Author: admin

I’m going to rant here…

 

Here is the inherently bi-polar position: We seem to believe that parents should be given the right to parent any way they see fit—so long as that parenting fits popular opinion. If some decision or method of discipline becomes fringe or is decided to be outdated we will publically burn at the stake anyone who engages in those outdated practices. Note: I’m talking about a trial in the court of public opinion and not the court of law. There is an expectation that we all now agree to hate and disassociate with Adrian Peterson because he admitted to spanking his kid. However, is what he did criminal? Is it wrong? Or are we still smarting from the beatings we took from our parents as kids—beatings that in some cases went too far and in others were both well deserved and properly impactful.

 

The popular media is also overlooking context here, and the public is clearly overlooking media motive here. I’ve spoken about the rule of three time and again. Here is how it works: Someone breaks a big news story. Immediately someone else finds a second story that continues public interest and then there is a 3^rd story to further public interest while the first is fading into memory. Try it some time. Look at the local news and note how the biggest stories always happen in threes. If you live in AZ take careful note of how the 2^nd and often 3^rd story is AZ specific as we attempt to link whatever is going on in the world to our own local drama. This last phenomenon might be standard, but I’ve only ever lived in three places. One of them was Iowa where news was careful to state that nothing at all was ever happening in state as though we wore some sort of ‘stuff-happens-proof-vest. The other was NYC and everything, apparently, was actually about us.

 

So what is the context here? It is unclear. I can speak from experience as both a counselor and a child who spent time in the courts: The court is a weapon used by bickering parents to wound the other parent and to advance their (often financial) interests. My birth parents were never married and hate each other to this day. As a result of that simmering anger I spent age 3 -16 in the courts dealing with custody and child support issues. I was in family court so often I knew judges by name. I was in the court long enough to actually believe I wanted to be a lawyer when I grew up and have time to have the discussions to pursue that profession. We know from court records and media reports that at least one of the accusatory baby momma’s is constantly looking for more money from AP. We also know she’s lied about his role as a father. We haven’t heard about the mother of the child involved in the highlighted incident, but we do know the case in question was shopped around, brought to grand jury, dropped, and then later picked up again once the climate in the NFL changed.

 

But all this isn’t even the most important point.

 

Here is the most important point: The system of idolatry is inherently flawed. When we conflate the actions of an athlete with the actions of a hero we risk going down that slippery slope of unrealistic expectation. We remove the potential for that individual to be human and flawed, and when we take away what they’ve worked their entire life for simply because they are flawed outside of their professional responsibility, we risk creating a system where nobody can live up to the standards established. The climate of the NFL is moving towards this. We are trying to make heroes out of every single player, and this is not a realistic thing to do. I’m sure there are heroes among them, but being a hero isn’t the job. Scoring or stopping others from scoring is the job.

 

There are obvious objections to my point of view: Isn’t it the responsibility of the athlete to be a fine and upstanding citizen? Don’t they have a responsibility as public figures because they get paid so much to be in the public eye?

 

I truly believe that parents are responsible for teaching their children right from wrong. I find allies in this belief in the strangest places. Homeschoolers, religious fanatics, hard core right wingers, hard core left wingers all believe that parenting starts in the home. In truth, the main reason books are banned is because some group of parents decides that they don’t want their kids to be taught that stuff. However, I fear that much of what we see on TV about these so-called heroes is a gut reaction to the fact that many American parents leave parenting to the television. Perhaps we should spend less time policing the television then and more time educating the people who should be policing their kids. It takes a village to raise a child, not a flat screen. On the other point, the amount one gets paid and the amount of news coverage they are provided should in no way determine how an individual lives their life or performs outside of the basic responsibilities of their job. We seem to accept this truth when it comes to corporate CEOs and, to a lesser extent, political officials. We don’t accept it when it comes to athletes and, to a lesser extent, musicians. The real problem is the specter of expectation. We expect too much out of people who only have so much to give. Worse still, we’re always expecting the wrong things.

 

I want AP to come back and score touchdowns for the Vikings and thusly for my fantasy team. I want to ‘bear witness’ to his running and to his Hall of Fame career. The guy plays the game right. He works hard, and he is an exemplar of how to play the game. Too bad that isn’t enough anymore.

I hd my class watch a Tony Robbins clip today and I must admit the dude does something to the way I feel about myself. Robbins is a world renowned motivational speaker who tells you things that none of us really are ready to hear but help each of us gain a deeper understanding why we aren’t the best people we can be. Sometimes I feel like the guy is looking at me, pointing, and saying ‘I’m talking right to you, man.’ He talked about the habits and rituals that successful people do. He compared the morning ritual of a person who is not healthy to a fit man and clearly explained the inherent differences. I do some of the things he talks about. I do much more of the bad than of the good, so there’s that. However, I recognize the potential for greatness and have an understanding of the many little steps it takes to get there.

I still want to hit the reset button.

I still understand there is no reset button and any hole you bury yourself in you are beholden to dig yourself out of. Of course, the point is that so many of us allow that hole to become our new reality and we narrow our perspective of what is possible as we age. I’m as guilty of that as anyone, but I don’t think it has to be that way forever….

 

 

Some Thoughts:

1. The Giants are a brutally bad ball club right now. The best thing about them was the alliteration in that last sentence.
2. Sponsors are pulling out from the Vikings because of A.P. and his indictment. Whatever happened to waiting for the facts? A trial? Innocent until proven guilty?
3. Peter Clines might be a demi-god. Check out his blog and his books.
4. I’ll be 45 when this goes down, but expect me to be a NYT best seller in the near future.

Frankly, I’m exhausted, but I still gotta get a post in. We spent the weekend at the Canyon, which I detailed in the prior post. A second day in the Canyon meant meeting more interesting people and learning more about that lifestyle out there. The boys earned their Jr. Ranger badges and we spent many hours on the road driving home. I think the drives are the hardest. Short of ‘Are we there yet?’ drama, the drives home consist of three extremely boisterous boys alternating singing, laughing, fighting, and crying in the backseat–all at a volume that makes the vehicle want to autopilot to the side of the road slowing just enough to safely eject the three through the moon roof. Of course, maybe that’s just me putting my wishes upon the tribe.

Come Monday I’ll sink back into my natural world and struggle put together something resembling a valid work schedule. I’ve been getting things done rather well, but I cannot say I have a legitimate schedule to work off of. I have the class schedule, the office schedule,  and the practice schedules, but everything in between in up in the air.  As I age–and my body is telling me that this aging thing is happening with greater rapidity–I find I need more of a concrete idea of when to do things in order to achieve maximum effectiveness. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’m still convinced I have a reset button in me that, once pressed, will shake off a decade of tough living and just put me back on my game 100%.

I wonder if the Giants have one of those? They could use one, because they’re making me look like a fool for loving them…

I returned to the Grand Canyon for the first time since the trip with the guys. This trip was a family affair. The five of us slipped away late Friday night and drove halfway. In the morning we rose early enough to reach the Canyon before the sun grew too fat in the sky. Here is something I didn’t know: My mid-kid is deathly afraid of heights. I spent the majority of the trip holding his hand and coaxing him to at least look at the canyon. Here is something else I didn’t know: My body is a wreck. We didn’t walk but 2 or 3 miles and I wound up with pinched nerves and feeling pain and numbness all down the right side of my body. If this is what getting old feels like then I’m out. I need to find that magical tea Kevin Hearne keeps writing about and wipe away this nonsense.

Generally speaking the trip is a success. It represents the first time we took an extended family-only vacation, so there’s that. More interestingly we discovered an entirely separate culture there in the woods. The company that runs the Canyon operations, Xanterra, has created a very interesting multicultural environment of woods-people and small town dwellers. I’m interested in learning more and learning how to use this pocket culture as an example in my sociology courses.

Some Thoughts:

1. Canyon tech is limited, so this won’t be posted until we get home tonight. By then the Giants will be 1-1 and the Jets will be 2-0. Here’s hoping!

The League officially lost its mind and backbone tonight in one swipe. The league’s top running back was deactivated from the roster because an indictment of negligent injury to a child. The charge stems from a report that he spanked his son with a switch. In other words, he inflicted the same punishment on his son that the majority of southern parents I know and know of have used for longer than I’ve been alive. This is the same punishment I faced when I stepped out of line, and yes, I still spank my kids. I don’t expect to go to jail for that.

It is no secret that the league is scared silly of media perceptions. The deactivation is, in part, the result of the state of Texas’ request to have Peterson in custody, but he easily could’ve been allowed to play. I believe the fear of the negative press drove the team to make this move. TMZ has been riding this guy for years–since the 2012 death of his 2 yr old son. The overwhelming early TMZ verdict on the dude was that he’s a deadbeat dad who skimped on child support. However, upon further digging, the station learned the opposite to be true. I think we will find more of the same here. This is a guy who spanked his kid, wound up facing a grand jury. Was relieved when the grand jury decided NOT to indict, only to discover just recently that their changed their minds.

The difference? Ray Rice.

The Hunger Games, Wayward Pines, The Maze Runner, In the After, The Giver, Dust.. The list drifts on into the forever. Each story different than the last, but each dancing around the same premise: After the world ends we will discover a new, self-contained world in which all of our problems and issues are explored on a micro-cosmic scale and we, quite quickly, will devolve into a caricature of Orwellian dystopia…or we already have.

All of these books tend to start/develop in the same fashion: The world is over. Despite this there is a piece of that world that remains, walled off from the abyss and protected by a strict set of laws or rules. Often the books focus on those who seek to challenge this structure and the protagonist (and thus the reader) is fueled by a desire to either escape or to challenge the dominant ideology. In Demitria Lunetta’s In the After series, the protagonist finds herself in a world filled with zombie-like creatures. She comes upon a safe-haven, a city that thrives and seeks to rebuild humanity. However, the rules of the society are counter to everything she see’s as important to her rebellious teen nature. I think the fact that the majority of these novels are YA fiction says something. In many ways the novels feel like a response to an American society that, for large swaths of the country, exists primarily in HOA-sanctioned and controlled enclaves in which we live under a series of seemingly endless and often psychotic rules designed to keep people in line and similar. I suspect that, on some level, the books are targeted at an audience growing up in this world with the ability to change it or at least understand the consequences of it.

There is no question that this theme has gained primacy in the YA spectrum. The questions I’m wondering about are where is it going and how is it going to impact this generation of readers and thinkers?

What happened to the Giants this Monday is unforgivable. By that I mean I cannot forgive the Giants for being such a terrible ball club right now. Here is what bothers me the most: The club had every opportunity to create a better situation for themselves and failed to capitalize on that in the offseason and especially in free agency. Anyone following the team knows the long and historical decline of the O-Line. Now Victor Cruz is complaining about the number of targets? Yeah, the Giants are a hot mess who are going to try to save their soul this Sunday at 1PM. I’m not watching. I can’t watch. I can’t look away if I watch, because it is like a car wreck in progress. Eli has his thumb in his mouth and he’s reaching for is safety blanket in the form of TE Larry Donell. That is just not going to cut it, and odds are the Giants are just not going to win. Here’s some tips on who might win:

 

PIT over BAL
They say the best way to get over distractions is to throw yourself into work (okay maybe I say that), but the power of the media machine and the Ray Rice story is enough to distract the team just a bit. PIT has too much D for BAL to win this one.

MIA over BUF
The Dolphins showed me something in that win over the Patriots. They proved they can slug it out with a great coach, even though they don’t have what anyone would consider a great team. The O-Line in MIA is solid and that will keep them in this shootout all the way to the end.

CAR over DET
The Panthers are flat out better than the Giants, and their secondary can slow down everyone outside of Megatron. At the same time, the offense can control the clock enough to make this a close win.

ATL over CIN
Not sold on the Red wonder.

NO over CLE

MIN over NE
Too much AP here.

NYG over AZ
Here’s what I noticed at the game–Carson Palmer’s tendencies and the playcalling tendencies are extremely obvious. They get by on having so many talented players that it forces the opponent into 1 on 1 situations where they often lose. The Giants will win those matchups defensively, and the way the Cards D is beat up means there will be some space in the short middle zone to do damage. I wanna believe in NYC so bad.

TEN over DAL

SEA over SD

STL over TB

DEN over KC

NYJ over GB
Despite Geno, Gang green gets a tight win.

OAK over HOU
I believe in Carr!

SF over CHI
Start the SF defense here. There’s go’n to be a killin…

IND over PHI
Philly was exposed by the Jags. They can be beat and IND has the O to do it.

Today I ran into a young writer I used to work with. He was working the registers at Chick-fil-A and lamenting his lost opportunities to write. It pissed me off. In truth I used to be that kid and sometimes still am. Here is a classic case of someone who had the fire to be really successful at something and then met resistance with what he tried to do. He turned around in circles, a dog chasing his own tail and hoping on the next rotation there would be someone there to back him up and make him feel like he could achieve. Instead he found the daily faceslap of life and a harsh existence that all too quickly got away from him.

 

This is my story too. I’m still working to decode the secret of motivation—of how to keep going in the face of adversity; of how to not quit when it gets hard. When I see that kid I see the person I become when motivation is merely nagging at me, tugging at the hem of my attention while I try to keep focus on making it through another difficult day.

 

A friend suggested that it is hard to do what you need to do when you’re dealing with personal drama. I agree with her wholeheartedly, but I also think that we actively choose what we are going to do and what we are going to focus on each day. If I can separate from the world for 10 minutes a day, I can separate from the world for 25 minutes a day or 45 or even as much as an hour. The thing is I gotta want to do it more than I want to talk about doing it or think about doing it or plan to do it tomorrow. Furthermore, for me at least, there needs to be people around me who see that effort and recognize its value and there needs to be at least one person in my life who sees me slack off and says, “that isn’t gonna fly.” Sure, in a perfect world that person would be me, but I’ve come to realize that I’ll let myself get away with a lot. I won’t be optimal until I find myself in the optimal situation, but I can at least be functional and this boy, this self-failed writer can be functional as well.

 

He’s just gotta want to get there more than he wants to ignore the pain of what it takes to get there.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Maybe I’m not done talking about the Ray Rice thing just yet. Now I had to hunt to find this article. Most searches for Ray Rice or his fiancee result in videos of the attack and articles about the attack and little about her and how she feels about this. Everyone is treating her like a witless victim who needs to get out of the situation. They basically chastise her for staying in the relationship and put on victims and experts to spin the same story. Here is the story being spun: He hit her, he needs to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, he should never be allowed to play football again, and she must be mentally messed up to want to stay with him. Well, I’m not so quick to judge. We pride ourselves as a nation that gives people a second chance, but that isn’t true when it comes to our exemplars of polarizing events is it? Ray Rice has been labeled by everyone I’ve talked to as a villain and not one person is willing to allow him the opportunity to learn from his mistake. Instead they see this as indicative of how the relationship has always been and indicative of his character as a man. We all seem to want to press the delete button on the dude, but what about what she wants? What about the possibility of him learning to be a better man and really understanding–as a society–what happens with that relationship and how such things can be fixed.

I saw the video and I still disagree with the punishment.

We can talk about the fact that she (without any comparable force) backhanded him twice, which in his unfortunate and dysfunctional cultural upbringing is an unforgivable provocation, but that just sounds like excuse making. No, I think the real problem is how the team and the league handled this situation. Let’s start with the facts:

Fact #1: The media and the league–heck all of us–knew that Ray Rice hit his fiancee. What seems to have changed this whole punishment is TMZ’s visual evidence of the attack. In other words, the new punishment is a direct result of America’s highly visual culture. Until we saw the video we could pretend it wasn’t real. Those in power could be satisfied with a 2-game ban and move on. Pictures change things. However, pictures don’t change the facts on the ground. We knew he hit her from the get go and he only got a 2-game ban.

Fact #2: As a result of the initial ban the NFL toughened its policy on domestic violence. You earn a 6-game ban for the first offense and a lifetime ban for any subsequent offense. Why then was Ray Rice cut and subsequently suspended indefinitely for a first offense? So the NFL creates a strict policy and then tosses it out the window in regards to a past case? I think Ray Rice has grounds for a major lawsuit here–both against the team and the league itself. The team case is harder to try because he did suck last year–which is why I think this is getting so much traction. If we have video of Tom Brady punching Giselle in the grill or Megatron doing the same, they aren’t getting cut.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. It is not lost on me that the Penn State ban was dropped the same day. So basically they received a 2-yr ban for being found complicit in covering up the sexual assault of minors. I wonder what would’ve happened to Penn State if we had video of the sexual assaults?

Around the age of 9 I decided to be a professional football player. It took me to college to realize I had neither the temperament nor dedication to achieve that goal. I’ll probably always see myself as a failed athlete, but I’ll likely never stop believing that I have the ability to bounce back and at least be athletic well into my 50’s. Of course, as I’ve covered time and again, there is a gulch between believing you can be something and actually getting off the couch to be productive. My friend Caleb is deeply indicative of that. The man says nothing about wanting or needing to be physically fit, but he’s the one in the gym and shedding the pounds I continue to dream of. Still, this isn’t a post about Caleb or about getting fit. It is a post about the how our dreams filter through our lives and become what we do.

I started coaching after football ended for me in college. I coached 10-12 year olds and worked to instill in them the mindset that I hadn’t been able to achieve. I knew what it looked like and even how one could get there, so it was only natural that I would coach it. Coaching led me directly to graduate school. I’m being literal here. One of the parents showed up to practice one day with some grad school paperwork and demanded I fill it out. I did and the rest is Talis-history. Because school became such a singular purpose, I stopped coaching for years. I kept playing when I could–mostly flag tournaments here and there. When I moved to AZ I signed on with a semi-pro club called the Flagstaff Hitmen (though I lived no where near Flagg). I drove for hours every week just for the chance to hold on to that faded dream. On Sundays I would recuperate from the Saturday game and study the pros hoping to learn something I could replicate in my next game.

Soon that brief flicker of a dream reborn ended and fatherhood took hold. It was another four years before I even picked up a football. My eldest started playing five years ago and I first coached him in his second season. I’ve coached him every year since, and when he turned 8 he let me know he’d be going pro in due time. I don’t know if this is his dream or mine, but I know that it really isn’t about football. It is about sport and competition, and facing off against another human being and feeling that connection with those like him.

Dreams don’t go away. They stay hidden in the corners of your mind like a ghost or persistent shadow waiting for the moment to cast memory on your daily life. The dream, if meaningful enough invades every aspect of your life compelling you to meet it, to shape your reality in the fashion of what you dream–what you believe you are capable of achieving. On Sundays I watch football and play football video games, and talk about the deeper meaning of sport and competition with my boys, and when my body and mind are good for it, I take to the field and live out fun and glory and memory in the style of what is and what could have been.

 

Some thoughts:

1. Under one minute left: It is interesting how sometimes the words crash down like a waterfall and other times I struggle to put a single sentence together. If I could figure out how to keep that faucet going all the time, I’d be a trillionaire–and ridiculously happy to have so many words…