A job Teddy just missed seeing accomplished

There have been so many topics I've wanted to delve into here since I last posted. I just never found the time to actually ... well, delve.

So, before we bid farewell to 2009, I thought I'd make an appearance to at least touch base on one of them.

I just finished reading "True Compass," the memoir of Ted Kennedy, who by the timeframe mentioned in the book, must have wrapped up his work not long before he died. He alludes to the brain tumor in the final chapter, along with his appearance at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and Barack Obama's inauguration early this year, and there is a picture of Kennedy with Obama (and a couple other congressmen) from April of this year at the White House.

The above is actually beside the point of my post today. The book did allow me to look at Teddy in a slightly different way. I found his candor on a lot of the book topics, whether it be related to the Congress and legislative issues or his personal life, refreshing. I'm sure staunch Republicans or Kennedy haters will find the extent of candor insufficient, or aver that Kennedy's version of Chappaquiddick was hardly thorough (or even complete). But that, too, is not the point of this post.

I actually found myself most interested, throughout the read, in the extent of Kennedy's involvement of some his pet legislative projects, the foremost of which -- one that goes back decades and, alas, one he will not see to fruition -- was health care.

The book laid the foundation for why all the Kennedys embraced issues and legislation directed at the downtrodden as so important to them. Yes, the Kennedy family was very well off, but Ted Kennedy and his siblings were raised by two very resolved parents to never brandish their wealth. In fact, the Kennedy siblings were strongly and repeatedly encouraged to seek out those who were far less fortunate, to strive to understand those people's plights and to invest whatever clout their societal or political stature allowed them toward helping the disadvantaged secure and enjoy every right that was enjoyed by the privileged.

Ted Kennedy embraced health care for the masses as an issue early in his Senate career. It was incredible -- and very sad -- to read how presidential administration after administration either shot it down or simply refused to consider it, thanks in large part to the extraordinarily powerful insurance and medical lobbies.

So it was with this fresh read in mind that I've been trying to follow Obama's attempts to make happen what Kennedy tried to bring to so many millions of Americans -- affordable health insurance. The strange perks we're seeing key legislators wresting in return for their votes for the legislation should tell you plenty about how difficult it had been through the years to extract elected representatives in both chambers from their comfortable and cozy beds with the insurance and medical lobby.

Equally telling is the degree of dilution of some key points of both measures in the two houses, the foremost of which being the one-payer option that would have totally removed control of funds to pay for health costs from the coffers of stingy, profit-hoarding private-sector insurers.

In the interim, I marvel how, as Obama gets farther than any president has ever gotten to reaching out and helping the giantly, under-insured lower class (and probably a good amount of middle-classers, too) people in our nation, he also is taking a political hit for doing so. Granted, the timing of funding the health care measure -- so soon after someone had to do something to bail out the tanking auto industry -- is not ideal. But if the uptick of Wall Street in the past six months is any indication, the president's move to revive the country's financial health should give us hope that there will be something of merit to come from the health care legislation.

My only regret, and probably a regret shared by those who knew how passionate Ted Kennedy regarded health-care coverage for the masses, is that he will not be here to see it finally arrive.

Call if you must ... but please, not while driving!

Thirty-two countries in the world -- including Germany, Ireland, Denmark, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, China, Egypt and the United Kingdom -- either ban all use of a phone or just a hand-held phone (read: cellphone) by anyone operating a motor vehicle. Four Canadian provinces, including the largest, Quebec, do likewise.

In the United States, no state imposes a blanket use of telephones while driving, although six states -- California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington plus the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands -- do ban the use of a hand-held phone by a vehicle operator (which means the use of phone earpieces while driving in those states would be OK). Only six states. Six other states have laws prohibiting local jurisdictions from enacting any restrictions on phone usage while driving.

Are legislators and the people in this country really that naive to trust the majority of people to drive undistracted while talking on the phone at the same time? I realize that I'm only one voice, but I find such trust incredulous. Blind, even. I don't even think it's a close call. I don't think half of the vehicle operators in this nation can drive and talk on the phone simultaneously without significantly diminishing their focus and attention to where it belongs -- the road.

To me, that's scary because it also means the likelihood of serious consequences on the road are significantly greater. As if we need another good reason -- aside from drunk drivers, who we already have a challenge trying to police and eradicate -- to be fearful about being "caught" driving while sober and phoneless.

Why is it our nation cannot put the hammer down -- much harder than it does already on drunk drivers, and simply "at all" on people who have to operate cellphones while behind the wheel? This is a rhetorical question, of course, because I don't know the answer -- other than to say Americans so value their right to get liquored up and to jabber away with their fancy hand-held electronic devices, the latter because it makes them look important. Hey, that's all that I can come up with. Important -- and deadly.

Perhaps you think I exaggerate, or am beating the drum to a pointless issue. I don't think so. I can't tell you how many times I -- just me, myself and I -- have come across a cellphone-using driver making a bonehead maneuver with the vehicle that I'm pretty certain was made because his or her attention was totally fixed somewhere other than the road or traffic.

I consider myself an accomplished multi-tasker. And yet, while I'm driving, and especially while driving in heavy traffic (e.g., rush hour or locales I'm not familiar with), I have trouble holding a simple conversation with a passenger in my vehicle -- someone sitting right next to me -- because I feel that to do so significantly affects my ability to remain adequately attentive to driving. As a result, I'm sure many passengers have thought me to be an antisocial while driving ... and certainly one who has trouble composing intelligible responses or comments if I do try to communicate.

So if someone who otherwise is a darn-good multi-tasker cannot, in good conscience, feel comfortable simultaneously driving and talking WITHOUT jabbering into a hand-held device, how many people are out there to you suppose are fooling themselves into thinking they can? Or simply ignoring the fact ... and risking so much -- like, oh, human lives -- doing so?

The latter two questions are what scare me the most. I suppose I could dismiss this fear by chalking up myself as a human anomaly, but I really don't think so. My years of observing human nature tell me too many people who feel the need to use phones at all times and places also fool themselves into thinking they jabber and drive without sacrificing the needed attention required of the latter.

I have no quip-laden ending for this. Except, please, don't ever try to call me if you're driving a vehicle. I'm likely to launch into the rant above. Do you really want that?

A somewhat long hiatus

Yeah, I know. It's been over two months since I stopped to post an entry here. But I know "bloggers" who've been away from their writing or posting far longer, so I guess I don't quite feel so bad.

I'll try to summarize the busy-ness that's kept from being "regular" here in those weeks since I wrote about the Tour de France.

*** On Aug. 7, my second granddaughter, Addison Elyse, was born at St. Francis Hospital - South in Indianapolis. Two days later, Addison came home, and two days after that Addy's mother, Kelly Anne, noticed Addy had a fever and was twitching unnaturally. After a brief visit to the St. Francis emergency room, staff there had Addy transported to Riley Hospital for Children in downtown Indianapolis, where Addy remained -- invariably in the pediatric intensive care unit and the newborn floor -- until this past Monday, Sept. 28.

It'd be difficult to summarize the roller-coaster medical issues Addy weathered during her stay -- and she's still not totally over the hill yet. But it entailed seizures, infant apnea, three blood clots, a blood infection (MRSA) and a lower-extremities hematoma. She had ultra sounds, X rays, MRIs, blood tests, a spinal tap, antibiotics (intravenous and needle-administered), tubes coming from every place visible and temporary loss of vocal cords.

Family members made regular visits to Riley during the period, and I will cherish my several post-work, late-day few hours alone cuddling with her for a long, long time -- the almost perfect ones (where she slept in my arms start to finish) to even the ones where nothing could seem to comfort her. I was still with Addy, and I knew she was in far more discomfort than I.

*** Work has dealt me yet another formidable challenge. My staff merged with another in our features department, and I've been left to figure out how to make it work. People's work shifts and days off have changed, we're finding Tuesday nights and all day Wednesdays incredibly overwhelming because of the onerous workload. But this weekend, our two desks are now physically merging (from mid-July until now, we'd still been operating in separate locations in the newsroom), so I'm hoping the proximity and ability to have access to all staffers to throw on the sundry triages that surface on those Tuesdays and Wednesdays will give us a little better means to deal with it all.

*** I had my first public display of my photography in an art gallery show for a one-night, monthly First Friday art tour along the Massachusetts Avenue cultural district of downtown Indianapolis. Actually, I was among five members of a photo club who contributed images for the display. That occurred Sept. 4. At my photo blog, Photo Potpourri, I have a picture of one of three walls from our photo club's exhibit (which was at the Art Bank gallery).

*** A staffer at the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library called me last month to seek permission to use six images from my Irvington neighborhood gallery (at my Fototime.com online site) in a display the downtown main library plans to put up in January to represent the Eastside of Indianapolis. The display will be available on the sixth floor of the library's new wing throughout the month of January.

*** I spent last Saturday at Faught Stadium on the grounds of Franklin (Ind.) College, shooting photos of an exciting football game between the host Grizzlies and Trine University (Angola, Ind.). The Grizzlies came from 13 points down late in the third quarter to win it 30-29 on a 13-yard pass from Nick Purichia (a graduate of Cardinal Ritter High School in Indianapolis) to Adam Mellencamp with only 2 minutes and 25 seconds left in the game.

Pictures from my shoot there can be found also at my online gallery at SmugMug; a few of the images and a text summary also can be found at Photo Potpourri. I include this shoot in this summary because I took more than 1,000 images at the game, and the process of editing them all ... and selecting the 150 I decided to post on the online gallery was time-consuming. But it was worth it; it was a beautiful day for a college football game, I enjoyed the small-college atmosphere there (reminiscent of my years at UW-Eau Claire in northwestern Wisconson), and, perhaps most importantly, I was extraordinarly pleased with with quality of images.

Armstrong and Contador keep their positions

Teammates and race favorites Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong kept their positions -- first and third -- after the climb up fabled Mont Ventoux (pictured above) at the end of today's Stage 20 of the Tour de France, despite expected and repeated attacks from Schleck brothers Andy and Frank.

The four were among a select few of the race's leaders who managed to separate themselves from the peloton (the rest of the pack) and conquer Ventoux without losing much ground. Andy Schleck (in white, left, crossing finish line) attacked repeatedly, hoping to both distance himself from Contador (in yellow jersey, left) to possibly pick up huge chunks of time and pass the race leader -- but also to wear down Astana teammates Contador and Armstrong (behind Contador, left) in hopes Andy's brother could push ahead and possibly vault over Armstrong for third place.

But Contador and Armstrong answered every attack. They did manage to add some time between fourth-place rider Bradley Wiggins of Great Britain, but not enough to enable Frank Schleck to leap over Wiggins and grab fourth place in the overall standings.

None of the major race leaders won the stage -- that distinction went to Juan Manuel Garate
of Spain (right), who finished three seconds ahead of Tony Martin of Germany. Garate and Martin, neither of whom's overall time was anywhere close to threatening the leaders, were the lone survivors of a much larger breakaway group that had led the stage most of the way. Except for the two survivors, the breakaway riders, one by one, withered and fell back on the 6,273-foot Ventoux.

After the race, Contador still led Andy Schleck by 4 minutes, 11 seconds in the overall competition. Armstrong remained in third place, 5:41 behind his teammate. Barring any unforeseen disasters, those three should stand together on the victor's podium in Paris tomorrow. Wiggins is in fourth place, Frank Schleck in fifth -- but only four seconds behind Wiggins -- and Andreas Kloden of Germany, another Astana team member, was sixth. Astana has a commanding lead in the team competition.

The 2009 Tour de France concludes Sunday with a largely ceremonial stage that will end with the fabled multi-loop ride in Paris that will include the Champs Elysees. The only drama will be a sprint to the finish line for some rider to wrest a coveted stage win.

A rousing climax to Le Tour

(Above) The 2009 Tour de France's top competitors (from left) Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, Bradley Wiggins of Great Britain, Lance Armstrong of the United States and, wearing the leader's yellow jersey, Alberto Contador of Spain.

For the past eight years or so, this time of the year has been my favorite when it comes to spectator sports. For three weeks each July, the top professional cyclists in the world combat the most difficult courses, terrains, mountains and each other in pursuit of the most prestigious honor in the sport -- the championship of the Tour de France.

Tomorrow's penultimate stage of the 2009 Tour promises to be an exciting show, indeed. Oh, the Tour winner -- 2007 champion Alberto Contador of Spain -- has this year's victory pretty much locked up. But there is a tight race for second through sixth positions. Whoever finishes second and third will earn a place with Contador on the winner's podium when the race ends Sunday on the Champs Elysees in Paris.

Le Tour is one of three grand tours (the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana are the others) in pro cycling, and each of those is tantamount to a major tournament in professional golf or tennis. But like the Masters in golf and Wimbledon in tennis, the Tour de France is the most coveted in cycling.

This year's Tour has been particularly exciting with the return of Lance Armstrong, who retired from the sport in 2005 after winning the last of his unprecedented seven consecutive tours. Armstrong (right) has been in fine form this Tour, and going into tomorrow's stage that ends with a formidable climb of the legendary Mont Ventoux, he's in third place -- a little over a minute behind second-place Andy Schleck of Luxembourg and less than a minute ahead of Britain's Bradley Wiggins, Armstrong's teammate Andreas Kloden of Germany and Schleck's older brother Frank.

But Armstrong has been in an awkward situation on his return to the sport: He's riding on a team, Astana, that also features race leader Contador, who now is widely regarded as the best in the sport, and two other onetime prime contenders for a grand tour championship: Kloden and American Levi Leipheimer. Contador already has won the sport's "triple crown" -- each of the three grand tours, an accomplishment so rare in cycling that only four other riders have done it -- Jacques Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Bernard Hinault and Eddie Merckx. Although Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times, he has never won the Giro or Vuelta.

Mont Ventoux could have been the chief motivation for Armstrong to return to the sport, and specifically, to ride in the Tour again. As he said in an interview on the Versus channel during the broadcast of today's stage, Armstrong has unfinished business on this mountain.

The moonscape-looking Ventoux is regarded as one the most brutal and unforgiving in French races, not only because of its steep climb, but also because the top portion's bare, deforested, unprotected slopes (no trees anywhere in sight) leave riders extremely vulnerable to any of the weather and climate conditions that torment cyclists -- stiff winds; stifling heat; and freezing cold in the high altitudes.

Armstong twice has narrowly missed winning Tour stages on the mount. The most bitter of those came in 2000, when Armstrong and the late Marco Pantani of Italy waged a thrilling battle ascending the hill. Pantani, the 1998 Tour winner whose nickname was "the Pirate," had the lead at first, but Armstrong found a burst in reserve and bolted upward, eventually catching Il Pirata. Several times the two jockeyed to separate from each other, but it appeared Armstrong had the upper hand in snagging the stage victory. Even though the veteran Pantani stayed close, Armstrong seemed to poised to claim victory until, just near the finish line, he inexplicably eased up and Pantani crossed first. It was believed Armstrong yielded purposely in a show of sportsmanship and respect, a gesture he would later regret. Pantani didn't regard the deliberate pullback kindly; the suggestion that Armstrong had to "give" him the win angered Pantani.

In the 2002 Tour, when Ventoux reappeared on the Tour map after only a year's absence, Armstrong allowed Frenchman Richard Virenque a seven-minute lead in the Ventoux stage and could never catch up.

Riders in the Tour don't get many chances to conquer Ventoux; it's been included in a Tour stage only 15 times since 1951. Armstrong also has tried, and failed, to win stages on the mount several times in the annual Dauphine-Libere race, which is held each June and is widely used by cyclists as a tune-up for Le Tour. Unlike the Tour, Dauphine-Libere almost always includes Mont Ventoux in a stage.

All of which is good reason for anyone who enjoys pro cycling and its drama -- and the Tour de France in particular -- to look in on tomorrow's stage. It could be Lance's last change to grab the one unconquered cycling challenge he craves most. I have to believe that tonight his team, with Contador's overall victory comfortably in hand, is trying to devise a strategy that can help deliver that victory for him.

The broadcast of Saturday's stage on Versus begins at 7 a.m. Eastern time.

Which 15 books make your lasting 'impression' list?

I just was "tagged" at my Facebook page by someone polling friends to see which 15 books they would list -- in 15 minutes or less -- among those that made a lasting impression.

I haven't had inclination to read much in recent years, what with my job requiring me to stare into a computer 10 hours a day, four days a week, rendering my eyes to half-mast by the time I drag myself home each day. But ... I decided to try take up the challenge and see if I could come up with a list in the required 15 minutes or less.

At first, I came up with multiple titles of fiction works by the same authors, simply because I enjoy their body of work -- W.P. Kinsella (left), Dan Brown, Patricia Cornwell, Clive Cussler, John Grisham and Lawrence Sanders, to name a few.

But then, after only a few minutes of reassessing that overload, other titles started popping to mind, so ... I weeded out the multiples and came up with a more rounded representation of books I've read that, I think, made some kind of impression on me over the years.

Here's the list, in no particular order:

1. Shoeless Joe / W.P. Kinsella
2. Tuesdays With Morrie / Mitch Albom
3. In Cold Blood / Truman Capote
4. Sirens of Titan / Kurt Vonnegut
5. Woodstock: The Oral History
6. Catcher in the Rye / J.D. Salinger
7. The Firm / John Grisham
8. The Making of a President 1960 / Theodore White
8. The Harrad Experiment / Robert Rimmer
9. Robert Kennedy and His Times / Arthur Schlesinger
10. The DaVinci Code / Dan Brown
11. Tales of an American Hobo / "Reefer" Charlie Fox
12. Postmortem / Patricia Cornwell
13. A River Runs Through It / Norman Maclean
14. This Wheel's on Fire: The Story of the Band / Levon Helm
15. Deep Six / Clive Cussler

The book by Capote (right), in particular, made a deep impression as I was reading it. Such riveting writing, and a vicious homicide to work with. I made seeing the Capote film, starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a "must" when it came out four years ago. And would it seem odd if said I can remember vividly that throughout the whole time I was reading the very lengthy Schlesinger bio on RFK, I listed to Supertramp's Breakfast in America vinyl album on my record player, over and over and over?

The Kinsella story, upon which the motion picture Field of Dreams was based, captured my imagination -- and floated me back to childhood baseball fantasies -- like no other tome before it or since. The film, starring Kevin Costner, Ray Liota, Burt Lancaster and James Earl Jones, was one of the few films I really, absolutely had to see when I first heard it was coming out. I saw it, in fact, with my youngest daughter, Elizabeth, one afternoon after her morning kindergarten class let out for the day. Field of Dreams also was the first VCR movie I ever bought.

Even as I type this, another title came to mind that I would have liked to have included: The Executioner's Song: The Gary Gilmore Story by Norman Mailer, the story of the convicted murderer who was the first person executed after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted restrictions on capital punishment in 1976.

If you aren't a "friend" at my Facebook page, what 15 titles would you put on a list that you had to compile in 15 minutes?

1st Indy shooter is featured at Photo Potpourri blog

Another short blurb to note that the July version of "Photographer in the Spotlight," my monthly Q&A feature at Photo Potpourri, was posted last weekend.

I make special mention here because the photographer profiled in this month's spotlight, Phil Jern, also is the first Indianapolis photographer to make the spotlight feature.

I met Phil through CaptureIndy, an ongoing project, driven by The Indianapolis Star, to collect photographs from people in the community for use in a book profiling the Greater Indianapolis area in pictures.

I've submitted quite a few images to be considered for the project, which is scheduled to end sometime next month. The Star is trying to create interest (and, no doubt, potential sales) in the book by encouraging anyone -- anywhere -- to create a simple profile at CaptureIndy and then vote for images they feel belong in such a book. To just vote, you don't have to be a photographer and you don't have to live in Indianapolis or Indiana, or to buy the book!).

There is still time to vote for images at CaptureIndy. You can vote for as many pictures as you'd like, but only once each. Not sure exactly when the book will be published.

Meanwhile ... back to the point of this post ... do check out Phil Jern's Q&A feature. As I do with all my Q&A posts, there are quite a few images of the profiled photographer included with the text of the interview. I've included a link to his personal Web site with this post; just click on the link wherever you see Phil's name. Phil also has a ton of other pictures available at a separate online site, Flickr. Click on the Flickr word to go view that. Finally, you can check out Phil's CaptureIndy page, too, on the link included with this sentence.