Susan Walters

Two days ago my husband and I welcomed a bouncing Samsung blu-ray disc player into our lives - a BD-C6500. A few months prior to this joyous event, we gave up hope of conceiving quality TV service outside of cable/satellite at anything resembling a sensible price. We only had satellite available in our semi-country setting, and EXTREMELY costly besides. We opted to go commando with just Netflix and HuluPlus. We were pretty happy for the last few months but missed the lazy remote control action from the sofa. We had been using a dinosaur computer as our internet source and had to do gyrations to see the monitor image on the adjacent big screen TV screen - very distorted. (Please contact my husband directly at his junk email account, buffoona@yahoo.com, or something like that, for further directions - sorry...) We finally caved and bought a blu-ray, internet ready, wireless DVD player.

Samsung was the only brand that Hulu Plus recommended. We searched for just the right model, not too expensive but with features we needed. We ordered it on a fabulous newegg.com sale last week. We set the whole thing up, clicked on the Hulu icon just as we had on the Netflix icon, and...nothing. This unit does not support Hulu, we learned. Why? Apparently the device manufacturers are not selling the 3-D versions of products as they predicted they would and in retaliation to customers, are only allowing services like Hulu Plus on the 3-D versions to boost their sales, or so I was told. Do YOU and all of your family and guests want to watch TV with specialty glasses on? What if you already wear glasses? How many pair of 3-D glasses should a household buy? I never thought 3-D TV would be a hit but no one asked me. Just saying. I want my Hulu Plus, which I am paying for, to play on my internet-ready blu-ray disc player. It is not too much to ask for!

So, while I sit surrounded by five remotes and a stapler that momentarily looked like a remote, I wonder why we have these issues with things as simple as TV and internet. I know the cable and satellite companies don't want to lose business, but they have. I heard on financial talk radio that this is the first year that there has not been an increase in demand for their services. Please correct me if I am wrong. Greed is killing these industries; I don't think they see it yet. There is still time for them to save themselves if they do a total overhaul of their business practices, like reducing prices by about 2/3. Right now, those of us doing it ourselves through the means noted above are the ones "suffering" but I know I am happy to save over $70 dollars a month by ditching satellite nonetheless. I'll have to watch some shows on the laptop that is tethered to me anyway but I want it to be easier, more comfortable, and with surround sound through my blu-ray and TV - Hulu, please help! Goodbye satellite/cable, the internet is here to stay. Too early to say RIP? Maybe, but I will when that day comes.

If I could, tonight I would be a fly on the wall of a particular ICU room at HUP. I want to see the room, see the patient, take on the pain, take on the worries, and fix all that is wrong. That is asking a lot of a fly, but in this instance, as far away as I am in Michigan, knowing would be better than guessing. Yes, we are getting the updates, but I want to know everything, not just the highlights. I want to see what my sister is enduring, and overcoming. I want to see her getting better quickly, from surgery, to recovery, to her her new/old life.

Why? Well, today my sister went through life-saving surgery with early indications that the surgery was successful. It was a long surgery in my eyes, about six hours, though the original estimate was 3.5 -5 hours. The fact that she even became eligible for surgery is a miracle in itself. I am skipping to the conclusion here but at this moment, my sister Chris can be considered cancer-free.

So I will backtrack now to October 2009 when Chris was admitted to the ER with extreme abdominal pain. She had had issues in the prior year but due to her active life and just 40 years old, they had been dismissed as muscle strains and who knows what else. Upon her arrival in the ER, a scan was finally done and five lesions/tumors were found. Three turned out to be nothing of significance but two, a lesion on her spine, and the other, an enormous tumor on her liver, positioned her positively as stage 4 cancer. The diagnosis was terminal. It was metastasised primary liver cancer, usually a disease of extremely elderly patients. Liver cancer is rarely primary - usually secondary to other cancers. She was fit, healthy (aside from the terminal cancer) and certainly didn't fit the norm. She was told there was no hope. The prognosis? As little as two weeks to maybe two months to live.

Well, with 3 children 14 and under at the time, a terrific marriage, success in other areas of life as well, this didn't sit well with Chris. She and her husband pulled in every favor and connection they could and soon had appointments and opinions from top oncologists. She decided on one oncologist and began chemotherapy at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia. She also opted to follow a very strict anti-cancer diet that she believes was the key to surviving chemo with few side effects and prolonged her life long enough to become a surgical candidate. Scans were done throughout her chemo treatment and the results were always amazing. When she asked a nurse if her success was typical, she was told, "hardly ever". Well, the spinal tumor was small enough for radiation in August and 3 zaps took care of that. (She ran a 5K that month as well.) A later scan revealed that the only cancer remaining was the liver tumor, and though still huge, it was believed to be surgically removable. The liver, being that it can regenerate, is a remarkable organ. Chris once quipped that she wished her cancer had hit an organ she no longer needed, like her uterus, given her three children, but admitted we don't get to choose these things.

Today Chris endured that surgery to resection her liver to remove the tumor. As much as 50% removal was predicted but I don't yet know the final details. I do know this - the surgeon said he was pleasantly surprised when he opened her up and realized that some of the bile duct and intestinal reconstruction was not going to be necessary. Chris did an amazing job taking care of herself while completing chemotherapy, and advocating for herself in her health care decisions. I expect, given the success of this year-long ordeal, she will make a full recovery, see her children graduate from high school, and live a long and happy life with her husband. I refuse to believe otherwise, just as Chris refused to believe her terminal diagnosis.

Long live optimism and faith! After witnessing this, I believe it is key to survival. Congratulations Chris - you beat the odds and did it! Was it your husband who said you were too stubborn to die? Yeah for stubborn!!!

In a procrastination mode over the course of the last half hour or so, my daughter Sara and I were IMing. She is in Boston; I am in Ann Arbor. Today we were brainstorming a slogan for the personal food service company she is contemplating starting. It's important to suggest the right thing and be memorable in a slogan. It's probably most important to avoid suggesting the wrong thing.

As a live-in cook while pursuing her undergraduate degree at UofM, Sara knows how to plan, shop for and prepare nutritious and delicious meals, breakfast through dinner. It was that qualifier that recently earned her a position as a personal cook to a travelling businessman who wanted to eat more healthily and perhaps lose some weight. She realized there are probably plenty more like him out there and

started to think big.

Sara is affectionately referring to this new adventure as her "food empire". If all goes well, she will pick up more clients, hire staff, complete a graduate program in nutrition, and ultimately write about food for a living. All of her interests and degrees will tie up neatly into one career - healthy eating and living, plus writing. For the moment it is a second job to supplement her full time job at a website/branding design firm.

So, along the lines of a bakery near her called "Flour", she is opting for an equally simple name and decided on "Flavor". I thought she should aim for the fifties housewife theme she so enjoys seeing mocked, prompting me to offer up the first slogan. Then the slogan writing really took off, with ensuing hilarity. For your consideration, I submit:

"Let me wear your apron."

(this one is not printable)

"Helping you find your flavor."

"Swallow the flavor."

"Eat this."

"Take this food and eat it!"

"Have a FLAVORite day!"

"Putting the FLAVOR in you!"

"Do what you want with my FLAVOR."

"This FLAVOR's for you!"

"The FLAVOR is on us!"

(this one is politically incorrect)

"Savor the FLAVOR."

"FLAVOR, it's tasty"

"FLAVOR, the missing ingredient."

"FLAVOR, not the missing ingredient."

"Flavor, don't eat without it."

After several episodes of ROFLMAO (Sara admitted to snorting once) both in Boston and Ann Arbor, we stopped there. We agreed that the last option has possibilities. It is short, pointed to the product and suggested it was a "must have".

Who knows if anything will work out long term but I give Sara credit for considering doing this. I tried to charge her $4000 for the winning slogan - it was mine - but she said I could have the "good feeling inside" and maybe some free food. She used my own words against me! The "good feeling inside" is what my very young children often received for a job well done, or for doing the right thing, rather than a tangible (excessive stuff) reward. I believe that was a Mr. Rogers suggestion I followed. Now I know how they felt. I'd rather have the $4000!

A man died in our community yesterday. He was bicycling, struck by a young man driving in rush hour with a storm moving in. The lives of these men and their families will never be the same, one gone far too early and the other likely under the shadow of this tragedy for the rest of his life. I don't know either of the men or their families, or if they believe in heaven, but I would like to think that they do and that that is where the victim is right now.

It was an odd coincidence that this event happened soon after I read chapter one of my daughter's debut novel. The chapter is devoted to a graveside service and it made me cry; I have been to far too many of these and recognized in her writing the numbness of the participants, the details of the scene, and the realization that it is all utterly unreal.

Sara graduated from the University of Michigan in May 2009 with a major in English Literature, a minor in Art History, and a completed novel, just short of perfection. She has been polishing and rewriting some parts of the novel this summer, previously guided in her efforts while wrapping up her last term at Michigan, by a multi-published professor . Sara was the recipient of a coveted Cowden Memorial Award at the university's spring 2009 Hopwood Award Ceremony after submitting parts of her novel for consideration. It was pretty clear then that she had something good going on.

Over the last couple of days Sara told me she was putting the last puzzle piece in place - finding a literary agent to represent her and market her novel to publishers. She sent a dozen letters out to the most suitable, reputable agents she could find who worked her brand of fiction. These are not pay-to-read agents, or those pointing authors to vanity presses. They are the real deal, taking on writers they believe will have critical success. They choose carefully the authors they represent. Sara prepared for a long wait on responses, as would be typical. She received two responses within 24 hours; one agent asked for her full manuscript.

When I told Sara that her writing made me cry, she was surprised. She hadn't viewed the chapter as particularly moving. (I can only imagine what the rest of the book will do to me.) I thought about that and realized it wasn't just what she wrote but that she had written it. We have watched her grow up like all parents do, wondering what their children will make of themselves, and now we are here.

Sara is moving to New York City in September with a defined plan and willingness to take a risk. We have two other children younger than Sara who have yet to have their special gifts acknowledged, though their days will come too.

Our youngest child told me, circa age 3, as we were resting before our afternoon nap so many years ago, that she had picked us. I asked her to explain and she told me that before she was born, she looked down from heaven and saw our family, deciding then that that was where she would go. Perhaps these were the ramblings of a preschooler who had never been schooled in any notion like this, but I choose to believe it happened just as she said it did.

Who Art in Heaven. The beginning and the end. One day, I hope to find out.

I just read a news piece where Bill Gates admitted to backing away from the high-tech environment he is hugely responsible for creating. It seems that real life personal connections rather than electronic friendships might actually be something to value. Yes, I am paraphrasing, inferring, and assuming, but Bill, I suspect you are someone just like me. OK, at least on this one point....

Yahoo! News reports "Bill Gates quits Facebook over 'too many friends' ". Not a problem I necessarily have on Facebook given my once monthly or so visits there but I definitely know where he is coming from. Enough is enough. Can't we have a private thought or moment any more? Must we, must YOU continually update everyone with your whereabouts, your activities, your thoughts, plans, successes, and (probably not) your failures? Please. Tweet me not.

The article noted that he had trouble figuring out whether he "knew this person, did I not know this person" and that "It was just way too much trouble so I gave it up."

Gates also admitted to not being that big on texting, not being a 24-hour tech person, and that he reads - sometimes not on the computer. I would like all dying newspapers and publishing companies to sit up and take notice since there could be a backlash coming. Some/many of the literary public want to curl up on a chair or tuck into bed and not wonder if their wireless will go that far or if the battery is going to die and need to be plugged in, leaving the reader entangled in cords. They may not want a history stored somewhere of what they've been looking at or reading for the world to somehow resurrect if they can and care to, for whatever reason is deemed necessary, fun, or stalker-like.

While Gates admits that he envisioned a computer on every desk and in every home, and that the tech revolution has been "hugely beneficial", he seemed to caution against overuse.

"All these tools of tech waste our time if we're not careful."

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is proof that Bill Gates lives by his words. People and charities deserve more attention than self-promotion via social networking. It is is real, besides. I can't remember Bill Gates ever promoting himself - he was in the news because others wanted to promote him. Do the right thing and you won't need to pat your own back. There will be plenty of people lining up to pat your back for you.

Come on Bill, don't you want to be my friend? OK, OK, just testing.