The Daily Cardiogram, excerpts from MY FATHER'S HEART: A SON'S RECKONING WITH THE LEGACY OF HEART DISEASE

[Steve McKee]

Now through NCTE I will be posting "The Daily Cardiogram," excerpts from my memoir, MY FATHER'S HEART: A SON'S RECKONING WITH THE LEGACY OF HEART DISEASE, to illustrate why at NCTE I will be recommending this book for juniors & seniors in high school.

F.58, Saturday, 8 a.m., Room 107B
Part of the Pennsylvania Showcase: “Coming Home Again”

And here's My Father’s Heart, the Movie!
“Green & Gold: A Run through My High School.”
Click here: http://ncte2008.ning.com/video/f58-green-gold-a-run-through

I hope to see you bright and early Saturday morning to talk about “My Father’s Heart” and its potential as a reading-list book for juniors and seniors. (I’ll provide a complete lesson plan – with vocabulary words.)
In the meantime, please feel free to zap these DAILY CARDIOGRAMS to friends (NCTE and otherwise -- so they can friend me) and fellow educators, school librarians, summer-reading chairs, and to post on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. Thanks, Stv McK

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM, from 'My Father's Heart':
My father’s boyhood, growing up in Buffalo, N.Y., seems to have been almost idyllic, at least in the telling he gave it. … The quarry! If I seem obsessed with it, it’s because I am, because Dad was. The quarry lived in Dad’s remembering and lives now in my imagining. He loved to talk about being a kid and heading straight to the pit after school, or lollygagging there all day long in the summer. He could tell a great story, Dad could, and he made it all sound like great adventure.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
All of Dad’s facts-of-life talks took place in his car. … I can still hear Dad running through the required vocabulary, and as a father now I appreciate the setting –captive audience, no eye contact. I have employed it myself.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
Dad was at his best when Judy Ochs came to our house for Sunday night dinner. Roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy. Judy was my sister Kathy’s best friend. Dad adored her. So did I. And not just because I was the younger brother and Judy was three years older, a varsity cheerleader dating the vice president of York Catholic High School in Pennsylvania. There was something about Judy that unloosed the best in Dad, the silly Dad, the relaxed Dad. As the years moved beyond Dad’s first heart attack, we saw less and less of that Dad, but he always appeared when Judy came for dinner. Who knows why? It doesn’t matter; I remain grateful to her.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My FATHER'S HEART":
My junior year at York Catholic High School in Pennsylvania, Dad and I got into a fight, an actual fists-up, come-and-get-it squaring off. It started with Dad and me goofing around, a pretend slap fight, laughing and joking. Then all of sudden it wasn’t pretend anymore. How it got from one to the other, I haven't a clue.
… I have often wondered what to make of that night -- while cautioning myself not to make too much of it. But I do think this.
When I broke Dad’s hold and stood up, we weren’t looking eye-to-eye. By then I was probably 6-foot-3, maybe 6-foot-4 –- a sizable three or four inches taller than Dad. I had overtaken him. In the same way, perhaps, that his life had overtaken him. He was already down one heart attack by age 44. Now, he had just turned 50. He was a smoker, addicted. As for his job, don't get him started.
I have no idea why that night happened the way it did, but I think in some ways it, served to pass the baton from him to me. Here, Steve, you take it, I give up. I remember his eyes, again those green eyes, as I looked down into them as we went chest to chest in the TV room. Angry and raging, helpless and tired."

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
York, Pennsylvania, has always been a crossroads town. The Monocacy Indian path forded the Codorous Creek in what is now downtown. A map from the 1770s shows seven roads in and out. Market Street itself is Old Lincoln Highway. The city’s finest hour might have come in the winter of 1977-78. With General Washington encamped at Valley Forge, the Continental Congress meanwhile had retreated across the Susquehanna River to “York Town” to escape the British in Philadelphia. While in the White Rose City the Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation. I always include “first capital of the United States” when bragging on York to people who have never heard of the place, even if it’s more marketing slogan than truth.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
Often our family camping vacations culminated at Little Pine State Park in north-central Pennsylvania. … Little Pine is a magnificent place. Eastern white pines, straight as telephone poles and just as bare, disappear into the sky. … Sunshine, barely penetrating, dapples a soft carpet of brown pine needles. The surrounding land was originally settled by the English family, and in a small corner of the park rests the English family graveyard; a few of the worn, chipped tombstones date to the mid-1800s. … Everywhere the light is muted, the noises muffled. The only sound is of the wind gently rushing far above. I have returned three times with my son. It as spiritual a place as I have ever known.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
Getting this all-day, comprehensive “executive physical” wasn’t my idea. It was my wife’s. She told me later that when I came out of the doctor’s office she knew immediately that the news was not good. … When I sat down, the doctor started talking immediately, chatting up all the good news. I was in great shape, right on track with the diet, all that. And then he turned my attention to the computer screen on his desk. He explained the technology that permitted us to take the heart and slice it into so many separate slides. … He turned the screen so I could see it and clicked back and forth between the first three or four pictures so I could see how one slide morphed into another and then another. Finally it came alive. With that he started, and together we looked into my heart. …

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
I was taking Dad’s pulse when it stopped. That’s how I remember it. There was a new show on TV, “Marcus Welby, M.D.” Dad had just come downstairs from the kitchen and I told him what was going on. …We took our assigned seats. Dad in his chair, the left side of the sofa; me in the upholstered rocker. … Then it happened, and not many minutes later I was taking his pulse when it stopped.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
I didn’t think then, and I don’t think now, that this is about death. I faced my mortality on September 30, 1969. The night I watched Dad die I watched me die, too. My life began the night Dad’s ended. Learn from me, Dad said. And so I did.

[Steve McKee]

THE DAILY CARDIOGRAM from "My Father's Heart":
In the summer of 1969, 40% or Americans 18 and older smoked. Today that number is down to 21%. Still 1-in-5. If the bar is lowered to include everyone 12 and up, the number jumps to nearly 1-in-4. Among kids 12 to 17, the stats are encouraging in one light: “only” 10.8% of these kids smoke, and the number is declining. On the other hand, among high-school-age kids, that number is 23%. Every day about 3,900 kids 12 to 17 give smoking a shot; for 1,500 it becomes a daily thing.