How about you?

Lottery ticket anyone?

So Bill Gross begins Midnight Candles. Is this a horror story? Perhaps a bit of fantasy fiction? Neither. Midnight Candles is the November 2009 installment of Investment Outlook from PIMCO, home of the world’s largest bond fund.

If you’ve thought investment writing is stuffy, jargon laden, put you to sleep reading you may wish to read the monthly column from Bill Gross. It’s very readable and highly informative. As the lead paragraph shows, he knows more than the numbers of finance.

Somehow I found the site and then spent a Sunday going through the years of history. There’s folklore, advice, parting comments, casual observations. If you saunter through the site you’ll find a diverse selection of humans, each of them with a memorable statement.

When I first saw the site I thought, “I’ve got to do this!” and sent an email to Mario asking if, by chance, he’d be in Italy at the same time I would be. This may sound far fetched, as London and Italy are not exactly close. However, Mario’s photos on the site included India, he’d just returned from a trip to Los Angeles and had a trip planned to southern France. Malta native Mario does quite a bit of traveling. It turned out he would not. Mario invited me to take my own photograph for submission. The result is here. (Yes, I could put the image here. You really should visit SOTM.) Mario suggested, “If you can send over any audio or video then that would be brilliant. I haven’t had any video submitted, would you like to do that?”

You bet. Never mind that I have no video editing software and the video function on my still camera seemed to be broken. No matter. With randonneur like determination I identified and resolved all the issues. Here’s the result:

Certainly someone once told you something memorable. Photograph yourself with a sign and send the result to Mario through the Your SOTM page. It’s a good time.

By Sunday evening my muscles were so sore it woke me up at night. How was your weekend?

I wrote a letter to them:

I hope to hear from Danny and find out about his hopes for life after chemo.

There is a lot of controversy over this case. People argue over patient’s rights, parent’s rights, the pain/benefit balance for cancer treatment. Dr. Rahul K. Parikh wrote a sensitive article for Salon.com exploring the complications.

This is a gripping story for me. At 19 I was diagnosed with stage 3B Hodgkins. Good timing on my part – an initial cure for Hodgkins was just being recognized. As my oncologist put it at the time “we know it works because people we treated five years ago are still alive.”

Treatments have improved since 1976. Side effects are “less” severe. Yet the central truth of Hodgkins chemotherapy is selective poisoning. Subjecting your entire body to poisons that will, 19 times out of 20, kill the cancer before it kills you. Living through that is not a good time.

At 13 Daniel feels the pain way more than he can foresee the decades of life that lie beyond treatment. I wish his parents could see the life that lies beyond treatment.

What follows is the contents of my letter to the editor on this matter.

Update: Daniel and his mom have returned from their time away from Minnesota. Daniel will be getting the treatment with a 95% success rate. It is with great relief I withdraw the statement “his parents are failing him.” May their journey through treatment go as well as possible.

Update: Kent Petersen is participating in the annual Livestrong Challenge to raise funds for the foundation. Donate Now! Why? The Livestrong Foundation does more than raise money for research. Their mission: We can help you face the challenges and changes that come with cancer. 30 years ago that element was missing in treatment. The Livestrong Foundation is supporting a vital aspect of helping people get back to total health. It is strongly worth supporting.

My introduction to him was in Drawing I, the Art equivalent of English Comp 101. On the first day we were gathered, rumors floated around about how he made you do so much work. “Be ready to fill up three or four sketch books,” one student warned.

Carlos quickly put the rumors to rest by addressing the class and setting out his expectations.

We laughed, set at ease. His expectations were actually greater than what was rumored. But we all felt good about it.

Eager to enjoy I read small bits, savouring the morsels, taking pleasure in the slow fulfilment of anticipation.

Will it hurt me through eventual disappointment? The question is quickly put aside, I return to enjoying the present pleasure.

I have a new book and days of pleasure await.

I did save. By visiting the website of the magazine in question. There I could get two years of Name Redacted Journal for $10 less than I could by accepting the special low offer extended only to renewing subscribers.

If I didn’t like the magazine so much I would have just let it lapse. Why make such an offer to a good customer and have an easily verifiable deal that is over 30% lower in cost?

In fairness, not all magazine marketing staffs are idiots. Many years ago one magazine offered a special deal “100 issues for 100 bucks”. If you believed the thing was going to stay in print for eight years it was a good deal. It still is for that matter. New subscriptions go for twice that amount. I don’t get the stream of letters urging re-subscribing, always an annoyance when they start one third of the way through your subscription term. I’m not sure when my 100th issue will be delivered. I am sure I’ll renew my subscription.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the h/t. You can read the comment stream at YouTube and see the video is over two years old. Responsible Marketing (criticism and praise for advertising and marketing) show cased it with the question “So, now do you believe you respecting all of your audiences?”

For those who wonder why I eat meat in the first place, I’ve considered the question for over 30 years. My food sourcing experience is not limited to grocery store and restaurant visits. I have participated in killing, butchering, cleaning and cooking meat. I have never been so hungry as when I assisted my grandfather in killing and cleaning a cow. Sure, I’d had a full breakfast but that didn’t matter. The process of killing, skinning and cleaning that beast left the marrow of my bones hungering. It was not my body that craved meat that day, it was my essence. I’ve also participated in making sausage. I do know what goes in and it’s fine by me. My consumption includes offal. It’s all good. The only hesitations I have about meat consumption is the cruelty of modern factory farming techniques and the ecological load of eating so high on the food chain.

Since Ash Wednesday of this year I’ve done without what is normally a staple of my diet. It was interesting.

Easing the process was my vegetarian wife’s support. There was no home front disruption. Certainly I ate better than many who give up meat for Lenten observation. We know how to do veg.

At work, where I take my lunches in the cafeteria, I was presented with a much smaller range of food options. Salads became a staple. On many days all the soups contained meat. The entrée specials had a vegetarian offering perhaps one day a week. Hot food, comfortable hot food, became mostly unavailable. My self imposed restrictions did not include fish. The tuna melt sandwich became a refuge for days when I wanted something warm.

The hardest times were at restaurants. Not that there were not ample vegetarian options. There were always good choices. However there were also great choices for meaty dishes that I desired. It never reached the level of craving, but I did feel some strong desires.

Controlling my desires by applying my wants became the central experience for Lent. The “want” in wishing to see this commitment through persevered over the desire to indulge in familiar flavors. During the forty days I got to observe myself encountering the moments of temptation and desire.

It was interesting.

Had I merely been speaking to a crowd there would have been no nervousness. On many occasions I’ve spoken, without nervousness, to diverse audiences:

• radio audiences during four years of being a DJ at KORT, Grangeville, Idaho and KYME, Boise, Idaho
• theater audiences, notably as a bawd (pimp in modern terms) banging on the edge of the stage and giving a monologue
• crowds of home brewers at meetings of the Oregon Brew Crew
• a congregation of strangers when the pastor asked if someone from the large group of visitors could please rise and share why we had come to services on that morning

Nah, when it comes to speaking I’ll rise up and calmly address an audience with prepared or ad lib remarks. No problem.

Put a clarinet in my hands, ask that I perform a simple tune (or with a great animation) and then I get all quivery. Quivery enough to muff the most well rehearsed, down pat sections of the piece. Public musical performance, unlike public speaking, is outside of my comfort zone.

What a surprise.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.