, Welcome to Mr Fran's

"The Nutrition Man" Intro Page

 

 

Hi! I’m Fran, part of the “ancient hippies” generation.

 

 

Almost 40 years ago I earned a BA in English Lit – 25 years ago I did the MBA bit – and now I’m a boom-a-rang grad student doing double Masters in Nutrition/Dietetics and Public Health with Minors in Gerontology and Border Health.  Yes, I go to school full-time!! 

This is my eighth semester and I figure I’m about 2/3 done.

 

My longer term goal in all this is to become “Dr. Fran” in private practice (RD/LD), private research, and consulting, writing, and lecturing. The emphasis is on orthomolecular approaches to the causes, prevention and management of the diseases of atherosclerosis – particularly cardiac health, diabetes, and hypertension.

 

After graduating from high school in a little town in Vermont I escaped to college in New York City and then raised a “U.N. Family” in Boston and So. California.  Alm a dozen years ago we gave the kids big hugs and invited them to come visit us in the desert about 50 miles west/southwest of Las Cruces.  We live at the base of the Florida Mountains – just us, cows, coyotes, rattlesnakes, quail, and an unending flow of “transient migrants.”  That's the road to our place in the background!

 

 

                         I find it absolutely enthralling that we can watch a sunset from a couple of thousand miles in space  . . .

  and watch a macrophage cell eat bacteria inside our veins (all in the same hour).   

       

 I love to garden because it provides this same kind of contrast to everyday life.

         Most days I’m in class, writing, researching, responding to emails, and sitting in front of the computer for endless hours – busy! busy! busy!  Plus, I am easily distracted.  Accomplishing a task becomes my world, and I allow “getting things done” to be the benchmark of the value I place on a day.

 

 

But the second my foot hits the threshold of the garden gate the rest of my life vanishes – like shaking an Etch-A-Sketch.  The doodles that clutter my life outside of my garden are inconsequential. Ego is checked at the gate.

 

 

Of course it’s true that gardening can be a lot of work and even be uncomfortable, sweaty, and even frustrating and disappointing.  One learns that there are forces beyond your control and much greater than your will.  A heavy thunderstorm, a hungry rabbit, or a swarm of insects reminds me how fragile my efforts truly are.  An evening spent silently star-gazing – pinpoints of brilliance, each millions of light years away – reinforces the knowledge that I’m not really in charge.

 

 

But when I look up from the work and gaze around at the mountains and desert that surround my garden I’m reminded that there are a couple of billion other people who live in more primitive conditions every day of their lives, and don’t have the privilege of providing for their sustenance (and their health) in this way.

 

 

One morning as we drove out the road our “snow bird” neighbor was also leaving.  He groaned to me that it was time to return to the real world.  As I drove along the interstate to Las Cruces I couldn’t help but feel like he had it backwards … we both had just left the real world on our way to a make-believe one.

frooker@nmsu.edu

Skype: LeeDad1