Miles To Go.

Miles Sharpless Spencer with 24th kid, Byrdie

Back in the day, commoners would from time to time approach the lord of the manor and “claim kin”, hoping to reap some of the benefits of those that lived “inside the walls”. Needless to say, those living inside the walls were very comfy and pretty skeptical. It usually took very good data, a lot of money, or a big @#$% army to convince people you were legit. For example William the Conqueror started out as William the Bastard, until he set matters straight in 1066 at the point of a spear.

These days we can prove more with data.

First is the growing power of ancestral research because of the web (and the Mormons, thanks for the hard work!). I’ve spent some time on Ancestry.com in the past year poking around my family history. We have a lot of legends that have been passed down through the years, but not a lot of it based on verifiable facts. Thanks to web 2.0, I have now traced Spencer males back to 1728 with birth and death records, census data, and Sons of the American Revolution documents and guess what: the family actually did a good job of remembering the lineage without writing much of it down. My great grandfather did have 24 kids. He did have his last when he was 74 years old. And he did have a wife ~40 years his junior. Apparently, with his spare time he ran a farm in Central Pennsylvania. His great grandfather a Joseph Sr. may have fought for the winners in the Revolutionary War (still confirming). And his ancestors came from England. (More to come after the DNA is complete).

Second is the power of  social networks to access additional, related facts nearly instantaneously. My dad, aka Big Art, and I had spent the previous 5+ years trying to piece together rumors, family legends, a bit of travel to the continent in an effort to verify anything about our heritage. The we logged on to Ancestry and used the other trees to quickly piece together draft documents, immigration papers, and baptism records we had not otherwise found. suddenly, our knowledge was no longer in a silo.

Third is the burgeoning business of DNA. 23andME  tipped off a fascinating journey in mapping the human genome. With the simple swab of a cheek, I will be able to confirm not only who we are related to, but also what anomalies I may be exposed to. Sergey Brin of Google realized he prone to Parkinsons by mapping his DNA this way. I can’t imagine what I am prone to. But with the results, there is likely undeniable truth to my ancestral claims, whatever that might be.

But perhaps the biggest point for me is this: like it or not, we eventually become our fathers, more or less. That is perhaps why I have been so fascinated with the Visualize Health/SelfAwareness project, where connected devices inform us of the health and wellness trends of ourselves and our loved ones. Through the power of Web 2.0, Social networks, and DNA we can all know what our baseline data is, as well as the trend. It’s up to us where to go with it.

Mobile has and will transform our lives like no other phenom, bringing knowledge and data to our fingertips that no 20th (or 1st) century genius could match. It will enrich our life experiences in ways we have only just begun to fathom. Mobile is perhaps the greatest technology of our lifetimes, and its effect will outlive us. The impact of new technology is hard to overstate, but here is an yet another example of how it can change the understanding of an entire era:

(Excerpt Phil Leigh) Mathew Brady compiled a photographic portfolio during the American Civil War that forever changed the way people remembered loved ones through a rather new technology of the time: photography. The war remains vivid in our visual understanding because it was so well photographed. Thousands of soldiers stood before the camera on their way to serve. Many were photographed in death, including a solemn series of photographs Brady exhibited in New York City just after a Maryland battle that turned back Robert E. Lee’s first Confederate invasion. Their graphic power overwhelmed cynical New Yorkers of the day. At last, someone had captured ‘the terrible reality and earnestness of war.’ The photographs by his colleagues of the dead at Gettysburg will never lose their power.

Such is the impact of a new technology as it transitions from early adopters into the mainstream. And so, video records are at a similar evolutionary threshold and Mobile will play a part in the shift again.

I never met my deceased great grandparents, or other older relatives, and are curious to know what they were like. I’ve spent countless hours on Ancestry.com trackng them down to coals mines in PA, battlefields of France and the backwoods of Northamptonshire. So far, we have a Purple heart, a Son of the American revolution, and one prolific Spencer that fathered the last of 24 kids when he was 74.  Both the facts and the legends were hard to find, and harder to verify.

The practice is new and it remains to be seen if it morphs into widespread use. But I would say the impact of mobile on our lives and beyond is a dead certainty.

Start by taking the “QR Memorial Poll” here 

To laugh often and much...

Here’s a recent shot from an event I attended with my Dad, aka Big Art.  OK, it was my wedding.

He was dapper in his tux, danced like a dervish, and sported a head of hair anyone half his age would envy. And while a full house went silent listening to him recite his “favorite” Emerson from 72 years ago, very few that night knew the challenges my father overcame to get there, many of them health related. Honestly, their gravity cannot be overstated.

So, looking at this picture of us side by side (after that toast), I got to thinking something we all wonder about as time goes by. “What will I be like when…”

Could I visualize that progression? And if there are improvements I want to make along the way and goals that I want to prioritize, what am I doing now that will affect that?

And so, a concept being kicked around by a few different entrepreneurs began to crystallize for me. Millions have created avatars for Farmville, Mob Wars, and World of Warfare. Many medical professionals who want to do something better than battle insurance carriers for reimbursements. And the number of mobile devices measuring weight, Blood pressure, Blood sugar, heart rate, excercise, etc. are making automated personal health monitoring a possibility. Then there are social networks to provide the support necessary to keep us on track with our goals.

So…how about a social game that helps me Visualize My Health?

Maybe then we can see our real-life avatar progress as it incorporates the positive (or negative) benefits of our (intended) behavior. And we can course correct those behaviors along the way. Drink less (or more!): add 3 years. Quit cigarettes?: add 5 years! Exercise: see your avatar lose weight and look healthier. Eliminate stress: live forever, or at least long enough to dance at your son’s second wedding! I’ve seen some entrepreneurs peck around at this, but no one is hitting it right — yet.

My call to action?  More feedback on the idea. Is this about health first? Is this another social media game to play online, or on my smartphone?  Is America long on health aspirations, and short on goals and willpower (shout out to Covey’s Seven Habits #2- begin with the End in Mind) ? Love to hear your thoughts and recommendations below.

Megan... got me thinking

Not long ago, I was in the animal hospital with the last and most lively of my Rottweiler gang, Megan.

She was closing in on the happy hunting grounds and I was there to say when. Balancing dignity with a finances, even for canine care, is not easy. With each deferral of the inevitable came the bill; in this case about $1k a day for superior care and technology (I could have opted for more technology and cost, but kept it practical, at least I thought). When it was over, we spent more in the final four days of care than we did in the preceding 11 years. For virtually the same result. A wonderful experience with a great dog that gave us a ton of happiness and four days of pain.

Thats when this came across my smartphone:

The New York Times Prime Number 197: The amount, in thousands of dollars, that the typical married couple at age 65 should expect to spend on uninsured health care costs over the rest of their lives, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. This total includes insurance premiums, out-of-pocket costs and home health care costs, but it does not include nursing home care. Including the cost of nursing home care, typical lifetime health care costs shoot up to $260,000, the center estimated.

Ok, people are not dogs. And vice versa. For one thing, people have a say in their care when conscious, while dogs can only rely on the incredible messages in their eyes. But for me, it leaves a good lesson in dong what is right, responsible , and sensible.

So whats it all about? In a word, hospice. For dogs and people.

It’s the ability to realize end of life and deal with it in dignity and balance. To live lives that are not based on the number of breaths we take, but the number of times our breath is taken away. And to not selfishly chase the “miracle “of a few more days at the cost of a lifetime of savings wasted. There is a wonderful hospice movement that continues to grow in scope and service in the US. I think it is important and deserves support and fostering.

Look, I know well the incredible boil of issues that is healthcare in America today. This is just one stab at a part of the problem. But it’s a good stab I think. Love to know what others think…

Legends die hard in the Spencer family, especially when they are based oceans away and told by grandparents that are beyond questioning. A trip through the French countryside with my father clarified a lot, and embarrassed no-one.

Herbert Sharpless Spencer grew up in a coal mine in central Pennsylvania (see prior story), this was all that was left. By the time he was of an age he could lie about his age, he volunteered for what appeared to be a much cushier job: rifleman in the US Army’s Big Red One commanded by General Pershing. His proficiency hitting squirrels (for dinner!) at 50 yards with a .22 rifle qualified him for the job, no doubt. Compared to the strip mine, it must have seemed like a nice trade. Obviously never out of the county- let alone the country- Herbert arrived in St. Malo, France in 1918 and was promptly sent to the Argonne Forest to an area called St. Mihiel, where the Germans had been terrifying the French by their proximity to Paris. (Actually, 2:30 by car for us, but we were flying.) It was warfare at its worst, stagnant lines of barbed wire and trench lasting for tens if not scores of miles uninterrupted.

So Herbert is in France for not longer than a week, stationed in St. Mihiel for not much longer than a few days. He hears the all clear, rises out of the trench, and promptly takes four bullets in the legs, losing one completely and seriously maiming the other. He is given up for dead. But, of course, he isn’t. By his telling, despite what must have been excruciating pain, he bound his (last) leg with his shirt, fashioned two crutches out of fence posts and started walking as best he could.

He finds a stream, drinks profusely from the collapsible army issue cup (now a Spencer talisman) and somehow finds the will and strength to save himself. Powerful force, that self-preservation. Downstream, he happened upon a farm house, and mustered the nerve to knock on the door. It opened, and he came to a tough realization: he spoke no French. True to form, the woman spoke no English, and shut him out. I’ve been treated rudely and felt out of place in some far away places in my life, but nothing like that. And no, the French aren’t usually that bad. But Herbert kept walking to a monastery he called St. Michel and somehow pulled through.

I had been to St. Michel a few times, on the Normandy coast a few hours drive outside Paris. I had shared those experiences with my Dad, and was able to bring him there recently with my publicist Greg and his Dad Paul. The place is glorious, as I imagine has been for 1,000 years. It’s also too far for a recently maimed rifleman to crawl to if he starts from the Argonne forest, even if he did start in 1918. My dad came to this conclusion on his own. “Perhaps there’s another St. Michel”, I suggested.

We spent the next week looking, with stops at the beaches of Normandy and the streets of Paris, just the four of us finding precious experiences together and generally enjoying ourselves immensely. (view short film). The culmination was our journey was the Argonne Forest and a field outside a town called St. Mihiel where 86 years prior my grandfather was shown no great respect by a German machine gunner. After a picnic (Dad is now a pate aficionado) on the banks of the Meuse where Herbert may well have dipped for drink we made our way into town to inquire about. It was a sleepy place, not to much changed from back in the day, I imagine. We were directed toward the old town, where amongst classic French row houses and walled gardens, we discover a monastery. Apparently, it was the Army hospital during the war, and was adjacent to a wonderful church. The name, of course: St. Michel.

Herbert Spencer had crawled across town, not across France. But his wounds were real, as was his valor. I was moved to see his son and my father piece it all together. It was magic.