These are worth watching. All three. Either via the embeds below, or directly through their Vimeo post.
3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage... all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ....into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films.....
= a trip of a lifetime.
move, learn, eat
Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover
Good reading is something I only wish I had time for these days. Thanks to my wife, there's no shortage of it. Thanks to my current position, there's no time for it.
I think I can only survive this particular job for so long. I think being a Dean is not supposed to be like this. I think you're supposed to have time for reflection, to pursue ideas to improve the school for everyone, maybe even to do a little research on a project or two of your own. Always Hemingway comes to mind: "Isn't it pretty to think so."
But some of you who read me have time on your hands, so let me offer a few discoveries from an evening of catching up on my lovely wife's blog, and pulling on a few of the strings dangling from its edges. I've added these to my own list of "Daily Reads," which once upon a time lived up to its name. These days it's merely an ambition; not even that really--more like a fond wish.
So for those of you with time on your hands to surf and to read . . .
Try A Passing Glimpse. A worthwhile mix of words and photography, and either worth the visit for its own sake.
After that, mosey on over to 80 West, where it's more about the words, or more accurately, about the mind behind them.
Finally, around dinner time, drop into E.A.T. for some ideas on what to do with nature's bounty on a very local scale. I know more than one of you to be a fellow foodie. You won't be disappointed.
An observation seeded by and elided from an e-mail I had to send today.
Improvement has three steps: 1) recognizing where it’s possible, 2) suggesting a better way, and 3) implementing that solution.
Those who often and publicly take the first step without ever making it to the second drag everyone down.
Those who consistently take the first two, but regularly witness good ideas die on the vine, seldom witnessing that third crucial step, eventually lose hope in the project or institution and abandon it, if they have options.
My job as a supervisor is to always be participatory and encouraging in that process along every step of the way. I should be looking for imperfection in our processes and open to hearing it from my subordinates and those above me. I should be innovative in finding better ways and encouraging to suggestions for them from below and above. And finally, I should be the impetus behind implementation of improvements, not the source of inertia or fear that roots every process in the status quo.
The summer of 1971, I was 11 years old. Sixth grade was behind me. "Middle school" loomed ahead. Both parents worked. I and my two sisters were tended to by a nanny. Her name was Mary. Her son's, John and Jerry had been my playmates on and off for years. I lived To Kill a Mockingbird and I'll Fly Away.
I woke every day that summer by 7:30. I cooked my own breakfast--cereal, or cinnamon toast, or toasted cheese--and by 9:00 every morning I was in the garden. I hoed and harvested tomatoes, squash, okra, radish. With cousins who lived two houses up the road, I built "forts" in the field beside our home--areas where the near-head-high (to an 11-year-old) rabbit tobacco plants were bent down at the end of a maze of an entry path. I played spin-the-bottle and got into all manner of other trouble with female cousins and neighbors. (When I consider the freedom we had to wander back then, I consider it a wonder we survived. Clearly none of us think our own children capable of the same responsibility at such early ages.)
But my favorite memory of that summer consists of the reading I did lying in bed each morning, enjoying that last fleeting hour of coolness before the sweltering southern summer sun turned house and world both into a place where any clothing more than cutoff jeans and a wholly optional tee shirt were too much to bear. I remember Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles. And by remember, what I mean is, I remember that I read them, and that I enjoyed the former in particular, tremendously. As for the action of either, I've not a clue.
Fast forward forty years.
Tonight, out walking with the family after dinner, the air was laden with the smells of summer in the country. I live in the city mind you, or what native Richmonders refer to as "the near west end." I laugh at that. Four blocks "nearer" and it would be in The Fan, and no one disputes that as being essentially in the city. But the alleys here are alive with the smell of flowers, of cut grass, of treated wooden fences, of the dirt beneath your feet, of gardenia, magnolia, and honeysuckle's last gasp. Rabbits run down the alley before you and squirrels scold from fence top.
And if you close your eyes and take a deep breath, you can travel through time to a summer of lazy mornings, food fresh from the garden, Royal Blue spray paint and fresh bearing grease applied to a boy's bicycle, crawdads snatched from beneath flat rocks in streams about to be dammed to create perfect ponds for skinny-dipping deep in the hollows of grandparent's old homesteads. You can smell the leather of new wallets perfect for tucking away money earned pricing groceries in a family store--money saved with the object of a new RCA clock radio in mind.
And you can wake again the next day to that clock radio, pull the paperback book from the nightstand, and embrace again a dawning day and the beginnings of a lifelong love of the wonder of the written word.
All in a breath, if the right four-year-old is tugging at your finger to show you the treasure of newly discovered unidentifiable metal plucked from the otherwise inconspicuous dirt of the roadway.
I posted this months ago, but a critical piece of it was misunderstood, and so I took it down. The misreading behind that should no longer be possible, so, here it is, to stay I hope.
An experience of emotional release and purification, often inspired by or through art. In psychoanalysis, catharsis is the release of tension and anxiety that results from bringing repressed feelings and memories into consciousness.
--The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Reading The World According to Garp, back in 1981, I reached the point where one of the children loses an eye in an accident. I put the book aside, and it was weeks before I picked it up again. I thought for years, decades actually, that it was simply that I couldn't stand for bad things to happen to children, even in fiction. Time has refined the things I understand about myself. I've realized that what I'm really bothered by is the sacrifice of innocence or beauty to something that is neither innocent nor beautiful.
For about the last 24 hours, I've felt physically ill. I can't say for certain whether it's something I ate that affected me so, or, more likely, something I read.
My longtime mentor in the world of books gave me one over the holidays. A book, as he said today, not casually chosen. Nor am I sorry to have read it. The book was Laughing Boy, the 1930 Pulitzer Prize winner by Oliver La Farge.* The climax of the book and the accompanying cathartic moment came barely 30 pages from the end. The climax: sudden revelation of the truth by an accident of fate, action taken on that truth. The cathartic moment: the necessity of a choice. Cathartic because I recognize that having faced the same choice, I lacked the self-awareness of La Farge's protagonist. I lacked the strength of character.
Now I must choose between her and myself. If I stay with her, I lose myself, really. I am a man. I am a warrior. If I do not give her up, I become something else from what I have always been. . . .
I must go away. I cannot stay with her. She is worth everything in the world, but there is something in me that I have no right to trade for her. That is what I must do.
What we appreciate about great literature is its ability to put into words what we know but can't express, what we experienced but couldn't recognize for our immersion in the experience itself. I'm grateful to La Farge and to my friend for both.
*Whatever you do, don't read the grossly inaccurate plot summary of the novel on Wikipedia. Grossly inaccurate.
I played golf last week. First round I've played in Richmond, after living here almost two years. Rotary Club tournament. Captain's choice format. We finished four under par. Had a great time.
Why blog about it? I'm not. I'm blogging about a revelation that occurred on the course. I had a decision to make about something. I can't even remember what that something was. I just remember suddenly being aware of the decision process. Again, the decision is unimportant. The process is everything. The revelation came in suddenly recognizing the process. In recognizing that it governs an awful lot of the decisions I make. Too many perhaps.
The beauty is that from this point forward, having recognized the process, I can harness it. The most interesting thing is that I didn't recognize it earlier.
The revelation came like this. Facing a decision, two options seemed eligible. I leaned toward one. I wondered why. In realizing why, I foregrounded an aspect of such choices that has long been there, but fairly automatic. Awareness makes it conscious. The aspect? Which of the two choices would most people not make?
Not that I seek to shock. I don't really. I simply seek to be anything but normal, average, run-of-the-mill, boring. The difference on the course the other day? Awareness. I've been anything but boring for a long time. It just happened. I've been aware of it for a long time. What I've not been aware of is how strong a role that need plays in most of my decision making.
All my life, I was the youngest this, the first that, the something some other thing. On the backside of fifty now, whole new vistas of firsts open up in the opposite direction. I expect I'll be the oldest this, the last that, and still something some other thing. My point is that all of that just happened. I didn't set out to be exceptional in those ways. I just set out to do this or that thing that I wanted to do. Then when barriers came in the form of, "Well you need to be this age to do this," or "You need this rank to fill this position," or "You need this experience for this post," I always managed to find the waiver authority for whatever rule was being invoked and to get the rule bent in my favor and then do a better job at whatever it was than anyone who fit the profile I was the exception to.
But choosing a path that makes you an exception and choosing a path because it will make you an exception are two different things. It was the occasional entry of the latter into my decision making that I recognized on the golf course this week. And recognizing it, I then wondered when it had become so strong a force. When did the drive to be the exception become a motivating force in its own right?
For instance, I've been jumping out of planes for so long now, and love it so much, that I can no longer remember the exact motivation for taking that path. But I'm sure now that part of that decision was that skydiving was something most people wouldn't do. A HALO badge is something few soldiers and fewer airmen wear. A liaison tour with the Marines or the Army is something most people are drafted into, reluctantly--I volunteered twice. In 2007, I actively sought an assignment to Kabul as the Air Attache to Afghanistan, and would have won the assignment except that the embassy wouldn't re-open in time for me to complete the tour before my mandatory retirement. (Don't think I didn't look for a way to bend that rule too.)
In the end, I recognize that this decision process may not be the surest route to longevity. But I can tell you this: my life is not, nor will it be, boring, or normal, or average. For the most part, I detest those latter two words (unless they're being spoken by my doctor or, more specifically, my gastroenterologist, and occasionally, even then).
When I lived in Colorado, I used to gather with my classmates once a month for wine tasting. Ostensibly. Really, it was a monthly ritual in which we engaged simply to remind ourselves that, while aging was inevitable, maturity was largely optional. Monday's revelation may mean that even the latter can't be escaped forever.
I'm not saying my decisions will necessarily change. I may have a new awareness of the decision process that I lacked before, but faced with pancakes or crab cakes, I'd still choose crab cakes.
Funny how I get my news these days. I was skydiving all day Saturday and Sunday (eleven jumps, all with people new to the sport), so my first inkling of the biggest news of the last few days came in the form of a text from one of my daughters: "Good morning! Happy bin Laden is dead day! Every patriotic Toby Keith song has played on my radio." And that was how I got the news.
Later in the day, my own spouse made it clear that she thinks any rejoicing in OBL's demise is misguided. And I've heard the same from others. Many on Facebook have now begun posting the words of MLK: "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
While I appreciate the sentiment, I believe the mistake these people make is conflating rejoicing with hatred. While that may have been the case on the bridge in Fallujah--and for some it may be the case here--it doesn't have to be. The argument can be made that the Munchkins, as a species, are incapable of hatred; yet they rejoice when nothing of their nemesis but the ruby slippers is left unflattened by Dorothy's house.
I grieve at the death of one innocent. Even more so when that death is the result of intent. But I believe I could put a bullet between the eyes of any of OBL's ilk in perfect cold calm, without the need of hatred to drive me or to spare me regret later. I don't pray to be released from that capability; rather, I thank God for it, and that it exists in others who protect us.
Evil exists. To rejoice in the death of innocents is its own form of evil. To rejoice in the death of such a one as OBL is to be rightly thankful for deliverance from a threat, a cloud, a menace, a catalyst to other dark and darker souls.
So ding dong, I say, without apology. At least one wicked witch is dead. Bring out the lollipops.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."
My stepson, bless his heart, has had a hard time of it of late. He is, as we used to say in the Air Force, "all thrust and no vector" (used in its single-dimensional if non-lexicographic sense of direction only without magnitude). He cannot control himself. He is not angry or malicious, mind you. That phase passed long ago, the inevitable result of a world turned upside down by divorce. No, this version of non-existent self-control is more driven by curiosity, over-abundant energy, above-average intelligence, and a disposition to disregard all boundaries of space and property. I awoke Saturday morning to find his bed empty and the tiny man downstairs, in the study, where he knows he's not to be, playing on not one, but two computers, both verboten. His repeated random keystrokes and who knows what else had vexed mine right into the blue screen of death. Not an auspicious beginning to the day, and it went downhill, in the Tiny Man's case, from there right through Sunday evening when, after dealing out consequence as dispassionately as I was capable of for nearly 36 straight hours without much detectable effect on behavior, I was granted parole to go see a movie in the interest of my sanity.
The movie is not important. Important is that, as I was putting on my coat to go, having had mostly only attention in the form of one consequence after another for the better part of two days, around the corner came a tiny man with a surprisingly flattering request: "Can I come with you?" "No son. Good night."
A brief exchange, it's true, but weighty. I needed a break. He needed . . . me. Never mind that other than a brief six-hour respite at work I had been on his case like white on rice for two days. I had thought he'd be as glad for the break in constant surveillance as I, but no. Nor did it change this morning. Out of bed nearly an hour before he should be, he was sent back to it, but chose instead, to avail himself of the pre-dawn darkness to rummage his sister's room while she slumbered. Busted yet again, his last sight of me this morning was exasperatedly tucking him in, kissing his brow, and closing the door to his room.
Fast forward through a long day at work where sometimes even the grown ups, when they don't get their way, are a trial more akin to rearing a four-year-old. Fast forward to bed time, and a calm conversation about consequence, about why again tonight there will be no Wii for the young hacker. And once there, freeze frame. Freeze on a bundle of four-year-old boy sitting in a half-century of lap, cradled, protected, nurtured, and loved, and listening calmly, and answering correctly when asked, "Why is there no Wii for you tonight son?"
"Because I went in the study and I played on the pooters."
"And why did you lose blanky this morning?"
"Cause I was in sissy's room playing wif her stuff."
"And who has control of how these things go son?"
"I do."
"That's right."
"I got blanky back."
"So I see. For putting away all your clean clothes in their right drawers I hear. Very good, son. I'm proud of you."
"Will you carwy me downstairs?"
"Carry you?"
"Please."
"Okay. Let's go."
Zoom in to angelic face of featherweight boy bundle snuggled into broad, man shoulders with blanky for pillow, arms around neck, tiny head tucked against bearded chin. I thought I might melt. The import, really, of "Will you carwy me?" is simply this: "I'd prefer my feet never hit the floor again tonight. I like here." Velcro. Even the squirms mostly worn out of him by a rambunctious day.
So down we go to rocking chair in living room. Man, boy, blanket, BlackBerry. Why BlackBerry? Simple: music. For the next thirty minutes, we snuggled and surfed. We worked our way through a series of music videos on YouTube, tiny hands holding the boy-sized screen as we worked our way through songs, me singing with most of them, each ending in the same refrain: "Can we do anover one?" Half an hour like this until, eyelids droopy, we headed up to brush teeth, don jammies, and be tucked in for the night.
Who needs whom most at the end of such a day is never really clear, not really even relevant, perhaps not even answerable. We empty our boy and man pockets on a common table: security, vulnerability, strength, fragility, age, youth, wisdom, innocence, calculation, impetuousness, anticipation, trust, and love. It works, this sharing. He's tall already, but in these moments he fits still in the crook of an arm. Safe. Calm. At home.
What I offer below is a list of those videos, that music. Soundtrack of a life. Witness to the wisdom of a license plate: love wins.
I spent most of the day yesterday blessed by an uncommonly beautiful merging of two worlds, introducing new family to old friends without ever once really worrying about what either would think of the other, taking for granted that the things I loved in each would make them equally dear one to the other. Only in retrospect does the magnitude of that assumption, and even more so the miracle of having been right in it, seem clear to me. And so, this evening, as I sat to pen a brief thank you, I found myself wanting to capture the essence of the day in a way that would convey my gratitude for so much more than mere hospitality. I found myself wanting to say thank you for a friendship that has spanned more than thirty-four years thus far, a full two-thirds of my life.
And so, as I was writing a "thank you" note tonight--not the obligatory kind required by social custom, but the kind you write for relief when your soul is full to overflowing and needs spill itself or burst--I found myself returning to that favorite phrase of mine from Robert Penn Warren, "the friend of your youth." And coming to my own blog where I knew I could find the quote I was looking for, I found not only Warren's words, but my own, already echoing the very thoughts I'd penned tonight, and I was reminded that this was not the first time I'd felt this gratitude. And therein lies one of the greatest benefits of blogging, or of journaling (which, blogging really is, just more publicly)--it gives us the opportunity to see our own thoughts return to us like kites upon the wind.
What I wrote tonight was this: "There are fewer than a half dozen people still in my life of whom I would use Warren's term and call 'friends of my youth.' But when I think back to some of the very best times of my life, you are there. And here you are again. There are those for whom we don this or that persona, seeking acceptance, and there are those rarest few with whom there is no such thing as a persona; rather, we find our truest selves, our better and even best selves, drawn out, restored, presented to us again, whole and untarnished, as a gift."
What I wrote almost three years ago was this: "Because what such friends see in us, celebrate in us, treasure in us is that thing which is inscrutable to others, but which they see clearly, without needing to strike through any mask. And that thing is unchanging, even when we ourselves lose touch with it or forget its nature. The joy that we feel in the company of our true friends originates in the role they play in facilitating the emergence of that best self. And the overwhelming joy we feel in reunion with those friends after lengthy separation is, in some ways, as much a joy at reunion with ourselves as with them."
And so, to my friends, those friends of my youth in far better ways than Warren meant, thank you. Thank you for welcoming introductions and for making a gift of re-introductions. Thank you. And thank you.
Yeah, unlike my friend Connelly, I still want nothing to do with free climbing radio towers unless intentionally "falling" off is part of the plan. But this? This I would so love to do.
Yeah, I've summitted three Fourteeners, and I teach skydiving almost every weekend now, but that's different. I'll crawl all over the outside of an aircraft as long as it's above 1,000 feet and I'm wearing a parachute. Mountains? Well, the first one I did, the north Maroon Bell, in Colorado, back in 1978, I was feeling pretty sick at the top. "That's just altitude sickness," said the lead climber in our group. "Yeah," I thought, "The kind of sickness you get in the top of a tree that you weren't all that sure you could make your way back down." We finished that descent by moonlight, by the way.
Anyway, I said all that to say this: These guys are crazy. This looks fun under only one circumstance: wearing a B.A.S.E. rig the entire time. Under that condition, sure, I'd do this. But otherwise, unclipped, unrigged, unenclosed? Not on your life. Nuts. Plain and simple.
So, without further ado, here's the video. If you can start it and watch one minute and not watch the entire seven plus, then you're a better man (or woman) than I. And that's all I have to say about that.
I began blogging in earnest in 2007, inspired, largely, by my cousin, Barry, over at Enrevanche. Blogging was, in some ways my most important intellectual outlet. Through 2008 and the first half of 2009, it was also the place where I hung out with friends.
Then, in 2009, marriage, a new job, a new city, and the blogging didn't so much taper off as simply stop, precipitously. It dwindled to a short post every couple of months, if that. Not writing, I was also not reading. But that watershed year is behind us now. A custody suit is over (in our favor), a SACS accreditation visit to the new campus I've spent a year getting off the ground is complete (with an unheard of single recommendation about something no one could have anticipated, and the visiting team's single word summation of the inspection was, "Wow!").
In many ways, I've begun to live again. I no longer work every weekend. Late days at the school still occur, but they are no longer the rule.
Eventually, I might even begin to write again. And more importantly, read. But whom shall I read? There was a small group of us, who followed one another's words and lives with regularity. For over a year, I've shared little and read little, and the ether world that I knew has changed. It's like returning to your hometown after a year or more deployed. People will have moved on, gotten married, taken up new hobbies. So it is here. Barry, my original inspiration, hasn't posted to Enrevanche since July. Jay, over at The Extended Table, whose beautiful family I met in Colorado, and whose fine gift of spirits I enjoyed some remainder of with my new father-in-law/old friend last night, not since June. Phil, whose perspective I always enjoyed at The Archer Pelican, hasn't been heard from since April. And Lex, of Neptunus Lex, I'm sure is still blogging somewhere, but not at the address I used to visit. Only Buck, whom I'm convinced is a reincarnation of Addison or Steele, seems to have kept the torch burning over at Exile in Portales.
The world can change a lot in a year. The real world or the digital one. I hope my friends are out there still, and well. It won't be the first time I've come back to a place and had to spend time searching for the friends I left behind.
"Any one of us who is lucky enough to have a job today must worry about losing it. This Labor Day, we might salute the millions of Americans who don’t have jobs, but who in many ways work harder than ever."
On the way to the drop zone on Saturday morning, lucky enough not just to have "a day job," but to have an extracurricular activity that's sometimes better than break even as well, I heard a short piece on NPR that moved me. NPR is my normal accompaniment on the way to work during the week, but on a weekend, I start out tuned into something a little more designed to get the blood flowing. I was grateful this past Saturday was different.
You can read or listen to Scott Simon's reflection here.
And really, really well at that. Of course I knew this when I married her. :-) It's quiet here at They Rode On, but if you like reading for the beauty of the stories and the words, check out the last few days work over at Cafe Catiche. You won't be sorry.
Something my better half is struggling with at the moment. The writer’s response to a solicitation for donation from her alma mater will make you smile:
“As all of the benefits you gave me were intangible, I assume you understand and appreciate the value of my sincere gratitude, in lieu of a financial contribution.”
I cannot believe no one has yet compared the growing ecological disaster in the gulf to Three Mile Island. Different energy source, yes, but the near meltdown in Pennsylvania set back the development of nuclear power in this country in ways from which it is still recovering.
This is the first shrimp season in Prince William Sound since the Exxon Valdez ran aground. Herring have yet to recover. This disaster promises to dwarf that.
As we age, I think we sometimes tend to devalue the philosophers that shaped us. Having found them in our youth, we may think of them as something we should have outgrown. We shouldn't.
I could do worse than making a habit of using the shift to and from Daylight Saving Time as a reminder to change the batteries in the smoke alarms and re-read The Prophet.
Here's a thought for today, courtesy of Kahlil Gibran:
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.
When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.
Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;
For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered
When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.
It is: random thoughts on food, wine, technology, politics, books, movies, life, death, etc.
It isn't: the thoughts, policies, views, or official positions of any person, agency, business, govt, or group except me, yours truly, unless specifically noted and credited otherwise.
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