23 February 2008

Greetings, All.

For the past week, I have been immersed in a new writing project that has absolutely consumed my life. It is, by far, the most exciting work I have done in the past 15 years, and I look forward to sharing it with all of you when I emerge from this work.

I am on schedule to finish by the second week of April. Until then, I will not be posting on this blog or elsewhere, so that I may focus my energies entirely on this project (after my familial needs are met, of course).

Somewhere (and somehow) in the middle of all this, I am performing in West Side Story (I’ve been cast as Doc), and so my energies will be directed there as well.

This is an extremely exciting time for me (and the weight loss–17 pounds now to date–makes it even that much more enjoyable), and although I will miss posting and reading your blogs during the next seven weeks, I cannot wait to return and share with you all that I have written and experienced.

Until then, I wish you all well. See you in April!

Rus

Saw this on CNN today. 143 MILLION pounds of beef recalled because of blatant abuse of cattle and the increased risk of contamination. Not only were the cattle slaughtered, but now their deaths have been in vain because their meat will not be consumed.

143 Million Pounds! That’s 2 burgers for every man, woman, and child in this country! (sans me, thank you very much).

You can read the article HERE.

Hey, I’m not being preachy about this or anything, but this is wrong. Plain and simple wrong.

Yummm….I can smell the asparagus and tofu marinating as I write this… :)

Thanks to Janet for showing me the way to this site…What does your day look like?

Click here to create your own painting.

In light of the tragedy that hit NIU, I was struck with an idea for a relevant and timely story: The Changing Role of the College Cop. Living in Baltimore, I am central to several universities: Towson U, my alma mater in my undergraduate work and where I currently teach, is less than a mile away; Goucher College, where I received my MFA in creative nonfiction, is literally in my back yard (I am looking at its campus as I write this post); Hopkins, Loyola, University of Baltimore, College of Notre Dame and several others are all within 20 minutes of my house. I live in the center of several university villages, all unique and serving local, national, and international students in particular ways preparing them for their contributions to society.

It seemed like a good piece, then for me to pitch. The role of the college police department has come a long way from caring for the drunken students who can’t find their way back to their dorms. When Goucher held some international games a few years back that included athletes from Israel, we had snipers on the rooftops of the Towson Sheraton and the parking garages to the mall less than a half-mile from our home. The jurisdictions have changed as well; campus police are now able to patrol and govern the surrounding streets to the universities, in some instances up to an 8-mile radius.

So last night, I did all the background research. I lined up all of my contacts at the universities. I decided that I would interview the Towson Police Chief for how he approached the change; the Goucher president for his view on empowering the campus police to ensure safety measures are in place; and the UB and Hopkins recruits/officers about their choices to work on campus rather than on the county squads, now that the difference between the two has vastly changed since 9/11, and even more so since the tragedy at V-Tech.

After I gathered all the preliminary info I needed for my article, I did what every freelancer needs to do: I created my contact list of potential markets for the piece and began the process of composing my pitch. To each market, my approach was a little different. However, I was confident that it would be picked up by somebody and I would be given a deadline and the green light to get writing.

Then I opened the paper today, and there’s my article, already written, by a staff writer.

That’s the trouble with freelancing. It’s so much harder to write the urgent, timely piece when you’ve got to take the extra steps in marketing/pitching your piece. I should have known better. Now I need to rework the angle and go deeper. What will still sell that won’t be assigned out to a staffer in the next week or two?

There’s always the first-person piece as an adjunct professor. How this has changed my way of teaching. And maybe I’ll write that piece, too.

But I can’t let this other one go just yet. There’s something deeper here that I’ve got to write, I’ve got to contribute to this issue.

Stay tuned…and if you have an idea about this, please let me know.

I drop 14 pounds, and suddenly I’m dropping every other part of my life that once defined me.

For some reason, I am now an avid Orioles’ fan.

I’m dropping my Green Party affiliation and joining the Democratic Party.

My vegan lifestyle encouraged me to say a few words to myself (and I do mean to myself) for a poor mouse that expired outside my back door. Sure, I just tossed him over the fence, but it was done with some ceremonial grace that I’m not afraid to mention here to all of you.

I’m joining LOST forums and posting frequently, lost myself in the deep discourse of dissecting what this show is really all about.

And this is just after 14 pounds….Yikes! If and when I reach my goal of dropping another 86, what in the world will my life be like then?

Back to bed. Hate the flu. Hate the flu. Hate the flu….

A while ago, after 9/11, after space shuttle explosions, after snipers on the prowl around DC, Virginia, and Maryland, after all of that, i watched my daughter grow numb to this kind of news. To her, it is simply a part of her life, part of the norm. Yeah, it’s important to stay informed, but there’s no real need to check CNN any more frequently than the Weather Channel, right?

I heard about the shooting on my way home from school today on CNN Radio. I found myself simply destroyed–initially–by the news, but CNN treated it as if it were an inconsiderate tragedy treading none-too-lightly on the political landscape of what lies ahead.

And for a moment, I went along with it. I got numb, just a bit, but numb nonetheless.

I could feel my body, my mind, my heart accepting this tragedy for what it was: just another horrifying incident on a school campus. Let’s turn right over to the TV page, shall we, and see what time LOST comes on tonight.

I pinched myself–literally–and cried out a whimper from the brief, sharp pain. And then it was gone. I was back to CoffeeHouse Rock. I was back to checking out the traffic along 695. I was back in my present, blinders on, eyes straight ahead. All is good.

Numb is what we become, though, isn’t it? How many memorials do we drive by when going through intersections? How many people die a senseless death before we start analyzing the colors of the flowers, the creativity of the whittled cross, the token pictures left nailed to trees.

How long before we forget that a death even occurred?

Maybe we’re becoming numb because this is our world, just like it is my daughter’s world. It’s replacing all we ever knew to be true, to be right. We are just learning how to…….survive. Differently.

I can’t write this enough (although I wish far fewer tragedies would have ever happened, prompting me to write such words): Love the one you’re with, call/text/facebook somebody you haven’t seen in a while and tell them hello. Especially today. Valentine’s Day.

Spread love. Words of hope. Words of encouragement. We’re all in it together. Let’s act like that means something.

I’ve been working (and reworking) a draft about following a blood trail along the paths near the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain. I think that I’ve finally decided to market the piece to a vegetarian/animal rights audience. In making that decision, I’ve had to make many changes to the original draft. These were necessary, of course. The original piece just wasn’t working with the first audience I was targeting–more of the mainstream reader. The piece was anticlimactic, and there was no deeper subject that made it worthwhile for the reader. By switching to an animal rights audience, the piece just logically fits now.

Anyway, because I shifted my target audience, I had to find a new publication for this essay. I did a quick search on the Internet, and I found the perfect home for it. Satya, a magazine that has been in circulation for well over a decade, has a solid reputation worldwide in providing interesting and important news and features about living a vegan life, supporting animal rights, and offering a variety of opportunities for others to get involved (in various degrees of commitment) to the mission of working more closely with the earth and all its creatures in a safe and healthy way.

Last July, the publisher of Satya, Beth Gould, decided to call it quits. Simply put, it seems as if she had tired from the fight. In her final letter to her readers, she wrote the following:

It is difficult to maintain such ideals when evidence of cruelty abounds. It is tempting to fight, to take up arms and to argue, especially when the tangible victories are so scarce. More animals die today, needlessly, painfully, than did 13 years ago, when our first issue came out. Our movement is more fractured. More people are willing to spend their time arguing about theory than creating positive change. But there are more of us than ever. More people willing to stand up, every day in the face of injustice.

The tone of the entire letter seemed drained, yet hopeful that somebody else would pick up the torch and keep the cause going.

That’s story no. 1.

Here’s story no. 2. A student at my school, whom I respect greatly, argued her point that people shouldn’t “throw away” their vote when they don’t vote for a candidate who has a good chance of winning. She couldn’t understand why people would vote (in a general election) for a member of the green party or an independent when it was obvious that the real race was between a democrat and a republican. Likewise, others have argued with me that they couldn’t understand why, in the primaries, a person would vote for Ron Paul or another candidate who was so far away from receiving the majority of the votes within the respective democratic and republican parties.

Finally, I offer story no. 3.

During the late sixties and early seventies, there was such a strong peace movement in this country that just dissolved because so many people felt that it had piqued, that it had reached its maximum impact, and nothing more could be done to make their point any clearer or create a greater following. Fractured peace movements remained along both coasts, but for the most part, the concept of a unified movement had crumbled. Countless peace lovers moved reluctantly into mainstream America, angry, defeated, resigned.

What do these three stories have in common?

I think that, somewhere along the line, we have confused “purpose” with “victory.” We don’t make a stand on our position regarding animal rights because we believe everybody will someday believe us and be “on our side”; we make our stand and create our communities because we believe in it. Period. And we know that others believe in it too. We’ll encourage others to join in our cause, and that’s good for the movement. But we can’t contribute to our missions believing that, someday, we will be the majority.

When we support a certain political candidate that does not align with the mainstream, we are not doing so because we necessarily believe that, at this time, this person will most certainly win the nomination. We do so because our values align most nearly with that candidate, and we vote our conscience. If more people did this, then perhaps the issues that not considered mainstream would be taken more seriously by the people who eventually end up winning the elections. Ron Paul is a great example of a candidate who has no chance at all of winning the nomination; however, much of what he says regarding our domestic affairs makes a lot of sense, and the media (and the other candidates) know it. If people have the courage to vote their conscience, then their voices will be heard, even if their candidate does not win the nomination. The Ralph Naders and Ron Pauls who throw their lives into the race do so to allow others to have their say, to have their voices heard, and if the voice is loud enough, the other “mainstream” candidates have to pay attention and address these issues in their own campaigns.

We pursue what we believe in. We throw our votes away when we cast our ballots for the mainstream candidates who are the “lesser of two evils” instead of voting for the person who actually represents what we believe most strongly in. The victory is not in the win; it’s in the collective, united sound we make so that we can be heard, taken seriously, respected.

Beth Gould should have never closed down her publication, Satya. She should have sold it to somebody else who could continue providing a voice to and for so many. The goal is not to overthrow the world and win; the goal is to be heard so that you can make a difference.  Peace lovers were making a difference in the sixties and seventies, Satya was making a difference in the last thirteen years, and candidates like Ron Paul and others are making a difference now. They were all victorious in their missions, in their purpose. To believe that becoming the majority is the only way to define success is a sad misunderstanding.

Make sure that your causes are victorious. Make your voice heard, and never lose the vision and the focus that, no matter how big or small your group is, what you are doing today matters.

0209081018blog

I spent some time last night visiting some new blogs just to see what others were saying about writing, politics, and life in general. I was immediately overwhelmed by the number of people who are just like you and me–doing our best to have our say in this world in our own special, unique way. Thousands (millions????) have small, medium, and large circles of blogging communities where there’s support, encouragement, friendship, and even love.

It reminds me of the time when I was driving in Baltimore City a few years back. I was stopped at a red light, and in front of me, dozens of people walked in opposite directions toward unknown (to me) destinations (who knows…maybe unknown to them as well). It was at that moment that I recognized the insignificance of one life (mine) in this world, and yet, at the same time, the significance of it to my small community. Each one of these individuals had families, social networks, ambitions, and accomplishments that I would never know about. And, likewise, they would have no idea about the ambitions and accomplishments of all the people sitting in their cars, waiting for them to cross. I felt so much pressure lifted from my shoulders to be somebody for so many people. All at once, in those moments before the last heal left the crosswalk and the light turned green, I felt empowered to just be me.

My wife and I are in the midst of some pretty heavy planning to start our own business in the next few years, and when I went blog hunting last night, I saw so many others doing the same thing. It overwhelmed me in the same way when I was at that red light several years ago. The negative speak kicked into high gear, telling me that I was insignificant and foolish for thinking this way, that this was all a waste of time, it was never going to work, everybody else is doing it, blah blah blah.

But inside of me, some light turned green, and I then became encouraged, knowing that I’ve got a strong community who will help us get started, and from that core group, our small community will grow as we might need it to. It makes no difference what everybody else is doing. If I wasted all of my energy on that, I’d never get anything accomplished.

So that takes me to this thought: these online communities are so self-sustaining, aren’t they? It’s like starting or joining a new colony with every new blog that is created. Thousands of posts are being published every minute, just like hundreds of thousands of lights are turning green all over the country, even the world. It would be just as ridiculous for us to worry about every light turning green, just as it would be to worry about the millions of bloggers who don’t know anything about our ambitions, our accomplishments.

I’ll end this post telling you about a little survey I took earlier in the week. Some online fitness site asks you some questions to see what your real age is (www.realage.com???). One of the questions was about how many people are in your social circle. I could be wrong, but I believe I was actually penalized (i.e., years were added on to my actual age) for having more than 7 people in my social circle. Is that because there is added pressure to maintain these social relationships? I wasn’t sure if the test was telling me that, if I had fewer friends, I’d be in better shape. That just seems so backwards to me. Or maybe my definition of social circle is quite different than how this website defined it. If this is the case, though, that our lifespans are shortened by social activity, I’d like to think that the shortened number of years I will be here on earth will be lived more fully for knowing you all a little better…

0207080559blog

I was listening to the post-Super Tuesday analysis on CNN on my ride home from school yesterday, and the big buzz was about how exciting this is to not have the democratic and republican nominees selected (or anywhere close) after nearly half the nation had their say. Most pundits are talking rather excitedly about “brokered conventions” and how good this is for the political process.

I wish I could agree.

Not that I’m against close races or spirited campaigns. Like any sports fan, I love a good fight that goes down to the final seconds of the game.

What bothers me, I’m afraid, is that the four (or six, if you want to include Huckabee and Paul) hardly stand for anything different, sans Barak Obama.

And the problem with Barak is that his presentation of taking America to unchartered ground in the next decade is absolutely believable–if we were not engulfed in a nasty, nasty war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon-to-be elsewhere.

I feel like we’re on the verge of doing the world’s biggest sweep-it-under-the-carpet clean up, like the past seven years haven’t really happened at all. Let’s move on, folks, and focus on the good, the future, the children.

After all the rhetoric and the campaign promises of a brighter tomorrow, whoever gets into office is inheriting a most challenging, all-consuming problem in how to bring our troops home from Iraq.

I believe that McCain doesn’t want to do it.

I believe Hilary doesn’t know how to do it.

I believe Barak can’t do it.

What good is competition if the people battling for the top spot continue to step around the problems they will inherit and instead talk about how wonderful life is going to be without war?

The media are to blame just as much, though. We are so caught up in the meanness of the republican candidates and the softer side of the democratic rivals that we’ve somehow managed to forget that we have to first address our problems before we can start holding hands and break out into choruses of Kumbaya around the campfire.

I’m not going to lie. I can’t help but be mesmerized by Barak’s words and vision. Between Obama, Clinton, and McCain, Barak is the only one that I think has a chance of really changing the direction of America.

But you can’t change direction until you address our needs today. Driving off into the sunset has no romance to it at all when what remains behind are the lives of thousands of men and women who did what we asked them to do: put their lives on the line and protect our country.

0206082103blog

to JT’s One Man Band

Let’s get a little intimate here, shall we?

I don’t mean that other kind of intimate. I’m talking about the honesty, the candid words, the pull-up-a-chair-and-let’s-chat kind of intimate. I’m there now. That place. That zone. That wonderful core within me that makes it so easy to just let go a little. Share. Be.Things are going well. I weigh in again this Friday, and I hope to add another 2 or 3 pounds to my 10 that I’ve lost to date since I started this vegan journey three weeks ago. It’s not hard anymore, though it was never really hard in the beginning either.

I think you have to have that decision made in your heart before your head can jump in and keep you on the straight and narrow. Without the love for yourself and for the ones you love, I think it’s pretty hard to do much of anything that’s going to be sustaining and worthwhile. The trick, then, is to stay there. In the core. Keep that center and know when you are drifting, then do whatever you have to to get back.

I’m walking a lot now (well, in comparison to the really sedentary life I was living). This pedometer I got for Christmas—this little digital thing that clips to my belt each morning—has motivated me more than any of those other things that were supposed to do the trick (you know, you look at your kids and do the whole be-there thing when they get into high school and college. For me, though, it just didn’t work like that.). I started out at 2,000 steps a day, and now I’m up to 10,000-12,000 a day with little effort. I walk everywhere. Run my own errands. Take the long way when possible. It’s all adding up. And as long as the pounds keep coming off (slowly but steadily), I’m going to be in great shape come summertime.

So what should we expect here at rusvwnet in the coming days? Well, I’ve been doing a ton of writing, and I guess I’ll share some of that with you here. More importantly, though, I need to use this blog to write for an audience on a daily basis. Please, don’t feel the need to leave comments unless you are so moved to share your thoughts. I feel closer than ever of reaching my goal of writing full-time. I figure that this should be happening by the summer of 2010, where I will be able to shift gears fully from teaching to writing. That’s not going to come easily, though, and so I’ve got to use this blog in all ways possible to get there. The daily post is most important, though.My apologies in advance for what may very well be seemingly meaningless dribble. Sift through the tripe and settle in a little more closely with the words that move you.

Finally, there’s this: I appreciate all of you immensely. I never asked you to keep coming back, but yet you still do, and for this I am ever-grateful. I hope that my daily postings will, in some way, demonstrate that appreciation. You are, simply put, the best.

Love to all, rus