sorry

that last post about Greg Maddux was not supposed to be so sappy....

Jordan

ps. I promise I´ll make a post about Guatemala soon.

A sad day in Atlanta

yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away

baseball was just another game to play



Yesterday, Greg Maddux (aka. pest pitcher of the modern era not on steroids) retired officially from Baseball. From 1992-1995 Greg Maddux won 4 Cy Young awards and amassed a 1.98 ERA. A brief look at his career statistics showed 20 walks total in 1997, in 232 innings. He won lots of gold gloves. He won lots of games with bad run support and crappy bullpens. I think 355 wins in all. Pretty amazing. You can marvel at his statistics yourself at the official braves website. I am not going to take the time rightnow on this slow computer to do it myself.



Anyways, I have been braves fan ever since watching Otis Nixon bring back a would be Pirate home run in the 1992 NLCS (I think that´s right, those details were´t so importatn to me at the time) and then watching Sid Bream charge into home, beating a Barry Bond´s (he had smaller arms at the time) throw to home, to win the series, I have been a Braves fan. Actually I think I might have just felt bad for the Braves because everyone else in my family was rooting for the Pirates. I felt bad later when my brothers were crying and I was happy.



Since then, I spent hours with a tennis ball and glove in front of our brick fireplace (the outside part) pitching balls, pretending to be alternatly, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Steve Avery (remember him? he was supposed to be great and was my favorite for a while). When my pitches weren´t great, Otis Nixon, Marquis Grissom, David Justice, Mark Lemke (my favorite playoff time second baseman, Jeff Blouser, and others would make diving catches to save me. SOmehow the imaginary Braves always won, and for the better part of my life that was actually true in real life too. Now the Braves are struggling a little bit and I have to live like every other baseball fan not knowing for sure that my team would make it to the playoffs. The Braves used to have three potential aces, now, with Tim Hudson´s injury, they are struggling to find one (and yes, I blame the Yankees and their greedy ways for that).


Now we´ve got some good guys like McCann and Escobar, and good ole Chipper Jones is stillwithus, but the days will never be the same as those fantasy days with (young) Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz dominating the NL.

Today, the Braves are lost without a single ace and the retirement of Maddux has brought to the forfront of my mind how far gone that "yesterday" really is.

Jordan

I hope like probably every other Brave´s fan that one day he will return as a pitching coach.

It´s been a while

You guys remember that song that was huge for a little while while we were in High School. Sort of a grundgish (sp) sort of song "it´s been a while since I could say.... that I wasn´t addicted" stuff like that, well my innocently written title suddenly brought back the shameful recollection that I liked the song. oh well. Anyways, for a long time now I have held fast to the rule that I need to respect my former self. That is, I need to respect the ideas, views, or ideas of what fun is, that I used to have, even if now I think it is stupid. I realized a long time ago that if couldn´t promis myself to respect (in the future) what I think today, then today will end up being pretty crappy and useless because I´ll always be worried about what a future, more intelligent (supposedly) perhaps more dignified me will think. If I don´t have respect for my formerself, my futre self might logically not have respect for my current self, and if I realize that, then why should me current self have respect for itself? So I promise to respect all of my selves... anyways.... This strategy has already benefited me. For example, when I was a little kid I thought that it was just downright disrespectful and stupid that my older brother sometimes went to peoples houses and TP´d them.... for fun. When I was in HS I learned that it was "cool" to do this very thing. I refused many an invitation to join in on this activity (which as a HS and with pure pressure and with the distorted but intelligent enough reasoning of my friends didn´t at the time seem so bad) largely on the basis of wanted to respect the strong opinions of my former self.

ok, enough of that, let´s get back to Guatemala, it´s been a while.

I just got back from MCC meetings in the city. It was a lot of fun to hang out wth the MCC team here. They are all a lot of fun and they are all very good people. I am constantly amazed at how different everyone on the team is, and yet how well we all get a long.
The highlight of our time was geting ready for our performance in a talent show which will be held at the regional MCC meeting in Nicaragua in January. I won´t reveal what it will be for fear of spy´s from SALTers in other countriçys in Central America who might read thsi and reveal the secret of what we are going to do. Suffice it tosay that it was a lot of fun.

It reminded me of the annual "talent" show which happens at my Penner sides Christmas gathering. I will miss that.

Anyays, we spent a lot of time talking about thefuture of MCC in Guatmala, values, and methods,. It was good. We also had a lot of fun, and for me it was just nice to be in a new place, get different food, and have a hot shower and room where the sunlight woke you up in the morning. My room in Carcha has a window, but it has no screen and it is not made of glass, but wood. So there is only light when it is open.

We also had a Christmas dinner which, being prepared by my former hostmom inthe city, was amazing. I also helped in hte making and earing of sugar cookies. We followed up dinner witha rousing game of pictionary. David Janzten, Beth peachy, and I won. I did bad drawing but twice I the first guess to come out of my mouth was correct, giving our team aneasy victory. One was Christopher Columbus ( guess as soon as I saw two little boats and what appeared to be a land mass) andtheother was Rocky Mountains. I have never played such an intense, hotly contested game of pictionary. THen we played the dictionary game which was also a lot of fun. Though I think we had a bad dictionary. I think in the first seven words no one guessed the correct definition, and it was because the definitions usually just sounded badly writen. I reminded myself of my dad with this entry for one word with the successful definition, "A man of unusual proportions" . My dad is not a man of unusual proportions, that just seemed to me like a very typical way that my dad might word the less politically correct, ¨that man is fat." Earlier that day we had also eaten pizza (it had been a while for me) and played soccer. Saturday we relaxed in theMCC apartment, went out to get coffee (I had gelato), I visited my former host family, made an excelent dinner, and hung outlate into the night talking, listening to David play his new guitar, and singing along. Very fun.


Now I am back in the office finishing up my project and wrking on getting ready for a Work and Learn team to come my way to Bezaleel in January.

oh yes, while visiting my host dad in the city he told me, ¨Ya casi no tenés accento gringo" or "you almost don´t have a gringo accent anymore" so that made me feel pretty darn good. Though I think in that moment I had been talking particularly well. I still stumble around sotimes when I am not sure what to say or how to say it. I am still, probably pretty much everyday, reminded that my vocabulary is limited, I need to get back to the books (maybe even with a dictionary) and continue learning vocab. I really want to learn higher level vocab. It wil be dificult here though because spansih is the second langauge of most people here too, andmost don´t read, so it will really need to be a conscious effort form me. Also my listening skills need to improve. They talk slow here and I am afraid that if I went to a faster speaking place I would ahve problems.

Anyways it is about time I go on and get home.

I think with Christmas season coming, thinking about all the traditons of my family and with people at Bethel College, I am entering a little bit of another period of missing home(s). I even kind of miss the whole commercial aspect of Christmas which has hardly hit Carcha. The cheesy Christmas songs that have nothing to do with Jesus and everything. It is all part of a season which I miss.

I did however, receive andelectronic Christmas card from Barry and Brenda Bartel and THE WHOLE BETHEL COLLEGE CAMPUS COMMUNITY. I thoght that was funny... thanks guys!! ok enough, fun, I actually did kind of appreciate it. I do feel apart of an extended Bethel community that is still worth something despite being so seperated. Thanks Bethel, you will always give me warm fuzzy feelings.

ok, I need to go

Jordan

An Awesome Dream

There is a lot to write about, including a 5 day trip to San Marcos Guatemala with young people from around guatemala and El Salvador to learn about environmental preservation. I have also been planning for a while a post on daily life here, but I´ve already written this, so I am going to share it.

I think I´ve always been a fairlyvivid dreamer and better than most at remembering them. I got particularlygood in collge with my roomate Alex, where we always told each other immediatly about dreams. Here is a very funny and interesting dream I had recently.

My family and I and... Barack Obama... ar eating dinner out in the Kansas countryside at a verynice, down-home style restaurant. Before gioin in I talked toa scruffy 30ish man standing by his blue ford pickup about what was good, he highlyrecomended the ¨corbet¨... whatever that is. Sounds like a Sorbet, but with a C. The place turns outto eb a buffet but withtheadded touchthat handsome male waiters in nice white suites asked youwhat you want and then they get it for youfrom the buffet line (a new revolution in American dining? I dreamt it first!) I ordered teh corbet, only afterwards remembering that I don´t know what that is... good thing it´s a buffet.

Anyways teh drea jumps to after themeal standing outsidetherestaurant whichlooks like a larege white house (old). Italk to Barck Obama and feel like an idiot/jerk even as I ask him aboutthos white supremecists who watned to killhim. NOw, my dream shifts for a little bit to us now being actors in a television show that looks and feelsl like smallvile (the young supermanshow that has been on TV at myhouse recently). I am sitting inthe back of on old pickup truck enjoyingth fresh air and win in my face and marveling at how exactly like Barack Obama our actor Barack Obama looks. Along with me and barck is a ccomplementary blond and good looking (hey, it´s TV) actress. The scene is on. Now in my dream I am not acting any more, but watching the television show, of which I am a part, but that I somehow don´t know what´s going to happen, as if I was not a part of producing it.

Scene of television show I watch on TV in my dream: The three of us sitting in theback of the truck. Obama starts to become concerned withis hand, but he doesn´t say aything about it. The trhree of us continue to enjoy the sceneryand i think some random things happen to distract us as the camaras continue to show Obama uietly growing more and more concerend withhis hand. Fuinally he tells me andthe prettyblond girl something goin on and his ahnd feels funny. He rolls uphis sleave andwe look at it. It is mostly invisible, but it is just opaque enough (the frafics, by the way, are B movie quality) but it looks like this invisible thing in the shape of his hand is being painfully extracted from obama´s physical body through his hand.

Obama suddely realizaes what is going on, he looks up dramitacally, a stron ghing of worry invades his usual cool that everybody likes to talk about, his voice states dramatically,

¨I´m losing my Martin Luther King¨ that his, in this show, his superpower.
commercial.

Then, still dreaming, I laugh about the show and how stupid/rediculous that was and yet find the idea really hilarious. who thought of that!

That´s the end of the dream, I gues we´ll never know what happens.

First of all, I want to state, that while I think it is extremely cool that we have a black president, I in know way consider his blackness to be his singular quality, or that he gets superpowers from it.

Ilove all tehlayers of reality. Dreaming that I am in a TV show. Thenwatching tthe TV show thenmaking fun of the TV show that my asleep mind made up.A prettyblond girl who only exists in a fake television show in my dream. My dreamself has the audacity to make fun of a television show, never realizing that I myself will later make fun of my dreamself for not realizing that what he was making fun of was actually a fake TV show which I made up, or that he doesn´t really exist outside of MY DREAM.

Thisof course makes me wonder....

the old, what if I am dreaming, or what if I am only being dreamt (like the blond girl). In which case, who is doing the dreaing?

well, anyways, that is a very fun dream that gets me to thinking... hope you enjoyed it and I would appreciate any far out interpretations of my dream. not that theyhave to be far out.

Jordan

Thought of the Day: Change is Hard

This does not have to do with Obama.

There are lots of people trying to change things here in Guatemala. The other day, driving through lowlands of Guatemala my friend Galan pointed out to me villages where they had placed hundreds of dry latrines. These latrines with a steady supply of human waste and ash from their cooking fires would eventually make great fertalizer for land which now really needs it (the land used to be rainforest, so it doesn´t stay good very long) . The latrines have the added advantage that when it floods (which it fairly often does) the waste doesn´t come floating tothe surface. Hardly any of these dry latrines are being used today. There happend to be a lot of flies around when they were placing them and many believed the latrines caused the flies. Rabbits, which make great fertilizer are becoming more popular here in Guatemala, but, if it´s sucha good thing, why isn´t everyone realeasing themself from taking on debt everytime they fertilize and having to work another job to pay it off? Well, I guess it´s just because change is hard. Besides who knows why your crops seem not to be doing as well year after year. Some ancient elder sayd its because the people don´t ask permission from the mountian gods anymore to plant, they aren´t doing the ancient rituals anymore. Or maybe it´s because you don´t have enough faith in God... you only go to church twice a week, or because you still hold onto some ancient traditions along with your Christian faith. Saber (who knows in Guatemalan spanish).

Reading is not a strong tradition with Qe´echi´, it will be part of my job to try to get students to think critically and independently and reading can only help with this. But why would you read if your dad hardly does... or anybody else in your family for that matter. And simply working seems alot more profitable. What can I show a student to make him believe that learning to read well could really be advantagous for him or her? I don´t think trying to explain why I enjoyed Unamuno´s Niebla will work and reading el senior presidente would beway to hard. Even in the states, to try toget us to read, we resort to tricks like a pizza party for students who read so many pages.

I was thinking discouragingly about Guatemala.

But I then realized how hard it is for usto change to. My old soccer coach used to always try to get us players to understand that stretching actually isn´t a good warm up. Studies show no drop in injuries and a loss in power with stretching. Dynamic stetching is theway to go. The players never believed him and stubbornly kept stretching. I just read iin the NY times just how right Sieber was. I still strethc a litte bit though too. How long have we known about global warming? And how long have we hardly done a thing? How long have alternative energies been around? Read Moneyball to learnabout how stubborn baseball execs are to changing how they evaluate players. Cigarettes will cause cancer. We will have shortages of water. Race is not a scientific reality. Women are equal to men. We´ve known these things for a while.

So that´s the thought. Change is hard for human beings. Even when the writing is on the wall.

Jordan

This summer

p Elijah and I riding bike in Cambodia. It was a lot of fun. Joseph took this picture from his bike. We also rode our bikes on the big roads withcrazy trafic. That was fun.

ok, this is actually not from this summer, but I just realized that thanks to Jennifer Gingrich who studied at CASAS the last two months, I actually CAN post a picture or two from Guatemala. The front three girls are Audry, Carrie, and Jennifer (all CASAS students) in the back from theleft is Lucy oneof the CASAS directors, Rachel fellow SALTer, David fellow SALTER, me yes I am wearing a sheet of plasitc (I ripped a head hole and tied the edges to make it like a poncho) and next to me is Tina. We are standing next to some awesome Mayan ruins. On this trip we saw two sites, and both were pretty awesome despite the rain.

Kyle Unruh came back with me to California and we had a grand time doing things like this. That´s a dead giant sequioa (forget how that´s spelled). We also went to the beach, visited Jenny in Berkeley, and, of course, enjoyed sites of Reedley.

My ¨We are the World¨ post

The other night I wrote a rara ¨we are the world¨type of entry meant for my blog. I´ve decided now not to post all of it. Only a summary. Why maybe I felt it to radical. Maybe I was afraid it could be mushy (thus the sarcasm of my title). Maybe because I am too scared to talk about ¨love and compassion¨ as real things that can make a difference if we actually tried and really (really) did what those driven by the ¨love the neighbor as thyself¨philosphy ought to do.... I don´t know... I am just scared of being scoffed at I guess.

Anyways, the title of my post was goign to be

¨the constricted Mr. President/ my ¨we are the world¨ speech.

note: I think I have to very powerful sides, a very idealistic side and a very sarcastic, cynical and scared to death to be clichéd side.

Anyways - a quick summary- I am very excited about Obama

BUT, I think as president, he has to buy into a lot of things (American ideas or cultural myths or whatever you want to call them) that will force him to act a certain way.

Mr. President has to respond violence with violence. Mr. President always act in favor of us. That´s basically his job I know, but sometimes acting that way will probably hurt others. Mr. President has to be tough. I wrote that he has to push free trade, but I just realized that Obama will be taking a closer look at the NAFTA and the CAFTA. Mr. President can never say socialism even as a republican president does a very socialist thing and bails out banks. Mr. President maintain military superiority (though hopefully he will be reducing out amount of nukes). Has to try to maintain our position as a superpower, as if that´s somehow more important that things like our well being. Maybe that´s not a convincing enough list, but work with me here...

I wrote: I am not saying that he is taking the one ring for his own, I´m just aying that I think the job defines the man more significantly than we realize... possibly even more than the man defines the job.¨

I jump into bashing American society (that´s supposed to be sarcastic because I do believe that in some ways American society is pretty great, how can I not. That´s why there´s this hope thing Obama is talking about. It´s not him, it´s us (¨It´s not your, it´s me¨ says Georges girlfriend, George, ¨Your using the the it´s not you it´s me routine on me! I invented the it´s not you it´s me routine! If it´s anybody, it´s me!!¨ girlfriend, ¨Älright Alright, it´s you¨ snort of agreement from George) And that, the part before the seinfeld quote, is basically the point of what I wrote.

bad things: materialism sort of heads the list (bad for personal happiness, bad for environmet, global warming etc etc). Racism. Sexism. Violence is normal. We live in a society where people commit crimes for which we deem it worthy to kill the perpetrator and in which abortion seems like a necessary evil. militancy. Family problems. Nationalism instead of genuine care for our neighbor (actually Americans have always viewed ourselves as doing our best to help the world, it´s just the actual foreign policy, in my opinion, has not really done that too much). education is not important enough.etc. etc.

I wrote: ¨There are some diseases for which a good president is really just a bandaid. Those of us without th constricting title of Mr. President can go beyond anything politicians can do and attack the reasons why we have certain problems instead of trying to simply treat the symptoms. Only we can actually build a society more strongly based on love and compassion. Politicians have to deal with the problems that arise because we are not so much built on these ideals.¨ Changing our culture would change the presidency far more than any presidency ever could.

I listed stuff we might do especially to do with conservation of energy and investment in our communities were the main things.

I said it, ¨love¨... gasp. ¨does anyone remember the let your light shine song. It´s definately old, and possibly clichéd idea, but the amazing things that may come probably aren´t.¨

As I write I am realizing how classically American what I wrote is.

I end with a disclaimer. Of course Obama could do a lot. But not without us. And I emphasize that I think the L word translates into action and it´s just hard to live up to it most... I mean all the time. And the presidency and governance in general can also have a great effect on our culture, but still, us as individuals and as parts of so many smaller communities are the ones who really make it what it is.

Jordan

ps. watch the Flight of the Conchords song, ¨Issues, Think About it¨the live version. Pure comedic genious. on youtube.

pps. right now I am finishing up The Upside Down Kingdom and am feeling kind of convicted by it. I feel like we all need to read the gospels a little harder and ultimately try towalkas hewaled and do some of the things hewants usto do which we generally do not. And it can take part of the blame for this post.