Day 560: Life in the Korean Army

Part 2 of the Military Service series from Ask A Korean, focusing on the Infantry, where combat-fit Korean men get allocated to. Most probably the remaining 3 members I would think… The subject is pretty heavy, but I think The Korean’s little funny references make it very readable
You can read his original article HERE. Part 3 has yet to be released, but I’ll update once that’s out…
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NOTE FROM ME : This is about the Korean ARMY, not the MARINE CORPS. Just a clarification, since too many people confuse the "army" to be synonymous with "military service".

Vast majority of Korean men spend their time during their service as a regular ground infantry, only differing in their base location and job description. So what do these men go through?

Which Eric and Dongwan had already gone through, and what the other 3 are about to go through…

Training Center/Boot Camp
First comes the 5-week stint at the training center/boot camp. In the first three days, new recruits receive their supplies. These supplies include everything, including uniform, boots, and underwear. Strictly speaking, no soldier in the training center is allowed to have any private item – everything is provided by the military. In practice, soldiers in the training center are generally allowed to have a spare pair of glasses, a watch, a small amount of cash, etc. There is more leeway with respect to personal items once the men are assigned to their bases.

(Picture of the training center at Nonsan)
The recruits’ personal items – usually the clothes in which they come into the boot camp – are packed up and sent back to their parents. It is the quintessential Korean mother’s experience to cry over her son’s dusty clothes mailed back to her after she sent her son away for his military service.
New recruits are then given a physical. Although it is extremely rare to be sent home at this stage, there are a few whose health has significantly deteriorated below draft eligibility between the time when they received the initial physical and the time when they report to the training center. These men are sent home.
Then the new recruits receive an exam that would determine their specialty as a soldier. This is based on their college major, career background, etc. However, this is far from a scientific process; more like a rough guess. For example, many math majors are assigned to artillery because firing a cannon requires a quick number-crunching ability. But it is not as if these men are tested as to how fast they can actually calculate things.
Once the specialties are assigned, the new recruits are trained to be soldiers. They receive their weapons, learn how to shoot rifles and throw grenades, learn how to march and patrol, etc. It is more or less the training you might see in a movie – they go through marches with full gear (around 55 to 60 pounds) during the day and at night, learn how to fight with bayonet, train how to use their hazmat masks and sit through tear gas, learn how to dig trenches and encamp, learn first aid, etc. After five weeks of this, the soldiers are assigned to their bases.

Ok…the following will apply as long as they are not public service officers…

At the Base
The long haul begins at the bases. The life at the bases can differ vastly depending on where the base is, and what your specialty is. The unanimous worst placement is the bases in the mountainous range in eastern Korea, along the Armistice Line. Staring directly into North Korea, these soldiers must constantly patrol in the blistering cold, often in minefields. In comparison, soldiers assigned to a supply center base in the southern parts of Korea have an easier time. Training continues to happen at the base, but the intensity of such training is vastly different depending on the specialty. However, at least once a year, every soldier goes through a pretty intense combat training.
Amenities differ significantly from base to base as well. The luckiest few bases sometimes have karaoke, Internet café, arcade, etc, as well as indoor plumbing and shower facilities. The unlucky ones will have outdoor plumbing, no hot water, and only a dirt field that doubles as a soccer pitch. Generally each squad shares a single room to sleep in, and the room tends to have a television. Of course, the channel showing on that television is entirely up to the sergeant, who is usually the highest-ranking officer in a squad.
A little more explanation on soccer in the base is warranted, because it is such a universal part of the military experience. The soccer experience is called “Gundaesliga”, a parody of “Bundesliga” or the Federal League in Germany. (“Gundae” is Korean for “military”.) Because soccer is popular in Korea, and also because the game can entertain 22 men with a single ball, playing soccer is nearly a ubiquitous experience for all Korean men who served in the military. Each squad would usually play as a team, sometimes with each sergeant of the squad betting snacks or drinks. Long discipline process such as running several miles, etc. usually awaits the losing team. It is said that for a gifted soccer player, life in the military comes easily. Because inter-squad soccer games factor so much into the military life, the ranking soldiers take it a little easy on the star players.

(A parody, popular among Korean websites, showing “Gundaesliga” created from the Winning Eleven, a soccer video game.)
When it comes right down to it, daily life at the base is rather boring. Assignments range from serious (patrolling) to petty (cleaning the base), but they generally end by 5 p.m. After 5 p.m., soldiers play soccer, read, study, or generally do anything to kill time.
Soldiers enter the base as a private, and gradually move up the rank up to sergeant over time. Sergeants, since they are closing in on finishing their duties, are known to be lazier and more slovenly in their uniforms.

The following explains why Hyesung sometimes gets to hang out with Kangta even though Kangta’s serving out his duty right now… LOL

Furloughs are permitted intermittently throughout the soldier’s career. It starts with the “100 day furlough” – time outside, usually for 4-5 days, given after 100 days of military service. After that, soldiers get the total of 10 furlough days for the rest of their time in the military. In addition, there are special furlough days given out as a reward for a variety of things – ranging from something important like good marksmanship to something trivial like being the crowd favorite in the battalion talent show. A squad mate of the Korean’s friend won a furlough day for randomly saluting at a helicopter flying nearby, which happened to carry a general who saw the salute. Soldiers are also given furloughs for personal circumstances, e.g. death in the family.
Soldiers can have visitors, but usually they need to ask for permission ahead of time. Soldiers can also receive packages. But keep in mind that all packages will be searched, and soldiers are expected to share any food coming from outside with their squad mates. If you are sending food, send plenty and in small packets.
Also, soldiers get paid in nominal amounts. Privates receive around $55 a month, and sergeants receive around $80 a month or so.

Life at the Base, and Aftermath
So, now we know what the nitty-gritties are in the Korean military, but what is it really like? Obviously, this answer strongly depends on the particular assignment and the superiors, but some common elements exist – emphasis on hierarchy, working as an organization, and learning to tolerate loads and loads of bullshit.
After all, these soldiers are in the military. And military does not function without the willingness of lower-ranking soldiers to follow the directions of higher-ranking soldiers. Therefore, in a regular squad, sergeants are kings. They control everything good in the squad, e.g. the first cut of the chocolate that a private’s girlfriend sent from outside the base, what channel the squad television would show, etc.
At one point, indiscriminate beating was commonplace in the military. Although (at least nominally) beating is not allowed Korean military anymore, there are plenty of ways in which the ranking officer can make a soldier’s life miserable. Other types of physical discipline such as running laps or Wonsan Pokgyeok are plenty available, and there is virtually no limit to insults and condescension.

(The Wonsan pok-gyeok, which translates to “bombing of Wonsan.” Wonsan is a port city in North Korea. This punishment is applied liberally for various causes, such as being slow in marching, losing a soccer game, or overcooking your seargeant’s ramen.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that Korean army is a place with a ton of manpower, but little money. Therefore, even the most menial task – such as cleaning the pool of the general’s house – falls on the soldiers. Also, like other parts of Korean bureaucracy, professionalism is missing at times and rules are frequently bent in the Korean military.
This often results in many hilarious situations. For example, the Korean has a friend who spent his military years in the eastern mountain range in Korea. One day, the general decided that he would have fresh sashimi for his guest. The Korean’s friend and his squad mate drove in a truck for two hours to the shore, and managed to acquire fresh, live fish. But how to bring them home fresh and alive?
A normal person’s answer would be, “Rent a truck with equipped with a tank and an air compressor, the kind that would deliver live fish to sushi restaurants.” But remember, this is the Korean military. It does not have the money to rent such a truck, but it does have the manpower of two soldiers.
So what did the Korean’s friend do? He sat in the back of the truck, churning the water in the tub so that air would go in and the fish would be kept alive. (His squad mate got to drive the truck because he joined the military a few months ahead of the Korean’s friend, therefore outranking him.) This was in the middle of winter, and the truck bed was exposed to the freezing wind as the truck drove into the mountains. The Korean’s friend nearly froze to death, but the fish were alive until they were served on a plate that evening.
Stories of this type, coming out of Korean military, are dime a dozen. A brother of the Korean’s friend was in the Special Forces, and he recalls his platoon carving out a side of a mountain to build a swimming pool using only the tiny field spades. The Korean Uncle, a doctor specializing in internal medicine, routinely performed appendectomy as a medic in the military because, in his words, “I wanted to practice.”
For some of today’s Korean young men, who have gone soft since the days of their fathers, military experience can be unbearable. Physical exercise is grueling, the superiors can be arbitrary and insulting, and your squad mates could shun you if you are responsible for putting the whole squad in trouble. Given that these guys, just like any other soldiers in Korea, can access guns and grenades, it should be no surprise that recently there has been a string of incidents in which a draftee shoots up his squad or toss a grenade in the squad room, killing many.

However, most Korean men go through with the service without a huge incident. Few Korean men truly love their military experience. (Those who do have the option to stay in the military and continue their service as career soldiers.) But Korean men generally tolerate it and find life lessons to be learned from the experience, mostly because it is something that everyone has to go through.
And there are definitely good life lessons to be learned from the experience, although it may be debatable whether learning those lessons is a good use of 2 to 3 years of young men in their prime. To put it bluntly, the military experience builds Korean men’s tolerance for all the life’s bullshit. As the Korean described so far, there is no shortage of bullshit – some of them perhaps the worst to be encountered in life – in the military. Exhausting physical training, insults and condescension from the superiors, and wasting time on arbitrary and trivial errands are all part of the experience. For young Korean men in the military, there is no choice but to simply grin and bear them. Once they finish bearing it, they know that most difficulties in life would be easier than what they already went through. The combination of such tolerance and insight, some may call it maturity – because, as anyone who has had a regular job can tell you, life as an adult has a lot of crap that we must simply grin and bear.

Day 557: Yeeeee Muffins

 

Baked muffins, baked man.

 

Muffins, are you done?

Take us out, dude! We're so baked!

Me too, muffins. Yeeeeee

Awe yeeeeeee

Honey, we suck at parenting.

Day 549: My Summer of 2010

Up on Melancholy Hill
There's a plastic tree
Are you here with me?
Just looking out on the day of another dream


Well, you can't get what you want, but you can get me
So let's set up and see
'Cause you are my medicine
When you're close to me, when you're close to me


So call in the submarine
'Round the world we'll go
Does anybody know
If we're looking out on the day of another dream


If you can't get what you want
Then you come with me


Up on Melancholy Hill
Sits a manatee
Just looking out for the day
When you're close to me, when you're close to me

Day 538: How to Fight

How to Fight

(http://www.violentacres.com)

The summer I turned 6 years old, some of the neighborhood boys started bullying me. Back then, I owned a pair of cabbage patch kid roller-skates and my favorite activity was skating around the block singing nursery rhymes at the top of my lungs. One day, a few boys in the 8-10 range thought it would be pretty humorous to push me around and watch me flail. I tried to run from them, but I couldn’t skate faster than they could run. They taunted me for a while and then knocked me down. Angry, humiliated, and with two freshly skinned knees, I did what any 6 year old girl would do in my position.

I went home and told my Dad.

My Father was an ex marine and always preached the benefits of learning self defense. Unlike most parents, he had no interest in calling the parents of my bullies to ‘open up a dialogue’ or some other such tripe. Instead, he planned to teach me to kick a little ass.

My Mother balked at this idea. She didn’t think little girls should be fighting. Little girls were supposed to have tea parties and then play dress up. Fighting was for little boys.

“What if someday a vicious serial killer kidnaps her?” my Father asked, “Do you want her to die weeping and begging for her life? Or would you rather she have the courage to wrench the knife from the killer’s hand and stab him in the throat?”

He paused, mid tirade, and said to me, “If that ever happens, V, stab and twist. Stab and twist.”

With my Mother temporarily mollified, My Father took me into the back yard to teach me how to fight.

Nervously, I explained to my Father that not only was I outnumbered by the boys, but they were bigger and stronger than I was. There was no way that I could beat them. My Father merely brushed my fears aside. He said that while they had the advantage of size and strength on their side, I could develop my own advantages. Here are some tips that he gave me:

1. Always Respond to Threats with Complete Confidence
Sometimes all it takes to make a bully re-think pounding you into a pulp is to make it very clear to him exactly how unafraid you are of a physical confrontation. When a bully threatens you, he is trying to invoke in you some fear in which he can feed off of. If you respond to his threats with confidence, even eagerness, it will give him a pause. If he doesn’t chicken out right then and there, he will enter the fight with a slight feeling of unease. His apprehension is your advantage.

2. Fighting Dirty is Fighting Smart
A fist fight isn’t the same as a karate tournament with judges and points. Your opponent is trying to hurt you, so don’t let some silly moral argument prevent you from kicking the little bastard in the nuts. Throw sand in his eyes, kick him in the back of the knees, bite him, or punch him in the stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of him. If he’s got you pinned down and you happen to see a rock out of the corner of your eye? Don’t be afraid to grab that rock and smash his face with it. There is no shiny trophy waiting for you at the end of this fight, so everything goes.

3. Talk Some Shit
Nothing will rattle your opponent faster than you screaming a steady stream of shit at him while you’re engaged in combat. The crazier you sound the better. If you can’t think of anything tough to yell, yell nonsense like, “I’m going to eat your eyes!” If you can’t think of any nonsense to yell, just plain scream. The second your opponent suspects that you’re a freaking lunatic he’s going to get scared. Fear causes people to make mistakes.

4. When You Lose, Claim It Didn’t Hurt
Sometimes you’re just outmatched. But even losing a fight can be used to your advantage. When it’s over, feel free to spit blood in his face and tell him that it ‘didn’t hurt.’ Laugh when he walks away. You might have just gotten your ass kicked six ways from Sunday, but I guarantee you that anyone watching that fight will think twice about ever messing with you in the future. No one wants to fuck with the crazy kid who feels no pain.

Armed with my new tips and tricks, I laced up my skates and headed out to face the jungle that is childhood. When the boys confronted me again, I dared them to mess with me. One ballsy kid lunged towards me with the intent of pushing me down. Quickly, I kicked that kid squarely between the legs with my skate. He crumpled to the ground as I hysterically screamed at his friends, “I’LL EAT YOUR EYES! I’LL EAT ALL OF YOUR EYES!” Terrified, those boys got up and ran like Hell. I’ve never felt so empowered in my entire life.

In retrospect, I think my Father was just trying to teach me a little something about fear and courage. Back then, and even more so today, it became quite popular to advise your children to: Run. Hide. Look away. Go get someone bigger. Be afraid. As a result, modern children and adults alike are easily paralyzed by fear and have no idea how to defend themselves.

After reading certain articles on my website, I’ve even seen people comment, “What is she going to do if she says the wrong thing to the wrong person? She’s going to end up getting hurt or killed.”

I feel sorry for those people. So paralyzed by fear of what might happen, that they lack the courage to stand up for themselves or for someone weaker. I refuse to live my life afraid to say what I feel or do what is right because there might be some mysterious villain lurking in the shadows who is bigger and stronger. Better to be dead, than to live your life afraid.

Besides, I could just as easily spend my life acting meek and compliant only to still end up with a bullet in my head. However, because my Father taught me courage, it’s not likely that I’d go down without a fight. Who knows? I may even end up wrenching a knife from some psycho’s hands and stabbing him in the throat with it.

Of course, I’ll remember to stab and twist.

Day 537.5: ROK Marines Admission I

Hey friends. It's 2:01 AM in Bangkok right as you're reading this very sentence, and here I am listening to Chopin while writing this very message to you in a desperate attempt to dispel the anxiety that holds me.


In 5 hours, I will get to know whether I will be in the ROK Marines or not.


As you may or may not know, depending on whether there was an opportunity do so, all male x citizens are required to go through physical/mental examinations and serve some national duty. Upon applying to the Marines division, I entered a competitive admissions process in mid-June, where I had to be examined, interviewed and screened (I can tell you more about this process later!).


I applied to the Marines because I want to change - for better or worse - and grow before I resume my studies back in Vermont. Now, I don't know whether I will mature/grow in the military, but what I do know is that time will help me to see things differently - again, for better or worse, but I'm just banking on better.


I also applied to the military now because I wanted to take a break from school. No, nothing is wrong with college-level education, but I just hate the people there. Or is it? Maybe I hate the majority of Americans, but it's probably because I'm unconsciously comparing them to you Kyle, Moki and Joel. Or maybe I hate the actual social structure and the way things are in the real world. Or maybe that's the result of forced transitioning out from the "fantastic" bubble we grew up in during high school. Or maybe I'm just having a hard time waking up from being so disillusioned? I really don't like how I ended up here; I want to blame something or someone, but what will I get from it? How will I benefit? Am I only debilitating myself by pointing a finger?


I don't know the answer, but I will only give an indifferent shrug. What's happened has happened, and here I am to get up and go. Even though a lot of people have advised me against it, I want to go into the Marines.


Okay thanks for reading! Got that off my chest.

Day 537: Do you belong there?

Where would I be?

(http://educationceo.wordpress.com)

As I read through emails, tweets, blogs, and Facebook statuses this morning, I came across one from @HalonaBlack that really made me stop and evaluate some things. Her post, which you better should read, discusses how some first-generation college students arrive on campus with the short-sighted goal of choosing a major that will help them earn money, in the shortest amount of time possible. Well, as soon as I retweeted it my college roommate posted the following comment on my page:

Roomie: “I can relate to this on so many levels. My Dad (even though he didn’t raise me he thought he had a voice in this) basically told me no “BS” majors (e.g. Communications,journalism, etc). I needed a “real” major so right off I felt limited in my choices. And even going to law school, it shocked me how prepared some of the well to do students were. They had outlines, knew the inside tricks, etc. Always vowed my kid would never start that far behind and would have the ability to pursue whatever she wanted.”

Whew! That hit so close to home it stopped me in my tracks. Now when I chose which college I would attend, no one in my family weighed in on majors, etc. Honestly, the only advice/words of wisdom I received came from my grandfather as he was driving me home from work one day (as we passed the University of Notre Dame):

“Don’t you let anyone tell you or make you feel like you don’t belong there, because you do. You have as much right to be there as they do.” Anyone who knows anything about Notre Dame, or any predominantly White college/university, can guess to whom he referred; it’s not rocket science. But that was the way we were raised: We were never taught that we were inferior to anyone. We are all as comfortable, if not more so, in a room where we are the only minority versus being in a room where we are in the majority. (Oh lord I get so sidetracked!) BTW: That’s not me in the pic. It’s Katie Odette Washington, Notre Dame’s first Black Valedictorian. 

Day 503: Today's Lesson - How to Kill a Child's Self-Esteem

Today’s Lesson: How to kill a kid’s self-esteem
(http://educationceo.wordpress.com)

Students in Gwinnett County Schools are down to the last 3 days and End-of-Year celebrations are in full-swing. I just returned from attending the celebration for my 3rd grader. On my way out of the building, I asked the Kindergarten teacher if I missed the note or email about their celebration. She informed me that their designated time was between breakfast and lunch last Friday, with lunch being served at 10:30 a.m. Needless to say, the Kindergarten team decided against over-loading kids on food that day, and I do not blame them one bit. The kids were treated to a ‘Game Day’ instead and based on the reports I received from my Kindergarten student, it was pretty fun. But that’s not why I felt compelled to rush home and get this blog written so let me get back on track…

So I am helping the long-term substitute with today’s celebration, i.e., serving the kids, cleaning-up messes, etc. (pretty much the same thing I do at home) when the awards ‘ceremony’ begins. Students received awards for successfully participating in the school-wide Reading program, Perfect Attendance, Testing Achievement, Honor Roll, and Principal’s Honor Roll. Several kids, including my 3rd grader (shameless shout-out), received multiple awards. I will admit that I was a little disappointed deeply offended by the fact that the principal only signed the Principal’s Honor Roll awards. My child and the others who maintained A’s and B’s during the last 9-week grading period worked just as hard as those who made the other list. Before you say,”Well, she probably had a lot of awards to sign,” my response is “Get a damn signature stamp then.’ Besides, the old adage is true: Excuses are like butt holes. Everybody has one and most of them stink. I can remember every award I ever received having the signature of at least one principal on them.

The celebration (partaking of the food) continues and the teacher walks over to me and tells me that one of the students was crying because he didn’t receive any awards. I’m not sure if the parent or common-sense teacher in me took over, but I became really livid at that point. I sat there thinking about this kid, who I had seen struggle with Math during the year, and his disappointment. Then all the research and data began going through my mind, especially because this kid is African American, he’s in 3rd grade, and just took a high-stakes test a few weeks ago. For those of you who don’t know, research shows that states develop their prison plans based on 3rd grade Reading achievement data…interesting. My motherly instinct kicked-in and I went over to him, bent down, and asked:

“Why are you crying?”

Sobbing and wiping tears, he answered “Because I never win anything.”

“It’s o.k. I understand why you are upset and I agree with you. You should be recognized for your efforts. Trust me, you are going to be o.k. Your *teacher knows that you try really hard and she also knows that you have improved this year.”

His parents entered the room a few minutes later and I am sure his dad had the same conversation with him. At least I hope he did. Now I will spend the rest of the afternoon in prayer, asking for some guidance/wisdom/financial blessing so I can give some of these kids what they need most: An opportunity to feel successful. Then I am off to Office Depot to print awards and beg area businesses to donate some certificates for the students.

*The classroom teacher has been gone 2 weeks due to a death in the family. I have no doubt in my mind that she would have given some type of award to every student.

Day 487: Inspiration from Bruce Lee

An excerpt from The Art of Expressing the Human Body by Bruce Lee & John Little:

Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We'd run the three miles in twenty one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile [Note: when runing on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six-and-a-half minutes per mile]. So this morning he said to me "We're going to go five." I said, "Bruce, I can't go five. I'm a helluva lot older than you are, and I can't do five." He said, When we get to three, we'll shift gears and it's only two more and you'll do it." I said "Okay, hell, I'll go for it." So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I'm okay for three or fout minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I'm tired, my heart's pounding, I can't go any more and so I say to him, "Bruce if I run any more,"-and we're still running-"if I run any more I'm liable to have a heart attack and die."

He said, "Then die." It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know; "Why did you say that?" He said, "Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it'll spread over into the rest of your life. It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level."

Day 484: Parental Guidance

Author: Nancy Gibbs (TIMES Essayist); May 17, 2010

Cancer hands you red-hot shoes and makes you dance with death every day for the rest of your life. So the question is, Who gets to lead? And what can the rest of us learn from watching?

Bruce Feiler is a writer with diverse interests and an adventurous spirit. His best seller Walking the Bible, about his 10,000-mile trek through the Holy Lands, became a hit PBS series; he wrote a book about his year as a circus clown and one on Abraham--nine books total, but none like his latest, The Council of Dads. It was basically born the day doctors told him there was a malignant, aggressive 7-in. tumor in his femur, a cancer so rare fewer than 100 adults get it a year. He was 43 years old, lying on his bed, wrapped in sudden uncertainty, when his 3-year-old twin daughters raced in, twirling and laughing. "I crumbled," he recalls. "I kept imagining all the walks I might not take with them, the ballet recitals I might not see ... the boyfriends I might not scowl at, the aisles I might not walk down."
(See the Landscape of Cancer Treatment.)

From that dark place came the need; a few days later came the notion, when he began making a list of men who represented, in concentrated form, all the qualities and memories he most wanted his girls to encounter, which they might not get the chance to absorb from him. One of those men he had known since the sandbox, one had been a camp counselor, another a college roommate, another a business partner, six of them in all. My girls have a great mom and a loving family, he told them. "But they may not have me. Will you help be their dad?"

And thus was born the Council of Dads, the friends he hoped would teach the lessons, send the signals, say the things he would have when his daughters fail a test, win a prize, fall in love. Proposing membership, Feiler recalls, felt like proposing marriage. The conversations defy the image of awkward men allergic to sentiment. Cancer was "a passport to intimacy"; it drove him to tell his friends why they mattered, ask them to be more involved in his life and particularly in his daughters'.

You could say that he reversed the normal arc: having close friends and having children is like trying to play hopscotch and knit at the same time--theoretically possible but requiring more dexterity than most of us can manage. During our prime parenting years, juggling work and home is hard enough; few of us are so emotionally double-jointed that we can manage much more than a book group, a chat with the other parents in the bleachers, intimacy on the run.

Reading The Council of Dads made me wonder at the great opportunity we miss. Sometime after you have kids, you are told to make a will, name some guardians, and on that occasion you wave, politely and formally, to your mortality as you carefully cross to the other side of the street. It's natural to avoid thinking about what your children would do without you. But being a parent involves planned obsolescence. We actually want children, as they grow, to expand emotionally, explore independently. Teenagers especially need advice from women who are not their mother, guidance from men who are not their dad.

This was once the province of godparents: in Renaissance-era Florence, a child could have a dozen of them--an extended family of providers and protectors. But since then, the role has evolved from spiritual mentor to social fixer. In some ZIP codes, preschool admissions officers find they get a lot of requests to serve, and Hallmark now makes a couple dozen Christmas-card designs for godparents to send, which is a sure sign the relationship has lost much of its meaning. "Always a godfather, never a god," lamented the much recruited author Gore Vidal.

Hillary Clinton said it takes a village, and she was mocked, but she was right. Is there any greater gift we can give our children than to be loved and lifted by as many adults as possible, beyond immediate family? Single and divorced parents do this informally all the time. Feiler, whose latest tests show him to be, for now, cancer-free, is working with the National Fatherhood Initiative, which has kiosks in 1,500 military bases around the world. The plan is to distribute literature about The Council of Dads and invite soldiers to convene their own; these are men and women who live with mortality and separation.

But maybe it's an exercise for everyone, not just in parenting, but in friendship and self-discovery. I'd like my daughters to have a Council of Dads, a Council of Moms--not, God willing, to replace my husband or me, but to remind us which values we value most, and help us make sure we transmit them.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1987596-2,00.html#ixzz0pZByapVS

Day 470: Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream

Walking on a dream
How can I explain
Talking to myself
Will I see again

We are always running for the thrill of it, thrill of it
Always pushing up the hill searching for the thrill of it
On and on and on we are calling out and out again
Never looking down I'm just in awe of what's in front of me

Is it real now
When two people become one
I can feel it
When two people become one

Thought I'd never see
The love you found in me
Now it's changing all the time
Living in a rhythm where the minutes working overtime

Catch me I'm falling down
Catch me I'm falling down

Don't stop just keep going on
I'm your shoulder lean upon
So come on deliver from inside
All we got is tonight that is right till first light

Day 467: Goodbye, Cruel World

Courtesy: buttersafe.com

Day 466: Free Lunch

Courtesy: toothpastefordinner.com

Day 465: Best Thing I've Read All Year

The Best Thing I've Read All Year

Published on May 04, 2000

Sunday, April 30, 2000

By SHARON UNDERWOOD

For the Valley News (White River Junction, VT)

Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I've taken enough from you good people.

I'm tired of your foolish rhetoric about the "homosexual agenda" and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called "fag" incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn't bear to continue living any longer, that he didn't want to be gay and that he couldn't face a life without dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don't know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn't put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it's about time you started doing that.

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I'll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for "true Vermonters."

You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn't give their lives so that the "homosexual agenda" could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.

He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn't the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can't bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage.

You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about "those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing" asks: "What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?"

Indeed, sir, what ever happened to that?

"Sharon Underwood's e-mail is: sundervt@hotmail.com. I had the chance to speak with her yesterday. Her son is doing fine now, the first in his family to graduate from college.

If you have friends who think Jesus would have been a Republican -- on the side of billionaire Pat Robertson, et al, in opposing Hate Crimes Legislation, opposing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and, yes, opposing Vermont's extension of economic benefits to same-sex couples -- please feel free to forward this column to as many of them as you like. Can't you just see it? Jesus arm-in-arm with the NRA trying to maintain the gun-show loophole? Stumping the Holy Land in favor of a massive tax cut for the rich, while opposing a hike in the minimum wage? Somehow, I think not."

Source: http://www.andrewtobias.com/newcolumns/000504.html

Day 462: Underachievers

"We were underachievers. That's why we came to Middlebury. Chuckle."

-C Burleigh

Day 457: Worship of the Intellectual Mind

Listening to Deadmau5 - I Remember
Feeling like time's runnin out!

Health.

My mother always told me to prioritize my own health (and among others) over schoolwork and GPA's. No matter how many times I would nod in agreement but just do my own thing, she still never ceased urging me to get a good night's rest and finish the rest of my work early in the morning. She would tell me that by overly occupying myself with schoolwork, I would lose out on the good things in life - my health would suffer, and I would miss out on precious relationships with other people. Really - who knows what amazing relationships you could have built if you have devoted more time into them.

One thing I complain too often about Middlebury College is the agonizing difficulty in forming meaningful relationships with people. People here in general are just obsessed with "success". Without trying to sound too naive, what if everyone prioritized other good things over academics? How differently would people behave, and what kind of community would we see?

Kids should listen to their parents, and even more when they have important things to say.

Day 453: One Time We Lived

One time we lived
Like the time would never leave
What time we had
The luxury to breathe
I couldn't see an end
There was no end in sight
Time has risen up time has pulled us down
Bringing darkness to the light

I remember the way you looked
The sun had set
The lights were down
I remember the light in your eyes
Do you remember at all?
Do you remember at all?

Isn't that what we wanted?
Isn't that what we wanted?
isn't that what we had?
Do we know what we need?
Now that its gone anekatips.com
Isn't that what we wanted?
Isn't that what we wanted?
Isn't that what we had?
Do we know what we need?

One time we lived
Like the time would never end
And now it breaks
Those left alone again
And while the waters course
By the old and pale light
See just what I've lost
And die into the night

I remember the way you looked
The sun had set
The lights were down
I remember the light in your eyes
Do you remember at all?
Do you remember at all?

Isn't that what we wanted?
Isn't that what we wanted?
Isn't that what we had?
Do we know what we need?
Now that its gone

Day 441: Silence Within

How is it possible to reach inner silence? Sometimes we are apparently silent, and yet we have great discussions within, struggling with imaginary partners or with ourselves. Calming our souls requires a kind of simplicity: "I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvellous for me." [Ps. 131:1] Silence means recognising that my worries can't do much. Silence means leaving to God what is beyond my reach and capacity. A moment of silence, even very short, is like a holy stop, a sabbatical rest, a truce of worries. ...

Brother Roger

I remember the feeling of being forced to stay awake for an hour, sometimes two - even three - by voices that repeatedly resound in my head. Sleep, sleep! Where is it. Restlessness that comes to find me usually before I lay down into slumber keeps me captive, in the weakest state that it can find me. I struggle, I fight.

Will we find inner peace? Silence? Is it something achievable?

Day 426: Napalm Sticks to Kids

A viral video of a US Apache (a helicopter gunship) massacring a dozen Iraqi innocents has been going around since early this morning, thanks to Wikileaks.

We shoot the sick, the young, the lame,
We do our best to maim,
Because the kills all count the same,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Chorus: Napalm sticks to kids,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Flying low across the trees,
Pilots doing what they please,
Dropping frags on refugees,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Gooks in the open, making hay,
But I can hear the gunships say,
"There'll be no Chieu Hoi today,"
Napalm sticks to kids.

See those farmers over there,
Watch me get them with a pair,
Blood and guts just everywhere,
Napalm sticks to kids.

I've only seen it happen twice,
But both times it was mighty nice,
Shooting peasants planting rice,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Napalm, son, is lots of fun,
Dropped in a bomb or shot from a gun,
It gets the gooks when on the run,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Drop some napalm on a farm,
It won't do them any harm,
Just burn off their legs and arms,
Napalm sticks to kids.

CIA with guns for hire,
Montagnards around a fire,
Napalm makes the fire go higher,
Napalm sticks to kids.

I've been told it's not so neat,
To catch gooks burning in the street,
But burning flesh, it smells to sweet,
Napalm sticks to kids.

Day 425: Blatant Racism

As I was walking down the sidewalk from the dining hall, a guy in a passing car stuck his head out and yelled a racial slur at me.

A few minutes later, the same thing happened again, but this time, they yelled a horrible attempt at Chinese.

Thinking back to it, I didn't like it.

But, seriously, why?

Day 394: Procrastinator or Incubator?

A story that I picked up from the interwebs...

As a university instructor, the close of each academic term is always the same for me: I get a flurry of apologetic e-mails from panicked students who have put off their homework and term papers until the last possible moment. They beg for an extension.

Procrastination is a phenomenon that is familiar to everyone, even outside of academia.

Who really likes to wash laundry, balance checkbooks or fill out complicated tax forms? Most folks put these activities off in favor of more pleasant pastimes like socializing, going out to eat or reading a good book.

Procrastination is the result of having very little motivation for a boring or unpleasant activity and it is something everyone experiences. The real problem is that procrastination can sometimes overshadow a hidden strength.

Incubation is not procrastination.

I once coached an extraordinary young man, whom I'll call Mark. Mark was at the tail end of his training at a prestigious medical school. When we met on a Monday of his last week, Mark told me he felt the stress of a number of weighty assignments, all of which had pressing deadlines.

He had only a handful of days to write applications for internships, turn in final papers and secure letters of recommendation. It was a tremendous amount of difficult work to be completed in a short period of time. Mark asked me to check back with him midweek to crack the whip and make sure he was still making progress on his work.

When we spoke again on Wednesday, Mark had fallen into a deep funk. Not only was there no progress, but he had frittered away hours in meaningless pastimes like downloading music and walking in the park.

Mark uttered the all-too-familiar phrase, "I am such a procrastinator!"

He vilified himself for checking e-mail, having lunch with his wife and other activities that appeared to be in the service of avoiding his more pressing tasks.

Something about the word "procrastinator" just didn't fit with what I was seeing. Here was a young man about to graduate from an elite medical school with a flawless academic record extending back into his middle school years.

My instincts told me that it was not a lifetime of chronic procrastination that led Mark to his current situation.

On a hunch, I asked him a crucial question, "When you get around to completing your work -- and we both know that you eventually will -- how will the quality be?"

My client seemed taken aback by the question. He answered with confidence, a single word: "Superior!"

I realized, in that moment, that there may be a subtle but important difference between the "back burner" mentality I saw in my client and the traditional way a procrastinator works.

Procrastinators may have a habit of putting off important work. They may not ever get to projects or leave projects half finished. Importantly, when they do complete projects, the quality might be mediocre as a result of their lack of engagement or inability to work well under pressure.

What Mark presented was something qualitatively different: a clear sense of deadlines, confidence that the work would be complete on time, certainty that the work would be of superior quality and the ability to subconsciously process important ideas while doing other -- often recreational -- activities.

I realized I was looking at a strength, one I called "incubator." When I shared this term with Mark, he felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted off his shoulders.

What does incubation mean?

One of the greatest difficulties with identifying an incubator is that they often look like procrastinators. People with both work styles tend to put off work until the last moment, and both seem to be best motivated by external pressures such as deadlines.

Importantly, people with both work styles are likely to be hard on themselves and consider themselves lazy.

In a pilot study with 184 undergraduate university students, we were able to isolate specific items that distinguished incubators from the rest of the pack. Incubators were the only students who had superior-quality work but who also worked at the last moment, under pressure, motivated by a looming deadline.

This set them apart from the classic "good students," the planners who strategically start working long before assignments are due, and from the procrastinators, who wait until the last minute but then hand in shoddy work or hand it in late.

For most incubators, having a label that is less pejorative than "procrastinator" can be a breath of fresh air.

Incubators tend to be bright, creative people with an amazing gift to work hard under pressure. As such, they can be very dependable in work situations that require last-minute changes or tight deadlines.

The other side of this coin is that they can be frustrating to work with because they appear to sit idle for so long. For incubators, it can be as helpful to appraise friends, family members and co-workers of your natural work style so the people around you can adjust their expectations accordingly.

Setting realistic expectations for yourself can let you off the emotional hook as you appear to waste time, solid in the knowledge that your projects will be completed when they need to be.

My former coaching client, Mark, actually built in "incubation time" during which he could watch movies, listen to music or other goof-off activities, knowing that -- below the surface -- his mind was preparing for work and that he would snap into action when the time was right. As for my students requesting extensions for their term papers, they should have planned ahead!

Day 381: Common Ground

What more is there to say?
I dont really want to know

Just wanna be here now
But you are not here now

Will we ever be on common ground?
So close, but so far away

Day 376: Pain

As humans, we are men of a myriad of things. One is a man of choice and decisions. With the exception of those affected by disorders one way or another, we all make choices.

One choice that surprises me is how we subconsciously choose our emotional state of being.... just so discreetly. We can choose to be sad, cheerful, surprised, or even fake whatever emotion we want to fake. Many people (mostly who are not yet mature enough) say that emotions are out of our control, but this is not true at all!

Think about when you were last disappointed by an outcome of an event - maybe a sudden and unexpected breakup with your girlfriend or your boyfriend. Our emotion may be of regret, sorrow, and/or loss... but remember that I said we choose our own emotions? We can totally block this out and treat it as something insignificant. It's possible... you just have to become aware of how you can control your emotions.

However, I want to express my deep sorrow in how people can be so used to controlling their emotions that they become less and less human over time. Sure, nobody likes pain - I mean who does? Pain is a part of life; it's inevitable, but remember that along with pain comes joy and vice versa. But you just can't numb your pain all the time... that's not real. And you become less real too.

.... I think I'm guilty of going far enough to judge people in order to block out at least some of the pain that I've been going through. With ability comes responsibility...

(Written two years ago)

Day 369: Third Culture Bolshevik

“In every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race. Those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness so that we mostly conform, we hide our secret identities beneath false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds—because we are alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves—we soar, we fly, we flee.”


-Salman Rushdie


After reading John H Quinley's post of Salman Rushdie's quote, I felt a need to confess about a few things.


Rootlessness - what is it? How is it so that one can define such terms without understanding its meaning? Why does society deem us as outcasts, just as any other foreigner, alien, outsider?


Sometimes at night, when I'm alone in the dark, comfortable solitude before going to sleep, a veil of uncertainty envelops me. It's not necessarily a sensation of ... pain one would feel, but rather one that strangles the rootless mentally and emotionally. Sometimes, you just discard them as you would with any problem when your life is on a high. Sometimes, you have no choice but to struggle with it; sometimes so long that it will keep you awake throughout the night... for hours.


But even night after night after night, how is it that we fail to find a solution to this problem in our lives? Isn't it supposed to be one of those problems where you have to think about it for a while, make a mental adjustment to your thought process, and get over it - just like that?


It's almost as if I've been running around in circles where you'd think you're getting somewhere. As a third culture kid in college, you're even more distinct from the "international" crowd in the school population - you're an international third culture kid. The first few months of your college career would go fine, because you're all so excited to be in a new country, new town, new school, in a new community. But then when reality hits you and when your heart starts to asks you strange questions, like- why is it so difficult adjusting? I thought I'm liking this place pretty fine? Why is it so hard to make meaningful connections with the people around me, even though these guys and girls are really friendly? Is it something that I'm doing wrong?


You swat those thoughts away, because they can only make you depressed and more self-conscious. But as time rolls on and you find yourself less happy and spending a lot of time THINKING, you can't help but start to take these questions more seriously and notice that you're a broken water jar (for a lack of better analogies). And the only sensible, sane thing to do is to fill up that jar that's draining all your emotional energy. So, what do you do - you do all sorts of things to make yourself feel content, happy, pleased. And that can be anything you can think of: overworking yourself in academics and getting a grade that makes you happy. Meeting new people in hopes that you'd find a best friend - that would make you happy. Smoking weed and doing shat with your friends so your problems won't haunt you for that night. Getting smashed at a party or social gathering so you would feel less worried. Finding a hookup buddy, working out in the gym, writing your feelings down on paper, obsessing yourself with video games... whatever. Whatever you can find. But I don't think it takes too long before you come to realize that there's not much you can do about it. Like I said, it's almost as if you're running in circles, only coming to know you really haven't gotten anywhere. You thought you were going somewhere, but you really haven't.


But even after thinking and writing and shedding tears and trying to find an answer for years and years, I still don't know anything! It's so stupid and fruitless, this whole thing. I don't know anything but one thing: that I am rootless. Like, yeah, I learned some things on the way, and I've built character from these social barriers that I had to face, and I've changed the way I would talk to people, but that's basically identifying the bolshevik problems that you were born into this world with - hooray.


I don't know. After a while, you become somewhat numb to this stuff, but I think you can still confess to yourself that you still have those times where this rootlessness issue keeps you awake at night and it makes you feel so, so, so homesick sometimes and so starved for that special something that you become emaciated. Not literally.


Again, I don't know. People react to such situations differently, but I'm sure a bunch of you out there can relate to this. Keep up the good work, and don't be afraid to be who you are. Most people we meet don't really give a dog's poo anyways. Let's just be the best rootless people.

Day 365: Anniversary?

“In every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race. Those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness so that we mostly conform, we hide our secret identities beneath false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds—because we are alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves—we soar, we fly, we flee.”

-Salman Rushdie

Day 347: For Entertainment Purposes Only

"Love is a verb."
Joyce Meyer
Runner up, only because I heard it in 2010: "'No' is a complete sentence."

"If money can fix it, it's not really a problem."
S Pitts

"People are either frustrating or fascinating. The choice is yours."
J Blasko

"Ignorance isn't the problem. The problem is the ignorance of ignorance."
A Sweeney (Heard this last week. Added it anyway :)

"Nobody wants to buy a drill but everybody wants a hole."
J Dwyer (I'm sure this one was recycled from somewhere)

"The pole vaulter doesn't know how high he can jump until he knocks down the pole."
Dr. Robert Schuller from the book "You Can Become the Person You Want to be"

"Be it if you want to be it."
Dr. J Davis
First runner up: "Explode the box!"

"The difference between try and triumph is a little UMPH!"
Rev. Run via Dr. Robert Schuller

"People that are fearful are easy to control."
Dani Johnson
First runner up: "Quit needing it and GO GET IT!"

"I learned that I could be a giver by simply bringing a smile to another person."
Maya Angelou
(Bonus)"...when I walk in, they may like me or dislike me, but everybody knows I'm here.

Day 334: Contemplation

We rationalize and justify whatever it is we end up doing and wherever it is we end up going, because contemplating those roads not taken is a fruitless task.