ABC’s 20/20 to Air “Superhumans” – How paraplegic Chris Waddell summitted Mount Kilimanjaro and changes the lives of America’s children.

This is the headline for our latest press release to announce that Chris will be featured this Friday night on ABC’s 20/20’s “Superhumans” segment (UPDATED TIME! AT 9 pm EDT)! In the show, Chris talks about his climb and his upcoming ten-week national tour of of his education program, Nametags, and award-winning documentary, One Revolution.

This spring One Revolution was featured in a number of film festivals and we were honored to win several awards. The film, directed by Amanda Stoddard, beautifully captures Chris’s very human journey to dare greatly and ultimately to live fully.

So far, Chris has spoken to more than 45,000 students through Nametags, and he is planning to reach thousands more in the upcoming tour. Nametags is not just about disability, it is about resilience and community. Chris encourages kids to do great things.

Brandon Gell, one of the students that Chris reached with his Nametags educational program, climbed Mt Kilimanjaro in support of One Revolution. Brandon said, “Chris made me look at my life and my perceived challenges. He inspired me to be better every day.” Along with his father and sister, Brandon climbed the mountain with the goal or raising one dollar for every foot of the 19,340-foot mountain. He exceeded his goal, raising over $20,000 to help One Revolution reach others.

The next step for One Revolution is to establish an outreach program, Mobility Revolution, to help people to be able to live more fully. The first project will be to adapt the hand cycle Chris used on Kilimanjaro to create a vehicle that could be affordably used throughout the world.

Our final news is that we just made some changes on the website, so please come take a look at all that we have been doing: www.one-revolution.org.

One Revolution is actively seeking sponsorship for its tours and programming and booking events for the fall.

For further information, visit the web site at www.one-revolution.org.

Thank you for your support!

Sunday May 22nd I received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from my alma mater Middlebury College. I also performed the commencement address. During the year I probably do more than 100 presentations to large groups. I get nervous every time. I don’t think that will ever change. After 30 years of ski racing I still get nervous getting into the Nastar starting gate. Nervous is good. It means that I care, but this was a different kind of nervousness. I was miserable leading up to the commencement address, feeling a responsibility to impart meaningful words to these amazingly talented students at a school that is so close to my heart.

I knew months in advance that I would give the address, but I couldn’t put anything on paper until the week of graduation. On Thursday, before the Sunday ceremony, I flew to JFK, rented a car, and drove to my parents’ house in New Hampshire. During the five-hour drive I worked through my speech a few times out loud, from memory. I like to hear how it sounds. Doing it from memory forces me to make transitions that aren’t as obvious when I write it on paper. The next morning I wrote the changes into the script, and submitted it to the college for them to disseminate to various news outlets. Each night and morning I ran through my speech a few times before and after sleep.

I don’t use notes. I had no security blanket. For the first time in a long time I worried that I wouldn’t remember my speech—that I would totally go up. The fear was so bad that a week later I woke thinking that I had to give the speech again, and this time it really counted. Dreams can be a little twisted. I couldn’t remember the speech at all, but then I woke up rolled over and went back to sleep. Here is a link to the speech if you would like to watch it.

http://www.middlebury.edu/newsroom/archive/2011/node/276643

Last fall we did a six-week, five state, 32 school, and 15,000 student tour of Nametags program on the East Coast. Touring Nametags attracted me from the beginning for the stories of the people I’d meet and the new places that I’d see. Originally, I envisioned a ten-month driving tour through our country. The lure of the odyssey, as in the Odyssey, or Karouac’s On the Road, framed the miles, spaces, people and places as the stories. Waiting for my plane in Charles de Gaulle as a high schooler I’d read Peter Jenkin’s Walk Across America. Our country was out there to be seen. I wanted to journey as an explorer—to learn bits from the people I met. In my mind it seemed so different than being a tourist—made more real by the struggle of getting from place to place and interaction with the people in the schools instead of just being a window shopper.

I’m thinking about the tour as we make plans to put both our Nametags program and our film on the road this coming fall. (Let us know if you’d like us to visit your community.) But, I’m also thinking about it because over the last three weeks, I’ve effectively been on tour. Since the beginning of April I’ve been in Vail, CO; Park City, Hampton/Exeter, NH; Dallas, Memphis, Vegas, Park City, Winnetka/Geneva, IL; Park City, San Diego, Park City, and then Newport Beach, CA tomorrow. It’s been a wonderful time to see friends and family, and to finally show our film in festivals, but it’s also been about the little things that I’ve learned along the way and the people and moments that have touched me.

At Phillips Exeter I attended a mysticism class prior to my Nametags presentation. We opened the class listening to a chant and meditating. As I touched my index fingers to my thumbs, I thought we never would have done this when I was in high school. After the meditation the student to my right said, “We should introduce ourselves and say what we like to do.” Every student in the class, from one of the most prestigious and competitive prep schools in the country, stated that what they liked to do was some form of art. I like to “write,” “paint,” “dance,” “act.” Inhibition didn’t even creep into their voices or eyes. I thought of Gordon McKenzie and a friend of mine. McKenzie wrote Orbiting the Giant Hairball, about slipping the bonds of corporate normalcy. He often spoke to students marveling at how the artists in the class slipped from unabashed everyone in first grade to 10 out of 30 self-conscious souls by the third grade, yet I’d just experienced a group of seniors who were all artists of one sort or another. Maybe by the time they start professions they’ll remember their art and something that a friend said when asked what he did. “I hike and surf,” which begged the follow-up question, “For work?” “No, that’s what I do for fun.”

Even though I’ve done fifteen presentations in the last three weeks, I’m completely ill at ease asking a question in front of a group. My heart races. My palms dampen. I loop over and over in my head what I want to say. Feeling my own pain, I marveled at Eyob. Not only did he ask one question, but he asked two questions in front of a room full of adults. I empathized with him in one way. This presentation was in a church. Eyob, in his wheelchair, was an add-on to the end of the pew. In that position I feel like a potential obstacle. He couldn’t have cared less. I think he’s a third grader, just recently adopted from Ethiopia, and still taking English as a second language, yet all I could think when I met Eyob and then talked with him at his school the next day was, “at ease.”

Our film showed for the first time at the Memphis International Film and Music Festival. It was a tremendous first showing in a real theatre, on a big screen. We won “Best Feature Documentary” (and would win again at the Geneva Film Festival), but the thing that stayed with me was a comment that my father made after the film’s conclusion. Speaking to the film’s director, Amanda Stoddard, he said, “It’s a wonderful film. I cried from the beginning to the end.” Obviously, I’ve known my father my whole life. During that time I’ve known him as a measure of control and composure. I never would have expected him to say that he cried through the whole thing.

I’d started this blog with the idea of recounting the interesting things that I’ve seen on my journey. I didn’t think that I’d have a theme, but I seem to—the things that we see in others that we want for ourselves. One of my primary goals in this project has been to achieve the kind of honesty that the Exeter students, Eyob, and my father displayed. Dropping the mask, being at ease, that’s what I wanted.

Recently I read an article that Boston Globe columnist, Charlie Pierce wrote about the recovery of Ryan Westmorland, the Red Sox top prospect who had delicate and possibly debilitating or fatal surgery for a cavernous malformation in his brain in the spring of 2010. Charlie said it much better than I can and I apologize but I’m going to quote a whole paragraph,

“The individual people who live their lives as athletes live them out side by side with constructed identities, public doppelgangers created by their talents and fashioned in every aspect by the worth that society places on those talents. There are athletes whose basic humanity becomes utterly subsumed by the identities that are built for them, a process in which they usually are more or less complicit. And the great majority of them don’t know that this has happened at all until something – simple aging, a catastrophic injury, legal problems – explodes the constructed identity and leaves them with nothing but their essential human identity, which they may not even recognize anymore. Those who have managed to hang onto their basic humanity, their fundamental sense of their actual identities, are the ones who survive. The others are lost, and often to themselves, most tragically of all.”

I guess that’s why we go on journeys, because we learn about ourselves. After my accident, I created the mask that I could do whatever I wanted. That mask became more firmly affixed as I competed for fifteen years and won medals and World Championships. It was exactly the opposite of being disabled and I liked that, yet I worried about Pierce’s doppelganger, and worried that I could be lost to myself. Maybe I started my journey to learn other people’s stories, and relish the gifts of our country, but I’m also learning about myself. Thanks Exeter students, Eyob, and dad for the lessons.

Now that the film is done there’s the worry that people won’t like it. With a friend, I drew the analogy, “It’s like having a kid and sending him or her off to college. You think your kid is a good kid, but you’re not sure if you think your kid is a good kid because he or she is your kid or if your kid is really a good kid.” We made the film that we wanted to make. That in and of itself is an achievement, but I really want people to like it. That desire breeds a little anxiety, so much so that I drew an analogy to having a kid. I’m sure some of you are saying what does he know about having a kid? Good point. I think having a kid is a bit like making a movie.

So far people like the film. We’ve won “Best Feature Doc,” at our first two festivals: Memphis and Geneva. It’s quite a start, though I hope the kid doesn’t flunk out in the second semester. In Memphis we showed in a theatre with a “U” shape from front to back. The seats in the middle were lower than those nearer and farther away from the screen. It was surprisingly comfortable. My parents came down for our big screen premier. Our Executive Producer, Pablo Nyarady, hustled an amazing collection of friends. For me, and I’d imagine for Amanda, watching the film that we’d slaved over for years, was a bit like that scene from Tom Sawyer, where he sneaks into the church attic to watch his own funeral. Everyone else was a spectator. We were subjects, and we felt conspicuously in their midst, hoping they’d like it.

As best I can tell there’s an arc of making a film, which might be similar to having a child because you need to approach both with unquestioning optimism and naïveté, again I present the caveat of never actually having a child. We started thinking that this will be the greatest movie ever. It will change the way that world sees films. Then there were the moments of total desperation. Nothing made sense. We were hemorrhaging money. We were totally overwhelmed. It seems like we wouldn’t even get started let alone create the greatest movie ever. I can’t tell you how many times I wished that someone just had an answer for how to continue—how to make sense. Everything was going at a hundred miles an hour and I felt stuck in the mud. I call this the “What the ____ am I doing? Phase.” Then there was the shaping. In this phase we felt like we had something. There was a story in there, but it was really deep in there. Finally, it was off to college, where you think, “I hope they like my baby.”

I don’t think that we will ever lose that feeling. I will always hope that they like my baby. Funny this might be like raising a child too…I worry and Amanda did all the heavy lifting. It’s been a great journey so far. I’m interested to see where our baby will take us.

A disturbing thing happened at the movie theatre and it has to do with a question we all get asked. Innocently waiting for a The Fighter to start, a man walked by and struck up a conversation with my friend. They were friends. He asked a question that has become so ubiquitous that no one even notices, and it wasn’t, “How are you?” It was the one that followed immediately after. “Are you busy?” Not are you busy at the moment because it was obvious that we were waiting for the movie to start, but the thing that permeates almost every one of our waking moments. Are you occupied? Are you scheduled? Basically are you doing anything worthwhile? Guilt is the sinkhole of a foundation because we’re never really as busy as we should be. That’s the problem.

I don’t think it’s so much, “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” as it is that you’re a loser if you’re not busy. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been busy, eyes bleeding, can’t see straight, waking at home not knowing where I am because I’m so used to being in a hotel room busy. From September through the end of last year I spent fourteen days at home. I flew to London for day and a half, slept in my car one night, and kept a schedule fueled by adrenaline and caffeine, even though I don’t really drink coffee.

I feel conflicted by “busy,” I do my own schedule and if I didn’t do it to myself it would be sadistic, but I worry that I’m losing time for idle thought—those times when something just pops into my mind. If there’s always something going on in there, then there’s no room for the idle thought. That’s a big loss, not to mention the cell phones that end up in the toilet.

We watched The Fighter on that January 1st night, deep in the heart of New Year’s Resolutions. Around that time I wrote about not a New Year’s Resolution, but starting to develop a good habit. I have to admit that I haven’t done too well, but that’s the beauty of a good habit versus a resolution. It takes a while to develop a habit, but you have one bowl of ice cream after ten at night and you’ve shattered a resolution.

John Lennon sang, “Life’s what happens while we’re busy doing other things.” But if we’re always doing other things when does life happen?

My habit is scheduling—not more, but less. I want to create sharp edges in my schedule, not the obscure ones that make me think that I’ve been working all day and I can’t remember what I’ve done. Separating work from play, carving out time for workouts, and most importantly allowing time for idle thought because those are the times when I feel smart. A thought jumps in my head and I think, “that’s a really good thought.”

“Are you busy?”

“Nope.”

“It took running,” Sarah made the statement with the unencumbered syntax of a six year old and the force of a twenty-pound sledgehammer. In her little red formal dress, she bobbed back and forth from foot to foot. Both hands firmly grasped the microphone. Three hundred and twenty, black-tie optional leaders of the community sat in awed silence. Next to her on the stage, in the wash of house lights, I couldn’t help but cringe when she said, “It took running,” meaning that her disease wouldn’t let her run like other six year olds, but that tidbit fell far short of her most powerful nugget, “It’s bad, but it makes me unique.” Really? It makes you unique? Did you come up with that by yourself? Do you have that depth of thought? Can you teach me what you know? Not only did that room of “Who’s Whos” step with Sarah on her journey, but also they gained an unexpected twist on perspective from a six year old. “It took running.” “It made me unique.”

At two, doctors had diagnosed Sarah with Spinal Muscular Atrophy. It had echoed like a death sentence. As we watched Sarah’s Hippotherapy lesson at the National Ability Center, her mother said, “She kept falling.” I could her the pain of a mother who felt she couldn’t protect her daughter. Doctors said that Sarah wouldn’t be able to get off the floor by this age. She still falls, but not nearly as much. She gets off the floor. She walked on stage. She grabbed hold of the microphone. Sarah’s family attributes her success to the program at the National Ability Center, the adaptive recreation facility in Park City, Utah. Hippotherapy is multi-dimensional movements on the back of a horse. The gait of a horse closely resembles that of a human. There’s almost an osmosis awakening of the human body, but when I watched Sarah’s lesson she looked more like she should be in a Roy Rogers show than in therapy. She stretched her arms and legs through plastic hoops while sitting on the back of the moving horse, playing to the crowd. It was a game, one that she is winning in front of the baffled doctors. She swims, the buoyancy offering freedom that land doesn’t. She skis finding the speed that “It” took when it took running. Sarah was the featured participant at the National Ability Center’s annual fundraiser, Red, White and Snow. She thanked the program and she thanked Spinal Muscular Atrophy. She thanked “It” that took running. With some of the coolest wine makers in the country sitting in the audience, she was the coolest person in the room. She also made me think of an experience that I had had at another event this past fall.

Women were in glitter and gowns, men in tuxedos. The band was just starting to get funky, yet I decided to make an early evening of it. As I descend the packed elevator to Times Square, a woman riding the night’s euphoria said, “We’ll cure you.” I knew what she meant. I knew that she meant they would make me walk again. One of the organization’s focuses is a cure for paralysis. I knew that her intentions were pure, but I couldn’t help but feel slighted. She’ll cure me. She doesn’t even know me. I wished the elevator would go faster—a race to the bottom. Will I get there without revealing what I really think? Later I played the conversation in my mind wishing I could have asked equally valid, yet illuminating questions. Cure me? Of my commitment issues? My organizational deficiencies? Fear of failure? Fear of dying alone? Accounting woes? Financial woes? An inability to speak Italian? The feeling that I might never be good enough or smart enough? That I might never find true happiness or fulfillment? That I worry? I knew she meant walking, but walking wouldn’t make me any more whole than I was the day before my accident. I wondered how high walking would be on my list.

Like Sarah, I think my accident made me unique, or probably more appropriately, my experiences since my accident, like Sarah’s experiences, have made me unique. I’d love to run again too, but I wouldn’t trade those experiences for running. I’m sure that Sarah falls some days and wishes that life were easier. I do too. Falling doesn’t make us unique. Getting up does. Our mantra with One Revolution is, “It’s not what happens to you. It’s what you do with what happens to you,” but like any mantra it needs to be a daily reminder. Last fall, I came off a month and a half long tour of educational program, Nametags, that centered on the theme of “It’s not what happens…” Still I felt a little unsettled and said to my yoga teacher that I needed to accept the accident. She said, “It’s not acceptance. It’s just a change in direction.”

Somehow I think that Sarah already knows about “just a change in direction.” Maybe she can teach us the way that she taught that crowd last Saturday night. To me, that sounds like a much greater cure.

People often look at me like I’m crazy when I tell that the two weeks of the Kilimanjaro travel and climb were easiest two weeks that I’ve had in the last three years. Pedaling for nine hours a day through rain forests, in deep scree, up rock gardens was easy by comparison with managing people, trying to raise money, worrying about paying bills when I knew I couldn’t and generally living in stress.

In the three years that I’ve been working on One Revolution I haven’t taken a proper vacation. There were the sanity saving five days that I spent at my parents’ over Christmas 2009. I didn’t even get that this year. Some might argue that I’m on vacation all the time. A vacation is not visiting different locations. It’s turning off the computer, the phone, and my mind. Two weeks ago I hit the wall. I was supposed to be in Chicago for a motivational speech when the snows hit and my flight was canceled. You’d think I had time to catch up, but no. Each day I’d go into my office with grand illusions and get absolutely nothing done. I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do. And if I could I didn’t care. Without the adrenaline that I would have had performing in Chicago I had nothing.

So I decided to take a few days off. My friends and sponsors for the climb, the Eureka Resort and Casino in Mesquite, Nevada said come as our guest. I left Park City in a crazy, warm, wet wind, promising snow, when all I craved was a little warmth. I’d been teased connecting through LA on my way to Mammoth the week before. Seventy-five and clear. I needed that. It was windy in St George when I landed, but on the way to Mesquite, we used the AC. How cool is that? I was reminded of a Jeff Foxworthy rip-off email… You might be from Utah… If you use the heat and AC in the same day. I guess it’s the same just over the border in Nevada.

Eureka was great. Before I met Greg, Andre, Ashleigh, Frank, Dave, and Rob, I had an image of Casino people, probably from Bugsy, and other knee breaking gambling movies. That image couldn’t be further from the truth for these people. After the climb I had met up with them for Christmas Can Cure, a Christmas vacation they host in Park City and Jackson, NH for select wounded warriors, who have often been away from their families during the holidays. Their generosity extended to me the way it did to the veterans.

The sun shone. I went for a push through the neighborhoods in shorts and a t-shirt, enjoying the desert beauty—the buttes, the texture of red sand dunes that come alive with the rising and setting sun turning the red purple and black, and also somehow highlighting a of pure window of sharp focused red sandstone in this vast desert—a little glimpse that we can comprehend. I sweated on that little push passing bright green golf courses in the desert rock and sand looking like moss had somehow crawled onto the desert landscape. Later I swung some clubs myself, but just on the range. Still in the middle of February I felt like I’d stolen something—stolen a moment. I had a massage and even won a bit of money at the blackjack table.

Mostly it was time to get away—time to read. I followed Conrad Anker and his team up Everest in his search for Mallory and Irvine and proof that they’d summited back in 1924. And I followed Keith Richard’s search for anti-establishment, the Chicago blues sound, and probably a few other things. Slipping into someone else’s story is a vacation, and this time I didn’t need to pedal nine hours a day. Thanks to everyone a Eureka for such a great time. I look forward to my return as I sit on a plane to Denver for another meeting. My time away was like that little window of light in the vast desert—a chance to see clearly. Thanks.

I’ve started listening to the oldies station, captured by the nostalgia. On my way home, Rod Stewart sang, “You’re in my heart.” It brought me back to 680 foot Mt Tom in Holyoke, Mass, to the cement floored basement equipment room of the ski school, the warmth of the room, while lights blazed against the black sky outside and the snow guns fired from sentry positions along the trail. The songs bring me back to the Boulevard, the trail where I took run after run first chasing the big kids as a six year old and then becoming a big kid myself as a thirteen year old. To practicing starts on any incline with my best friend Bissell Hazen. To jumping against the rules on the Pump House.

I realize that my career had a bit of a soundtrack. Steve Miller’s “I Want to Fly Like an Eagle,” was the anthem of chasing the bigger kids. They were so cool, and Steve Miller was so cool. That song is forever tied to the patch of road right in front of the O’Connell and Sons construction offices (coincidentally the owners of Mt Tom), on our way to the mountain, just past the rotary, and right after we crossed the Connecticut River. That moment is also tied to the lesson that “sucks” is not a good word and not a cooler synonym for “stinks.” Not everything the big kids taught me was good.

When I made my first championships at ten, we prepared for the races at Sugarloaf by training at Titcomb Mountain in West Farmington, Maine because that’s where my coach had trained when he went to the University of Maine at Farmington. I was ten and out of school for the week. The sun blazed in March. I rode the t-bar and Rod Stewart again sang, “If you want my money and you think I’m sexy.” There was “Hot child in the city, running wild and looking pretty,” as I got off the lift at the top of the Boulevard. Dark surrounded us, but I didn’t notice. It was light in my world as I ran gates run after run.

The Gambler was in there somewhere too, but I can’t remember where. Eddie Rabbit sang about the windshield wipers slapping out a tempo as I tuned skis in that basement of the ski school building. By that time, I was thirteen. I was old enough that my feet knew the pleasure of changing from ski boots back into sneakers.

This past spring the US Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame inducted me into its halls. What you might assume would be one of the most ego filled moments, was instead one of the most humbling. I’d joined the people who decorated the walls of my childhood bedroom. I thought of the big kids that I looked up to from the time I was six, people like Bobby Hazen and Timmy Enright. I thought about all of the coaches: Rob Broadfoot, my first coach and the man who could walk on water in my eyes, Paul Putnam, tough love, Bart Bradford, who started me skiing in a monoski, Mike Brown, who always knew the right thing to say even if I knew that he was saying it for a purpose. I thought of my parents, who taught skiing so that we could race. They woke us up before the wood stove had had time to warm the house. In those days a lot of my clothes had a burn mark across the back from getting dressed a little too close to the only heat source.

When I think back, it’s those nostalgic moments of youth that are the fondest memories of my ski career. The songs transport me back there. When I placed my photo at the Hall in Ishpeming, Michigan, I saw much of my youth. Ishpeming, in Upper Peninsula (they call themselves Yoopers) doesn’t have big mountains or glitz. I’d imagine that its lodge is a lot like the one at Mt Tom. The smell of hot chocolate spilled on a cement floor is the smell of skiing in my olfactory catalogue. The people who hosted us in Ishpeming were ski patrollers and ski instructors in addition to their real jobs, the way that my parents had been. The ski job let many of us afford to do the sport, but more importantly, it built a community of friends that we’d have for the rest of our lives. We shared a love of the sport when the sun was high in the sky, when the snow fell, when the rain splashed, or when it was dark everywhere but where you wanted to make a turn. It smelled like hot chocolate spilled on a cement floor. On the oldies station, there’s a soundtrack that brings me right back there. That’s what it means to me to be in the Hall of Fame.

It’s that time for New Year’s Resolutions. Here are a couple of ideas. Just the other day I received an email from a friend who said that she started a new tradition last year, opening the back door at midnight to let the old year out and then the front door to let the New Year in. On New Year’s night I ushered out 2010 and welcomed 2011 by opening the back and front doors. I’ll let you know how it works.

The second idea has caused me much thought. This past fall in the midst of my Nametags tour on the East Coast, I had a good conversation with a longtime buddy, who has started taking a lot of early morning photos. With his black lab Isabelle, who is to apple cores what French pigs are to truffles, Bill shoots what catches his eye on their walks around Upper Lake at Mount Holyoke College. Then he does fifteen minutes of Tai Chi.

I couldn’t resist asking how he chose Tai Chi. He said that each year he likes to create a good habit. When he turned forty, sixteen years ago, he wanted to maintain a lifestyle of skiing, mountain biking and general fitness. Tai Chi was a good way to maintain flexibility and concentration. His eyes light up when he says some days he gets closer and closer to transforming the series of movements into a continuous one.

When I told my mother about my conversation with Bill she captured it in red ink on a post-it, which she promptly stuck on the wall above the calendar in her kitchen. I looked at it soon after, noticing that she had written, “Create a new habit each year.” She’d forgotten the “good habit,” like so many of us do. I like the way that it reads now, a sort of hierarchical reminder, with good floating above the rest of the rest of the words. Create a good habit. Make it part of who we are. Take a series of movements and turn them into a continuous flow.

As we approach the end of the year I’m full of optimism: our film on the Kilimanjaro climb is nearing completion, our educational program, Nametags, is established and beginning to flourish, and I have an interested, talented, and motivated board of directors. We’ve cut 200+ hours of footage down to a film that captures many of our intended themes: how ordinary people achieve extraordinary feats, how we learn from the journeys we set for ourselves, and how having a goal bigger than ourselves can push us to the greatest heights.

In September and October I did a five state tour of our educational tour. We visited 32 schools in Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania and presented to 15,000 students. Nametags asks the students to look beyond our reasons to be separate and to see the budding genius in all of us. In our common journey inspiration is where we choose to find it. We have so much to learn from each other. One principal said, “Each child left the presentation an inch taller.” Another said, “Every student in the country needs to hear this message.” We will bring the message to as many as possible. In the fall, if we can secure corporate sponsorship, we will tour Nametags and the film throughout the country.

As much as we’ve achieved, 2010 has been a scramble. We’ve pared our One Revolution numbers to essentially two, Amanda on the film side, and me on the foundation side, though we’ve had support along the way particularly from Ryan Gass with film editing. Worries of how to keep moving forward, how to pay the bills at the end of the month, how to stay true to our dream have persisted. It’s been a daily struggle—a personal struggle that challenged me and Amanda more than Kilimanjaro ever could. The challenge forced us to prioritize our efforts and pare our lives to the bare essentials, but I’m optimistic. Due in large part to the board’s support, expertise, and guidance, we’re turning a corner.

While we started with an effort to gain equality for people with disabilities, our strength has been our universal approach. Instead of bringing one group up, we want to bring all groups together. We call ourselves One Revolution, but the aim is really a Revolution of One a Revolution of All—without any of the Marxist implications—but with a wink toward Aristotle and Buddhist tradition in creating a community that allows us to flourish.

Hopes for the New Year include a greater voice through relationships and support with corporate America and major foundations, and through more partnerships with a wide array of organizations. This blog started with the idea of saying goodbye to 2010, ushering in 2011, and creating a new good habit. While it’s been a busy year, I feel soft in mind and body. Both become stronger with use. With a nod to the Greeks version of health, I’d like to create a mind body habit to the written word and a daily heart rate rise. Twice a month I will produce some thoughts for the blog even if they are not completely formed. I worry that this thought is still not completely formed, but I will resist the temptation to wait until it is. Throughout 2010 I wrote numerous blogs that I didn’t publish because I didn’t think they were ready. In 2011 I will create a habit to finish thoughts enough that I can build on them with the next thought.

I just returned from a nose hair shattering cross-country ski, and it was great. When I retired from competitive sport I said that I would train to play and make my play training. My maxim proved easier in theory than practice, as there was always something else to do, some reason not to sweat. The specter of guilt hung heavy in my mind because I’d made the pursuit of physical fitness my career for so long. I envisioned that growing up I should have more responsible pursuits, but the ultimate goal is to be healthy and happy. In the New Year I want to create the habit of sweating, of raising my heart rate, of pursuing fitness, at least once a day.

Happy New Year.

This past week a friend sent me an article about people with disabilities in film and TV acting. It hit on a lot of the perceived limitations and assumptions.

Check it out:

http://www.backstage.com/bso/content_display/news-and-features/e3ib38cebd2d45985ddb98bc96273deac20