New Thing 31, New Thing Every Day: Leave $10 on Someone's Windshield

Doesn't this sound like a nice thing to do? I decided to find a car in an accessible parking place for this activity because I figure they are more likely to need the $10.00, and more likely to need a little pick-me-up. Of course, this is a stereotype and may well not be true at all (I don't need $10.00 left on my windshield to pick me up, for example). It was a nice thing, though, and I hope I brightened someone's day. To really get the job done, I put the money in an envelope and wrote a note, "Smile! Somebody cares about you."

I hope it brightened someone's day and I am happy to have done it.

- sean

New Thing 30, New Thing Every Day: Go to the World Chess Hall of Fame

I had an afternoon meeting in St. Louis today, so it was the perfect time to carve out a little time to swing by the World Chess Hall of Fame. Did you even know that it is located in St. Louis? Yep, and it is pretty cool I highly recommend checking it out.







Here are 10+ things about my visit.

1. The Hall of Fame is in the Central West End neighborhood, feet away from cool bars, restaurants, and a chess club.
2. In front of the building is the largest chess piece in the world (as confirmed by Guinness). 
3. There is also a pretty cool, giant chess set.
4. The building is not super accessible, so I could not really get my wheelchair inside. I walked around as much as I could, and took many sitting breaks.
5. It seems like the whole thing is primarily funded by Rex Sinquefield, a major chess buff.
6. My dad taught me chess when I was a young boy, and stopped playing with me when I could beat him, around 12.
7. There is actually a world women's league for chess. I woud have thought the two leagues would have merged by now.
8. There were two temporary exhibits, lots and lots of chess boards. One was actually owned and used by Catherine the Great (a great chess player), made of amber and ebony. So beautiful.
9. They had a wall display of pop culture pieces, including the Peanuts and the Flintstone characters.
10. A board was set up, to be played, with characters from the Super Mario Brothers video game.
11. My friend Greg Wolff and I like to play chess. We are definitely due for a game.
12. I really feel like they should have a human board, available for play at any time. Surely Mr. Sinquefield could come up with the money for that.
13. My personal board is hand carved, from Mexico, and it used to belong to my dad. It is one of the last things I have of his.
14. This visit was my introduction to the idea of chess boards as art. Definitely glad to have this particular horizon expanded.

Catherine the Great's Board

Super Mario Chess Board

Pop Culture Pieces

New Thing 29, New Thing Every Day: Visit FailBlog.org

Goodness, I just almost did not get to my New Thing Every Day today! For a Sunday, I have been so freaking slammed and I just got done with everything at 9:45 pm. But I did it!

Here is another entry from that list of 20 Most Interesting Websites that I found. Today, I visited FailBlog.org, which is kinds of a haphazard cataloging of stories and posts about people who have screwed something up in some sort of fantastic way. I can see how someone would find it funny -- and I get that I am getting to be a bit of a fuddy-duddy in my old age -- but it really is not my thing. The older I get, the less joy I get out of making fun of people, even those who may deserve it at least a little (okay, so I still really like making fun of the people I love and who can give it back to me).

I'm no judger, though, so check it out if you want.

Either way, have an awesome week!

- sean

New Thing 28, New Thing Every Day: Apply for a TV Game Show

It turns out that it is really easy to apply for a game show, at least the one I chose. Match Game is a classic TV game show, revived in the last year or two and hosted by Alec Baldwin. I have only watched it maybe once, but it is pretty good, and I love Alec Baldwin. I really think they are going to want to have me on the show, don't you?

The application took me maybe 10 minutes (just go to http://castingmatchgame.com/apply/ if you want to be on the show with me). The two toughest questions asked for fun facts about me and for my hobbies.

I will let you know when they call to book me.

New Thing 27, New Thing Every Day: Review a Book on Amazon

I read a good bit and have ordered many, many books from Amazon over the years, but I have never written an online review. Here is my first.

Hillbilly Elegy is smart and real and true

Short version? Awesome book! You should buy it and read it this weekend.

The long version is that I grew up in Kentucky and I have met some of the people in this book, at least in spirit. It is smart and real and true. J.D. Vance tells his story and that of his family with love, beauty, and humor. It is a little tougher read than a novel -- with some statistics and hard-core popular history -- but it is definitely novel-ish, and just fun. Importantly, it is also insightful and can help us all understand poverty and even just humanity in the modern US a little better.

Read this book. You will be glad you did.

New Thing 26, New Thing Every Day: [SURPRISE] Do Something Nice for Leigh that I Have Never Done

The thing about today's New Thing is that it will not actually land until sometime in the future  -- how long? who knows?!? -- and what it actually is, is a total surprise. I really did do something nice for Leigh that I have never done before, and I am pretty excited about it.

Those who know me, know that I do nice things for Leigh pretty frequently. So I turned out to be pretty hard to come up with a new thing. I thought and thought; I Googled like I had never Googled before; and finally it just came to me. Thankfully, I was able to find a place hat could do what I wanted, and today I set the wheels in motion.

At some undisclosed date and location, the thing will happen, and I am so excited about it!

I promise I will report on what happens, when it happens.

New Thing 25, New Thing Every Day: Make a Kiva.org Loan

Here are My 10+ Things About Making a Kiva.org Loan.

1. Kiva.org is a website that allows people to make loans to people who need them, pretty much anywhere in the world.
2. I had heard of the site, but had never visited it.
3. In my own life, I do not believe in borrowing money and have been out of debt for a decade or so.
4. On the other hand, I love the idea of loaning money to someone who needs it, with the idea that they will pay me back if they can (and it won't kill me if they can't).
5. Kiva.org links hundreds of thousands of lenders to thousands of people who need the money to improve their lives.
6. Apparently, 97% of the loans are repaid.
7. You can donate as little as $25.00
8. You can make all kinds of choices about your loan: which country, what kind of need, women-focused, etc.
9. My step-son Clark was adopted from Honduras, so I decided to loan money to someone there.
10. After reviewing a long list of possibilities, I donated $25.00 to a woman in Honduras so she could buy groceries to sell in her grocery store.
11. I really like the idea of lending money who needs it to make more money to support her family and community.

New Thing 24, New Thing Every Day: Use Google Translate

Right now EveryEventGives (my company that helps people sell tickets online) is working with a large concert in Texas that deals with a lot of Spanish speaking people. This morning, I got my first customer service e-mail from someone that was in Spanish. What the heck do I do with that?

Then I remembered that there is such a thing as Google Translate, which I had heard does pretty much what it sounds like it would do. So I went to Google, typed in "google translate", was directed to a screen where I could enter a passage and translate it from one language to another. Would you believe it actually worked?

I cut-and-pasted in the entire body of the e-mail message and got back a complete translation, which seemed right (based on my very limited knowledge of Spanish). It was very, very cool, and I highly recommend it.

Have an awesome rest of your day!

- sean

New Thing 23, New Thing Every Day: TRY to Donate Blood

Yes, I said "TRY to Donate Blood". Here are my 10+ things about the experience.

1. At 46 years old, I have never donated blood. 
2. Yes, this is embarrassing.
3. Leigh warned me that I might not be able to give blood with Multiple Sclerosis.
4. On Leigh's advice, I went on the Internet and learned that MS is not a disqualification.
5. The Internet also said that even though I should not be disqualified, that I might be, because individual blood centers sometimes have their own policies.
6. It was also possible that I would be disqualified by the individual staff member, checking me in to donate.
7. Always optimistic, I took off lunch to donate blood at the Red Cross center on South Providence.
8. It turns out that there have been recent changes to Red Cross policy and my MS does, in fact, disqualify me. Literally, they would rather have no blood at all than my disease-riddled donation.
9. The staff was incredibly nice and I do not fault them or the Red Cross or anyone, of course. I am glad that they are taking care to ensure that their blood supply is of the quality people need. They do such important work and I am just bummed that I can't donate now, and mad at myself for not donating when I could have (like for the decade or so that I was an adult and MS-free).
10. If this inspires you to donate blood, please do. It is awfully important.
11. Now, I am back to work, ironically sadly, with exactly the same amount of blood with which I started the day.

New Thing 22, New Thing Every Day: Let Leigh Teach me to Make Cauliflower Crust Pizza

We learned about cauliflower crust pizza sometime last year and we probably make it every several weeks. The only difference is the crust and that really is delicious, but totally lacking in carbs. Leigh always makes it, and tonight she showed me how and let me help a bit.

Here's the recipe:

Pureed Cauliflower

Cauliflower Crust (Raw)

·      Whole head of cauliflower
·      1 egg
·      ½ c. mozzarella grated
·      ½ c parmesan
·      ½ t red pepper flakes
·      1/2 t. garlic salt
·      1 t oregano

Grate cauliflower
Microwave on high covered for 5-6 minutes wait 10 minutes
Preheat to 400 degrees
Squeeze out in cheesecloth and wring out thoroughly
Fluff with fingers

Add egg and cheeses and seasonings.
Mix it.

Use cookie sheet with parchment
Smooth out onto parchment about 1/3 inch thick

Bake 30-40 minutes
May want to flip it for five to 10 minutes

Cauliflower Crust (Cooked)

Cauliflower Crust Pizza

New Thing 21, New Thing Every Day: Go to Columbia Cemetery

Here are my 10+ things about my visit to the historic Columbia Cemetery.

1. Leigh went with me, which always makes everything better.
2. Bizarrely, I did not really know where the cemetery is. Leigh had to tell me. Yes, I have passed it and seen parts of it thousands of times, but it just had not registered. Yes, I need to be more observant.
3. We could not find brochures, but we had read about it before hand and asked friends about it, which was good enough for today.
4. With my mobility issues, walking in a cemetery does not work for me for more than a few minutes, so the drive had to be enough. It was still a good experience.
5. We saw many family names that I know well, and I am sure we know many of those families.
6. We saw the burial place of "Blind" Boone and his wife.
7. We saw a few MU presidents.
8. Always fascinating to see a Jewish and "colored" sections. Glad we do not legally segregate by black and white anymore, although I suppose people do that a lot for themselves.
9. We found a few Spence stones (no relation).
10. Leigh saw the stone for a former student of hers that had died a high school senior. Leigh and the principal had visited her in the hospital, in her last days, and delivered her diploma. It is nice to see people taking such good care of that particular grave.
11. My generation and younger do not seem to care nearly enough about family grave sites. I am as guilty of this as anybody. 
12. Back in Madisonville, Kentucky, my hometown, my family has 800 or so plots in the local cemetery, all together (stories conflict about how we got them). There are maybe four people buried there now, and there probably will not be many more, because we all live other places. Several years ago, the cemetery enacted what is affectionately known as the "Spence Tax" -- $50 for every lot sold, in the hopes that we would eventually sell all of our extras and they would get a windfall. I suspect they are just going to sit there, empty, pretty much forever.

New Thing 20, New Thing Every Day: Buy My First Cane

Would you believe I have been using a cane for maybe three years and I have never bought one for myself? Here is my very first one.

Here are 10+ things about today's New Thing.

1. Due to my MS, my mobility started to deteriorate long ago, and started to get bad enough that I needed a cane maybe three years ago.
2. The real reason I first started using a cane was not so much that I really needed it to get around; it was primarily because I did not want people to think I was drunk. The cane sent the signal that it was something else.
3. Leigh got me my very first cane, a wooden one with a black leather handle, and I still use it.
4. Since that first one, I probably have a dozen now.
5. The cane I probably use the most has a lacquered deer or elk horn as the handle. It was made by a local artist and is super cool.
6. Since I have become a daily wheelchair user over the last year or so, I always keep a collapsible cane around so I can get out of the chair and walk when I can.
7. Part of me always worries that people are going to see me walking and think I am faking needing the chair.
8. The cane I bought today came from the Midway Truck Stop.
9. Originally, I had gone to Midway to do a different New Thing, but they did not have what I needed.
10. The one cane I really wish I had is the sword cane that my dad always kept at my grandmother's house when I was growing up. My sister has it!

New Thing 19, New Thing Every Day: Add Something Useful to Wikipedia

Here are my 10+ thoughts about adding something useful to Wikipedia.

1. Since I am writing a biography of disability rights advocate Justin Dart, I decided to beef up his Wikipedia entry a bit.
2. Justin Dart was basically the Martin Luther King, Jr. of the disability rights movement. He is often called the godfather of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
3. Justin was the grandson of the founder of Walgreens.
4. The cowboy hat was kind of his trademark.
5. Justin is pictured here with his third and final wife - and his partner in advocacy - Yoshiko Dart.
6. As an entrepreneur myself, I like that Justin started high-tech bowling alleys in Mexico, founded Tupperware in Japan, and built one of the largest greeting card companies in Asia.
7. Adding to Justin's biography in Wikipedia took no time at all and there was nothing to qualify what I posted. As I understand it, it is up to the Wikipedia community to police what I wrote.
8. Some years ago, I read somewhere that Wikipedia is slightly more reliable that the professionally edited Encyclopedia Britannica.
9. To help ensure that what I posted lasts, the things I added were direct excerpts from Justin's New York Times obituary.
10. My first addition to the post was about Justin's transition from Democrat to Republican to Democrat.
11. My second addition was a quote from the President when he awarded Justin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
12. Yes, now that I know how easy it is to add to Wikipedia, I am probably going to do it a lot more.  : )

New Thing 18, New Thing Every Day - Contribute to a Podcast I Like

Here are my 10+ things about today's New Thing.

1. Podcasts are awesome. You can find bunches of them for every area of interest, download them to your phone (for free), and listen any time you want. 
2. If I am in my car or getting ready in the morning, I am usually listening to a podcast.
3. Each week, I probably listen to 4-5 hours worth of podcasts. If I am traveling, they provide an awesome, free way to pass the miles.
4. The first podcast I ever even heard about was the WTF podcast. Host Marc Maron does wonderful, long-form interviews with mostly comedians, but also movie people, musicians, and one time he did Barack Obama (but that was a one-time thing because the White House called him, and I do not expect he will be doing any other politicians). 
5. Over the last four years or so, I have probably listened to over 300 of Marc's podcasts.
6. Other favorites include general interview shows with Alec Baldwin and Katie Couric; a show that focuses on the business side of the movie industry, with veteran comedy manager Barry Katz (managed Dane Cook, Louis CK, etc.); and a movie review show called SlashFilmcast.
7. My original plan was to contribute $25 to the SlashFilmcast. They are always asking for donations as one of their primary sources of income -- they also do commercials -- but something must be wrong with their site because I could not find the donor button that they always say is there. 
8. So, instead of donating to SlashFilmcast, I went to the WTF site and discovered that they do not take donations at all, but they do sell merchandise to support the show.
9. Honestly, I did not really like the design of most of what the WTF site sells, so it was actually tough making my choice.
10. As you might have guessed, I finally bought the WTF t-shirt you can see above. I am sure it will be lovely.

New Thing 17, New Thing Every Day: Prepare a Pomegranate

Here are my 10+ things about preparing my first pomegranate.
1.    As a kid growing up in rural Kentucky, I never even heard about a pomegranate until sometime in my 20's.
2.    I am pretty sure I did not taste one until maybe in my 40's.
3.    As with so many exotic foods, I am pretty sure that I first saw one prepared and used as an ingredient on an episode of Top Chef.
4.    Pomegranates cot over $2.00/each. Wow!
5.    People tell me that a pomegranate is a super food, but I am not really sure what that is. Sounds good, though.
6.    For my New Thing Every Day project, I bought three pomegranates, in case I screwed one up.

7.    None of them got screwed up.
8.    Once you cut one open, a pomegranate is basically just a big ball of seeds encased in a tiny amount of fruit. They are buried in a pulp that looks a little like the white of an orange or grapefruit. Do not eat the pulp! It tastes like something that has gone really, really bad.
9.    Top Chef and Chopped have taught me two methods of getting the tasty seeds out of the fruit. One is to cut it in half and beat it with a wooden spoon, dislodging the seeds. That one worked pretty well for me. The other method is to cut off the top and then vertically down the sides, in sections,

until the seeds are exposed and can be removed. I failed miserably at this and ended up just ripping the whole fruit apart, which actually worked pretty well.
10.   Most of the seeds were a ruby red, but one of the three pomegranates had seeds that were gold. They tasted the same, like a drop of juicy sweetness.
11.   As the seeds go in the bowl, do your best to make sure pulp does not fall in, and remove every bit of it that you can. I can not emphasize how yucky the pulp is.
12.  Now I have to figure out what to do with a bowl of pomegranate seeds.

New Thing Every Day - Change in Post Format

Since sometime in middle school, I have kept a journal and have written in it most days. There are some extended stretches during which I did not write, but I probably have journals for the last 70% or so of the last 34 years (in a box in the . It is an awful lot of words that, most likely, nobody will ever, ever read (I offered to let Leigh read it when I am gone, but she declined because she said she does not want to read something upsetting and not be able to talk to me about it - fair point).

Anyway, a few years ago, I started making a daily list of at least 10 things that had happened or that I had thought in the previous 24 hours, instead of primarily writing less structured paragraphs. I still write aragraphs from time to time, but now I mostly write the list. This reduced the potential for beauty in the language -- which was pretty low, anyway -- but dramatically increased the number of things I mentioned. The process pushes me to really think about m day and record as many things about it as possible.

That leads me to today, and my "New Thing Every Day" project. From now on, I will write my daily blog posts in the same format as my journal, providing at least 10 things about each day's experience. Hopefully, this will provide a more complete experience for me and for whomever it is that actually reads this blog.

Here we go!

- sean

New Thing 16, New Thing Every Day: Read Something By Joan Didion

Over the years, I have read and heard about Joan Didion, but never read anything that she had written. So today, I looked at several of her essays and chose one that seemed interesting to me, "Morality". I would absolutely kill to be able to write in a way that is so smart and thoughtful. Words are so powerful, and Didion definitely had a command of them that I would love to have.



Morality
by Joan Didion

As it happens I am in Death Valley, in a room at the Enterprise Motel and Trailer Park, and it is July, and it is hot. In fact it is 119°. I cannot seem to make the air conditioner work, but there is a small refrigerator, and I can wrap ice cubes in a towel and hold them against the small of my back. With the help of the ice cubes I have been trying to think, because The American Scholar asked me to, in some abstract way about “morality,” a word I distrust more every day, but my mind veers inflexibly toward the particular.

Here are some particulars. At midnight last night, on the road in from Las Vegas to Death Valley Junction, a car hit a shoulder and turned over. The driver, very young and apparently drunk, was killed instantly. His girl was found alive but bleeding internally, deep in shock. I talked this afternoon to the nurse who had driven the girl to the nearest doctor, 185 miles across the floor of the Valley and three ranges of lethal mountain road. The nurse explained that her husband, a talc miner, had stayed on the highway with the boy’s body until the coroner could get over the mountains from Bishop, at dawn today. “You can’t just leave a body on the highway,” she said. “It’s immoral.”

It was one instance in which I did not distrust the word, because she meant something quite specific. She meant that if a body is left alone for even a few minutes on the desert, the coyotes close in and eat the flesh. Whether or not a corpse is torn apart by coyotes may seem only a sentimental consideration, but of course it is more: one of the promises we make to one another is that we will try to retrieve our casualties, try not to abandon our dead to the coyotes. If we have been taught to keep our promises—if, in the simplest terms, our upbringing is good enough—we stay with the body, or have bad dreams.

I am talking, of course, about the kind of social code that is sometimes called, usually pejoratively, “wagon‑train morality.” In fact that is precisely what it is. For better or worse, we are what we learned as children: my own childhood was illuminated by graphic litanies of the grief awaiting those who failed in their loyalties to each other. The Donner‑Reed Party, starving in the Sierra snows, all the ephemera of civilization gone save that one vestigial taboo, the provision that no one should eat his own blood kin. The Jayhawkers, who quarreled and separated not far from where I am tonight. Some of them died in the Funerals and some of them died down near Badwater and most of the rest of them died in the Panamints. A woman who got through gave the Valley its name. Some might say that the Jayhawkers were killed by the desert summer, and the Donner Party by the mountain winter, by circumstances beyond control; we were taught instead that they had somewhere abdicated their responsibilities, somehow breached their primary loyalties, or they would not have found themselves helpless in the mountain winter or the desert summer, would not have given way to acrimony, would not have deserted one another, would not have failed. In brief, we heard such stories as cautionary tales, and they still suggest the only kind of “morality” that seems to me to have any but the most potentially mendacious meaning.

You are quite possibly impatient with me by now; I am talking, you want to say, about a “morality” so primitive that it scarcely deserves the name, a code that has as its point only survival, not the attainment of the ideal good. Exactly. Particularly out here tonight, in this country so ominous and terrible that to live in it is to live with antimatter, it is difficult to believe that “the good” is a knowable quantity. Let me tell you what it is like out here tonight. Stories travel at night on the desert. Someone gets in his pickup and drives a couple of hundred miles for a beer, and he carries news of what is happening, back wherever he came from. Then he drives another hundred miles for another beer, and passes along stories from the last place as well as from the one before; it is a network kept alive by people whose instincts tell them that if they do not keep moving at night on the desert they will lose all reason. Here is a story that is going around the desert tonight: over across the Nevada line, sheriff’s deputies are diving in some underground pools, trying to retrieve a couple of bodies known to be in the hole. The widow of one of the drowned boys is over there; she is eighteen, and pregnant, and is said not to leave the hole. The divers go down and come up, and she just stands there and stares into the water. They have been diving for ten days but have found no bottom to the caves, no bodies and no trace of them, only the black 90° water going down and down and down, and a single translucent fish, not classified. The story tonight is that one of the divers has been hauled up incoherent, out of his head, shouting—until they got him out of there so that the widow could not hear—about water that got hotter instead of cooler as he went down, about light flickering through the water, about magma, about underground nuclear testing.

That is the tone stories take out here, and there are quite a few of them tonight. And it is more than the stories alone. Across the road at the Faith Community Church a couple of dozen old people, come here to live in trailers and die in the sun, are holding a prayer sing. I cannot hear them and do not want to. What I can hear are occasional coyotes and a constant chorus of “Baby the Rain Must Fall” from the jukebox in the Snake Room next door, and if I were also to hear those dying voices, those Midwestern voices drawn to this lunar country for some unimaginable atavistic rites, rock of ages cleft for me, I think I would lose my own reason. Every now and then I imagine I hear a rattlesnake, but my husband says that it is a faucet, a paper rustling, the wind. Then he stands by a window, and plays a flashlight over the dry wash outside.

What does it mean? It means nothing manageable. There is some sinister hysteria in the air out here tonight, some hint of the monstrous perversion to which any human idea can come. “I followed my own conscience.” “I did what I thought was right.” How many madmen have said it and meant it? How many murderers? Klaus Fuchs said it, and the men who committed the Mountain Meadows Massacre said it, and Alfred Rosenberg said it. And, as we are rotely and rather presumptuously reminded by those who would say it now, Jesus said it. Maybe we have all said it, and maybe we have been wrong. Except on that most primitive level—our loyalties to those we love—what could be more  arrogant than to claim the primacy of personal conscience? (“Tell me,” a rabbi‑asked Daniel Bell when he said, as a child, that he did not believe in God. “Do you think God cares?”) At least some of the time, the world appears to me as a painting by Hieronymous Bosch; were I to follow my conscience then, it would lead me out onto the desert with Marion Faye, out to where he stood in The Deer Park looking east to Los Alamos and praying, as if for rain, that it would happen: “. . . let it come and clear the rot and the stench and the stink, let it come for all of everywhere, just so it comes and the world stands clear in the white dead dawn.”

Of course you will say that I do not have the right, even if I had the power, to inflict that unreasonable conscience upon you; nor do I want you to inflict your conscience, however reasonable, however enlightened, upon me. (“We must be aware of the dangers which lie in our most generous wishes,” Lionel Trilling once wrote. “Some paradox of our nature leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion.”) That the ethic of conscience is intrinsically insidious seems scarcely a revelatory point, but it is one raised with increasing infrequency; even those who do raise it tend to segue with troubling readiness into the quite contradictory position that the ethic of conscience is dangerous when it is “wrong,” and admirable when it is “right.”

You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting that we have no way of knowing—beyond that fundamental loyalty to the social code—what is “right” and what is “wrong,” what is “good” and what “evil.” I dwell so upon this because the most disturbing aspect of “morality” seems to me to be the frequency with which the word now appears; in the press, on television, in the most perfunctory kinds of conversation. Questions of straightforward power (or survival) politics, questions of quite indifferent public policy, questions of almost anything: they are all assigned these factitious moral burdens. There is something facile going on, some self‑indulgence at work. Of course we would all like to “believe” in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home. And of course it is all right to do that; that is how, immemorially, things have gotten done. But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with “morality.” Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble, And I suspect we are already there.

New Thing 15, New Thing Every Day: Take an Academic Exam, Online

Did you know I am working toward my MBA? I'm not doing it in a hardcore way because I already have more than one job, but Columbia College has an excellent program that allows me to take just one class at a time, one every eight weeks, and I am on my third class with them. If I stick with it, I will earn my MBA in 2019. Yes, I am pretty excited about that.

Even though I have just started my third class, Finance 350, I really did take my first online exam today. The first two classes had projects and homework assignments, but no actual exams.

The exam was actually pretty stressful for me. On the one hand, I tend to be an excellent test taker -- a fact that got me through high school and college without doing most of what was expected of me -- but on the other hand, I am absolutely horrible at math. Like, I literally think I may have an undiagnosed learning disability. Unlike other kinds of information, it is very difficult for me to absorb and retain math, and I generally have to read things over and over to get them at all.

If you think I am exaggerating, you should know that it took me two tries to pass college statistics at MU -- my only college "math" class -- and that was with a cumulative D. That's right, I really do suck at anything math.

I am enjoying my Finance class, despite its difficulty, and I was sort of looking forward to my first exam. For that kind of test, they give you two hours and that is it. If the house burns down around you, you have just two hours. So that was a little intimidating, and I sequestered myself away where I could focus on the exam and nobody would bother me.

It really makes me empathize with people who are poor test takers, or just poor students. I am generally a fast test taker, and it took me over an hour and a half of the allotted two hours. And it was a hard two hours. In the end, I got a 92% and am very excited about that. I also learned valuable lessons from the process that will help me do better in the future. I look forward to the challenge.

New Thing 14, New Thing Every Day: Get an Instagram Account

Until today, I had never visited Instagram or even seen it. It is important to an awful lot of folks, though, so I suppose I should check it out. As my friends know, I am more of a Facebook guy, with just a sprinkling of Twitter and LinkedIn, and now I have an Instagram account. We will see if I do anything with it.

Here it is -- https://www.instagram.com/seanspence70/

New Thing 13, New Thing Every Day: Visit www.zergnet.com

When I was building my preliminary list of 365 new things, I did quite a bit of Googling, and found a list of "The 20 Most Interesting Websites". I added most of them to my list and today I am visiting the first one: zergnet.com. I had absolutely no idea what to expect, and what I fond was a news aggregator that collects popular stories of all kinds -- lots of move star stuff, film trivia, recipes, etc. It looks pretty interesting, and I could see it as a good way to kill some time.

New Thing 12, New Thing Every Day: Try Dragon Fruit

Probably my very favorite things to watch on TV are competitive cooking shows -- Chopped, Top Chef, etc. I love them! In fact, I never even knew I was a sports fan until I started watching Chopped. Oh, and note that I am not very interested in cooking shows that are not competitive -- I want the action AND the food, not just the food.

As a byproduct of watching these shows, I learn about all kinds of foods that I have never tried. And that is where my New Thing Every Day project comes in. Over the next year I will try all kinds of foods that I otherwise would not have. I'm pretty excited about it.

Today is my first new food, the dragon fruit. I had seen it in the store and watched it used in dishes on TV, but never tried it. So, yesterday, I bought one, and today I prepared it (after reading a bit on the Web). I will warn you, in case you plan to follow my lead, that a dragon fruit costs $6.00. That's right, $6.00 for one fairly small piece of fruit. For most of us, this is definitely not an every day ingredient.

My preparation was very simple (see the pictures).

1. Cut it in half with a large kitchen knife. 
2. Scoop out the fruit with a spoon (if the dragon fruit is ripe, this will be pretty easy).
3. Chop up the two halves into cubes.
4. Mix in a bowl with a little fresh lemon juice and agave nectar.

In the end, it was really tasty and I am glad I tried it -- kind of a cross between honeydew melon and kiwi (with the chewy black seeds throughout). Was it worth $6.00? As a first-time thing, sure; as an ongoing purchase, probably no.

If you have not had dragon fruit, I recommend giving it a try.

Have an awesome rest of your day!

- sean

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New Thing 11, New Thing Every Day: Read Kahlil Gibran

My friend Karen Mickey suggested that I should read something by Kahlil Gibran. Honestly, I had never even heard the name before and knew nothing about his work. Now that I have read up on him a bit, it turns out that he is the third best-selling poet in history, behind Shakespeare and Laozi (okay, so I have never heard of that second one, either).

I have now read several of Gibran's poems, and pasted below is one example. I hope you enjoy it!

- sean

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A Lover's Call Xxvii - Poem by Khalil Gibran

Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little
Paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you
As infants look upon the breast of their mothers?


Or are you in your chamber where the shrine of
Virtue has been placed in your honor, and upon
Which you offer my heart and soul as sacrifice?


Or amongst the books, seeking human knowledge,
While you are replete with heavenly wisdom?


Oh companion of my soul, where are you? Are you
Praying in the temple? Or calling Nature in the
Field, haven of your dreams?


Are you in the huts of the poor, consoling the
Broken-hearted with the sweetness of your soul, and
Filling their hands with your bounty?


You are God's spirit everywhere;
You are stronger than the ages.


Do you have memory of the day we met, when the halo of
You spirit surrounded us, and the Angels of Love
Floated about, singing the praise of the soul's deed?


Do you recollect our sitting in the shade of the
Branches, sheltering ourselves from Humanity, as the ribs
Protect the divine secret of the heart from injury?


Remember you the trails and forest we walked, with hands
Joined, and our heads leaning against each other, as if
We were hiding ourselves within ourselves?


Recall you the hour I bade you farewell,
And the Maritime kiss you placed on my lips?
That kiss taught me that joining of lips in Love
Reveals heavenly secrets which the tongue cannot utter!


That kiss was introduction to a great sigh,
Like the Almighty's breath that turned earth into man.


That sigh led my way into the spiritual world,
Announcing the glory of my soul; and there
It shall perpetuate until again we meet.


I remember when you kissed me and kissed me,
With tears coursing your cheeks, and you said,
"Earthly bodies must often separate for earthly purpose,
And must live apart impelled by worldly intent.


"But the spirit remains joined safely in the hands of
Love, until death arrives and takes joined souls to God.


"Go, my beloved; Love has chosen you her delegate;
Over her, for she is Beauty who offers to her follower
The cup of the sweetness of life.
As for my own empty arms, your love shall remain my
Comforting groom; you memory, my Eternal wedding."


Where are you now, my other self? Are you awake in
The silence of the night? Let the clean breeze convey
To you my heart's every beat and affection.


Are you fondling my face in your memory? That image
Is no longer my own, for Sorrow has dropped his
Shadow on my happy countenance of the past.


Sobs have withered my eyes which reflected your beauty
And dried my lips which you sweetened with kisses.


Where are you, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping
From beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need?
Do you know the greatness of my patience?


Is there any spirit in the air capable of conveying
To you the breath of this dying youth? Is there any
Secret communication between angels that will carry to
You my complaint?


Where are you, my beautiful star? The obscurity of life
Has cast me upon its bosom; sorrow has conquered me.


Sail your smile into the air; it will reach and enliven me!
Breathe your fragrance into the air; it will sustain me!


Where are you, me beloved?
Oh, how great is Love!
And how little am I!

New Thing 10, New Thing Every Day: Mail Someone a Ball

The two ladies at Send a Ball.

Some time ago, I was watching an episode of Shark Tank (you know, that show where really rich people invest in business ideas), and I saw a business that sends big rubber balls to people in the mail. Seriously: big, inflated rubber balls with no packaging of any kind and the address just written on them. It looked so fun, and I knew I would eventually have to send a ball to someone (for goodness sake, it costs just $20.99!).

It took my New Thing Every Day project to get me to actually pull the trigger, and, as of a few minutes ago, I have visited sendaball.com  and sent someone a ball.

I gave the recipient a lot of thought. Of course, my first thought was my wife -- and that will still probably happen at some point -- but I decided I should send it to someone who really needs a day brightener. It took a lot of thinking but I feel like I chose exactly the right someone. No, I am not going to say who it is here but, trust me, I sent it to someone who really could use a big rubber ball and hopefully a little smile.

Have an awesome rest of your day!

- sean

View the Complete List of New Things

New Thing 9, New Thing Every Day: Review Something I like on Yelp

In this world of e-everything, there is a wide range of things I have not done that millions of people do on a fairly regular basis. Over the next year, I will do many of them; today, I am writing my very first Yelp review. Enjoy!

••••••••••••

One of Columbia's newest restaurants, Barred Owl is a wonderful addition to our options. As someone who frequents Sycamore and Bleu (well, used to) I am happy to see Barred Owl join their ranks as one of Columbia's tastiest restaurants.

The menu is eclectic and changes "constantly"; I expect most folks might only be interested in parts of it at any given time (be ready for rabbit, fried head cheese, or maybe grilled sardines). But there is plenty for those with less exotic tastes -- great steaks, pastas, sandwiches and salads (all creative and made with the finest, often local, ingredients). The bar is awesome, too, and offers a wide range of craft cocktails that are fun to order.

The desserts are constantly shifting and many are a little fancy for my taste, but they are made right there and offer the kind of variety that can satisfy a wide range of sweet toothes.

Definitely recommend. If you eat out a lot, put Barred Owl into your regular rotation.

View the Complete List of New Things

New Thing 8, New Thing Every Day: Make a List of 50+ Places I Want to Visit

Leigh and I love to travel, including road trips, so this was a pretty fun list to make. It has ended up being 77 places. It would be great to go to all of them, and I hope we will. I have barely done any international travel, and it is definitely getting to be time to make that a priority.

To create the list, I started by adding the places that were just in my head of places that I thought should be a priority. Then, I did some Web searching and that got me to maybe 50. To really fill out the list, I used Facebook to ask my friends, and got back lots of fabulous suggestions (crowd sourcing really is one of my favorite things about this project). Some suggestions were already on the list (which I had not shared); some were places I have already been; but all the rest made the list because I figure a friend's recommendation is good enough for me.

Here is the final list (at least, until I think of more places that should be added).

Location	Country
Kenya	Kenya
The Great Wall of China	China
Mumbai, India	India
Tokyo, Japan	Japan
Ithaa Undersea restaurant	Maldives
Moscow	Russia
Sydney	Australia
Prague, Czech Republic	Czech Republic
Iceland	Iceland
Tuscany	Italy
Icehotel, Jukkasjarvi	Sweden
Hawaii	United States
Napa Valley, CA	United States
Alaska	United States
Post-Katrina New Orleans, LA	United States
Athens	Greece
Hong Kong	China
Barcelona	Spain
Cairo, Egypt	Egypt
Morocco	Morocco
Cape Town	South Africa
Beijing, China	China
Israel	Israel
Kuwait	Kuwait
Singapore	Singapore
Seoul, South Korea	South Korea
Bangkok, Thailand	Thailand
Dubai, UAE	UAE
Basque Country	Basque Country
Santorini, Greece	Greece
Monaco	Monaco
Warsaw, Poland	Poland
Milan, Spain	Spain
Stone Henge	United Kingdom
Istanbul, Turkey	Turkey
Havana, Cuba	Cuba
Easter Island	Chile
Mexico City, Mexico	Mexico
New Zealand
Stellenbosch wine region	South Africa
Quebec City	Canada
The Black Forest	Germany
New Delhi, India	India
Glass Igloo Village Hotels, Finland	Finland
Ireland	Ireland
Glacier National Park, United States	United States
Buenos Aires, Argentina	Argentina
Belize	Belize
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	Brazil
Honduras	Honduras
Salzburg	Austria
Watkins Glen, NY	United States
Bryce Canyon, UT	United States
Luxembourg
Banff	Canada
Mt. Rushmore	United States
Lerici	Italy
Hell's Canyon	United States
Restaurant near Sanyou Cave above the Chang Jiang river, Hubei	China
Tahiti, French Polynesia	French Polynesia
Jakarta, Indonesia	Indonesia
Plitvice Lakes National Park	Croatia
Hardanger Bridge	Morway
Atlantic Ocean Road	Norway
Waterfall Castle, Poland	Poland
Algarve Coast, Portugal	Portugal
Japanese Gardens in San Francisco, CA	United States
Capilano Suspension Bridge, Vancouver	Canada
Stornoway	Scotland
McMurdo Station	Antarctica
Sand dunes of Recife	Brazil
Collioure	France
Cortina	Italy
Fortaleza	Brazil
Seville	Spain
Loch Locky	Scotland
Mackinaw Island, MI	United States

 View the Complete New Thing Every Day List

New Thing 7, New Thing Every Day: Write a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Plan

Honestly, I am not sure why it has taken me so long to create this, even without my New Thing Every Day project. Everyone should have one because the zombie apocalypse could happen at any time, and it will hit so hard and so fast. Thank goodness, our government has their plan in place.

Here is a news story about the federal plan. They claim it is just for training and is not a real thing, but we know the truth, don't we? http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/16/politics/pentagon-zombie-apocalypse/

Over the years, I have seen and read far more than my share of zombie stories. I am downright encyclopedic when it comes to my knowledge of the ways of zombies. So it would certainly be reasonable to assume that I would create a pretty detailed plan and get the pieces into place. I actually started to do that, but that is not the right way to go, at least for me.

The fact is that I am almost certainly screwed if the zombie apocalypse hits during my lifetime. Trust me, wheelchair users do not fare well in that world -- we get eaten, or robbed and killed, or turned into a perpetual plaything for some kind of post-apocalyptic pervert.

I never give up without a fight, though and I know what my goal will be and what first-steps I will take.

• My primary goal will be to ally with one or more people who can help me survive, and get to a secluded, self-sufficient location where I hope to live out my days (traveling as little as possible will be a key to my survival). At least in the beginning, I will have one major strength to offer potential allies: my deep knowledge of what can happen in a zombie apocalypse, what might be helpful and what definitely will not be (for example, all that matters is the headshot).
• The very first step will be to do my best to locate Leigh and Clark and persuade them to go with me. I think I can get that done.
• The second step will be to get to one of three people -- Larry Schuster (Columbia), Brad Tolson (NW Missouri), or David Scott (Eldon). They have the perfect combination of qualities for partnership in a zombie apocalypse.
• They are geographically close to me.
• I can trust them and they will have an interest in helping me survive.
• They have weapons and ammunition.
• They have immediate access to farmland where we can live indefinitely.
• They know how to survive off the land, how to fix things, etc.
• The will not annoy me.
• Honestly, that is pretty much the whole plan. There are other people I can try, including family, but most of them are several hours away. My goal is to get somewhere on less than one tank of gas and figure things out from there. If that does not work, I will probably try to get to Kentucky, where I have lots of family, most of them rural (and I can get there on 1-2 tanks of gas).

Someone will say I have forgotten my mom, or my siblings, or any number of other people who are super important to me. But the fact is that the odds are incredibly slim of getting to anyone who is more than a tank or two of gas away. Trying to prove that rule of zombie survival wrong will surely get millions of people killed.

When the zombie apocalypse hits, I am saving who I can that are closest and getting the heck out of town as quickly as I can. I'll figure things our from there. I encourage you to do the same.

New Thing 6, New Thing Every Day: Learn My Spirit Animal

One lesson I learned pursuing this New Thing is that there is not an actual, agreed-upon process for determining one's spirit animal. Really, it does not seem to be a real thing, but it is still fun to think about.

What I did find were many different online quizzes for determining one's spirit animal, and I took five of them. This was not nearly as helpful as I would have liked, because five quizzes yielded five different results. In addition, I also learned that my Chinese calendar birth animal is the dog, which was not one of the five quiz results. The five were: llama, lion, elephant, eagle, and sloth.

My favorite is the llama (see description, below), so I have decided that the llama is my spirit animal. Let it ring forth throughout all the land!

Have an awesome rest of your day.

- sean

See the Rest of the New Things List


In case you are interested, here is the full list of my potential spirit animals, with source and description,

Llama (https://www.doquizzes.com/QCKYZO)

Majestic, under appreciated and like 80's fashion a future style icon. Your time will come.

Lion (http://www.spiritanimal.info/spirit-animal-quiz/)

In the realm of spirit animals, the lion wins the prize for most relentless fighter in the face of life challenges. The lion spirit animal represents courage, strength in overcoming difficulties.

The presence of this power animal could also mean that something “wild” or difficult to control is happening. As such, lions symbolizes emotions that are difficult to manage, such a anger or fear.

Elephant (https://whatismyspiritanimal.com/spirit-animal-quiz/)

You're the Elephant - Royal Eminence of the African Savanna! Your deep spirit rules with dignity and abiding love for your people. Your talent to rally the troops and lead them to victory is the stuff legends are made of.

Eagle (http://quizinsight.com/quizzes/what-is-your-spirit-animal/quiz)

Followers of this universally admired totem -- the eagle -- have a striking presence that exudes powerful sexual energies. A sacred animal to many native tribes, the eagle is a natural explorer and its high energy means that it’s not going to remain in one place for long. It’s one of the defining features of this spirit that nothing gets their juices flowing more than travel to an exotic locale.

That’s why eagles do not adjust well to the confines of office work, and it’s recommended that you find something outdoors – even if it’s working in the hot sun in construction worker, or as a park ranger or pilot.

There is a tendency toward emotional instability, but these jags don’t last long. All it takes is a long walk in nature to restore the balance of this majestic animal spirit.

Sloth

You’re as cool as a cucumber, and you love to go with the flow. Your favorite activities include eating, sleeping, and eating again. Your rap name is Sir Naps-a-Lot.

Chinese Year of the Dog

New Thing 5, New Thing Every Day: Fast for One Day

My entire sustenance for the day.

5:30 am
Since this is an all-day thing, I am starting my post at 6:46 a.m. and will periodically update throughout the day, kind of like progress reports.

At this point, I am already a little hungry, but that will go away.  I will drink water throughout the day, to be as healthy as possible about this whole thing. That should help, but I suspect I am going to get pretty hungry sometime around lunch time. Do milkshakes count as food?

9:20 am
Ugh. It is snowing and the temperature is in the teens, so I am stranded at home (darned legs that don't work very well!). There is just so much tasty food within feet of where I am sitting, this is going to be an even more challenging day than I had planned.

12:32 pm
It is a little after the time I would usually eat lunch and, yes, I am hungry. That said, it is not that big a deal, and I feel like that is partly because I have made the decision to not eat today. I feel like if I were expecting to eat, I would feel much hungrier than I do. It is a good reminder to me that so much of how we feel really is under our own control, at least to some extent.

2:11 pm
Really for the first time today, I am starting to get pretty hungry. Over the last few years, as I have been losing weight slowly but consistently, I have been conditioning myself to think of hunger as a good feeling, the feeling of weight loss. So it really is not so bad.

4:06 pm
For the last hour or so, my brain has been conjuring the taste of things I would really enjoy eating (and that are readily available in the kitchen, a few feet away). It is contributing to an interesting exercise in self control. All I have had today are cans of La Croix sparkling water; definitely looking forward to breakfast tomorrow.

4:51 pm
I keep forgetting that I am fasting and looking forward to dinner.

5:47 am (Friday)
The fast is over and I am getting ready for my day. I actually woke up with a splitting headache (which I never do), so I went straight to the kitchen and ate an apple, and the headache is already mostly gone.

Aside from the headache, fasting for the first time ever was a pretty good experience (no, Facebook friends, I did not have the Bailey's!). I don't want to make it a bigger deal than it was, but it made me think quite a bit, mostly about my relationship with food. Yes, food was on my mind for much of the day, but I saw even more clearly that I do not need it quite as much as I have often felt like I do. Food has often played an unhealthy role in my life, and I feel like some of its hold on me -- often not related to actual physical need -- is a little weaker.

That said, I am going to go have a little more breakfast!

- Sean Spence

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New Thing 4, New Thing Every Day: Buy a Lottery Ticket

Ticket bought from friend Daryl Dudley.

Would you believe that I had never bought a lottery ticket before today? I do not really believe in it, but I have to admit that it was kind of fun. In spite of myself, two dollars spent, I found myself thinking about what I would do with the $80 million payout from the Missouri Powerball drawing.

On the other hand, it also made me think about the majority of lottery winners, who end up going bankrupt. I am not so sure that lotteries are a good thing for our society, or for the individuals who play, as a whole.

I will let you know when I win the $80 million, at which point I feel fairly sure I will become a vocal advocate for the lottery system.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

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Day 3, New Thing Every Day: Write a List of 10+ Life Lessons

This was a fun exercise. The first several lessons poured out of my brain fairly quickly, and I had to give extra thought to get to the final four or five. They are all super important lessons for me, though, and have been essential in making me who I am.

Everyone should do this exercise because it forces us to think about who we are and how we became whomever that is.  There are plenty of people in this life who never engage in this sort of introspection, and I think they are missing out. Understanding the answers to these sorts of questions is the first step to knowing ourselves, and becoming better people.

It was also powerful for me, by the way, to think about where I learned each lesson (at least, to the best of my ability). Going through that process made me dig a little deeper, which made the whole process more valuable to me.

Here's my list.

1.              Don’t sweat the little stuff.  (Richard Spence, my dad)
2.              It’s all little stuff. (Richard Spence, my dad)
3.              “What were you worried about on this day, six months ago? You don’t remember and you won’t remember what worries you today. So don’t worry.” (Bill McKenna, former boss)
4.              Don’t get upset about what has happened, just focus on making things better in the future.” (Ed Payton, former boss)
5.              Don’t buy on credit/get into debt.” (Dave Ramsey, radio guy)
6.              Someone will always be smarter or better looking or whatever, but you can still be the best by working harder than anyone else.” (unknown)
7.              Don’t take any crap, from anyone. (Shirley Spence, my mom)
8.              It is never too late to fall in true love. (Leigh Spence, wife)
9.              There are all kinds of people in the world, and they all have value. (Dean Andersen, friend)
10.          Always tell the truth. (Richard & Shirley Spence, my parents)
11.      Accept the hard things in life; they are what build your character. (Richard Spence, my dad)
12.      Be patient. If it is not time to know something (at work, or home, or whatever), then don't think about it until the time comes. (Joe Maxwell, former boss)

View the Complete List of My Planned 365 Things