Always Looking Up

Fox Michael J. Always Looking Up. The adventures of an incurable optimist. Hyperion. 2009.
This biography focuses on Mike’s Parkinson (PD) experience since he retired from Spin City. It is an amazing story of courage and obvious optimism that Mike demonstrates under very difficult circumstances. He focuses on four areas of his life, his work, his politics, his faith, and his family. What he is experiencing in his life puts him into a significant category of difference makers.
When Mike retired from Spin City he had no plan concerning what he would do Book Review.
with the rest of his life. His retirement came nine years after his diagnosis with PD. He describes himself as a ‘political junkie’ and this explains in part what he ended up doing and what he calls his life work. Lance Armstrong and his foundation had an influence on Mike’s decision to establish his foundation. The primary goal of the foundation was to find a cure for Parkinson so it was expected that those involved would ‘work themselves out of a job’. A special friendship developed between Mike and Mohammed Ali, the most famous person with PD.
Mike’s work would become not only leading a foundation committed to finding a cure for PD but “mixing politics with Parkinson’s”. (74) Human embryonic stem cell research became a major political issue and since the MJF foundation saw this research as a major potential for discovering cures for PD, juvenile diabetes, spinal cord injuries, etc. Mike became very involved in supporting politicians who were for stem cell research.
When Mike was visited by a couple who were presenting their Jehovah Witness beliefs, he suggests “that my willingness to hear them out was an expression of my faith”. (160) Faith is equated with tolerance. He describes himself as a spiritual person who believes in a higher power. If fear is the opposite of faith Mike could be viewed as a man of faith. In his youth he was exposed to a form of evangelicalism which he rejected. Mike identifies with Bishop Carlton D. Pearson and his position on biblical interpretation. Because of his wife’s Jewish background Mike has been “thoroughly immersed in Jewish culture and tradition”. (198)
Mike and Tracy have had a long marriage, twenty years, and they have a great family, Sam, a college student, Aquinnah and Schuyler, teenage twins, and Esme’, born six years after the twins. When asked what the ‘secret’ is for his happy marriage his simple answer is “Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty”. Regarding raising kids he has this very ‘doable’ advice, “Love ‘em, feed ‘em, and keep them out of traffic”. I must say, I found this section on the family the most interesting and the most endearing part of the book.
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