Dang, I've Been Sick...

Pretty sure I evaded the dreaded swine flu, but between allergies and a cold, I've been absolutely knocked out!

Last week I just benched 4,320 pounds and biked 33 miles.

TOTAL
Ran - 40.5 miles
Biked - 163 miles
Benched - 39,380 pounds
Raised - $355

Remembering Emmett Till

This past week, I taught a class of 10th grade students about Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old boy who was tortured and killed in 1954, just for being black and overstepping Mississippi's outrageous racial codes. Till's death, his murderers' shamelessness, the joke of the trial that occurred - all of it's tragic. It's clear that the Till case energized the Civil Rights Movement not just because it was shocking, though, but because it represented a way of life, a way that had to go. This was a time and place when white people could abuse the rights of others in just about any way, because it was understood that others were less human, less deserving, less worthy. The brothers-in-law that killed Emmett Till actually implied that in doing so, they preserved a way of life associated with the so-called purity and superiority of their race.

Teaching Till made me think of Southeast Asia today. As despicable as the murder of a child for saying, "Bye, baby," so too is the enslavement of children, sometimes in brothels in order to be serially raped. This ravages the child, enriches the captor, and supplies the rapist (or shall I be polite? The "john"?) with a kind of exotic perversion. Beyond this, though, I wonder if a whole way of thinking is represented. In this enslavement we have a mindset that says humans can be owned, that men's sexual appetites can be fulfilled in any manner, and that children are nothing; they can be trampled upon.

Biked 47 miles this week and benched 4320 pounds one day.

TOTAL
Ran - 40.5 miles
Biked - 130 miles
Benched - 35,060 pounds

The Little Things

My wife and I went to a really well-produced arts benefit show tonight. There were dozens of performers, hundreds in the audience, and thousands of dollars raised for two good causes, one of which was our very own Love 146. The show had its ups and downs for me, but there was lots to write home about, except that I won't. Because my mind was on two things - food and my kids.

The food part is easy. I gardened all day today and most of yesterday. Gardening doesn't have a macho reputation of, say, power lifting for straining your muscles, but it should. At least at my age. Digging, raking, mulching, and the like really wore me down. I'll call it landscaping; that sounds tougher. Anyway, I missed dinner tonight, I was ravenous, and there was loads of good food, almost entirely in bite sized portions, in the lobby of this show. So I listened, and I watched, but often, I thought about food.

My kids are more complicated. I'm crazy about my three children, but I'm also usually glad to have a night out with my wife, with my kids in the care of a sitter. Especially a free one, like tonight. But my kids had to largely amuse themselves today while my wife and I went to work transforming our yard and getting sun stroke in April. Something in my gut also told me as I was leaving home that I should stay behind and put the kids to bed and just let my wife go out. But, as is too often the case, I didn't listen to my gut, and I was kind of irritable all night, missing the little guys and gal. They were fine, as it turned out, but missed us badly.

I want to have something deep to say about the show tonight. A number of aspects explicitly related to child sex trafficking, including a powerful monologue on the topic and some other art that hit on the themes more obliquely. Really, though, I've just had food and children on the mind. I guess no matter how large our vision, when it comes down to it, our own nourishment and our loved ones are central to human existence.

Then how dare those traffickers rob children from their loved ones, deprive them of the nourishment their souls need, and defile the very concept of love. That the world would be rid of this crime, and the children have the right to a night where all they think about is great food and their own beloved children....


Ran 2 miles on Thursday, 3.5 yesterday and 4 today.

TOTAL
Ran - 40.5 miles
Biked - 83 miles
Benched - 30,740 pounds

Still truckin...

Yesterday was Marathon Monday in these parts. I love watching the leaders and for the first time, I really thought about running next year. Maybe I'll raise money to end child trafficking if I run the marathon as part of my efforts.

Benched 3915 pounds on Saturday and Monday. Ran 6 miles on Monday.

TOTAL
Ran - 31 miles
Biked - 83 miles
Benched - 30,740 pounds

Go Ahead -- Follow the Rules but Let 'Em Drown!

The past two times I took my children to the local pool, someone almost drowned. Both days I swam with my children in a small pool with a paid lifeguard on duty. Both days the lifeguards vigorously enforced the pool's rules - no running, no children in the hot tub, and so forth. And both days, when one of my boys walked into water over their head and thrashed about gasping for air, the lifeguards didn't notice and didn't even stir in their seats.

In some ways, this scene reminds me of well-informed liberal America. Most people in the circles I run have highly developed, acceptable opinions about the world we live in. They can speak forcefully global health care inequity, public health disparities in the United States, or the root causes of East African piracy. My friends and acquaintances tend to carefully cultivate and express right opinions. They know the rules!

But I wonder if when a child is drowning, they notice or stir. My pastor sometimes says that God couldn't care less about our opinions, that our actions are of much greater import. I couldn't agree more. I really don't care what opinions I have, or anyone else has, about child sex trafficking. I want us to stop it!

Thursday I biked 14 miles. Yesterday I biked 8 and ran 6.

TOTAL
Ran - 25 miles
Biked - 83 miles
Benched - 22,910 pounds
Raised - $315

Hope

Yesterday I wore my "Tread on Trafficking" T-shirt to work to raise awareness and remind colleagues to give! The responses I got were interesting. Both adults and teens I spent time with saw the message on the shirt and were familiar with the problem of human trafficking. Most new that it was a huge problem. Many new that it was the second biggest profit-producing criminal activity on earth. All thought it should be stopped. (That reminds me of a comment I made to a friend once. I said that ending child sex trafficking is one issue that all people can get behind. And then he gave me a look and said, "Well, not all people." There are the perpetrators - the men that exploit the children through abducting, enslaving, or raping them. I'm guessing they're not reading this blog, though, or working with me, though one never knows, I suppose.)

Anyway, what fewer folks seem to know is that you can actually do something about it.

Love 146 works on the ground, in the US and in Southeast Asia, to prevent at risk youth from falling into the industry and to educate individuals and families. They also provide aftercare in Southeast Asia to girls rescued from sex slavery. And here, the money counts a lot. It pays for new aftercare homes, for street workers, for education for families of young children who might end up in this industry if their community doesn't know to protect them.

We can help. Give!

Biked 10 miles Monday, 8 yesterday, and 17 today.


TOTAL
Ran - 19 miles
Biked - 69 miles
Benched - 22,910 pounds
Raised - $315

Paschal Greetings!

Happy Easter, Happy Passover. Family's here, so I won't write. More this week.

Ran 4.5 miles today.
Benched 4,015 pounds
TOTAL
Ran - 19 miles
Biked - 34 miles
Benched - 22,910 pounds
Raised - $315

Death

Still trying to make the giving link work. It's below; if it's still not clickable, please take the extra second to paste it into your browser and give.


http://www.kintera.org/faf/r.asp?t=4&i=266140&u=266140-252262280&e=2334045622

Almost twenty years ago, for the first time, I watched someone die. She had been a friend of my mom's for years. They met through some connection around pets, and our relationship started off on rocky ground. (I remember an incident that involved her smoking in our living room and me spraying Lysol around her head.) Paula and I had come a long way, though. She was a single mom, and my first year in high school, I spent a bunch of afternoons at her house, baby-sitting her only daughter. Now she was remarried, battling cancer in its second or third wave through her tired flesh, and on Good Friday, she was dying. I was by her bedside with her husband and my mom and watched spellbound as her lungs heaved and she struggled against death, failing as we all will in the end.

I think of death every year on this day, because of Paula, but also because I follow a tortured, slain, incarnate God. Those of us who are captivated by him associate death with judgment and pain and senseless futility as well all do, I suppose. But we also sometimes, especially on this day, see sacrifice and hope in it all.

In the suffering of young children, trafficked into a brutal sex industry, I look for life and I see Love 146 rescuing girls out of the jaws of death, helping their lungs which heave with fear breathe life again, helping their faces frozen in despair find hope. I want to help. Join me, please.

Ran 6 miles today
Benched 4,000 lbs.

Ran - 14.5 miles
Biked - 34 miles
Benched - 18,895 pounds
Raised - $315

I need to raise much more, I feel.

Scarred Joy

I watched Slumdog Millionaire the other night and like the rest of the world, loved it. I especially loved the ending. Yeah, the whole "Jai Ho" song and dance number had me out of my seat trying to move with it; it's infused with a lot of soul. More than that, the journey of the character Latika brings me joy. Here's a young woman who as a tiny child is abducted into the sex trafficking industry, then rescued, only to be victimized again. Through it all, she's scarred: on her face and in her soul. Yet she finds love, joy, and redemption. (O.K., it's Hollywood, but still....)

Love 146 is making real life redemption stories amidst tremendous scarring, as they provide what they call "aftercare" - a healing journey - to girls rescued from trafficking.

If you're reading and haven't given yet, please whip out that credit card and give here:
href="http://www.kintera.org/faf/r.asp?t=4&i=266140&u=266140-252262280&e=2334045622">

Biked 9 miles yesterday, ran 4.5 today, and benched 3,850 pounds.

Ran - 8.5 miles
Biked - 34 miles
Benched - 14,895 pounds
Raised - $315

Rain

It's raining today, hard. And when I biked home from work, my socks got soaked. Somehow, more than an hour later, I haven't bothered to change them. Doesn't feel good. And I'm getting a bit sick. And I'm tired. And I have to write a lousy power-point book report tonight for my principal training program. Oh, well. At least I can get an ice cream cone from J.P. Licks for $1. And a bit more money came in today.

Ran - 4 miles
Biked - 25 miles
Benched - 11,045 pounds
Raised - ????

More than a Dead Fish

My daughter is almost seven. Today she discovered that her fish died. She had had Lily, the fish, for two months, since we gave her as a gift after my daughter had a stint in the hospital. My daughter cried. She wanted to keep the fish in the tank. She didn't want to let her go. Eventually, we said our good-byes as we dropped Lily into a drain leading out to the Charles River. The sadness was great; my little girl's still not accustomed to death. But this sadness was appropriate for a seven-year-old. My daughter's doing fine.

Somewhere else today, a girl not much older than my daughter was sold by her impoverished family to work in a factory, or as a maid. The agent then brought her to another town where she will be raped and imprisoned in a brothel full of other girls her age, where she'll eat small meals, watch TV, sleep on a hard cot, and await another night of rape and abuse. Her captors will earn a few dollars and her abusers a type of perverted pleasure and power. This is not age-appropriate. It is a sadness no girl can or should bear.

It needs to stop.

I ran four miles tonight and saw that one of my neighbors had dropped by a twenty for the cause.

Ran - 4 miles
Biked - 17 miles
Benched - 7295 pounds
Raised - $65

Locked In

I've been reading The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a memoir by a Frenchman who develops locked-in syndrome, a condition where one has total brain function except in the brain stem. As a result, the victim can think clearly but can't communicate except, in the case of this author, by blinking a single eye. I've heard there's a film, which I'll watch eventually, but the prose is luminous - who'd want to adapt it into any other form?

I've thought while reading it about victims of child sex trafficking, of the kind of trauma that would make you emotionally locked-in, a prisoner of one's own crushed hopes and ever-expanding fear and shame. I can think of little else that so mars the glory of a human being. Tragic.

Yesterday I benched 4,255 pounds.

Pledges are starting to come in. Thanks.

Ran - 0 miles
Biked - 17 miles
Benched - 7295 pounds
Raised - $20

Donate here:

http://www.kintera.org/faf/r.asp?t=4&i=266140&u=266140-252262280&e=2334045622

I'll have to figure out how to get this link on the top of the blog somewhere...

Time to get the word out....

April 2 - biked 9 miles, benched 1890 pounds, set up my Tread on Trafficking site
April 3 - biked 8 miles, benched 1150 pounds
April 4 - time to get the word out

I've spent too much time in my life doing noble deeds in my mind. That sort of narcissistic fantasy doesn't much interest me anymore. It'd be nice to raise some money for the girls.

Ran - 0 miles
Biked - 17 miles
Benched - 3040 pounds
Raised - $20

Tread on Trafficking!

Child sex trafficking has to be one of the most heinous crimes on earth, and the scope of this abuse of children can seem overwhelming. But it doesn't need to continue unchecked. We can rescue the weak, heal the wounded, and stop the crime.

People and organizations like Love146 are doing remarkable work to rescue children from an industry that robs them of their innocence, freedom, and dignity. Each gift of twenty dollars or more to an organization like this helps save a child. Simple as that. As the Talmud says, "The one who saves a single life, saves the world." Save the world today, my friends.

From April 2 to May 2, I'll be running 75 miles, biking 200 miles, and bench-pressing 50,000 pounds as I raise money for Love146, a remarkable organization dedicating to ending child sex trafficking.

Here's where I post my updates and thoughts.