a little community, a little service

when i was starting my first grade year at J. H. Gunn Elementary School, my parents made a decision that would forever alter who i am as a person and, ultimately, my future as a whole. they decided to enroll me in Cub Scout Pack 144. this was my first extracurricular activity. it was also my first experience of true community, something that the other Sunday school kids or regular school kids couldn't really offer. you really need a group of people who you can hang out and joke around with or, in my case as a 6 year old, run around and play with without getting in trouble or camp on the USS Yorktown with (still one of the coolest things I've ever done).

luckily, i liked my experiences in cub scouting enough to stay with it and, in the sixth grade, i moved up and joined Boy Scout Troop 144. boy scouting is much different from the parent-dominated, parent-led, arts and crafts session with the occasional camping trip that is cub scouting. we went camping in our boy scout troop about 8 or 10 times a year including a week-long summer camp at the ever-so-wonderful Camp Grimes and a cold-weather camping trip.

but rarely did we do any service on camping trips. my first experience (or so i recall) with true community service was when our troop woke up early on a Saturday morning every three months and got together for a roadside cleanup. a roadside cleanup for our troop was to meet at the church, put on a beat up orange vest which never stayed on because the ties were broken, wear gloves that looked and smelled like a dumpster in Mordor, line your pockets with huge orange trash bags, and pick up beer bottles, McDonald's bags, torn up newspapers and the occasional adult smut along Lawyers Rd between Wilson Grove and Hwy 51 in Mint Hill.

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it was annoying and awkwardly educational (kpdub knows what i mean). yet, it didn't really feel like service. maybe it was because i didn't really know what service was yet.

it wasn't until i got into high school that i really began to understand and experience what service was and what it meant. at the end of middle school, i signed up for the IB (International Baccalaureate*) program at Independence High School. one of the requirements is to complete a certain number of community service hours over the four high school years. even though it was a requirement, i didn't really mind doing the service. it was very easy to complete those hours because of scouting. i mentioned the roadside pickups, but we also went to homeless shelters and places like the Charlotte Rescue Mission to serve meals and fellowship with the people there. this is when i really experienced service. experiencing service involves human interaction with those you serve.

in college, i had two main communities and one minor community. the minor community was with ResNET, an on-campus computer troubleshooting service for other students on campus. here i got to meet frustrated people and, hopefully, be able to calm them down by fixing their problems. it was a simple way to serve, even if i did get free housing. the two main communities were Intervarsity Christian Fellowship (IV) throughout all eight semesters and the Appalachia Service Project (ASP) for three summers. all three of these communities provided me (1) opportunities for service and (2) opportunities to interact with those who I am serving.

in IV, i had the really fun job of being an IV band roadie for four semesters. i served not only the band, but the students who attended IV on any given night (that's most likely you). the part that i slowly realized i liked about it was that i was behind the scenes and the average IV goer didn't know me or what i did (i don't write this now to toot my horn, but to give you an idea of the type of service that i really enjoy). with ASP, i got to help extremely impoverished families in Central Appalachia who are in need of emergency home repair. because it is a volunteer based organization, i got to serve not only the families in need, but also the volunteers who willingly (or sometimes unwillingly) stepped out of their comfort zone to come to a strange place and get dirty for five days. it is, of course not about the volunteers, its about helping the families, but again, the volunteers didn't know that we (the staff) were serving them. there were times when we couldn't even see that we were serving them. it is the idea that God was using me to do His work and I had absolutely no control over it, is what I grew to love about that job.
and now scouting is over. high school is over. college is over. more importantly, all of the community and all of the service that came with those, are gone.

now is the first time since i was 6 that i do not have a true community and the first time since i was 12 that i do not have a service opportunity readily available for me to take advantage of.

until now, i have never seen community or service as things that i need or even want to look for. they have just been there, ready for me to be a part of. and now that those things are not readily available at my fingertips, i am thrown for a loop. i long to go camping with a large group. i want to help someone with their eagle scout project. i want to do home repair projects around my house. i want to fill my Saturdays with something other than hanging around the house. i want to help someone who doesn't know i am helping them. i want to help someone, period. i want to be behind the scenes.

i know that if i really want to do any of these things, i am certainly resourceful enough to find a place to do it. i guess this is just one of the many shocks associated with the shift from my young life to my young-adult life. resolving this problem will be one of my many new years resolutions (which i [1] haven't ever really done and [2] will post about later).

feel free to give me your thoughts on community and or service. thanks for reading y'all.

Blig of the Christmas Season: O Holy Night

Best Christmas song of them all (again, don't confuse Holiday and Christmas music). Hands down. Maybe its because of the 6/8 time signature, dramatic chord progressions and awesome melody, or maybe its because of its ability to kick the butts of all other Christmas carols. We may never know.

Jam of the Day: the raw emotion with which Alicia Keys sings her new song "No One"

I personally thing this song is awkward. I thought it was horrible the first time i heard it, simply because i thought she was over-doing it. i thought she was doing too much with her voice compared to the music and the beat. i still kind of agree with that. but the emotion with which she sings the lyrics grabbed my attention unlike any song before. sure there are other vocalists who belt it out with similar emotion (mariah carey, whitney houston, celine dion, freddy mercury just to name a guy) but alicia keys grabbed my attention with this song like none of those others could. now, whenever i hear the song on the radio (which is like every 5 minutes on 3 or 4 different stations in Charlotte) i usually listen to the whole thing just to hear her vocals. good stuff.

Junk and a half of the Holiday Season: Happy Holidays from David Hasselhoff



*for those of you who don't know and don't want to figure it out from the website, its an overrated version of AP with an international standard for tests which tricks young students and parents into thinking they will learn valuable life and time management skills because of the greater course load they will have to complete as compared to other high school kids. i don't completely regret that i did this in high school. i didn't get any credit at Carolina from my IB test scores (some of which were superb, but were only for standard level, not higher level, which UNC looks at). i do however, believe that my ability to show near straight A's in a course load with the IB name greatly helped my acceptance into UNC. the fact that my father is an alumnus and i am an eagle scout were the other two things that got me in. it certainly couldn't have been my SAT, ACT or essay performances. so i do not think i am better than you because i did IB.

A Mormon Q & A

while procrastinating at work today, i stumbled upon a Fox News article called "21 Questions Answered about Mormon Faith." I personally do not know the differences between different denominations of faith, be that between Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Catholics, Messianic Jews and Hasidic Jews or Jehovah's Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for example.

with the presidential race in full swing and the recent attention that Mitt Romney's religious beliefs have raised, i thought that this was an interesting article. it is a list of questions drawn from public conceptions (and misconceptions) about the Mormon faith and the beliefs of the LDS Church as a whole and answers to those questions provided by the Church.

just a little light mid-day (or whenever you may run into this) reading for y'all.

holler

a bit too sarcastic

so i suck

i apparently don't know how to not be sarcastic when i talk to my mom. tonight was the second time in recent days where i got myself into trouble because of my tone and presentation. its certainly not intentional. i always have considered my self to be Courteous McGee, and certainly am with people i don't know, but i guess there is a filter that just isn't present around people i know, and more importantly, my parents.

so let me take this time to say that i apologize to any of you who may have been offended by my sarcastic tone and presentation. it truly wasn't and isn't my intention to push your buttons or rub you the wrong way.

but what a great time for me to be reminded of Grace. the Lord doesn't take days off.

amen y'all

Artsy, Fartsy Gain Foothold?

first of all, i enjoy the way that newspaper headlines truncate the titles of their articles by using a comma. it is so awkward to read sometimes.

second of all, i don't consider my self artsy-fartsy (as should be obvious by the use of this term). i never have, and if i have my way, i never will.

hold up. define artsy-fartsy for me one time...

well my definition of artsy-fartsy might differ from yours. i will use an example to define it. whenever people can "see" the pain of the world's children, for example, in a piece of "art" consisting of a shoelace and a length of barbed wire, for example, i would consider that to be artsy-fartsy with the emphasis on the fartsy (no i have not seen any piece of art consisting of shoelaces and barbed wire. but i bet i could make millions by making that piece and saying that it represents the pain of all the children in the world. do you doubt it?). another example comes from Mrs. Rogers' (no kinship to Mr. Rogers the friendly neighborhood... well... neighbor) 11th grade IB english class at the Big I. as you can imagine in any higher level english course in high school, many literary works were read and discussed in class. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Homer's Odyssey, etc. But the one which sticks out in my mind (because i wrote what i thought was a darn good research paper on it) is John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. as you may or may not recall, this work (along with every other work ever by anyone if you want to take the artsty-fartsy route) has a ton of symbolism in it. this symbolism is rooted mainly in Christianity and Christian themes. Jim Casy (sacrifices himself and his body for the salvation and safety of his family and friends - JC - Jesus Christ). 12 members of their traveling party (12 tribes of Israel). the book's title (Battle Hymn of the Republic - Revelation 14:19-20) even the character Rosasharn (Rose of Sharon - Song of Solomon 2:1). The artsy-fartsy part of this ramble-fest is how Mrs. Rogers discussed said symbolism. Like any good teacher (and she was a great one - i simply disagree with this one thing) she asked for class participation: "What could this be representing?" The obvious answers that i laid out above were said. But that wasn't enough. "What else?" Students began throwing out anything and everything under the sun, and as long as it kinda made sense, Mrs. Rogers nodded, agreed and said "What else?" And this happened with any and all works that we covered in that class. NOT ok. That is artsy-fartsy. (paintings made by elephants and sold for way too much is also artsy-fartsy.)

despite all of that, i do have a few chinks in my anti-artsy-fartsy armor. the main reason for this post is to briefly analyze the song on that ipod touch commercial which says that music is a bunch of different things like significant others, comfortable things and, shall we say, more intimate things which gives the song by CSS its title "Music is My Hot, Hot Sex."

if you know me at all, you will know that music is very important to me (if i were to even begin to explain why, you would be reading this blig post for another 30 minutes - i am sure i will write a blig or two on music in the future. something to look forward to..). i was a music minor at UNC and took a few classes which required me to analyze different pieces of music and i quite enjoyed it. usually these pieces were either sans lyrics or i was analyzing the music as it related to the lyrics, not the other way around (because, after all, lyrics are poetry, not music. usually those lyrics are given a melody which has musical qualities, but this still does not change the fact that lyrics and music are not equatable).

i am, however, intrigued by the lyrics to this song and would like to give you some of my opinions on it.

the word "is" can be equated to, well, an equal sign. so wherever you see "is" you can safely put an equal sign in its place without the meaning of the word changing. so when the vocalist says that music is her boyfriend or girlfriend, she is saying that music = boyfriend or girlfriend. she is dating music. whoa... now that's kind of artsy-fartsy. that mean she holds music's hand, buys music things and makes out with music. now that's really artsy-fartsy. that's so artsy-fartsy that it's not possible or even practical (traits artsy-fartsy things rarely possess).

here are the other things that the lyricist equates to music:

(drugs, junks, boys, ladies, dead end, imaginary friend, brother, great grand daughter, sister, favorite mistress, shit (stuff, not poo), jobs, drinks, bitches, beach house, hometown, king size bed, where i meet my friends, hot hot bath, hot hot sex, back rub, where I'd like you to touch)

think of how a human being would interact with or do those things. now imagine interacting with or doing those same things to music.

is your mind blown yet?

see, its not about the fact that one could not possibly drink music, sleep in music or be akin to music. music isn't an actual, animate or inanimate thing we can interact with through our senses (what we hear and feel is vibrating particles in the medium through which we hear or feel the effects of the music, not music itself). its about the thought process of the lyricist while he or she wrote the lyrics to this song.

the idea that someone could be close to marriage with, bathe in, have infidelitous relations with or go home to the unearthly, completely God-designed phenomenon that is music is impossibly awesome*.

we would all agree that those things cannot actually be done to or with music. duh. easy. but many of us would differ on the opinion that these thoughts are beautiful, provocative and challenging thoughts about music. some might even say that such thoughts or such a line of thinking is artsy-fartsy.

i would not be counted among that group.


Dip of the Day: Google Earth

ok so google earth (not google maps) has been my dip for a while now but I was super-duper impressed with it for two (2)** reasons the other day while procrastinating at work.

(1) it now has the option of looking at the universe (or at lease what we can see of it). you can search for and zoom in on galaxies, constellations and stars. there is also a little application where you can track the orbits of the planets and the moon. needless to say, its out of this world.

Hubble Space Telescope photographs are laid onto the
celestial sphere in the correct places. Here are
the Pillars of Creation near the Eagle Nebula.

(2) terrain and tilting. goodness gracious. turn on the terrain layer and tilt the view down and all of the sudden the mountains and hills rise out of the computer screen. you find yourself zooming through valleys and dodging mountaintops. GREAT for exam time.

Grandfather Mountain anyone?

Junk of the Month: Ace & TJ's Breaking and Entering Christmas

an awesome example of doing good works behind the scenes (my next post topic). Ace & TJ are morning radio talk show hosts here in charlotte and they accept nominations for families who are planning to spend this holiday season without a Christmas and none of the cheer that comes with it. They get a bunch of volunteers together and break into the house, stock the cupboards and fridge with food, redecorate the kids' rooms, put up a tree and put a HOARD of presents under the tree. they have done three so far (1, 2, 3) and have 3 more left this season. they have already donated a car!

the best part about it is that they (Ace & TJ) go to great lengths to keep their identity hidden. the family has no idea who or why someone or something has given them all of these presents. thats what i'm talking about.

thanks for reading such a long post. let me know what you think.

*awesome meaning 'inspiring awe', not 'very impressive'
**why do legal documents and disclaimers have to put the number in parenthesis after stating the number in letters? seriously...