The week has come and almost gone; I'd better get this little laptop of mine typing away and write at least one blog. I've been spending a lot of time riding a tractor pulling a disk. It is the most beautiful time of the year in the countryside. Spring green contrasts with the black tilled soil in the fields. Cattle, mostly the black variety, stand likewise in the greening pastures. The rolling hills, buttes, and valleys paint their shades and shadows everywhere on the horizon, and weeds have not yet begun to show themselves. Somehow flowery language seems a bit incongruous with my style, but that is the way I see springtime in the countryside.
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I have to make sure to mention a workshop I attended last Saturday at the Med Center One hospital. Ric Masten has made a name for himself as a poet and entertainer, but his latest gig is battling prostate cancer. According to him he should have been dead some years ago, but with his aggressive response to the disease he survives. When he discovered his illness, it had already spread from the prostate gland into various locations within his body. His message this day was that he did not sit and wait to die from the disease but began studying it and how to combat it. One thing I found especially interesting is that he's discovered only a handful of doctors in this country who specialize in prostate cancer. Most doctors who treat it are general oncologists; therefore many of them do not have the time to know everything there is to know about the disease.
He set out to learn what knowledg there is out there and inform his doctor, an oncologist, how he then wanted to be treated. He calls himself the "captain of his own ship." Whatever, he's lived beyond expectations. I'd heard Masten interviewed on our public radio station a few days prior to his visit and knew then I wanted to hear him speak in person. Before the meeting commenced, I shard this with him. He asked when he started how many had heard the interview. My hand was the only one that went up. He and I had connected in some elemental way, probably because I told him I, too, had interest in poetry. When the meeting ended he brought a copy on one of his books and gave to me as a gift. I've read it; he is a good poet.
