Remember Me?

I used to write a blog post about once a week until mid-June. I abruptly stopped when I was stranded in my chair on two different nights by the company called Custom Care who failed to send an attendant by to put me in bed, which resulted in me being bedridden since my pressure sores were opened to a degree I could not sit up in my chair!

I ended up in an emergency room on June 19th and spent the next eight days in the hospital until I was able to find another home healthcare agency who would be more reliable in getting me personal-care attendants (PCA's). My doctor would not allow me to be released from the hospital until I had a care company who could supply my needs.

Little did I know when my social worker arranged for this company to do my cares that she was going to retire as soon as she closed out all of her cases! The new company president showed up making all kinds of promises that I knew he could not keep. My doctor released me that Saturday and I have been in bed ever since! My only trips out of my room were a once a month visit to the wound clinic to have my doctor check on the progress, order new supplies and send me home for another month of R&R in my bed!

On my last visit, the wounds are getting good enough so he allowed me to start sitting up a couple hours a day. The first few days I was experiencing a dramatic loss in strength and stamina. I am still weak and frustrated to not be able to be up in my chair for very long periods of time.

I have good people helping me now who are going the extra mile to take care of my increased needs.

I thoroughly enjoy watching the Minnesota Twins and their run for a playoff position! It has kept me going along with countless hours of watching television. My summer and now early fall is gone and I am hoping to be ready to start going to my Gopher basketball games in a few short weeks.

I am attaching a photograph taken on June 20th with my brothers, Rick and Chad when they came to visit me in the hospital in a break from our niece's wedding that day. I regret not being able to be there very much.

Click on the image to make it larger:

The bottom line is I am back to a degree! I am excited to get back to a degree of ability I had before this latest setback. I have much more to write on this subject of my summer vacation which lasted well into autumn; however, I need to lie down as my time is about up!

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

WITNESSED: The Killings at Kent State

I know I do not always get my post in on the correct day, but the story remains the same. I just watched this CNN special "WITNESSED: The Killings at Kent State" and it brought back a lot of memories. I am certain if you were anywhere near your teenage years or above in 1970 you remember the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s with the events at Kent State on May 4, 1970.

It is hard to believe it has already been more than forty-four years since the Ohio National Guard killed four Kent State students on Blanket Hill on the campus of Kent State University. It all started five days earlier when President Nixon announced his invasion of Cambodia and the ramping up of the Vietnam War.

Many people felt let down because Nixon had said he was going to de-escalate in Vietnam and Cambodia. Instead, he makes the announcement how he is going to escalate the war and bring in more American troops to advance on areas along the Vietnam and Cambodia borders. I like this chart he showed on a nationally televised presentation. It shows just how far we have come in forty-four years of television graphics and technology:

What happened when Nixon made that statement about advancing instead of de-escalating it made the divide we all ready had between the Vietnam supporters and the antiwar movement.

The students at Kent State University were just the tip of the iceberg of students all over the country who were outraged when Nixon called them "Bums" in an article in the New York Times shortly before the end of April. Students and antiwar supporters all over the country were outraged and incensed at that event. It was starting to throw fuel on the fire of the divide it was happening in the country.

There is always been a debate about whether or not an order was given to the Ohio National Guard to fire upon the students. According to the special, a recently enhanced recording shows the Guards were ordered to open fire on unarmed, innocent, fleeing students. Four students like dead and nine more were injured. One of those students was shot in the back and remains paralyzed to this day. O will get back to them later.

In an interesting epilogue on the video this statement occurs:

The 28 national guardsmen who fired their weapons signed a declaration of regret for the incidents of May 4th, 1970 …  but have never apologized for their actions.

I find it interesting how only sixty-seven rounds were fired and it has caused a debate to this day about how the event should have unfolded peacefully.

At no time in history has a branch of the United States military fired on innocent civilians with live ammunition.

The four students killed were Allison Krause, William Schroeder, was shot in the back; Sandy Schreuer, had been walking to class, and Michael Miller shown in this iconic, Pulitzer prize-winning photograph as Mary Ann Vecchio screamed for help over his dead body:

Click on the image to make it larger:

I remember watching Walter Cronkite tell us on the news that night about the terrible massacre on the Kent State campus in Kent, Ohio. I had never even heard of Kent, Ohio before. That shows you how naïve I was to my world outside of Worthington, Minnesota.

The thing that was so disturbing to me about Nixon ramping up the war and sending more troops in was he won election in 1968 telling us he was going to end the Vietnam War. He was lying to us way back then. He had no intention of stopping the war and withdrawing our troops.

As always, I look forward to your comments. I specially look forward to your comments if you will remember that time and how it affected your friends and family and especially you.

Later,

Mike

Intuition

When you read the word "intuition" what do you think? Do women hold the exclusive rights to intuition, or do men have intuition as well? It is an interesting thought.

We often hear about women's intuition, but rarely do we hear about men's intuition. Why is that?

Several years ago, I gave a workshop at the University of Minnesota's Landscape Arboretum for a group of about thirty social workers one morning. I was done with my section at noon as the group broke for lunch. I could have gone home, but something told me I wanted to stick around and listen to what this woman had to say in the afternoon session on intuition. I was very glad I stayed.

My own intuition was telling me to stay, and I listened to it. We were sitting in a large circle in one of the beautiful conference rooms they have at the conference center. I cannot find the woman's name who was leading the group, but she started talking about both male and female intuition. I was sitting next to a young man of about twenty-five.

At one point in the discussion, he asked her, "Would intuition be like if I was playing football and I didn't feel quite right, so I asked to sit out a play, sit down on the bench, put my head down between my legs and wait for this feeling to go away? Would that be intuition?"

Now mind you, I was sitting right next to this young man who was in the same position I was in about twenty years earlier. After he finished, I looked up and everyone was looking at me including the instructor. I looked at her and said something like, "Why did I stay here this afternoon? I could've gone home at lunch. I was supposed to hear that, wasn't I?"

The instructor said, "Yes, I believe you were."

I honestly believe my intuition was telling me all day long the day of my accident something was not right. I did not listen to it! Instead, I chalked it up to nerves. I was just nervous because it was my first varsity game, and I was nervous.

The irony in this entire experience for me was a month before that I spent the first two weeks of August at my aunt and uncle's farm near White, South Dakota helping on the farm like I had done for several years before I was old enough to drive. That summer from August first to August fifteenth I spent helping my aunt and uncle at their farm and spending some time at my grandma and step grandfather's farm doing whatever I could to help. I loved my time each summer I spent working on the farms and working out in the evenings preparing for football. I would run around the section which was four miles each night, do wind sprints in the yard, exercised, stretched and prepared for my upcoming football season.

When I went to leave that day and go back to Worthington, I had this strange feeling something was not right. I drove down the road about fifteen miles and the feeling did not go away, it just got stronger. I turned around and went back to the farm. When I entered the house my aunt asked me what was going on. I told her I had forgotten something and I believe I had left it in my room. I went upstairs, sat down on the bed for a few minutes and the feeling went away.

I believe my intuition was telling me something was going to happen on my drive home. I listened to my intuition that day, and that pit in my stomach went away. Two and a half weeks later, on September 3, 1971, I did not listen to my intuition and I broke my neck. I believe that with all my heart.

Do you always listen to your intuition when it is telling you to do or not to do something? Do you believe in intuition? Do you believe women have it and men do not?

What would have happened had I not gone in to the game that night because I told my coach, "I don't feel right,"? Would the feeling have gone away if I had sat out that play? We will never know because it never happened. Intuition is funny that way.

Before I close, I want to tell you how I came upon writing this post tonight. A little more than a week ago, someone signed me up for a new Facebook page titled "Growing up in Worthington, Minnesota." I did not sign up for it because I did not really grow up in Worthington. Worthington was the eighth town I had lived in before I was fourteen years old. We never lived in any town more than three years and any one location more than eighteen months. My dad was always getting a better job so we were constantly on the move to the next place that was a little bigger, had a few more amenities to offer a young boy growing up and paid my dad a little more money. I believe all of the changes I had to go through as a young boy prepared me for the life-changing moment that happened to me when I broke my neck. It was preparing me to deal with all of the changes I have had to adjust to since that night. It set me on my path of lifelong learning.

Someone signed me up for this page and I started getting friend requests immediately. I noticed a woman was commenting and liking several of the same posts I was responding to. So I looked at her profile and decided to see if Cathy wanted to be my friend. Her acceptance was almost immediate. I had never had someone respond to a friend request so quickly. I rapidly found out there was a reason for my intuition to tell me to become her friend.

We have become fast friends, chat quite often and have spent several hours already talking on the telephone. My intuition told me to friend her and I am very glad I listened to it. She is the one who recommended I do this post on intuition tonight as we both shared stories of how intuition has affected our lives numerous times. So, Cathy this post is for you. Thank you.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Fifty Years Ago Today

It is not as though anyone needs reminding what happened fifty years ago today in Dallas, the media is doing that for us. I just want to take a few minutes of your time and share some information you may not know, and for that matter, ever new about the events around the assassination of President Kennedy.

One fact I found interesting, especially in the world we have today with cable news channels giving us instant news 24/7, and all the other technologies that allow us to get access to information instantly, the Kennedy assassination news coverage would be the longest uninterrupted news event in American history until the events of September 11, 2001.

I find that amazing because in 1963 black-and-white television was still in its infancy, and the news was not a very big deal.

Another fact I learned was November 22, 1963 was Walter Cronkite's first day on network television. We have all seen the iconic footage of him taking off his black, horn-rimmed glasses, pausing for a few seconds, fighting back the tears and announcing President Kennedy was dead!

Television newscasts played a central role in the coming three days which was unprecedented and very challenging for the new medium. Remember, in 1963, television had not been around very long. Upon confirmation of the assassination, the three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, cut out of their regularly scheduled programs and ran without commercials for three days.

One of the more striking facts that hit me was an interview with Secret Service Agent #9, Clint Hill. In a 1975 interview on 60 Minutes, he told Mike Wallace he blamed himself for the president's death because he could not get to shield the president quickly enough to take the third bullet, which was the fatal one. He would rather have taken the bullet himself then to have it kill the president.

Another interesting fact is only thirty-three percent of the American population alive today were alive on November 22, 1963. That moment ended the short-lived one thousand day life of hope affectionately known as Camelot. It ended an age of innocence for us, and brought the beginning of the turbulent and very violent 1960's. 

After the Summer of Love in 1967 when the counterculture Hippie Movement was gaining strength in its movement for peace, violence seemed to be everywhere in 1968. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4th, and two months later, on June 6th, Robert Kennedy was gunned down after winning the California primary in Los Angeles.

In between those two assassinations was the Kent State riot when four students were killed and brought about massive demonstrations on college campuses all across the country. Tensions were mounting and the anti-Vietnam movement was gaining strength as Richard Nixon had announced the invasion of Cambodia just a few days before that.

From August 26th through the 29th the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was marred by violence when the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the Youth International Party (Yippies) joined other groups to form a massive protest during the convention. They were joined by other groups like Students for a Democratic Society, and I huge population of about ten thousand protesters converged on Chicago.

Mayor Richard Daley would have none of it and amassed twenty-three thousand police officers and National Guardsmen to quell the demonstration. In the middle of the afternoon on August 28th, the so-called "police riot" broke out and was witnessed live on national television as the rioters were trying to get away from being maced and beaten by the police and guardsmen. 

Those are just the highlights of what the turbulent decade was. I remember all of those events. The one I will never forget where I was when I heard the news was the assassination of President Kennedy. In 1963, we lived in tiny Edgerton, Minnesota. My third grade classmates and I were in music class in the old part of the school when someone came to the door and had our teacher come with their out in the hall. Our music teacher came back and told us President Kennedy have been killed.

My classmates and I did not know what to do, or exactly what it meant. We just knew something bad had happened. I remember watching the news on up to the funeral at a family friend's house because they had a color TV. It was a horrible time and changed our nation dramatically.

If you were alive and remember where you were that day, and how you heard about the assassination, please make a comment and tell my subscribers your recognition of that day when a dream died in America lost so much potential. John Fitzgerald Kennedy had many plans and goals to make a better America. He never saw us get to the moon, which was one of his goals. I wonder what he would think of our space station and cooperation with the Russians in operating that. For that matter, I wonder what he would think of all the changes that have happened in the United States in the last fifty years.

He laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Act of 1965, which were the groundwork for Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. President Johnson started Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He also escalated the Vietnam War and more than fifty-eight thousand names now adorn that black granite wall in Washington, DC's Mall. 

Personally, I do not believe we would of stayed in Vietnam had President Kennedy not been assassinated. What sort of contributions would those men and women who fought and died in Vietnam and whose names appear on the Vietnam Memorial have made in the United States and globally had we not been there?

It seems every generation has an event that changes their life. The so-called Greatest Generation had December 7, 1941. Baby Boomers had November 22, 1963. The Millennials or Generation Y had September 11, 2001. That names only a few events. Throughout history there have been many more events that change lives.

What will be the next life-changing event that will affect your life and you will remember where you were for the rest of your life when you learned of it? As history has proven, it will happen. It is just a matter of when and where.

I wholeheartedly look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Football And Sportsmanship

There has been a lot said and written lately about all of the negative aspects of playing football. Everyone from the Pop Warner Leagues to the NFL and its former players are mounting a growing concern over all of the injuries associated with the game. Rightly so on many levels.

When NFL Hall of Famer, Tony Dorsett has announced he is suffering from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease at an early age, Brett Favre has stated he does not remember one whole year of his daughter's soccer season, the Minnesota Vikings were not able to field a full roster for their last game because of injuries and current NFL teams injury lists look more like MASH reports, there is an epidemic of injuries amongst all levels of football.

60 Minutes did a report last Sunday on how the numbers of young boys playing football at an early age is steadily dwindling and ESPN is doing special reports on injuries amongst that age group, you know something is drastically wrong. The question is, what can be done about it? I have some suggestions as do many experts, but like any subject that debate cannot be solved in a simple blog post.

I am living proof football is, and always has been; a violent game and can result in serious injuries. I did a paper for my Prevention and Care of Athletic Injuries class in college on Neck Injuries In Football. In doing my research, I learned the neck musculature is the last muscle mass in the body to develop. And yet, we see young boys and girls wearing heavy helmets with giant facemasks trying to support their heads and faces with necks that are not fully developed.

That is why eighty percent of all spinal cord injuries occur to young males between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. When one counts all the spinal cord injuries that occur in the United States every year, football related injuries only occur about twelve times annually. That is not very many when one considers the number of automobile, gunshot, motorcycle, diving and other active activities accidents. 

But that is not what this post is all about. Once again, I have strayed from my original intent. Of course, my longtime readers know that is how I write.

I titled this post "Football And Sportsmanship" because of a wonderful gesture on the part of the Olivet Middle School Eagles in Olivet, Michigan help one of their own score a touchdown.

Watch this video and see if you do not agree with me. To view the video, click here. If the video does not show up, click on this URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8_RpyfyNs4 

Keith Orr will never forget his touchdown thanks to his buddies who decided to do something for the young man. Steve Hartman gets to do some amazing stories, but not many have brought him to tears like this one did. I like his weekly story on the Friday Night CBS News. He has introduced us to many wonderful people and their incredible stories.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike

Forty-five Years Ago Tonight

Forty-five years ago tonight after winning and placing third in the 200-meter dash in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, John Carlos and Tommie Smith made this now famous black-glove salute during the playing of the National Anthem.

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On the left is Peter Norman from Australia. He won the silver medal. There is a great article in "The Nation" you should read by clicking here. As a side note to the 200-meter race that night, Lee Evans won the 400-meter dash the next night, he took the podium, received his gold medal and as the Star Spangled Banner started to play, he pulled out a black beret, bowed his head and protested much like Carlos and Smith did the night before.

All three athletes became pariahs because of their support for the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR). Smith and Carlos also took off their shoes and wore black stockings to represent the poverty of African-Americans in the United States. Smith and Carlos also wore OPHR pins to show support for the cause. Peter Norman also wore one of those pins to show his support.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos traded back and forth several times the world record in the 200-meter dash in the late sixties. They went on to have successful careers with John Carlos eventually earning his PhD.

One reason this photograph carries significant meaning to me is because the architect of the protest of the Olympics was Harry Edwards. Harry Edwards was my Sociology of Sport Professor at Berkley in 1974. He was an imposing figure as he lectured to us in a large hall without a microphone. He did not need one. As an undergraduate, he was a discus thrower on the San Jose State University track team. Dr. Edwards earned his PhD at Cornell. He is now a Professor Emeritus in the Sociology department at Berkeley.

Edwards told Time magazine, he "wants to serve as a role model — the promising athlete who gave up the possibility of a career in professional sports to become a scholar instead." He also stated, "We must teach our children to dream with their eyes open," he said. "The chances of your becoming a Jerry Rice or a Magic Johnson are so slim as to be negligible. Black kids must learn to distribute their energies in a way that's going to make them productive, contributing citizens in an increasingly high-technology society."

I could write a lot more about this life-defining moment, but I want to put this thing to bed and go there myself.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Connections Are Made

As human beings, we never know when we make a connection with another human being. Unless, that other person lets us know through their words or behavior.

Yesterday, I was on a weekly conference call with a group of people who are all members of a group called The Good Men Project. When the topic came up about some people objecting to strictly men helping young boys and men to become better people, and how we were supposedly ignoring young girls and women in the process, I had to make a statement.

I proceeded to go on about a five-minute rant about how I made a connection with a young lady in a locked mental health unit in a hospital many years ago. I told about how this one girl came to my presentation in her bathrobe and pajamas. She had no reason to get dressed because she was depressed and suicidal.

This was back before the Internet and email. Two days after I visited that institution, I received a large manila envelope with letters from all the youth who had attended my ninety-minute presentation.

As it turned out, there was a two-page letter from this young lady who wrote she had tried to kill herself seven times, and because of my presentation she would never do it again! I have received letters like that both before and since that day. Now, I get emails from both young people and adults who are hurting and express themselves to me after only maybe hearing me for an hour. It always amazes me what people are willing to tell me after only meeting me briefly and listening to me speak for a short period of time!

I called the counselor who had arranged for my trip and told her of the girls letter. I am proud to say I return every letter or email I have ever received to the individual who has written me. In all the years I have been speaking, I have only received one hate email. In fact, I received two identical emails that day from two different students in a school I had been at two weeks prior to those Sunday afternoon emails. They were especially disturbing because they both had my photograph from my website defaced with a paint program, and the words, Your gay and a bitch. I wish you die and go to hell!

I must admit that scared me. The next day, I called the counselor from that school and told her of the incident. That is a whole other story, about how we dealt with that issue. I spend a good part of a chapter talking about it in my book, I Still Believe In Tomorrow. As I am prone to do, I am getting off topic. Please forgive me. Regular readers of my blog will understand my propensity to do that.

Back to the young lady: Through a series of phone calls with her counselor, and a couple conversations with the counselors from her high school who were friends of mine, we addressed her issues and she received some more psychological counseling. I had visited her home high school on numerous occasions; and the person who arranged for all the visits was one of her counselors who was very aware of her situation.

Then, about a year later, I was invited to the school where she had graduated that previous spring for a twenty-four hour lockdown of eighth-grade students coming in as freshmen in the fall. Unbeknownst to me, she was one of the graduates who was assisting the counselors in running this orientation.

I no sooner got into the building, when this attractive, well-dressed, young woman in a dress came running up to me, gave me a big hug, backed away, spread her arms out, and proclaimed, Look what you did!

I immediately asked, What do you mean?

Whereupon she explained, I am going to college, I got an apartment, I moved out of the abusive environment I was in, I've changed my name, I'm a new person, and I owe it all to you!

I said, I didn't do any of that. You did it. I just gave you the tools.

You should have seen the look on her face when she realized it was her and not me who had made the transformation to become the young woman she was today. It was one of those life-defining moments we all get on occasion.


The point of this whole post is to give you an example of how we can make a difference in someone's life and not even realize it. Something I said in that mental health unit affected that young woman so profoundly; she even went so far as to change her name!

As always, I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike

It Never Stops!

My longtime readers have often read my posts when I start out by writing something like, I never know where my inspiration for posts is going to come from.

Guess what? It has happened again. I received an email this morning from a Rev. in Casper, Wyoming. He wrote how he was a new student in Worthington just starting his senior year in the fall of 1971. He also wrote how he was the student who ran our videotaping, or at that time, Super 8 mm movie camera to film our game.

He went on to write how he remembered the sound of my accident! Please indulge me and let me insert his email message here:

Mike:

While I am sure you don’t remember me, as I was just a new senior there at Worthington your junior year when you broke your neck, I was the one who was recording the game for the school.  I was also one of the many who rode our bikes over to Sioux Falls to visit you.  I do know that you know my parents Robert and Betty McGrew as it was in conversation with them that my parents got a copy of your book for me (signed by you) as they thought that I knew you. I know more about you as I was there, and will never forget the sound from that moment.

In any case, the reason I am writing to you today is that after reading your book, I was in conversation with a lady here in Casper, Wyoming, where I am currently appointed as a United Methodist pastor, and I believe that your book would be an inspiration for her as she struggles with recuperating from a major stroke. If you would let me know what I need to do in order to get another copy of your book and what the costs are I would appreciate it.

Now, mind you, he is talking about my accident, which happened more than forty-one and a half years ago. He mentioned how he will never forget the sound! He was perched high from the crowd in a crow's nest at the fifty yard line, more than two hundred feet from the play! It astonishes me how he could hear the snap of my neck from that distance!

One of my coaches told how he heard a sound; and before the whistle even blew to end the play, he was running onto the field because he knew something was wrong. He was even thirty or more yards from the play when he heard it.

If you have read my book I Still Believe In Tomorrow, you know I wrote about how Charlie Blackstead, who was running the chain gang and had a very unique perspective on my accident, constantly referred to my head bouncing just one time, it bounced just one time, it bounced just one time. He kept repeating that in a conversation we had just a few years ago.

Another friend wrote how he did not think it was any big deal, until the ambulance got there. Again, if you have read the book, you may remember some of those comments.

I often refer to an instant in time when I talk about my accident. I believe we can all think of an instant in time in our own lives that have affected not only our life but the peoples' lives around us. It is those instances in time that often define our lives. Take a minute if you will, and think about some of the instances in time in your life that have affected not only yours, but the lives around you.

I am happy to say I have already sent the book; and a woman in Casper, Wyoming who has suffered a major stroke may benefit from an instant in time in my life in 1971. Also, who knows whom she will give it to and let read I Still Believe In Tomorrow?

I could not always say this, but I believe very strongly there was a reason for my accident. That gets reinforced to me on almost a daily basis.

As always, I look forward to your comments. I especially look forward to comments from people who were at the game and what you remember about that instant in time.

Later,

Mike

Knowledge Is Good

If you ever saw the movie Animal House, you may remember the opening scene and the statue of the founder of the fictitious Faber College, Emil Faber. They slowly panned to the bottom of the statue where the words Knowledge Is Good were inscribed.

Of course that was just the first of many jokes throughout that wonderful movie and it's spoof on higher education. This post is not about Faber College, Delta House, Otter, Boone or even Bluto, played by John Belushi, who I believe was one of the best physical actors of all time. He never had to say a single word and with just his body language, eyes and facial expressions made audiences laugh hysterically! It is still being watched by a whole new generation.

This post is about higher education and the amount of post-secondary degrees my immediate family have achieved. While cleaning the other day, my mother gave me an article she found in a box. I have attached it to this post. It is from the tiny town of White, South Dakota where my parents grew up on farms a few miles out of town. The title of the paper was The White Leader. It was published in the spring of 1980. White, South Dakota is a tiny town of about five hundred people located fifteen miles northeast of Brookings, South Dakota.

Between my parents, my five siblings and myself we hold three Associate of Arts degrees, six Bachelor of Arts or Science degrees, three Masters degrees and one Juris Doctorate degree. My father, Arlin Patrick is in the lead with one Bachelor of Science degree and two Masters degrees. His Bachelors degree is in education, as are Kathleen's, Chad's and mine. You could say the apples did not fall far from the tree with us.  

In fact, my dad's undergraduate degree is in physical and health education, and my degree is in school and community health education with a minor coaching. You could say I followed in his footsteps. I literally grew up in his footsteps as he was always coaching once for or another I was following him everywhere. I have one photo of him teaching me how to use a basketball scorebook when I was six years old. I was a Gym Rat from the time I was old enough to walk.

I have many great stories about growing up with a father whose job it was to play. He coached and mentored me until the night of my accident. Then, he helped carry me off the field and kept me from going into shock. I tell several stories about him in my book I Still Believe In Tomorrow. I also have pictures of him at my accident scene on my website. You may see them by clicking here, here and seeing one in the book.

Here is the article I mentioned earlier:

Click on the image to make it larger:

As always, I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike

The Book is here! The Book is here!

Okay, I know I told you I would only post about once a week, but I am busting at the seams to share my good news. 

I received my first paperback copies of I Still Believe in Tomorrow today and they are ready to ship! If you want your own book you can hold in your hand, you can order it from all the major booksellers, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., but please order them from me because I get a bigger royalty.

For example: I only get about $3.00 if you order from Amazon! Let's just say, I get a little more if you order from me. Eventually, I'm going to set-up a unique website for the book complete with a page for comments, it's own blog and the ability to pay with PayPal and credit cards. Until that happens, please send your checks to:

Patrick Communications, Inc.

619 Lafayette Road North, #304

St. Paul, MN 55130-4444

The price is $14.95 per book plus $5.00 for shipping for up to ten books. I'll give you a quote on shipping if you want more. I'll send your books once your check clears.

I'm going to be moving in mid-August, and my new address will be:

Patrick Communications, Inc.

10100 Lyndale Avenue South, #104

Bloomington, MN 55420

Please contact me with any questions and/or concerns. By all means, please share this post and help me spread the word! FYI: I quote several of you and your comments to my previous blog posts.

A very heartfelt thank you in advance to everyone who buys "I Still Believe in Tomorrow."

Remember, it makes a great gift!

Later,

Mike

When Bridges Fall

I live in Minneapolis, and have crossed the 35W Bridge more times than I can count since moving here in 1975. In fact, my mother and I crossed it on Tuesday night, about 22 hours before it fell. My sister, Vicki, and her two children, Gavan and Sinead, had also crossed it on Tuesday. I found out later, my second cousin, Jeremy and his girlfriend, Kelli, had crossed it about 5 PM, just an hour before it collapsed. They are going to school on the edge of downtown and live about a mile from the bridge. Then, I got an email from a friend who told me he and his wife crossed it on their way home from work at about 5:30. One of their coworkers crossed it at 5:45! That was too close!

I know there are stories like those all over the Twin Cities because it is such a major artery and carries about 140,000 vehicles each day.

I was working a youth program that night with Paul Ramsour, the executive director of a small non-profit group called Elpis Enterprises. We were at a Minneapolis City Park doing one of our birdfeeder workshops when people started walking up to our booth and telling us the 35W bridge had just collapsed over the Minnesota River in Burnsville, a southern suburb.

When we were done with our workshop, Paul had to drive 35W to get to his home, also south of the Minnesota River. As often happens in events like this, initial information is wrong. After several minutes, people started telling us the bridge that fell was the bridge between downtown and the University of Minnesota spanning the Mississippi River.

It came as a bit of good news he would be able to get home. Little did we know the magnitude of the story until we got home and started watching the coverage on television. It's going to be a major story in these parts for years to come.

It's another one of those life-defining events where you remember where you were when you heard some incredible news. It's like for those of us who are old enough to remember where we were when we heard President Kennedy had been shot. Or, most recently, where we were when we first heard about the attacks on 9-11.

Hopefully, this will be a wake-up call to start fixing our infrastructure. I've been reading about the state of the bridges and roads in America today, and it's a sobering fact: we need to speed up the fixing and building of our aging, and crumbling infrastructure.

My prayers go out to the people who were killed and injured, the people still buried in the river, and to their families and friends whose lives will never be the same.