Brave Saint Saturn

Gloria, in excelces deo.
Glory, gloria.

Too weak to wonder,
too tired to care,
Jesus Christ, are you really there?
I've fallen down,
Can't pull myself back up.
I'm going to drown, have mercy,
Have mercy.

I need you now,
Not words or a feeling.
But Jesus Christ,
I've hit the ceiling.

Your love,
Your mercy,
Your light unending.
Your hope,
Your peace,
Your strength my heart is mending.

Ever feel like...

something exploded in front of you?

Here I am...

...sitting in the campus bookstore on my computer. Making a feeble attempt at getting some school work done before my class starts in an hour. The semester is starting to get old. I'm at that point where I am not really that interested in my classes anymore. Midterms #2 start next week and I don't really want to study for them. School just isn't for me. I love to learn and I love what I am learning. I just don't like the institution. It is hard for me to believe that school can actually prepare you for the world. Granted some people enter school unprepared for certain jobs and leave equipped for their careers but I don't think it is the school that prepares them. The majority of learning that takes place is voluntary. One could easily make it through a variety of degree programs without learning much. I have made an effort in many of my classes to actually learn the material because I'm interested in it. The other classes I get the A and receive no lasting knowledge. Some people say that a college diploma is proof that you can stick it out and are therefore more qualified but does that really make any sense? Why would anyone pay that much to prove their stick-to-it-ness? ::end rant::

Yup.

 

Technology seams to permeate our lives. Some people accept that as fact and others don't. Of course, I write this on a computer and you read it on a computer as well. Last night I turned on pandora to listen to some music while grading and after being asked by Laura why I wasn't listening to my records I turned it off and put on some Willie Nelson. Granted a record player is still technology but I enjoyed being interrupted every once in a while to flip the record over or change it to a different one. I want to read more. I used to be much better about reading instead of watching television. I like reading better when I get the chance to do it because I can create worlds all of my own. Television in easy and mind numbing... not to mention expensive. I am tempted to say something about how when I grow up I won't have television, but, I realize that I am already there. Change must start now. I am plagued with an inability to change. I can look back over the last year and a half and see so many little changes that I have made to better my life. However, I also see the same old habits and tendencies as before. I haven't read Fahrenheit 451 since High School. I think that will be next after I finish H. G. Wells.

Simplification

Well, I moved over to Google Reader today because Bloglines is going to be shutting down. I realized in the switch that I only have 7 feed subscriptions (now 8) which made me happy. Though I still haven't kicked the habit of checking the internet multiple times a day I have substantially decreased the amount of time I spend at each sitting. Taking two minutes to check my email and facebook a couple times a day and my reader a couple times a week isn't bad. I'm still working on this though. It bothers me that I feel compelled to know if someone has sent me an email even though I know they haven't. I struggle with simplicity. I am thoroughly convinced that for all the simplifying I've done over the years I haven't made it very far. Other than a few minutes here and there on multitask I really haven't spent much recreational time on the computer recently. I'm pretty proud of that.

Recycling

The plastics dillema is hard to solve but there are some who will take all our junk!

S&D recycling will also take misc. plastics, just make sure you explain you don't want to be paid.

The Start of Summer

I posted a while back about some changes that I wanted to make in my life. They are slowly happening. I have a small garden in the backyard with the first little tomatoes becoming visible, I've spent the last several months slowly getting rid of possessions, cleaned out the garage, started removing shrubberies and trees from the front yard, learned how to prune and take care of the roses, regularly mow the lawn, by trial and error figured out how to edge, borrowed a chainsaw for the next project (trimming the juniper), and am generally living a life I can be proud of.

While I have found plenty of things to keep me busy since school got out (including a week of VBS) I have found myself this past week back to my old habits of sitting in front of the computer or tv, staying up late, and generally being unproductive. Today is my last day of work until August and while I will miss it immensely it is an opportunity for me to tackle all of those summer projects that need to get done. I realized yesterday that one of the reasons I have accomplished so little this past week is that I am alone. Lamar at school, Joy at dance camp, and Laura in Hawaii has left me to sleep in and putter every single day. Next week I want to live differently. I want to jump right back in to moving and working with excitement. I was talking to someone last night about how good it was to have a weekend off from the busy schedule... but I think that getting rid of the busy schedule can be just as daunting (though more relaxing) than the work schedule. I never thought that I wouldn't get things accomplished because  I couldn't decide what I wanted to do instead of what I had to do.

Summer Restoration

It seems as though I have been going non stop for too long. It really hasn't been that long but I am finding that living life is far more important than stressing myself out. Living with people with whom I want to spend time with, having a place to call my own, and nearing the end of my formal education have all changed the way that I look at life.

This week I have spent a little bit of every day in my garden, working in the yard, working in the house, reading, sitting, eating, enjoying everyone's company, even some video games. This is life. I want to use this summer to set the groundwork for living deliberately and sustainably. One by one I am trying to change habits in order to become a better steward of the resources that I have been blessed with.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life..." ~ Thoreau

Spring Reading Revisited

Well my spring reading was actually somewhat successful. Books go back this week and I didn't finish them all but I had fun and learned a bit as well. If anyone wants to know in detail how to live off grid I have a book to show you! In other news, I have been growing some things. Seeds are now seedlings and mini-plants. We shall see what survived this heavy rain though... only three days after I set them outside they get pummeled. But they still make me happy. My life is slowly getting organized into something that I am happy with. I think I may go on another cleaning spree in my closet sometime soon...

Some Spring Reading

Easy Steps To Success

I have been trying to take simple steps to make my life just a little bit less wasteful. One of those was buying and using handkerchiefs instead of Kleenex. I've been using the handkerchiefs for about a week now and am rather pleased with them. I have even been sick and constantly blowing my nose without much of a side effect. I bought them cheep and think that I may upgrade to something a little bit nicer (they were 6 for $5) at some point but for now its kind of nice to not have a trash can overflowing with Kleenex.

Lemonade and Compost

Made a pitcher of lemonade from scratch... yay for using fruit that someone grew in their backyard. Oh, and if you have fruit that just falls and rots I'd be happy to come pick it for you. :-)

The second hand composter is in as well. First round of compost is ready to go!

Life Changes

I promised another post when I had some time and here it is:

When I graduated from high school I had high hopes and dreams of bettering my life in large chunks... that never really happened, but over the last three years I have changed some little chunks. I think that I spent a good year purging my life of material possessions that I had owned for too long. Birthday cards from when I was five, old stuffed animals, broken toys that I “couldn't part with”, clothes that I never wore, you get the idea. When I found out that it was a real possibility to buy a house last fall I spent the next several months packing up everything that I owned into boxes. Eliminating what was left from the purge that I didn't need to carry with me to a new start.

I'm still purging and trying to let go of so many material possessions but I'm on my way. Life now has turned to focus on how I live. I want to live purposefully with every action that I take being a response to thought and decision. Some things I've wanted to do for a long time but haven't been able to living in a house that is not my own and some things I've found as new revelations.

Here are some of things that I've been trying to change in my life (mostly ways to live more simply or more environmentally beneficial ways):

• Not flushing the toilet so often – hopefully soon to be replaced with a low flush toilet
• Riding my bicycle as much as I can – someday to be replaced by selling my car and buying a moped
• Bought a push mower – And I've been using it and love it
• Trying to do bulk shopping – Someday maybe I'll be able to keep to once a month
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (recycling not just CRV) – I'm also trying not to buy things that are packaged to begin with
• Making my own garden/green house – I have visions of living on a half acre.... I also want a rain catching system.
• This includes composting – Never have to buy fertilizer, I've got my own
• Uninstalling all of my game applications – Maybe someday I'll even get rid of my console games
• Only getting on facebook/email once or twice a day – I'm getting close to giving them up as much as is practically
• Trying to eliminate hobbies (can't decide yet which ones to keep) – Maybe keep it to just a few...
• Quitting one of my jobs (the weekend one) – What's more important, time or money? Definitely time.

There is a little glimpse into what I'm up to right now. I'm happy that I can finally make changes that I believe in.

Little Girls In Pretty Boxes

I've spent the last month or so reading through a lot of gymnastics literature. While a majority of it includes tables and graphs demonstrating biomechanics, scoring systems, or aesthetic instruction the most impactful book includes none of these. The book "Little Girls In Pretty Boxes" by Joan Ryan is a heartwrenching look into the horrors of the sports of gymnastics and figure skating. I have only read one other book that compares to how difficult it was to read this book (A Child Called It), yet this still tops the list. As a gymnastics coach and former competitor I have seen first hand the physical and emotional abuse that can be present in the sport. I have personally witnessed coaches verbally demeaning girls as young as seven, telling them that they are not good enough or that they are wimps and sissys for not working through the pain of injury. I have heard parents and students confide in me about coaches going against the warnings of doctors and their own bodies... yet never confront the coaches. I have seen gymnasts including myself quietly leave gyms because we can't deal with the coaches anymore without ever telling them off or letting them know the damage they cause. While I have never had a coach like Karolyi the similarities are haunting.
It was so refreshing to see Shawn Johnson compete. She enjoys her sport, she didn't drop out of school, she smiles. So many competitors gave up on life long ago. The sport is not for their enjoyment but for the enjoyment of their parents, coaches, and America. The empty looks on competitors faces and dissapointment at getting less than gold. I went to the level 5 state meet this fall. The meet is for girls ages 7-14+ most of who are 8 and 9 years old competeting for their second or third year. This student showed incredible talent with first place scores on vault and bars (9.925 on bars, the highest in the nation for her level this year), second place on beam, and sixth place on floor with a 9.050 (only .425 behind first). After the awards ceremony I heard her coach talking to her mom not about the incredible feet that she had obtained with a second all around score and the highest bars score I have ever seen in my life but about how they really need to work on her floor routine... no one is ever good enough.


Here are some of the excerpts from the book that I found most impactful:

"And after Julissa joined Karolyi's, she was always in pain, first from a stress fracture in her ankle, then shinsplints, then hamstring pulls and finally a sprained knee that would eventually drive her from Karolyi's for good. Karolyi, like a lion circling hobbled prey, picked on her, testing her survival isntincts. Either she would grow stronger from his abuse or she would quit. Karolyi needed to know which it would be. In or out. Black or white. Yes or no. He had no time for doubts, hesitations or fears... 'He called [Julissa] stupid all the time,' says Chelle. 'Then he didn't really pay much attention to her at all. She didn't get the hard-core coaching.' No mater what ugly words the coaches threw at her, Julissa didn't fight back. Few do. A gymnast at the elite level learns to stand still--mouth closed, eyes blank--and weather her coache's storms. A gymnast is seen and not heard. Even when she's in pain, she says nothing until she can no longer work. Nadia Comaneci once cut her hand on the plastic-and-foam hand guards the gymnasts wear to perform ont eh uneven bars, and by the time she told anyone, she had blood poisoning up her arm. Even when she's scared, the gymnats says nothing. Especially when she's scared. 'Chickening out' before a trick is an unforgivable sin." ~ Julissa died competing a vault that she was never confident on that her coach insisted she perform.

"Parents have always lived through their children to some extent, but these live in fear their daughters will be expelled form the gym, so they say nothing when coaches belittle their children or push them too hard. 'We should as parents be able to make sure they're treated porperly, I guess, but everybody's afraid to do it,' says another Karolui mother, Chris Fortsen. 'I guess I wasn't a very good mother, because I just kind of took it.'"

"Few parents learn from those who have gone before; the girls' careers are too short. By the time parents realize their mistakes, their daughters have retired, the parents themselves have moved on and new parents have come in to play out the same old script. 'I would never do it again,' says Laura Irvin, mother of another Karolyi gymnast. 'When my daughter said she'd never let her own daughter do gymnastics, I felt like a failure. All we wanted was a perfect life for her.'"

"Of the two hundred or so gymnasts who compete on the elite level every year, only twenty make the national team. Only six compete in the Olympics. A gymnast's elite career usually lasts five or six years, generally from age twelve to age eighteen. Some go on to college gymnastics, a more forgiving environment. Others walk out of the gym and never return. How many leave because of injuries or eating disorders? No one keeps a tally. But at the highest level few quit simply because they have lost interest, as a child might quit violin lessons. 'Gymnasts don't so much retire as expire.'"

"Two cherished American values came crashing against each other in the debate over Karolyi: the protection of our children versus our will to win. 'We have to figure out what our goals are,' says Olympic medalist Bart Conner, who considers many of Karolyi's detractors hypocrites. 'If we want a team that looks nice in their uniforms, that isn't under all this stress, that isn't playing with pain, that isn't risking injury, then we're not going to win.'"

"When [Debi Thomas] botched a combination of triple jumps fifteen seconds into the four-minute program--she hadn't middsed a jump in practice all week--she gave up. She couldn't do what she had come to do, which was skate the best performance of her life and win the gold. She turned her triple jumps into doubles, her doubles into singles. She finished third, behind Witt and darkhorse Canadian Elizabeth Manley. In what should have been the crowing moment of a remarkable career--she did, after all, earn an Olympic medal--Thomas felt only horror and shame. 'It was like on of those tortures in Dante's Inferno. I just wanted to get it over with. I don't remember much of it. I've blocked a lot of the Olympics from my memory.'  Up on the victory stand, when she accepted her medal, she felt as if she had le down her coach, her family, America and all African Americans who looked at her as a role model."

"Tara Lipinksi and Jennie Thompson embody the unspoken imperative of elite figure skating and gymnastics: Keep them coming, and keep them young, small and more dazzling than the ones we already have. The national appetite for new stars is instatiable. Deep down, we know that our consumption and disposal of these young athletes are tantamount to child exploitation and, in too many cases, child abuse. But we rarely ask what becomes of them when they disappear from view. We don't want to see them parade past us with their broken bodies and mangled spirits, because then we would have to change forever the way we look at our Olympic darlings. They are the pink ballerinas inside a child's jewelry box, always perectly positioned, perfectly coiffed. They spin on demand without complaint. When one breaks, another pops up from the next box. To close the lid is to close down that part of our sould that still wants to believe in beautiful princesses and happy endings."


Someday I want to have my own gym where I can coach a competitive team that is based on fun. I don't care how old they are or how well they do as long as they try their hardest. Some coaches say that to work less than nine hours a week for level 5 (8 and 9 year olds) is insufficient. I say give them a life and make your coaching more effective.