#and all three of us are pretty regular members of our sunday school. like often we are the only people there so we chat a bit | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hlupdate · 5 years ago

Link

In a never-before-published 2012 interview, Harry Styles and Niall Horan talk about their childhoods, the future of One Direction, and much more

In the spring of 2012, I spent a few entertaining days hanging out with the five young members of a British boy band who were just breaking big in the United States. The guys from One Direction were unjaded, unguarded, totally charming, and a puppy pile of optimism and energy. On April 8th, in a New York City hotel room, an 18-year-old Harry Styles and 16-year-old Niall Horan sat down with me for a joint interview, published here for the first time. (The reporting was intended for a Rolling Stone cover story that never ran.)

It was late morning, and they had both just rolled out of bed. Styles wore a hotel bathrobe; Horan, with braces still on his teeth, was in sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a Dallas Mavericks hat a fan had given him during a recent trip to Texas. The conversation was casual, full of laughs, and focused on their formative years.

What did you do at the gym last night? Harry: One of our security guys, his friend’s over, he’s a personal trainer, so I was working with him, and he ripped me to shreds.

In 12 hours, you have to do Saturday Night Live. Are you ready? Harry: Yeah, I think so. I think it’s going to be a fun day. It’s just really exciting, obviously. The show is so huge. For us to get the opportunity to be on it at all was just amazing, and to us, to be performing and just be involved with the show is amazing.

Have you seen whole episodes of it? Harry: I’ve watched a lot of clips on YouTube. They don’t show it in the U.K.

Growing up, when did you realize you could sing or that you wanted to sing? Harry: I sang in primary school, like the school productions, plays and stuff.

What was your first one? Harry: The first one was…I was five, and there was a story about a mouse who lived in a church, and I was Barney, the mouse. I had to wear my sister’s tights, and a headband with ears on it, and I had to sing a song all by myself. I remember it was just like, whatever…in the second, I was Buzz Lightyear in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, so you know when they run and hide in the toy shop? Buzz Lightyear was in the toy shop, so they just created my character. The last one, I was in…you know Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat? I was the pharaoh, but I was an Elvis pharaoh.

Did you have a sense that this is what you wanted to do in your life? Harry: I think in school, I was OK, I wasn’t a bad student. I think I just knew I wanted to entertain people and stuff. I was a bit of an attention-seeker at school.

Niall: Me, too. I just talked too much, sang too much.

You were onstage as a kid and were like, “This is what I like”? Harry: I knew it was fun, I had a lot of fun doing it, and I stopped when I started high school, and then I didn’t really do anything, I just sang at home, in the shower, in your bedroom, that type of thing. I guess it started again when my friends were in a band and they wanted to do this battle of the bands competition that was at school, and they needed a singer, and one of my friends asked me.

What did you sing? Harry: We sang “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” by Jet, and “Summer of ’69.” We did it more towards the Bowling For Soup version.

How about you, Niall? Niall: I always knew I wanted to sing. I was academic…I was one of those people that if I’m not interested in something, I don’t really care. If I’m not interested in school, I would have never trained or done my homework or anything, I’d have just gone outside and played football or whatever.

Harry: [helpfully translating] Soccer.

Niall: So I always wanted to sing. I was singing here and there, not gigs or anything, but I always sang around the house or whatever, and I played Oliver in a school play. And then I just did that, and people told me I should do something…I was only 10, what could I do at 10? I just did a couple of gigs, and when I got to high school, they told me that I should just try out for The X-Factor.

Who told you? Niall: My French teacher. We used to do talent shows and stuff at school, she was like, “You should do it,” so I did it.

What did that entail? What were the steps from being a kid in high school to getting on the show? Niall: It was the final of The X-Factor the year before, and at the end credits of the final, it says, “If you want to apply for 2010, go online,” so a couple of weeks later, I said, “Right, I’m going to do it,” and I filled in the form online, we were sending emails back and forth, going to this place at this time. The first one is at a big stadium, then if you get through that, you come back the next day. Is that the way they did it with you?

Harry: I had to wait a little bit, I think.

Niall: I was there at five a.m., I got seen at 12, and I was out of there by quarter past 12, and the next day I came back at 10 in the morning. You get through the first round, then they do a round where they don’t tell you if you got through after that.

Harry: They film it.

Niall: The producer and someone from the label. They film it and show it to whoever. Then if you got through that, it takes about two or three weeks until you find out. I was in Spain. Then you just go through the audition.

Harry, how did you wind up on X-Factor? Harry: I basically said, the same as Niall, I was watching the year before, and I remember looking at the young guys on there, and I was kind of like, “I’d love to have a go at it just to see what happens,” and that was kind of it. My mum actually did the application, and then three weeks later, I walked upstairs and she said, “Oh, you’ve got your X-Factor audition Sunday,” and I was like, “OK.”

Niall: In England, it’s the biggest thing ever. It took a while to build.

Harry: The two or three years were steady, and third or fourth, it just blew up.

Niall: It works that one in three people in the UK watch it. There’s 60 million people in the UK, and 21 million people watched the final the year we were in it.

Harry, your band also played at least one wedding right? Harry: Yeah. We actually said that we’d do the wedding gig, and…

Niall: You get paid for it?

Harry: Yeah. 160 quid, between all four of us. 40 quid each…we said we’d do it, and then we found out it was the weekend coming up, and we hadn’t done anything for it, so we asked the bride what kind of stuff she wanted, and she said she didn’t mind, but she wanted some Bob Marley songs. Literally in three days, not even three, probably two days, we learned like 25 songs. We might have known like three of them before. I was 16, maybe 15, singing these Bob Marley songs. There was a girl a couple of years below us, and it was her mum, she said she wanted us to play.

Niall: Can you imagine you’re at a wedding and you have 16-year-old kids up on the stage?

Maybe you were really good! Harry: Yeah, the drummer is one of my best friends from school, he’s a sick drummer, he’s so good.

Did you think the band could be something? Harry: A bit. My friend’s mum was a radio presenter, and she did a radio show for a bit, so she was trying to sort us out a little bit of studio time, we were going to go in and record.

What do your parents do? Harry: My mum is a PA. My dad is a financial adviser.

How about you? Niall: My dad works at a supermarket, he’s the head manager, general manager of an area, not just one, and my mum is unemployed now, so I try to help them out whenever I can.

You probably can. That must be nice. Niall: Yeah, it’s nice, it’s good.

Plus, now you can tell them what to do. Harry: [laughs] “Now you go to bed.”

Were you happy as kids? Did you have adolescent angst and stuff? Did you go through depressed periods? Harry: Not really. I think at one point, I started acting like I was…I had a phase of listening to really heavy music.

Niall: I never went through that.

Harry: Not stupid heavy, but a bit… just because I thought it was cool.

Like what? Harry: Like Nirvana T-shirts, wore black all the time, pretty much.

Were you pretty happy go-lucky? Niall: Yeah, I was always happy. I think me and Harry were lucky. Our parents got divorced quite early, didn’t they, when we were really young. I was four, I didn’t know much, so I was always a happy kid, always up for a laugh, very carefree, and I’m a bit like that now.

Did you both grow up in your moms’ houses? Harry: Yeah.

Niall: I went between both, my mum moved to the country and I didn’t have any interest in it. I always felt like the country is for when you’re older. I was with my mom for a while but got bored, all my friends were in town, I went to school in town and all that stuff. It was more like that.

Harry: I lived with both parents, and then moved with my mum, and we owned a pub for like five years. I remember the first night, it was like a night where a band was playing, and I just thought, “How am I going to get to sleep?” I was three stories up, I was like, “How am I going to get to sleep with this noise?” I was next to a road in Sussex in the middle of nowhere, and by the end, I could fall asleep next to the band, I was so used to the noise.

Was it imprinting your brain? Harry: Maybe. One of the guys who used to play every so often, he used to be in Deep Purple or something… He started teaching me guitar when I was like 10, I think 10, maybe nine. I loved it. I was 10, 11, all of the regulars, I got on with them. I’d walk behind the bar and my head would barely go over the bar. It’s still going now. We sold it to my best friend, we go in all the time still.

People say you come off as more mature than your age, you come off wiser. Did hanging around all those people as a kid help you mature?

Harry: I don’t know, maybe. I moved when I was seven or eight from Cheshire, and it was still Cheshire, but half an hour away, but in terms of not driving and stuff, all my friends lived near my school, so that was a bit further out. One of my friends there was my sister’s age, he was 16 when I was 10. It was so tiny, they were the only teenage boys…we’d ride our bikes and go to the driving range and stuff. It was good, it was fun.

You both wanted to entertain – if it hadn’t worked out, would you have been really unhappy? Harry: Yeah, I think it would be kind of like…one of the reasons you go for X-Factor in the first place is that you want to do this, and it kind of helps you get out of the life that you were doing before. I worked in a bakery for two years. Obviously, I didn’t want to do that for ages!

If you’d asked people at school, would they have said, “Yeah, they’re probably going to be famous,” or would they never have guessed that? Niall: My aunt, I was in the back of her car. We used to go across Ireland to go to the beach for a couple of weeks, and I remember we were in the car, I was singing, and she thought I was the radio, and she told me, I never forgot it, that she thought I was going to be famous since I was six, seven. She was the only person who told me that, so I always remembered that.

Harry: My dad said it. I used to listen to a lot of the music he was playing, he’d play Elvis Presley to death, the Stones, I’d sing along to that and he’d say, “You’re going to be famous,” or whatever. He came on tour with us for a few days out here, he came to the Radio City show. He just said, for him, it was so educational. Obviously, he hears about what happens when I call him, but to see it and see it actually happen and how everything works was so good for him, he really enjoyed it. So that was nice.

So you grew up on Elvis and the Stones? Harry: Yeah, pretty much. My dad was a massive Stones fan, so it was pretty much Beatles and Stones in terms of what my dad played.

People say you kind of look like Mick.

Niall: He gets that a lot.

Harry: I get it more here, probably, than I do at home. It’s because of the British thing.

What have you learned about life from the last few years, what didn’t you know? What advice would you give yourself? Niall: How much more independent we actually are – me, anyway. Your mum attends to your every need and does your food and washing and gives you somewhere to live. Then you go into the real world, as you’re told as a kid…

Harry: We’re living on our own now.

Niall: We just started living on our own in the last six months, really.

Harry: I’m moving when I get back.

Niall: We do our own washing, we make our own food, we rent places, we’re out on our own now. You mature so quick, you’re dealing with big businessmen every day, you’re not dealing with school, people your own age. It’s a bit different.

Harry: You seem to learn so many life lessons, but in such a short space of time. If I speak to my friends and they’re having problems with girls, whatever it is, now I seem to just have the answer. I don’t know, it’s just different. Or I think I have the answer. In terms of…one of my friends was trying to decide what to do with school, stuff like that, and I would have had no idea what to say to him before.

The last two years must feel like 10. Harry: Yeah, but at the same time, it feels like six months, it’s weird. X-Factor was two years ago, but it seems like five years ago, but at the same time, it’s gone so quick. It’s a really strange dynamic of how it feels.

Do you have a sense of how this is going to go? Does it matter if it’s two years, five years or forever? Harry: I think how much we all enjoy it, because we love what we do – if you have to call it a job, it’s an incredible job to have, and we love it. We’ll all want to do it for as long as possible. If we have the opportunity to have a Take That kind of career, I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t want to do that. If we don’t, I don’t know…we’ve done some amazing things already, but we don’t want to stop there, we want to keep going. I guess if we didn’t, I think we’d probably want to still be involved in…I’d just write, I guess.

Do you want to act? It feels like you could have your own TV show. Harry: I think it would be more of a documentary, because obviously, we’re not actors.

People must want you to try. Niall: Watch tonight, tell us what you think. Watch SNL.

Will you all make solo albums? Is that inevitable? Harry: No, I don’t think so.

Niall: Let’s do a swing album!

Harry: [laughs] We’ll all do swing albums. We’re just so focused on this, we all feel so lucky just to be part of this opportunity that we’ve all been given, it’s incredible, we’re just loving it. It’s sick.

People make a lot of assumptions about people in your position. They think you’re puppets and do what you’re told. What do you do when people make those assumptions? Harry: When you look from the outside, especially if you’re a skeptic of groups made through TV shows, which is fair enough, people don’t see what we do on a daily basis, people don’t see…I think from the outside, it looks so glamorous, they see us do TV performances every now and again, see us doing an interview every now and again, but they don’t know that we work seven days a week.

Niall: If there was eight days, we’d fit it in.

Harry: It’s not as completely glamorous all the time, of course it’s not, it would be stupid to think that it would be, but it’s hard work.

Niall: You’ve got to remember that you’ve got people on your team that have been doing this for many years and have been through the mill. You have all that experience around you, even from our tour manager, who’s been doing this for 20 years, they know what’s right, but at the same time, we want to have creative control, because at the end of the day, it’s us stepping out onto the stage of SNL tonight and have to sing these songs. We want to be singing what we enjoy, as we said last night. The music we all listen to is what we try and blend together to make this One Direction sound.

Harry: We obviously want to make it authentic and have our say without going, “People say we don’t control it, so we need to take control.” We’re not…we haven’t been writing songs for 20 years, we’re not producers. We’ve got an incredible team around us. Luckily, we’ve been given a lot of freedom, so we don’t go, “OK, we just need more and more control,” because we have a lot of control already. I think we find a really good balance in the way we work with our record label and our management, and it’s just how we work together, I think.

In any case, it’s probably better than the bakery. Harry: Yeah. But I don’t get a nice bun on my break anymore, that’s the thing.

Did you wear an apron? Harry: Oh yeah, I wore a white polo shirt and a maroon apron with white stripes. “What would you like? 78 pence, thank you very much.”

Were you behind the counter? Harry: Yeah, I was behind the counter. It was good. It was Saturday morning, I started at five and finished at four in the afternoon and got like 30 quid, it was a joke.

Niall, did you have a job? Niall: No, never.

So this is your first job. Niall: Yeah, not bad at all. I was chilling, I was being a kid.

Harry: I had a paper route before that. It gave me a bad back, bad posture. It was a heavy bag.

I interviewed some fans downstairs, and asked if they knew who you were six months ago, and they all said yes, and a year ago…They were all early adopters, heard you from the Internet, watched X Factor on YouTube… Harry: It’s the internet. People have friends over here that might tell their friends and look on YouTube and show their friends. It’s insane how it’s blown up. We’ve had the opportunity to come over to America and do shows, and release our music over here, which is amazing. Through the power of social media, we already had a bit of a following before we’d ever been over here, we hadn’t done any shows. We had some fans out here, which was amazing, but weird, really strange. I don’t know, it’s gone crazy. We don’t really see loads of it. We do the shows, then we’re in hotels, then we fly somewhere else. We don’t see massive amounts of it, we just go with it. This whole thing has gone on, and it’s sick.

Do you ever feel anxious through all this? Harry: Yeah, I think, obviously, just naturally, you think about what’s going to happen in the future. We’re 18, 19, 20 years old, we’re young. I wouldn’t say anxious, we’re just excited most of the time, and having so much fun, that if stuff were to finish and you were to look back on your time and all you did the whole time throughout this amazing stuff was shitting yourself about what’s going to happen next, then it would just be…I think you have to enjoy it while it’s going on. I think you should be wary about the future, but not worrying about it all the time. We still enjoy it and have fun, but obviously, you do think, “What am I going to be doing in 20 years, 30 year?” I’ll have kids by then.

Harry, I saw a tabloid with pictures of everyone smiling, and you were looking thoughtful. Do you get down sometimes? While everyone else is having fun, do you start drifting off? Harry: No, I think I’m naturally…not everyone is happy all of the time. I think you always have times when…like when you’ve just landed off a really long flight or miss home or something. They got a picture of me where I wasn’t smiling. I usually smile, but they got one where I wasn’t smiling and used that, and then said I wasn’t happy. They did that for a few days, that’s when we were in L.A. last time. It goes with the morbid voice.

Ringo would say, “It’s just me face.” Niall: “Who’s that little old man?” [quoting Hard Day’s Night]

Harry: “That’s Paul’s grandfather. He’s very clean.”

Sometimes you can drift off, that’s just your thing. Harry: [laughs] I’m just soulful, man, I try.

Harry, do you mind when you’re singled out for attention? Harry: I don’t know. I don’t really…I don’t know. We’re a band. Everything we do is together. I don’t take much notice of it.

So you’re not the Justin. Harry: No.

Niall: J.C. was popular, too, wasn’t he?

It’s not like that for you guys. Harry: Not at all.

There was an imbalance in that group. Harry: I think we find it important that people get to know all of our individual personalities, because…

Niall: I think that’s what’s good about it, people see us as individuals as well as a band, we all have our own personality, and we all give something to a band. Previous bands, they go around and can never explain themselves, they can explain the band, but as individuals, what we bring to the band and stuff…

Harry: We all know that we all have our roles, and we all know that without one of us, it wouldn’t work.

#harry styles #niall horan #one direction #230720 #1d ten

402 notes · View notes

dailytomlinson · 5 years ago

Link

In the spring of 2012, I spent a few entertaining days hanging out with the five young members of a British boy band who were just breaking big in the United States. The guys from One Direction were unjaded, unguarded, totally charming, and a puppy pile of optimism and energy. On April 8th, in a New York City hotel room, Harry Styles and Niall Horan, both 18, sat down with me for a joint interview, published here for the first time. (The reporting was intended for a Rolling Stone cover story that never ran.)

What did you do at the gym last night? Harry: One of our security guys, his friend’s over, he’s a personal trainer, so I was working with him, and he ripped me to shreds.

Have you seen whole episodes of it?

Harry: I’ve watched a lot of clips on YouTube. They don’t show it in the U.K.

Growing up, when did you realize you could sing or that you wanted to sing?Harry: I sang in primary school, like the school productions, plays and stuff.

What was your first one? Harry: The first one was … I was five, and there was a story about a mouse who lived in a church, and I was Barney, the mouse. I had to wear my sister’s tights, and a headband with ears on it, and I had to sing a song all by myself. I remember it was just like, whatever.… In the second, I was Buzz Lightyear in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. So you know when they run and hide in the toy shop? Buzz Lightyear was in the toy shop, so they just created my character. The last one, I was in … you know Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat? I was the pharaoh, but I was an Elvis pharaoh.

Did you have a sense that this is what you wanted to do in your life? Harry: I think in school I was OK, I wasn’t a bad student. I think I just knew I wanted to entertain people and stuff. I was a bit of an attention-seeker at school.

Niall: Me, too. I just talked too much, sang too much.

What did you sing? Harry: We sang “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” by Jet, and “Summer of ’69.” We did it more towards the Bowling For Soup version.

Harry: [helpfully translating] Soccer.

Who told you? Niall: My French teacher. We used to do talent shows and stuff at school, she was like, “You should do it,” so I did it.

Harry: I had to wait a little bit, I think.

Harry: They film it.

Niall: In England, it’s the biggest thing ever. It took a while to build.

Harry: The two or three years were steady, and third or fourth, it just blew up.

Niall: It works that one in three people in the UK watch it. There’s 60 million people in the UK, and 21 million people watched the final the year we were in it.

Harry, your band also played at least one wedding right? Harry: Yeah. We actually said that we’d do the wedding gig, and…

Niall: You get paid for it?

Niall: Can you imagine you’re at a wedding and you have 16-year-old kids up on the stage?

Maybe you were really good! Harry: Yeah, the drummer is one of my best friends from school, he’s a sick drummer, he’s so good.

What do your parents do? Harry: My mum is a PA. My dad is a financial adviser.

How about you? Niall: My dad works at a supermarket, he’s the head manager, general manager of an area, not just one, and my mum is unemployed now, so I try to help them out whenever I can.

You probably can. That must be nice. Niall: Yeah, it’s nice, it’s good.

Plus, now you can tell them what to do. Harry: [laughs] “Now you go to bed.”

Niall: I never went through that.

Harry: Not stupid heavy, but a bit… just because I thought it was cool.

Like what? Harry: Like Nirvana T-shirts, wore black all the time, pretty much.

Did you both grow up in your moms’ houses? Harry: Yeah.

People say you come off as more mature than your age, you come off wiser. Did hanging around all those people as a kid help you mature?

So you grew up on Elvis and the Stones? Harry: Yeah, pretty much. My dad was a massive Stones fan, so it was pretty much Beatles and Stones in terms of what my dad played.

People say you kind of look like Mick.

Niall: He gets that a lot.

Harry: I get it more here, probably, than I do at home. It’s because of the British thing.

Harry: We’re living on our own now.

Niall: We just started living on our own in the last six months, really.

Harry: I’m moving when I get back.

Do you want to act? It feels like you could have your own TV show. Harry: I think it would be more of a documentary, because obviously, we’re not actors.

People must want you to try. Niall: Watch tonight, tell us what you think. Watch SNL.

Will you all make solo albums? Is that inevitable? Harry: No, I don’t think so.

Niall: Let’s do a swing album!

Niall: If there was eight days, we’d fit it in.

Harry: It’s not as completely glamorous all the time, of course it’s not, it would be stupid to think that it would be, but it’s hard work.

In any case, it’s probably better than the bakery. Harry: Yeah. But I don’t get a nice bun on my break anymore, that’s the thing.

Did you wear an apron? Harry: Oh yeah, I wore a white polo shirt and a maroon apron with white stripes. “What would you like? 78 pence, thank you very much.”

Were you behind the counter? Harry: Yeah, I was behind the counter. It was good. It was Saturday morning, I started at five and finished at four in the afternoon and got like 30 quid, it was a joke.

Niall, did you have a job? Niall: No, never.

So this is your first job. Niall: Yeah, not bad at all. I was chilling, I was being a kid.

Harry: I had a paper route before that. It gave me a bad back, bad posture. It was a heavy bag.

Ringo would say, “It’s just me face.” Niall: “Who’s that little old man?” [quoting Hard Day’s Night]

Harry: “That’s Paul’s grandfather. He’s very clean.”

Sometimes you can drift off, that’s just your thing. Harry: [laughs] I’m just soulful, man, I try.

Harry, do you mind when you’re singled out for attention? Harry: I don’t know. I don’t really…I don’t know. We’re a band. Everything we do is together. I don’t take much notice of it.

So you’re not the Justin. Harry: No.

Niall: J.C. was popular, too, wasn’t he?

It’s not like that for you guys. Harry: Not at all.

There was an imbalance in that group. Harry: I think we find it important that people get to know all of our individual personalities, because…

Harry: We all know that we all have our roles, and we all know that without one of us, it wouldn’t work.

#brian hiatt #rolling stone #harry styles #niall horan #press #230720 #10years1d

108 notes · View notes

talesofafangirlwithadvr · 5 years ago

Text

APRIL PICKS!

And we’re back with new picks for the month!! Man, this has been some strange times we’re living in. I saw a post that said March felt like 300 days, while April feels like 3. I could not agree more. I’ve watched a lot this month, which isn’t a shocker due to our current circumstances. There’s a pretty big range, so there might be something here that you can check out during quarantine.

Here come the spoilers!

THE SOCIETY

I’m going to start with my latest watch from Netflix, The Society. Wow. I really enjoyed this one. Going into it I knew it would be like a Twilight Zone meets Lord of the Flies show, but there was so much unexpected stuff that occurred. Much like Degrassi the Next Generation, they went there. The students from New Ham, Connecticut go off on a field trip, but the buses don’t get too far due to the storm. This forces them back into town only (maybe) a couple hours from when they left. No one is home when they get back. No adults, kids, or others who were not on the school trip. The town is theirs and there is no way out. At first it’s all partying, but things take a dark turn fast and the teens must come up with laws for there to be some sort of order in this new world if they want to survive and find a way back to their real home. The 10 episodes go by really fast. It leaves a nice cliffhanger for season 2 (which is supposed to be in the works, but I don’t know if Corona affected that at all). This show definitely contains a lot of surprising twists including one very early on that is hard to predict. If you have watched this show previously or are interested in giving it a shot know one important thing.

This is the BEST character on the show.

I have not met one person who doesn’t love Grizz. He is the greatest. (The fan love for him really reminds me of the love for Stiles in Teen Wolf.)

DC’S TITANS- Season 2

At the start of April, I started the second season of Titans. As someone who does not have the DC streaming service I have to wait till the seasons are accessible on DVD. I watched the first season back in December and loved it, so I couldn’t wait to watch season 2. I was excited to see all the characters they were adding to the team. As someone who LOVES superheroes, but gets most of their knowledge through watching TV and movies rather than the comics, I went in not knowing a lot, which made it even more exciting. I would say my only main issue with this season was the staggering of plots. Because there were so many characters to follow and so much going on there were a lot of times when I was excited to start the next episode (because the previous one always ended on the BEST cliffhangers) only to have the episode involve a completely different story-line. While Deathstroke was the main villain for the season, sprinkling in CADMUS and finishing off Raven’s dad at the start felt like a lot for me. Most of the side conflicts added up to involving Slade, but looking back (because I did watch this at the beginning of April) it often felt like a lot in the moment. Some of the moments that were my favorite were finally getting the Nightwing reveal, seeing Bruce and Dick interact, being at Titans tower, hearing Hank sing and all of Connor. I think he was my favorite addition to the show. (I could be biased because I’m a Superman fan.) I’m upset with the ending and they better find a way to reverse it!! I would also like to see more of the team together next season because I really missed that too.

On a lighter note....

NAILED IT!

This is the PERFECT show for the crazy times we are in. It takes your mind off the repetitive news and is a great stress reliever, plus it is super funny and you will find yourself laughing uncontrollable. Maybe more in some episodes than others. Nailed it is the baking game show for people who strive to be better bakers in the kitchen, but are struggling when it comes to appearance (or taste...or both). In the half hour show there are two tasks for the three contestants to perform in order for a chance at the Nailed It trophy and $10,000. They are both often very difficult, with the second creation much harder than the first. Watching the contestants is hilarious as well as their reactions to baking and not having any clue what to do sometimes. I also love the judges. Nicole Byer is too funny and Jacques Torres is one of my new favorite people.

Plus Wes is just beautiful and I loved when Nicole called him the human form of Simba from the Lion King.

Continuing on with more comedy...

I know of several people who quote John Mulaney’s comedy specials on the regular, plus his gifs are EVERYWHERE. So it was about time I watched his specials and what better time than right now when I can use all the laughs I can get. I watched The Come Back Kid and New in Town and was laughing all the way through. If you’re already familiar with his stand-up you can enjoy some of these moments again below. If you aren’t then I HIGHLY suggest you check them out on Netflix or by simply YouTube-ing some of his best moments. (My computer cannot stop putting them in my suggested now.)

Returning to some of my past favorites this month....

(Some of these should not come as a shocker)

ZOEY’S EXTRAORDINARY PLAYLIST

One of my February Picks is back (not that it ever really left). Zoey’s is the show that I can’t stop talking about and even if this past Sunday’s episode (not the one airing tonight because I obviously haven’t watched it yet-while he’s been bothering me I can’t wait to hear Max’s rendition of ‘Bye, Bye, Bye’) gave me issues because everyone was blowing up at each other and there were times I wanted to shout at the TV, I would still suggest this show to anyone. This dramedy has so much going on from captivating (and sometimes heartbreaking) plots, to realistic and lovable characters and songs you will quickly want to add to your personal playlist. It’s honestly just a feel good show that usually puts me in such a great mood (again, despite last week’s...) With only a few more to this season I cannot wait to see what happens next!! (If you enjoy the show check out my other posts on this page!)

NANCY DREW

The CW retelling of Nancy Drew is in the top 2 of shows that I currently cannot stop talking about. It’s still a little shocking to me that I have grown to like Nancy Drew SO MUCH. If you told me that at the start of the season I would have been like ‘really?’ But as this first season has progressed I really fell in love with the show and the characters. While we ended on an earlier cliffhanger than was intended it was still an AWESOME one that has left me with so many questions. I am so happy this show was renewed and I cannot wait till they can start filming the second season. Because I need more of these kinds of moments:

I’m pretty sure I ended my last post this way too. But come on these two are the cutest and deserve to be endgame!

Just like with Zoey’s check out this page for more detailed reviews if you are also a Nancy Drew fan!

I DIDN’T DO IT

I am SO HAPPY that this show is now on Disney Plus. I have talked about this show since it got canceled from Disney Channel far too soon (much like many of their great shows on that channel). But at least they had gotten 2 seasons and both are now available to watch on the streaming service as much as you’d like. (I think I already made it up to episode 12). In my personal opinion season 2 is stronger than season 1 mainly because it doesn’t follow the classic structure of the “I didn’t do it” episode. What I mean by this is starting the episode out with some sort of hi-jinks and having the 5 best friends exclaim they “didn’t do it” or this isn’t how they thought things would go. Then we flashback to events either earlier in the day or week, etc, leading up to the first scene’s events. This style can get very repetitious, but with funny plots and likable characters certain episodes work better than others. However, by season 2 this structure was gone completely and I think the show strongly benefited from it. I truly believe this group of friends felt like a teenage “Friends” sitcom. They had a hang out at a smoothie cafe, two of them were siblings (here twins) and each member of the group resembled a character from the classic NBC show. They even had the two that felt like Ross and Rachel like each other romantically. Who knows where the show would have gone if it wasn’t cancelled. Check it out and let me know if you find more comparisons.

And Last But Not Least...

WORLD ON FIRE

The most recent show I’ve started watching is currently airing on PBS after previously airing on the BBC. This drama throws us into the beginnings of WWII as we follow several characters from different parts of the globe, from England to Germany and Poland. I’m really loving the diverse cast and seeing through the eyes of so many characters during this turning point of history. While I have only watched 2 episodes so far, I already feel very invested in each of their lives and cannot wait to see what happens next. Already so many twists and turns have occurred in such a short amount of time. The episodes go by really fast and will have you thinking a lot after. If you are a fan of a lot of other Masterpiece’s Classics I would highly suggest checking it out.

I hope everyone is staying safe and well!

69 notes · View notes

lovemesomesurveys · 5 years ago

Text

1. Are you related to the last person you spoke to? Yes, I was talking to my mom and brother. 2. Are your blankets normally kicked all over the place when you wake up? No. 3. Do you wear an eye mask when you go to sleep? Nope. I’ve been wanting to get one of those eye cooling sleep masks, though. I get bad headaches and cold washcloths help with those, so I figured a cooling sleeping mask would be great for that. And for when it’s hot. 4. Are family get-togethers fun or awkward for you? I like them. 5. Are any of your friends hoping to be famous one day? No.

6. What do you do if someone way too old for you hits on you? I’d decline. 7. Can you eat a whole pizza by yourself? I typically only eat 2-3 slices at a time. 8. Do you wear a lot of red clothes? No. 9. Do you lock the doors? Of course. 10. Is coffee better with or without milk? I only use milk (well soy milk) when I order lattes/mocha/macchiatos. If I order a regular coffee at like a restaurant then I use Half and Half and sugar. At home I use flavored creamer. 11. When was the last time you were at a hotel? Last weekend briefly when dropping my brother off. My mom and I went up to check out his room and stuff before we left. 12. Who would you kiss right now if you could kiss anyone? My doggo. 13. Are you afraid of the dark, or were you ever? I mean, I sleep with the TV on for some light and sound because I can’t have it completely dark or silent. 14. Do you have trust issues? Not really. I just have a hard time opening up and expressing myself to anyone. 15. When was the last time you cried from laughing so hard? I don’t remember. It’s been a long time since I’ve laughed that hard. 16. What are your plans for Thursday? I don’t have any plans for tomorrow. 17. Have you had your birthday yet this year? Yes, back in July. 18. Are you playing hard to get right now? No. I’m just hard to want. 19. Do you still talk to the person you were dating five months ago? I was single and still am. 20. Does cuddling freak you out? No. 21. Are your toenails painted? Nope. 22. Have you ever told someone you were in love with them? Yes. I laid all my feelings out on the table for Joseph, which took every ounce of courage I could muster up. It was so hard for me. 23. Ever slapped a guy in the face? Only playfully, and it was lightly. 24. Would you ever dye your hair blonde? Nah. I had blonde highlights for several years, but I never went full on blonde. 25. Did you make anything to eat today? I had a sandwich for lunch. 26. Do you wear eyeliner? When I wear makeup, which is rare nowadays. 27. What’s your favourite part of the song that you’re listening to? I’m not listening to music right now. 28. Do you think you’re a good friend? I haven’t been at all for the past few years. I’ve been very shitty. :/ I can’t even call anyone a friend anymore. 29. If the year consisted of only one season, which would you choose? Fall. 30. Could you go out in public looking like you do now? I’m wearing leggings with Santas all over and A Christmas Story shirt at the moment... in October. :X lol I’d really rather not. Plus, my hair is messy. Like, I couldn’t even just throw a hat on it. 31. What was on your mind mostly today? Blah. 32. Who was the last person you got into a small argument with? My mom and I bicker sometimes, mostly cause my moody moods get especially bad and I just end up butting heads with everyone. :/ 33. Can you handle the truth? Depends. 34. Are there some songs you can’t listen to because they remind you of someone? I listen to them anyway and get sad. 35. Last night, did you go to sleep smiling? I never go to sleep smiling. 36. Where did you sleep last night? My bed. 37. Did you have a good day yesterday? It was alright. 38. What was the highlight of today? I’m getting my favorite pizza for dinner. 39. Do you hate anyone? Besides myself, no. 40. Do you wish you had the chance to tell someone something right now? Not right now. 41. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? My mom. 42. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now? No. 43. Do horror movies these days scare you? I love horror movies now it’s so weird. I used to be such a scardy cat. It’s October aka spooky time and I want to watch a ton of scary movies. 44. What is the best thing that’s happened in the past week? Spending the afternoon this past Sunday in one of my favorite touristy cities that’s near water so it’s a lot cooler there temp wise and it was great and getting my favorite pizza twice. 45. What colour is your hair? Naturally it’s dark brown, but I dye it red. 46. What did you do yesterday? Same stuff I always do. 47. What are you doing tonight? Eat pizza and watch AHS. 48. Have you ever thrown your cell phone in anger? When? No. 49. Do you think you will be in a relationship three months from now? No. 50. Do you want to fix things with anybody? Yes, but I know I’m not in the right space mentally to do so yet. 51. Could you go the rest of your life without drinking alcohol? I’ve gone 6 years so far since the last time and I have no desire to drink as of now. 52. Is your hair long enough to pull over your face like a mustache? Yeah. 53. Do you ever find yourself making up survey questions throughout the day? There’s been times I’ve thought up a question or two. 54. Who is your favourite online friend? I think the survey community on here is pretty cool. 55. What was the last thing you tried for the first time? Hmm. I can’t think of something at the moment. 56. What was the last thing you said out loud, and how loud were you speaking? I was saying goodbye to my mom and brother who were leaving to go get our food. 57. What’s your favourite nail polish colour to wear or see on others? I liked wearing black the best. 58. What was the last thing you learned? Hmm. 59. How warm do you like your showers/baths to be? Not scorching, burning hot, but hot. 60. Are there any advertisements/commercials you actually like? Which? There’s been some commercials that I actually like, but generally I don’t pay much attention to them. 61. How often do you visit your relatives? Not often these days. There’s some family members I was really close with that I haven’t seen in a few years, which is crazy. I just really became withdrawn, distant, and reclusive these past few years from everyone. :/ 62. In your opinion, what is the scariest natural disaster? All of them sound terrifying. I’ve thankfully never experienced one. So far anyway... 63. What design is on your bed sheets? They’re just pink. 64. What is your favourite brand of fizzy drink? Like soda? I like Coke and Dr. Pepper, but I haven’t actually soda, only just a bit when I take my medicine, in like 2 years. I used to have one a day and I had been drinking soda since I was a kid (not regularly as a little kid, but I had it sometimes. I regularly started having it in middle school). 65. As a kid, did you use toothpaste that wasn’t minty? Yeah, I remember having bubblegum flavored ones. 66. What is your favourite vegetable? Spinach, potatoes, broccoli. 67. Do you have any other countries’ timezones saved to your computer/mobile phone? No. 68. Is your username the same for every website? No. 69. What do you have in your online bookmarks? On the bookmarks bar on Chrome I have Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube. 70. Do you have a lucky number? Why is it so lucky? I don’t believe in luck, but my favorite number is 8. 71. Do you set your browser to remember passwords? No. 72. Describe the perfect burger: I’m not a big burger person, but if I were to have one I’d just want cheese, ketchup, mustard, and mayo. 73. What was the last thing you made yourself to eat? A sandwich. 74. Do you agree that the nude scenes in movies are generally unnecessary? Uhh sometimes, but it’s whatever. I still act like a kid and mostly look away, though lol. 75. Have you ever stood on a sea creature while at the beach? Uh, no? 76. What’s worse; speaking in all caps, or all lowercase? When people type in all caps my mind reads it like yelling. 77. What’s your favourite place to go for fast food? Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, or Jack in the Box. However, I haven’t really been into fast food at all for the past few months, oddly enough. 78. How many fillings do you have? A lot. 79. Do you prefer warm or cold hands? I’m fine with my hands being warm, just not me overall being hot. 80. Have you ever had a mud fight? No. 81. When you see people in love, is your first reaction “ew” or “cute”? Cute.

82. Have you ever woken up from a dream and thought it had actually happened? 83. Do you know anyone who closely resembles someone else? Yeah, family members. lol. 84. When your sunburn peels, do you leave it or pull at it? I’m the worst cause I pull it. :X 85. What type of food do you find yourself craving most (sweet, savoury, meat, etc.)? Savory. 86. Why did you last go to the doctors? Monthly checkup for one of the ongoing things I’m dealing with.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

3 notes · View notes

tsgnorthwestarkansas · 5 years ago

Photo

Up Close & Personal with Dr. Kattie Allen from Premier Dermatology

We love the doctors and staff at Premier Dermatology. It’s a special place that provides medical and cosmetic services and a medspa – all things skin under one roof – with the utmost care, compassion and expertise. Dr. Kattie Allen is one of the owners at Premier Dermatology as well as being a member of the Premier medical team as a board-certified dermatologist who studied and practiced at some of the biggest names in medicine across the country before returning to Arkansas. She has triplet daughters and a son at home, so she keeps pretty busy! Below, she gives us a sneak peak into what it’s like to be an in-demand doctor juggling four kids in NWA.

The Scout Guide: How do you start the day?

Kattie Allen:  I wake up and get myself mostly ready for work. Then, we wake up the kids, help them get ready for school and get them on the bus. Then, I finish getting ready and head to work around 7:00 a.m.! I’m not a coffee drinker. I grab my usual glass of ice water, a banana and a bar and eat that on the way, or once I get to work.

TSG: What’s your standard work uniform?  

KA: Black scrubs of course!

TSG: Workout and/or wellness routine? 

KA: I love to run when I have a chance, so that is a variable depending on the weather and kids schedule. I was a swimmer at the University of Arkansas and I still love to swim, mostly outside in the summer. We did a relay triathlon for work last year, and I thoroughly enjoyed swimming again for that event.

TSG: Favorite part of your job?

KA:  Interacting with patients! They are the reason I chose this profession. I get to remove their cancer and listen to all their wonderful stories at the same time. Skin surgery is ideal for this because our patients are awake, so we get to interact with them while doing surgery and get to know them.

TSG: Since May is national Skin Care Awareness month, what advice can you share on having regular skin cancer checks and screenings?

KA: Your skin is the largest organ in your body and takes a beating on a daily basis with everything in the environment. Once you become an adult, I would recommend an annual skin examination. It is similar to an annual physical, but for your skin. Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer. One in five people will develop a skin cancer in their lifetime. Individuals getting regular skin exams are more likely to have a smaller cancer, which is easier to remove and leaves a smaller scar. If your parents or siblings have had a history of skin cancer, it becomes even more important to have an annual check. In addition, if you are someone with a lot of moles (like myself), it is also important to have your moles monitored at least annually by a trained specialist and to do monthly self checks. They can teach you changes to watch for in your moles that could be a concern.

TSG: We should all wear sunscreen daily – what sunscreen do you wear for everyday and for being active in the water or on the beach? What are some of your go-to skincare products you use regularly?

KA: For my daily sunscreen, I love the Skinceuticals Physical Fusion. It is a zinc oxide and titanium dioxide based sunscreen (physical sunscreen, no chemicals) that goes on very smooth and feels light on my skin. It also has a slight brown tint to it and acts as a slight coverup. Mornings can be a bit crazy in my house, so I’m all for minimizing steps in my routine.

For the beach or long days at the pool or the ball fields, I like Elta MD UV Pure for arms and legs and UV fusion for my face (also slightly tinted). These are both zinc oxide/titanium dioxide based physical (non-chemical) sunscreens that sit on top of your skin and do not get absorbed into your body.

As for the other products I like to use on my skin regularly, I will be honest and say it depends on the day. I’m a big fan of SkinMedica’s HA5 and their LumiVive dual system (morning and night). I also like the Revision DEJ day cream and Night Creams. The night cream has retinol in it, which is the ultimate anti-aging basic product we should all use. I have very sensitive skin and can not tolerate most retinol products, however, this is one that I can use on the most regular basis without irritating my skin. Eye creams are also for prevention of aging. I like the Elastiderm eye serum by Obagi, because I like the cool tip applicator. It feels good to apply it.

TSG: Best thank you you ever received from a client?

KA: Once I received a thank you card from a patient that ended up getting diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He wanted me to know that he wouldn’t be coming to his follow up appointment because he was entering hospice. He wanted me to know how much he appreciated me as his doctor and taking care of all of his skin cancers. I think of him often.

TSG: Best way to spend a Sunday around NWA?  

KA: Back before COVID-19, we begin Sundays with service at Fellowship Bible Church, then we are usually watching baseball. My son plays, so we spend a lot of time watching baseball. We love to celebrate a win with pizza. Our favorite places are Old Chicago pizza and Bariola’s pizza.

TSG: Favorite local indulgence?

 KA: Frozen custard from Andy’s, or the milkshakes at Ron’s.

TSG: How do you end the day and get ready for tomorrow? 

KA: Putting my kids to bed helps me wind down (occasionally I fall asleep with them).

Make an appointment to meet with Dr. Allen or any of the team at Premier Dermatology to learn more about their medical and cosmetic services and shop online for sunscreen and skin care products. Premier Dermatology has three Northwest Arkansas office locations: Fayetteville, Bentonville and Bella Vista.

photos: Meredith Mashburn Photography

#livelovelocal #medical #dermatology #cosmetic #medspa #skin #skincare #tsgnwarkansas #thescoutguide #spa

0 notes

yoonmelody · 7 years ago

Text

Merry Christmas from Ebeye

I was fully funded literally at the last minute and left sunny Kona on Tuesday, December 19th with my eight team members and stayed the night at Honolulu Airport.

Because our flight wasn’t until 7:30AM, we spent the night there for our 12 hour layover. We first settled in the baggage claim. It was quiet, cool, and two feet away from the Starbucks, but closed at 10PM. No problem! We lugged all our bags back upstairs to a waiting area. There were chairs and a nice square of space to leave our stuff. We even asked the security guards if we could stay there. They said we could, but roused us only an hour later to tell us to go “to the end,” whatever that meant, to sleep since we weren’t allowed there.

Truthfully, I was grumpy and exhausted, maybe even beginning to feel a little lonely despite being in a group with wonderful people. My 40L hiking backpack was heavy despite its small size and hurting my shoulders. I had my school backpack slung in front of me as well as my canvas bag hanging off one arm. I trudged behind, pouting as everyone continued on ahead. We finally found the “correct” sleeping area: outside in the warm, humid air with the airport traffic, on the exact opposite side of where we were supposed to check in tomorrow morning. It was around midnight now. I laid down on my beach towel on some uncomfortable blocks of a bench, no blanket, lights shining above. Our little caravan finally attempted to sleep. Since our flight was at 7:30, we could wake up at 5:30AM and check in with no problem!

NOT! Security guards woke us up at 3AM. They rushed us to pack whatever we slept on and to shuffle to our gates. Thankfully, one of the guards gave us two more baggage carts so we didn’t have to walk with our heavy backpacks all the way to the end of the airport. We checked in around 5AM after waiting in line for an hour, then made our way to our flight.

The flight was rather uneventful, save for some light turbulence. I was able to watch a few movies (they had the live action Gintama movie!!), and fell asleep for the majority of the flight from Honolulu to Majuro. At Majuro, we stopped for a brief moment, then flew to the Kwajalein Atoll.

Our plane landed on the US Military base there. It took awhile since 6 members were international. Christine, April, and I were the only ones with US Passports!

We met up with the Sudernos, the full time missionary family who has been here for two and a half years. They work with children’s ministry, teaching ESL, and other relational ministry. They moved out of their home and to the sailboat for the duration of our stay. They blessed us with rooms, a kitchen, running water, and WiFi!

The first day, we hopped right into the Good New Club Christmas Party! Since Micronesia is past the dateline, it was already Friday the 22nd! About 90 kids showed up and we sang, danced, and performed a few skits about Christmas and a short message about why Jesus came down to us.

The next day, we did a prayer walk around the island, blasting worship music as we prayed in front of various buildings and places. As we waited for Sophie and Annika to finish talking with a local woman, we ended up playing with the children in the area and spent another hour learning the games they played. Bingo and Big Man!

After lunch, we continued with our sports ministry, coming out to the basketball court with some balls and nail polish! While the guys went and played soccer and basketball, we sat near a bench and started to paint some girls’ nails. After two girls, we were swarmed by girls, boys, and mothers wanting to get their nails painted. When the rush ebbed, we began to play with the children. The kids especially enjoyed seeing me get confused with the more complex version of Bingo. After the nails, we performed two skits! He Lives In You (we did that twice, since a crowd formed and asked to see it again) and Everything.

Candi seemed to like me. She laughed whenever she beat me at Big Man and clung to my side as I walked around. Berta is older, around 9. There were so many more kids who told me their names, and I hope to remember them better as we get to know them more these coming weeks.

I also met Kio. She lives near the basketball court. She was happy when she found out that I was Korean, since she likes K-Pop!

On Sunday, Christmas Eve, we went to the Salvation Army Church to attend service around 11. Some children from yesterday yelled my name and walked beside me on the way there. It was really sweet, knowing that even after a few hours of playing with them, we had forged this relationship with the children! After the 3 hour service, we rested back at our house!

Christmas is a big event in Ebeye. They practice for their celebrations 2 months in advance! They practice from 7PM, officially start practice at 11PM and go until 2AM all week except the weekend.

We had brunch with the Sudernos, opening presents from our Secret Santas, then headed to the first church for the performances at 1PM. Other rubele, or white people, were there from the military base on Kwaj. This was the most white people we’ve seen days. We were there at Calvary Church til 5PM, and that was only one performance! The rest of the group was pretty exhausted after watching the dancing and singing, so we rested back at the house while Katie and Scott moved onto the next church. They didn’t get back to the house until 12AM!! Even then, they were still continuing the festivities.

So far, it’s been both a low energy, but exhausting week. We are careful not to burn ourselves out as we do these all these relational ministries. When we do wound care, we have about 3 people patching the kids up as the rest of us do “distraction minisitry:” playing volleyball, soccer, or even spinning kids around. It’s a full workout for everyone.

On January 3rd, we will be sailing for three weeks to the other islands, where there will be no internet at all. These people are less fortunate than the the Marshallese living on Ebeye. Ebeye gets regular ferries that bring in supplies and are close to Kwaj, the outer islands don’t have a high school or accessibility to adequate health care besides some medical dispensaries, and even then, these dispensaries often run out of medicine.

There will be another update on Sunday! Or at least I will do my best! Iakwe and Kommol Tata!

#journal #update

2 notes · View notes

ericvanwesenbeeck · 5 years ago

Photo

2019 on Two Wheels to Nowhere ~

As we approach the day when the calendar turns the final page on 2019, I have plenty of spare holiday time to mull over both the mundane commutes and epic adventures of the past twelve months of riding my two-wheelers. Fortunately, even the mundane commuting to and from work and around town stirs a little excitement in me each time before I depart. I’m not sure exactly what it is but for me there is a distinct element of exhilaration each time I hop on a bike. Funny how such a simple thing (think “it’s as easy as riding a bike!”) can repeatedly provide such a positive visceral feeling. I’m sure you all get what I am talking about here; we all have the same condition, to varying degrees. Somehow, it makes me feel like a kid again even though the DOB on my driver’s license and my aching joints tell me otherwise. For the first three months of the year, in between bushwhacking on my cross-country skis, I managed to get on a bike a few dozen times. These rides were a combination of occasional commuting https://www.strava.com/activities/2027332120, a few spirited RadRoom time trials on Thursday nights, a few stationary bike workouts at home and a few opportunistic spins https://www.strava.com/activities/2058240437 out on the open road when the stars aligned to provide clear tarmac in spite of the snow banks and sub-zero temps. Just enough cycling, combined with some classic XC skiing, to maintain basic fitness during the dead of Winter. Early April brought Chris and me to Grand Cayman for a week visiting family, soaking in the Caribbean Sea, reading on the beach and of course, riding! Thanks to Keith R who lent me a bike bag, allowing me to transport the Batmobile safely to the island. It was so awesome to have my own wheels in Cayman compared to renting in previous years. Grand Cayman is a small, flat island with generally good roads that lends itself beautifully to fast and furious solo riding https://www.strava.com/activities/2272462632. You can imagine how good it felt to put on a simple summer kit and ride through the balmy air followed by a dip in the warm sea after riding the previous 4-5 months wearing full winter gear! April also brought the unofficial start of the BCC Thursday Morning Sunrise rides https://www.strava.com/activities/2299047313. Led by Craig S, these rides became a weekly staple for me in 2019 as I learned to drag my sorry ass out of bed at 4:55a to join a solid group of riders for a pre-work spin. As Summer progressed, ridership grew and we even got in some Friday morning rides, as well! These early mornings also provided me with numerous opportunities to capture some stunning Sunrises and Moonsets! Icing on the cake. https://ericvanwesenbeeck.tumblr.com/post/185114832427/recently-getting-into-the-routine-of-early April closed out with an awesome BCC volunteer group cleaning up the roadsides around Shanty Bay on a snow Sunday; part of our club’s yearly civic duty! The fifth month of the year usually brings a trip to Asheville, North Carolina with a cadre of the usual suspects from around town but this year it was not happening for me, having just returned from a week in the Carribean. Although May started kind of cold and dreary, some awesome riding began as BCC started regular Tuesday night rides and weekends offered opportunities for some long rides onto the Niagara Escarpment https://www.strava.com/activities/2381124819 with good friends and strong riders. Regular evening cruises along the Barrie Waterfront always brings me to randomly meet people or to see interesting scenes of life on the lake. https://www.strava.com/activities/2394518921 The next month started with a bang with our annual Tour de Lake Simcoe https://www.strava.com/activities/2415506469 on June first. Not for lack of effort, I only managed to get one other person out on the road with me. Well, when that person is Joe F, you end up with a rocket ride around the lake that left me sucking Joe’s wheel for an hour before he pulled away seemingly effortlessly for the last 20 kilometres! It turned out to be the smallest Tour group ever but the fastest Lake Simcoe circumnavigation I have ever ridden, with a blistering pace finishing the 200 kilometer rip in well under six hours. As the daylight got longer and the weather finally started to warm up in June, my rides got longer and faster. We had some great BCC rides as younger riders returned from school and the Tuesday night A-rides began to feel like a Runaway Train https://www.strava.com/activities/2443067914. All these fast, longer rides led us perfectly to the Summer Solstice on which the Toronto-Niagara Falls-Toronto Hairshirt Ride https://www.strava.com/activities/2475551164 is always scheduled. This was my third T-N-T Hairshirt Ride and it was hands-down the fastest! For the first half of the ride, I got caught up in the lead group which was more like a pro peleton, or so I imagine, because we completed the first 160 km in four hours!! While I stopped to fill my empty bottles, this group rode on to clock the fastest Hairshirt elapsed time in its 41 year history, smashing the record by riding 320 kilometers in 8h32m! Rolling with these guys for half the ride helped me to finish with a solid PB: elapsed time of 10h34m in spite of a broken rear derailleur with 120 km to go! June ended with my first of many “Rip ‘n’ Dips” https://www.strava.com/activities/2492727403 in 2019, enjoying the refreshing Kempenfelt Bay waters after an excellent escape on my bike. https://ericvanwesenbeeck.tumblr.com/post/186829227637/beautiful-sunset-today-as-i-cooled-off-in-the-bay July was full of fabulous riding, often with the Barrie Cycling Club during the week and then out for adventures on the weekends with some really inspiring, like minded people. One of these weekends was the first annual Hairshirt North double century ride around Simcoe County https://www.strava.com/activities/2532969425, showcasing the beautiful waterfronts we enjoy all around us! Eleven people started out and six people finished the full 320 km route on a pretty much perfect Summer’s day. I was rather stoked to ride with such a strong group on this inaugural ride, which I hope to make an annual event. Mark your calendars for July 12, 2020! Looking back on August immediately brings to mind one very special ride: the Terrific Tarmac Team Time Trial! https://www.strava.com/activities/2610234053 This ride is arguably, the highlight of the season for me. Exhausting but exhilarating. Four very determined and capable riders - Jason M, Steve E, Joe F and I - met up early on Sunday morning with one goal in mind: completing a 100 kilometre route in two and a half hours. This goal would require some serious suffering and some tactical teamwork. Sunny skies and very little wind definitely helped! We didn’t quite reach our goal but we came damn close at 2h33m, leaving us all the more determined to go for it again in 2020. This last month of Summer also provided some wonderful rides with family. Brothers Benjamin and Peter were in town and we got in some nice tours; I also managed some terrific tandem rides with my Mom. At eighty-four, she has trouble riding solo now as her strength and balance diminish however, her desire to be active outdoors is so strong and riding on the back with me she is able to pedal for quite a while! We enjoyed some memorable tours together around Barrie and the Bay on my now classic Motobecane bicycle built for two. https://www.strava.com/activities/2651817254 September and October made for some solid solo riding as several of my fellow riders headed to the south of France to ride in the mountains. I like solo riding a lot, so this was a chance to do my thing and keep fit for the Tour de T1D https://www.strava.com/activities/2750522352 organized by BCC’s very own Richard G and his wife, Darlene. This was a beautiful and challenging 100k route through the hills of Oro-Medonte raising over $47k for the Youth Diabetic Clinic at RVH, a worthy local cause! https://www.facebook.com/tourdet1d/ It was a really fun event with many friends from BCC participating. I plan to be there again on September 27, 2020! November and early December saw some spectacular Saturday morning group runs with a small gang of BCC friends looking to stay active as the cycling season wound down. We enjoyed early morning meet ups at the Spirit Catcher followed by easy runs around Barrie’s Waterfront paths https://www.strava.com/activities/2885344747. Unfortunately, as I headed into December my knees started chirpin’ at me as old injuries were aggravated by the pounding of the longer runs I was doing. So, I backed off and enjoyed the daily walking as I commuted back and forth to my work and let my knees settle down a little. In early December, I prepped and waxed my classic cross country skis but with a very hectic pace at work and at home, I haven’t yet used them! In the meantime, a mild Christmas holiday week has allowed me one last run of Winter riding before the year is out. https://www.strava.com/activities/2963626488 As usual, cycling was a big part of my daily work and leisure again in 2019. These activities inevitably bring me to meet new people on the road - Max R, Tyler D, Craig L, Todd R, Les - and several new BCC members. The cycling community I find myself in also has some very inspiring individuals! Max R and Larry O, whom I have ridden with in the TNT Hairshirt rides, were both inspiring in their completion of the world renowned Paris-Brest-Paris 1200 kilometer epic tour! Avery G inspires me as a young man building a career in cycling that I only dreamed of at his age - as a bicycle mechanic for touring teams and as an incredible rider in his own right, on the trails as well as on the road. Joe F and Todd R who completed their first Hairshirt rides in stellar form. Jenn J who seems to effortlessly pick up a new sport and within a season is competing at a top national level in it! Trevor O who races with the best in North America, especially inspiring in his crit performances. Eric J and Tyler M who inspired me to reconsider my days-of-old penchant for bike-packing with their three day epic road tour https://lostconglomerate.com/pages/joe-ride through Ontario cottage country. Mark L who “vEverested” https://www.strava.com/activities/2074501841 on a 12h43m epic virtual adventure that had him climb over 8900 metres in a single ride! I am also inspired by the new riders this season who stepped out of their comfort zone and into the world of cycling, which can be intimidating at first but opens up so many new experiences and relationships. With retirement now on my radar, I am inspired by recently retired Carol and Tony who are seizing life by the ball bearings and living their cycling dreams. And so, as we breakaway from 2019, I want to thank you all for your shared passion for cycling. Whether it’s commuting, recreation, racing, endurance, adventure, gravel, trails, roads or cruising, we all have this one simple thing in common. I am grateful for covering so many miles uninjured and in good health in 2019. I am grateful for the fun and fitness, competition and companionship that cycling with you all has brought me over these past twelve months. I hope to see each of you at some point in 2020 on two wheels to nowhere. https://ericvanwesenbeeck.tumblr.com/

0 notes

petitalbert-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Structure Is Good For Me

Here is a problem I've had, which you may be having too.

When I first got in, one of the statements which came up a lot was "Paganism is never a once a week affair!" - which I think is pretty rude to Christians, on reflection. but what that translated into for me was, spending hardly any spiritual time because it's not expected.

Which is weird because hmmm for most people of faith it is entirely normal to pray twice a day (or more!), and spend at least Sunday morning at church (or equivalent). Whereas I'd say in Paganism, it is more normal to feel bad about not having a regular practice.

One of the problems is: being a Pagan is typically MUCH more hard work than any of those other religions. Think about Christianity. You already know who your deities are, you likely have a local church leader who plans sermons and prayer AS THEIR FULL TIME JOB, you have a book of trad prayers and hymns you can simply use, and a holy book with all your key information in it. As a Pagan, you almost certainly have none of these things. And then when we get into ritual, it's often super involved: research, props, expenditure of energy, lighting candles, making and sharing food, it's freakin tiring especially as a spoonie perennially short of spoons and bad at executive function. Getting through rituals is so tough for me; fex, I've abandoned the need for ritual cleanliness in recent years just because having a bath or shower is so draining. I think Paganism focuses a lot on the presence of the gods to a detrimental effect - does that make any kind of sense? My mum is a Methodist and I'm sure she's never heard the voice of Jesus, she just prays and then done. We could stand to do a lot more of that casual, informal, few-words-of-prayer style, and save The Big Rituals, the ones where you dance until divinity arrives, for special occasions. Not least because it'll make 99% of pagans feel less inadequate when they hear nothing. Like, we don't need to hear a reply to do meaningful rites. The rites themselves have power: they demonstrate our commitment, and they help us focus on the divine, and those two things are important even if you're certain you did not get Anubus to manifest with you.

So you're doing more work than those other guys to begin with, and experiencing extreme choice paralysis between ALL the options of who to worship and how. Especially with background beliefs about fate and destiny and Finding The One. I often think it'd be better for new Pagans, instead of being told "it takes time to discover your path and your gods!", be simply handed "Spend six months in the Golden Dawn, revering Thoth" entirely at random. It'd be good to think, like we think of life partners, that there is no One path - but many potential Ones out there, and it's good to invest in the ones you see in front of you at least in the short term rather than waiting for Mr Right or your soulmate.

So that's three big barriers, formed from our three freedoms. Choice paralysis, low/no expectations, and the additional work we have to do vs members of a major religion taking up some of that time.

And basically I've solved it by putting the structure back in. As much as Paganism doesn't "need" regular structure - I do.

For me, ritual structure means a DAILY, WEEKLY and MONTHLY practice, and even though that sounds intense, and like it'd be more discouraging to fail at than succeed, when you start thinking about how Christians etc practice and basing off them it does become easier.

DAILY for me is 2x5 minute somethings. Here's a shortlist of ideas: I do the top two:

Time spent sitting outside

gratitude for my senses (i.e. when seeing something lovely, feeling happy, eating something nice, essentially doing mindfulness etc)

doing meditation

doing a one-card tarot reading

lighting a candle to a Power, feeding a spirit, tending their altar

saying a prayer

tending your plants

Or abiding by a taboo or promise, and using that to keep the spiritual in mind.

WEEKLY for me is one morning a week, and again I'm basing this off my memory of what Sunday School felt like. It's good to designate A Morning for this, not just "when I have time this week", or a regular evening slot, the same time every week. Time spent:

going for a walk in a natural area ("Spend time with the gods")

reading a book/articles/learning more about Pagan things ("Listening to a sermon")

Doing something to please your spirits, for example swimming for Poseidon, dancing for Bes, programming for Thoth, some hobby which helps you experience their attributes or gifts OR like charity work, such as working food bank for Demeter, something in Their name("Putting a coin on the charity plate")

Making a craft project or engaging with the divine in other ways, like writing a hymn or making a mask or an altar cloth.

Planning big rituals

Doing a "regular circle" - you know, just casting one up, eating with the divine, chatting, but not doing anything solemn and not caring over-much about feeling the divine or hearing them

Doing a spell

MONTHLYish is when I do big rituals - either a Sabbat, a Full or a Dark moon. These rituals do take work, esp as a solitary, and I hardly manage all of them because life. It gets easier if you write A Moon Rite or A Midsummer Rite and repeat it each year. And that's when I take things v seriously, try and take a bath, try and reach trance, try to call the divine and experience their presence in the way Pagans Are Supposed To and so on, or doing a freakin serious spell to coincide with a key date or time or phase.

With the exception of a big monthly ritual, setting aside that kind of time wouldn't be weird for members of any other religion - I think we are just facing unique challenges, and a unique like religious history/context which makes it a lot harder to do. And for me at least, having that structure and comparing myself to what other lay-members of a faith would be doing, helps.

I guess tl;dr is, I did well by a) trying to make worship far more casual and less ritualised, and b) setting a weekly structure based on what I can see Christians achieve, and it's working well for me to solve some problems inherent in Paganism. If you have these problems too, I hope these are helpful ideas.

#paganism

39 notes · View notes

itstimeforafrika · 8 years ago

Text

May 28th 2017 Sunday

Long post warning!

SO much has happened!

So we finished posting, which means bringing all the new volunteers to their villages. It went pretty smoothly with the exception of two sites who didn’t finish the volunteer’s house, but it worked out in the end as it always does.

I came down to Lusaka with the rest of my intake for our COS (Close of Service) Conference. This conference is for when there are 3 months left in our service. It acts as a last celebration when we’re all together (a good number of volunteers early COS for school or jobs). We discuss our future plans, and reflect on our service. Our Conference took place at Chaminuka lodge, which, if you’ve ever stayed there you know, is super bwana (Bemba for fancy and western). The food was AMAZING. We got three course meals and all the cheese you can imagine. We did a game drive, which I actually don’t recommend coming there to do. They have all the regular animals but all of the big cats were kept in enclosures which made a lot of us feel a little uncomfortable. We also did a cheese and wine tasting. I’m pretty sure the wine was the same as the boxed wine I buy in the boma, but there were like 13 different types of cheese. Super fancy. We had a candlelight ceremony where we all talked about how much we liked each other. Cheesy (no pun intended) but it did make most of us tear up. It’s been so sad saying goodbye to people. Especially people I know live far away and I probably won’t see again stateside.

To my friends and family back in America. We had a session about readjusting to American life, and reconnecting to Americans. We heard testimonials from RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers). I posted on Facebook how I was anxious about returning and I got a few friends and family members messaging me telling me they’re excited for me to return and how it will be great. It’s going to be hard. Really hard. I’m telling you that now. Just my transition from my hut to living in a Zambian town/city has been a hard adjustment, so I imagine it will be harder when I get back to America. It’s little things. Like seeing water being wasted and knowing how I had to haul my own everytime I wanted to even wash a dish. Or hearing town children whining about how they can’t buy the cool new toy and knowing how my host siblings used to mold toys out of leftover wire they found. Or seeing everyone I loved age two years. Or throwing in a Bemba phrase and having no one understand what I mean. Or going to buy an apple and knowing I used to buy them for 30 cents. Or people calling Africa a county. Or going to the supermarket and seeing a whole aisle dedicated to cereal (often used as an example of things that gave RPCVs anxiety.) I’m a different person since being here. How I view the world has changed. Please be patient with me. Understand readjusting will be even harder than adjusting to coming to Zambia.

On Friday I went back to visit my host family from training. It was a good but strange experience. You realize how almost staged your training host family is. My host family has had 3 volunteers after me and I was number 4. I’m becoming just a number to them. Don’t get me wrong, they still welcomed me like family. Bamayo is such an amazing woman. She’s so strong and in control and I wish she was my host mother for my whole service. I walked in and she was immediately concerned at how much skinnier I look from when I was last there 2 years ago. She then proceeded to feed me three dinners. I saw three out of four of my host sisters. All two years older. They’ve grown up so much, and their English was so good. They asked me if I was going to stay with them all week and it broke my heart to tell them I had to leave the next morning. My little host nephew who couldn’t even walk or talk when I left is now running around and speaking like he’s the man of the house. It was all so much to take it. It gave me a little taste of how overwhelming it will be to see friends and family back in America after two years.

Yesterday I went to the Dutch market near the PC office. It was pretty good. It’s hard seeing so many nice things and knowing we can’t afford them on our PC allowance. One day. We also went paintballing for my friend birthday yesterday. My first time firing anything that resembles a gun and I confirmed that I do not like it very much. Good to know though. We ended the day by getting 3 beer towers at Keg and Lion. I’m still in Lusaka for VAC (Volunteer Advisory Committee) meetings this week. As a PCVL (Peace Corps Volunteer Leader) I’m now on VAC and that means I get to talk to staff about volunteer’s concerns and complaints. Fun.

I’m starting to plan out my COS trip. I’m really excited. For everyone back home I’m planning on returning the end of October. I want to see as many people as possible. I plan on taking a road trip up to Boston and maybe New Hampshire or Vermont in November, and maybe even down to DC to see some RPCVs if I have time.

Hope everyone is well. Until next time.

#y2 #lusaka #zambia #pc #peace corps #pcz #peace corps zambia #volunteer #anxiety #safari

1 note · View note

kuwaiti-kid · 5 years ago

Text

This White Man’s Journey to Understanding Racism in America

These are incredibly challenging times right now, aren’t they? For months now, we’ve been dealing with COVID-19 and the isolation that comes with it. As if that weren’t enough, we’ve had three racially motivated killings during the same time.

Ahmaud Arbery was gunned down by a father and son, one of whom is a retired police officer.

Breanna Taylor was shot in her apartment (8 or more times) while in bed. They said they were searching for a suspect who allegedly was already in custody (according to a lawsuit filed).

And the final, most egregious of them all was the murder of George Floyd. A Minneapolis police officer held his knee on this man’s neck for over 8 minutes, suffocating and killing him senselessly while other officers stood by and watched. The look on his face and the lack of emotion in what he was doing was stunning.

I’m Angry

As I’ve watched the outrage on the news and, more importantly, on social media, I’ve been surprised, amazed, and, if I’m honest, pretty angry about what I’ve seen.

During the most recent killing of innocent black men and women, I’ve seen many people, especially white people, like me, asking what they can do. That’s good. We should be asking that question. We should have been asking that question and doing something about it for years.

Conversely, I’ve seen far too many people expressing uninformed, often harsh opinions on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. They express outrage over what’s happening. They shame people who don’t feel that outrage. That self-righteousness grates on me.

Over the past few years, that’s the pattern I’ve observed. Another police officer kills an innocent black man or woman. Media goes into a feeding frenzy over it. Everyone suddenly expresses outrage that this is happening and goes out of their way to show their anger.

A Pattern Repeats Itself

Here’s the question – Where have they been over the last several decades? Do they think this is something new? If so, that’s sad. It’s been going on for hundreds of years.

Here’s another question. Will the outrage be different this time? Will it turn into action after the news dies down? Because so far, that hasn’t been true. As one involved in this battle, it’s pretty hard to see this pattern repeating itself yet again.

I’m hoping that hearing the story of how I went from an indifferent, disconnected, and a biased white person to the man I am today will offer some answers as to what you (we) as a majority community can do to affect change. I’m no saint. Nor do I have all the answers. If we’re honest with ourselves, all of us have racism in our hearts at some level.

For those asking the question of what they can do, I will share my ideas in this post. My comments are based solely on personal experience. Take it or leave it. It’s up to you. And I will not try to shame you for what you are or aren’t doing right now.

With that wordy intro, let’s get started.

A Sheltered Childhood

Who am I? I’m a white male Baby Boomer. I grew up in Zionsville, IN, an all-white community just outside of Indianapolis. The only time I saw black people were on the news, usually those arrested for committing a crime of some sort. The other times were on the basketball court when my HS team played a Marion County school that had black players. There were no schools in Boone County, where Zionsville was, or most any other school on our regular basketball schedule.

I heard and was a part of tasteless jokes about blacks. The N-word was common among friends. I never had a black friend. Nor had I ever had a meaningful conversation with anyone of color. I suspect many of you who are reading this grew up in similar circumstances, whether you are black, brown, Asian, white, or any other ethnicity, likely hung out and grew up with people of the same or similar ethnicity and background.

We don’t have a choice where we grow up. That choice comes when we’re on our own.

Relationships Matter

It seems that many of us form opinions about other people groups based on information we get from other people, be it friends, the mainstream media, or social media.

That brings up a question I asked myself many years ago.

If, as a white person, I don’t have relationships with African Americans, how can I form such strong opinions and stereotypes about them? Where did I get the information that shapes those stereotypes and views? If it’s from the media, how do you think it gets portrayed? Do you ever see the media show blacks in a good light? Rarely.

In most cases, they show blacks at their worst. They emphasize gangs, guns, and violence. The portrayal is of a group of people who are criminals to be feared.

That was my view for the longest time too. I had no relationships with anyone of another race, let alone another culture. There were no blacks in my neighborhood, my town, my school, or anywhere around me. Even in college, nothing changed. I hung out with people who looked like me. I was oblivious to the concerns I heard on the news from blacks about being mistreated. It didn’t affect me, so I didn’t pay attention to it.

The Awakening

When my wife, Cathy, and I moved to Indianapolis from where we were living in Bloomington, IN, we started attending Second Presbyterian Church (Second). My brother and his wife attended there. We were looking for a church, so we gave it a try. That was in 1984. Second Pres. was one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the city. That didn’t include us but did include many of the area’s business and civic leaders.

The former Mayor of Indianapolis, William Hudnut, was the pastor at Second before becoming Mayor. The CEO of Ely Lilly, some of the city’s top lawyers, doctors, and business leaders, were members and in leadership at Second.

The Event that Changed Us

A Senseless Killing

Somewhere around 1987, racial tensions in the city were escalating (sound familiar?). During that time, Michael Taylor, a seventeen-year-old boy, was arrested. I don’t remember the reason for the arrest. He was handcuffed and sitting in the back of a police car. Somehow, he ended up shot and killed while handcuffed in the back seat of the police cruiser.

Protests began immediately. Leaders of black churches raised their voices. After the police investigated the killing, they determined that Michael Taylor had somehow committed suicide with the police officer’s gun while handcuffed, hands behind his back, in the back seat of the police car. I’m not joking. That’s what they drummed up at the time.

Tensions went through the roof. The Mayor of Indianapolis at the time, Stephen Goldsmith, called together white and black pastors of the largest and most influential churches in the city asking for help. It was there that our pastor, William Enright, met the pastor of Light of the World Christian Church, T. Garrot Benjamin. After the meeting, Tom Benjamin invited Bill Enright to do something together as churches.

In typical grand thinking, pastor Benjamin suggested the two churches shut down their doors on Easter Sunday and do a joint worship service in one of their churches. He was ready to roll. Since Bill’s church is Presbyterian, run by elders, and required to do things “decently and in order,” Bill told Tom he liked the idea, but it would take some time to work through the system.

The Planning Begins

I don’t recall exactly how long it took, but it was at least a year before anything got scheduled. A group of people from each church got together to talk about and plan an event. It was during this time that I met Andy Hunt.

Andy was the business manager for Light of the World Church. He and his wife Sandra and their three children moved to Indy from Atlanta for Andy to take that position. More on that shortly.

Our group met regularly and finally came up with a plan. We would hold a joint worship service, not on Easter, but a regular Sunday at Clowes Hall on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis. We scheduled the event and continued meeting to plan the details.

The Celebration of Hope

The name for the event was The Celebration of Hope. We felt it captured what we were trying to portray. The hope that blacks and whites could come together in unity to worship, pray, and fellowship together. And that’s precisely what we did.

It was a beautiful experience. Our two choirs, with entirely different styles, sang together. Ushers from each church led people to seats. Elders from both churches served communion. We took an offering that day. It was divided equally between the two churches.

James Forbes, who at the time pastored Riverside Church in NY City, gave the message.

The auditorium was packed. Most of us in attendance had never experienced a worship service like it.

Relationships Begin

I mentioned that I met Andy Hunt during the planning meetings. He and I hit it off almost immediately. We decided it would be good to get our wives together for a meal. So we did. Cathy and Sandra hit it off as well.

As we talked about the event, we realized something was missing. It was great to get together in large groups for a single event. But what we needed was to build personal relationships with each other.

To accomplish that, we decided to start a dinner group with couples from each church. At its peak, we had six or seven couples who were part of it. We met for dinner monthly. A different couple hosted each month. We continued meeting for a couple of years. It was a fantastic experience for all of us.

We learned that, despite our different backgrounds and experiences, we had far more in common than differences. We all loved our kids. Many had struggled with jobs, finances, relationships, etc. There was one difference. For the first time, the whites in the group heard about what it’s like to be black in a predominantly white world.

It was eye-opening and shocking to most of us. We had no idea what blacks, especially black males, had to deal with daily. Remember, we all came together after the Michael Taylor shooting. For blacks, this was a regular part of their lives. Fear of that happening to them was real. For whites, we thought it was an isolated incident. How wrong we were.

A Moment of Truth

Andy and I continued to meet for lunch, and the four of us for dinner fairly regularly. But there was something that was bothering me about his and my relationship. I would talk to him about pressing issues in my life. He listened, but I always felt he kept a distance. As time went on, I continued to feel like he was holding me at arm’s length.

Finally, I’d had enough. Keep in mind; this was before email, texting, and the things we take for granted today. So, I sent Andy a letter. In the letter, I told him I was tired of trying to get close to him and to get pushed away continually. I said I wasn’t looking for any more shallow, surface relationships. I already had plenty of those. But if he wanted to start opening up to me and share his life, I was all in. I told him I didn’t know what his problem was, but that I didn’t cause it.

As soon as Andy got the letter, I got a phone call from him. He was on the verge of tears and asked if we could have lunch. We went to Hoolihan’s a couple of days later, where he finally opened his heart and told me his story.

Crying Over Nachos

Andy and Sandy were in the process of moving to Atlanta. That’s where Sandra’s family lives. They just had their first child, Drew. Sandy and Drew went back to Atlanta while Andy stayed behind in California to finalize things with his job.

Sandra’s mother loved Drew. It was her first grandchild. When she and Drew were together, grandma had Drew in her arms. One Saturday afternoon, they decided to visit a new mall that opened up in Cobb County. So Sandra, Drew, grandma, and grandpa got in the car and headed to the mall.

As they pulled on to the ramp to the mall exit, a car full of young white men pulled beside them. They rolled down the windows and yelled the following: “What are you n***ers doing up here in Cobb County. You got your own n***er malls where you come from. You need to get your asses back to your n***er malls and get out of Cobb County.”

Grandpa decided he needed to defend the honor of his family. So he was going after the boys. In the back seat, grandma said to Sandra, “take Drew.” Remember, that was something that just didn’t happen. Drew and his grandma were inseparable. She passed Drew to Sandra, had a massive heart attack and died in the back seat of the car.

As Andy told this story, I was balling like a baby. He could barely get the story out himself. What came next changed the nature of our relationship forever. He told me that after that happened to Sandra’s grandmother, he’s hated white people ever since. He said words that resonate with me to this day. I use them often. He said I let an incident become an indictment. The incident killed Drew’s grandmother. He indicted all white people as a result—powerful and poignant words.

Changed Hearts and a Changed Relationship

That lunch happened almost thirty years ago. Other than my wife, Andy, is my closest friend in the world. He is truly a brother from another mother. The four of us have walked through life together ever since. We have vacationed together almost every year for the last twenty years.

One of the life missions for Andy and me is to do what we can to foster racial reconciliation. We have been a part of starting three Great Banquet ministries. The Great Banquet is a three day spiritual renewal weekend. Other versions you may have heard of ar Walk to Emmaus, the Catholic Cursillo, and the Tres Dias.

In 1995, I attended my first Great Banquet. Ironically, it was in Zionsville, IN. That’s the small white town where I grew up. I invited Andy to go there several times. He always had an excuse for why he couldn’t attend. Once we started a community at Second, he and one of our other mutual friends from Light of the World church finally participated.

The Truth Comes Out

I later learned the reason they wouldn’t go to Zionsville. It was because of its reputation as a racist, all-white town. Once it moved to Second, they were all in!

That community now has probably around 3,000 or more members. Andy and Bill, our other friend, invited dozens of people from Light of the World church to the Banquet weekends. What started as an all-white group, now boasts a diversity that probably consists of 40% or more people of color. They’ve gone on to do more things together as churches. May personal friendships across racial lines now exist.

When Cathy and I moved to Northern Virginia in 1998, we started another Great Banquet out here. Our first weekend was in October 2001, right after the 911 terrorist attacks. One of our primary goals was to build a racially, diverse community. God has blessed that goal. Once again, with intentionality, the local community is close to 2,000 strong and of a similar level of diversity. Because it’s in NOVA, that diversity expands beyond blacks to include many Latinos and Asian Americans.

It Starts with Relationships

By now, many of you might be wondering what’s the point of all of this. That’s a legitimate question.

Here’s the point. If whites and blacks don’t start building relationships with one another on a personal level, I don’t see how meaningful change takes place.

When our opinions come, not out of our personal experience, but from media or others, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to have empathy and understanding of the pain of our black and brown brothers and sisters.

Until the Celebration of Hope and my friendship with Andy, I certainly didn’t. The result of that friendship has changed my life. It’s changed Cathy and Sandra’s lives as well. It’s made it easier for me to develop relationships with other people of color. It gives me a perspective of events I see that I would never have without these relationships. There is absolutely no way I’d have the empathy I do without hearing Andy’s and others’ stories. It puts faces with the struggles. I hear real-life, often chilling accounts of what they deal with daily.

Where to Start

At times like these, many people want to know what they can do; where to start. Here’s my suggestion. If you’re white, you know someone, either at work, at your kids’ schools, sports, or somewhere who is black or brown. Pick up the phone today and call them. Don’t worry about what to say. Keep it simple. Ask how they’re doing with everything going on right now. Ask them if you can have a cup of coffee (socially distant, of course) to chat.

You don’t have to have any profound conversation planned in your head. Just say you’d like to get to know them better. Let them know you stand with them in their pain. Ask them how you can support them. Be willing to hear their passion, rage, tears, or whatever comes up. Understand that for them, the George Floyd murder was the tipping point. It’s the accumulation of decades of discrimination, of life devalued and being thought of as lesser than.

A pastor friend of mine said it best. Just engage in the ministry of presence. Be with them in their pain.

Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

African Americans are tired. They are tired of being pulled over for DWB (driving while black), tired of having conversations with their sons about how to behave if you’re pulled over by police, tired of wondering whether their sons will come home that night.

They are tired of being followed in stores, tired of having to explain why they’re walking in your neighborhood, which also happens to be theirs. A friend gets a visit by the local police almost every time a new owner moves into his neighborhood on his street. It usually goes something like this. He’s out working in the yard, or even walking down his driveway. The new neighbor calls the cops to report a man who appears to be doing something untoward. They know Dave well. Many have been to his house before. But because they were called, they have to respond. So they come, have a brief conversation, and report to the new neighbor they live there.

They are tired of gentrification, being pushed out of their homes and neighborhoods in the name of economic development.

They are tired of being turned down for loans, even though they have the same income, credit scores, and qualifications. If you don’t know this history, research redlining, a policy that kept blacks from buying houses, one of the most significant sources of wealth for white Americans.

They are tired of being overlooked for promotions for jobs in which they are equally or even more qualified than their white counterparts. I have not only read about all of this, but I’ve heard personal stories from people I know.

Getting Defensive

Don’t get defensive if that’s what you hear. Even though it may not feel real or right to you, it is real to them. Think about it. As a white father, have you ever had to have that conversation with your son? I know I haven’t. It’s not something that ever crossed my mind. But every African American father I’ve met has had that conversation with their sons.

Please understand. I don’t offer these things as some sort of expert on the topic. I’m not. In the years I’ve spent with Andy, Sandra, and many other African Americans, these are some of the things I’ve come to know. They come from conversations with many people with whom I’ve developed relationships over the years.

Two Types of Responses

I’ve seen two types of responses from whites during this and other times of police killings of blacks. The first, and most damaging, is the opinionated, self-righteous person who spouts off about blacks being their own worst enemies; that if they’d just comply with police, they wouldn’t get killed. Or one of the favorites, something like, “I don’t know why they’re bitching all the time. They have the same opportunities the rest of us do.” These words have to be coming from people who have never had a meaningful conversation or relationships with a black or brown person. Because if they did, there is no way those words would cross their lips.

The other response and one I appreciate is, “what can I do?” I hope the suggestions above provide some ideas. Sometimes, we make things more complicated than they are. We want to make a big difference. Start with one person. See where that goes. You’d be surprised at what you will learn. But it won’t happen overnight. Andy’s and my story is a perfect example of that. The person you’re sitting across from has lots of years of mistrust for white people built into their lives. It’s not personal. Be patient, and keep showing up.

Final Thoughts

The most important thing I’ve learned and been the most grieved about is that this is a way of life for black and brown people every day. We are all stirred by the senseless and inhuman murder of George Floyd. Remember Michael Taylor, the death that birthed the Celebration of Hope and my friendship with Andy and his family. That was 1987. Redlining started in the Roosevelt administration. Woodrow Wilson screened the Birth of a Nation in the White House. If you don’t know what that is, look it up.

Racism is in the very fabric of America. Is it better? Yes? Is it over? Not by a long shot. It won’t end until whites get involved and demand changes. What you’re witnessing now in cities across the country is a release of hundreds of years of frustration and anger at a system that refuses to change. It’s a shame that people are destroying businesses and looting stores. That’s criminal and, for many, reinforces the stereotypes many whites have of blacks.

But let’s not be too quick to judge. Put yourselves in their shoes. Peaceful protests have not brought about meaningful changes. When another police murder happens, the pent up frustration reaches a peak. When there are three in a row like now, it can and did reach a breaking point.

They want and deserve change; to be treated with respect; to feel like their lives mean something in a free society. I’m asking my white brothers and sisters to join me in saying, we hear you. We value and stand with you. We will walk with you in pushing for changes that make a difference.

If we do that, things can and will change. If we don’t, I’m afraid what we’re seeing now will be the way of life for the foreseeable future.

The post This White Man’s Journey to Understanding Racism in America appeared first on Your Money Geek.

from Your Money Geek https://ift.tt/2MmRo55 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Your Money Geek

0 notes

lalka-laski · 5 years ago

Text

Has the person you like ever seen you in your pajamas? I wore the same pajamas for over 48 hours straight this week so uh, yeah. He’s most definitely seen me in my pajamas. Did the last person you kissed celebrate your last birthday with you? Yes we did! It was our first year *officially* celebrating our birthdays together (we’re 10 days apart) and it was wonderful! What’s the first word of the last text message you received? Almond Do you think you’ve changed at all over the past year? In pretty miraculous ways. This past year was one of tremendous growth and triumph for me. Is there a song that reminds you of your ex? Do you still listen to that song? Let’s NOT EVEN go there...

Did you tag anyone in your last Facebook status? Actually yes. It was a quiz to find out which Tiger King cast member you are and I had to tag my fellow obsessed friends. How do you behave when you’re drunk? I can be a bit of a wild card, but I only ever act as an amplified version of who I already am. So I either cry a LOT (either happy or sad tears), sing and dance and dance a lot, or worry obsessively. All of those are regular habits of mine, I just do them more intensely when drunk. What color was the last car you travelled in? Gray What is your least favorite type of chocolate? I like all chocolate! I used to hate dark chocolate but I’ve developed an appreciation for it as I’ve grown older. When was the last time you felt disappointed? What was the reason? This morning when I checked my bank account expecting to see a check that wasn’t there... Is there someone that can make you smile, even when you feel like crying? My Hannah <3 Is there a certain person on your mind right now? Tell me about him/her. Well NOW I’m thinking of Hannah... You’re getting ready to go to bed, and the last person you kissed shows up, what do you do? I kiss him goodnight because that’s a nightly occurrence What was your last thought before you went to bed last night? My head was throbbing because I drank too much wine Do you think someone is thinking about you right now? Maybe Are you okay right now? I am doing ok, all things considered. But my daily anxiety is still higher than ever and the stresses of the world weigh heavy on me. But I take comfort in the fact that everyone else is struggling with the same worries right now. Do you get along with girls? Absolutely, and I can’t stand a “I don’t like hanging out with girls! They’re too much drama” type bitch. What time did you get up today? 8ish I think When was the last time you saw your mom? Yesterday very very briefly. We had to stay 6 feet away from one another so we just waved. It was a sad feeling. What is the last thing you drank today? I’m sipping a Double IPA right now Do you dislike/hate anyone? I don’t wanna get into it Where is your best friend right now? They’re all at their respective homes, where we are all supposed to be! When will your next kiss be? Probably in a few minutes Will you be up before 7 am tomorrow? I’ve been waking up anywhere between 6-9 lately. But I’m on no schedule so it doesn’t even matter Does anyone completely understand you? I’m not complicated and I wear my heart on my sleeve. So, most people understand me. Who was the last girl you hugged outside of family? I haven’t hugged anyone in a long time thanks to Covid-19. It’s real tough for me because I’m a major hugger. What are you listening to right now? Glenn’s watching “The Resident” Have you held hands with somebody in the past three days? My babe What will you be doing in 3 hours? I will either be doing exactly what I’m doing now or I’ll be sleeping How often do you straighten your hair? It’s naturally pin-straight so I have no need to What are you currently looking forward to? This quarantine getting lifted and life as we know it resuming. I have no idea when that may be though Who did you last hang out with? Glenn, right now. Doesn’t intentional bad grammar annoy you? Honestly, not really. Language is fluid. It’s flexible. Did anyone see your last kiss? Nope. Could things possibly get any better? In terms of the world um yeah, they fucking better. Do you know who you’ll even kiss next? Nope. Not a single clue. *Stares directly at my boyfriend sitting across from me* Do you ever sleep in jeans? I would rather die tbh Whose birthday is coming up? My friend Jessica’s birthday is soonest Name something you dislike about the day you’re having? Well I’m not allowed to leave the apartment so, that. But really I can’t complain too much. I’m safe and healthy. Did you get a full 8 hours of sleep last night? I did not. But I’ve been napping frequently during the day so I make up for it. Are you in love lately? ”Lately” is a weird add-on word. But yes, I am in love. How often do you see your ex? I saw my high school boyfriend a couple weekends ago at a bar crawl. We actually had a good conversation that answered a lot of my lingering questions. Where did you buy the shirt you’re wearing now? My dad bought it for me Who was the last person to text you? My college friends groupchat: Blonde Squad 505 (No, we are not serious about that nickname. Just to clarify...) Do you believe in love? I’m living it! Do you curse a lot? I actually just said today that I’m cursing a lot more lately than normal Did you like anyone last summer? I sure hope my boyfriend did What’s the closest red object to you? My sweatshirt Who have you texted in the last 48 hours? Every person I’ve ever met pretty much. There’s nothing else to do! Last time you had a sleepover? I slept over my sister’s place over the weekend If the last person you dated said they were in love with you, what would you say? I wouldn’t believe it for a minute What kind of pets do you have? None at present Did you have a good day yesterday? It wasn’t bad. Every day pretty much bleeds together at this point. Do you replay things that have happened in your head? Like ya wouldn’t even believe. What are you doing Sunday? This! Who was the last person you stayed up with till 2am? Me and Glenn watched Tiger King ‘till nearly 3 am the other night. I normally am not one to binge watch anything but I couldn’t help myself with that mess. If you could get paid to do anything in the world, what would you do? Write articles Do your parents actually knock on your door before entering your room or just barge right in, instead? I don’t live at home anymore but when I did they were notorious for doing the knock-as-you-walk-in move. What would you do if it snowed right now? I wouldn’t give a shit because I can’t go anywhere anyways What do you want to be when you grow up? I always wanted to be a writer

0 notes

mastcomm · 5 years ago

Text

Kobe Bryant Saw His Greatness Mirrored in Gianna

The N.B.A. on Thursday is scheduled to announce the players chosen by Eastern and Western Conference coaches as All-Star Game reserves. On the internal calendar I keep, this is traditionally the ideal time to unveil my unofficial All-Star selections.

That won’t be happening this time.

In the wake of the horrific helicopter crash on Sunday that killed the legendary Kobe Bryant and eight others aboard, normal operations have been pretty much suspended for anyone who has anything to do with the N.B.A.

Bryant’s worldwide stature is obviously a huge part of that. He was one of the giants of this game, an immense figure globally, revered by the overwhelming majority of current N.B.A. players — and incomprehensibly struck down at the age of 41. Grief like this will not fade quickly.

It is doubly true in this case because Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, was on that helicopter with him.

Beloved by members of the University of Connecticut women’s basketball program, which she dreamed of joining someday, Gianna received a moving tribute from the team on Monday when it placed flowers and a UConn jersey bearing her No. 2 on the bench for an exhibition game against the United States national team.

“Mambacita is forever a Husky,” the school posted on Twitter, referring to the nickname that Kobe Bryant, the self-styled “Black Mamba,” had given the second-born of his four daughters.

Also on board were two of Gianna’s teammates from the AAU squad coached by her father: Alyssa Altobelli and Payton Chester. The lives of three teenage girls with so much to look forward were taken in the crash, along with those of Bryant; Alyssa’s parents, John and Keri; Payton’s mother, Sarah; Kobe’s assistant coach, Christina Mauser; and Ara Zobayan, who piloted the helicopter.

The list gets sadder every time it is recited.

Kobe Bryant was 17 when I met him, then freshly acquired by the Los Angeles Lakers. On Monday, I wrote about how he was convinced, from the first minute of his pro career, that he was bound for the Hall of Fame.

Bryant was equally convinced that Gianna was likewise destined for greatness. She was his ever-present companion at countless games in recent years — to watch her W.N.B.A. heroes, or the Huskies, or maybe on a special trip to see her favorite N.B.A. player: Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks.

Perhaps by now you have seen the clip of Kobe from his visit to the “Jimmy Kimmel Live” show in 2018, telling the world that Gianna bristled any time she heard a fan suggest to her father that he and his wife, Vanessa Bryant, needed to have a boy to uphold Kobe’s legacy.

“She’s like, ‘Oy, I got this,’” Bryant said of Gianna, then 12.

The last time I saw Kobe, on Dec. 29 at Staples Center, he had never looked more joyful. Wearing a bright orange hoodie and a green ski cap to rep his hometown Philadelphia Eagles, Bryant was sitting courtside beside Gianna as they watched — make that studied — the Lakers’ LeBron James and Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks going head-to-head.

Also in the building that night was God Shammgod, whose extraordinary dribbling ability made him a New York playground legend. Despite the briefest of N.B.A. playing careers, Shammgod has landed on the Mavericks’ staff as a player development coach — yet he remains so revered for his ball handling that, even in a coaching role, he has his own Puma signature shoe.

Days after that Lakers/Mavericks game, never realizing the sorrow that was looming, Shammgod told me some moving stories of his workouts with father and daughter — how he had the extraordinary opportunity to coach them both.

“I knew him when he wasn’t this Kobe,” Shammgod said. “He knew me when there was no Shammgod moves.”

In their high school days, Shammgod — then known as Shammgod Wells — wound up at an ABCD youth camp with Bryant in New Jersey. Kobe had spent some of his formative years in Italy, where his father, Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, was playing professionally, but Shammgod said Kobe’s fellow campers knew only that he had mostly played abroad somewhere.

“The boy from France,” Shammgod said. “That’s what we called him. After the first game, guys were saying, ‘Who’s this guy who actually thinks he’s Michael Jordan?’ He’s walking like Jordan, he’s doing every Jordan move, shooting all the balls.”

Bryant was clearly a special talent, but his ball handling was a weakness. Joe Bryant had noticed Shammgod’s slick handles and asked the 16-year-old if he could help Jellybean’s 15-year-old son.

Shammgod told the elder Bryant that he would be happy to work out with Kobe — at 6 the next morning. “I was thinking, ‘He’s not going to show,’” Shammgod said. “I get there and he’s already there.”

A bond was forged, and the two remained close. The friendship endured even as Bryant rose to stardom and his dribbling mentor was forced to scour the globe for jobs (in Poland, China, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Croatia) after an N.B.A. career that lasted just 20 games with the Washington Wizards in 1997-98.

During the All-Star break last February, Shammgod received an urgent summons from Bryant to Southern California. Kobe was now coaching Gianna’s travel team and wanted to introduce her and the rest of the squad to the move known in hoop parlance as “The Shammgod” — which requires the dribbler to bring the ball to the side with one hand to get the defender off balance, then snatch it back with the opposite hand to execute a crossover dribble. Oklahoma City’s Chris Paul and the Nets’ Kyrie Irving are two of the most accomplished modern practitioners.

Shammgod spent two days at Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

“When I say that’s all he wanted to do is dribbling, that’s all he wanted to do,” Shammgod said. “From 10 to 12 in the morning, then from 2 to 4. These girls were dribbling four hours straight without shooting the basketball.”

One-on-one tutorials with Gianna would soon follow. Shammgod said they had worked out about a dozen times over the past year. Kobe wanted to fly him in more often, but Shammgod said he had to remind him occasionally, “I work for the Mavs and I can’t leave.”

When the trio huddled at that Dec. 29 game at Staples, Gianna excitedly told the story of how she “did the Shammgod on this girl” in a recent game.

“She was so locked in,” Shammgod said. “Her mind-set was just like his mind-set.”

That was evident in a 2019 glimpse of Gianna on camera with the Las Vegas CBS affiliate during a trip to watch that season’s opener for the W.N.B.A.’s Las Vegas Aces. Explaining her fascination with film study, Gigi could not have sounded much more like her father when she said, “More information, more inspiration.”

Those of us who were there for the start of the Kobe Bean Bryant experience and watched him grow up can’t help but flash back to those early days now. Even though the journalism handbook says we’re supposed to be detached and unemotional — even at times like this — Bryant’s sudden death has been a gut punch for many scribes like me who covered him closely over the past two decades.

What messes me up most, though, is when I start thinking about Gianna Maria-Onore Bryant, her two teammates on that chopper and the shattered families that have to try to move on without them.

Gianna, Alyssa and Payton — gone at an age just a few years younger than Kobe was upon his league-shaking arrival in the N.B.A. So, so unspeakably cruel.

This newsletter is OUR newsletter. So please weigh in with what you’d like to see here. To get your hoops-loving friends and family involved, please forward this email to them so they can jump in the conversation. If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up here.

In tribute to Kobe Bryant and his second of two jersey numbers, we present a 24-item assemblage of standout statistics from his career with the Lakers.

Bryant was the youngest player in N.B.A. history when he made his regular-season debut for the Lakers on Nov. 3, 1996, at 18 years and 72 days old. A future teammate with the Lakers, Andrew Bynum, eventually became the youngest player in league history at 18 years and six days old when he made his debut in 2005.

Only four players — all big men — made the jump directly from high school to the pros before Bryant and Portland’s Jermaine O’Neal were selected in the 1996 N.B.A. draft. Those four predecessors: Moses Malone, Darryl Dawkins, Bill Willoughby and Kevin Garnett. Shawn Kemp sat out a year after graduating high school in 1988 before he was drafted in 1989 by Seattle.

1,346

Both of the Lakers’ rookies selected in the first round of the 1996 N.B.A. draft — Bryant (1,346) and Derek Fisher (915) — rank in the top five in club history in games played.

Bryant started only seven games in his first two N.B.A. seasons.

Bryant’s four air balls in a 1997 playoff game in Utah — one at the regulation buzzer and three in overtime — came against the same Jazz franchise he riddled for 60 points in his final N.B.A. game on April 13, 2016.

The Lakers’ championships in three consecutive seasons — 1999-2000, 2000-01, 2001-02 — represent the league’s only three-peat this century. The Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls had three-peats twice in the 1990s (1990-91 through 1992-93 and 1995-96 through 1997-98).

38.3

A conversion rate of 38.3 percent in 2002-03 marked Bryant’s most successful season from the 3-point line.

35.4

Bryant’s highest single-season scoring average was 35.4 points per game in 2005-2006, the Lakers’ second season after trading away Shaquille O’Neal.

16,866

Bryant scored 16,866 points and won three of his five championships wearing No. 8 through his first 10 seasons.

16,777

He scored 16,777 points and won two championships wearing No. 24 over the final 10 seasons of his career.

Bryant’s 20 consecutive seasons with the Lakers left him one shy of the N.B.A. record for playing with only one team: Dirk Nowitzki’s 21 seasons with the Dallas Mavericks.

No other Laker played more than 14 seasons (Jerry West and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar).

Bryant scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors on Jan. 22, 2006.

Bryant’s eruption against the Raptors, the second-highest scoring output in league history behind Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game in 1962, came just 33 days after Kobe scored 62 points in three quarters against the Dallas Mavericks.

220

Bryant appeared in 220 career playoff games, which equates to more than two and half seasons of extra wear and tear.

The Lakers missed the playoffs in each of Bryant’s last four seasons.

35.6

Bryant averaged just 35.6 games played over his final three seasons following his torn left Achilles’ tendon in April 2013.

The 60 points Bryant scored in his farewell outing beat the previous record for an N.B.A. player in his last official season by 11 points. Boston’s Larry Bird scored 49 points on March 15, 1992.

Bryant is the only player in league history to have two jersey numbers (No. 8 and No. 24) retired by one franchise.

Bryant’s 18 N.B.A. All-Star appearances are one shy of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record 19.

Bryant was voted in by fans as an All-Star starter in his third season with the Lakers and in each of the subsequent 17 seasons.

$328,238,062

The value of Bryant’s contracts over 20 seasons with the Lakers, according to Basketball Reference, was nearly $330 million.

Bryant and LeBron James never met in a playoff game. James has made nine trips to the N.B.A. finals, winning three titles.

5-2

Bryant posted a career record of 5-2 in the N.B.A. finals, winning five championships in seven appearances.

Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@marcsteinnba). Send any other feedback to [email protected].

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/kobe-bryant-saw-his-greatness-mirrored-in-gianna/

#Sport

0 notes

torreygazette · 5 years ago

Text

Ordinary Means

When contemplating the primary influences in my theological development, I come back time and again not to the books I have read, or the famous speakers I have heard, but to the ministers in my life who have faithfully preached the word in corporate worship week after week. These ordinary ministers will likely never be invited to speak at a big conference or to write a book, but they have been called to the greater task of bringing the ordinary means of grace to ordinary people on ordinary Sundays. In their faithfulness to their calling, they have pointed me to Christ and given me particular tools to seek Christ in scripture for myself.

One Sunday morning, Jonathan and I walked through the doors of a Presbyterian church, confused and questioning. Mitch McGinnis was the minister of Westminister Presbyterian Church in Columbus, GA. Over the next two years, Mitch had a profound influence on how I saw scripture and the promises of God that extend into my life now a decade later. Mitch taught me to see Christ as central to every passage of scripture. While we had professed a gospel-centered faith for several years, Mitch pointed us to the person of Jesus Christ. The Lord used Mitch’s teaching and preaching to help my cage-stage heart see the source of the truth I so militantly defended. Often he would tell us that we needed to love Jesus more—not instead of doctrine—but as the whole point of our doctrine. Mitch would often say that our hope rests in both God’s goodness and his sovereignty. If God is good, but not sovereign, he can do nothing for us. If God is sovereign, but not good, he is terrifying. The person of Jesus Christ shows us that God is both good and sovereign, and Mitch drew that out of scripture every Sunday. Mitch taught me to see and seek after Christ and in faithfully teaching this way, he taught me that scriptural indicatives (statements of truth) power scriptural imperatives (commands to be obeyed).

Arriving in a seminary town, looking for a church, is a daunting task. It took us a while to find a church home in St. Louis, and the Kirk of the Hills wasn’t a natural fit for us—on paper. Yet, the Lord provides in mysterious ways, and our years there were wonderful. For two of the three years, we were members Mark Kuiper (current mission developer at Three Rivers Presbyterian Church in Grove, OK but then minister at Kirk of the Hills in St. Louis, MO) was preaching through the gospel of Matthew. I grew up in Sunday School and Christian school, Christian camp, and youth group. I was pretty certain that I knew the gospels inside and out, but Mark showed me that the gospels are not a collection of short stories. Mark connected the stories I knew so well in ways I had never seen. He tied together the narrative in a way that made Jesus’ earthly ministry make sense. In particular, the way Mark taught Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom within the greater context helped me to understand the doctrine of the visible and invisible church as well as driving home the truth that context is king without ever uttering the words themselves.

In our most recent time of transition, we had the pleasure to spend four months sitting under Henry Bartsch’s preaching (founding minister of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Chatham, ON). As Henry taught from Jeremiah and then Daniel he stressed the points of hope amid great judgment. Both from the pulpit and in private conversation he reminded me of God’s promise in Jeremiah to not bring a full end of His people. The redemptive promises woven through the judgment and discipline of Jeremiah’s prophecy to a rebellious people point us to Christ and our overwhelming need for him.

I have known that intellectually for some years. Yet, it carries new weight listening to the promise that Christ will not bring a full end of his people—especially when one is homeless and unemployed. Henry showed me Christ and His promises amid trial, judgment, and pain. Henry showed me hope in lamentation. He also taught me the importance of historical interpretation. In a sermon on Daniel, Henry reminded us that historically, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego would have either directly or indirectly heard Jeremiah’s covenant warnings and promises. While Jeremiah never saw or knew of their faithfulness in this life, his teaching was used to that end. The Lord used Henry’s faithful historical study to both encourage me and to teach me the importance of the time and place in which the words of God were inspired to be written.

Over the last six years, I have also had the privilege of sitting under my own husband, Jonathan’s, preaching. One of the great gifts of being married to a minister is the ongoing nuggets of study and biblical truth that get dropped in conversation throughout the week. It is a regular occurrence for the children to interrupt their schoolwork because their dad has come dashing up a flight of stairs to say, “Listen to this! Isn’t this so cool?”

After reading us the segment of commentary or quote from a sermon he will retreat back to his desk and schoolwork continues. We are all richer for his enthusiasm. I also have the privilege of being his sounding board, to whom he will read portions, or even the entirety, of a sermon to work out the kinks in delivery. All of this combined means that by Sunday morning I have usually heard each sermon at least partially, and sometimes multiple times before I even get to a pew. Yet the Holy Spirit applies that text to my life in a completely different way when I receive it during corporate worship on a Sunday morning than at my kitchen table, in my basement, or sitting beside his desk.

I have cherished this truth for many years, but this past year I have had it once more illuminated. Having been without a call for nine months, Jonathan has been filling pulpits and our family has traveled with him. As circumstances dictate, we have heard him preach six times on Psalm 110. We know his points. We almost know the Psalm by heart. Still, every time we hear it preached, something is different for each congregation, and something is different in me. The truth remains the same. The grace is applied to my heart in unique ways every time.

I don’t remember the primary points from most of these ministers’ sermons. I could not tell you details of particular texts, or how they outlined the books they preached. Their ordinary faithfulness has been more important than that. In each of these cases, I understand the word of God more clearly. I know Jesus better because of the way the Spirit worked in their words. I also have benefitted from the teaching of wider known authors and speakers because of the firm foundation of the regular, ordinary preaching in my life. That has given me the tools and worldview to interact with other theological teachings.

The word of God, preached by an ordinary man, and accompanied by the sacraments, is a conduit of grace to ordinary people. Every protestant denominational confession agrees the Holy Spirit has promised to speak to us and move within us when His word is preached and sacraments are administered to gathered believers (WCF 21.5, Belgic 30, Augsburg 7, LBCF 14.1, Article 19 of Anglican 39 articles, Savoy 22.4). The means of grace are formative precisely because they are ordinary and frequent. The weekly ordinariness of it is both its beauty and its strength. The layers of God’s grace are washed over us, week by week, in a gentle abrasion that both slowly erodes the remains of sin’s corruption, and polishes us into the image of Christ. It is the steady stream of grace that can cut away a hard heart.

As ordinary ministers preach the supernatural word of God and the ordinary congregation receives it, we are all washed clean and built up. We are transformed and conformed. These four (and more) faithful ministers in my life have all been ordinarily used to that purpose. Sola Deo Gloria.

Photo by Drew Mills

#Women and Doctrine #Ordinary

0 notes

pastordorry-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Saints Rise to the Occasion

Luke 10:25-37

Saints Week 1

October 28, 2018

Over the past six weeks, I’ve learned a lot about the people of Lima Church. I attended fourteen Coffee With the Pastor Meetings, and had the opportunity to hear 86 people in this congregation tell me about their lives. I asked people to take five minutes and introduce themselves, and the responses were great. You described yourselves as mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, grand-parents, even great-grandparents. I met employees, business owners, and, not that I am jealous, retired employees and business owners. I met volunteers, travel buffs, musicians, gardeners, readers, and sports fans.

But there was one important word I kept waiting to hear, one way you might describe yourself to your new pastor, and no one said it. Not one single person in this church introduced themselves to me as a “saint.” Can you believe that? No one said they were a sinner, either, but none of you introduced yourself to me as a saint.

Maybe you are an especially modest group, and you don’t want to brag. Or maybe you feel there’s no need to state the obvious! But I don’t want to leave anything to chance. The people of Lima Church, you are saints! Actually, all Christians are saints. I’m not talking about the canonized saints in the Roman Catholic Church that are famous for their miracles. I am talking about every ordinary, regular person who has made a commitment to follow Jesus Christ—every single one is a saint. That includes us! We are saints: holy, set apart, called out by God for God’s special purposes.

And what are those special purposes? To love God with the whole of our being. To love our neighbors as well as we love ourselves. To especially love one another. By this everyone will know that we are Jesus’ disciples, if we have love for one another. And to do what we can to make earth more like heaven. That is what saints do!

Often we associate the word saints with people who aren’t here anymore. I have heard about Saint Wilma, who did a lot for this church. I’m sorry I never got to meet her. We will honor our departed saints in a special way next week. But we don’t have to wait to leave this earth to be saints. In front of any other title people might have for you, you can rightly claim the title, “Saint.” That’s Saint George playing the organ, and Saint Sandy working our audio-visuals. All of us are saints. We are saints now, who honor the saints in our past, and look to the future, hoping to raise up a new generation of saints so God’s work can continue in and through Lima.

For the next several weeks, we are going to be talking about the theme, “Saints rise to the occasion.” Often this means doing something new, risky, or sacrificial. Can you think of a time in the life of this congregation when you had to do something bold, something new, perhaps even something that felt risky? I have already heard several such stories. Buying the nearby parcels of land. Building this sanctuary to replace the smaller one we now use for education and community groups. Reaching out to the new people who were moving in to Riddle Village and other developments. Buying the bus. When saints hear about a need, they do all they can to fill it.

That is why I chose to read the Parable of the Good Samaritan this morning. Did you know that the Jews and the Samaritans hated each other? Their rift reminds me a lot of how, when I was growing up, Protestants and Catholics in Ireland hated each other. They had so much in common—politically and religiously—and yet their differences led to contempt and even violence. The Samaritans and Jews shared many common features religiously, they were from the same region of the world-and yet their differences led to contempt and even violence.

Jesus could have told us a parable about any number of people, rising to the occasion to help the Jewish traveler who was robbed and left for dead. But he made as the hero of the story a Samaritan, an enemy! I wonder, if I could have had coffee with the pastor with the priest and the Levite who walked by the injured man, how they would have introduced themselves to me. They might not have used the word saints, but I am sure they would have pointed out how very religious and righteous they were. Two people, members of the religious elite, walked by a brother who was suffering. Their love of God may have been exemplary. But their love of neighbor was certainly not up to Jesus’ standard. They did not rise to the occasion!

Jesus offers us this parable, not only to answer a pointed question from the religious elite about just who is our neighbor, but to cast a vision. The Kingdom of God is a realm where there are no superficial divisions. No male or female, no slave or free, no Jew or Gentile. Only saints. Only people who have set loving God and loving neighbor as the highest and only aim in their hearts. I had intended to write this sermon, praising the saints of Lima for all the ways you are doing that. I had intended to write this sermon, hoping it would inspire us to all set apart a significant portion of our income so the good work being done in and through us can continue. I wanted to tell the stories of saints and how, one person making the decision to rise to the occasion, can alter the course of history for generations.

But when I chose this scripture for today—way back in August—I had no idea of what would be dominating this week’s headlines. Explosive devices, mailed to political enemies around the country. Tragedy at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, enacted by someone who considers people of the Jewish faith to be enemies instead of neighbors. These news stories have all of us wondering, what is God calling us to do—calling us as saints—to do to rise to the occasion of an unprecedented level of hatred and vitriol in our society?

I think one thing God is calling us to do is to tell—and listen to--our stories. Lima Church has this tagline, “Where your story matters.” Each and every person’s story matters. At my coffee with the pastor meetings, I only heard five minutes from 86 people here, but even those snippets of stories have the power to bring us together, and solidify our commitment to each other, and validate the pain and joy in each person’s life. I am convinced there are stories we need to hear, from people inside and outside our congregation, so we can expand our capacity to love God and neighbor. “Courageous conversations” we might call them. Love grows when we dare to tell the truth about who we are, and dare to listen in love, even when it’s hard.

When we take time to talk and listen to each other, we find we have important things in common. We find out that we are like all of the characters in this well-known parable. All of us at one time or another have been the man, beaten down by life and left in a ditch. All of us have been a helper. And all of us have on occasion chosen to walk by instead of allowing our lives to be interrupted by someone else’s need. I thought I would be writing a sermon calling us to be good stewards of our finances. But as important as that is, today I feel God calling us to be good stewards of our stories. Each one matters.

And part of my story is, I felt called to ministry so I could help foster the kind of congregation I grew up in: a place where everyone can discover, there is more love available to them in the world than just what they can get from their family. There is love from God! And love from Christian brothers and sisters! What a huge difference discovering that made for me. I consider myself very lucky to have been called in to ministry at a time when female preachers were pretty well accepted in most of our churches. That has not always been the case in Methodist churches, as I’m sure you can imagine.

But let me ask you to take a guess. When do you think the first sermon was preached by a female at a Methodist gathering? What year do you think that was? Believe it or not, you have to go all the way back to 1761, to a woman named Sarah Crosby. She lived in England and was one of John Wesley’s “class leaders”, which meant she was something like a Sunday school teacher to about 50 people at most at a time. But one day, 200 people showed up! She couldn’t use her normal teaching strategies with that many people, so she preached a sermon and told the crowd about what God had done in her life. Sarah Crosby is an example of a saint who rose to the occasion. Two hundred needy souls had gathered, and she was not going to look the other way. Even though it was unconventional, she felt God was calling her to preach, and so she offered her best in that situation.

Saints rise to the occasion. Saints see a need, and do all they can to fill it. That is what we are doing today, in three special ways. First, in the narthex there is a letter to Congregation Beth Israel, which is just 3 ½ miles from here, straight down Route 352. Before you leave today, will you please take a minute to sign that letter and let our neighbors know we are in prayer for them and their extended faith community? Second, this afternoon at 3 we will have a meeting in our sanctuary to hear more about the United Methodist Church and its Way Forward. We are at a critical time in the life of our denomination. A decision will be made on our behalf in February that will ramifications for all of us. We will start the presentation this afternoon with a short video, where two of the Commission participants describe how they sought to listen to God and each other in order to do their work. It is by valuing every story that they were able to discern the plans they proposed to the bishops, and it is by valuing every story that the Council of Bishops overwhelmingly supported the One Church Plan. We don’t often gather on Sunday afternoons to talk about sensitive subjects. But today we will. There is a need, and we are going to pay attention instead of walking by.

And lastly, today we are talking about financially supporting the church. We are talking about stewardship, about using all God has given us in ways that will do the most good. Pledging a significant portion of your income to the church is one way of living in to the vision Jesus gives us with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Together with other Methodists, we are reaching out around the world, paying attention to needs near and far, so every hurting person will know that their story matters, too. Thank you, Saints, for all you are doing to support the work of Jesus in and through Lima Church. The world’s needs are all around us, calling out for a response. Together, let’s rise to the occasion! Amen.

0 notes