Shooting at UU church in Knoxville

I just wanted to acknowledge the shooting at the UU church in Knoxville Tennessee this past weekend.

A very sad act of violence. If I ever go back to church, it'll probably be at a UU congregation. That was the denomination I was going to work for before I dropped out to get into public policy.

The guy was a nutball who hated liberals. That's why he targeted the UU church. I really, really hesitate to make any comments about that, cause the guy was obviously nuts, and crazy people don't make for lessons. They just make for tears.

I'll just say, we're all Americans. Can't we love each other while we hate each other's ideas? I hope that's possible.

There were lots of other sad acts of violence during the last few days. This was just one I had a slight connection to.

little doodle from earlier today

The Mindfuck

Death is a mindfuck.

You know, I never read any Camus, but I've heard good things. I think it was him who said that the only real question facing a human being is that of suicide. I agree. A while back, I kinda decided that I'm done with that question and pretty much gonna stay among the breathing.

When Spike, one of the good vampires from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was about to die, Buffy offered to save him. He said, "no. I want to see how it ends." I respect that, and when my body quits working, I'll probably have a similar attitude, and may even hasten the process. But until then, you know, I want to hear the story! I want to see what happens!

But back to the death thing.. once you've answered that question of suicide, you're basically settling in for the show. You're resolved. You're riding the train to the terminus. And maybe you kinda stop squirming and just accept that the seats in the bus aren't as comfortable as you'd like, and you start to let the images kind of flow over you, cause what else are you gonna do? You're not getting off...you already decided that. And you start to see the beautiful and mysterious swirl of pain and joy, of life and death. It doesn't really make any more sense, but it is kind of pretty. You start to see the shape of it...of life, of how it's been forever and how it'll be until human life as we know it is over. It's the same. But, then again, it's new! You're still in it! And I am blessed to live in very, very interesting times. Hell, it's worth breathing just to see what the hell happens! And you float in and out, into engagement, and back to detachment. When engaged, you feel the sorrow or you feel the joy. When detached, you feel something else...amusement sort of. Wonder. Awe. Cause you see the whole picture and don't understand it, but it's beautiful.

I read a little pamphlet once about Kazantzakis, who wrote the Last Temptation of Christ. He used an image to describe life that stuck in my head. I forget his words, but it was essentially like a meteor with a huge tail. The tail was death, and on the very front was a thin plane of life, constantly being desolved into the tail. And it progressed through time like that...a think sheet life constantly being born to burn off into the long tail of death. I think that's what he called God. Interesting image anyway.

There's no getting your head around it. Death that is. It's too big. There's no real acceptance. It'll crush your brain like a grape. It's not scary, it's just..overwhelming. It's the ultimate mindfuck.

And once you're resolved to riding the train until it's your time to get off, you have to learn to, I don't know...not make friends with it exactly. But just maybe nod your head to him. He's part of the picture, and the picture is kinda pretty. He's not gonna be your buddy, but he's gonna be around, a lot, until he kicks you off the train.

God, I'm mixing metaphors like a metaphor whore!

My First Real Backpacking Hike

Got back last night from an overnight hike down into the gorge with the camp. This was my first real "backpacking" experience. I had all my gear strapped or stuffed in an external frame pack. Not sure how much it weighed...maybe 50 pounds?

Not sure I'd really call it fun...it was pretty hot and uncomfortable. If you know me well, you know that I get grumpy when I'm uncomfortable. Sleeping on the ground is just not for me, at least not with my present stock of equipment. I had a sleeping pad, a sleeping bag, and a smallish fleece blanket. It wasn't quite enough to make a comfortable ground bed. I think there are three sleeping factors: head comfort, body comfort, and warmth. I could only get two of the three with that equipment. I really need a sleeping bag designed for fat people, like a 2x or 3x sleeping bag. That'd go a long way to fixing the problem.

And I need a chair. A chair is important for my physical comfort. I can't really sit on the ground for very long, and rocks, you know...they're rocks. Not designed to be comfortable chairs.

And water...also helpful. We had to drink river water treated with iodine, which isn't that bad, but isn't that good either.

Also, there were some foot blister issues. So, hurt feet, no place to sit, gross water, and lack of sleep. Yay nature!

But, there was substantial fun involved too. We spent a lot of time swimming in the Rio Grande, and we did some "floats" where we donned life jackets and floated down a couple of mini-rapids. It was fun.

The hike up was hard. But one of the campers became my hiking buddy. He had a couple good comments. He's a little latino kid, very cute. "No offense, but I like hiking with you cause you go slow." And then later, "Joe, you're, like, the awesomest guy in the world. Cause, like, no offense or nothing, but you're, like, a lot fatter than me, but you can still hike faster than me." I thanked him for his kind words.

Anyway, we made it up there in not so slow a time. I pretty much collapsed from exhaustion at the end, but I was alive. And there were some stellar views.

Joe's Advice to Incoming Liberal Arts Degree Seeking College Freshmen

Dear Freshman,

Welcome to college! Here are a few tips on how to make your college experience not be a complete waste of time and money.

1. Realize that it DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOU MAJOR IN!!! College students seem to be obsessed with picking the right major, because they crave some shred of individuation and because they do not understand the job and grad school markets.

Here's why it doesn't matter. For jobs that require real skills, you won't get enough training in class to be able to do them. For most other jobs, the skills required would be so specific to that particular job that no class would prepare you for them and instead, you would learn on the job. For those jobs, an employer will probably look favorably on your degree, but they will not care much about what you majored in or your GPA.

So, what should you do? You should acquire skills while majoring in something you find interesting. So, go ahead and major in art history or philosophy or english or biology or whatever interests you, but take as many language, computer, and math classes as possible. As much as possible, use college to acquire skills that you would not otherwise be able to acquire. If it's possible to really get qualified for specific jobs with an undergraduate education, it's gonna come from these skills, not from the name of your major.

So, in other words, worry about your real skill set, not about what it says on your diploma. If you have these skills, you will be better positioned to pursue grad school in whatever subject interests you, cause grad school is increasingly useful.

2. Do a lot of stupid shit.

3. Call your mother

4. Don't get addicted to anything.

5. Do study abroad.

6. Don't waste your summers! Take the time to find internships, apprenticeships, or something that increases your stock of skills. Or, at least something cool. I.E., don't work crappy restaurant jobs or something.

Well, that's about the sum total of my wisdom on this subject. Good luck, young freshman. Don't get V.D.

Sincerely,

An Old Guy

:)

Just saw the Dark Knight...it was pretty damn good.

Heath Ledger does a fine joker, and the movie did the best of any treatment so far of capturing the utterly evil bloodthirsty destructive craziness of the Joker.

The Joker and Batman is my favorite of the classic comic storylines. They are perfect foils for each other and really touch some deep archetypal shit in the modern human psyche.

Anyway, go see it. Hahahahahahahahahahahah....hehehehehehehehehe...hahahaha...hohohoho..

Bigfeet and Wild Men

The other night, the boy and girl campers split up, and the boys went to camp out up the mountain. We were trying to create sort of a "right of passage" type feeling for both the boys and girls. Anyway, we thought it'd be great for both groups to get a Bigfoot sighting. So, we scrambled and managed to put together a pretty good bigfoot costume for me. My friend Emily spent about 5 hours cutting fabric and hot glueing it to this cheap painter's coverall I was wearing. It actually turned out really good! So, we staged the boys' sighting at dusk. I was standing in the middle of a clearing, and they came through the trees marching and hollering and carrying on. When they saw me, they all stopped and stared dumbfounded. Then I took off toward the edge of the clearing using my well-practiced Bigfoot Walk. But, I wasn't really prepared for what happened next. They chased me! Luckily one of the counselors basically tackled the chasers, which gave me time to get to the tree line. Oh, and then I discovered that half the trees up on that part of the mountain are covered in thorns! That started the steady decline of the suit, which would continue through the night.

That sighting done, I went down to the camp where the girls were. They finished the night off with a campfire, and my friend Wyman told them a scary story (this was all part of the set up). Here's the story: There are some old house "ruins" at the lower end of camp. Those are the remains of the house that belonged to the Valdez family. Mrs. Valdez died in childbirth. The father, grief-stricken, took to drinking, and couldn't take care of his new boy. He locked him in the basement and would feed him scraps. The boy grew wild, with mangy, matted hair and long fingernails. One day, a neighbor girl heard the boy's howls and came to investigate. She let the boy out of the basement. Then, the father came home, and started shaking the little girl. The boy got angry and knocked the father against the wall. The little girl ran away and told her parents, who called the police. They came to investiage, and all they found was blood and hair. The place was destroyed, and the boy was gone. Every once in a while, cats and dogs go missing up on the mountain. They say that's what Juan survives on.

Anyway, just at the end of the story, I came shuffling up to the campfire making strange noises (still wearing my suit). The girls all screamed, but then they started chasing me too!

Anyway, it was a lot of fun.

rambles and brambles on my New Mexico adventure

Well, my life in New Mexico is winding down. T-minus one month until I go back to Indiana to start my PhD program. I'm gonna spend my remaining time focusing on grantwriting, so I won't be working with the kids as much.

In general, this has been a good experience for me. It reminded me that adventure is important and needs to be pursued with deliberation. It showed me that natural beauty is a really nice addition to everyday life. And it greatly re-enforced my existing presumption that most of the things that I value in life cannot easily be purchased. It engendered a desire to meet my needs as much as I can through my own skill and effort and as little as possible through purchasing goods, services, and land from others. I've made a lot of new friendships, some of which I'm confident will last, and I cemented an old friendship. I've got some new interests that might last a while too, like gardening and river rafting.

It hasn't all been great. I was hoping to have some romance, but that didn't happen. I think my contribution to the organizations I'm serving has been less than stellar, partially due to my failures and partially for other reasons. I was hoping to make more progress on my health/weight loss goal, though I have made some marginal gains.

I think I've been able to really think about the trade-offs that life's various paths present. These tensions are often rooted in my schizophrenic personality. I'm a sensitive emo sap and an objective depressed realist. I enjoy community, but I'm so sensitive to criticism that I also crave solitude. I want to serve others, but I also want independence and freedom. I like being busy and engaged in my work, but I also love being able to pursue my own interests, including doing absolutely nothing. I hate being bored and left to stew in my own juices, but being left alone and doing nothing is precisely what I crave when I get stressed or irritated.

Camp is concentrated utopia. It shows you what community can be when it works. But even then, there are aspects that make me uncomfortable. There's this whole ethic of "positive peer pressure" as well as a constant drumbeat of protestant work ethic, and part of me definitely endorses both of those things, but part of me is skeptical of them as well. The positive peer pressure has a cultish tinge to it that bothers me a little, and preaching about "work ethic" makes me a little uncomfortable when the protestant work ethic has never really taken hold in my own personal life (see previous paragraph).

Working with kids, you're always up against the specter of hypocrisy. How can I tell kids not to cuss when I've been cussing like a sailor since I was 10 years old? How can I tell kids not to smoke when so many people I know do all the time, and do it responsibly? How can I tell kids to whistle while they work when I have such trouble doing it myself?

Well, this is long enough. I hope my sparse posting hasn't lost any readers...lord knows this blog doesn't have many to spare.

Perceptions

Man, I'm a terrible blogger. Maybe that's a sign, huh?

I had a dilemma...the kids from camp wanted to "friend" me on myspace. I told them I would friend them only on my music profile, not my personal one, and not my facebook profile. (Yeah, I have 3 active social networking site profiles, 1 abandoned one on friendster, and a dating site profile on okcupid).

So, three kids did friend me, and I started second guessing myself, and I apologetically deleted them as friends. Not that it makes THAT much difference...they can still visit the profile. But it just seemed like a line that I didn't want to cross.

I hope I didn't hurt their feelings too badly. One of the kids seemed kind of hurt by it, and I had to explain that adults have to be really careful about being friends with non-adults and that it wasn't because she's not cool. I hope she understands.

And, it's kinda dumb, because the profile isn't private, so anybody can visit that one (my personal profiles ARE private). The music profile is pretty tame, but you know...my music is pretty personal, and I can't control what others post on there.

I think I probably wouldn't mind if the kids were, like, children of my friends or something. I feel like the fact that they were semi in my care makes a difference. I don't want to inadvertently endanger my organization or myself. It's a small risk, but the gain is also small. It would probably make it easier to stay in touch with those kids, which would be cool...I'd love to see what becomes of them and to be able to help them out if possible...but there's just too much potential for misconstrued intentions, etc.

ok, gotta go hold a boom mic for my friend's movie.