Almost three years ago, I was sitting with my brother on his deck, built outside the third story on the back of his house in Kentucky. It was Memorial Day weekend of 2007 and the leaves of the trees were full, and the grass way down below was crisp and deep bluish-green. At that height, we were literally up in the trees, and we felt like kids hanging out in a tree house. We were both enjoying a cool libation, as our dad used to call them. It was a cool breezy afternoon of relaxation and fun after a morning round of golf…the preferred sport of our family for 3 generations. I and my family were up visiting from Memphis to celebrate the holiday weekend, and the Confirmation of my nephew Drew.
"Are you doing any kind of exercise," he asked me.
"Nope, just don’t have the time," I responded. "I'm going to 6:15 Mass every morning, and then back to the house for breakfast and then off to work. I am involved in…such and such I went on for a few minutes…" All the while I'm explaining how incredibly busy I am, I'm thinking: What a crock! You're too busy to exercise for 30 minutes a day…you don't have one half hour you could spend in physical activity? Booshwa…again a favorite term of our father's.
"Me neither," he said casually as he sipped a cold Budweiser and looked out into the eye-level birds singing, perched high in the tree tops.
I was approaching my 49th birthday and I was as heavy as I had ever been in my life. In fact, just prior to the trip to Kentucky I had gone to the department store to get some new shorts. I knew we would be playing golf at my brother's country club, and I didn't have any nice shorts that fit my expanding waist line. My legs are particularly short, so getting a pair of 38's made me look like a college basketball player, except really dorky. As I looked in the mirror in the dressing room as I tried on pair after pair, I looked like Tim Conway's character "Dorf."
All of the nice shorts, the real golf shorts, that fit me in the waist looked more like ballooned-out capris on me. They hung about 2 or 3 inches below my knee caps and were baggy as clown pants. My hairy white legs looked like dirty toothpicks sticking out of whiskey barrels. I couldn't bear the thought of walking through Mike's clubhouse looking like Ronald McDonald' caddy. I finally found a pair that had a shorter inseam, and fit around the waist ok, but they weren't really golf shorts. They were more of a sad hybrid of golf shorts and hiking shorts. The back pocket, which was just a patch of fabric sewn to the back of the shorts, fastened with Velcro. The only proper place for Velcro on a golf course is on a golf glove, not on a gentleman's pants. And worst of all, they had an elastic waist band. Oh the humility. It had come to this: as I was approaching AARP membership status, I was also adding elastic waist band pants with Velcro fastened faux pockets to my wardrobe to accommodate my expanding waist line. And yet, I was too busy to exercise.
For much of the remainder of the weekend and the drive home to Memphis, I was haunted by my own words, my own pathetic excuses for not having enough time to exercise. And then a few weeks later, I was shocked into a new sobering and devastating reality. I was slowly walking down a long staircase in a loose fitting golf shirt. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed myself in horror as I stepped down and down and down the stairs in agonizingly slow-motion; and there they were. How had they gone so undetected by me up to this point in my life? Why hadn't someone said something to me? My wife? My kids? A close confidant? Granted, it's not something nice people say to other nice people. But, someone should have told me about them before I took them out in public like that. Why hadn't someone told me: I had man-boobs -Phil Mickleson, man-boobs! The red shirt I was wearing made me look like C.J. Parker running down the beach. What happened to Mitch Buccanon? That's when I decided I better find some time to exercise.
The next day I went to a strip mall shoe store looking for a pair of walking shoes. I hated running. I had always hated running, and I had no intention of running. I would be a walker. I would log in miles and miles of happy trails, at a brisk pace and conserve my knees and legs, joints and sanity. I would be the tortoise, never the hare; and I would persevere and stay the course and walk off the pounds and get back into my 32's -without elastic waist bands. I picked out a nice, rugged looking pair of New Balance 473's. They were light and cushioned and I liked the blue and gray colors; really great reasons to buy a pair of shoes, right? Well, at that time I sure thought that was the way to buy shoes.
Did I mention, I really hated running? I had tried it before, going all the way back to high school when Frank Shorter, and Dave Wottle were making headlines from the Olympics. But back then, I ran too far too fast, and my muscles burned like molten lava pits for a week. I was so sore, I walked gingerly around school, unable to bend my knees or hip joints; I looked like I had crapped in my pants. I tried running a couple times again over the course of the years...even did a 10K but mostly walked that...but same soreness always happened, except brutal pounding and shaking of my frame was added to the list. It just wasn't for me…at least it wasn't for me the way I was doing it.
And then, one day -one bright and sunny summer, early evening, I was out about half way on my daily brisk walk. Clouds started to gather on the north east horizon. Big zeppelin shaped clouds rolled over head, and an unfamiliar chill entered the breeze…unfamiliar for that time of year anyway. And then my moment of inspiration for giving running another try happened: Lightning. In the distance, lots of lightning and much rain and maybe even hail to follow. I was a mile from my house, and so the 473's instinctively picked up the pace. I started to jog, and then I was no longer a distinguished British gentleman out for an evening stroll, I was Eric Liddell of Chariots of Fire, and I was hauling ass back to the house. And as I'm running, I'm thinking: "hey this isn't so bad. I'm not being jarred like I remember, like an old jeep driving down a dry rock strewn river bed. This is kind of enjoyable." I got home, out of breath and much more sweaty than usual, but not electrocuted, not hail stung, not drenched from the coming downpour. But, I was kind of high. I was feeling pretty darn good. My first runner's high. And then the real miracle happened. The next day, I was not overly sore! I did not have the crap walk. I actually felt pretty good.
This event started me down the pathway of running which I have maintained with joy, and wonderment, and strains and pains to this day. I graduated from walking to running and thus joined the brotherhood and sisterhood of running, all because of a bolt of lightning on a summer evening almost 3 years ago.
Of the many, many things I have taken from the experience of running, maybe the one most important is: you don't have time for exercise, you have to make time for it.
I still resemble Dorf, or at least Tim Conway's "old man," who shuffles along, when I run. But for me, that's ok. I'm out there running, every week and loving it to death. I follow John Bingham, "The Penguin," and Jeff Galloway, the proponent of run-walking. I'll never get to the Boston Marathon as a participant. But again, that's ok with me. I'll waddle along, as long as I can; enjoying the sport I have come to love, even now that I do have my AARP membership. I have taken to heart John's slogan: "The miracle isn't that I finished, the miracle is that I had the courage to start." So as John also tells us all, "Waddle on," Friends.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
My Take on the Healthcare Debate...a Personal Story
I was contacted yesterday evening by Tony Garr of Tennessee Health Care Campaign, a health care reform advocacy group headquartered in Nashville. He asked if I would be willing to do an interview with the Memphis media. Channel 3 News was doing a story on the affects on local small businesses from the federal health care reform bill which was passed late Sunday. I am a small business owner, and Channel 3 wanted to get perspectives from both sides of the issue: one business that was opposed to the reform, and one in support of it. I was nervous about doing the interview, not wanting to look like the Albert Brooks character in "Broadcast News," who gets called on at the last minute to go on camera to fill in the Sunday Evening news chair. He develops a disturbing but hilarious case of flop sweat. But my interviewer, Danya Bacchus quickly put me at ease and I tried my best to be calm and poised.
I told Danya at the outset that I was not smart enough to know all the answers to this extremely complicated problem, but I thought I could at least offer my story to show how the failure of the system has affected me and my family. Within the limited amount of time that any 10:00 o'clock news story allows, I think my story was given a good look. However there were two points I made to Danya that were not able to make it to air time, I'm sure due to time constraints.
Please do not take the following quote out of context. I am not comparing insurance companies or the current health-care system to Nazi Germany. But I do believe this quote will illustrate my point about speaking out and taking a stand on this issue. Martin Niemoller said in a speech in 1946 to describe the inactivity of many of the German people during the time of the Nazi's:
"They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
Fourteen years ago, insurance premiums for my family, even with my wife's MS were significant, but manageable expenditures. However, over those years, the premiums have grown into the single largest item(s) in our family-business budget. For us, this expense is larger than our mortgage, utilities, cable bill, and phone bill combined. And I might add, these are policies with maximum deductibles, which mean we have further significant out of pocket expenditures as well. For those of you who have good insurance policies through your work, you are blessed. And I am happy for you. But, whether you realize it or not, your employer is going through the same kind of premium creep that we have experienced. It's just not quite as drastic as in our case because of group policies, depending on the size of your company. We have individual policies; one for my wife with MS, and one for myself and our one college aged son living at home. We have no access to a group policy because of the nature of my independent business. And we have no choice in insurance policies with other insurance companies for my wife because of her "pre-existing condition." She is as the insurance industry terms it: uninsurable.
I ask you, as an employee haven't you had to make ever-increasing contributions to your insurance coverage over these same 14 years? Do you think your employer is just trying to get out of paying for your insurance? My guess is they are right there with you having to find money from their bottom line, to match with yours to pay for ever-increasing premiums. Whatever your contribution is today, I'll be willing to bet that it will double or triple, like ours has, over the next 10 to 15 years, if we don't get a handle on this problem.
The second point I want to make is that this problem is affecting your neighbors. Yes, neighbors as in, people who live in your neighborhood. It is happening to the people across the street, and around your corner, at the end of your cove, not just folks who live on the other side of town, in subsidized housing and run down neighborhoods, or wherever you think they live. The face of this problem looks just like the one you look at every morning in the mirror. It's not "out there," somewhere. It may even be in your own family -a brother, sister, cousin, son or daughter.
It's easy for some people to put this off as an issue for "those" people, who don't work hard enough, or don't have the will to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. But the reality is, it does affect millions of people who pick themselves up by their bootstraps, but have been hit with a difficult, long term, chronic disease through no fault of their own. How fair is it, how American is it that someone really trying to live the American Dream, trying to soar with the eagles, is overwhelmed by a financial tsunami of enormous insurance premiums and never ending medical bills? So, don't look downtown, or north of town, or south of town to see how this problem is affecting people, you can look right across your own street.
So, what's the solution? I've already said, I'm not smart enough to solve all of the problems that this issue holds. But, I do find it a problem that we've given so much control of our health care system to private insurance companies. Not that the private sector is bad; heck I'm an entrepreneur myself, owning and operating my own business for 14 years. I'm a big fan and beneficiary of private enterprise, and the cherished American ideals of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. But, what if we gave control of our police and fire departments to private industry? What if at some point the police-company determined it was not profitable to go to certain neighborhoods; too far from the stations when gas prices rose sharply or too dangerous for their officers to patrol or even answer 911 calls? Or, what if the fire-company wouldn't answer an emergency call to a house made of all wood, because the owner should have known that his house would be more susceptible to fire than an all brick home right next door? In the same way, we have let the insurance companies cherry pick the healthiest and least costly individuals for them to insure, while excluding others through outright denials -as uninsurable, or priced them out of the market with exorbitant premiums. I do not believe the profit motive has served us well when it comes to our health-care, just as I don't believe profit would be a proper place for police and fire protection.
Although the mechanics of this problem are far beyond my intellectual capabilities, let's break it down to a somewhat simple proposition. We as a society have to ask ourselves this question: is health-care a right or a privilege? If you think it's a right, then quality care should be available to everyone, regardless of health circumstances and or economic situations. If you think it is a privilege, then I would like to appoint you…you personally…to be the single person in charge of deciding who gets proper care, and who gets denied. Would you make your choices on ability to pay? Would you make your choices on how sick someone was, or what type of disease they had; or would you decide based on what part of town they came from? With that power, I would like for you to reflect that the Good Samaritan considered none of these criteria when he helped someone who was put on his pathway in need of help. What about the two priests on the same road? And secondly, would you want the person living across the street to have this same kind of power? After all, he or she may be the last one to speak up for you; shouldn't you do the same, before there's no one left to speak for you?
I told Danya at the outset that I was not smart enough to know all the answers to this extremely complicated problem, but I thought I could at least offer my story to show how the failure of the system has affected me and my family. Within the limited amount of time that any 10:00 o'clock news story allows, I think my story was given a good look. However there were two points I made to Danya that were not able to make it to air time, I'm sure due to time constraints.
Please do not take the following quote out of context. I am not comparing insurance companies or the current health-care system to Nazi Germany. But I do believe this quote will illustrate my point about speaking out and taking a stand on this issue. Martin Niemoller said in a speech in 1946 to describe the inactivity of many of the German people during the time of the Nazi's:
"They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
Fourteen years ago, insurance premiums for my family, even with my wife's MS were significant, but manageable expenditures. However, over those years, the premiums have grown into the single largest item(s) in our family-business budget. For us, this expense is larger than our mortgage, utilities, cable bill, and phone bill combined. And I might add, these are policies with maximum deductibles, which mean we have further significant out of pocket expenditures as well. For those of you who have good insurance policies through your work, you are blessed. And I am happy for you. But, whether you realize it or not, your employer is going through the same kind of premium creep that we have experienced. It's just not quite as drastic as in our case because of group policies, depending on the size of your company. We have individual policies; one for my wife with MS, and one for myself and our one college aged son living at home. We have no access to a group policy because of the nature of my independent business. And we have no choice in insurance policies with other insurance companies for my wife because of her "pre-existing condition." She is as the insurance industry terms it: uninsurable.
I ask you, as an employee haven't you had to make ever-increasing contributions to your insurance coverage over these same 14 years? Do you think your employer is just trying to get out of paying for your insurance? My guess is they are right there with you having to find money from their bottom line, to match with yours to pay for ever-increasing premiums. Whatever your contribution is today, I'll be willing to bet that it will double or triple, like ours has, over the next 10 to 15 years, if we don't get a handle on this problem.
The second point I want to make is that this problem is affecting your neighbors. Yes, neighbors as in, people who live in your neighborhood. It is happening to the people across the street, and around your corner, at the end of your cove, not just folks who live on the other side of town, in subsidized housing and run down neighborhoods, or wherever you think they live. The face of this problem looks just like the one you look at every morning in the mirror. It's not "out there," somewhere. It may even be in your own family -a brother, sister, cousin, son or daughter.
It's easy for some people to put this off as an issue for "those" people, who don't work hard enough, or don't have the will to pick themselves up by their bootstraps. But the reality is, it does affect millions of people who pick themselves up by their bootstraps, but have been hit with a difficult, long term, chronic disease through no fault of their own. How fair is it, how American is it that someone really trying to live the American Dream, trying to soar with the eagles, is overwhelmed by a financial tsunami of enormous insurance premiums and never ending medical bills? So, don't look downtown, or north of town, or south of town to see how this problem is affecting people, you can look right across your own street.
So, what's the solution? I've already said, I'm not smart enough to solve all of the problems that this issue holds. But, I do find it a problem that we've given so much control of our health care system to private insurance companies. Not that the private sector is bad; heck I'm an entrepreneur myself, owning and operating my own business for 14 years. I'm a big fan and beneficiary of private enterprise, and the cherished American ideals of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. But, what if we gave control of our police and fire departments to private industry? What if at some point the police-company determined it was not profitable to go to certain neighborhoods; too far from the stations when gas prices rose sharply or too dangerous for their officers to patrol or even answer 911 calls? Or, what if the fire-company wouldn't answer an emergency call to a house made of all wood, because the owner should have known that his house would be more susceptible to fire than an all brick home right next door? In the same way, we have let the insurance companies cherry pick the healthiest and least costly individuals for them to insure, while excluding others through outright denials -as uninsurable, or priced them out of the market with exorbitant premiums. I do not believe the profit motive has served us well when it comes to our health-care, just as I don't believe profit would be a proper place for police and fire protection.
Although the mechanics of this problem are far beyond my intellectual capabilities, let's break it down to a somewhat simple proposition. We as a society have to ask ourselves this question: is health-care a right or a privilege? If you think it's a right, then quality care should be available to everyone, regardless of health circumstances and or economic situations. If you think it is a privilege, then I would like to appoint you…you personally…to be the single person in charge of deciding who gets proper care, and who gets denied. Would you make your choices on ability to pay? Would you make your choices on how sick someone was, or what type of disease they had; or would you decide based on what part of town they came from? With that power, I would like for you to reflect that the Good Samaritan considered none of these criteria when he helped someone who was put on his pathway in need of help. What about the two priests on the same road? And secondly, would you want the person living across the street to have this same kind of power? After all, he or she may be the last one to speak up for you; shouldn't you do the same, before there's no one left to speak for you?
Friday, March 19, 2010
Celebrating the Last Day of Winter
If you are a "glass-is-half-full" kind of person then you might view today as the last day of winter. I think that is a positive spin on tomorrow being the first day of spring. Here in the mid-south we've had an unusually cool and wet winter as predicted by the weather service experts and the Farmers Almanac. But, as I write this, the sun is shining, the skies are blue, and we even have the back door by the kitchen open to let in the spring-like breezes. Yesterday at lunch I went out to Shelby Farms for a mid-day run. It was wonderful seeing so many people out running, walking, sitting on blankets reading, and even a few young folks flying kites. People were variously dressed in shorts and tee shirts, sundresses, and sleeveless tank tops, with winter-pale limbs swinging and swaying in the purple weed dotted fields and up and down the running trails throughout the park. We were as lively as the daffodils and irises springing up from the moist dark ground swaying in the breezes, or the teal headed ducks bobbing along on the waves of the ponds and lakes along the trails.
It seemed an impromptu gathering to welcome back the life of spring and summer from the cold and listlessness of the passing winter. But alas, another cool front is due to come in tonight and leave us with a cloudy Sunday with a high of 50. This time of year teases us so cruelly with tastes of spring and then throws us back into the cooler of winter storage. But, trying so hard to be a glass-is-half-full person, I can remind myself that these bolts of cool weather are surely numbered for this season. Maybe a layer or two and a jacket will be needed for my long run on Sunday, but here's hoping afterward I'll be able to put them away until I'll happily be putting them on again in October. Another reminder that the seasons of life are truly a blessing: what we grow tired of one day, we can relish somewhere down the road. What a wonderful gift.
I've been running with Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running," as an audio book on my iPod. It's not nearly as heart pounding inspiring as an upbeat Rolling Stones play-list, but it's pretty good for an easy long-run. I love the simplicity of his language; it feels like an old friend telling stories as we jog together through the park. And, I'm amazed and encouraged at his physical endurance. Yesterday I listened to his notes from running an ultra-marathon 52 mile run in Japan. I find it encouraging as I waddle along my 4 mile route up and down the trails. It makes me feel a part of the brotherhood -and sisterhood of the running world. Even though I'll never reach those kinds of miles, my own accomplishments…a PR 5K, a late winter 10K, a successful completion of a 1/2 marathon, those are the runs at this stage of my life, that make me feel part of the brotherhood.
It seemed an impromptu gathering to welcome back the life of spring and summer from the cold and listlessness of the passing winter. But alas, another cool front is due to come in tonight and leave us with a cloudy Sunday with a high of 50. This time of year teases us so cruelly with tastes of spring and then throws us back into the cooler of winter storage. But, trying so hard to be a glass-is-half-full person, I can remind myself that these bolts of cool weather are surely numbered for this season. Maybe a layer or two and a jacket will be needed for my long run on Sunday, but here's hoping afterward I'll be able to put them away until I'll happily be putting them on again in October. Another reminder that the seasons of life are truly a blessing: what we grow tired of one day, we can relish somewhere down the road. What a wonderful gift.
I've been running with Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running," as an audio book on my iPod. It's not nearly as heart pounding inspiring as an upbeat Rolling Stones play-list, but it's pretty good for an easy long-run. I love the simplicity of his language; it feels like an old friend telling stories as we jog together through the park. And, I'm amazed and encouraged at his physical endurance. Yesterday I listened to his notes from running an ultra-marathon 52 mile run in Japan. I find it encouraging as I waddle along my 4 mile route up and down the trails. It makes me feel a part of the brotherhood -and sisterhood of the running world. Even though I'll never reach those kinds of miles, my own accomplishments…a PR 5K, a late winter 10K, a successful completion of a 1/2 marathon, those are the runs at this stage of my life, that make me feel part of the brotherhood.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
"How the Irish Saved Civilization," so We Can Enjoy Green Beer Today
Are you looking for a reason to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, even if you're not of Irish descent? Well, if you can't abide by today's often heard slogan that "On St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish," how about this for a little known St. Patty's Day fact: St. Patrick himself was not of Irish descent. "Blasphemy" you say? Not at all…according to one of my favorite books, "How the Irish Saved Civilization, The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe," by Thomas Cahill, "Patrick," was actually named Patricius, and was a "Romanized Briton"; in other words as a young boy, he was a middle-class Roman citizen, living somewhere near the western coast of what we now know as England or Scotland. But then something terrible happened to the young lad that has had according to Cahill, monumental consequences for the Western World…and I don't mean corned beef, cabbage, and green beer.
The young Patricius was kidnapped by a Celt raiding party and taken to the Emerald Isle, and sold into slavery. There he spent several years in servitude tending sheep and doing his best just to survive. In his isolation on the rolling green hills, with little to eat, barely enough to keep warm from the elements, and no one to talk with, he turned to God and developed a deep spirituality and love of Jesus.
According to his book "Confessio" after 6 years in servitude he received a message in a dream that he was to return to his homeland. He set out on foot and traveled some 200 miles to the nearest sea port, where he convinced a crew to take him back to the mainland of Europe, most likely France. He finally arrives home to friends and family. However, his "conversion," has deeply affected him, and he goes on to study for the clergy. At the age of 30 he makes the remarkable decision to return to Ireland to preach the Good News of the Resurrected Christ. Over the next 28 years, up to the year 430, Patricius converts thousands of "Hibernians," to the Faith; no small feat considering the thousands of years of pagan worship that preceded his arrival; and the Irish being of a stubborn nature, as my wife can attest.
Cahill's book "How the Irish Saved Civilization," then takes this story, of Patricius spreading the seeds of faith into Ireland, and shows how those seeds grew into faith communities, churches and most importantly, for Cahill's story, monasteries. In those monasteries the monks in the following 1000 years or so, were transcribing the great-civilized-literature of the Greek and Roman eras, thus preserving it while Rome and most of Western Europe were being sacked and burned by the Barbarians. If it weren't for these monks, in the farthermost remote land in Europe, Ireland, hard at work keeping these treasures alive, we may not have the works of Plato, or Socrates, or any of the first sparks of civilization today. It's a fascinating story when you consider how "civilization, the Irish, and Christianity," are all folded together. As I've heard many times, "God writes straight, with crooked lines."
So there you have it, a nice history lesson, something to ponder upon, and a good reason to celebrate this wonderful Holiday, whether you are of Irish descent or not. And the next time you are reading Cicero, or any of the classics, have a green beer by your side, and thank God for the Irish. Erin Go Braugh!
The young Patricius was kidnapped by a Celt raiding party and taken to the Emerald Isle, and sold into slavery. There he spent several years in servitude tending sheep and doing his best just to survive. In his isolation on the rolling green hills, with little to eat, barely enough to keep warm from the elements, and no one to talk with, he turned to God and developed a deep spirituality and love of Jesus.
According to his book "Confessio" after 6 years in servitude he received a message in a dream that he was to return to his homeland. He set out on foot and traveled some 200 miles to the nearest sea port, where he convinced a crew to take him back to the mainland of Europe, most likely France. He finally arrives home to friends and family. However, his "conversion," has deeply affected him, and he goes on to study for the clergy. At the age of 30 he makes the remarkable decision to return to Ireland to preach the Good News of the Resurrected Christ. Over the next 28 years, up to the year 430, Patricius converts thousands of "Hibernians," to the Faith; no small feat considering the thousands of years of pagan worship that preceded his arrival; and the Irish being of a stubborn nature, as my wife can attest.
Cahill's book "How the Irish Saved Civilization," then takes this story, of Patricius spreading the seeds of faith into Ireland, and shows how those seeds grew into faith communities, churches and most importantly, for Cahill's story, monasteries. In those monasteries the monks in the following 1000 years or so, were transcribing the great-civilized-literature of the Greek and Roman eras, thus preserving it while Rome and most of Western Europe were being sacked and burned by the Barbarians. If it weren't for these monks, in the farthermost remote land in Europe, Ireland, hard at work keeping these treasures alive, we may not have the works of Plato, or Socrates, or any of the first sparks of civilization today. It's a fascinating story when you consider how "civilization, the Irish, and Christianity," are all folded together. As I've heard many times, "God writes straight, with crooked lines."
So there you have it, a nice history lesson, something to ponder upon, and a good reason to celebrate this wonderful Holiday, whether you are of Irish descent or not. And the next time you are reading Cicero, or any of the classics, have a green beer by your side, and thank God for the Irish. Erin Go Braugh!
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