Table Tennis: Take It Outdoors for a New World of Experience

While commuting to northern California from New York City my entire time with Industrial Light & Magic Commercials Lucasfilms, I often took advantage of the natural wonders this part of the world has to offer. One of my most memorable trips was driving to the top of Mount Shasta, just south of the Oregon border. Mount Shasta is part of a dramatic volcano mountain range that snakes its way north. The size and grandeur of this mother of mountains was amazing; you could see it from 100 miles away. We had nothing like it on the East coast.

Some say as we grow older and get closer to leaving, some become more spiritual, women become more masculine and men more feminine, or something new world coins buy like that. Well, anyway after some medical mishaps and 'enough is enough' syndrome, I did leave film and advertising. I mean what else was I going to do, produce another commercial? The last spot we did was the biggest commercial ever created for Ford motor company (90 days of shooting all over the world, the largest budget ever, aired all over the world; this was.

My mother was American Indian descended and my father Irish. My father's Celtic grandmother, my great grandmother, was a back woods Alabama healer. I call it my "I" and "I" links (Irish & Indian, both known for native healing). I remember sitting by great grandmother's bedside as a young child listening to her stories of her healing potions and how people would walk for days to get to her for a healing. She knew how to pick herbs from the forest floor and turn pine tree sap into a soothing medicine. So I imagined this ability was also in my DNA.

Filmmakers are often multi-faceted people and while I was working with one of my film directors on a project I developed a cold and shared my family's healing background. My director-friend immediately suggested that I see his alternative medical doctor named Dr. Herbert Fill. This filmmaker knew I was at the end of my film career and there was more to cure than a cold. Dr. Fill was a rare mix of psychiatry, acupuncture and homeopathic remedies, and commissioner of mental health in the city administration; all this in a Park Avenue office.