Gettin' Out of the Funk
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
I had a tough day the other day. Thankfully, I know a recipe that gets me out of them. ----- My eighteen-year-old son is headed to Tuscaloosa next week for his Bama Bound orientation. My wife and I are going, too. I’m wondering why the parents need a college orientation so I’m tagging along. It’s about a day and a half worth of stuff. As a student, my Tulane orientation was this: “Don’t mess with the New Orleans police department during Mardi Gras,” some guy said from the stage, “or you’ll likely never be heard from again. Good luck at college. Don’t forget to study.”...
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The Blessed Boast
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Some social media posts have been gettin' to me a bit... ----- The caption read “blessed.” The social media posts were of a woman surrounded by her friends wearing designer clothes. Another of her on a private plane drinking champagne with friends. And another sitting in a suite with friends at a world-famous event. Perfect hair. Perfect teeth. Blessed, it read. Blessed? Really? I think what she meant was “More blessed than you.” Or maybe she misspelled blessed and it should read “Boast.” When Christians want people to see how well they’re doing, they post a “humble brag.” I...
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Trophies
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Recap and thoughts from a client call a few week's ago. We were discussing a problem they're having that all of us had a hand in creating. ----- “I didn’t realize it would be so hard.” That’s from a conference call with the leaders of a mid-Atlantic hospital system a few weeks back. We were talking about their young, newly minted doctors. I was putting the finishing touches on a workshop for their spring leadership conference. It seems that medical residency has gotten much easier. Less stress. Less sleepless nights. Less intensity. Less rigor. Once residency is over, the newly minted...
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Our World Needs a Prophet Today
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
We need change. And someone special who can bring it. ----- Another mass shooting last weekend. By the time this airs, there will likely be another one or two. It’s awful that these events no longer horrify us the way they should. I hardly read the story anymore. The details are all too familiar. A young male. An assault weapon. A troubled background. A history of affiliation with hate groups. Concerns by neighbors and employers of mental instability. And, boom. I’ve warned my children: at some point in your life, you’ll experience a mass shooting. Know what to do, I’ve told them. Our...
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Jazz Fest Recap
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Lots of sights and sounds at New Orleans Jazz Fest. ----- My wife, a college friend and I stood amidst the peace and quiet of Jazz Fest in New Orleans last weekend along with what must have been 100,000 of our closest friends. It was a sight. When my wife and I told our friends we were going, they reacted the same was as when I told them we were going to Mexico for spring break – “Oh no,” they said. “That’s dangerous over there. You’re going to get shot.” During my thirty-six hours in New Orleans, I never once felt unsafe. To the great disappointment of my schadenfreude friends,...
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TLAs and FLAs
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Today's Keepin' it Real - the language of insiders. ----- I made a short statement the other day and my son immediately replied, “That’s cap.” C A P. Cap. I’m unsure what it means. It’s either “that’s the gospel truth” or “that’s a boldface lie.” I thought about it for a moment and decided I didn’t want to know. For centuries generations have used hairstyles, vocabulary, music and clothing to separate themselves from adults just like my kids are doing today. We called things “cool” or “grody” or “sick.” Today my kids use Cap and ‘lit’. When I say someone...
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Twins in Mexico
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
This week I'm on the heels of a spring break trip with my youngest children - my twins. ------- I’ve wondered how often my teenaged children brush their teeth. After spending a week in a hotel room with two of them I learned that it is much less frequently than I had thought. Spring break was last week. It’s already been quite a year in the Marston household. With a daughter off at college and my wife and son away on a trip with his classmates, the twins and I flew to an all-inclusive resort on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Unlimited smoothies and milkshakes for them. Long days of compare...
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Let's Go!
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Listener's responses from my request last week: ----- To the many of you who pulled your Subaru’s over last week and emailed me, thank you. For those who don’t know, I had a stroke about two weeks ago and am, thankfully, ok. I walked out of intensive care about twenty-four hours later. Other than a fistful of pills every day, I’m back to normal. And as I said last week, it was close and I got lucky. My request last week was what does this all mean? I got very close, received an enormous outpouring of support, and got stuck on the question, “What’s it all mean?” The emails from...
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Stroke of Luck
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
It was big. I got lucky. And I'm not sure what to think about it. ----- My wife and I moved to Mobile in 2007. We had four children ages four and under and needed cheap arms and laps – better knowns as family - to help through this overwhelming time. We committed to staying awhile so my wife and I did our best to invest ourselves in our community. That investment manifest itself last week. Last Tuesday morning about 8:30 I was on the treadmill. About 8:35 I was mumbling, drooling, the left side of my face was sagging, and I was leaning against the wall. About 9:20am I was rolled into the...
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Camping
Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
I've been offered an invitation to go camping... ----- Years ago, my wife and I got a deal on some camping equipment. We headed into the North Carolina mountains to a creek camp site and set up our fancy new tent and tried out our new gear. When night fell, we unpacked our fancy new sleeping bags that were rated to keep us warm well below that night’s low temperature, climbed in, and waited to get warm. And we waited. And we waited. Then we started shivering. Teeth began chattering. After an interminable amount of time, I asked my wife what time it was. “Ten PM,” she said. The night...
info_outlineThe value of Mardi Gras beads peak when they're under no ownership. It's part of the silliness of my favorite time of year.
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If you’re not listening in the deep south, you may not know that it’s Mardi Gras time for us derelicts and mystics living here on the top lip of the Gulf Coast. Ships from all over the world back in the day delivered a menagerie of people here where they threw their customs and traditions into one big gurgling pot and one of the results is Mardi Gras. The story I tell is that Mardi Gras was a time for people to dispose of food that would spoil during the fasting associated with Lent, which begins with Ash Wednesday next week, so they threw big parties to consume all the food. Is it the truth? I don’t know. It’s the story I’ve heard the most, so it’s the story I tell.
Folks from other places who now live here are fond of saying “I just don’t get Mardi Gras. It makes no sense.” And they’re right. It doesn’t. Don’t try to make sense of it. Just enjoy it. If you can’t enjoy it because it doesn’t make sense, stay away. L et us have our fun.
Take Mardi Gras beads as one of many examples. The value of a typical strand of Mardi Gras beads can range from a few cents per strand to a few dollars. So, for argument’s sake, let’s assume one of the strands I bought at the bead store last weekend for my parade cost one dollar. It was likely made for a few cents by some poor underpaid child somewhere operating massive machine and wondering what in the world these beads things are used for and why they need so many. Nevertheless, the bead store paid maybe forty cents for it. Its value shot to a dollar when I paid for it at the register. However, the highest value of those beads cannot be assigned a number and was not when it was owned by the manufacturer, the retailer, or me. The highest value of the beads was when those beads were ownerless after I had tossed it from my hand, and it curved in gentle arc through the air and began its descent. In those moments the beads were in the air, grown men and women, aggressive children, and people who are normally friendly neighbors saw the beads and used NBA style block-outs, tremendous jumps, karate chops and tae kwon do style elbows to friend’s ribcages to catch ‘em.
Once caught, the beads went around a neck for a short time. Or they disappeared into a bag already full of them. Or were tossed on top of a pile of other beads just like it. Or, they could very likely been given away to a complete stranger. Once secured and under new ownership, the bead’s value vanished instantly. In a week they’ll be in the trash.
It makes no sense to spend so much money buying beads, then give them away, only for them to ultimately be thrown away. No sense at all. But that’s Mardi Gras. If you try to apply logic to it, you’ll scream.
And, frankly, I can’t get enough of it.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.