Daily Archives: October 5, 2009

Sport

The First Time in the History of the World

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Fall                                     Full Blood Moon

Appropriate that this Vikings-Packer game will be played under a full blood moon.   If one could, in some fantastic realm, collate all the words written and spoken, each image reproduced either moving or still that focused on just this game, you would have a tome and a webpage of impenetrable length and size, compared, that is, to the time an individual would take to parse it all.

Then place the weight of this event, referred to by an announcer tonight as the “first time in the history of the world,” against the weight of the slightest child in Darfur, the gradual build up of gases in the atmosphere, the plight of any American citizen without health insurance and the game deflates to the size, perhaps, of a football.  Which is where it belongs.

All that said, I will be on the couch watching it and not out stopping starvation in Bangladesh, working on the Sierra Club’s upcoming legislative priorities or pressing my congress people for a decent deal on health care.  No, I will take part in an even more ancient human activity, competition between rival clans, competition engaged by the healthiest and the stoutest of each side.  Tonight it will be the Cheesehead versus the Viking.  In all fairness, now, in a battle between a piece of cheese and a valiant Scandinavian pillager, who would you picke?

Art and Culture, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Friends

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Fall                                            Full Blood Moon

“There is no need like the lack of a friend.”   Irish saying

How many sets of friends do you have?  Not an idle question since study after study shows friendship a vital element of health.  Friends become even more important as we age.  Here’s a couple of examples:  BBC, Science.

Today at noon a group of friends I still consider new, but whom I’ve actually known for almost 5 years, met for lunch at the Black Forest.  It was those from the Docent class of 2005.  We trained together for 2 years, meeting every Wednesday during the academic year for lectures and tour practice.  The education was fun, since I love learning new things, but over time I’ve found the relationships formed then the most important gift.

An introverted guy, I need these kind of stable groups.  I’m fortunate right now to have three groups in which I’ve made networks.  The Docent class of 2005 has, by now, blended into the docents of all classes, in particular for me, those who tour on Fridays, my tour day.  I see these folks at continuing education, on tours, in the docent discussion group and in these more casual events that happen from time to time.

The Sierra Club, the most recent of the three, taps into older networks for me, the DFL political world and the world of community activists, but has opened up a new one in those people whose primary activist commitment is the environment.  I enjoy being around the new generation of political activists, people in their 20’s and early 30’s.  They’re bright, practical, and seem to have a better balance in their lives than I did when I was engaged as intensively as they are.

The oldest network for me is the Woolly Mammoths.  With the Woolly’s I have 20+ years of twice monthly meetings, annual retreats and social occasions outside those events.  We know each other, each other’s story, our families.  We’ve had fights and reconciled, gone through life and death struggles and will go through more.  As a man, I feel so lucky to have this long term set of relationships in my life.