Ralph

Being that this is the "holiday season," many of us spend copious amounts of time with people who are near and dear to our hearts. We also often spend time resurrecting the memories of those who are no longer with us in the flesh. This Christmas, as is usual, I did both, and I must say it was (as far as I can remember) one of the best Christmases yet.


I began my holiday festivities in Youngstown, OH...a city that has lapsed into some sort of crevice in the space-time continuum, where progress no longer exists. I must admit, it is (slowly) crawling out of this slump, but it will take divine intervention for this city to ever fight its way out of the infinitely deep chasm it has fallen into. Either way, a trip to Youngstown is always filled with experiences that are...strange...but strange is interesting so you never leave feeling disappointed. After my brief junket in Youngstown came to a close, I traveled south to an equally weird "city" ---> Washington Court House. The only real difference between these two places is that progress stopped in Washington CH right around the time it was founded (c.1810). If you're looking for something to compare it to, think of small cities in the deep south, before the 13th Amendment was adopted, that still valued the ownership of slaves and complete racial segregation (to this day, the population of Washington CH remains 96% white). Youngstown may be strange, but Washington CH is scary.


But for better or worse, this is where I was born, and where my grandparents had decided to make their home. The time I spent here on Sunday was much appreciated. We had a great meal, a few glasses of wine, and started to watch some football game that was on TV. But then, the worst possible thing that could happen...HAPPENED...the cable went out!!!! AH! We were then forced to actually spend time with each other which led to us taking out the big book of random "stuff" that my grandmother has kept around since she was born, in 1927. We were perusing terrifying pictures of our ancestors (one guy looked like Santa Claus with the face of the Devil), as well as old articles and letters when I happened upon a pretty recent newspaper article from the local newspaper. It was the "Saturday Profile" and the person that was featured was the big man himself, RALPH GEBHART, M.D. For your viewing pleasure, the article in its entirety can be found at the bottom of this post.


One part of the article really struck a chord in me. It was this:


LIFE'S PHILOSOPHY: You have only one lifetime so work hard, play hard, and experience everything you can with moral and legal limits.


It's a statement I have heard from him in one way or another since I was old enough to comprehend words. He really did live by this maxim, and tried to impress upon other people how important it really was. Ralph passed away in June of 2007, after a near 15 year battle with prostate cancer. He is my hero, he is my inspiration, he was the one person who I could ALWAYS count on to encourage, educate, and entertain me simultaneously (not an easy feat). For people who have never met him, it is hard to really describe all that he was in words. In fact, I would say it is impossible. I do not have the ability nor do I have the eloquence to be able to capture his essence, as beautiful as it was, in a manner that would really do him justice. I can say, without question, everyone who met him was changed, forever. I don't regret many things, but I do regret not being able to really let him know how deeply he has affected my life.


For 20 years he filled me with knowledge, ambition, and a reverie for all that this world and my life had to offer. It really is a magical thing, having the embodiment of everything that you want to be, standing before you.


The best gift that I received this Christmas wasn't something immediately tangible or material (although I did get a pretty sweet crock pot and food processor, along with many other great gifts). It was this article. It is so easy to be pulled down by the undertow these days. Each of us has what seems like an endless ocean full of things that need to be done. That one strong riptide is all it takes to pull us below the current, make us feel like we are drowning in things we HAVE to do. I had forgotten that part of life's beauty is learning to appreciate and enjoy everything, especially the day-to-day. I had lost that love of life and the dedication it takes to make it down this long road that I am on. A road that will hopefully result in bringing all of my dreams to fruition. But when I read this, I thought back to the years of conversations I had with Ralph, and how every time he spoke, he did so with unrestrained enthusiasm. I thought back to how his eyes actually sparkled with true joy and excitement for life, even after 70+ years of living it, and I got a little bit of that love and dedication back.


I think the more I remember, and the more I learn to see him in everything that I do, the more successful I will be at keeping that spark myself, not allowing the day-to-day to burn me down, but to build me up. Most of us have a person who inspires us or lights the fire of excitement in our hearts. Thank them if you can, because it is the most precious gift you will ever receive.


We should all take a moment, every day, to think about that person and what it is within them that inspires us. This way, we can all get a little bit of that love back in our lives.

HST

"There was never enough time. Every deadline was a crisis. All around me were experienced professional journalists meeting deadlines far more frequent than mine, but I was never able to learn from their example. Reporters like Bill Greider from the Washington Post and Jim Naughton of the New York Times, for instance, had to file long, detailed, and relatively complex stories every day -- while my own deadline fell every two weeks -- but neither one of them ever seemed in a hurry about getting their work done, and from time to time they would try to console me about the terrible pressure I always seemed to be laboring under. Any $100 an hour psychiatrist could probably explain this problem to me, in thirteen or fourteen sessions, but I don't have time for that. No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland...On the other hand, it might easily be something as simple & basically perverse as whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car.


People who claim to know jackrabbits will tell you they are primarily motivated by Fear, Stupidity, and Craziness. But I have spent enough time in jackrabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dull lives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now & then...No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheap thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenaline rush in crouching by the side of a road, waiting for the next set of headlights to come along, then streaking out of the bushes with split second timing and making it across to the other side just inches in front of the speeding front wheels. Why not? Anything that gets the adrenaline moving like a 440 volt blast in a copper bathtub is good for the reflexes and keeps the veins free of cholesterol...but too many adrenaline rushes in any given time-span has the same bad effect on the nervous systems as too many electroshock treatments are said to have on the brain: after a while you start burning out the circuits.


When a jackrabbit gets addicted to road-running, it is only a matter of time before he gets smashed -- and when a journalist turns into a politics junkie he will sooner or later start raving and babbling in print about things that only a person who has Been There can possibly understand." -Hunter Thompson

A little Christmas Spirit.

[ Do you hear what I hear? ]

There was silence today when I woke up. No motors from cars, or trucks, or airplanes, or helicopters. No jackhammers, or power drills, or bulldozers. No voices, no footsteps. No television or music. It was clear, unencumbered silence...and it was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard. In the age of 23.5 hour work days, and cities that never sleep, it is a rarity, indeed, that one should wake up without being immediately bombarded with the racket of the hustle and bustle of the world "taking care of business." This constant inundation of the senses, especially with sound, goes virtually unnoticed by most people; we've all acclimated to the capitalistic society that we live in...gotten used to having products (whether it's food, music, clothing..."things" in general) constantly slapping us in the face, and maybe even started to enjoy the almost seductive excitation that comes with the knowledge that there's always something goin' down.

But why can we no longer appreciate reticence? There are so few times when we are free from stimulation that people have actually come to fear moments of quiet. If you are looking to make someone uncomfortable, the sure fire way to accomplish that is simply to turn off the television and stop talking. The other person will immediately start writhing in distress, and their neurons will start firing at a supersonic rate, trying to come up with something...ANYTHING to say to liven the dead air. 


But why?

Personally, I find silence quite comforting, but that's probably because I spent a lot of time in my own head as a child...or perhaps because I grew up in a tiny house, with multiple younger siblings, who never stopped talking, and a break from the chaos was a miracle from the gods...either way, this preoccupation with being constantly stimulated (in one way or another) has got to stop. 


Take a time out, and enjoy some silence today. 

Dorian Gray

"There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamored of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black, fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth Sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin, dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colors of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colors, and be changed or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain." - Oscar Wilde

Lost

I wish I could get lost inside a book or a story. I mean, really lost. I wish I could dance between the lines of a tale so magical it brings me to tears, or make music to the beat of a poem, each new syllable inspiring the next beautiful note.