Monday, September 24, 2007

Peace Pt 3

Lost for words actually...

New challenges await, the past is no more and the future is eagerly anticipated. I have let go of the things of the past and beg that others do. God gave us eyes at the front hence we may look forward, if we were meant to be backward-looking our eyes would have been placed at the back of our heads.

In balance, empathy and truthfulness can there be peace. I have forgiven and will try to forget, where I have erred I ask equally to be forgiven and let the new life begin with fresh hope and positive energy.

Its a wonderful day and a wonderful life, happiness is never far away...unless you choose to ignore/avoid it out of puerile fear, vanity or ignorance.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Random recollection

There was an obscure band from Liverpool from the early 80's, called rather quaintly- "Now is the time to forget the whimpering- child become the warrior". They had one cult hit called "Fine Lines and thin disguises".
A bit of digging showed that this band was formed by a singer called Geoff Kelly in 1981, not overly successful but the lyrics to that song were awesome and was a narrative on Thatchers Britain at the time in a detached and quite frankly- spaced out perspective.
Why did I remember this?, Don't quite know...

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Jane Tomlinson 2


Enough said, she's done her bit.
God bless her soul and thoughts to her family.
Please, please donate if you can, to her Charity via this link http://janesappeal.com/?page_id=5

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Delano who?







About 24 years ago, While at Uni, I would spend several hours in the dusty old library reading back copies of Time Magazine and on one occasion found a really inspiring article in one of the 1971 issues one about a Black guy who won the Amateur Athletic Union 100 yards title with one of the fastest times ever run for the distance 9.0 seconds flat. Not so remarkable, other than the fact that the man in question had hardly run competitively before then and in particular was a crass amateur who wasn't affiliated with any Track team and ran in Gold swimming trunks and a Lab vest.
The man in question being one Dr Delano Merriweather, an incredible man by all standards and I'll tell you why:

a. He was the first Black man to graduate from the prestigious Ivy League Duke's Medical School:

b. He had trained for the AAU by running up the 14 flights of stairs to work, sometimes backwards- rightly prompting comments about the crazy black medic from patients and colleagues alike;

c. He had decided to compete in the AAU, whilst watching a Track and Field meet on TV with his wife, where he had commented about his being able to beat "those fellas", and rightly prompting a "yeah right honey rom his wife"

d. He never really knew how fast he was until he trained with some elite athletes at a track meet before the AAU finals and beat them all.
e. His time in winning the AAU final actually equalled the World Record, but was marginally over the Wind limit.

f. In the same year he won a U.S. Public Health Service award for co-authoring a paper entitled "The Inhibiting of DNA and RNA Synthesis by Dau-norubicin and Adriamycin in 1-1210 Mouse Leukemia

The lesson being never let go of your dreams, self-belief is a powerful thing, no-one gave him a chance, but he believed in himself and triumphed.

Merriweather today still practises as a respected Haematologist, still modest and unassuming and totally unfazed by the hype. His immediate reaction after the win was, hey nice but my priority is my family and bringing up my kids, but thanks for the attention.

I've pasted the original article from Time magazine here, please enjoy:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,903012,00.html
The Dr. Meriwether Saga

Monday, Jul. 12, 1971

Baltimore. July 1970. Dr. Delano Meriwether, a 27-year-old hematologist, is stretched out on his bed watching a telecast of a track meet between the U.S. and France. He stares intently at the 100-meter dash, turns to his wife Myrtle and says, "Hey, I think I can beat those guys." Myrtle nods and mutters, "Sure, honey."
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Eugene, Ore. June 1971. Meriwether, improbably garbed in gold swim trunks, a white hospital shirt and gold-and-white-striped suspenders, steps into the starting blocks for the 100-yd. dash in the A.A.U. championships. The gun sounds. Meriwether streaks for the tape with great, loping strides and wins, in the astonishing time of 9 sec. flat, a mark equaled by only one other man in history, the U.S.'s John Carlos.*

Newest Folk Hero. Neither Mitty nor Merriwell would have believed the Meriwether saga. But it is undeniably true that track's newest folk hero never raced in competition until a year ago. Meriwether explains that his high school in Charleston, S.C., had no track team, and the football team had no use for "a guy who was 6 ft. tall and weighed 135 lbs." At Michigan State, where he studied pre-med on a scholarship, his only brush with organized sports was a few hot games of volleyball. The first black accepted into Duke University School of Medicine, he specialized in blood diseases, and in 1969 took a job at the Baltimore Cancer Research Center. While caring for and becoming "personally involved" with young leukemia victims, he says, he desperately needed a diversion. For "exercise and entertainment," he decided to run for fun.

Meriwether's training methods have been unconventional, to say the least. He began by running up the 14 flights of his apartment building. Often he would run up the stairs in reverseā€”a sight that soon had neighbors asking who was the backward freak in the knee-length white coat? "It seemed like I'd always pass women returning home with the groceries," he recalls. Borrowing a pair of track shoes, he started working out late at night at a nearby outdoor track. He practiced alone in the dark with no coach, no blocks and no starter's pistol. "It's unsafe," he says, "to practice with a gun in Baltimore after 10 p.m."

Back to the Lab. Since he had no stopwatch either. Meriwether had no idea how fast he was until he began competing in local meets last summer. "No one was more surprised than I was," he says, when he ran successive 100-yd. dashes in 9.6, 9.5 and 9.4 sec. In Meriwether's first major meet, the National Invitational in College Park, Md., in January, a field of world-class sprinters got an even bigger surprise. He won the 60-yd. dash in 6 sec. flat, just one-tenth of a second off the world record, despite a characteristically poor start. Troubled by pulled muscles, and unable to train more than two or three nights a week, Meriwether won only 2 of 12 races before his triumph in the A.A.U. 100. "I've never been frustrated by defeat," he says. "If I don't win, I know I can go back to the lab, to my patients, to television.
Last week, after winning a U.S. Public Health Service award for co-authoring a paper entitled "The Inhibiting of DNA and RNA Synthesis by Dau-norubicin and Adriamycin in 1-1210 Mouse Leukemia," Meriwether moved to a new job at the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory in Boston. "I haven't talked to my new employer," he says. "He may not dig track." A more important question is whether Meriwether digs competing in the 1972 Olympics in Munich. "First things come first," he says. "My family and my work. But whether I do or don't compete, I'll always jog and enjoy it."









Monday, September 03, 2007

Mandela's Statue

I had an interesting exchange with a character called "Mrs Buckett" on an Internet discussion board, centred on "Whether Mandela deserved his statue".
My view being that Mandela neither requested nor lobbied for a statue and for the very fact that he was subject to rabid, ignorant scrutiny from pea-brained, mealy mouthed and sometimes deranged commentators, I wish he wasn't given the bloody statue in the first place.
Some of the conversations centred around funding for the statue as well as his so-called terrorist past. I thought to post this to correct a few things:
a. The statue is being funded by an Independent foundation not by British Tax-payers;
b. Mandela did found Umkhonto We Sizwe, the paramilitary arm of the ANC, whose purpose was to attack Military targets. Umkhonto We Sizwe however descended into Internecine violence and some acts of terrorism, however this was after Mandela was imprisoned and there is no evidence that Mandela supported some of their plainly extreme acts. It may be argued that the rationale for UWZ was terrorist, but I guess its difficult to take a position what with the violence Blacks were subjected to daily in South Africa at the time, which gave rise to Armed Resistance, I guess by the same token the French Resistance were terrorists then.
c. Mandela's wife rather than Mandela was responsible for the bullying campaigns by some extreme elements of the ANC and this was the reason for the break-up.
d. Mandela was never cited for corruption whilst President and though undoubtedly he handed over to the buffoon Mbeki, his government actually included elements of the old apartheid regime- Frederick DeKlerk et al. There is no saying what would have happened to South Africa, if Mandela had mishandled the governance.
Just thought I'd clarify this, by the way about Mbeki, this has to be one of Africa's tragedies- firstly a Deputy who's accused of raping a HIV-positive lady and a Health Minister who feels that Anti-Retrovirals don't work and recommends Beetroots, Olives, Garlic and Lemon juice instead, as well as Mbeki who believes the HIV threat is overrated and described AIDS activists who criticised his idiotic Health Minister- (nicknamed rather aptly- Dr "Beetroot" Shabalala) as wild animals.
Well, sometimes the contrary view has merit but please lets criticise fairly, okay Mrs Slop-Buckett?