At lunch with colleague Dave Stromfeld in Chicago, 6 days before the seizure that landed me in O’Connor ER and my new life. I tripped over this photo after I inadvertently launched iPhoto on my MacBook Pro. Compare the pic with the mug below: I weigh the same, but months of steroids have bloated me (don’t get me started on steroids’ other ‘features’). My muscle tone has gone the way of my hair (disappeared). Where once I jogged 35 miles a week, so far this week I haven’t made it around the block.
Other brain cancer patients write about loss: it certainly, for me, defines the experience so far. What a difference a few months can make...
I snapped this photo while waiting to shoot an assignment at Dodger Stadium in the 1970s. One reason for posting is that I was having a heck of a time making the ‘Faith’ post, below, with a photo included.
In fact, as you can see, I never succeeded. I kept getting a permissions error from Apache on the ‘post’ path, even though every other Wordpress feature worked, and the whole post was blown away when I back-buttoned to the ‘Create Post’ screen. (I did eventually get smart and begin to copy the text for successive retries). The photo upload seemed to be working fine, as did the photo placement tool in the Wordpress editor.
So, now, images appear to be OK to post again…[but the 'faith image still won't go... hmmmm]. I’m wondering just what it is about the earlier problem… server weirdness? Image corruption issue? Full server or directory bug? I’m so used to Wordpress ‘just working’…
I am dualistic (kind of ‘quantum’) on the topics of science and faith. I have often responded to secular and atheist opinions on faith by asking the question about faith communities – where else would they come from? They’re not ’support groups’ per se: there’s a depth and commitment I’ve seen nowhere else. Neil Stephenson even notes the phenomenon in his novel Cryptonomicon.
We attend the 5 PM Sunday service at Trinity Episcopal Church in Menlo Park: it’s our faith community, without whose prayers, thoughts, meals and loving support, I’m not sure I or Linda would have made it through the last 6 months.
Speaking of which, Trinity is sponsoring a series starting this Wednesday evening on science and faith. I’m paricularly interested in hearing Dr. Sjoerd Bonting, scientist and Anglican priest, talk about “Chaos Theology.” Doing anything Wednesday PM? Come on down….