Tag Archives: action/adventure

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Shadowlands

My mother and I went to Garvan Woodland Gardens in Hot Springs, Arkansas, last Thursday. Rumor had it that the daffodils were at their peak.

It was late in the day, as we boarded the volunteer-driven golf cart for a ride through the garden. “Good day to come,” according to our driver.

Daffodils, Garvan Woodland Gardens, Hot Springs, Arkansas, March 13, 2014.

Daffodils, Garvan Woodland Gardens, Hot Springs, Arkansas, March 13, 2014.

If the predicted cold and rain came over the weekend, the yellow and white flowers would be goners and the tulips were two and a half weeks away. As we drove through the garden, I was as impressed by the long shadows cast long across the garden as the yellow blooms.

The old idiom “late in the day” often means too far advanced or too late to be useful or too late for actions or decisions. But late in this day meant a new kind of richness for the garden.

Some days there is splendor in the shadowlands.

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Pagophobia?

Last week I laughed long and hard at a post on phobias, especially aroraphobia – the fear of the Northern Lights. I laughed because I didn’t see myself as a fearful person. Then came today.

Ice, February 3, 2014. ©D.L. Ewbank

Ice, February 3, 2014. ©D.L. Ewbank

Today the local weathermen have one word for central Arkansas, ICE. Even though I’m warm and cozy and sipping a nice hot cup of lemon ginger herbal tea, I’m getting a little anxious. I see ice for what it really is – a transparent, terror-wielding monster.

Go back to Christmas 2000. I am at my mother’s home in Hot Springs preparing to enjoy the fabulous brunch at the historic Arlington Hotel when Mom says the weather is getting bad. If I don’t get home now, I might not make it back to Little Rock for a week.

I load my clothes, my Christmas goodies and my dog Oscar and strike out in my Bordeaux Pearl Red Honda Accord. Have you ever started on a path you think might be a major mistake? That’s how I feel as I turned onto Hwy 70. “I’ll just take it slowly.”

Traffic is scarce, but I drive slower than the 55 mph speed limit. I am going so slowly I might get a ticket even though there’s no minimum, but apparently law enforcement vehicles are smart enough to stay off the road in this weather.

Thirty minutes later I reach the Lonsdale Rest Area about nine miles out. I breathe a sigh of relief. Ice and snow are scary in Arkansas because few of us know how to drive on it. Even if you can control your car, you worry about others on the road who can’t. If you’ve ever been in a wreck that totaled your car or injured you, you’re aware of what a wreck can mean.

Should I keep going or turn back? Though it means driving through scarcely populated wooded areas, I keep driving. My next goal is the Interstate. Surely the Interstate will be better.

It takes three times the normal thirty minutes to reach I-30. Did I mention I am going slowly? My nerves are as tight as my clenched teeth.

Should I stay on the Interstate or get off on the access road? I am still wavering when a car ahead of me spins out of control and plunges down the grassy slope that supports the road.

The off ramp is a good decision. When cars line up behind me, I simply pull off into the first available, and hopefully graveled for increased traction, off-road space.

Miraculously, I pull into my driveway safely. It has taken four hours instead of the normal one. I am weak and shaky as I carry Oscar inside. As I unload my car, I slip and fall on top of a shoe box I am carrying. After my icy ordeal, sore ribs seem like nothing.

The ice continues. State government is shut down. 300,000-500,000 (depending on which stats you read) Arkansans, including me, are out of power for days. One day I reach my cold tolerance. “If my power isn’t on tonight, I’m renting a motel room.” What a sight it is when I spot my lit doorbell. I have power!

With a storm just two weeks earlier, this ice storm is viewed as the worst natural disaster in the history of Arkansas. Did it leave me with pagophobia, an intense, irrational fear of ice? No. But last fall I spent mega-bucks to drastically clip my gargantuan red-tip Photinias away from power lines to my home. There’s no harm in taking precautions.

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A salute to Captain Phillips

In Invictus William Henley says, “I am the captain of my soul.” After watching the Academy Award multi-nominee (including best picture and best writing, adapted screenplay) Captain Phillips, I prefer to say, “I am the captain of my story.” There’s much to learn about telling life story successfully from this film.

Cargo freight containers at the port awaiting shipment. ©iStockphoto.com/pierivb

Cargo freight containers at the port awaiting shipment. ©iStockphoto.com/pierivb

After identifying Captain Phillips in Is your story ‘award’ worthy? as one of five award-worthy life stories from the 2014 Hollywood award season, I knew I had to see it. As foul weather was predicted for Little Rock, I rented it on iTunes on Super Bowl Sunday.

Captain Phillips is a thrilling story about the hijacking of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama and the taking of its Captain Richard Phillips as hostage by Somali pirates in 2009. The script was written by Academy Award nominee and Writers Guild of America winner Billy Ray based on A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy Seals, and Dangerous Days at Sea by Richard Phillips with Stephan Talty.

Researching the film I found the October 13, 2013, New York Post article by Maureen Callahan “Crew members: ‘Captain Phillips’ is one big lie.” According to the article some of the crew didn’t think Phillips was the big hero portrayed and filed suit against the Maersk Line and the waterman Steamship Corp. claiming “willful, wanton and conscious disregard for their safety.” I’m not the truth-in-life-story police. Whether Phillips is a hero or not, there are life story elements we life narrators can glean from this superbly written film.

Raise a question. On the way to the airport Phillips and his wife talk about their boys. Andrea Phillips raises a question, “It’s gonna be okay, right?”

Let’s ask ourselves, “What question does my story raise?”

Boil your story down to its ”one word” topic. For Captain Phillips the “one word” might be piracy. Piracy on the open seas, especially off the coast of Africa, has been a threat for some time. “As Seen in ‘Captain Phillips’: 5 Facts About Modern Piracy” quotes piracy expert Jay Bahadur saying that while today many ships hire armed guards, the Maersk crew could not have weapons on board in 2009. “Well,” you say, “nothing in my life is as grand as ocean piracy.” But strip piracy down to its basics and what you have is loss, theft or the threat of these.

Let’s ask ourselves, “What loss, theft or threat have I experienced?”

Have a goal. Captain Phillips expresses the clear goal of this commercial ship is to transport its cargo as quickly and safely as possible through potentially unsafe waters.

Let’s ask ourselves, “Does my story express a goal clearly?”

Eliminate the unnecessary. Captain Phillips is stripped of everything except those things that relate to (or support as background) the piracy experience.  We don’t see unnecessary information about life on board, how they eat and sleep, how they interact. While Phillips has a wife and children, we only get enough suggestion of these to raise the stakes.

Let’s ask ourselves, “What is absolutely necessary to convey my story? What can be cut in order to reveal only bare bones?”

Confine locations. Captain Phillips is set aboard the Maersk Alabama and its lifeboat. We see only the necessary locations of the bridge, ship exteriors, the engine room, the captain’s quarters and, later, the inside of the enclosed capsule of the lifeboat.

Let’s ask ourselves, “How can I narrow my physical scope to strengthen impact by giving a sense of confinement?”

Contrast the antagonists. In Captain Phillips, views of the enemy show the oppression of crime leaders, poverty so deep one man isn’t even wearing shoes and the drug Khat.

Let’s ask ourselves, “What characteristics of my enemy illustrate how they differ from me in daily experience, status and world view?”

Show a resolution.  The best lesson of Captain Phillips, at least for me, comes at the end. After four days aboard the lifeboat, Navy Seal Team Six takes out his three captors. Phillips, spattered with his blood and the blood of his captors, is brought aboard a naval ship where he is attended by a Naval Hospital Corpsman (Danielle Albert). “Are you okay?” she asks. “Can you talk now?” “Are you in any pain right now?” As Phillips begins to respond, she makes assurances that resolve the initial question of the movie including: “Captain, you’re safe now. You are safe and you are fine. It’s going to be okay.”

Let’s ask ourselves, “Is my main question resolved?”

Going deeper, the film raises a fundamental question for life story tellers. Does the ability to tell my story indicate I’m okay? Are we okay when we begin to be able to talk about our traumatic experience? I’m no psychiatrist, but it seems to be a start for Phillips. Richard Phillips returned to sea July 25, 2010.

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I’m inspired by Dr. Eben Alexander

In 1970 after fracturing a vertebrae, I experienced a fat embolism that sent me into convulsions and stopped my heart. I only know about the event because medical staff told me the next day as they put my dislocated shoulder back in place, did a brain scan and put me on a no fat diet. To my conscious knowledge, I had no near death experience, or NDE. But if I had had an NDE, would I, a freshman at the University of Arkansas at the time, have had the courage to tell the story to family and friends, much less the whole world?

Amazonian butterflies behind glass. ©iStockphoto.com/simonox

One element of Dr. Alexander’s NDE was butterflies. Amazonian butterflies behind glass. ©iStockphoto.com/simonox

Eben Alexander was living a good life as a husband, father, and respected neurosurgeon for which he was smart enough to be grateful. Then one day he began to experience flu-like symptoms, a headache and back pain. His wife returned home and discovered he was having a grand mal seizure and called 911. At the hospital doctors discover Alexander had E. coli meningitis. Despite the fact he was treated quickly and aggressively, Alexander remained comatose for six days surrounded by medical staff and praying family. With little anticipated hope for recovery, it is miraculous that he opened his eyes on day 7 and eventually had full recovery. Even more remarkable to me is that Alexander returned to consciousness with his own personal tale of a near-death experience, or NDE, which included a blue-eyed woman who came to him on butterfly wing and chose to tell it in Proof of Heaven: a Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife.

The NDE is not new in popular culture. Before picking up Dr. Alexander’s book at Target, I had read 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper, Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo, and To Heaven and Back: A Doctor’s Extraordinary Account of Her Death, Heaven, Angels, and Life Again by Dr. Mary C. Neal. Mark Galli says in his December 2012 article Incredible Journey: What to Make of Visits to Heaven that he tends to believe NDE accounts (one of which he mentions is Alexander’s) due to his experience with historical research and its reliance on personal testimony by reliable witnesses.

Unlike the med students portrayed in the 1990 film, Flatliners, the only proof of heaven needed for the Christian is found in scripture. Didn’t Jesus promise one of the thieves crucified with him that, “Today you will be with me in paradise?” (Luke 23:43 NIV) Where the skeptics often appear, for Alexander and others with NDEs that speak of heaven, is in the scientific realm. Many scientists, including Alexander before his NDE, look upon the NDE as the hallucinations of a dying brain.

Blue skies from the top of the Statehouse Convention Center parking deck. ©D.L. Ewbank

Blue skies from the top of the Statehouse Convention Center parking deck. ©D.L. Ewbank

Arkansans have the privilege of hearing Dr. Alexander live on November 13, 2013, as part of the Clinton School Speaker series. The crowd drawn in this neck of the Bible belt woods by the neurosurgeon turned NDE author is large. At the parking deck of the Statehouse Convention Center I get one of only a few remaining spaces on the upper deck. I join the throngs at the Ballroom of the Statehouse Convention Center and find one of few remaining seats. As the best selling scientist shares a capsule version of the story I have already read, one word comes to mind. Risk.

RISK! is a live show and podcast hosted by storyteller Kevin Allison who regularly brings on folks to tell “stories they never thought they’d dare to share in public.” Possibly the riskiest story I’ve seen told is that of this neurosurgeon turned NDE author unafraid to tell his story even though he knew the full extent of scientific skepticism!

Got a risky story to tell? Get a “prescription for courage” to tell it from Dr. Eben Alexander!