Mr. Maxwell

Confession: I was a band... "nerd"? A band geek? I don't know that I was either, but I was in the band in high school for all four years. Section leader, first chair (in a section of three), etc.

Nerd

Anyway, my band teacher from high school is retiring. This man brought dancing to high school bands in southwest Florida. Before that, just some boring walking in lines. The Naples Daily News (heh) had a nice story on him. It gives a bit of a picture of how things were when Mr. Maxwell was in high school:

Growing up in Immokalee in the late ‘60s, Maxwell attended Bethune High School, a segregated black high school, where he ran track and played percussion in the band. In 1968 when the government ordered Collier County to integrate its schools, he transferred to Immokalee High School along with the rest of his classmates, with plans to continue his music career.

But as history reminds us, desegregation didn’t happen very smoothly. Before the school year even started, the Immokalee band instructor abruptly quit. “He said he wouldn’t teach black kids,” Maxwell says. “That was devastating.”

This man probably changed high school music for the whole state (for the better).

For years after I graduated from high school I used to make sure that if I was counting in my head or humming a song, my left foot hit the ground on the odd numbers and my right foot hit on the evens. You're a card , Mr. Maxwell. Thanks.

Also, let's look at this:


Just because you can, does that mean you should?

Golden Year (Year 28), coming to an end

Golden Year in brief review - a list of mostly positive things:

• pulled together two applications to divinity school
  
• realized that I have/had a long way to go to be as good of a student as I (might) want to be
• received unconditional love
  
• got into divinity school and enrolled in it
  
• left job of 3.5 years (feels like I worked there much longer)
  
• went to Honduras
  
  

• realized better what love is (still working on the words to express it outside my head and heart)
• appreciated simplicity again

• climbed a mountain, hiked around Pico Bonito National Park
• saw and listened to tropical birds
  
• learned to test dissolved oxygen, pH and nitrates in river water
  
• got sick from drinking creek water when I was near the top of a mountain and we had run out of potable water because we drank it all on a brutal hike
  

• dug up sweet potatoes with a Honduran farmer
  
• got my glow back (lost it again somewhere during midterms, but it'll come back)
• became, at least temporarily, more mellow (believe it or not)
• learned that human relationships are the most important thing we have (I think)
• got over the impending 3-0, at least a bit
• acknowledged another form of love in me and got the cojones to feel it and express it
• found an amazing church
  
• had some people change my life for the better
• marched in a Pride parade

• left Chicago (which I miss in many ways)
• learned more bike mechanic skills (and forgot many of them)

• loved the smell of bike grease on my hands
• learned some more of my weaknesses
• sneaked around a San Juan hospital
  
• ran a 20K race
• rode to Milwaukee and back
• went to my ten-year high school reunion and enjoyed it
• connected with former professors
• got the cojones to move closer to the life that I want, or at least the approach to the life I want
• learned to let things slide more often
• learned to make two different styles of arepas
• Understood that I have a lot more to learn and do
  

Year 29 starts in a few days.

What did you do this year?

Look at these two:

Also - look! Affirmation of my existence! I'm gonna find some big words to misuse so I can really write on the grad school level:

"I want to blanket the world with the gospel through prints."

Did you know that there are home designs modeled after Thomas Kinkade's paintings? I learned this while studying for my evangelicalism exam.

http://www.gatescda.com/
http://www.hstidaho.com/

Is it a shocker that these two are in Iowa and Missouri?

Your home design options include:

Blessings of Spring




















and the magnificent Lamplight Manor, among a few others

Finals

talk to you soon, I hope

Republic Windows and Doors

Dear Jhonathan Gomez sent more information on what's happening at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago.

• More information: http://www.ueunion.org/ue_republic.html
• Here's a bit of what happened.

Jhonathan writes:

• Petition (click here)
• Updates from the UE (click here)
• Statement from Republic Windows and Doors (click here) (I don't find this too helpful)
• There is an opportunity to join the demonstration on December 10th at 12 at the Bank of America; 231 S. LaSalle, downtown.

#1

Blood dried from the stabbing
you still wince, stuck
with the memories.
cleaned your wounds
tended to his

You started to run, to fly, as intended.
Stretched tall
alive since the day he sharpened his knife.
You reached out your hand.

A few fingers held out to you
he turned around
back to the cave
to creep behind boulders
hunched over

-anonymous

------
Contemplating Desire

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning

now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward...

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I'm down to the last two weeks of my first semester of grad school. There's so much to write here, (you know, in addition to school junk), but not enough time or attention span to devote to it right now. So:

• Pulled off writing the surprise paper I had forgotten over reading week
• Thankful that I'm not in Chicago because it's miserably cold over there, but still wish I were in Chicago
• Am starting to believe that the six-hour study day is really possible some days of the week
• Two exams, one philosophy paper, two ethics essay exams, hundreds or a thousand pages of reading to go in two weeks
• Only really enjoyed the last two readings in my philosophy class: the Kierkegaard and the Nietzsche
• My intereste in religion, politics, culture, and diplomacy is renewed
  
• Still need to decide on a thesis for the Kierkegaard/Philosophical Fragments paper (any suggestions?)
• Approaching my 29th birthday and the end of my golden year
• YDS makes us put $400 per semester toward our meal plan. I am used to bringing my lunch from home. I have $200 left over, meaning I'm spending it now on overpriced rice crackers, $4 bags of trail mix, and $1 pieces of fruit. Am waiting for the day when they have a vegetarian entree that's not pasta (I've only seen them offer a vegetarian entree twice in as many months.)

What I appreciate:

• Thursday nights at the Catholic House ("just color it out, honey")
  
• that the Episcopalians usually have wine at their parties (and free dinner every Wednesday night)
  
• Consistency; let's have a go at it
  

Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca

LINK: You put together words that make me think and realize and make that hmm-ing sound.

Anyway, go read Rebecca's post while I learn more and sort out some thoughts and eventually come up with something coherent.

Edit: I forgot about this one, too.

Dec. 1 is World AIDS Day

Go find some free testing.