Thursday, July 29, 2010

The Pass


This trip to Australia, the surf has not been accommodating. In Margaret River (Western Australia), it was supposed to be 10 ft, and it probably was, but you couldn't tell with the on-shore gale (although it was beautiful). No in Byron Bay, one of the most-beautiful beach towns in all Australia, it has been raining and on-shore winds too. "Blue Bottles" or Portuguese Man-o-war litter the high tide line.

Yesterday, I was supposed to skydive and shoot an XS video with the Eatons, a couple with a great business we support. It was rained out. Today, I surfed The Pass, a relatively famous wave here in Australia/Byron Bay, but it was still beat up, disorganized and generally a lot of work and not much return. Ce la vie!


We do not plan this
Life, it is what we choose to
Make of it. BIG FUN!

Sunday, July 18, 2010

New Day for G


I've been a bit overwhelmed with travel and work and. . .excuses. Getting back into writing deliberately. Since my last post, I've been in Japan a bunch, did a family trip to the Netherlands (boating the canals of our ancestors in Friesland), Spain (surfing the Basque Coast) and France (more attempted surfing--unfortunately, the waves were 20 feet and not something we could ride with the equipment available). Also, our 10-year-old lab, Genevieve had to be put down while we were overseas. Something that is difficult and compounded by the fact that we were not there with her to say good-bye.

Genevieve, or "G" as we called her most of the time, was a sweetheart. One of the most 'soulish creatures' as Lewis called dogs, that I've known. I've written about her already as Genevieve the Meek a couple months ago. She loved us, and we loved her--we both gave and we both received from each other. We miss her dearly. It was hard to come home and see all her things, her bed, bowls, leashes. . .empty.

My brother, Joel, spent a lot of time with G. He was her alternate master and loved her and she him. Fortunately, he was with her during her sudden illness (spleen cancer) and departure from this silent planet (Lewis again). A wonderful family friend, Cathleen Falsani, was also with her when she passed on. Cathleen published this wonderful piece on her blog. It is beautiful.

http://falsani.blogspot.com/2010/07/godstuff_16.html#comment-form

Somehow I had felt guilty mourning a dog--something in my Dutch Christian Reformed roots. After reading Cath's blog I feel fully justified in missing our family member. There is a hole where G was in our lives that won't ever be filled. We will continue to pour God's love and our belief in, as Fr. Mac at Grace Episcopal said to young campers at one point: "The dogs? They all go to heaven!"


g, the golden one
a space that was love, now dread
soulish creature, home.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Bloed Oranje

We've had an odd week-or-so in Laguna. A friend and I got into a friendly series of bets and heckles over the Celtics/Lakers NBA Finals. While we live in Orange County (defined as "not LA" by so many in Laguna), when it comes to basketball, the Lakers have a decidedly large following in town.

The betting started with game four--a Laker victory and I would have been wearing some verison of a yellow Speedo and purple cape to the Dirty Bird (our local watering hole), but a Celtic victory would have Ron Pringle, aka "Ron-i" the lead singer for World Anthem, a great reggae band, having Boston Chowder dumped on his head on-stage. Ron-i got chowdered.



Sunday, before game five, Ron and some friends burned my Laker Hater t-shirt (stolen the night of the chowdering) and left it on my steps. In my mind, they were unleashing a deeper Celtic magic by sacrificing something stolen. . .and the Celtics won again.

Monday morning, a bigger event happened--the KNVB, the Royal Netherlands Foot Ball team beat Denmark 2-0 in unspectacular play. It's funny, but I didn't really care that much about the Celtics v. Lakers--it became interesting because of the betting and shananigans. With the Oranje, I could watch them play what is arguably one of the most boring sports on television (not a lot of scoring) because I feel actually connected to them somehow. . .weird, I know.

Then a friend posted this epic Nike ad on my page--"Orange is the Color of Insanity," which captures the character of the Dutch and their passion for the Oranje so well. Bloed Oranje or "Bleed Orange" is my new mantra. How can we be born across an ocean from our homeland and still feel it deep in our souls?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0BStdL8siY

insanity is
cheering for a ball passed
oranje dna

Monday, May 31, 2010

On Memorial Day


Remembering my best friend and others that have given so much on Memorial Day. It's the least we can do.

The images are of my friend's family (his wife and parents) and the plaque they installed at the commissioning of it all in Emerald Bay, CA. It's also of his daughter both on his fresh grave and this year. . .the images shows what he's missing for all of us.





I didn't think I'd have a lot to add to Mr. Helprin's essay, so I'm reposting:


On Memorial Day
Mark Helprin

In American military cemeteries all over the world, seemingly endless rows of whitened grave markers stand largely unvisited and in silence. The gardeners tend the lawns, one section at a time. Even at the famous sites, tourism is inconstant. Sunsets and dawns, winter nights, softly falling snow, and gorgeous summer mornings mainly find the graves and those who lie within them protected in eternal tranquility. Now and then a visitor linked by love, blood, or both will come to make that connection with the dead that only love can sustain. Sometimes you see them, quiet in some neglected corner beneath the trees or on a field above the sea, but numbers and time make this the exception. If not completely forgotten, the vast ranks of Civil War dead are now primarily the object of genealogy and historians, as the fathers and mothers, women, children, and brothers who loved them are now long gone. As it is for everyone else it is for the dead of all the wars, and neither proclamations nor holidays nor children innocently placing flags can cure it.

Nonetheless, a universal connection links every living American with those who have fallen or will fall in American wars and overrides the lapses in sustaining and honoring their memories. We are and shall be connected to them by debt and obligation. Though if by and large we ignore the debt we owe to those who fell at Saratoga, Antietam, the Marne, the Pointe du Hoc, and a thousand other places and more, our lives and everything we value are the ledger in which it is indelibly recorded. And even if we fail in the obligation, it is clear and it remains. What do we owe soldiers on the battlefields of the present or--do not doubt it--the future? How does one honor the inexpressibly difficult decision to walk toward annihilation, in some instances guaranteed, for the sake of the imperfect strategies of war, their confused execution, and their uncertain result? What can we offer the soldiers who will not know the outcome of their struggle, or ever again see those left behind?

We owe them a decision to go to war ratified unambiguously by the American people through their constitutional and republican institutions. Except where instantaneous response is necessitated by a clear and present danger, this means a declaration of war issued by a Congress that will fully support its own carefully determined decision and those it sends to carry it out--nothing less, nothing hedged, nothing ducked.

This requires in turn the kind of extraordinary, penetrating debate that can occur only among those wise enough to understand mortality and weigh it against principles that cannot be left undefended. It requires a president who can argue for his decision not merely with eloquence but substantively and tenaciously--guided only by the long-term interests of the United States, not fatuous slogans, political imperatives, and easily impeachable ideological notions of the right, left, or center.

Look ahead, not back. If we commit soldiers to battle, we must support them unstintingly. There are many ways to pay for war: taxing, borrowing, cutting other expenditures, sharing the burden with allies, adjusting war aims, and starving the means to fight. The only unacceptable one is the last. If the general population must do with less, so be it, for the problem is only imagined. Better than feckless politicians who think it lives by bread alone, the American people has always known that its enlisted sacrifices are hardly commensurate with those of the maimed and the dead.

A soldier's destiny must rest, rather than with careerists, in the hands of grave and responsible officials and commanders, those who experience what Churchill called the statesman's "stress of soul." He should never have to die for the sake of an academic theory once the doctoral thesis of an Ivy League idealist working his way up through the bureaucracies and think tanks.

And yet the commander who does not labor to educate himself unceasingly is likely no better than his opposite number in the seminar room. Above all, he must have a genius for war, an inherent quality that cannot be manufactured and is usually crowded out by that part of the brain that makes for a brilliant career, and punished by the higher ranks for having what they do not. Such people deserve the protection and promotion that mostly they do not receive, for when they do they become Grant, Churchill, Marshall, Eisenhower, and Patton.

The debt we owe, and in regard to which we are at present deeply in arrears, may be difficult to pay but it is easy to see. To grasp its conspicuous clarity one need only walk among the graves and pause to give proper thought to even just one life among the many. Read slowly the name, the dates, the place where everything came to an end.

I have seen lonely people of advancing age, yet as constant as angels, keeping faith to those they loved who fell in wars that current generations, not having known them, cannot even forget. The sight of them moving hesitantly among the tablets and crosses is enough to break your heart. Let that break be the father to a profound resolution to fulfill our obligation to the endless chain of the mourning and the dead. Shall we not sacrifice where required? Shall we not prove more responsible, courageous, honest, and assiduous? Shall we not illuminate our decisions with the light that comes from the stress of soul, and ever keep faith with the fallen by embracing the soldiers who fight in our name? The answer must be that we shall.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Enablers


Saw an outrageous photo of an Indonesian baby (2-years-old) who supposedly smokes two packs of cigs a day and is 53 pounds--apparently they don't help him with weightloss.

Obviously, the image incites a range of emotions from anger to humor, but what struck me the most was that this kid can't get cigarettes on his own--his parent(s) have to serve him. While this is news in the USA, a very similar epidemic is also in full swing here, childhood obesity.

Young children don't buy their own food, it is served to them by their parents. We are destroying the current and future health of our children by supersizing them via the food choices we bring into our homes and deliver. As Tommy Thompson said when he was health secretary: "Obesity has become the number one preventable form of disease that leads to death, and high fructose corn syrup is the new cigarettes." [Reciting from memory.]


He gets angry if
Cigs and sugar aren't served
two-year-olds gone wild

Commitment

Am on my rounds with XS enthusiasts--Amway Independent Business Owners (IBOs) who are some of the most committed people on earth, thankfully some of that commitment includes the XS brand.


Last night I was in Edison, NJ, participating in a meeting for a good friend, Charlie Durso. He told me about a young guy on his team, 'MegaDoug,' who rolled his car the night before, coming home from a product demo. "I doubt he'll be there tonight," Charlie told me as he showed me the picture of MegaDoug in a neckbrace. . .

I'm sure that MegaDoug was in some real pain last night, but he showed and we called him out for being a champion--what an animal!



overcoming pain
megadoug defeats injury
blue-vase champion

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Victory at Sea



Since 5:45am, I've been watching the tide charts today, that and the surf. It's huge but it was also blowing 30 knots since 4:30am (according to Surfline.com). This means, very choppy, barely rideable conditions with lots of bombs on the head. Reminded me of Beowulf in the opening scene when he and his crew are sailing their dragonship through a storm-tossed sea to get to Geatland.


mountains roll beneath
gray/green/brownish kelpy soup
spring winds blow the sea