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I recently attended a Leadership Conference for work...an annual event for training and professional development. We met in Florida at a beautiful resort, and we were well fed...it seems there is always food around. And refreshing beverages too. Mountains of pop, soda, soft drinks, Coke....whatever you call it.
Everywhere you looked there were drink stations stocked with these cans. Everywhere. They were part of the meeting. "Hello Coke. Nice to see you Sprite. How's it going Diet Coke?" All day long...every meal. I'm surprised I didn't crawl in bed at night and roll over next to a red can.
I used to love soft drinks. As a child, they were a treat. They were not with us at the dinner table...nor any other table for that matter There was not a vending machine on every floor of every building. They were not in my school. I badgered my mom to buy soda pop, but she seldom did. Funny story..or memory...As a child, we lived in Paris during the Summer of 1972. My dad had a Research grant at the Paris-Sorbonne University. He took us to Paris with him, and every morning when he went to work, my mom dragged me and my sister to the Louvre...or so it seemed. She also took us to many of the other incredible museums...but I seem to remember going to the Louvre the most. We took the Metro and usually packed a lunch. One morning, she had packed a lunch, and with it was a one of those 32 oz bottles of Coke with a screw top. A real treat.
As we rode the train on the way to the Louvre, we heard a loud bang. We thought someone had been shot. Then we saw Coke squirting everywhere. Somehow, the top of our Coke bottle had popped off. Everyone on the train looked at us with both relief and consternation. I was bummed that our Coke was escaping its bottle and squirting everywhere.
When we got back to the US, there was a commercial running that I'm sure most of you remember...the groundbreaking Coke ad featuring the "I'd like to teach the world to sing" song. A brilliant ad campaign. And a Trojan horse. This song of inclusion that celebrated our diversity was in fact a calculated and brilliantly successful way for Coke to become a part of our households in a way we could never have predicted. And now its everywhere we turn. Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Diet Coke, Dr. Pepper....all of it....By the 1980's all of these drinks were a part of our families. And with it came the obesity epidemic...the diabetes epidemic...And I was right there drinking it left and right. I had no idea as a young person what it was doing to my body. I stopped drinking it, except for special occasions, about 20 years ago. Root Beer is still a favorite of mine, but I only have 1-2 per year.
Last month, my wife told me she had watched a movie called What the Health. It's make a very convincing argument that a plant based diet is far better for our health than a diet that includes meat and dairy. I stopped eating meat 10 years ago, so I had that part down, Why? Everyone in my family has either had or died of cancer. My mom is five years past surviving a breast cancer battle. My dad died of leukemia. Three out of my four grandparents died of cancer. Two of my great grandparents died of cancer. My grandmother's sister had cancer. My mom's brother died of cancer. My mom's sister just fought a cancer battle.
My friend Pat was already a vegan when I met him ten years ago. He turned me on to The China Study. I read it and decided I needed to do something to try and avoid what seemed inevitable. I was in my early '40's at that time. Giving up meat is a decision I have not regretted. I lost 10 pounds, had more energy than ever and started running 4-5 marathons a year. But I still ate seafood, butter, and cheese. Giving those loves up seemed crazy. Well, now I am a month in to the crazy. So far I really don't miss eggs, which used to be part of my breakfast every day. I do miss cheese more often. But when I did relax last week and have a couple of slices of cheese pizza...within a couple of hours I felt foggy, sluggish and listless. It is not easy. I am the freak amongst most of my friends and family. "He doesn't eat meat. He's a VEGAN now." Crazy. We'll see.
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Speaking of freaks...let's talk about saxophones. Adolphe Sax developed this wonderful instrument in the 1840's. It is a standard instrument in the jazz, blues, and popular-music world. But it has a complicated history in the classical music world. Even though Berlioz, Bizet, Mussorgsky, Gershwin, Villa-Lobos, Rachmaninoff and Glazunov, to mention a few, wrote for the sax, it was slow to become accepted. As a lover of jazz, especially John Coltrane, I am baffled by this, but it is what it is. None of them could see far enough into the future to see what an entire section of saxes could achieve...thank you Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, and others. But of course, John Coltrane....yes him....
Everyday, I read the Kansas City Daily Journal from 1896 for the same day of this year. In August of that year, the Royal Hawaiian Band and Glee Club were touring the United States and spent two weeks playing here in Kansas City. The leader of the band was named J.S. Libornio, who was also a saxophone player. This brief article from August 13, 1896 tells us just how well he played this "new" instrument. Well before Coltrane or Rollins.. the Miller or Ellington or Kenton Bands....the Royal Hawaiian Band brought the saxophone into the spotlight. He was the "Hawaiian Sousa."
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