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How can you be TOO good?

1 Comment 27 August 2008

    Nine-year-old Jericho Scott is a good baseball player — too good, it turns out. a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more. When Jericho took the mound anyway last week, the opposing team forfeited the game, packed its gear and left, his coach said.

Officials for the three-year-old league, which has eight teams and about 100 players, said they will disband Jericho’s team, redistributing its players among other squads, and offered to refund $50 sign-up fees to anyone who asks for it. They say Jericho’s coach, Wilfred Vidro, has resigned.

But Vidro says he didn’t quit and the team refuses to disband. Players and parents held a protest at the league’s field Saturday, urging the league to let Jericho pitch.

“He’s never hurt any one,” Vidro said. “He’s on target all the time. How can you punish a kid for being too good?”

The above story from ABC News just goes to show how life in the USA just gets stranger, and stranger. It appears that it is OK to be good-you just cannot be TOO good. Can you imagine telling a gifted football player not to score , or a good youth wrestler to not try to pin his opponents? What the so-called adults are doing to this kid out in New Haven, Connecticut is just flat-out wrong. What does it teach kids by just telling them can fold up their tent and quit if they run into dominant opposition?

If you have a great opponent, you simply have to raise your game. I remember when Venus and Serena Williams hit the pro tennis circuit and started to win, people thought that they would totally take over the sport, that no other woman could POSSIBLY hit with the two sluggers from Compton California. A funny thing happened. Other women worked on their game, people like Justin Henin, Maria Sharapova and others came along and were able to not just compete with, but beat the Sisters Williams. For people who remember the “Dream Team” in Men’s basketball from the 1992 Olympics, the dominant American performance by legends like Bird, Barkley and Jordan did not make the world just quit. The rest of the world went back to the gym, worked on their basketball game, and got a helluva lot better to the point where the US Men had not won a World title in 2002 and 2004, and took 3rd at the Athens Olympics. The “Redeem Team” that played well at the recent Olympics won-but barely against a very game Spanish side. Again, competition dictates that you must raise your game in the face of excellence by your opponent. You don’t just quit.

If what happened in New Haven starts to happen in other sports in the USA, where excellence is penalized, then Americans better get used to a whole lot of other teams smoking us in the Olympics besides just the Chinese. (Yeah, we won more medals, but look at how many more gold medals that they won) Not celebrating excellence, and indeed, penalizing it is not only just flat out wrong-it’s un-American.

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Intimidating? Moi??

2 Comments 26 August 2008

One more random thought from my camp experience.

When I got there on Saturday, the 18th, a couple of the “monos” (short for “Moniteurs”) or counselors were checking out in the clinic. As I was finishing up the paperwork for one young lady, who was about 19, she told me “I remember YOU! You were the camp nurse when I was first at Lac du Bois back in 2000 (my first year working at camp) I was SO scared of you.”

In looking at this now young adult woman, her words did kind of bother me a bit. When you work with kids, you like to be respected, but you don’t really want to scare the kids. I think unfortunately, when you are a male, and a bit of a wide body, sometimes it does scare the kids a little bit. I made it a point to try to smile more, and to at least try to soften my expression. It seemed to work, I had a lot of kids engage me conversation, and quite a few asked me if I was ex-military ( wearing a flat top crew cut still draw that kind of question) At least the kids were pretty positive about my military service, I did not have anybody make any direct anti-military remarks like “how many babies did you kill?” (believe it or not, I have had people ask me that question)

Anyway, that young counselor’s remark gave me a moment of pause that sometimes as a guy working with kids, I have to go an extra step so as not to scare or intimidate them. People really do judge by appearances. Last year, when I shaved my head early on in the summer, and would take my Bulldog Buddha out for a walk, I had people actually cross the other side of the street, to the UN-sidewalked side to stay away from us.

Well, time to get ready for work. In a few short weeks with the kids back in school, it will be the official beginning of cold and flu season. Hey, it’s good for job security. I have to say, if there was a way I could camp nurse year-around, I would so love to be able to do that. People were not meant to sit behind desks for 8 hours a day looking at a computer screen. The camp experience is not just great for the kids. It does some of us adults a world of good to be silly and just be out and interacting with kids and nature. It’s a good reality check to not take oneself too seriously.

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Back from French Camp

1 Comment 25 August 2008

I got back yesterday from “Lac du Bois”, the Concordia French Language Village near Hackenack, Minnesota.  It was a very good week, the weather was great, the campers were generally healthy, with a few sprained ankles and a couple of coughs, it was a quiet week.

The last 24 hours at camp there was a lot more wind, and some falling leaves-you could almost feel fall in the air.

One of my favorite things to do at camp is being “La Tornade Blanche”, or The White Tornado. After the kids have eaten breakfast, I go over to “Club Med”, what we call the clinic, and change into my uniform of white t-shirt, white sheet, white bandanda and a mob head as a wig. The counselors get the get doing La Tornade Blanche chant, where I come bursting into the chow hall and give out certificates for the cleanest cabins. You would not think so, but by making a game of it, the kids really do a good Job jof keeping their cabins clean.  The payoff of all of this, is when the parents come to pick up their kids, and I point out to the parents that their kids did a really good job of keeping their cabins clean-and that there is NO reason not to expect them to continue to keep their stuff neat and organized when they get home. The expression on the kids’ face is priceless. A few years ago, I worked the opening year of Italian Camp, Lago del Bosco, and the dean at that time, a woman who had NO business being a dean working with kids, said that she did believe in making a competition out of keeping their cabins clean, and the kids deserved a break. Not surprisingly, their cabins were not just unclean, they bordered on the unsanitary. (Luckily, that dean is no longer with CLV )

I had a great time working with Mirabelle, the dean, and Americ, the assistant dean-two people with whom I have worked with more than a few times…I think I have worked at least 5 of my 8 times with Americ while working as a camp nurse with CLV. The staff they hired was excellent.

I was able to do my workouts just about every day-I brought  my kettlebells up north with me. I almost always lose weight when I work at camp, even though the food is almost always excellent, but being up and walking around outside and not having a bunch of junk food lying around helps a lot too.

I missed Metropolis’ first rugby game this past weekend-that was kind of a drag. I heard that one of the Old Boys broke a bone in his cheek-they are hoping that he did not have a broken orbital bone along with it. I will have to check out email this week to see if they give an update on Shrek.

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Saying Good Bye to a Long-Time Partner

1 Comment 20 August 2008

My two very best friends from High School live away from Minnesota these days. Mike lives in the DC area after having lived overseas for a few years. My other good friend Tom-better known as the Mad Moose- lives and works as a policeman in Palmetto, Florida.

Moose had been a very good paramedic at North Memorial Medical Center, but always had law enforcement in his blood. He dropped a bunch of weight and moved his family down to the Gulf of Mexico side of Florida just south of Tampa. I remember getting a picture of him sitting on his police-issued Harley with the Bay of Bradenton in the background. It would take a lot to get Moose of his bike. It turns out all that it took was a 90 pound German Shepherd.

The dog’s name is Talon. He has been Moose’s partner for the better part of 6-7 years. It’s a unique relationship that a K-9 police officer has with his 4 footed partner. They work together in dangerous circumstances and the dog also is a part of the family. Having a German Shepherd and a pug named Kirby at home is a comical sight, particularly since the pug thinks that he is the Alpha Dog. Talon and Moose have been through a lot looking for drugs, searching in marshy, disgusting places for bad guys, and Moose has had to have Talon take down more than a couple of fleeing crooks. My buddy is one of those people who just loves his job.

Last week, Moose got some bad news about his partner. Talon has an inoperable form of cancer. The city of Palmetto medically boarded Talon out on the spot, even though Moose feels like Talon can still do less strenouous work like drug-sniffing. Now when Moose is in uniform, and he heads out the door, he has to leave Talon behind. It just kills him to do this. Talon, for his part, is very confused by all of this. He waits by the front door for a good couple of hours crying to go to work. It’s all that he has known. That part is really hard for both Moose and Talon. When I talked with Moose last week, he said he is holding up, but he knows when the time comes to put Talon down, it is just going to gut him.

He tole me that he does not want to continue to be a K-9 officer anymore. He’s feeling like it is more of a young guy’s thing, but the biggest issues are the amount of paperwork, and is virtually impossible to get home owners insurance in Florida when you own a breed like a pit bull, Rotweiller or German Shepherd because of fear of biting and the liability-even if the dog in this case is the property of the city of Palmetto.

It’s a sad thing to think that Moose and Talon are no longer patrolling the streets of Palmetto. It’s going to be a sad day in Moose’s household once they have to say goodbye to Talon. After having said goodbye to our 12 year old golden retriever a couple of months ago, I kind of understand-but if possible, the bond between Talon and Moose runs much deeper.

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The Return of “Guy L’Infirmier”

1 Comment 17 August 2008

I am currently at the Concordia Language Villages French camp working as a camp nurse. We all go by French names up here. This summer is my 8th summer working for CLV. I did not work here last year because I needed to save vacation days for our France trip.

My “Nom de Guerre” is Guy L’Infirmier, or Guy the Nurse. We have a group of two week campers entering in to their last week. On Monday, we get a fresh group of one week campers who will be ages 11-15. It’s beautiful up here. After working at the main site in Bemidji the previous couple of times I have worked at CLV, it’s nice to be back here at the Camp Holiday site, near Hackensack, Minnesota; where I worked my first 4 times as a camp nurse, 3 at French camp, once at Italian Camp.

Here at Lac Du Bois (Lake of the woods), it is really rustic. None of the kids cabins have any electricity. It is also close to Woman Lake, where my late paternal grandfather had a cabin for many, many years. He finally sold it the year before I started nursing school back in 1988 when he was dying of cancer. It just FEELS like a camp here. It is really wooded, and the beach here is, in my opinion, the nicest of the any of the beaches I have seen at the many language sites. (although at Mori No Ike, the Japanese site where my son Ian went a couple of times, their beach is pretty nice-and the lake there is really clean)

I brought some weights up with me and hope to try to get a workout in. I also brought my mountain bike, a real necessity as the clinic is quite a hike from the kids cabins. Anyway, my contact on the blog will be sporadic this week, as I don’t know how busy I will be, and there is just one open computer for all of the staff, so it might get a bit competitive to get access to it.

A` bientot!

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Random Wrestling and Judo Thoughts for Wednesday

1 Comment 13 August 2008

As an ex-wrestler and somebody who did Judo for a couple of months(was too expensive to keep up with it), I have a great deal of respect for people who do these two grappling sports. They are not instant gratification sports. For a long, long time, there were no big paydays for these athletes. The growing popularity of mixed martial arts has shown that people with grappling skills have another avenue to pursue once they are done with Judo or wrestling.

Today’s results in Judo and Wrestling at the Olympics has given me a few thoughts to consider:

* Good to see France FINALLY won it’s first gold medal. Oddly enough, it was in Greco Roman Wrestling. I liked it even better that a French wrestler named Steeve (Like my name, just one extra “E”) Guenot won it. This was France’s first wrestling Gold Medal in 84 years. The Guenot domicile will expect a second Olympic medal, this one Bronze, won by Steeve’s brother Christophe.
* Minnesota High Schooler Jake Dietchler lost his two matches at the 74 kg class-but he lost to wrestlers from Krygyzstan and Ukraine who ended up winning Silver and Bronze medals. For a high school aged wrestler to have qualified in Greco Roman wrestling was an amazing feet. This young man can come back from China with his head held high.
*Ronda Rousey became the first American female Judoka to win a medal-a Bronze, in the 70kg class. A few people had felt that this young woman might be the first American Judoka to win a gold medal after she won a silver medal last year. She lost her third match to Dutch Judoka Edith Bosch, and had to get over her anguish about losing and come back to win 4 more matches to win a well-earned Bronze medal.
* Georgia has had a really rough last week after getting invaded by Russia with the loss of a couple of thousand souls. Georgian wrestler Manuchar Kvirkelia and Judoka Irakli Tsirekidze won Georgia’s first Gold Medals of these Olympics today to at least give a little bit of good news to their compatriots back home. Kvirkelia was able to defeat a Russian judo player on the way to his Gold Medal.

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When Winning a Bronze Medal is Amazing

1 Comment 13 August 2008

In watching the Olympics, it can be very easy to get caught up in the media hype when a favored team or athlete doesn’t win the Gold Medal. French Athletes are painfully aware of this, a few of their highly favored swimmers, a weightlifter and a Kayaker ended up bringing Silver, instead of gold back to land of Voltaire and Sartre.

Today on Tuesday, their were some very suprising winners of Bronze Medals, the US men’s gymnastics team, and a Kayaker representing the west African country of Togo, Benjamin Boukbeti.

In the case of the US Male gymnasts, a few months ago, there was some talk of going head to head with their formidable hosts, the Chinese men. Injuries to stars Paul and Morgan Hamm were thought to be too much for the young and mostly untried Americans to overcome to even make the final round. Not only did the two reservists participate, but they put in a gritty, gutsy performance to help the Americans win the team Bronze. Quite an accomplishment in the face of adversity.

In the case of Benjamin Boukpeti, a man born in France of a French mother and a Togolese father, he had initially been in the French system, but a shoulder injury made members of the French Kayak Federation wonder if he would ever become a top level kayaker. He ended up going to the 2004 and these Olympics representing the country of his father. The man who today calls Toulouse home made a clean run in his last shot to bring a Bronze medal to Togo-it’s first ever Olympic medal of any kind.

This is the kind of stuff that makes the Olympics such a compelling thing to watch and follow. The US Bronze might get lost in the shuffle of the other medals that American athletes will probably win-but for Benjamin Boukpeti, it’s a safe bet that somebody is planning a BIG party for him in Lome`, the Togolese capital of this small west African country of about 5 million souls.

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What’s French for “In YOUR Face, Alain!”?

2 Comments 11 August 2008

I have been dealing with some major sleep deprivation, the likes of which I have not had since the 2002 FIFA World Cup played in Japan and South Korea. This current round of insomnia has nothing to do with my grandson Duncan. It has to do with the 2008 Summer Olympics from Beijing, China.

One area the USA is still strong in, is men’s and women’s swimming. I have a lot of respect for swimmer’s. They are in great shape, and the mental toughness that you need to swim all of those laps to get into competitive shape is something that is going to be increasingly hard to find in an American society that has become one of instant gratification-and swimming is NOT an instant gratification sport.

Going into the men’s 4x 100 freestyle relay, French swimmer Alain Bernard was talking some serious smack: “The Americans? We’re going to smash them! That’s what we came here for.” With France in the lead going into the last leg of the relay, Jason Lezak-the oldest American male swimmer at 31-somehow overtook the formidable Frenchman, Bernard, and just touched him out for the American team to take the gold. It should be added that the blistering pace of the race was so great, that the top 5 teams in the race had surpassed the previous world record.

Alain Bernard, with enough egg on his face to make a 5-egg omlette, was the last one to leave the pool.

The answer, by the way to the above question, is “Ta Guele!” In the US, we have another expression: “Payback is a BITCH!”

Enjoy your lovely silver medal, Alain.

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“Visit Russia Before it Visits You!”

2 Comments 09 August 2008

Back when I was studying in France back in 1980, The Soviet Union Had invaded Afghanistan Christmas Eve in 1979 and were still occupying the Central Asian Country while I was in Paris. While  walking along the Boulevard Montparnasse one day, I saw a poster on a wall that translated as “Visit the Soviet Union before it visits YOU!”

President Jimmy Carter decided that the best way to teach the Soviets a lesson was to keep American athletes at home and Boycott the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. The American media may have given President Carter a hall pass on his willingness to dash the dreams of hundreds of American Athletes. It’s a safe bet more than a couple of them remember President Carter with more than a little bitterness.

For whatever reason, the Soviet Union, and now Russia, seem to really enjoy flexing their military muscle right before (or during) Olympic years: In 1956 Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary, in 1968 the Soviets squashed the “Prague Spring”  by sending troops into Czechoslovakia, we already mentioned the Soviet’s Afghani invasion not even two full months before the 1980 Winter Olympics…add to that hit parade the former Soviet Republic, the country of Georgia.

Yesterday, as China declared the 2008 Summer Olympics open for business,  the Russians have sent in hundreds of tanks and troops to the breakaway province of South Ossetia in Georgia.

You gotta give the Russians credit for their sense of nostalgia. What’s an Olympic year without a Soviet/Russian invasion of a soveriegn country.?

This has the real potential to get very, very ugly. Already, there is some talk of 1,500 civilian deaths. Georgia also is very close to the USA, and has ambitions of joining NATO. The Georgians are asking for international aid.

All I know is that any wrestling or judo matches between Georgians and Russians should be more than a little personal-not too unlike the blood bath that was the water polo match between the Hungarians and the Soviets at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, and the  hockey match in the 1968 Winter Olympics between the Czechs and the Soviets.

The Olympics have an ancient history. This invasion of Georgia reminds us that the history of warfare goes back even longer.

 

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B and B Time Instead of Rugby Practice

1 Comment 06 August 2008

Poor Ian and Andrea have been fighting a gastro-bug the last 3 daysYell.  The only other casaualty-besides their stomachs and intestines- was Tuesday Rugby practice.

It was my intent to make it to rugby practice at Columbia Park on Tuesday. Well,  so much for that. Ian and Andrea both ended up going to urgent care, so I ended up with baby Duncan for the better part of 4 hours on Tuesday evening.  I decided to make Tuesday evening into a  “B and B Evening. (Bulldog and Baby)Becky was late getting home because of a late funeral pick up for her job. I took Buddha, my Bulldog, and Duncan on a nice 3 mile walk.  You can tell that Duncan is getting bigger, his little blue cap from the hospital kept falling off his head and really could not stay on. I have come to the conclusion that a chunky guy with a baby in a front pack with a bulldog in tow must be a humerous sight, because during the walk I lost count of the amount of smiling people who went past us while driving, then having big, dumb grins on their face. Laughing

When we got back to the house, I fed and rocked Duncan while Ian and Andrea were at the urgent care.  It was really pretty relaxing. Buddha was off in a corner, panting away in post-walk-bulldog-bliss. There was a little breeze coming through the house, neither the TV or radio were on. Duncan dozed on my chest for the better part of an hour. When my wife made it home, we gave him a bath, rocked him and bottled him some more untill his parents came back.

After my wife and I came home, Andrea went to bed early, and my wife fell asleep on the couch holding onto Duncan. And must have slept that way for the better part of 90 minutes before I woke her up and put Duncan to bed in HIS crib.

The evening did not go to plan-but in the end, it was not half bad.

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