OK, so I admit it: When Jane asked me to do the Komen 3Day for the Cure in Chicago in August — walk 60 miles in three days to raise money for breast cancer — I didn’t really think it through. Jane asked me, I was in.

Then I began to get my head around the training. I bought new shoes (and socks, the expensive polypro kind), I borrowed fanny packs from my pals (thanks, Heather and Mary), and began doing long walks. My first 3Day post, below, is all about the walking. And yes, it is a LOT of walking.

I now realize, belatedly, that this effort is about so much more than walking. In the process of asking for donations to support my walk (every walker must raise $2,300), I have had to articulate what it is that’s making me do this. I’ve had to go back to the story of my mom’s breast cancer, and remember how sick she was, how scared we were, and how each time I get a mammogram, I get scared all over again. (I’m having my yearly diagnostic mammogram tomorrow. Perfect timing, no?)

It’s about much more than being scared, though. Telling my story has connected me in amazing ways with all kinds of people from various chapters of my life. One of my sorority sisters, the dazzling Michelle Nicastro, died last fall after a long breast cancer fight, and all of us who knew her when we lived together at Theta have begun reconnecting by remembering her and her amazing life, and it’s been great. We are engineers, moms, doctors, lawyers, corporate executives … and, still, the terrific women I remember from that other life, when we were drinking Tab and sharing clothes and stories and dreams. It makes me mad that Michelle isn’t here to share it with us.

I have also been so gratified by gifts from long-ago friends from New York, co-workers at St. Mary’s, and best friends who are always there for me.

I finally realize that this is more than a 60-mile slog, and Jane and I are going to have the hot-pink time of our lives doing this walk. I don’t know if I’ll end up wearing a pink feathered tiara, but I defy you to watch this video and NOT get why this is such a cool thing to do.

Here’s a widget that will take you to my personal page, where you’ll see more about my story; I hope you’ll think about making a gift yourself. Thank you SO much for your support.

It was my sister’s idea: We’d meet up in Chicago in the beginning of August, and walk 60 miles to help raise money to find a cure for breast cancer. I had heard of the Komen 3Day for the Cure before, but had never really thought about doing it. Let’s just say that if Jane is in, I am in. Totally.

So I have started to walk as much as possible. It’s way different from training to run a race. Walking takes a LOT OF TIME. Progress is SLOW. I am not good at slow. Though thinking about the amazing friends who have donated their hard-earned money to my effort (see their names by clicking the link above … and add your name to the list!), and thinking about all of the people I love who have been affected by this terrible disease, has made it easier than I thought to get out there.

This morning I walked 11 miles, my longest distance yet. (Keep in mind that the actual event will have us walking 20 miles. For three days. In a row.) I walked on the Greenline, Memphis’s wonderful rails-to-trails project that stretches from Tillman Street to Shelby Farms. (Pictured above, the lovely section between Waring and Graham.) I have biked the Greenline before, thanks to my pal Mary, but walking gives you an entirely new perspective.

You actually see things when you are walking. I saw neat rows of corn, onions and peppers in a backyard garden. I saw a gold kitty greeting the day from her back porch perch. I saw poison ivy, trumpet vine, graffiti, dragonflies, the women’s prison, a cypress swamp and lots of friendly bikers and runners. (Though I was surprised to see that all bikers, even those moms and dads out with their kids, don’t wear helmets. What? I thought everyone understood about bike helmet safety by now.) There are funny signs nailed to a tree.

You smell things, too: Honeysuckle scents the path at 8am. Towering locusts and oaks make dusky shade, and the damp woodland smell makes you forget about the sunhat you left at home.

I began my three-hour tour (cue the theme from Gilligan’s Island) at High Point Terrace, where Cheffie’s is twinned with Charlie McVean’s adventure in motorized bicycles. I walked all the way out to Mile Marker 0 at Farm Rd. and Mullins Station (that’s the view from Mile Marker 0 in the photo). The mile markers are quite clear, something I never saw on my bike. Then I walked back.

At the end, I treated myself to an orange cream Italian ice from Mama D’s ices, just $1 at High Point Pizza. And two Advil.

I have always loved to sing. I guess I was inspired by my parents: My dad had perfect pitch, and though he wasn’t a singer, he played piano by ear most of his life, sometimes for money; his piano, left, sits in my living room and reminds me of him every time I see it.

My mom was really the singer. She taught my Brownie troop every song she could, most of which I remember to this day. She sang to herself all day long, even (especially?) when things weren’t going so well. I have a crystal clear memory of sitting on the front porch of my grandmother’s house in Cincinnati on a warm summer evening, listening to Mom and Nana (her mom) sing folk songs, camp songs and whatever else came to their mind as my sister and cousins and I ran around catching lightning bugs.

Singing has always been natural for me, something everyone does. It has only been recently that I’ve realized what a gift my voice is. I don’t want you to take that the wrong way: My voice isn’t anything I’ve ever really done anything to deserve. It is the way it is because, well, God made it that way. Fortunately I have been lucky enough to be in choruses beginning in about the fifth grade (thank you, Kettering, Ohio, public schools) that taught me how to read music, and I have had sense enough to realize that singing is a sort of universal language, a way to fit in when no other way will work.

I sang at my high school graduation. I know all of the 70s-era musicals by heart (Godspell, anyone?). When I lived in New York after college, I sang with an NYU chamber ensemble that turned into a life-changing trip to Scotland and Wales. Later on I sang with the Collegiate Chorale, and performed at Carnegie Hall (really!). When Andy and I lived in Denmark while he was in grad school, about the only time I felt like I had any reason to be there at all was when I was at chorus rehearsals.

It took me a while to come back to singing when we moved to Memphis, and of course (this being Memphis) it happened at church. The choir director at Calvary at the time heard me singing the closing hymn one day (did I mention I’m not shy about my singing?) and asked me to audition. The music we made together at Calvary — and the faith I saw in action among the terrific people that made up the choir — made me think about my singing in a whole new way.

Okay, it made me think about my faith in a whole new way. What a revelation, that singing in a group to the glory of God could be such a powerful act of faith. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by that, but I always am.

Which brings me to tomorrow, when my new choir pals and I will be singing a concert for Ascension Day at St. Mary’s Cathedral. I am no longer at Calvary, but have been welcomed to the choir at St. Mary’s with much more than open arms. It’s a terrific group, filled with nice people and amazing voices. Scott Elsholz, the organist/choirmaster, is a gifted musician who is my kind of choir director: Enthusiastic, affirming, articulate, challenging. Our rehearsals on Wednesday nights are often the highlight of my week, a time when I use a different part of my brain, learn new and sometimes difficult things, and hear in a brand new way. Truly, the experience of filling the magnificent gothic nave of St. Mary’s Cathedral with just human voices is one of those bucket list experiences I am grateful every day to have.

I hope you’ll think about coming to our concert tomorrow (Thursday, June 2): It starts at 7pm and is free. Everyone is welcome. There’s a reception afterward.

If you listen carefully, I’ll bet you’ll hear why I like singing there so much.

Yes, the crest is past our fair city, but there’s still a whole bunch of water out there, and the misery is just beginning for those folks who are waiting for the flood to subside so they can see what’s left, and how bad the clean-up will be. Just by looking at this photo you can see the other problem we need to tackle: All the trash that has come floating out of the city and landed in the river. (This photo also shows the preferred spot for national news anchors’ wade-ins. Don’t miss Jon Stewart’s spot-on reporting of this goofy trend. As my husband pointed out, of course they loved working here, steps from a great market, a lovely coffee shop and a four-star hotel!)

But honestly, how can you live with yourself, seeing this, if you’ve ever thrown a plastic pop bottle out the window of a moving car (something I saw on Island Drive just last week)? And God knows what’s in that water, still lapping against the back of the Montessori school and saturating the ground in the park where our Harbor Town babies play. Plenty of agricultural pesticides, at least, but who knows what else. I wish someone (hello, CA? Maybe Andy Wise?) would take a water sample from our harbor for testing this week. Might be a good way to focus our attention on what we need to do to take better care of Mother Earth, our island home. And if you can’t think that globally, make it a good reason to stay out of the water. Jeez, people.

At least raw sewage hasn’t begun lapping at our shores, though this morning’s story in The Commercial Appeal mentioned that problem in the Cypress Creek area of North Memphis. Which brings me to another rant: I know looking at the big water of the Mississippi is sexy, and yes, the photo opportunities are irresistible. As I’ve said before, if I didn’t live in Harbor Town, I’d be down here snapping away, too. But that’s not the real story of this flood, at least not in Memphis. The real news is happening in places like Cypress Creek, Frayser, and Tunica Cutoff, where people who don’t have much to lose have lost everything. I am not minimizing the trauma of watching water climb up the side of your house on the Wolf River Harbor, but there are really only a handful of houses here that are affected. To say the national media missed the story is a wild understatement; I can’t imagine that they even know Cypress Creek and Frayser exist. Not to mention the business implications of headlines like “Memphis Flooded”; click here for an interesting take from my pal Amy Howell, a social media marketing whiz who gently chides the city for not shaping its coverage a little better. Though even Amy knows that trying to tell a reporter what story to cover is a fool’s errand.

In fact, there’s lots of great stuff going on in Memphis right now — it’s finally time for the Memphis in May Barbecue Contest (you’ve got to love a festival that welcomes a group called Big Al and the Butt Rubbers), the Griz are still in the hunt despite the shelling they took last night in OKC, and President Obama is coming Monday to celebrate the achievements of the amazing kids and their equally amazing principal down at Booker T. Washington High. Even Wendi is feeling proud of Memphis today.

But as the national media move on to the next center of the universe, as Zack McMillin (@zackmcm) tweeted recently, let’s keep our eyes focused on the real stories of the Memphis flood, and what we need to do to recover from it. I was ready to fill sandbags, and I am ready to help clean up, from Harbor Town to Cypress Creek. Just tell me where and when. I’ll be the one in the Grizzlies t-shirt … BELIEVE Memphis!

I know things are happening right now that are a little strange, out of the ordinary. But I couldn’t make this up if I tried: Tonight when we drove up Island Drive on the way home, there was this giant boat, tied up to a tree in what used to be Greenbelt Park. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, standing on the riverwalk, playing her heart out, was this bagpiper, dressed in concert black. She had quite an audience, and segued seamlessly from “Scotland the Brave” to “Happy Birthday to You” to “Twinkle, Twinkle.” The kicker: She was wearing a gold Grizzlies “Believe Memphis” growl towel around her waist, sort of like an apron, though you can’t see it in this picture. I swear I am not making this up.

It was also Happy Hour out on the river tonight, with a whole herd of people settling in for what was a lovely sunset. There seems to be more of a more party atmosphere out tonight, since it looks like the river has crested, though The Commercial Appeal story tonight says we won’t know for a couple of days if we reached the 48 foot mark. The river looks as high as ever to me tonight. I’m not seeing anything recede yet.

I spotted the network satellite truck down near the Marina Cottages tonight, though maybe Al Roker has moved on. I hope so. As I’ve said before, it’s bad enough that the sweet Montessori school in Harbor Town is sandbagged. We didn’t need Al in his waders on the playground pointing it out to us, as he did this morning on the Today Show. And I hope someone told him he wasn’t actually standing in the Mississippi River, as he was reporting. Sorry dude. Only crazy local news reporters stand in raging river water to make a point. That was Channel 5′s Janice Broach last night in waders in the parking lot of one of the casinos in Tunica. I can actually see why doing that might help her story — no other way to show the context of the flooding — though it’s still way dangerous. (Speaking of Channel 5, they are now linking to this blog on their neighborhood pages. Thanks, Jeramia.)

Despite the misery and heartache of people leaving their homes and businesses and shelters filling up, Memphis had some great news today: President Obama picked Booker T. Washington High School in the Commencement Challenge, and he’ll give their graduation address there Monday. BTW is in a tough, inner-city neighborhood, but their graduation rate and test scores have climbed in recent years. I met Alisha Kiner, the dynamite young principal, when I interviewed her for Skirt back in the day, and she rocks. We are THRILLED for BTW’s success. If you haven’t watched the video they made to convince Obama to come, take time to watch it (it’s embedded in the news story linked above). It’ll make you feel good about Memphis.