land barely a few miles wide surely we would run out of road.  And we did.  Late, late in the afternoon, we arrived at a hidden dune cul-de-sac.  We couldn't see the beach from where we parked.  We couldn't even hear the waves beyond the dune and above the sound of the strong breeze.  We followed a steep path through the grassy dunes, passing a few people as they were leaving.  When after a few minutes, we finally crested the last hill, an empty expanse of beach revealed itself to us.  Here, in Wellfleet, in the middle of a hot and sunny August weekend was an empty beach, no one as far as we could see in either direction.  It was ours.  It was equal parts diet, exercise, rest, recreation and attitudes of mind.  I didn't surf, but I was riding the wave.

Surfwise Trailer

My Bad Back

I had a music teacher in middle school - a kindly woman named Mrs. Taylor - who always told me to sit up straight.  "Stop slouching, David!"  She said that if I didn't, I would have a sore back when I got older.  If my back was in good shape today, I might have forgotten Mrs. Taylor long ago, especially given my lack of musical talent.

The first time I can ever really recall being conscious of my back as a body part was when I hurt it in a fall at the age of 14.   This was no ordinary tumble.  I can't recall why we decided to do it, but like much that a teenager does the reason was two-fold:  we had nothing better to do (motive) and we had the latitude to do it (opportunity).

I was a sophomore in high school and paling around with two older kids, a junior and senior couple, and the junior's freshman sister.  One night when I told my mom we were going to see Body Double at the now defunct College Theater, we instead decided to climb onto the roof of our high school, Edwin O. Smith School.  The night was cloudy and dark; there was little to illuminate our trespass.  If memory serves, it was Preston who knew the way.  We went around the side of the building where an emergency exit formed a good U shaped space between the main building and the math wing.  By using the corner of the building and the window mullions we were able to scale the 14 feet to the vast black tarred roof.  There was nothing to do up there, no mischief in which to engage, but the illicit nature of the act alone was exhilarating.  The four of us ventured out in separate directions to explore, each of us given to our own migratory predilections.

I walked atop the inky expanse and looked out from my lofty vantage at the front of the school, the movie theater across the street, and the UConn campus in the distance.  Temporarily entranced by the blackness of the roof and sky and the stillness of the night, I failed to perceive that the roof upon which I strode was nearing its end.  I walked on; my left foot landed firmly on the roof, but my right foot failed to find any surface whatsoever.  I literally walked right off the roof.  It happened so fast - and so long ago - that I can't say exactly what I felt when my consciousness absorbed the fact that I was falling off the roof of my school.  I know this:  as my right foot strode off the roof, my body twisted as I fell.  I dropped the dozen or so feet quickly like a stone and landed squarely on my back upon the firm autumn grass - my head mere inches from the asphalt foundation that ran along the base perimeter of the building.  I couldn't breathe, but I didn't know why.  Was I dying?  I must have made some sound of distress as I fell because it wasn't long before Preston made his way down the same way we'd climbed up, ran alongside the opposite side of the math wing and up the other side to where I lay supine and motionless.

Preston and I ascertained that I'd simply knocked the wind out of me (all of it!), but other than a sore foot, I seemed okay - no blood and no broken bones as far as we could tell.  Ashley and Nanny came upon us soon after.  Preston and I were so grateful and astounded that I seemed to be relatively uninjured that by the time the girls arrived, he and I were nearly laughing with relief.  The girls took this as a sign that we'd staged the whole event and Nanny pushed me to the ground in anger for having scared her so.  We soon convinced her that, no, it was as it appeared, I simply walked off the roof.

My back was sore for several weeks, but after that, the pain subsided.  My mother was none the wiser and I had a good story to share.  I'm not Irish, but I sure was lucky.  I thought that would be the last I heard of my back; I didn't give much thought to it for the next three years.  By then I was a freshman oarsman on the UMass Crew Club's Novice Team.  I was a burgeoning 18 year-old athlete, but not having played competitive sports before, my body had as yet little preparation for the stress I'd be applying to my slight frame and weak spine.  Core strength was not yet in vogue; sit-ups - poorly performed sit-ups - and back extensions were the entire scope of my abdominal and spinal training.  The toll of an infirm upper body trying to keep pace with my comparatively stronger legs eventually caught up to my lower back.  That winter I felt an especially acute ache and strain that wasn't dissipating.  I eventually sought treatment at UMass Health Services and was referred to physical therapy where I received ultrasound treatment, electric stimulation therapy, and massage (treatments I'd receive scores of times in the years ahead).  When my back felt somewhat better the treatments ended. I was given stretches and strengthening exercises to do and was prescribed a specific position in which to sleep (basically fetal on my side with a pillow between my knees).

As my crew career proceeded I had occasional bouts of pain in my lower back - some more severe than others.  There were several times I was forced to sit out practice for days or weeks - especially over the winters when our workouts focused more on weight training.  But season by season, I prevailed.  I learned to cope with a base level of pain - it became normal for me.  It just was.  After college - especially during the numerous spans of time when I was less active, my back would flair up and occasionally leave me laid up.  Sitting in almost any chair for more than twenty minutes proved a challenge.  I took Tylenol and ibuprofen, lots and lots of ibuprofen; I learned more exercises and stretches.  Inevitably though when my back felt better I'd forego my 'supermans' and leg lifts.  And just as inevitably I'd re-injure my back.   Over the years, I've seen chiropractors, massage therapists, and acupuncturists.  I've done yoga, pilates, and swum countless laps in the pool.  Like a comet with an unpredictable, but certain orbit, severe back pain comes and goes.  All the while though there is a residual pain that's nearly constant.

In late October, early November of 2000 I went on a long journey.  I was living in Amsterdam and flew to Malta for a week long meeting - which was also a week full of late nights and little sleep.  From there I flew- coach - from Malta to London and from London to San Francisco for the wedding of a high school friend.  After the weeks of late nights, little sleep, and long, uncomfortable travel, I sought refuge at my father's duplex unit in Marin County.  I arrived just a day or two before the historic 2000 Presidential Election between Gore and Dubya.  I stayed awake as late as I could that night, drifting to sleep to Tim Russert's famous, "Florida, Florida, Florida" refrain.  When I awoke the next day, still unsure as to who our President-elect was, I tried to rise from my makeshift couch cushion bed.  Immediately I froze in the sharpest, most debilitating back pain I'd ever experienced.  The pain was paralyzing.  I couldn't shift into any position without searing agony.  I spent the rest of my paternal visit supine.  I mustered all my strength and courage, to say nothing of the hundreds of milligrams of ibuprofen coursing through my body, to board a flight home.  The pain acted like a clarion call: Take care of your back!  And I did.  For a time.

The thing about a tricky back is that when it's fine it has a way of lulling you into complacency.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  I knew this:  when I was exercising regularly, my back felt better and hurt less.  Marrying a physical therapist helped, too.  (Though when I took her advice some years back and saw a back expert, had x-rays and an MRI taken, I was deeply saddened to hear the pronouncement that I had the back of a man twenty years my senior.)  The long and the short of it is that I have arthritis far more advanced than a man my age ought to - degenerative joint disease (DJD), also known as Osteoarthritis in my spine - commonly known as a bad back.  I was struck just now reading this from the DJD Wikipedia link: "it commonly arises from trauma."  Perhaps I wasn't as lucky as I thought with that school roof fall after all?

Lately and up until recently my back had been feeling great.  I've been running a lot, even finished a marathon this past fall.  Pain that used to be referred from my back down the front of my legs was a sensation from long ago.  But as sure as Halley's Comet returns, just days before this past Christmas, I was bending over and turning slightly when I felt The Twinge.  I didn't realize at that moment how badly I'd tweaked it, only that I had. For two days I managed with stiffness and general discomfort, but by Christmas Eve, I was an invalid, confined to my bed, barely able to move, let alone attend family festivities.  On Christmas morning, I drove myself to the doctor while my family waited to open presents.  Max got a toy truck; Linda got theater tickets; I got a shot of Toradol, two doses of Amrix, and a prescription for Vicodin.

I am feeling better, finally able to sit at the computer for more than a few minutes.  In a few more days I'll start running again.  I am sure that I'll do some core strengthening work.  In a month I'll scarcely remember how bad it was (my brain is funny like that).  I'll have that low level pain that's always there, my life long and less than amiable companion.  Long car rides will always be tough and as I age, it's not likely to improve.  I don't share this to engender sympathy.  If you don't have a bad back you either will or will have some other cross to bear.  I share it because whether it's a back, a disease, trauma - emotional or otherwise, we all have something to endure.  And if you don't, sure as shit you will.  How you choose to process your pain is what distinguishes suffering from perseverance.

My bad back is my ever present shadow.  We met that fateful autumn night some 26 years ago when I walked off that roof and we've been quite close ever since. Though not always visible to the casual observer, my bad back is as much a part of my identity as my gangly height and my goofy sense of humor.  Sentimentality aside, I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for a healthy back today.

Supermarket Minefield

I've been thinking a lot about food and health lately.

For the better part of the past decade - if not longer, I've been aware that I have high cholesterol.  While I contributed to it with regular doses of cheese and hamburgers (tip: the two taste great when combined), I also have my genes to thank for its base level.  What is high?  Well, let's just say that it was somewhere below Ted Williams' lifetime batting average, but not much.




It always seemed unfair to me that I'd have high cholesterol. While I've taken time off from exercising from time to time, I've been active far more than not and I've always eaten better than my cholesterol number would suggest - or so I thought.  At various times, I've had doctors tell me that unless I could lower my number, they'd recommend Lipitor or other statin drugs to do the job.  But the idea taking a pill for the rest of my life (at was then only my early 30's) seemed both onerous and expensive.  I told the doctor to let me try on my own first.

For more than 5 years, I tried and had only marginal success.  The number, at times, was lower, but then it would rise again.  I modified my diet.  Less fries, 'lite' cheese, lean meat, turkey.  Inevitably, though, there'd be a plate of nachos or what is still my weakness, a bowl of French onion soup with that broiled layered of oh so tasty cheese. Let's not even talk about ice cream.

A few years ago, I felt a tightness right about the area where my heart is.  It hurt, but because I'd developed a latent paranoia about heart disease, I was aware that my symptoms were not that of a heart attack.  Soon after that I sought the attention of a local cardiologist.  (The doctor, for the purposes of imagining the scene, is a dead ringer for Matthew Broderick, right down to the voice and mannerisms.)  I made the doctor do all kinds of tests:  EKGs, a treadmill stress test, and I even got to see a three dimensional computer model of my heart.  Aside from all that being very cool and fun (and probably expensive), I learned that my heart is very strong and in good shape and that the pain I was occasionally feeling was likely musco-skeletal and had nothing to do with my cardiovascular system.  However, my cholesterol and especially my triglycerides levels were indeed still very high and I'd need to do something about it or risk heart disease, heart attack, and of course pre-mature death. (And while what the doctor was saying rang true, it's hard to take serious medical advice from - take your pick - Ferris Bueller, Eugene Morris Jerome, or Leo Bloom.)

But back to food now.  In the past couple of years, I've made some major changes to my diet.  It began, as I noted with a reduction in cholesterol laden foods.  I slowly began to cleave (dig the diction) meat out of my diet.  I ate it from time to time, but rarely ever bought it in the grocery store.  I was still eating chicken and turkey, though.  I was, along with my wife, trying out recipes from Eating Well and other more 'healthy' oriented websites or magazines, but deep down I knew that I wasn't being consistent enough to make the kind of dent necessary to make a difference in my numbers.

Thanks to some good friends of ours, we were introduced to a doctor's diet.  His name is Joel Fuhrman and his book, "Eat to Live," espoused the health benefits of what is basically a vegetarian diet loaded with essential, unprocessed nutrients:  fresh fruits, vegetables, beans, soy, seeds, nuts.  We began to eat this way far more often than not (but by no means as strictly as advocated).  Without exercising much - at that time - I lost about 10 pounds, with very little effort at all.  When I added exercise to my regimen, I had to notch the belt tighter and was quite often greeted with, "you look skinny" or "have you lost weight?"  I did and I had.  In fact, today I weigh almost the exact same I did when I graduated college at 21.  (I am the taller of the two in the photo.  The older man, who lives a healthy life, is 128 years-old.)

It wasn't very long after shifting my diet that I had a check up with Dr. Bueller, uh, I mean Dr. Lawson to review my numbers.  When he came into the room, he could barely contain his excitement.  "What have you been doing?!"  My triglycerides, which had literally been off the chart were back to near normal and my cholesterol while still being above baseball's Mendoza Line would certainly have have landed me back in Double A.  "Whatever you're doing, keep on doing it," the doctor exclaimed with joy.  I felt like I'd aced a test I'd been failing for years (like when John John finally passed the bar).

It's hard for me to recollect exactly how my present thoughts on food and diet got to where they are (and I should note they are still in flux), but the more I read about how food is processed, what industrial farming does to animals, land, the environment, not to mention America's (and the world's) waistline, the more I feel like I have to opt out - as much as I can.  And it isn't easy.  Go to the supermarket and all the aisles between the produce (which is suspect, too!) and the milk (another no-no according to Furhman) is likely processed, likely made from corn by products and likely has high fructose corn syrup as one of the first few ingredients.  The more I read in books like Eat to Live or The Ominvore's Dilemma and the more I see in documentaries (Super Size Me, and soon Food Inc.), the more I come to terms with the fact that, at least the way I see it, our health is being highjacked by the corporatocracy (Tangentially related good read:  Confessions of an Economic Hitman).  Know this:  our food today is NOT the food of our forefathers.  And while science works to solve many of life's banes, it also causes too many others.

I don't yet know where these thoughts will lead me, but I do know that in both my thinking and my actions, I am already outside of the mainstream.  I have to tell you, though, it feels like the mainstream isn't really serving me well right now.

Stay tuned.