Collective Responsibility

The last time that I was in Washington DC, I stopped by the National Archives Building rotunda to view the fading "Charters of Freedom", those expressions of our country's founding ideals: the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. While straining my eyes in the dim light to read the faded words written nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, my thoughts turned to the idea of the collective responsibility that a society has to its members.

The United States was founded by the herculean effort of a few charismatic leaders against very long odds, guided by the desire of a people to chart a destiny free from tyranny. The notion that the individual, when faced with a challenge, can rise as far as their own tenacity will take them to achieve great things is deeply rooted in our national character.

This secret to our country's success may be our Achilles heel. Action for the collective good has always come grudgingly in the U.S., usually in response to crisis. Here, debate over health care, education, the economy, or any other collective effort is often couched in terms of button-pushing phrases like 'creeping socialism' rather than ideals such as proactive collective effort for the common good.

It's so deeply hardwired in Americans to mistrust any united enterprise that many of us might have read that phrase "collective effort for the common good" and reacted unconsciously by cringing inside. And yet, for the good of our family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, religious institutions, and schools, we all perform willing acts of selflessness every day to ensure our common welfare. We support our schools, churches, temples, and religious centers. We obey the rules of the road, fund our military, and vote for our political leaders. We donate to homeless shelters and food pantries. When our neighbor needs a helping hand, we offer it.

Coming out of the National Archives Building rotunda that day, I thought about those faded words I had struggled hard to decipher: "...a more perfect union..." Hmm. "...ensure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity..." Sure. "...inalienable rights...". Uh-huh. So, are these ideas mere conceits? Just great prose crafted out of desperation 250 years ago to unite a pitiful band of rebels against an oppressive king? Do they continue to reflect the aspirations of American citizens today?

Collective effort, compromising to achieve a common goal, taking care of your neighbor, and your neighbor's neighbor. These are American values. They are human values. They are the keys to our success and, I believe, to our survival.

Submission: Learning To Walk In A New Way

 

My wife Rosana and I sat together at a picnic table on a beautiful spring afternoon within view of a sea of massive wind-blown sand dunes at Jockey’s Ridge State Park, in the North Carolina Outer Banks. It was a major achievement for me just to be there, and yet I was overcome with sadness. Tears streaked down my face. I wanted so badly to walk in the dunes with Rosana as I had done many times before. 

But my left leg would not allow it.

The dunes at Jockey’s Ridge State Park, North Carolina Outer Banks, April 2, 2023.

        *          *          *

A year and three months earlier, in the in-patient rehab unit at Vidant Medical Center, my attending physician had grim news.

“We are going to send Tom home,” he told Rosana. “He doesn’t have much chance to walk again, and there’s no more we can do for him here in the hospital.”

Rosana eyed a metal track mounted on the ceiling above my bed. She had just been trained by my physical therapist, Katie, on how to hoist me out of bed in a crane-contraption that looked like a deflated parachute suspended overhead from the track and settle me into a waiting wheelchair. Someone would have to install a similar track in our bedroom ceiling at home and use it to get me in and out of bed. Every day for the rest of my life.

Rosana swallowed hard. She looked at me, her eyes brimmed with tears.

“There is no way we can do this,” she said. “You’ve got to get better.”

Until then I did not have a clear understanding of what I was up against. My brain could process reality in chunks of one hour at a time. Long-term thinking had not returned to my repertoire. My physical therapy session with Katie had ended a few minutes ago, a cognitive therapy session with Kayla was about to start. That much I knew.

Kayla noted that I’m a professor of atmospheric science at East Carolina University. 

“So how does a hurricane form?” She had done her homework, to probe my memory and reasoning ability. I returned her serve to her satisfaction.

“The key is warm ocean water,” I explained. “That’s the gasoline for a hurricane, like with Hurricane Florence that hit us a few years ago. That warm water is what powers the winds. The Earth’s rotation takes care of the rest.”

She scribbled in her notebook: Memory and abstract thought intact.

Then Kayla threw me a curve ball.

“What’s 564 minus 392?”

I froze. Though I had never been great at subtraction in my head, this one should have been well within my wheelhouse. But the numbers she read blurred into a fog in my mind.

“Uh ok, let me think. Four minus two is two, sixteen minus nine is, um, eight? Do I borrow the one?” 

I had no idea if I was on the right track, or what to do next. After a long pause I asked her to repeat the problem. It didn’t help. For the life of me I could not solve in my head the simple subtraction problem she had posed. Even on the paper and pencil that she offered it took a full three minutes to get the right answer. I guess brain surgery will do that to you.

Kayla wrote more in her notebook. Math is a challenge.

The next day, after Rosana struggled courageously with our health insurance representative and with the doctors, it was agreed that I could stay at the hospital for another two weeks if I showed progress toward moving my left foot. Katie decided to try to move the ball forward in physical therapy. She took a long wooden plank and laid it between me and the wheelchair. She sat me up, placed the plank next to me, and helped me slide across for a successful transfer from the bedside to the chair. A key skill to function at home.

Two weeks of wheelchair transfers, leg workouts and fine motor skills exercises passed, as my discharge deadline approached. Though I was gaining strength, I was not where I needed to be for Rosana to help me to function at home. One morning in the neuro gym, with the clock ticking, Katie looked hard at me. Her expression of determination was hidden under her COVID mask. She felt I could do more.

“Alright Tom, it’s time to walk,” she commanded. I looked back in disbelief. I could not even stand on my own. Katie could not gage my quizzical expression from under my mask. She helped me stand along a rail while she sat next to me. I moved my right foot forward while she slid my left foot ahead one step at a time. My first steps on the long marathon ahead.

My first steps with Katie in the neuro gym, Feb. 2, 2022.

Soon after came discharge from the hospital, now that Rosana had some key infrastructure in place at home. A long aluminum wheelchair ramp leading to the front porch. A reclining armchair that would hold my body in place so that I could sleep. Empty plastic bottles placed in strategic locations around the house. It all added up to a harsh new reality for me and my family.

A year of physical and occupational therapy brought slow but steady progress. Standing with the help of a loving hand (there were so many of those!). Tentative shaky steps with the aid of a quad-cane. Guided trips up and down stairs. Turning on my side in bed. My first real shower in months. Squatting to pick up cones from the floor. Lowering myself to a floor exercise mat. Lifting my left hand to my chest, and later to my chin, eyes, and forehead. 

   

Working with therapists Josh and Krista at the outpatient rehab unit, 

Vidant Medical Center, Spring 2022.

An inch higher each month. That’s how I measure progress in this marathon, all thanks to neuroplasticity. That’s the remarkable, gradual, and poorly understood ability of the brain to bypass damaged circuits with endless repetition, training and focus.

Soon came the one-year anniversary of the event, the deadline my doctors had set as the limit for whatever progress I would make. Krista, my occupational therapist, looked at me as my left hand reached back to place a last beanbag in the box directly behind me. She addressed me like a Shaolin master: 

“Tom, the time is coming soon when you must answer this question: ‘Do you live to do therapy, or do you do therapy to live?’”

I had all the tools we would need to continue the marathon at home. Though formal physical therapy ended, the milestones kept coming despite the doctor’s pessimistic prognostications. Driving, air travel, walking on grass, walking barefoot, stepping without help into a shower, stepping back into a classroom. 

And now, a symposium in the Outer Banks, my first professional conference since surgery. That afternoon, at ECU's Coastal Studies Institute in front of a windowed view of the beautiful Pamlico sound, I delivered my talk, gesturing to the screen while pacing awkwardly with the aid of a cane. 

Though some in the audience were aware of the basics of my journey, most were oblivious to the main physical impediment to my walking progress: I couldn’t feel my left ankle. Because of that, my brain could not trust that my left foot could support the full weight of my body while walking. As a result, I was unable to propel myself forward with the ball of my left foot following a step with the right, as most people do successfully and effortlessly. This gave me a limited, start-stop gait, and prevented me from fully rejoining the community of bipedal humans. Nevertheless, encouraged by my progress I had been waiting patiently for those symptoms to resolve before the final push for a return to normal walking. But a nagging question haunted my recovery, like a gremlin in my brain:

What if that feeling in my left ankle never comes back?

I had made so much progress in the past year that I never considered that possibility. I realized, there in the shadow of those dunes that I so craved to climb, that my failure to accept that I might never feel my left ankle push my body forward was getting in the way of that very goal. In my mind, ongoing walking progress would hinge on my assurance - blind faith really - that I would soon get my left ankle sensation back. Lose that faith, I thought, and the end game might be lost. 

I reflected on what Josh, my physical therapist, told me each time I failed to stride evenly with both legs:

“Look Tom, you can leg press 120 pounds easily with that left leg. It is strong enough. The barrier to walking normally is all in your head.”

Sure enough, that’s where it all started. My head. A malformed junction of capillaries suddenly ruptured between my skull and brain case while on a bike ride on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, the final day of 2021, as a global pandemic raged. Like being struck by lightning on stormy waters. 

I desperately needed some perspective.

    *          *          *

In the 1997 film ‘Amistad’, a West African captive was acquitted in 1841 by the U.S. Supreme Court of murdering his captors as they prepared to sell him in a slave market. Before his trial he mapped out strategy to his lawyer, former U.S. President John Quincy Adams:

“I will call into the past and beg my ancestors to come and help me. And they must come. For at this moment I am the whole reason they have existed at all.”

In times of trouble you call on the spirits of your ancestors for guidance. My granddad’s grandfather, Ed Rickenbach, died the morning after being struck by lightning while piloting a canal boat near the Philadelphia ports in 1894, at 38 years old. Not too reassuring but at least, unlike my ancestor, I survived my ‘lightning strike’. His family was descended from Amish-Mennonite immigrants from the Swiss-German Palatinate region to southeastern Pennsylvania. Might their culture help illuminate a path forward for me?

Author Rachel Yoder was raised in, and later left, a Mennonite community a few miles from where my Pennsylvania Amish ancestors lived and died. In her article “In the Glimmer” (Harper’s Magazine, July 2023 issue) Rachel muses on her struggle to live in two worlds simultaneously: The insular cocoon of the Mennonite community, and the anonymous chaotic freedom of modern society. The spirit world and the physical world. The past and the present. She is exploring this duality in the context of a very old faith-healing tradition of the Pennsylvania Germans called braucherei, part of her heritage and of my own. Braucher practitioners reach into what Rachel refers to as the ‘glimmer’, the spiritual community of all previous generations of brauchers, to lean on and move into the strength and guidance they seek. Sort of like the ancient community of Jedi in the Star Wars movies.

A braucher practitioner helped Rachel discover that the ’glimmer’ implored her to cut the cord that binds her to both worlds before it rips her into pieces. She must choose one world or the other.

I thought of my own long journey, after a ticking time bomb - a malformed junction of blood vessels - exploded in my head. 

I might never get that feeling back in my left ankle. I can’t wait indefinitely for something that may never come. Time waits for no one, and I have a lot of living left ahead. Rather, I too must make a choice: Either accept, without the sensory confirmation needed to assure balance, that my foot can support my weight and make progress on the path to walking more normally, or accept a future without the possibility of climbing a sand dune again. The first option would basically relegate my left foot to the status of a very advanced prosthetic, a prospect that already has initiated a feeling of deep loss. “Don’t worry,” my own ‘glimmer’ assured me, “You’re never alone on your journey.” And my ‘glimmer’ includes a loving, living community of family and friends. With their guidance I can’t go wrong.

Struggle. Submission. Acceptance. We all share that path. 

Submission does not mean giving up. Rather, I see submission as an act of measured faith, not blind faith. Submission, followed by acceptance, opens the door to a path forward. And on this journey, we are not alone.

And so, in the shadow of those sand dunes at Jockey’s Ridge that I so desperately wanted to climb, I dried my tears and began to cut the cord.

I’m learning to walk the world in a new way.

My memorial contribution to the ‘Glimmer’ of the in-patient community at the neuro gym,  

Vidant Medical Center, February 2022.

        *          *          *

You can’t get far without friends…

'La Amistad' (Friendship) is the name of the Spanish slave ship that brought Cinque, the West African captive acquitted of murder and mutiny, to the U.S. in 1840.  'Friendship' is the name of the ship on which my Amish-Mennonite ancestors came to Philadelphia from Switzerland via Rotterdam in 1740. ‘The Long-Lost Friend’ is the name of the foundational braucherei guidebook written by Johan Georg Hohman near Philadelphia around 1820. 

Calling All Angels

 

Meet Mary, my guardian angel.

Unlike the angels of myth and legend, Mary is as real as the rain. She wields no sword. You don’t see any wings. The only flying she does is in an airplane. But like all real angels, she knows what to do when things get rough. And when my time of trouble arose, Mary was there, harnessing that knowledge. Armed not with a sword that strikes with lightning and thunder, but with a courageous and empathetic heart that saved my life. 

It was an unseasonably warm afternoon, the final day of 2021. I was preparing an early dinner for my wife Rosana and daughter Olivia, both scurried away somewhere upstairs. My son Lukas was at a soccer practice with his friends, at a field ten minutes from home - a last session before heading to Italy in a few days to try out for a professional club. Garbanzo soup simmered on the stove, the table was carefully set for four. I took an opportunity for my daily ritual: a brisk neighborhood bike ride before eating. My ride that afternoon seemed no different than any other, except for a few key anomalies. I went alone. I didn’t tell my family that I was heading out. I did not bring my cell phone. Those details were not only out of the ordinary but also, as I would soon find out, life-threatening.

A mile away, Mary was on a neighborhood walk with her daughter and son-in-law. She soon noticed a man, sitting on a lawn, his bike left carefully on the side of the road. At first glance nothing out of the ordinary. But something was not quite right. The man stared blankly ahead. He was pale, seemed sickly. His left arm and leg were oddly positioned and immobile. 

A warning flashed in Mary’s mind, triggered by a career of experience as a cardio nurse at Vidant Medical Center, a level-1 trauma hospital located (as luck would have it) a fifteen-minute drive away, just past the soccer field where Lukas was training. She reached into her jacket pocket. Empty. I was not the only one who left their phone at home.

“Call 911 now,” Mary urged her son-in-law. 

“What’s going on?” He looked at Mary quizzically.

“That man is in trouble,” she said with a firm and resolute voice, drawing from years of training in situations not so different than this one. “He needs an ambulance right away.”

Her actions that day were not miraculous. Rather, they emerged from the unbeatable combination of a caring heart, impeccable timing, knowledge to recognize that I was in deep trouble, and the resolute confidence to act quickly. 

You see, angels walk among us. They look like you or me. To earn our wings, we first dedicate ourselves to develop knowledge or talent to help others. Next, we have to muster the courage and compassion to act, to help someone whether they just need a little push or are in desperate need, as I was, sitting alone on a brown lawn in crisis that warm winter afternoon. 

This ‘grounding’ of angels does not make them any less powerful or formidable. It just makes them real. Capable of great deeds. Ready to make a difference in this world of trouble. 

Like saving a life.

Prepare to be someone's guardian angel, whether in a moment of crisis or as a lifelong calling. Here’s a recipe: Blend your knowledge and experience. Add a pinch of compassion and caring. Season with strength and resolve. Then go on walks every day, and be ready…

Dia de los Muertos

Today, the Day of the Dead, is not a time to be sad about those who are no longer with us. Rather it's a chance to listen to what they still say to us. It's an opportunity to let them guide us, to allow them to connect with their greatest legacy - us! Our ancestors have long turned to dust, but their lives and achievements echo forward. The dead still live in us.  

Celebrate your ancestors today. Find something connected with them - a photograph, a letter, a piece of jewelry. Remember them. See yourself through their eyes. They are watching. Make them proud! Here are a few of mine.

 ¡Viva los Muertos!

On the Schuylkill Canal north of Reading, Pennsylvania, 1880s.

 

At James Rickenbach's house, near Tuckerton, Pennsylvania, 1880s.

Rickenbach 'Navy Yard' drydock, along Cross Keys Road north of Reading, Pennsylvania, 1880s.

It's Only a Theory

 "It's only a theory..."

That's like saying "It's only the Hope Diamond"

A theory in science is the gold standard of knowledge. Those best ideas that have stood the test of thousands of skeptical scientists. Those ideas that actually work. Those ideas we can use. The theory of gravity. The theory of evolution by natural selection. The theory of electromagnetism. The theory of climate change. 

When you have an idea that might explain something, we put it on the queue for testing. That idea is called an hypothesis. Once that idea has gone through extreme scrutiny, repeated testing, and still comes out as the best explanation for something, that idea is elevated to a theory. That's the value of consensus in science. Not that we voted for the best ideas. But that, try as hard as we may, those ideas can't be shot down. They remain the best explanation.

Here is a recent NPR story from May 28, 2021 on President Biden ordering an investigation into the coronavirus origins. The reporter, John Ruwitch, mentions the hypothesis that the virus may have originated in a Chinese lab. 

YES, thank you John! It's a hypothesis, not a theory! Later the reporter slipped and called it a theory, but I won't mention that...

Why is it important to distinguish between hypothesis and theory? Because in the public discourse, when we say something is a theory, we dismiss it as being speculative. Nothing could be further from the truth.  The theory of gravitation is a rock-solid, time-tested, actionable idea that we can count on to explain the world we live in, and importantly, to predict the future. Same with the theory of evolution by natural selection. And yes, the theory of human-caused climate change. 

In the age of alternative facts and willful ignorance, it is essential that at least we all speak the same language when it comes to those best ideas that define our place in the world and with each other. 

Black Hole in the Sun

In a world of uncertainty and trouble, the sun has always inspired awe and reverence. Its constant brilliance brings life and light. The sun breathes promise and hope into each new day. Its unending light transcends death. Without the sun, we are nothing.

These are deep spiritual connections. They are also irrefutable facts.

Those two pillars of understanding – faith and science – joined forces on August 21, 2017 on a hot summer day to unite, in a way nothing else ever could, millions of people - of all faiths or no faith -  called to meet along a seventy-mile strip of land crossing the country. I was one of them.

I almost wish I had experienced that day's total eclipse of the sun like our ancestors had. They had no idea it was coming. To them the fading sun came by complete surprise, that must have quickly led to desperate fear of losing the one light they could always count on. I tried to put myself in their shoes at that moment. So as I looked skyward just before the sun disappeared, I awaited feelings of unease.

As a black disk covered all but a bright golden sliver of sunlight, I saw our awesome star become suddenly vulnerable, its power diminished. The clouds disappeared in the cooling air. A massive dark shadow rolled across the sky. Birds, insects, and humans screamed in unison. And then, in an instant, the sun’s brilliant light vanished.

Instead of fear, I felt something surprising and disarming. Like me at that moment, an ancient observer must have realized that the sun was not lost. Rather, the truth of its beauty was found.

All at once the sun transformed into the most beautiful, ethereal sight that I will ever see – a deep black hole in the sky, wreathed in a pearly glow embedded in the dark blue mid-afternoon twilight. Thin silver luminescent rivers flowed in three directions away from the void, like a mermaid’s flowing hair suspended in water. The black circular edge flickered with tiny red glowing embers. Minutes later, the sun’s golden light exploded back into the sky like a supernova, hiding again the incredible beauty we had been allowed to see for a brief moment. Those two and a half minutes passed rapidly, but seemed like a lifetime.

It was as if a goddess suspended her blinding brilliance for a fleeting moment to reveal to us her true nature, her incredible beauty. A gift of encouragement and inspiration to her people: ‘Keep going! It’s worth all the pain and fear. Everything will be alright!’

It was a sight that a photograph or video absolutely cannot capture. It was a deeply moving experience that I hope never to recover from, shared with family, friends and strangers at a city park in a small town in South Carolina that I will not likely pass through again. I shared the experience with friends and family across the country united by text and social media.

Today, days later, I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the urgency to understand the world and our place in it was ignited in people thousands of years ago after seeing a total eclipse of the sun.

May we all continue to benefit from that gift. 

Total solar eclipse, Fountain Inn, South Carolina, 21 August 2017. Photo by T. Rickenbach

Real-time video on 21 August 2017 of the total solar eclipse from a regional park in Fountain Inn, South Carolina leading up to and including totality, shot on a GoPro Hero 5 Session. Totality lasts 2 min 23 sec. The color transitions are pretty accurate, but the corona viewed live was so much more detailed, and far more beautiful. Video by T. Rickenbach.

Look up!

Why are we compelled to look up at the stars? 

The matter that makes up your body was forged in the violent death of some old and distant star. Yes, that makes you a star! In its dying breath that brave star paved a path that has led right to you - all it took to travel down that road was time and physics. Honor your legacy by keeping that fire alive as you watch your next sunrise...

Tonight, gaze up into the mirror of the night sky. See and feel the deep connection you have to every living thing that ever breathed, grew, and loved here at home or anywhere else in the universe. Know that you are a vital - an essential - part of the whole. Look up and look well, and as you do, realize that you are a beautiful and unique way for our ancient universe to know itself!

This wonderful perspective was brought to you by….scientific inquiry!