Graduation

This is a blast from the past. I came across my older son's high school graduation photos on my computer, and I wanted to post them for the memories.

Informal shots after graduation. Ryan saw his grandmother for the second, or maybe third, time in his life. Probably won't see her again for a long time.

I did the tourist thing and took Grandma down to the mall in Washington, DC where we went to the Museum of Natural History. There was a wonderful exhibit of tropical butterflies. The exhibit is a glass enclosure that people can enter to spend time looking at the butterflies and plants.

There was fruit on posts for the butterflies, and information cards that so that people could identify the butterfly and its native country.

Grandma looks at the butterflies.

We watched my youngest son play a lacross game, although the game was rained out shortly after the photo was taken.

Penguin Pace 2009

I had no idea how I'd do in this race because I've barely been training--and I mean barely--but I shaved a few seconds off my time on a hilly course so I was reasonably satisfied, although I keep wishing I was in better shape. The only consistent training has been in the last two weeks in which I've been alternating treadmill running and cycling dates with Troy Jacobson, whose workout killed me the first time I did it. It will be two or three more weeks before I know whether the consistency actually sticks.

Penguin Pace is one of my favorite local races because they give out a great t-shirt. I love it when races give you a moisture management shirt that you can actually wear while training. This shirt is my base layer for my winter training outfit, so I wear it all the time. The race sells out each year and is known for it's catered sit-down breakfast. But this year, a water pipe broke in the senior center where the event is held, so they moved the breakfast to a nearby middle school and handed out bag breakfasts. Not quite the same...but a nice way to start the day. I'll go cook my Super Bowl chili now.

Alley Loop
I know I shouldn't keep using the Internet as a tool for fantasy, as a way to find information, photos, and videos about other places, activities, and events in which I'll probably never get to participate...but I do this a lot lately. This weekend in Crested Butte, the Colorado town near where my son goes to school, they had the Alley Loop Nordic Marathon. There are actually many distances from 1.5K, 3K, 5K (hey I could be doing a xc ski race instead of a running race), 10k, 21K, and 42K. The event is billed as "Crested Butte's largest costume party." All of the races start in the small town near the nordic center and wind through the streets and alleys of the town before heading out onto the trails surrounding the town.

Just to help us all visualize, I found a video of the finish which shows the quaint town:

Baltimore Examiner Closing

Less than three years after its launch as the city's second daily newspaper, The Baltimore Examiner is shutting down, a victim of slower-than-expected ad sales.

Employees of the free tabloid were informed of the closure Thursday morning. The Examiner will publish its last issue on Sunday, Feb. 15. About 90 people will lose their jobs, said Jim Monaghan, a spokesman for Clarity Media Group, the paper's Denver-based parent company.

"We had good people there. We thought we had a good paper," Monaghan said. "It's a disappointment that it didn't work out."

Clarity, owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz, also publishes Examiner papers in Washington and San Francisco. Ryan McKibben, Clarity's CEO, told Baltimore staffers that the company expected "strong revenue synergies" between the Baltimore and Washington papers, but those did not materialize.

Clarity had been searching for a buyer for the Baltimore paper for months, McKibben said.
"We didn't get the depth of national advertising that we would have liked. We thought, with the combination of two markets, we would have been able to do that," Monaghan said. "After 30 months of trying, it became clear during the current recession that advertising is not increasing."

The announcement "came as a complete surprise" in the newsroom.

Skiing The Butte

My son took these awesome photos! Part of me worries about my son doing intermediate runs on his third or fourth time skiing. After all, I am his mom and it's my job to worry about everything. But another part of me admires his bravery in tryng new things. Before he moved out to Colorado, my son never went downhill skiing or rock climbing. Now, he's trying all of these things, and last I heard, he was contemplating ice climbing.

The photo above was taken at the top of the Silver Queen express lift--the highest place on the mountain where you can take photos.

This photo looks over the town of Mt. Creseted Butte at the base of the mountain in the foreground, and then the town of Crested Butte. There are a few scattered homes that are not a part of the town...they're actually mansions.

He keeps telling me that the sky is very blue in Colorado because there's less pollution, and you can see a lot of stars at night. Before he moved out there, he never talked about the color of the sky.

There are a lot of warning signs for black diamond trails. My son assures me that he hasn't tried those yet!! He also plans to get a helmet.

He went down the Silver Queen Road to Forest Queen, both intermediate trails.

I know these pictures are his invitation to me.

Musings for the New Year

For anyone who wants to know what I do at master's swimming, just take a look! The group is temporarily crowded into a very small pool, so we're focusing on stroke and the coach is videotaping team members and critiquing our stokes. It was really neat. I have a hard time finding myself on the video--despite watching it several times!! I'm the one with the great stroke, right? Nope, I need to work on keeping my head level with the water at my hairline, which should help me breathe more efficiently. (There may have been complaints about posting the video to YouTube, and if that happens, it will disappear from this blog.)




It's a new year and it's time for some goal setting. After my half marathon, I fell off the bandwagon with all three sports. I worked out periodically during the week, always trying to get back into a routine, but never achieving my goal. At night, I just wanted to go to bed and pull the covers over my head, and there were days I did that. I came to realize the value of going to swim practice and engaging in an endorphin-producing activity with people that seemed happy. Sometimes the good mood even rubbed off on me, even if just for a little while.

My son came back from college for winter break and with both kids home, I took the last two weeks of the year off for a blissful time of relaxing with family, sleeping, eating, watching R-rated movies (I could have lived without) and playing Monopoly (my oldest son became very strategic with the game). My husband and I ran together down our favorite trail, taking our first steps to getting our base back...




Hubby decided that a marathon is on his Bucket List (although I think he's too young to have one). Maybe it was watching me to a half marathon....maybe it was watching the marathoners, run, walk, and crawl to the finish line...or maybe it was the movie and the New Year...but he says that he needs to do the marathon this year.

He's been running for two years; however, he isn't consistent in the days/miles he runs per week and the most he's ever run is 15 miles per week. The longest race he's ever done is a 10K. When I posted his background info to an e-mail discussion group, wondering if perhaps a marathon was a crazy proposition, all I received were words of encouragement. The marathoners who responded said that if he trains consistently and builds a decent base, he can do it. Of course, if he gets serious, I'll be thinking about it too.

I have a lot of big goals this year with sports and studying. And as I try to regroup and rebuild, I hope my son does too. This should be an interesting year, and we'll see how it goes!

Three Cups of Tea

One of the things I really enjoy is reading and discussing books, so I've participated in our office book club. Participants democratically vote for one of several books, and then discuss it over a potluck lunch. Many of these books I would have never read if not for the book club, and many books deal with other cultures, which is reflected in our potluck lunch. Previous books included The Zookeeper's Wife (Diane Ackerman), Loving Frank (Nancy Horan), Unaccoustomed Earth (Jhumpa Lahiri), and Dreams of My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (Barack Obama). I didn't actually read the last book because during the elections, I believe in keeping politics separate from the workplace. However, the elections were over when the book discussion occured and I was piqued.

In search of an uplifting book with a happy ending, our book club chose Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I read parts of this book while I was sick over Thanksgiving, and was inspired to sip tea while reading. I later bought Chai tea, which is often mentioned in the book.

Greg Mortenson was born in Minnesota to parents who were Lutheran missionaries and spent the first 15 years of his life near the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. He is fluent in Swahili, English, Pashtu, and Urdu. His father co-founded the Kilimajaro Christian Medical Center, a teaching hospital, and his mother, Jerene, founded the International School Moshi.

On July 24, 1992, Mortenson’s younger sister, Christa, died from a massive seizure after a lifelong struggle with epilepsy. To honor his sister, Mortenson climbed K2, the world's second highest mountain on the Karakoram range, which sits between Pakistan and China. There, at the 28,250 ft summit, he planned to bury his sister's necklace.

But Mortenson never reached the summit. After spending 70 days on the mountain, Greg and three other climbers interrupted their ascent to complete a 75-hour lifesaving rescue of another climber. The rescue depleted Mortenson's strength, and exhausted and weakend, he mistakenly wandered into the village of Korphe, where he was nursed back to health.

While recovering, Mortenson asked to see the village school and was shown a meeting place where children wrote out their lessons in the dirt with sticks. Mortenson made a vow that would prove to be a turning point in his life when he promised to return the the village with funds to build a school.

So, Mortenson returned to California and took a job in his profession as an emergency room nurse, living out of his car and pounding out more than 500 letters, first on a typewriter and then on a computer, to raise money for a school. I never could make sense of Mortenson's desperate financial situation from reading the book, as nursing has been a shortage profession for quite some time, and as such, is a financially rewarding profession. Mortenson's luck turned when he met Jean Hoerni, a former mountain climber and Silicon Valley pioneer, who funded that first school.

Much of the book details the challenges in building that first school. Unlike other books that describe humanitarian efforts, such as Josh Swiller's The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa about his work with the Peace Corps, one of the crucial underpinnings of Mortenson's success is his willingness to learn about other cultures and adopt their practices without foisting information about American culture. In the Muslim culture of Pakistan, Mortenson communicates his respect for Islam and kneels toward Mecca to pray alongside his hosts.

Another crticial factor in his favors is his ability to identify "culture brokers" along his journey who sympathize with his goals and help him navigate the local culture and customs to help Mortenson achieve his objectives. In Rwalpindi, his host patientely and skillfully barters for building supplies for his first school while Mortenson sits through endless cups of tea needed to conduct business. It is only when he lacks a "culture broker" that trouble ensues, such as a kidnapping in the Northwest Frontier Province tribal areas of Pakistan.

Another strength is Mortenson's willingness to work with local tribal leaders within the customs of their society. He accepts a setback when the village leaders announce that they must first build a bridge instead of a school. Mortenson is forced to return to California with nothing concrete accomplished to engage in another round of fundraising.

The success of that first school in Korphe ultimately led to the founding of the non-profit Central Asia Institute with its mission to build schools in the remote, rural regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where few opportunities for education exist, especially for girls.

In my own mind, one litmus test of a biographical/autobiographical novel is its honesty. It is human nature to want to project successes, while glossing over unflattering aspects of our characters and our lives. Unlike Michael Phelp's Beneath the Surface which puts a creative spin on unflattering chapters of his life like his DUI, Three Cups of Tea presents an honest—and balanced—view of Mortenson's accomplishments and his character. I was often in awe of his everyday acts of bravery: crossing a tightrope bridge with rushing water below and three heavy people wobbling the rope behind him; going on a hunt for an ibex mountain goat over glaciars while wearing only tennis shoes stuffed with straw; traveling on the back of bumpy truck rides while practically boucing off the truck, over the edge of the mountain below. Yet it also presents a view of his homelife and the sascraficial amount of time he poured into CAI at the expense of his wife, children -- and even regular sleep.

Mortenson’s approach hinges on a simple idea: that by building schools and helping to promote education—particularly for girls—support for the Taliban and other extremists eventually will dry up. While this goal is laudable and I fully support his efforts to promote education, I feel that Mortenson softpedals the cultural forces particularly in Pakistan's rural and remote areas that leave girls without an education, without the opprtunity to exercise choice and determination in their lives, and even without the chance to live.

This is a culture in which male children are favored over female children and from birth, boys are given more food than their sisters. A girl's father and later her husband exercise control over her, and spousal abuse is common. Tribal customs include arranged marriage and honor killings. It is telling when a young woman approaches Mortenson to ask for tuition for higher education, that Mortenson hands the tuition money to the girl's father. The village elders think it odd that Mortenson asks girls their dreams, which shows their support for the education of girls.

The $3.7 million non-profit 501(c)3 CAI organization is still largely the work of Mortenson, with only eight U.S. staff members. None of the schools founded by CAI are self-supporting, and according to the organization's 2006 tax statements, a handful of schools had no girls enrolled. Although the effort is still young, I would have liked to have a better sense of the results that his organization has achieved in educating girls beyond anecdotal reports in the book. How many female students went on to higher education? How long did girls remain in school compared to boys? What did these students accomplish with their education?

It is a fascinating book to read and offers a great deal of insight into world events. I'm looking forward to the shape and direction our book discussion takes and its effect on my own views. The next book we'll read is The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. I've read Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much is True and I'm looking forward to beginning his recently released 752-page novel.

Crested Butte Cross Country Skiing

One of the neat things about Western State College is that they have a Wilderness Pursuits program that lets students do various types of outdoor activities like rock climbing, mountain biking, hiking, and camping -- for very little cost. This Saturday, they have cross country skiing for $15, which includes all equipment, lunch, instruction, and transportation. What a deal!

Of course, this is the time of year that my xc ski dreams begin. I've gone cross country skiing only once or twice, but every year I wish I could go again. One of my favorite vacations was a trip to Devil's Thumb Ranch. From looking at the web site, the resort seems to be expanded and upgraded from what I remember years ago. I don't remember any of the cabins as being that fancy and I certainly don't remember any spa. But the food was excellent and very natural, with brown eggs included in the breakfast buffet. Of course, I always order the most exotic thing on the menu. We went on a sleigh ride one afternoon where the hosts cooked s'mores and hot chocolate over a fire. Our kids would pet the horses in the field outside the cabin. I remember ice scating at night.

The first time we went cross country skiing, my husband and younger kid kept falling down and didn't enjoy it (although I dont' understand how you can possibly fall while cross country skiing because you just glide along), but my older son and I got the hang of it easily. My older son wanted to go skiing one night, but it was dark and there was snow falling and I was afraid we wouldn't find our way back, so we agreed to go out one more time on our last day there. My kids think it's lame, I still have the ski tag from that trip on my winter jacket.

Wish you were there!