A cup of Joe

That pipping hot cup of coffee - It is steaming near the boiling point. There is a lot of danger in that extreme heat. You could burn yourself if you aren't careful. In fact many people just wait until the coffee cools off before attempting to take a sip. You take cold cream and pour it into your mug. The white ripples make their way throughout the cup sinking at first, then slowly the cream rises to the top. The cream always rises to the top.

This is what I am seeing these days in my fellow 3 day walkers. We are out there, asking for money for an organization that has been under fire over the past month or so. Feels like a longer time to me! The rhetoric drones on like a one note instrument stuck in the middle of a symphony. If you listen to that one stuck instrument you could lose the music that surrounds it. There has been a shake up at Komen with some people leaving (One the board chairman is 81 year old) and the headlines all read ... Komen still reeling.

I don't know about you, but what I do when I read articles right now is go to the bottom and scan upwards. We have turned into a Twitter world, where our judgments are formed from sound bites and first lines of news stories. I took journalism classes and learned a couple of things. One was you had to have at least 3 sources for news; another was you needed to verify those sources; another was you could not interject opinion. But perhaps another journalist principle is where our collective minds are stuck right now... grab them in the first sentence.

I don't think back in 1972 anyone envisioned this Twitter world where very few people read beyond the headline. Beyond the headline you would have read that donations holding steady in most areas. You would see that recent articles refer to four individuals besides the 81 year old Chairman, two of those people people very well may have been part of what people preceived as the problem. "Affliate Relations" "Marketing" Ok.... I am ok with those people looking for work elsewhere. People move laterally within Non profit work frequently. This isn't news. It is the way it is. There is always more to the story beyond a Twitter headline. Part of that story are the people who are walking in the 3 day.

Those folks walking with me and raising funds with me have been looking beyond the headlines for a long while now. They are the cream in this cup of coffee. Many have been tested by REAL life, not Twitter tweets. They have battled Cancer either themselves or with others. They have focused on the reason they are walking and supporting Komen not the noise. They are focused on the music.

Komen still reeling? Well I have been reeling since I got a call 16.5 years ago telling me I had Breast Cancer. Others are reeling since their mother or sister or wife received the same call - And all too many are reeling since their loved ones died. But when they decided to do something about it, they found there were others like them. They joined them and together they jumped in, and in the recent days, they have risen to the top.

You can tell a 3 day walker by the smile on their face, and the steely eyes set firmly on the horizon where they see a day without Breast Cancer. We will never give up. We will never give up. WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP!