Cancer on the Brain … Baseball, Business and Beating the Odds
Jay Lefevers with his 25-pound cat Spanky and his 1967 Mustang
I’m really excited to announce the release of a new memoir by Jay Lefevers, an Arizona businessman who battled and beat a brain tumor and cancer.
Appropriately titled Cancer on the Brain, Lefevers’ book is an inspiring record of surviving multiple brain surgeries and fighting cancer, while also running a real estate business, being a husband and father, and coaching a winning Little League team.
I worked with the author on some of the editing for the book and have previously blogged about a film he was involved in backing — Another Happy Day.
For me, Cancer on the Brain is a fascinating memoir about remaining focused on living life — even when facing possible death — and how and why we all need to be our own best healthcare advocates. If we don’t watch out for ourselves and our loved ones, and aggressively advocate for our health and the kind of care we receive, we run the risk of being subject to distracted doctors with jam-packed patient waiting rooms and well-meaning but over-burdened medical professionals.
Lefevers has a unique tone — he’s tough on himself and he’s tough on the world around him in some ways — but that’s what I enjoyed most about his book: his unflinching honesty about himself, his experiences and how he interpreted his circumstances and how he chose to meet the challenges of multiple brain surgeries but then after surviving all that, having to face cancer (lymphoma) and enduring the ensuing chemotherapy.
I sometimes bitch about my life and this thing or that thing not going my way … I moan and groan about not having enough time to do some of the things I want to do or spend time with the people I say matter to me … and then I read a book like this. About a guy with a business employing 15 people, a wife, three kids about to go to college, a couple of cats and a whole team of Little League players — all looking to him in one way or another to keep their lives and interests on track — and he still manages to find time to ride a roller-coaster (despite metal stitches in his head) and walk the Freedom Trail in Boston (despite the fact that he essentially had to relearn how to walk after the brain tumor had numbed out his nerves and left him unable to feel his foot).
I found it inspiring to read about the way Lefevers stayed fully engaged with his life — even when faced with the possibility of losing that life. I need to take a lesson or two from this book.
You can snag a copy of Cancer on the Brain at all your usual online book-buying haunts — at Barnes & Noble stores across the country, and, if you happen to live in the Phoenix area, Lefevers will be giving a talk in July at Scottsdale Barnes & Noble.
If you’d like to help spread the word about Cancer on the Brain, just visit the book’s Facebook page by clicking here and “liking” it!
No Impact Man makes a big impact (on me)
I’m full of all kinds of movie recommendations this month! The trailer above is for the documentary No Impact Man, which tracks one family’s quest to reduce its waste to zero over the course of a year. The man who hatched the scheme, Colin Beavan, stops using electricity, watching TV and using gas-powered transportation — dragging his initially skeptical family through the process as well.
The Beavans
No, I’m not planning on following in Beaven’s footsteps, but the film offers a ton of practical ideas for how to live a more sustainable life, and I encourage you to check it out. It’s available on DVD now (and there’s also a related book).
Sense and the City: Boomerang and the butterfly
Boomerang
Were you aware that May is National Pet Month? In honor of it, for this week’s Sense and the City, out in print in today’s Ticket, I present the tale of Boomerang and the butterfly:
Boomerang is my cat, so named because when he started hanging around my house as a stray, whenever I shooed him out of my yard, bang, he’d come back again. Just like a boomerang.
Eventually, he charmed his way into my heart and home. I adopted him, moved him indoors, domesticated him (um, yes, that means I neutered him) and made peace with being considered a crazy cat lady, with not one, not two, but three rescued cats.
When he was wild, he would sit a few feet away from me as I worked in the yard pulling weeds or digging up old tree stumps. He’d roll in the grass, climb trees, hide under the fallen palm fronds and play in the leaves when I raked; it was almost like having a dog.
He’d catch turtles in the nearby pond and hunt lizards and birds. Many mornings I opened my front door to find a dead something or other he’d caught and brought home with pride as a present for the woman who was now feeding him so well he no longer needed to eat what he killed.
After adopting him, I trained him to walk on a leash so he could still enjoy the evening air, stretch his legs in the grass, sniff the air and remember his former life of freedom.
One evening, I took him on a walk along the long row of Mexican petunias bordering the sidewalk in front of my house. As we meandered along, a butterfly floated past us, flitting in and out among the bushes. No ordinary butterfly this, it was large and magnificent — dark brown with just a thin line of yellow along the edges. As I stopped to watch him, Boomer laid down on the sidewalk, enjoying the warmth it still had from the hot day.
Check out the conclusion to the story over at the Ticket website.
Sense and the City: The mystery of moms
The cover of Diane Keaton's memoir, Then Again
Mother’s Day is coming up this Sunday, and rather than just do brunch (like you’ve done every year for the past decade), why not reflect on what makes your mom tick, and take some time to get to know her? That’s the subject of this week’s “Sense and the City,” out in print in today’s Ticket.
Here’s a sample:
Actress Diane Keaton focuses much of her new memoir, “Then Again,” on her mom — helped by having access to 85 volumes of diaries her mother wrote over the course of her life. The journals contained thousands of pages of her mother’s most private thoughts about herself, her children, her marriage. I don’t know if Keaton knew her mom all that well while she was alive, but she sure gained entirely new and perhaps sometimes shocking insights into her mother after her death through these journals.
In this day of electronic correspondence and Facebook, fewer and fewer people are keeping journals, much less busy moms who nowadays even keep their grocery lists on their smart phones.
The roles moms play, though — as breadwinners, carpoolers, laundresses, housecleaners, homework-helpers, grocery-getters, button-sewers, advice-givers — haven’t changed much, and those busy duties make it even harder to get to know them. Unfortunately, many children take it for granted that they know all there is to know about their moms.
After all, “Mom” encompasses everything. For most kids, the concept of “Mom” is that of a bottomless pit. Everything goes in — every desire, want, need, curiosity, whim, joy, heartache, drama, catastrophe and success is poured in — but not much about Mom ever gets to come out.
How can it? They’ve got to attend to your needs first.
For the rest, head over to the Ticket website.
Extra special bonus flick pick: Another Happy Day
That right there is a (very) foul-mouthed glimpse at the film Another Happy Day, unveiled at Sundance last year and now available on DVD.
The movie tells the story of a twice-married mother of four traveling to her parents’ estate for the wedding of her oldest son. The cast is dynamite: Ellen Barkin (Sea of Love, This Boy’s Life, Ocean’s Thirteen), Kate Bosworth, Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream), Thomas Haden Church (Sideways) and Demi Moore. And so’s the pedigree of first-time director Sam Levinson, the son of Barry Levinson, who has helmed major Hollywood hits like Rain Man and Good Morning, Vietnam.
Ellen Barkin in a still from Another Happy Day / VIA IMDB
The movie is a tense, sharp-tongued family drama dripping with black comedy, and I’m not surprised the move won a Best Screenwriting award at Sundance 2011. The dialogue is just that provocative and cutting.
I month ago, I filled you in on my top Sarasota Film Festival picks, and even though Another Happy Day didn’t come anywhere near our local fest, I’m happily adding it to the heap of festival-style films I’m recommending this year. Well worth a rent.
Sense and the City: May’s UnSeason Scene
Kevin So will play WSLR's Kumquat Court studios at 8 p.m. Fri., May 18
This year’s tourist season might be dead, but hurricane season is looming. For this week’s Sense and the City, I’m spotlighting a handful of must-do events coming down the pipe in May.
Here’s a taste:
The Sarasota Film Fest has come and gone; snowbirds are flying north, it’s only a matter of weeks before another hurricane season kicks off — May has arrived and with it, a calmer, but no less fun flurry of places to see and be seen.
May 8, 5:30-8 p.m. — Sarasota Magazine holds its Best of 2012 party at Selby Gardens; showcasing restaurants and shops that were voted “best of” by readers of the magazine, and giving scenesters one last “season” event at which to shake things up. I attended last year’s inaugural event and thought it was one of the most fun and relaxed parties I’ve been to in Sarasota — ever. Great people-watching (for the fashion alone) and hob-nobbing party (almost everybody who’s anybody) made all the more enjoyable by music with deejay Barry Carew, cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and a setting amongst lush greenery, banyan trees and water views. ABC Channel 7’s Bob Harrigan and Lauren Dorsett will emcee this seriously “don’t-miss” festivity. A portion of the proceeds benefit the gardens themselves and the Sarasota Chalk Festival. $50; bestofsarasota.eventbrite.com.
Friday, May 11, is the opening reception of the Florida Artist Group (FLAG) exhibit and symposium at Ringling College of Art and Design, 5-7 p.m., featuring painters, sculptors and photographers who have received statewide and national recognition for their work.
Saturday, May 12, painter/printmaker Tom Nakashima, whose work is currently on view at the Vero Beach Museum of Art, will make a presentation. Also on Saturday — a walk-about of the Sarasota High School soon-to-become Sarasota Museum of Art, led by SMOA founding members Wendy Surkis and Peppi Elona, includes a sneak-peak virtual tour and architectural model of the future museum. The symposium runs through June 1; for details on the opening weekend and entire symposium, visit floridaartistgroup.org.
Read the rest over at the Ticket website.
Sense and the City: Sportsmanlike behavior
Curt Schilling (Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The early weeks of baseball season have been making me think about why men love sports so much — and why men love to play sports so much, even when they get too old to compete with the young guys. I wrote about it for this week’s Sense and the City, in print in today’s Ticket. Here’s a taste:
My older brothers were athletes and though I was the youngest, and a girl to boot — they still taught me what they considered to be the essentials of life: how to tuck a football in the crook of my arm and run like hell, how to throw a lateral, how to fake left, how to shoot hoop and aim for that sweet spot on the backboard, how to go in for a lay-up.
Later when I started dating, I always seemed to end up with guys who had a seemingly bottomless wealth of knowledge and superior recall of stats and names and years and coaches and where their favorite players went to college. (Though I’ve wondered, with a couple of boyfriends, how the heck they could remember the number of some obscure player’s high school jersey, and yet still manage to forget my birthday.)
Men always seem so unusually happy when they’re watching sports on television or when they’re getting their clubs out to go hit a few, or when they’ve just come back from an afternoon of Ultimate Frisbee. When I hear a man whoo-hooting with excitement over a touchdown, or see the ultra-relaxed smile of a man who’s just run six miles, I feel like I’m getting a rare glimpse into his interior emotional world.
Most of all, I love men’s never-say-die attitude about their bodies. I admire the way they keep showing up at the court for a game of pick-up with guys half their age, keep tying the shoelaces on their running shoes even when their knees are close to giving out, keep digging the football out of the closet on Thanksgiving Day to throw glory day passes to their young nephews in the backyard.
Read the rest over at the Ticket website.
Sense and the City: Shakespeare’s words to live by
Frankie Alvarez plays Hamlet in the Asolo Repertory Theatre production of Hamlet, Prince of Cuba (Photo by Scott Braun)
It’s tax season, but rather than turn to a CPA for advice on how to file, I’m reading Shakespeare. Check out my newest Sense and the City column to find out why.
Here’s a preview:
William Shakespeare was born — and died – in the month of April. Even if you’ve never read one of his plays or sonnets, I’m sure you know his words. “Every dog will have its day,” “star-crossed lovers,” “dead as a doornail,” “bated breath.” Even, “Knock, knock! Who’s there?” — just a small few of the many Shakespearean phrases that are part of everyday English language.
Wit and drama aside, Shakespeare’s plays are above all else immutable lessons in living with integrity, a quality which seems as on its way to obsolescence as the American penny — something we fish out of the bottom of our pockets only after we’ve hit rock bottom.
After all, these days, if you’re caught doing something wrong or saying something egregious, you simply show up looking contrite on Good Morning, America or make a tearful confession to People magazine, and voilà, your integrity — or at least your viability in the marketplace of public opinion — is restored.
In a world that increasingly thinks that doing the right thing is simply doing the wrong thing and not getting caught, what relevance can Shakespeare have?
Read the rest over at the Ticket website.
Sense and the City: Picking the winners at this year’s Sarasota Film Festival
Miami-based actor Eric Aragon as Paul Fowler, with “The Perfect Wedding” director Scott Gabriel and line producer Matt Dunnam (a 2011 Booker High School graduate)
My column in this week’s Ticket is all about settling into the dark of the movie theater and enjoying some high-quality flicks, just in time for this year’s Sarasota Film Festival. Here’s a taste:
My brain is a sieve when it comes to remembering people’s names, the ticker symbol for my miniscule retirement investment and what I had for dinner last night, but just say the words, “Leave the gun; take the cannoli,” “I’ll have what she’s having,” “Do I laugh now, or wait till it gets funny?” or “Yippee-ki-yay [INSERT WORD THAT’S UNPRINTABLE IN A FAMILY NEWSPAPER]” and I can tell you the film title and character speaking without even scratching my head.
I live for those rare moments when the person I’m talking to nods, gives me a knowing smile, and says simply, “De Niro in ‘Casino’ ” after I toss the line “And the eye in the sky is watching us all,” into a conversation about Google or Facebook.
In other words, I’m a cinephile — a nut for movies and films (and yes, there is a difference). So of course, I love the fact that my hometown has its very own film festival, with its ever-growing film industry bona fides. Though I generally eschew the glitz, red carpets, celebrity appearances and pricy parties — give me a ticket, a dark theater and a film that makes me laugh, cry, cringe, grab hold of the person sitting next to me, feel like falling in love or think about changing my life — and I’m golden.
Read the rest — including the films I’m most pumped about — over at the Ticket website.
Sign up for Boot Camp today!
Event chair Flori Roberts (Photo courtesy heraldtribune.com)
No, I’m not forcing you to join the military. I’m merely recommending that you sign up to attend the Women’s Resource Center’s Boot Camp for Women Entrepreneurs.
I’ve had an entrepreneurial outlook most of my life — even when I was working for other people. So, I’m completely bummed to miss this fabulous event, which is being offered this Sat., April 14. Even if you work for someone else, the entrepreneurial attitude — thinking/acting/working as an employer instead of an employee — is what sets you apart and paves the way for growth in the company. It’s short money — just $25 to hear from expert entrepreneurs in an all-day seminar.
Click here for more details and to register online.
