NOT QUITE BACK IN THE BLOG GROOVE

So I posted the first installment about our Europe/Lithuania trip on Crisco, Etc. instead of here. The original premise was to have my life history here and things I have learned in practicing pediatrics there (like we can't use Crisco anymore because they added a butane derivative to it to make it last as long as hamburgers on your kitchen counter).

Future posts will conform with the original format, probably!

GRACE OF GOD

Only by the grace of God am I able to write that at 5:45 a.m. on March
29, I was involved in an almost deadly car accident in Dana Point and
survived! My recovery is being chronicled on CaringBridge by
Vanessa, who has already walked my path.

www.caringbridge.org/visit/drmichaelshannon

I will blog again, but it may be several months before I continue.

MWS

REALLY COOL VS. ALMOST COOL

As I finished junior high (7th-9th grade) and ventured into high school, it became even more obvious to me that there was a fairly clear distinction between really cool kids and almost cool kids and not cool kids. I realized by this time that I was somewhere in the middle group and that my chances of ever being rally cool were not great. Really cool was Jay Wilkinson (the son of Oklahoma football coaching legend, Bud Wilkinson), who was good looking, quarterback of the football team and rode a Cushman Eagle to school ( I rode my Schwinn bicycle and was first chair trombone in the band - not really cool). I had several really good friends and lots of acquaintances, but none of my friends were really cool either. some of the really cool people were friendly and would actually talk to us and say "Hi" in the hallway and that made us feel a little closer to really cool. But in the end we thought that they were cool and we were almost (but never ever really going to be) cool.

When my family moved from Oklahoma to New Mexico in the summer after my sophomore year of high school, I was devastated. I was leaving the kids (really cool and almost cool) that I had gone to school with from the second grade on. And I was moving to the middle of nowhere to a new school where I would be the new kid in town and have even less chance to be really cool and maybe a chance to be not cool. As it turned out, Portales, New Mexico is a very small college town as compared to Norman. And where as in Norman, I was the son oa a college associate professor in a large university, in Portales I was the son of a full professor who became the Academic Dean of a much smaller university. Because of this difference I was regarded as a much bigger fish in a smaller pond and began a journey which ended with my being one of the really cool kids in Portales High and later Eastern New Mexico University (in my opinion, of course, looking back). And it didn't hurt my coolness that I found my first girlfriend, also cool and went "steady" through the rest of high school (young love can blind feelings of uncoolness).

However, thinking you are really cool and believing it can are totally different. Graduating as covaledictorian, going off to medical school, training for pediatrics at one of the country’s best children’s hospitals, developing the leading pediatric practice in my area – these are all things that a really cool person would do. And I developed a costume that looked like I was a really cool person and I had a beautiful wife and wonderful kids like a really cool person would. But believing it would take quite a while and another journey.

In 1987, Dr. McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) starred

in one of his earliest films which to me was like a

story of my past. The plot of the movie stated,

“Ronald Miller is tired of being a nerd and makes a

deal with one of the most popular girls in school

to help him break into the “cool” clic. He offers her

a thousand dollars to pretend to be his girlfriend for

a month. It succeeds, but he soon learns that the

price of popularity may be higher than expected.”

It wasn’t until later in the mid 90s that I finally figured

out the whole “cool” thing, and that will be the content

for another blog entry.

HAPPY NEW 2011

As we leave 2010 I will take a quick moment to remember some of the hightlights for our family.

The Panic Swine came and went. (almost, except there was an attempt to use the "panic" to sell the 2010 flu vaccine because it contained H1N1)

Lala turned 65 and now qualifies for social security and medicare if she chooses.

I had a 6th double same digit birthday and began walking every single day.

Spencer turned 6 and started kindergarten.

Owen turned 3 and started preschool.

Vanessa survived a severe auto accident with only four broken fingers.

Michael's pediatric dental practice continued to become busier and he is now open four days a week in his own office.

Sammy's sister Vicki survived triple negative breast cancer and now has very curly hair.

We spent our 32nd summer vacation at the Alisal Ranch near Solvang.

Sea View Pediatrics added our 10th doctor and in early 2011 will open our fourth (and presumably last) office in Irvine. Everyone in our family continues to take Vitamin D and to believe that it is very important for our long-term health.

We ended the year with our largest Thanksgiving in West Virginia at Vanessa's (attended by all of us and Vera's sister and our niece Shannon and her family) and our largest Christmas gathering in California with Sammy's mother, her sister Olivia and her sister Vicki and family from Houston.

We fully realize that many others will not remember 2010 as a good year and we are thankful that ours was so positive. We are very thankful and appreciate each and every day.

GROWING UP IN SOONER LAND - RECOLLECTIONS

Norman Oklahoma is just a little south of the center of Sooner Land, and also one state south and a little east of the geographic center of the U.S. (Lebanon, Kansas). Norman is at the western edge of the Bible belt, just below the western edge of "the Midwest" and at the upper west edge of "the South".

Sooners is the name given to settlers in the Midwest of the United States who entered the Unassigned Lands in what is now the state of Oklahoma before President Grover Cleveland officially proclaimed them open to settlement on March 2, 1889 with the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889. The name derived from the "sooner clause" of the Act, which stated that anyone who entered and occupied the land prior to the opening time would be denied the right to claim land.

Sooners were often deputy marshals, land surveyors, railroad employees, and others who were able to legally enter the territory early. Some Sooners crossed into the territory illegally at night, and were originally called "moonshiners" because they entered "by the light of the moon." These Sooners would hide in ditches at night and suddenly appear to stake their claim after the land run started, hours ahead of legal settlers. For anyone who doesn't follow college football, Sooners is also the name of the University of Oklahoma football team.

When we moved to Norman late in the summer of 1951, the population was around 28,000. Today the population has grown to 115,000. The city is named for Abner Norman, who headed a federal work crew surveying the empty lands along the Arbuckle Trail (a feeder route to the Chisholm trail along which cattle were driven from Texas to Kansas).

As a child growing up in Norman I learned many things about the town and the area. Coming from Kansas and Ohio where the soil is black, the red soil of Oklahoma was a new experience, and I think also a new experience for our mom doing laundry. Oklahoma soil is red because it contains iron minerals such as hematite and ferrihydrite which oxidize or rust creating the distinctive color.

Dust from Oklahoma during the 30s was blown as far north as Canada and as far East as the Atlantic Ocean. Although Oklahoma is often associated with the Dust Bowl, it actually only affected the Oklahoma Panhandle. Drought in the years 1934-37 occurred on grasslands that had been plowed and planted with wheat to meet the demands of World War I. With no grass root system to hold the soil in place, it simply blew away. My most prominent memory of the red dirt was in fourth grade when I attended a new Madison elementary school. On windy days we would come in from recess and have to take wet paper towels and clean the red dust off our desks before we could use them. I can also remember driving with my family when the red dust was blowing so severely in places along the highway that it was almost impossible to see.

Another thing in Norman that was red (besidesthe colors of O.U., which are actually crimson and cream) was the color of rose rocks. I can't remember where we found these but I am pretty sure I still have one in one of my boxes of childhood rocks.

Rocks resembling full-grown roses were formed by barite rock crystals during the Permian Age and are found in a few rare places around the globe. In Oklahoma, the distinctive red soil colors them in hues ranging from reddish brown to cinnamon. According to an old Cherokee legend, the rocks represent the blood of the braves and the tears of the maidens who made the devastating "Trail of Tears" journey to Oklahoma in the 1800s. Rose rocks are aggregates of barite (barium sulfate) crystals and sand whose iron content gives them a reddish hue. The barite crystals form a circular array of flat plates, giving the rock a shape similar to a rose blossom. Rose rocks appear either as a single rose-like bloom or as clusters of blooms, with sizes ranging from pea sized to four inches (20 cm) in diameter. The rose rock was selected as the official state rock of Oklahoma in 1968.

For a growing child, Norman had lots of advantages (ranked no.6 on CNN Money's Best Places to Live in 2008). There was plenty of empty land just across the street from the edge of any of the housing areas and plenty of places to ride bikes and dig forts in the trees and johnson grass. As a boy scout, we only had to drive a few minutes outside town to get to places to camp and hike.

We lived in a new area close to the University of Oklahoma where there were tons of young kids to play with.

Even though the wind blows a lot in Oklahoma and it gets freezing cold in the winter and hot enough to fry eggs on the sidewalk in the summer, there were lots of beautiful days to play and ride to the university or to friends houses. It was considered safe at the time for kids to ride several miles from home. We only had to let our parents know where we were going and when we would be back. And of course, there was always something going on at the university, especially football.

Norman was also centrally located and just south of the state capitol, Oklahoma City. We went to the capitol city many times through the years for shopping excursions, scout expositions, band competitions, tennis matches, state championship football games and numerous other reasons. The central location also made it easy to take family trips to many of scenic state parks of Oklahoma.

Travelling though the state made it obvious that there is much Indian heritage in Oklahoma. The "Trail of Tears" ended in Oklahoma. The Five Civilized Tribes were the five Native American nations: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole who lived in the Southeastern United States before the government forced their relocation under Indian Removal to other parts of the country, especially the future state of Oklahoma. The tribes were relocated from their homes east of the Mississippi River over several decades during the series of removals, authorized by federal legislation.

They moved to what was then called Indian Territory, now the eastern portion of the state of Oklahoma. The most infamous removal was the Cherokee Trail of Tears of 1838, when President Martin Van Buren enforced the highly contentious Treaty of New Echota with the Cherokee Nation to exchange their property for land out west. Once the tribes had been relocated to Indian Territory, the United States government promised that their lands would be free of white settlement. Some settlers violated that with impunity even before 1893, when the government opened the "Cherokee Strip" to outside settlement in the Oklahoma Land Run. In 1907, the Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory were merged to form the state of Oklahoma. All Five Civilized Tribes continue to have a major presence in Oklahoma today.

When we moved to Norman, we had never experienced a tornado. While we were there we had the privilege of living through several, but none ever caused any damage to anything close to us. When the weather warnings would suggest a tornado coming, we would quickly gather a few essentials and head for the basement of the Education building at the university. I remember three stories about tornadoes.

When we started attending the University laboratory school on the "north campus" (former naval base), we saw that there were quite a few foundations where buildings had been. These naval base buildings had actually been leveled by a previous tornado.

The second story occurred on one of my grandmother Edward's visits. We heard that a tornado was coming and scurried to go to the university, but were delayed while my grandmother had to put of her new girdle. She couldn't be seen in public without it.

The final story was when I was in high school. We had been in Oklahoma City playing a tennis match and returned to the high school just as it was starting to rain and the tornado sirens were sounding. So we just stayed at school and played basketball till it had past. Oops, forgot to call the parents and tell them where we were. Of course they were happy just to know we were OK, and as always anger is preceded by fear and once the fear was over the anger didn't last long.

My father's association with the college of education at the university gave me a life-long respect for teachers. It turns out that he a faculty member in the early 50s when the college played a supporting role in one of the U.S. Supreme Court's most important rulings.

In 1950, the Supreme Court ruled that George McLaurin, an African-American retired educator, had the right to pursue a graduate degree at the College alongside white students. McLaurin had been admitted to the College but had to attend separately from white students, as required by Oklahoma's "equal-but-separate" law, which he successfully challenged.

McLaurin’s case was the climax of the NAACP’S campaign between 1930 and 1950 to overturn the separate-but-equal doctrine in graduate and professional schools. This laid the groundwork for the landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. the Board of Education, which ended school segregation. My father was faculty advisor to multiple graduate student during his time at OU and I remember that a number of them were African-American.

Norman was hard to leave, especially between sophomore and junior year in high school. My mom says in her autobiography that I cried most of the way as we drove to New Mexico.

But as always is true, the turns in the road lead to new adventures and to new times of life that continue to add to our history and our knowledge of the world and our self.

IT ONLY TAKES A SECOND

On the rainy morning of October 6, 2010 I was up early to walk around 5a.m. and saw that my daughter, Vanessa, had left a message. I called her back and don't even remember what the original conversaton was about. I got on my rain gear and went out to walk in the rain (which I really enjoy). At approximately 5:15 I got another call from Vanessa. She said, "Daddy, I've been in a bad car accident. I'm okay, but I think my hand is broken and they are taking me in an ambulance."

That was the scariest call I have ever gotten from one of my children and could have been the worst call of my life if anyone but my daughter herself had been making the call. I finished my walk and got showered and went on to the office in Talega, where I started looking for flights to Morgantown for my wife, Vera. About 8am I got a call from Vanessa's department chairman telling me that she had rolled her Tahoe on the wet interstate highway 4 times and landed right-side-up with only a broken hand and severe abrasions of the back of her hand and badly shaken. As the morning went on I received more information.

Vanessa had been driving on a rainy road on the way to work. As she neared her exit and was about ready to go over the last little hill before the exit to WVU, she heard her phone ring and reached to answer it. By the time she looked back up she had cleared the top of the hill to see that all the traffic was stopped dead in the exiting right lane. She swerved to the left to miss the backed up cars and then was heading for the median (which in WVA is a deep ditch) and then cut her wheel back to the right to try to stay out of the ditch. The sudden turn caused the Tahoe to roll down the freeway on the driver's side first and then over 3 more times landing on all four wheels.

To survive that accident took an act of God, a lot of Irish luck and the roll bar which Tahoes have above and behind the front seats. Seeing the photo of her car in the towing garage and then seeing her car in person days later was a life changing experience. Most of the windows had been blown out, the front windshield shattered and the passenger side severely crunched down (lucky no passenger). Her door was wedged into the jam and hand to be removed with Jaws of Life before they could get her out.

I was so shocked by the event that it took about 4 hours before I really began to consider that her call at 5am could have been the last call I ever received from her, and later that evening when I was looking for a photo of her to send to friends with the pictures from the day, I realized that I could have been looking for photos of her to do her memorial service.

She is now doing much better and the hand is healing slowly but nicely. We found another Tahoe to put her back in the same kind of car that saved her life. We are now all driving very carefully and cautiously and have all pledged that ""driving" will be the only thing we do when

driving.

It only takes a second to lose one's life. No phone call is that important!!!!!

RINGING IN MY EARS

RINGING IN MY EARS

About three years ago, I began to have a constant ringing in my ears. My best description of it would be that it sounds like a quiet version of what it sounded like when the male locusts sang every 17 years in Kansas. Realizing that it only happens every 17 years, I probably only got to hear it one of the summers that I vacationed at Grandmother Edwards house in Hamilton. It seems to me that it was around the time I was 10.

I found two YouTubes which demonstrate the sound. The first gives the life cycle of the cicada (which is interesting to a former bug collector): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjLiWy2nT7U&feature=fvwThe second show a demonstration of the sound when squeezing a cicada: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy12sppepRQ&feature=related

One more YouTube has all you will ever want to know about cicadas: http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/michigan_cicadas/periodical/Index.html

The ringing in my ears caused me to think about what might have caused it. One possible reason for the ringing was lying on my back in my room as a teen listening to "In My Room" by the Beach Boys with my head between my stereo speakers as a way of not having to listen to my parents restrictions for my life at the time. A second likely etiology would be listening to protesting children while holding their heads against their mothers to examine ears and doing this over and over for more than 35 years.

It is the first reason that led me to write about the effect of music on my life and of course, since music was an early influence, it was a perfectly natural way to mood alter as a teen.

I don't know exactly when my father started playing piano or clarinet, but his college degree was a Bachelor of Science in music. My mother was singing early in her life and winning little cup trophies for her vocal achievements. To my recollection, her undergraduate degree was in teaching but with a strong emphasis in music. My father became the band director in Macksville, Kansas as his first job and subsequenly was band director in Garnett after my birth and his stint in the Navy during WW II.

So without hard evidence, I know my parents sang a lot and I know they sang to and with me. We sang a lot as we drove back and forth from Oklahoma to visit my grandmother in Kansas and we learned old classics like "Goodnight Irene" and "Over the River and Through the Woods".

When my father decided to leave high school band directing and go to The Ohio State University, I was then exposed to The Best Damn Band in the Land,

and my brother and I would march through our tiny apartment on Defiance Drive in Buckeye Village graduate housing singing "Buckeye Battle Cry" (http://www.osu.edu/download/battle_cry.mp3) and "Fight the Team"(music on the end of the next mp3) and of course it wasn't long until we knew all the words to Carmen Ohio (http://www.osu.edu/download/carmen.mp3). And finally, "Le

Regiment" leading to the dotting of Script Ohio (http://fightmusic.com/mp3/big10/Ohio_State_

_Le_Regiment_de_Sambre_et_Meuse_(short).mp3). Talk about mood altering with music - all four songs still make the hair stand up on my arms! We also learned about Michigan music and double time marching (OSU & Michigan) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtUQ1tU4BRA&feature=related) as well as learning most of the other Big Ten fight songs and of course Anchors Away.

So by the time we moved to Norman, Oklahoma I was highly versed in college fight songs and continue to love them to this day. In Norman we quickly became huge fans of "Boomer Sooner"

(http://fightmusic.com/mp3/big12/Oklahoma__Boomer_Sooner__short.mp3) and "OK Oklahoma" (http://fightmusic.com/mp3/big12/Oklahoma__OK_Oklahoma.mp3) and learned to dislike have the "Eyes of Texas" anywhere upon us

(http://fightmusic.com/mp3/big12/Texas__The_Eyes_Of_Texas_Fanfare.mp3).

I began piano lessons probably about the fourth grade, but all I can remember is watching "My Little Margie" on television while waiting for my lesson to start. In the summer before 5th grade, I began taking trombone lessons from William Robinson, who was the band director at Norman High School and a brass teacher. I guess I had some inborn talent because I was soon sitting in with the Norman Junior High Band.

I remember when I got to junior high that I was first chair ahead of Jim Harris, a really nice guy, who hooked me up with my first date ever (the sister of his girl friend). In junior high I started playing solos in the district and state music festivals and on my first solo received a 1++ for my effort. What I can remember about trombone solos most was getting up two hours early so the diarrhea from the anxiety of being judged could resolve before I had to play (first child thing!). I was lucky because I could play most music by ear and had what is called "perfect pitch" so I didn't have to practice as much as some people to get it right. One week in my sophomore year in high school, my lack of practice caused me great humiliation as I lost my "first chair" because I had not prepared. I think I learned a good lesson at that point. I continued to play trombone through 10th grade in Norman and in the band at Portales (New Mexico) high school in 11th and 12th grade. In New Mexico, my girl friend was in the band so that worked,

but in college that was not the case and in my sophomore year, I told the director that I would love to play in the concert band but I wanted to take a date to the football games. So no more band and ironically I wound up dating a cheerleader and still went to games by myself.

All that band experience left me with a love for symphonies, college fight songs, symphonic marches, The Black Watch, The Eastman Wind Ensemble, musicals like Oklahoma and South Pacific. And as I spoke of in Double Digit Birthdays, I have continued to acquire new musical tastes including bluegrass, country music, Michael McDonald, The Doobies, Chicago, The Eagles, Carpenters, steel drum music, om music, new age music, synthesizer music, Bocelli, Pavarotti, David Foster, Peter Cetera, The Canadian Tenors and endless other varieties of music like "Jock Jams", mariachi music as in "Canciones de mi Padre "(Linda Ronstadt). I can't say that I have ever learned to like metal music or much rap music and a lot of what kids listen today sound like noise to me. I love the fact that today's young adults still like the music of the 60's and 70's that they grew up listening to us listen to. And of course I love Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman and the jazz that my dad listened to.

Being an auditory person, music will always be a source of mood alteration whenever needed and I use it ever day as I walk all those days of my 67th year and the days of the rest of my rawer, greener longer life.