Cristina Trapani-Scott: Relentlessly Local

Here are video highlights of the Davy Jones concert held at the Tecumseh Center for the Arts Jan. 30, 2010.

The attached musical slideshow is of photos that I took to go with my Winter at the Gardens feature that ran in the Jan. 21, 2010, edition of the Tecumseh Herald. I added a couple photos that didn't appear in the newspaper.

By CRISTINA TRAPANI-SCOTT
cristina@tecumsehherald.com

Every once in a while it’s okay to let our dork flags fly. Anyone who reads this column regularly knows that I do that a lot more than every once in a while. Well, here I go again.
In a couple of weeks a certain gent will be coming to town. All I have to do is say, “Hey, hey, it’s…” and most everyone of a certain age can fill in the blank. I’m talking about Davy Jones of The Monkees, who will be coming in concert to the Tecumseh Center for the Arts Saturday, Jan. 30.
Anyone who has known me for a long time knows that Davy Jones was my first love. Okay, so maybe that’s a dreamy stretch, but at age six I was smitten. I’m not 100 percent sure I was really old enough to form an opinion about boys back then, but I knew I liked Davy Jones. Of course, being on the early end of Generation X, I only really knew him through the reruns that I watched religiously after school. I was only a speck in the universe when the television show debuted in 1966, so it wasn’t until about six or so years after the show ended that I had my introduction.
Back then I was really into horses. I’m sure I knew that Davy Jones loved horses, too, and I could have listened to him talk and sing all day. Those must be all the combined reasons why he was my favorite Monkee, not that I’m alone. I know he was a lot of girls’ favorite Monkee.

Since we began this video thing here at the Herald, I've found myself juggling snapping photos, writing notes, parenting and videotaping. The middle school concert at Britton-Macon Area School was no acception. Here are some highlights from the concert. The kids did a great job.

As a band mom, it's always fun to hear the kids play. I once was a member of a school band and my parents were the ones sitting in the audience at most of my concerts. Now, the tables have turned.

Over the Christmas break I had an epiphany. Christmas is good for epiphanies, if not for the spirit that is in the air, then for the fact that life pauses for a moment to let me catch a breath, enjoy some nog, and eat way too much food.

For a good portion of my adult life I'd been living in the past or clinging to some distant future goal. Publishing my novel is chief on the list of distant, or not so distant, future goals. I realized that I'd been so absorbed in the things that I regretted or things that made me angry in the past, and that I'd been so absorbed in the things that I wanted to accomplish that I was forgetting about the here and now. I was forgetting that being outside just to feel the cold on my cheeks is a good thing, or that sitting with my kids and enjoying a game of Rock Band with no thought of yesterday or tomorrow is a more valuable gift than any kind of jewelry money can buy. 

The odd thing is that it wasn't cancer or any profound event that led to a clearing of vision. I say clearing because there's still a lot to be dusted away, but I feel like this is the beginning of a better way. It's just been a gradual shift, with missteps along the way for sure, but it's a shift that feels brighter in so many ways. 

I suppose the closest thing I have to a New Year's resolution is that I hope to continue my practice in this better way. I won't say it's easy. It's become habit for my mind to gravitate to lists of what should be done and worrying about whether everything will ever be done.

So, my wish for readers in the New Year, then, is for all to have many happy moments.

Britton-Macon Preschool parents enjoyed a concert Thursday, Dec. 10, featuring their children.

Wind and cold temperatures couldn't keep families from attending the Britton Lenawee's CHILD annual Santa night.

Looking to do some Christmas shopping? Don't know what to do with the kids? Kim Wagner of Britton and friends are offering babysitting services Saturday, Dec. 12, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Britton Bethel Baptist Church, 296 S Main St in Britton. Kim, who has gone through the Red Cross Babysitting Class, and her friends will have games and craft. The youths also will have help from certified childcare worker. For more information, call the church at 451-5415.

EVENT CANCELLED

This is the second year I was asked to be an adult facilitator during Challenge Day at Britton-Macon Area School. Each year, I've left the event really thinking about how I think about our youth. Just as teens have certain impressions of each other, so do we adults have certain set impressions of teens. Challenge Day reminds me that those impressions are limiting, not only to teens, but to me. I can't go into everything that happened during Challenge Day, but I can say that we have more in common with our young folks than we let on. We have similar fears, similar worries and more. However, we are fortunate as adults that we more often have more tools to deal with the fear and worry than our young counterparts. That's what Challenge Day taught me. Here is an Emmy Award-winning documentary by Arnold Shapiro Productions showing a bit of what Challenge Day is all about. I'll post all three parts throughout the weekend.

Yeah, so you had to know I might have something to say about this. I didn't find my cancer with a regular mammogram or a self exam. I found it by "accident." Still, what the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recommended makes my blood boil. It builds on this assumption that breast cancer is an "older woman's disease" and it just isn't happening in younger women. Sure, it's not happening as often, but it's happening more and more. I was diagnosed at age 38, two years before my regular mammograms would have started. Fortunately, I had been doing regular self exams, so that I knew when something didn't feel right.

Not only does the Task Force recommend regular mammograms start at 50 and then are only given every two years, but it poo poos the notion of regular self exams. In so many words, they encourage women to just let it go. If I'd just let it go, I'd have been dead. If others I know who did find their cancer through mammograms had just let it go, they'd be dead. 

The fact is that most breast cancers found in young women are more aggressive than those found in their older counterparts. With these guidelines women risk finding cancerous tumors in their breast later stages when treatments are harsher and the chances of survival decrease.

Really, it's about weighing the options. The argument that these new recommendations would keep women from going through the "agony" of unnecessary exams and false positives makes me cringe. If you discover your positive is a false, that's a blessing in my book. The agony, my friends, is when the positive is actually positive.

Find some interesting facts about breast cancer in young women at the Young Survival Coalition website.