The Devil’s Hour Be Damned

My earliest memory is of waking up around 3:00 AM demanding my bottle. My mother, desperate for sleep, stumbled into my room, leaned over the edge of the crib with half-closed eyes staring down at me, and handed me one.

It was full of Coke, not milk. I grabbed the bottle and eagerly started to suck its sugary teat. Minutes later, I was back to sleep, and so was she.

I’m pretty sure my mother didn’t read about that little trick anywhere in Dr. Spock. She was “winging it,” as they say. What would I want if I awoke crying at 3:00 AM?… Read the rest

Doyouseemenastrees? Reflections on Mark 8:22-25

(This is Part 2 of a series on our recent trip to Clinica Ezell in Montellano, Guatemala. Part 1 can be found here. The following are remarks that I delivered to the HTI Eye/Ortho Team on March 17, 2010 during evening devotional).

First off, thank you Cameron for having my back tonight. He loaned me his Bible after I forgot mine.  I didn’t want to stand up here and scroll through my Bible app on my iPhone–I thought that would look, uh, “unprofessional” (pointing to my Bama ball cap and scrubs).

I just want to clear up one more thing before I get started.… Read the rest

Dmitri, You Stop That RIGHT NOW!

Gentle Fusioneers–

If you’re trying to read the comments on my blog you may have noticed you can’t. In fact, you can’t leave one either for that matter.

You can thank Dmitri for that. He’s one of the imaginary Russians that I race toward the end of my long runs (and always beat, BTW–USA!, USA!, USA!). But in real life he’s a spammer. A good one, too.

This time he left a piece of…well, you know what he left, that apparently corrupted my database. Rest assured, your five years worth of comments are still there, careening through the interwebs, floating in the virtual ether, and as soon as I can figure out to to retrieve them, they will appear again.… Read the rest

The Road to Montellano Leads Straight Through My Heart

The road to Montellano, Guatemala started in a small, dingy-gray room on the 11th floor of Roanoke Memorial Hospital on April 2nd, 2009. It was there around 5:00 AM that I held my mother’s head in my hands and shouted words of love and farewell over her as she drew her last breath in this life.

You don’t travel into the Valley of the Shadow with someone and then back out again without being changed forever. The Reaper’s sickle passes so close to your own skin that you feel its wind. It cuts, and if you’re standing near enough, you bleed.… Read the rest

Sometimes Only a Buzzword Will Do

I literally groaned when my clerk handed me the plastic reference card to place on my houndstooth lanyard. If you work for the government or a large corporation, you know what I’m talking about.

Those lovely little laminated jewels have all the answers to every conceivable scenario or crisis. Surrounded by a 10-foot wall of flames? No problem. Just remember–“R-A-C-E” (Remove, Activate, Confine, Extinguish) and “P-A-S-S” (Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep).

Of course, by the time you fumble through them, find the right one and read it, the point is moot because now you’re soot.

“Don’t worry,” he said as he watched me reach around and rub my neck in anticipation of the extra weight. … Read the rest

Confessions Of An Old Cold Warrior

I had a very smart man, a rocket scientist in fact (we have a few in Huntsville), tell me recently that America was going to hell in a hand basket. He didn’t say it quite that way because a respectable Christian, Southern gentleman would never drop the “H” bomb in front of the ladies unless he was reading it out of the Bible. But that was the basic gist of it.

He said a lot of things, that we had strayed from the intent of the Founding Fathers to establish a “Christian Nation,” that widespread belief in evolution was the root of much of society’s evil and ills, including increasing teenage suicide rates, and that really things had grown much worse since prayer was banned in public schools.… Read the rest

Waiting on the Crumbs From Steve Jobs’ Table

I had a Close Encounter of the Creepy Kind with my iPhone this week. This has caused me to pause and reflect on our relationship with all our bright and shiny electronic doodads.

It happened last Sunday as Eyegal and I attended early service at a local Episcopal parish, as is our habit from time to time. It was the First Sunday in Lent (Note to my Baptist and Church of Christ friends: Lent is a 40-day period of repentance preceding Easter. It is part of the church calendar, which is actually pretty official and has been around a long, long time–like, several centuries before the founding of the United States–and has more on it besides the date of the Ladies Retreat and the next church-wide potluck.… Read the rest

We All Bear the Mark

“Have a nice weekend,” I called out to my technician last Friday shortly after 4:00 PM. “Off to get a haircut. It’s getting a little out of hand,” I chuckled. I patted the top of my crown where a shock of unruly hair shot straight up, trying in vain to press it down flat. I looked like Einstein after sticking his finger in a light socket.

When I stepped outside, I heard the sirens in full, 360 degree surround sound. From every direction came the warbling wail; if the sun hadn’t been shining I would’ve sworn there was a tornado on the ground.… Read the rest

OME, OMY, I Can’t Find The Eye

I’ve received quite a few compliments on my “old-timey” eye exam header at the top of my blog. Glad y’all like it. I think it symbolizes what I’ve been trying to do here at Ocular Fusion over the years (“Just looking around and trying to put it all together”).

That, plus I like black and white, old school pictures. We’ve had a blast going through Mom’s pictures since she died and found some real gems. It’s always good to be remember your roots.

Of course, any eye-savvy folks out there can immediately spot the irony: Old Timey Eyeguy is not really “fusing.”… Read the rest

Why Some People Should Go Straight To Hell

tentslogoI would never tell my good friend Dr. Mark Elrod of Harding University (Hail!) to go to hell. He’s too nice a guy for that, plus he has this “condition”–an enlarged heart. Not the type that would cause you to keel over in the middle of a pick-up basketball game, but the kind that bleeds heavily when people are suffering. It’s a malady we could all use a little more of these days.

As for Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh, those purveyors of post-quake logorrhera, and the political dude from South Carolina who when speaking about people on public assistance used the analogy of denying animals food so they couldn’t “breed” but now “regrets” saying that even though it brought him much attention and fired up his “evangelical” base–I would wish them all straight to hell in a handbasket.… Read the rest

Getting a Grip: About Mark Ingram’s Gloves

ou6zpsNumber One Son and I had just been discussing what could possibly be on the palms of Alabama’s new Nike Pro Combat player gloves, and it didn’t take us long to find out.

We knew that the Crimson Tide was among several teams that would be receiving the new gear, which featured a particular avatar representing the “spirit” of each team, but Bama’s was missing from Nike’s preview website.

But when Heisman Trophy-winning tailback Mark Ingram scored his first touchdown in the BCS Title Game against Texas, he flashed the new gloves toward the camera for all the world to see.… Read the rest

All Eyes Are On Alabama, And It Feels So Right

Bama washingtonIf you’re going to stand in line in subfreezing temperatures in order to enter the holy of holies of college basketball, then you’d better know your stuff because every other Cameron Crazie wannabe standing in line with you sure will.

Well, mostly anyway.

When it comes to football, we were a motley crew, united only in our love for Duke basketball. Clemson, LSU, Georgia, Alabama, Penn State and Rutgers were just a few of the schools represented in our little knot of frozen fandom near the front of the line.

Kid Clemson, the guy in the Tiger hoodie in front of me, was a veritable walking encyclopedia of sports statistics.… Read the rest

Twitter Me Blue

I learned a very valuable lesson yesterday. If you’re going to be using an iPhone in subfreezing temperatures, make sure it’s fully charged. You might even want to wrap it up in a heated, insulated blanket between uses while you’re at it.

I barely had time to snap a photo or two of the Duke University campus when it completely flatlined. Can you believe that? Sure you can! It’s an iPhone! My itty-bitty blue United States map was lit up and everything, and then it just up and disappeared like the lost continent of Atlantis.

Guess I can’t blame that one on AT&T since it was a hardware issue.… Read the rest

Signs and Wonders Never Cease

CameronThe first time I saw Cameron Indoor Stadium, I walked right past it without even trying to go in. I figured anything that storied and sacred was probably locked. I was seventeen years old and too wet behind the ears to realize that in order to gain entry to the places you wanted to go in life, sometimes all you have to do is walk up to the door and knock.

Instead, I walked over to the tennis courts and watched the men’s team practice. It was September 1979, and my father was having coronary bypass surgery at Duke Medical Center on the other end of the quad. … Read the rest

I Still Believe In Santa Claus

If I had a shred of innocence left in me by the summer of 1968, it was all gone by the time Mom gave me “The Talk.” No, not that talk. The one about Santa Claus.

Martin Luther King, Jr was gone and now Bobby Kennedy was dead too, and the world seem to be spinning out of control. I watched Memphis burn on TV and remember seeing the thousands of grieving onlookers who lined the tracks and payed their respects as Kennedy’s funeral train traveled from New York City to Washington, D.C.  I was a mere preschooler, but it didn’t take some preternatural sixth sense to tell that most folks thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket.… Read the rest