Saying good-bye to the pink ribbon, but not the cause

Tabling in Dayton, NV

Long-time readers are aware of my very active political background. I have served on our local party committee and worked for the DNC as a field organizer in rural Nevada.  I believed in the party. Four years ago I was a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter and there was much ugliness directed at people like me in that election from my own party.  It’s a fact, and I’m not going to sugar-coat it.  Sadly, it was a very divisive time and when I finally stepped away from the Democratic party I wanted nothing to do with activist politics. This isn’t to say I stopped being interested in politics, but I was sick to death of the tribalism of it all, Left and Right.

2005

However, I am a helper at heart. I like causes. I like thinking that I am making a difference, even if it is just one person at a time.   In May 2007 I started the job I currently hold. It is a large company (multinational) with about 400 employees just at our site alone.  In addition, over the years I had participated in the Northern Nevada  Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure as an individual and on occasion I would be joined by my daughter or a friend.

2009

When I went to work for my very large company I was very excited about the prospect of participating in the race on a team. When I found out that our company did not already have a team I formed one and got about 29 of my co-workers and their family and friends on board.  We raised a couple thousand dollars, as I recall.  It became an annual tradition, and over the years our team has grown to average about 50 members each year.  Over the course of those five years, we raised well over $20,000.

2010

In 2008 I volunteered to serve on the race committee and, in addition to my team captain role, served as the Database Chair for the next four years (2008-2011). For the last two years I also served as the In-Person Registration Chair (in addition to my team captain and database duties).

I’ve tabled for Komen, attended its national conference, personally given hundreds – if not thousands – of dollars to the cause.  I even served on the board of the affiliate as its secretary for about two years.

When I commit to a cause, this is what it looks like:  Full bore, pedal to the metal.

I am not a breast cancer survivor but have had too many friends and relatives affected or killed by this disease.  Just this week one of my co-workers, a young mother of two, underwent a radical bilateral mastectomy. So this is personal. Big time.

In 2009 I wrote this about my experience with Susan G. Komen:

The women I work with at SGK are a varied lot. But one of the things I love most about serving with this wonderful group of women (and men) is that when we are in a room together, all thoughts of political, religious or philosophical differences go out the window in our pursuit of a cure and assistance for those diagnosed with breast cancer.

That all got blown out of the water this week and it is why I’ll never give another dime or moment of my time to this organization. And all the back-tracking and weasel words in the world won’t change that.  Linda lays it out in a very blunt and to-the-point message.

Going forward my cancer research donations will go to the American Cancer Society, and locally I will support Moms on the Run who help not only breast cancer patients but women with other women’s cancers as well. And yes, Planned Parenthood can count on donations from me as well. I’ve taken this fantastic organization far too much for granted and it’s time to give back.

     

Pink Week

I’ll be at my Real Life job today and then will be out of the office Tuesday through Friday to fulfill my duties as the Registration and Database Chair for the 2010 Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure which will be this Sunday at Boomtown.  This is the third year I’ve served on the race committee and it’s been one of the most challenging. The economy, for all that the “experts” are telling us is improving, has taken it’s toll on our sponsors and participants.  After we’d gotten some of our race materials printed we were informed by UNR that we would not be able to use the Quad, and so we had to scramble to find another location. Vital time was lost looking for another venue able to hold the numbers that our race attracts. We were also looking for a place to hold our annual Team Captain Kickoff event (held in July), and one thing led to another, and it was Boomtown that stepped up to the plate and offered us their site not only for our Kickoff event, but also for everything else for the race, including In Person Registration and Packet Pick-Up.  Boomtown has been a true partner for the race and we are very grateful.

Me and my pal, Kerry. 2003

Some people might think Boomtown is too far to go for the race, but it’s not any further away for me than when the race was held at IGT, and getting in and out of the place will be a heck of a lot easier! Plus, they’ve got a Peet’s Coffee and a great buffet on site! What’s not to love?

2005

There are so many women and men that work together on this event, but by far, our board president and race co-chair, Lucy McGuire, is the one who has done the yeoman’s work. She has a full time job, a family, and yet she seems to devote every waking hour to Komen. She’s either on the phone, on email, or making trips back and forth to Boomtown, she is an inspiration to me.

It will be a late night tonight, what with pulling lists to coordinate with our timing company, creating mailing labels for all the tshirts we’ll mail to our Sleep in for the Cure participants, organizing binders for registration and packet pick-up.

Why do I do it? Simple. I want to see breast cancer eradicated, and knowing that Susan G. Komen is the largest funder of research into breast cancer outside the federal government keeps me coming back.

You may just see pink. I see a deadly disease and potential cures.

If you can, please donate.

2009 - UNR

I’ll be checking in.

Out of touch

No, Nina doesn't have anything to do with the race, but isn't she cute?

I’m completely out of the loop. I know there are goings on that should get my attention, but there is only so much time in the day. But crunch time is over. Tomorrow is Race Day.

Breasts and Burgers

Just a reminder that today is:

RED ROBIN GOURMET BURGER’S KOMEN DAY – Wednesday, September 30

On Sep. 30, Red Robin is sponsoring a Gourmet Burgers Komen Day. Stop by the Sparks/Spanish Springs or Reno Red Robin, enjoy anything on the restaurant’s menu. 15% of all proceeds will be going to the No. Nevada Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Back to the race database. I’ll come up for air soon.

Goings on and a tiny rant

Aside from the usual newsfeeds and promotional emails from Macy’s, Coldwater Creek, Target, Borders, and Pettags.com, my inbox is full of back and forth emails between the committee members for next weekend’s 11th Northern Nevada Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.  It’s definitely crunch time, and the emails are flying fast and furious, but I can breathe a little today as I am caught up on all the paper entries we’ve received.

For those of you in the area who wish to participate, online registration is open until midnight on Monday, and In Person registration begins on Thursday, October 1st at the Macy’s Furniture Store at 6011 S. Virginia. Hours: Th/Fri: 12:00-7:00 pm, Sat: 10:00 am – 3:00 pm. You can also register on Race Day at the quad at UNR, from 7:00-9:00 am. Not in the area but still want to help? Here’s a link to my donation page, if you can find a couple of extra dollars.

Gardeners in northern Nevada have learned to work with a very short growing season, and more often than not, false starts on spring. So every year we wait with bated breath after our fruit trees blossom to see whether our blooms will be wiped out by a killing frost, or if it will stay warm enough for our trees to produce fruit.  This year was one of those years and northern Nevadans are chock full of all kinds of backyard fruit. Maven mentions in her Friday Fish Wrap that she’s got a ton of wonderful nectarines but that her tomatoes don’t seem to want to ripen.

Nectarines are my all-time favorite summer fruit and I was so excited when our tree started growing bunches of them. I kept my eye on them, waiting for them to grow and ripen, my mouth watering in anticipation, but I soon noticed that they did not appear be growing very well. For weeks they just seemed to stay small and hard, but were starting to turn a ripened color. Something was wrong! So I mentioned it to Sweetie and after checking it out, it turns out that the fruit trees were not getting watered by our drip, and though he fixed it and the trees began to get their fair share of H₂O, it was too little too late and our nectarines never really got much bigger and though they did ripen were never really edible.

Our Granny Smith apples, on the other hand…bumper crop. I’ve finally turned into one of those people that has to take take a bag of home grown produce to work in order to get rid share with her less blessed co-workers. Fortunately, it’s a big company and there were enough hungry souls.  And I need to do it again. Seriously.

It's tiny!

 The heart monitor.  I’m seven days in to my 21 day monitoring. It’s not so bad. I’ve got to keep the cell phone in the charger as much as I can, replace the batteries in the monitor every couple of days and replace the electrode patches daily, but all-in-all, it’s not too bothersome. Coolness: the monitor itself has a little button on the back that fits the electrode patch, so that I can add a fifth one and just attach it to my chest. For work days, this is marvelous because a loose shirt hides the monitor and wires. Nice not to have a lanyard hanging around my neck.  Here’s what the company’s press release says about the model I’m wearing.

With up to 21-days of real-time ECG monitoring and the provision of ST deviation analysis, the ACT III provides more sensitive and specific data for initial or early detection of arrhythmia in patients that have limited or atypical symptoms.

This cell phone automatically sends the heart data back to data central, and though I can send a manual incident when I'm noticing symptoms, I don't have to.

The device has 6 hours of memory in the sensor and a flash memory of up to 21 days of data on the ACT Cell phone monitor. This ensures that no valuable data is lost if a patient is disconnected from the cellular phone.

That “limited or atypical” would be me. My symptoms are so weird, they nearly defy explanation.  The 24-hour Holter monitor picked up a few weirdnesses, but not enough for my cardiologist to really get the full picture. I do have an arrhythmia – sometimes my heart beats fast, sometimes skip beats, but my doctor isn’t sure if the misfire is coming from the bottom of my heart or the top. One is okay, the other, not so much. My resting heart rate is already slow (about 45 bpm) and I’m not an elite athlete. When I went for my echocardiogram, the tech told me I went as low as 35 bpm. I’m thinking that’s not so good.

In the real world shit keeps happening. 

Bill Sparkman (AP Photo/The Times-Tribune) - Photo: Bill Sparkman with 7th grade student, Jessie Roberts during a lesson about sound waves in 2008.

I read about the census worker who got lynched in Kentucky and I have no words. Surely, Michelle Bachmann (crazy Congresswoman from Minnesota) has blood on her hands. I mean, yeah, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are paid to be ignorant, but she’s a fucking congresswoman fer cryin’ out loud.

Here’s a plan. Let’s let all those rightwing reactionaries NOT fill out their census forms. Do they have any idea of the impact that will have on their allocation of federal funds for roads, schools, health and emergency services, not to mention representation in D.C. as well as their state legislature? They want to be anonymous? Let ‘em.  Jeebus on a triscuit, their ignorance is stunning.

Furthermore, where the hell were all these people while the government has been secretly listening to our phone conversations, monitoring our library use, internet, email?  IN SECRET – no warrants, no letters, no nothing. But these idjits are stoking fear about a process that is (A) mandated by the U.S. Constitution, (B) has been going on since the country was founded, and (C) is probably one of the most transparent things our goverment does. 

Mission Statement of the U.S. Census Bureau:

The Census Bureau serves as the leading source of quality data about the nation’s people and economy. We honor privacy, protect confidentiality, share our expertise globally, and conduct our work openly. We are guided on this mission by our strong and capable workforce, our readiness to innovate, and our abiding commitment to our customers.

And Michelle Bachmann’s query as to why the questionnaire doesn’t ask if the person filling it out is a citizen or not is ridiculous. Either she has no clue what a census is, or she is being disingenous. Me thinks the former. Every time that woman opens her mouth I wonder about her I.Q. The census is a count of how many bodies live in a particular area and the demographics about those bodies. All those bodies use public roads, schools, emergency services, etc. Furthermore, there are many, many people who are in this country legally, but are not citizens. My son-in-law is one of them. But to hear Beck and Bachmann speak, he’s a dangerous “illegal.” Fuck Them. He loves his wife (my beautiful girl), is a hard worker,  has a real job and actually makes a contribution to society. Which is more than I can say for Bachmann and Beck. (/rant)

And finally, for something completely different, my favorite scene from my favorite movie. If you haven’t seen this little gem, rent it. Today.

And Tom Waits with a cautionary tale.

I’m not ignoring you

It’s eleven days until the Race for the Cure and as the race database chair I’ve got my hands full entering scads of offline registrations. Between that, my job, my family, and the critters, there is barely time to blow my nose, let alone catch up on the news and comment on it.

I understand that Obama’s gonna make another speech and get all hard-ass on the U.N.

Egalia has a great quote from the author of The Clinton Tapes.

It was almost like a credential for old liberals to look down on Clinton, because if you looked down on Clinton, you could say, “He’s betrayed liberalism,” but you didn’t have to uphold anything yourself. All you had to do was talk about what a shit he was or what a sellout he was and you could get this cheap credential.

The Red Queen and the Kid have moved and are in hot environs, but surrounded by family and love.

I’m walking around with a heart monitor for the next three weeks. Got a weird rhythm going on, so my cardio is trying to get to the bottom of it.

That’s all for now…off to the shower.

Local Events for Susan G. Komen for the Cure

In the next couple of weeks, there are events happening around Reno to benefit the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Northern Nevada Affiliate.  I’ll be at Coldwater Creek on Sunday, getting my massage on Tuesday morning, and Sweetie and I have September 30th calendared for a rare work-day lunch together.

 

COLDWATER CREEK TRY IT ON FOR THE CURE® – Sunday, September 13

The Summit, 13945 S. Virginia Street, Reno, NV

Coldwater Creek will hold its Fall Try It On for the Cure® events benefiting Komen Affiliates on Sunday, September 13. Once again, Coldwater Creek will donate $1 to Komen for each customer who “tries on” something, as well as 10 percent of the purchases made in conjunction with the program.

MASSAGE FOR THE CURE AT MASSAGE ENVY – Tuesday, September 15 (Spaces are almost gone!)

Massage Envy Reno – 6795 S. Virginia St., 853-8399 or 5110 Mae Anne Dr., 825-3689

Massage Envy Sparks – 155 Disc Drive, 857-3689

Massage Envy Carson City – 933 Topsy Ln., 267-9400

This annual event supports Komen with a $10 donation for each $35 one-hour massage session. All local proceeds go to the Northern Nevada Affiliate. Since the event’s inception in 2005, Massage for the Cure has raised more than $800,000 for Komen nationwide. Each location has 125 appointments available, and appointments may be made by calling Massage Envy clinic directly or online at http://www.massageenvy.com.

UNR dedicates Nevada-Missouri game to Komen – Friday, September 25

The University of Nevada, Reno is not only the site of the October 4 Race for the Cure, it is supporting breast cancer awareness in a very big way in the weeks prior to the Race by dedicating to the cause the nationally televised Nevada-Missouri game on September 25. From the moment Wolf Pack fans enter Mackay Stadium, they will know it’s a pink as well as silver and blue day beginning with welcoming stations at entrances with Komen volunteers offering Race and other Komen materials.

Spectators will view a moving game-opening sight: the Wolf Pack entering the field through a human tunnel of pink-clad survivors. Komen and breast cancer education messages will be highlighted in stadium announcements throughout the game. Game sponsor and longtime Komen grantee Saint Mary’s Regional Medical Center is donating rally towels featuring the Komen logo. To obtain game tickets, please call 348-PACK. Breast cancer survivors who would like to participate in the Wolf Pack team tunnel at game opening are invited to contact the Komen office, northnvkomen@yahoo.com or 355-7311.

RED ROBIN GOURMET BURGER’S KOMEN DAY – Wednesday, September 30

On Sep. 30, Red Robin is sponsoring a Gourmet Burgers Komen Day. Stop by the Sparks/Spanish Springs or Reno Red Robin, enjoy anything on the restaurant’s menu. 15% of all proceeds will be going to the No. Nevada Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Register for the Race now at www.komennorthnv.org or call 355-7311 for the Northern Nevada Race for the Cure Oct. 4 at UNR.

Me, second from the left, at the Team Captain Kickoff.