Gordon Chanina

A Guest Post by SunKingpoet:

I’ve always loved the outdoors, but I’ve never been too partial to the cold. I just don’t get how someone can go out in weather below 60 degrees and actually be inspired to hike, raft, or bike. Come on, people. If your nipples are reaching for the sky like the wind is a mugger at the ATM, then it’s probably not a great day for a trip down the river.

Lucky for me, I live in Texas (and have for most of my adult and teen life). To say that we have warmer weather than most places here is an understatement to the Nth degree. Texas (especially south Texas) is hot my friends. It’s so hot here, you know that whole frying an egg on the pavement saying? Well it can actually happen in Texas. What do you think a sidewalk café is in our state? Okay, so I kid… only slightly.

Truth is, I dig the heat… love it in fact, but I happen to be married to a woman who must be part polar bear, because our house is kept so cold, there’s actually a glacial layer of ice on all of the linoleum floors. The kids and I use ice skates to get across the kitchen. Okay… well, maybe they’re more like socks and we don’t have our very own ice age taking place, but it is cold… really cold… that’s the point I’m trying to make.

Where was I going with this? Uhmmm… hold up, let me shuffle some thoughts around in my head.

Oh yeah, the cold and outdoors…

I’ve never been hunting. I’ve never had the desire. Though I’m an animal lover, I’m not a card carrying member of PETA (those folks scare the Hell out of me), and I’m not opposed to hunting for food if the need arises. However, I think I’d prefer pushing the shopping cart down the frozen food isle at the grocery store rather than sitting in a deer stand in the winter with deer urine on my boots and a sack of corn scattered across the grass. Let’s just say it’s not my idea of a good time.

I have been canoeing in the winter though, and let me tell you that that experience did nothing to make me lose my aversion to outdoor activities in the cold. It seems that somehow a pair of pretty eyes fluttered a bit and I lost complete control of my ability to think clearly agreeing to take a canoe down the Brazos River during a January cold spell. A canoe is not the most stable of boats with inexperienced drivers. Did you know this? Yeah, well, I wish you would have spoken up at the time. A dunking in the river, and a rather severe cold later, I made up my mind that if I was going to have a day outdoors, it was damn well going to be 70 degrees or more on the thermometer.

Whitewater Rafting?

What’s the weather report?

MTMD Responds:

Whitewater Rafting? What’s the weather report? Who cares? My dear Sun King Poet, you’re going to get wet anyway. Sun, Mist, Thunderstorm, Rain, Hurricane, Clouds…it’s all good. If the water is high, the rapids are fast, and the waves are tall Whitewater Rafting is the best bang for your adventure dollar. In no other activity can you and a group of friends or family have wild fun, experience nature on a grand scale, be entertained by your guide/comedian/naturalist/historian/geologist. Add in the natural team building that results from running a whitewater river and you can also write off those thousands of dollars you were going to pay to Zig Ziglar.

The planet is 70% water. Our bodies are 70% water. Water = life. Granted, every once in a while you might want to have all that water baked out of you on a beach somewhere on a 100 degree day, but you know what you’ll look like in your forties and fifties if all you do is soak up the sun–you’ve seen those men and women with their dried out sun-baked hides. How they look twenty years older than they really are. Don’t plead ignorance, YOU KNOW. Whitewater Rafting is the ultimate in hydrating activities….and ONE MORE THING!

Ten Years of Whitewater rafting I’ve never had so much as a scratch! One game of softball and I have a separated shoulder. I’m telling you, whitewater rafting is good, clean, safe, hydrating fun!

Tell ya what: My Dear Sun King Poet, I invite you to West Virginia the third weekend in September for a trip on the Upper Gauley as my guest. The weather will be warm. The water will be warm, and the Gauley is one of the ten best whitewater rivers in the world. I guarantee an awesome time! And I make you this promise: Once you come over to the WET SIDE, there’s just no going back.

Thanks for reading.

Health has been a concern lately…hence my flight home is delayed for 1 week. Check up today went alright… the effect of anaesthesia wearing off, I found, is similar to the effect of alcohol… I talked loudly to random strangers (about my Mum).. asked the nurse to prepare me some warm drinks and biscuits (which she ignored).. Have to wait for the results to be out on Wed.

Another specialist appointment tomorrow and I hope things will be fine. Pray for me guys.

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A wonderful properly of Music is that it has a “transportation” value. An outstanding scholar (an asso prof) in U of Melb told me that when one reads a story…often we get “transported” into the story as a protagonist. My use of “transportation” here is similar. When we hear a certain song… or smell a certain scent…. we get transported back to the time we first heard the song or noticed the scent. Or the first significant time.

I am listening to a song now… am being transported to another place. The place is a cosy lil living room, in a small apartment at Blackwood street. The time was about 8 plus at night…I believe it was sometime in Oct 2004. I was sitting on a dark blue sofa bed.. watching Australian Idol 2. The singer was Marty Worrall…

He crooned:

Oh simple thing where have you gone
I’m getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you’re gonna let me in
I’m getting tired and I need somewhere to begin

So if you have a minute why don’t we go
Talk about it somewhere only we know
This could be the end of everything
So why don’t we go
So why don’t we go

This could be the end of everything
So why don’t we go
Somewhere only we know

We later came to know that it was a song by Keane… but at that brief moment… we looked at each other. There is no mistake what that look was.

It was a look of Mesmerization.

At that split moment… our thoughts and feelings were conjoined. And that is the power of a good song. A good song enchants people to set all differences aside and be lost in the moment… it leaves us breathless.

…………………………….

This memory is accompanied by a lot of feelings of warmth and sorrow. I paused at this point for ten minutes. I am at loss of what to say. Should I explain the juxtaposition of warmth and sorrow?

I decide to remain silent. I cannot express it. Words cannot express it. Let the old ghosts in that house die.

This could be the end of everything
So why don’t we go
Somewhere only we know

What is happening to the city where I have lived my life? I was born on the third floor of Cone Hospital in August 1956, when Greensboro was a nice place to live.

Today, we have lost our identity. Pilot Life is gone, The Greater Greensboro Open has disappeared as our local PGA golf tournament’s name; some people want to drop our “Gate City” nickname, probably because they don’t know what it means; the Greensboro Daily News is simply the News & Record (again, most will not know where the Record part comes from), and now Friendly Shopping Center with its Christmas Santa will be sold to some investment firm, possibly from New York City.

Our culture is diluted and the social atmosphere of a once nice, Southern city is gone. People do not even know who their neighbors are.

I just hate to lose something that was once special, something my granddaughter will never enjoy — the Greensboro I knew.

Teddy Burcham
Greensboro

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