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Alaska lost one of its beloved heroes today: Colonel Norman Vaughan.
Norman symbolized what I love most about Alaska: the spirit of adventure, of unending youth, of being just plain down to earth. (I won’t repeat his story here, but you can get it from my earlier Norman Vaughan post.)
When I first moved to Alaska, Norman (despite his international celebrity) wasn't above investing a couple days
We've held off for weeks posting this picture, as we wanted to officially unveil it as our holiday photo this year. This is another "Clark Mishler's done it again" shot. Except this time, Clark was a one-take wonder. This was the first frame he took!
It's also one of the last pictures you'll see of Ari with his tongue hanging out like a lap dog. About a week after this photo shoot, Ari found himself plugged into IV tubes and other monitoring devices in a New York hospital.
The situation? What we thought was nothing more than a cute little habit of tongue that he would soon outgrow was instead professionally diagnosed as a condition in which his tongue had limited mobility since birth...requiring a minor procedure. Thanks to the encouragement of Yael's parents to see a specialist, Ari was able to get this taken care of and get back into his regular push-up and stair-climbing regimen only days later.
It had to happen. Workout sensation that he is, it was only a matter of time before a major sports marketer came a knockin’ down Ari’s door. And so, it was no surprise last week when the head of licensing for Nike showed up at Ari’s cribside with an offer to name a new bib and pacifier set after him. Ari’s response was like, “Bib? Are you kidding? Go back and sharpen your pencil!”
I've never seen a salesman slink away so dejected. But a week later, the poor fellow showed up again. This time he offered to basically cancel the whole Michael Jordan relationship and replace it with a new “Air Ari” line of active lifestyle wear.
To that, Ari said, “that’s a little more like it. Let’s get on with the publicity photos.” So we went on over to Clark Mishler’s house and made the image at left. I had to throw Ari in the air about a dozen times before the guy from Nike said, “it’s a wrap.” And the rest is history. Look for Ari’s line in your local retailer by Christmas.
In addition to push-ups, Ari has now added leg lifts, cross-body stretches, and stair climbing to his workout. But Ari shuns the health club scene. He prefers to work out on his bedroom floor in his pajamas. He’s often so transfixed on proper technique that he doesn’t even realize he’s drooling (see stretching photo). We just bought an elliptical for the house, but Ari isn’t heavy enough to make the pedals go. So he climbs real stairs, using both his hands and feet. He demonstrates his technique in this video (10mB--give it a minute to load), expertly captured by his Gammy (grandma) in New York.
My brother Andy debuted on national TV last week! He gave a 6-minute interview to Amy Goodman on Tolstoy for Democracy Now which you have to watch (click on either the “128k stream” or “256k stream” links at top). He's so damn smart and engaging.
Andy got his doctorate in Russian from Stanford. Like most Russian scholars, Andy went to work for a Linux company after graduation. When that went dot-bomb, Andy decided to pursue a less risky career as a Hollywood actor. He was only weeks from certain fame when the University of Virginia somehow snapped him up as visiting Professor of Slavic Languages, where he is now.
Andy’s account of the interview is really interesting:
I was contacted a few weeks ago by Pacifica Radio Network to do a dramatic reading from Tolstoy's
