There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (via creatingaquietmind)
Part 1: Welcome to the Big Blue Nation. How’d I get so lucky?
I don’t know how it happened. I loved my freshman year at Sonoma State. I didn’t really have any intentions of transferring until…I did. I’ll admit, I couldn’t have even pointed out Kentucky on a map until I landed in the Bluegrass state and immediately fell in love. All it took was one step out of our downtown Lexington hotel that sold me on my biggest life decision to date: the flower pots that hung from the lamp posts had basketball nets attached to the bottom. Although there were doubts that I had to keep pushing out of my mind, it was a mother’s intuition that eventually put those fears to rest. She somehow, “just had a feeling that Kentucky was the best fit”. You know, they do say Moms always know best…
I’ve always loved the South. Visiting family in Memphis was always an exciting trip that gave me an early appreciation for sweet tea, country music, southern drawls, incessant cicadas and the necessary aversion to humidity. Kentucky was everything I loved about what little I knew about the south, times 100. It had the southern charm: the lush, rolling hills dotted with immaculately sculpted thoroughbreds with bloodlines that the Kennedys would envy, the frat-tastic boat shoes and pastel knee-high kakis, the picturesque, magnolia-draped back roads that somehow always opened up just in time to see a huge, fiery sun sinking behind a horse farm, enough home cooked goodness to comfort you for years, and, most importantly, that history-laden tradition and school spirit that’s only truly done right in the south, of which I’d always dreamt. Above all, though, Kentucky had one thing no other school in the world really, truly had: basketball.
I never really watched college basketball because, unlike every single Kentuckian, I didn’t come out of the womb immediately attached to a college team. Sacramento has the Kings and I took full advantage of my pride and fandom in that one team that was really mine (as evidenced by this post http://anchorsandeden.tumblr.com/post/4581976599/the-color-purple), but California is primarily an NBA state. The Kings, Warriors, Lakers and Clippers far outnumber the main college basketball program, UCLA, and occasionally USC, Cal or Stanford. Kentucky, on the other hand, is ONLY college basketball. More specifically, it’s ONLY Kentucky basketball, but I’ll get into that in my next blog post.
These simple basketball facts make it all the more miraculous that I ended up at the University of Kentucky, the Mecca of college basketball, the winningest school in the history of the game, the only place where my rabid obsession with the sport could even be remotely matched. It was fate, and the Basketball Gods, that led me to the most-tradition rich basketball school in the world and I still look back on my time at UK in amazement. And that’s not an exaggeration. It still baffles me that of all 2,618 public Universities in the country, I wound up at the only school that fit me like a perfect, Big Blue glove.
You can talk about Indiana, North Carolina and Kansas as historical basketball states ‘til you’re (Go Big) Blue in the face, but they don’t hold a candle to Kentucky. The South, full of all its football tailgating glory, is the heart of American college football, as evidenced by the SEC having won the last 5 National Championships, but Kentucky is the anomaly. A proud hoops haven indifferent to the world around it. Make no mistake, Saturday tailgates before UK football games are some of my favorite memories, but football fans are different than basketball fans. Football games are played in the more favorable months where the weather obliges the all-day party that overtakes every surrounding city block, where the grill burns hot and the drinks flow endlessly as the fuzz spin themselves dizzy constantly turning a blind eye. Basketball, on the other hand, requires true investment in the game and the only partying comes when the Rupp Arena security lets you in the breezeway 3 hours before tipoff after you’ve spent the last 5 hours in line huddled with your friends in the snow. By that point, all your hard work and incredible luck of winning a ticket through the flawed (but necessary) lottery system, waiting in line for hours and sprinting to the best available 1 foot standing room spot left in the eRUPPtion zone would be useless if you were too sauced to give the game the full, undivided attention that it deserves. Because of this general understanding, Kentucky fans, young or old, male or female, are some of the smartest-gasping when the opposing team sets a solid back pick before the point guard even finds his open man and jumping out of their seats before the lob to Anthony Davis is even thrown. This intricate attention to detail of nearly every fan is what sets the Big Blue Nation apart and makes me appreciate even more the fan base to which I proudly belong.
Most of all, though, Kentucky fans know that it’s not “just a game”. In fact, Kentucky fans are God’s heaven-sent retort to the paltry denunciation that basketball is “just a game”. There have been countless clichés about the Commonwealth’s love affair with basketball, all of them as true as the state is Blue, but there aren’t strong enough words in the English language to explain something that is just so inherent. I won’t ever fully understand how it binds generations and divides families, how “just a game” enabled dreams in young men just trying to survive miserable years working in the coalmines or how it unified an entire Commonwealth to endure years of economic hardship.
Despite my propensity to be adopted as a Big Blue diehard, I wasn’t born in Kentucky, don’t have the Wildcat pedigree gifted from the generations, didn’t have the blue blood birthright from my first gasp of air and wasn’t born with that ‘Free Admission’ card to those with Blue gene lineage, but it took less than 3 years in Lexington to understand and identify with a group of people so seemingly different: it’s so much more than just a game, and in Kentucky it’ll get in your blood and turn it Blue.
Hundreds of UK fans waiting at the airport the other day for the team plane to land back in Lexington after advancing to the Final Four.
Brow Down.
That’s real. And not uncommon. And I love it.
Tradition defined.
The Water Is Black: My Dear Wormwood,
Absolutely incredible. Jed is just another example of the brilliant, talented, creative, empowering and caring individuals that Invisible Children collects. Amazing, Jed. Thank you.
I received your letter this morning and I must say I am not the least bit pleased. You brag and gloat that you got the face of the world’s largest youth movement to go mad. To tear off his clothes and cry out to the Enemy in the streets for all the world to see. You list the lies you whispered…
You really should follow our Austin Street Team blog…
This is our first post and our first installment of our ATX Bucket List. We asked the good people of Facebook for bucket list items and have come up with the following (and added some of our own): Swim in Hamilton Pool-Collapsed cavern-turned-natural-swimming-pool fed by a waterfall Go kayaking (Town Lake and Lake Austin) Attend Austin City Limits Festival Attend SXSW music festival Eat at Franklin’s bbq Swim in Barton Springs-spring-fed and over 900 feet long Hike Mount Bonnell Play disk golf at Zilker Park Hike/Bike/Fish Lady Bird Lake Eat at Torchy’s Tacos Go to Amy’s ice cream and have them throw the ice cream across the street (apparently it’s a thing?) Go to Sno-Beach and get sno cones Eat Gingerbread pancakes at Magnolia Cafe — Just go to Magnolia Cafe in general, says Lindy. Cliff jumping at Lake Travis Eat breakfast burritos at the original Whole Foods Have a cake shake at the Holy Cacao food trailer Have something from each of the trailers in the iconic South Austin Trailer Park & Eatery (Torchy’s Tacos, Holy Cacao and Man Bites Dog) in one sitting. Find and take a picture with Leslie, the famous homeless man. This is phase one of THE LIST. Let us know if you have any more ideas for us to add and follow us here: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/atxstreetteamATX Bucket List
Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide whether it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they’re deciding, make even more art.
—
—- Andy Warhol
A good reminder for creative souls. Never stop being creative and letting your mind go…so important to remember.
Long overdue and still not quite there…
I was asked to write a blog post for a girl who just started a blog about social change and getting involved to make a difference. She contacted our PR department asking if one of the roadies would be interested in writing about his/her experience on the road. I jumped at the opportunity when asked, but two things stood in my way…1) it was right in the middle of our intense, three week fundraising marathon in the office and all my time was spent fundraising and making calls (yes, I left out sleeping for a reason) and 2) every time I did have a minute and sat down to try to put my last year into a few concise paragraphs, it seemed impossible.
I was reminded tonight that the girl was still waiting and the blog post hadn’t been written so despite the late hour of the night and the mental mountain I had to climb to write it, I came up with…something. It’s nowhere near how I hope to some day write about my year at I.C., but considering how low my eyelids are hanging and the epiphany half way through that I’m probably always going to feel like I’m doing it an injustice, but that it’s still important to write about it regardless, it could be worse and I’m going to post it anyways! Oh, and it’s not been edited in the slightest. I’ve been writing and re-writing for two hours so re-reading it sounds even slightly less appealing than becoming a Lakers fan, sorry I’m not sorry :)
“Just go through with the second interview. It can’t hurt.”
I am forever grateful for my mom for those wise words last November when I was going through the interview process to be a roadie for Invisible Children, a non-profit organization working to end Africa’s longest-running war. A 26-year-long war, to be exact, where a madman named Joseph Kony has been leading his Lord’s Resistance Army on a tear across regions of central Africa (Uganda, Central African Republic, South Sudan and Democratic Republic of the Congo) killing, raping, pillaging and, most notably, abducting thousands of children.
My Invisible Children story started about 5 years before that fateful conversation with my mom when I was a senior in high school. During a free period I sat down to work on homework but my attention was immediately drawn to the film being projected on the wall in front of me. That film, I would later find out, was called Invisible Children: The Rough Cut, and as dramatic as it sounds, my world would never be the same after that, honestly. Having my eyes opened to that level of human injustice and never even having heard of Joseph Kony or the Lord’s Resistance Army was simultaneously frustrating and inspiring. On one hand I couldn’t understand why my parents, teachers and mentors hadn’t ever told me about the most neglected humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. On the other, it sparked something that made me not only want to get involved with ending this war, but made me more conscious of the world outside my bubble.
That spark would remain and would only intensify after I traveled to Kenya twice during college. After my first trip I came home and in the midst of my culture shock of being back in the U.S., realized that I could come back and allow myself to slip back into my world and only talk fondly of my “life-changing experience” or I could actually act on it. So I went to Kenya the following summer, graduated from the University of Kentucky, moved to Nashville to intern for another Africa-related non-profit called Mocha Club and decided to take that next big step and applied to be a roadie with Invisible Children. I got through the first round of interviews and didn’t expect a call back for round two. After all, this was a huge organization with hundreds of applicants from across the world dying for the opportunity to act on the same spark they felt after watching an I.C. film, like I did. Never mind the money I didn’t have to support myself throughout this 15 week internship or my paralyzing, mind-numbing fear of public speaking.
“Just go through with the second interview. It can’t hurt.”
I got the call for the second interview and if it weren’t for my mom I wouldn’t have just finished my second tour as a roadie for Invisible Children, would’ve missed out on by far the most formative year of my life and I would be a drastically different person than I am today. (Thanks again, Mom!)
Having the incredibly good fortune of touring Texas as a roadie on the Congo Tour in the spring and New England as a team leader on the Frontline Tour in the fall, I grew exponentially and learned things I will carry close for the rest of my life. I got to speak to and inspire thousands of students weekly (yes, I managed to get over my fear of public speaking…for the most part), cultivate life-long friendships with the three Americans, two Ugandans and one Ethiopian I lived with in a van as teammates over the course of two tours, set a new standard for the type of friends and community I will strive for after being in the most loving, inspiring and challenging environment I could imagine while at Invisible Children and countless more that I’d be doing a disservice both to you and Invisible Children trying to put into words.
I will never forget the honor I had daily to get on stage in an Invisible Children shirt daily and inspire audiences to join us on the front lines of this war and do more than just watch Joseph Kony commit these atrocities daily, because contrary to what they’ve heard, and at the risk of sounding cheesy, we can absolutely, without a doubt end this war. I got to do that standing next to a survivor of the very war we’re fighting. Both of my Ugandan teammates, Tony and Grace, had amazingly powerful stories of faith, resilience and strength and I stood in awe every single day as they choked back the tears and fought through the pain to recount their story for a new audience because their commitment to ending this war was so personal and ran so deep, seemingly coursing through their veins.
As much as my story with Invisible Children began in high school and carried through my trips to Kenya and my time on the road, it was the two of them who kept me going and reminded me daily the enormity and importance of our goal. As much as this story transformed from one I saw on a movie screen to one I was deeply entrenched in five years later, this is their story; they have LIVED it. As much as this past year has given me an epic adventure, lifelong friends and the courage to continually challenge myself and always defy the status quo, in the end it is not about the personal growth, it’s about Tony and Grace and the human connection.
I can’t tell you enough how imperative it is to get involved with something you care about. If Invisible Children isn’t the route for you, find something else. Take that next step and immerse yourself in whatever that is. Give everything you have to helping people and making the world better because you were here. In twenty years when your child asks you what you did when the world was (seemingly) falling apart, be able to say that you showed up.
I think it’s only appropriate to end with a quote from Invisible Children’s latest documentary, Tony (go here to watch it for free http://invisiblechildren.com/frontline-tony-documentary), “Push yourself, do what’s necessary. The world is waiting for you, don’t miss the invitation to join.”
This is the dream. Literally. I would do a lot of things for this to be my house.
(Source: twenthings, via theohpioneer)
I promise you not a moment will be lost as long as I have heart & voice to speak & we will walk again together with a thousand others & a thousand more & on & on until there is no one among us who does not know the truth: there is no future without love.
—Story People
Who We Are
Via my BFF, Alex Alberico. AKA the word wizard.
We are roadies.
We are sons and daughters.
We are brothers and sisters.
We are friends.
We are a family.
We are the movers, the shakers and the world changers.
We are a culture; a new generation.
We are a movement.
We stand on the shoulders of giants, legends, anonymous extraordinaries.
We stand on a legacy.
We remember the past, embrace the present and write the future.
We have been through the tough and the even tougher.
More importantly, we have been through the beautiful and impossible.
We have sweat, bled and cried.
We have sacrificed everything and gained infinitely more in return.
We have, and will continue to, inspire and shape the world around us.
We are a movement.
We are a culture; a new generation.
We are the movers, shakers and world changers.
We are a family.
We are friends.
We are brothers and sisters.
We are sons and daughters.
We are roadies; a force to be reckoned with.
to say something plain,
let me quote a hero of mine:
We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them
i am a piece of a focused machine that has deployed US troops
to help pursue a warlord, a mass murderer, a leader of a rape-cult,
a child destroyer,and potentially kill him and his commanders
i believe Joseph Kony is a human being with a childhood and a soul
our call is to arrest him. but we understand that in forceful arrests, he may resist,
and in that situation, he will be killed
i accept that I may be, in a way, killing a piece of a man
or many men
i accept that i could be instrumental in the death
of an american soldier fighting for congolese victims he has
no national interest in protecting
and that that exemplifies a selfless hero
and that we don’t see those very often
i believe in action
and i believe in monsters
and that all human beings have the potential to be monsters
and i believe in the chance of redemption, and a trial and life in prison is what we demand
and i believe in peaceful resistance to the detriment and even death of myself,
from regimes that are mistaken and capable of hearing the overwhelming voice of the people
but i also believe in sociopaths who use human beings as fleshy-holsters for their machetes. for a dark dark dark that can move into the mind of a man and turn him into a force of nature
i believe in human beings no longer capable of persuasion. or said differently, the patience it would take to continue discussion would enable them to kill another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another as I wade in blood with a megaphone saying ‘please’
if a brain injury can render a man incapable of speech and motor function, could not a spiritual injury render a man beyond the reach of words and reason? resolute to destroy other human beings and amused by their begging tears? by spiritual injury i may mean brain injury. just that more important part of the brain
at that point, his prolonged days on this earth are a hindrance to his redemptive crash with the Lord
this dark line can only be manifest in his actions and the exhaustion of diplomacy
i am crass because war is crass and to kill a man even a monster is crassi am uncomfortable with the purity of fundamentalist pacifism
as i am uncomfortable with any fundamentalism
because it denies the fact that nothing exists in a vacuum
and the assumption that it does empowers a lie that empowers its opposite
but let me be plain with you, i want this man arrested. for arrest saves me the weight of holy decision. if we let the man live his days robbed of the lust and drunk stupor of his jungle power, the fragrance of redemption may just find him
i am not the first to struggle. much greater men, Bonheiffer. Lewis. taught me these things. as did the victims
and i believe we cling too desperately to life
like nasty bundles afraid to die
and the people most noble understand this
and the people most powerful understand this, and that power can be used for evil
and sinister spirituality and magic and murder and the LRA
and G-d understands this better than i. that when our flesh falls
He has something to do with it
that every knee shall bow
but if i am the wall, or the builder of the wall, that blocks the wave from the town
then so be it.
i would rather save the town
and stand before G-d honestly mistaken
than sit beneath the tree and write of the shame of it all
as i keep my legs pulled tight so as not to touch the blood
for we are too afraid to die, yes
but we cannot be afraid to live
and a monster makes the world afraid to live
and a monster invites the world to produce heroes that will sacrifice their comfort
and maybe even their lives to define nobility, equality, virtue, and sacrifice
i believe the physical life matters,
but
i think the spiritual life matters more
but i don’t know how that ties in to all of this.
but i am acting on lofty words, and have been, and believe there is virtue there.
may G-d have mercy.
