Beer: What CAN'T it do???

So apparently fisheries are being hit hard in this recession. Food costs are on the rise. So some folks got together and are testing using the spent grains and hops from breweries to feed the fish! How great is that???

Read the Story

Eddie Lee Ivery

One of my heroes growing up was Eddie Lee Ivery, running back for the Green Bay Packers in the early 80s. I remember my dad taking my brother and me up to Green Bay for training camp when I was 6 or 7. Eddie and James Lofton were my brother and my favorite players.

I had the opportunity to meet Eddie a few years back when I was working at Cafe 458 in Atlanta. As has been written of elsewhere, Eddie was in the Oakhurst Recovery program, an in-patient drug and alcohol recovery program that was connected with Cafe 458. Eddie was an All-American at Tech, setting what was at that time the single-game rushing mark of 356 yards against Air Force (in a blizzard, no less) and the single-season mark of 1526 yards in 1978. He was drafted in the first round by the Packers, but was injured on the third play of his rookie season. He went on to have multiple knee surgeries, and he was never the player he was in college, though he did lead the Packers in rushing twice.

From small-town, warm weather Georgia, Eddie told me he was pretty depressed when he injured himself. Isolated, he started using drugs and alcohol with teammates. This habit turned into an addiction which lasted through his eight seasons with the Packers, until he finally sought help at the Oakhurst Recovery Program in 1998. That's where I met Eddie. I even talked him into playing on a church-league flag-football team where I was quarterback. I just told my teammates this was Eddie and he'd played a little ball before. I think that first game he had 5 touchdown catches, at 43 years old, not having run in years.

Georgia Trend magazine has a great article about Eddie and his story of getting his life back together. Eddie finished Oakhurst and was put back on scholarship at Tech to finish his bachelors degree. He works as a strength and conditioning coach with the football team at Georgia Tech. Who knows how many lives he has touched already. He certainly touched mine.

Double-Consciousness

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others. . . . One ever feels his twoness,an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warrings ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

-- W.E.B. Du Bois(1868-1963), The Souls of Black Folk

Hope Network: Election Edition!

This campaign has gone on quite a while, huh?! Sure there is negative campaigning going on, yet I find great hope in the numbers of people turning out to vote! Ok, I admit we as a nation have a rather sad record in terms of voting rates--Australia and Malta are at like 95%-(I'm all for tax breaks for voters, like $50: who's with me?) But early voting has caused quite a stir across the country. According to the AP, early voting has tripled since 2004. And voters in one Georgia county stood in line until 10:30 p.m. last week to cast ballots.

In Florida, there were such long waits for early voting- over five hours in some places- that Gov. Charlie Crist had to step in and sign an executive order extending early voting hours to accommodate the masses. And the Florida A&M marching band entertained one group of early voters at a polling station (right).

So let's get out there on Tuesday if you haven't already done so! This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land...

Mary Oliver, Part II, The Journey

Here's another poem by my favorite poet Mary Oliver. I don't know about you, but I can live so much of my life in my head, with so many conflicting voices. None of the voices are not mine, and yet none of the voices is pure. That's what I like about Oliver. She's right there in the midst of the struggle. She's not writing after she's got it all figured out, kicking back on her sofa saying, "Whew! I'm glad life isn't so difficult anymore now that I've beat the system, solved the puzzle, found my one clear voice (the voice of God?)." She's not the saint who used to be the sinner, the one who, now that she's beyond doubt or struggle, can finally make art. She's right there right now making beautiful art, right in the muck and messiness. Saintliness and Beauty are not things that come after the struggle, after all the questions have been answered and doubts assuaged. Now is Beauty. The Beauty of God is at hand. That is good news.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Senseless acts of singing

The Decatur Five

I had the pleasure of singing for no good reason at all today! Five of us from the Community of Hospitality brought songbooks and gumption to downtown Decatur, GA and sang on a street corner for about 30-40 minutes. We had one complete stranger jump in to join us, several encouraging comments, and lots of interest by kids smiling, pointing, and walking by with their parents. The point was simply to sing and to share music with those walking by. I personally see such actions as movements towards creating the type of world I want to live in. But even if nothing happened today other than 5 people singing, isn't that reason to rejoice?!

Our Worship circle sings every Sunday night, we have for the past 25+ years. Someone mentioned the other week that the only time each week that they sung was on Sunday nights at our service. This got folks thinking that we should just get together and sing in public.

I was relating my singing afternoon to friends tonight and it reminded them of a trip they took to China recently. They said that every morning and afternoon, they would see dozens, even hundreds, of people in parks throughout Beijing who also gathered to sing as well as ballroom dance, do Tai Chi, and ribbon dancing gatherings (see below). That makes me smile! I am happy anytime people are gathering in public as citizens, are engaging with their friends and the larger community. We've gotten so disconnected from each other in this American society. I'm heartened to hear such that such gatherings are common in China.

So this was round one--let me know if you want to join us next time. Or do it yourself! Or dance in public. It's your and my community out there, let's engage it. Do something beautiful today that makes no sense--it's quite liberating!!!

Movies of Hope: Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude is one of my all-time favorite movies. For many reasons. The fantastic music was all written for the film by Cat Stevens. The theme song is If You Want To Sing Out (listen on YouTube), and the song exemplifies the theme of the movie: Live, Live your particular and wild life, even and especially when there are so many who want you to live someone else's life!

I won't give anything away because I know you're going to see the movie soon! Hal Ashby, of Being There fame, directed the film. The images in the movie are fantastic and the soundtrack, though most definitely dated, is perfect. Maude is an over-the-top free spirit who knows pain deeper than most, and yet is alive. She's about to turn 80 and has never been more alive. She steals trees that are choking on the pollution of the city and transplants them back in the forest. She "borrows" priests' cars and cops' motorcycles. Ironically, she likes funerals, which she attends with her yellow umbrella. Harold has no friends, but likes funerals as well. They bump into each other at funerals of people neither of them know. In one of several all-is-not-what-it-seems elements, Harold and Maude, who appear to be most morbid, are in fact the only people in the film who have any sense of life at all.

Harold is primed to come to life, and he meets his guide in Maude. Their friendship mentor-mentee relationship invigorates Harold and sustains Maude. They live wonderfully odd lives. I think more that the truly odd might have something vital to teach me about really living. Because they are not constrained by fear, by embarrassment and shame, but what is "normal" or "respectable." These categories are all fictions at best, prisons at worst. Corporations and other snake-oil salesmen can't sell you plastic surgeries or the "right car" or a soul-less job or celebrity gossip if you are alive, are yourself, and don't give a shit about what other people want you to be. Sorry to swear, but the truth's the truth.

Here's the point: It is the freaks who are free, the freaks who can live beyond fear. It is the freaks who are in touch with what Mary Oliver calls their "wild and precious life." Watch Harold and Maude, or watch it again. See if you are re-invigorated to live wildly, to love, to be yourself--which is no small feat!