Thursday, October 25, 2012

RESET





6:30 AM. Alarm rattles silence and sleep.

I want to weep. I want to sleep! 

For a week.

Instead, boys and dogs will rise. Daily marathon will begin.

Mid-afternoon, sometime between work, laundry, dinner prep, dog-walk, school pick-up line, and volleyball cheers I will long for a nap.

48 hours ago, I'd have guzzled a cup of coffee.

But today I just might take that nap.

Because I discovered Ikaria.

It's an island some 30 miles off the western coast of Turkey.

An island where citizens reach the age of 90 at 2 1/2 times the rate that Americans do - men reach 90 at four times the rate of American men.

An island that native Stamatis Moraitis returned to in his mid-60s, so he could be 'buried with his ancestors in a cemetery shaded by oak trees that overlooked the Aegean Sea'. Told by nine American doctors that he had only months to live with advanced lung cancer, Moraitis journeyed home and altered his lifestyle. Each day he "... he woke up when he felt like it, worked in the vineyards until midafternoon, made himself lunch and then took a long nap. In the evenings, he often walked to the local tavern, where he played dominoes past midnight."

Without surgery, chemotherapy, or drugs, Moraitis, now 97, has remained cancer-free.

Ilias Leriadis, one of Ikaria’s few physicians, explains the astounding ease of Ikaria. “We wake up late and always take naps," he says. "I don’t even open my office until 11 a.m. because no one comes before then.....When you invite someone to lunch, they might come at 10 a.m. or 6 p.m. We simply don’t care about the clock here.”

Or Cash. 

Or Creature Comforts.

Simply stated, Ikarians care about each other. Leriadis compares his island to the near-by island of Samos. 

"There they are much more developed. ...they care about money. Here, we don’t. For the many religious and cultural holidays, people pool their money and buy food and wine. If there is money left over, they give it to the poor. It’s not a ‘me’ place. It’s an ‘us’ place.”

Ikarians love their Mediterranean diet - comprised of homegrown produce, local sour dough bread, olive oil, fish, goat milk, and honey. They drink coffee and local “mountain tea,” moderate amounts of alcohol and wine, and 'end-of-the-day cocktails' made from wild herbs that double as medicine.

But diet alone isn't affording Ikarians health, happiness and longevity. Dan Buettner has studied populations of the long-lived for nearly a decade.  In his article The Island Where People Forgot to Die, he writes: "If you pay careful attention to the way Ikarians have lived their lives, it appears that a dozen subtly powerful, mutually enhancing and pervasive factors are at work. It’s easy to get enough rest if no one else wakes up early and the village goes dead during afternoon naptime. It helps that the cheapest, most accessible foods are also the most healthful — and that your ancestors have spent centuries developing ways to make them taste good. It’s hard to get through the day in Ikaria without walking up 20 hills. You’re not likely to ever feel the existential pain of not belonging or even the simple stress of arriving late. Your community makes sure you’ll always have something to eat, but peer pressure will get you to contribute something too. You’re going to grow a garden, because that’s what your parents did, and that’s what your neighbors are doing. You’re less likely to be a victim of crime because everyone at once is a busybody and feels as if he’s being watched. At day’s end, you’ll share a cup of the seasonal herbal tea with your neighbor because that’s what he’s serving. Several glasses of wine may follow the tea, but you’ll drink them in the company of good friends. On Sunday, you’ll attend church, and you’ll fast on Orthodox feast days. Even if you’re antisocial, you’ll never be entirely alone. Your neighbors will cajole you out of your house for the village festival to eat your portion of goat meat."

Consider it the "It Takes a Village" approach to health, happiness, and longevity.

Reset, anyone?

Laugh, dear Reader, but I read Buettner's article at dawn yesterday morning, and cringed when I noticed myself - and many people I know - in quotes attributed to Thea Parikos. Born in Detroit to an American father and an Ikarian mother, Parikos moved  to Ikaria after she and her husband became parents. “I was not unhappy in America,” she told Buettner. “We had good friends, we went out to dinner on the weekends, I drove a Chevrolet. But I was always in a hurry.”

Gulp.

Like Leriadis, Parikos thinks of her hometown as an 'us' place, focused on family and friends more than wealth. “People ... are very self-sufficient... We may not have money for luxuries, but we will have food on the table and still have fun with family and friends.

Buettner believes that the key component to Ikarians' longevity might be more about social structure than diet and exercise - the centerpieces for improving health in America.

"The big aha for me... is how the factors that encourage longevity reinforce one another over the long term," Buettner writes. "For people to adopt a healthful lifestyle, I have become convinced, they need to live in an ecosystem, so to speak, that makes it possible. As soon as you take culture, belonging, purpose or religion out of the picture, the foundation for long healthy lives collapses."

The Election of 2012 looms. We've heard unceasing rhetoric about our country being an ‘us’ place, rather than a 'me' place.

Economically speaking.

But as Scott Shane laments in The Opiate of American Exceptionalism, no candidate has even  begun to mention the aspects of the American 'Ecosystem' that hamper health and longevity. No candidate has dared remind the electorate that:

The U.S. ranks 2nd of thirty-five economically advanced countries with 23.1% of children under the age of seventeen living in poverty.

The U.S. ranks 14th in the percentage of 25-to-34-year-olds with a higher education.

The U.S. ranks 28th in life expectancy and 11th in happiness.

The U.S ranks lower than 48 countries and territories in infant mortality, and trails most of Europe, Australia and Canada in social mobility.

Still, we top the list in small arms ownership, incarceration rates (blowing away Russia, Cuba, Iran and China); in obesity, and in energy use per person (doubling the consumption of Germans).  

Teacher Mark Rice, who writes the blog Ranking America, offers a sobering analysis, “Sure, we’re No. 1 in gross domestic product and military expenditures... but on a lot of measures of quality of life, the U.S. ranking is far lower."

In 1992, Bill Clinton won the Presidency by reminding American voters: "It's the Economy, Stupid."

Since then It's the Economy, Stupid, It's the Economy, Stupid has been burned into our brains.

And reflected in our votes and motivations.

Might it be time for a reset?

Two of my dearest friends - who dutifully served this country for more than twenty years in the armed forces - shocked me last weekend with talk about relocating. They aren't looking for a different town, city, or state to call home. They're looking for a different country.

An environment less hurried, stressful, complicated, divided.

To many, a place like Ikaria sounds pretty ideal.

To me, an America that considers supplanting "It's the Economy, Stupid!" with "It's Health, Happiness, and Longevity, Partner!" sounds even better.

Reset.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

MISSION

The Berkshires were rocking their boldest autumn colors.

But I hardly noticed.

En route from Massachusetts to New York, I was alerted by my smartypants phone that something BIG was about to happen.

An Austrian paratrooper turned pilot turned daredevil was being propelled by a 55-story balloon to the perimeter of space. Journeying inside a capsule, the pilot was traveling 128,000 feet to the top of the world.

I had heard about this stunt when it failed to materialize a few days earlier. But I didn't know the details. Flipping from news site to science site, I gathered information as the white balloon gathered altitude.

Seems the pilot, Felix Baumgartner, and his team spent five years preparing for the pioneering jump. The daredevil's life depended on a 100-pound pressurized flight suit and helmet; his only barriers to the lethally thin atmosphere and brutally frigid temperatures near space. Failure of the pressure suit would cause Baumgartner's blood to boil. 

Death in fifteen seconds.

Baumgartner also risked spinning out of control and losing consciousness once he jumped from the capsule and fell to earth. Imagine. This person was going to step into space fully aware that one daring step could lead to a horrific death.

Real Rocket Science and Real Danger in Real Time.

Mesmerized, I watched the door of Baumgartner's capsule open. Pressure equalized with the atmosphere outside as the space man moved forward and looked down at the spinning blue-brown earth beneath him.

He muttered something unintelligible. Then he saluted and jumped.

Hurtling through the sky at speeds more than 830 mph, Baumgartner plummeted to earth in a four-minute, twenty second free-fall. Veering into an uncontrollable spin at one point, he pulled his arms closer to his body, regaining control. By the time he deployed his parachute for the final mile drift to Earth (where he would make a running landing onto the New Mexico desert,) Felix Baumgartner had survived a record-breaking, sound-barrier-shattering 24-mile fall from the edge of space.

Eight million people watched in real time. Four of those folks watched on a smartphone suction-cupped to the dashboard of an SUV speeding across the Berkshires. 

While that, in and of itself, is worthy of a whole blog of wow, it is not the story of this blog, dear Reader.

This is the story of a man - a self-proclaimed hot-headed, demanding daredevil who, growing more humble with age, knowledge and experience, persevered for half a decade to achieve an unimaginably difficult mission. 

A man who worked to conquer acute claustrophobia that nearly halted the mission in its earliest stages. 

A man who maintained his composure and discipline even as his visor fogged three minutes into the fall, and his body launched into a violent spin that threatened to send blood rushing to his head, rendering him despondent and out of control.
 
"There was a period of time where I really thought, 'I am in trouble,' " Baumgartner said. "But after a couple of seconds, I had that feeling I'm getting it under control. And I did," he added. "And that's why I broke the speed of sound today."

It's likewise the story of a team that prepared diligently for the mission, even while acknowledging that Baumgartner's survival was not guaranteed. Prepping the pressurized flight suit and helmet with sensors and recorders to measure everything from speed to heart rate, the team hoped to learn if similar suits and helmets could someday save astronauts' lives should manned spacecrafts malfunction in space.

Finally, it's the story of Colonel Joe Kittinger. A pilot who jumped from 102,800 feet as part of a U.S. Air Force mission in 1960, Kittinger was the sole person from Mission Control who remained in constant contact with Baumgartner as he attempted to break standing free-fall records - records that Kittinger held for half a century.

Joe Kittinger took off his headphones as Felix Baumgartner landed in the desert and dropped to his knees, raising his fists in victory. Praising the pilot, and all those who helped to make the mission a success, Kittinger said, "It was a team effort, and Felix did a fantastic job...It was an honor for all of us to work with this brave guy."

Imagine, dear Reader, if the characters featured in the story above were President and Congress.

Imagine if the mission was Grow the Economy. Reduce the Deficit and Carbon Emissions. Revitalize Entitlement Programs, Healthcare, Manufacturing. 

Imagine a government filled with leaders who confronted fears, rather than stoking them.

Imagine teams of legislators working together, making difficult decisions and taking calculated risks that lead to progress, while inspiring and aiding future generations.

As Felix Baumgartner stood in darkness and silence on the edge of space, looking at the globe spinning beneath him, he surely could not see wars raging, earth warming, and politicians debating.

Humbled, focused, and intent on surviving, Baumgartner looked down and said, “The whole world is watching now, and I wish they could see what I see. Sometimes you have get up really high (to realize) how small you are.”

If only we could tuck our leaders into space suits and capsules, and balloon them to the edge of space to look upon the world they impact day after day.

Surely they'd realize the gravity of their mission to serve and protect.

They may even be humbled and focused enough to understand that the citizens on one small corner of the spinning globe beneath them are not 47%-ers who refuse to take personal responsibility and care for their lives. They're not 1%-ers who turn their backs on the less fortunate, or binders full of women seeking employment.

They're actually binders and binders full of citizens longing for leadership and compromise.

Sixteen days till the election. The politicians in space fantasy isn't going to happen.

But there is still time for Congress to convene and waive the citizenship requirement for the American Presidency.

Baumgartner and Kittinger for President and Vice President in 2012.

Wish it on a star. 

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

PERSPECTIVE

















Consider the State of the Union 
      from a Dog's Perspective.



















  
Makes no difference if the Big Bird is maligned or revered.

I will still smell him, chase him, catch him, and chew him.


 



Makes no difference if there are detailed plans for cutting the federal budget and deficit, or reforming healthcare and entitlement programs.  

Scraps and sticks are plentiful, and I am entitled to them.









Makes no difference if master loses job, livelihood, and home to foreclosure.
                                 
                                Business can happily be done on someone else's property.








Makes no difference if talking heads fume and frustrate, bellow and bark. 24/7.

Naptime trumps Nastytime. 24/7.







Makes no difference if human rights are trampled or protected.

A pat on my head, and a rub of my belly will suffice.




Makes no difference if wars flare, and hostile leaders rage. 

There will always be another Top Dog. Just wag the tail.




Makes no difference if storms grow more wet and loud and fierce. 

Sunshine will surely return, and beloved brothers will want to play in it.



  

Makes no difference if polls change, momentum swings, and supporters flee.

Master will always love me.
 





Consider the State of the Union from a Dog's Perspective.






So much better for our State of Mind.






QUING Hereby Decrees: If substance returns to rhetoric this election season, give me a shout. Till then, I'll be hanging with the dogs.







DOG Hereby Decrees: Yes, I like wind whipping in my face. So long as I'm riding IN the car, rather than ON the car.