IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, REALLY

            I often wonder what life would be like if I didn’t have multiple sclerosis.  Would I have been a major league shortstop player because I had speed and a strong arm? Or maybe a NBA point guard because I could handle the ball and I had an outstanding jump shot?  Or maybe a NFL quarterback because I had pinpoint accuracy.  But the military was where I wanted to go.  I was ready to go into the U.S. Air Force Officers’ Candidate School after graduation from graduate school. After all, I would only be 24 year’s old.  

            Well, now I know. I would not do any of those things because the direction of my life changed on that lonely day in August of 1990.  After going though a battery of test, it was a relatively a new device called the MRI that confirmed the diagnosis. I had multiple sclerosis. There was now a reason behind why my hand totally froze while taking a final exam in graduate school. There was now a reason why I had double vision while stressed out taking any test.  There was now a reason why I couldn’t finish any task without trying to get my eyes to focus.  I now had answers.

            Even though I had multiple sclerosis, I soldiered on.  After stints at General Electric and the now the defunct accounting firm of Arthur Andersen, I took a job at a great place, Quixote Inc.  Although, I walked to Quixote in the beginning, as time past, it was becoming more and more apparent that I could no longer embark on this endeavor. Then it happened. One summer, coworkers at Quixote were determining who would play what position on the company’s softball team. I posed and gestured like I was a great baseball player, and well, coworkers immediately determined that I would be on the team. For me, this was mistake. Running was now impossible to archive. But with some lame excuse of a hamstring injury, I ended being the head coach.

            Now, I was determined to hide my diagnosis but hiding it would be costly.  I wasn’t retaining anything new and because I did not know what I writing, my writing became suspect.  It was the summer of 2000, about ten years into my diagnosis; the cognitive impairments were becoming more and more apparent.  At the now defunct WorldCom Inc., which would be my last job, I became the butt of my boss’s jokes. He mocked me with my colleagues. I was the guy with the Masters Degree who could not complete tasks that someone with a Masters Degree should be able to complete. Maybe it was time to come clean.  So I slowly did.

            I first told a female colleague and it relived a lot of pressure.  I felt I knew what a gay person felt when they come out. I always felt like I knew what women felt about their biological clock because I had a physical clock that was ticking.  After further talks with my neurologist in Chicago, it became apparent that I could no longer handle high finance or pursue a Doctorate Degree.  My working career was over and now I was on disability.

            I thought my life could not any worse but it did. My wife of ten years divorced me. And after some time, she decided to move back to her hometown of St Louis, Missouri with my sons. But after they were in St. Louis for less than six months, my oldest son caught a nasty staph infection. It ate away bones in his neck to the point that his neck was going to collapse.  The best part, or if you can say that, is because of my disability from multiple sclerosis, I was able to move from Chicago to St Louis and be with him. In his hospital room, I told him stories of my athletic experiences that made him laugh.  He was concerned that he would no longer be able to put his chin in his chest but I simulated in my scooter, how a person would look if they walked liked that and he laughed. I told him how basketball coaches insist players always keep head up and how he was now a natural to do just that. We laughed and laughed all night and every night in that hospital room.  Maybe I put him at ease or maybe I did not but I know because of multiple sclerosis, I was the last person he would see when he went to sleep and the first he would see when he woke up. 

            The First Lady is from Chicago and her father had multiple sclerosis.  I grew up five blocks from where the first family lives in Chicago.  They overcame many obstacles to get where they are, so did me and now I hope my son will.

            Today, I no longer work or drive so money is an issue. I live alone in isolation.  My ex-wife and I are friends and that relieves stress.  She brings the boys by to see me but I have to depend on her.  I’m in St Louis and my family is in Chicago and my boys are not old enough to help me. Yeah, I can’t walk or play basketball or even attend basketball games my boys are in but I’m alive.             

            So am I bitter?  No.  Do I wish I didn’t have multiple sclerosis, you bet.  But I have accepted it and moved on.  It is what it is. I would not wish this disease on anybody though. Now, I look for breaking news on treatments and potential research. I spend my days writing in my blog or just writing. Along with my brother, I write screenplays that I hope one day, someone in Hollywood may show some interest in. But there is a positive thing associated with this dreadful disease; I was there in my son’s time of need. Can anyone really say it’s a wonderful life?  Well, I can.

GUNS

Guns don’t kill people; people kill people as the National Rifle Association would say. Yeah, people with guns kill people. Take away the guns; it would be a lot harder for people to kill people.

LAST NIGHT, AMERICA WON

LAST NIGHT  NOV. 6TH 2012. . .

The winners . . . .

Women’s reproductive rights

Marriage equality

Climate Change

Civil rights

War opponents

Social liberalism

A vision of diversity

We are in this together

. . and whatever you can add

The losers . . . . .

Bigots and Racists

Religious zealots

Non-believers about Climate Change

Birthers

War proponents  

Social Conservatism

A monolithic vision

You are on your own

. . and whatever shouldn’t happen

Last night, America won with the re-election of President Obama

 

SHOULD OBAMA BE PLACED ON MOUNT RUSHMORE?

 I know a sitting president cannot be placed there, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start thinking about it.  Why you ask?  

1)       George Washington was the first President. Obama is the first black president.  Clinton aside, Obama actually is black.

2)       Abraham Lincoln is credited with freeing the slaves. Obama enabled gay people in the military and country as a whole to live freely in a country that is still struggling to see them as equals. 

3)      Thomas Jefferson helped write the U.S. Constitution, a document about freedom and liberty. Obama is living by that document by allowing young immigrants to live with freedom and dignity in the only country they know.

4)      Theodore Roosevelt busted up big industrial trusts and set aside land for conservation. Obama is defending people against companies that are "too big to fail", and he is an environmentalist in the vision of Teddy.  

And among other things, Obama passed a national health care program that other presidents have been trying to do since Teddy Roosevelt, pursued and killed America’s real “Enemy Number One”: Osama bin Laden. And finally, Obama saved the massive American auto industry and thousands of well paying jobs when others said let them go bankrupt.

Need I go on?  

Therefore, I ask -- is it time to start thinking about it?

TO BE DISABLED OR BLACK IN AMERICA

 

             I often think about what it would like not to be disabled.  But then, I think about what it is like not be a black man.   You see, I’m both so I can compare the two from a position of experience.

            Born in Chicago in 1966, I thought the hardest thing was to be black or African-American male in America.  Having grown up in the Hyde Park and the University of Chicago neighborhood, yes, I do remember in route to Kenwood H.S., walking past a home that would later be the Chicago home of the future President of the United States.  

            Years later, the Travon Martin shooting in Florida happened.  Was he profiled because he happened to be in the neighborhood?  He had a right to be there but that didn’t matter.  I had a right to be in Hyde Park but that too didn’t matter. I, like Travon, were youths just trying to get where we were going. Oh wait a minute, we are black.

            Now, I am disabled and in a scooter.  Yes, the scooter gives me some independence but its nothing like being able to walk.  But I ask myself would George Zimmerman have profiled me if I had been in a scooter?  Would Travon have been profiled if he was in a scooter?

            I now notice things since being in a scooter.  No one feels threaten by me.  White men don’t have to worry about me stealing their women – the sexually strong black male – is no longer.  White women don’t clutch tighter their purse because I’m near.  Police don’t stop me anymore because now they probable say to themselves, he don’t fit the description and besides he couldn’t have done it.

            Had Travon been in a scooter would George had profiled him?  Would Travon be alive today had he been in a scooter?  Would George have drove past dismissing him?  Would George’s self defense claim been totally ridiculous? Yes, I can’t play basketball or baseball with my sons.  Yes, I won’t make it to all their track meets because of the double vision. Yes, I can’t have long walks on the Lakefront with my sweetheart.

            I can’t do those things any more. But now, I won’t be shot because someone feels threaten. I suffer from multiple sclerosis which is the same thing that First Lady’s father suffered from. Yea, I’m in a scooter but I’m alive.  George would have dismissed me.  There would have been no confrontation. Looking at what happened to Travon and as long there are people like George Zimmerman around, I ask myself:  Would I rather be disabled or a black male in America?  RIP Travon.

           

Vacation?

Can someone justify to me as to why the president can go on vacation for a month when our young men and women in the armed forces have to sweat day in and day out in Iraq. I request that as long as our troops can not take vacation, he should not be able to either. After all he sent them there and since he refuse to go, the president can show his support by at least not going on vacation.



I. Rakski
Contributing Fellow

How low can you go?

How low can Bush’s favorability rating go? According to a Newsweek poll released today, he is at 26%. America doesn’t like kings.