The struggle is a good thing…

So I am blogging again today.  Looking back, it occurs to me that I have been away a while.  Baseball, tee ball, ballet (not me, the half-pint), teaching, working, scouting – all of those things that I love are taking me in a direction away from something else I love – sharing this little corner of the universe with you.  So it is that there is one thing in particular nudging me back into the electronic study where I can pace around and sort out my feelings. The Boy Scouts of America, yesterday, “affirmed” their stance on discriminating against “avowed and openly” gay scouts and volunteers.

What utter nonsense.  First and foremost, let’s just take a look at the words they use.  They “affirmed” their policy.  How does one “affirm” discrimination?  The juxtaposition of the two words in the same sentence brings to mind the inauguration speech of Alabama Governor George Wallace.  “Segregation now!  Segregation tomorrow!  Segregation forever!”

In that speech, the Governor “affirmed” his state’s policy, didn’t he?  No doubt about it that he “affirmed” his policy of never letting one group of people mix with another group of people.  50 years in our rear-view mirror, I have to ask – how did that affirmation hold up?  Was it the right thing to do?  Was it in keeping with our founding principles?  The answer is certainly “no,” at least for the humane and decent among us, it is.

So you have this “affirmation” from the Boy Scouts of America that they are going to keep discriminating against people.  They say that “a majority of their parents” want this.  Well, wait a sec – no one ever asked me.  I have been in scouting since my Star scout was in the first grade.  Can’t recall ever seeing a questionnaire from BSA mailed to our house or our troop.  How do they know what a majority of the parents want when they never surveyed them? 

I am just a volunteer, working my butt off for this great little Troop so that they can grow into strong, wise, and self-reliant confident men who make up their own minds about such nonsense.  I have no resources to donate to scouts other than my time and my commitment to the principles of scouting.  Principles like this little ditty from Sir Robert Baden-Powell:  “The spirit is there in every boy; it has to be discovered and brought to light. “  Or maybe this one:  “The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others. “  How does any of that involve discrimination based on a person’s sexual preference?

Baden-Powell is, if you didn’t know, the founder of scouting (there is considerable speculation that he himself was a closeted homosexual.  While his sexual preference doesn’t matter a bit to me, I guess since he wasn’t an “avowed” homosexual, scouting’s founder must be ok in the BSA’s eyes, because to date they ain't kicked him out).

And let’s talk a moment about that concept of being an “avowed” person of any sexual orientation.  I missed a lot during puberty, I mean there was just a lot going on with girls, and sports, and school and family life…so I could have been out fishing or playing baseball the day the village elders came around intending to make me swear a vow to be either hetero or homosexual.  I do not remember ever “avowing” to any particular sexual orientation.  I do remember seeing Dawn Wells on TV in those little red shorts on Gilligan’s Island and being pretty well smitten by that, but that is about as close as I get to “avowing” anything in terms of my individual sexuality.  Maybe it’s different for others, I just don’t remember having to swear a vow about my sexual orientation.  Seems I just grew up having the one I got.  

So this topic of the Boy Scouts of America “affirming” their discrimination against “avowed or openly gay” kids and volunteers is nonsense.  Scouting should be open to all.  It diminishes the integrity and credibility of our commitment to the Scout Law to intentionally turn our backs on kids and their parents because of something as absurd as sexuality.  As a committee member and assistant scoutmaster, I find it absolutely inappropriate that I would be expected to engage any of my scouts in a discussion about their sexuality.  Discussin gthis decision, a good friend of mine and scoutmaster pointed out the obvious, "as scout leaders who grants us that license, that charter, that permission to engage kids that way?"  No one.  Yet the scouts have forced that dynamic precisely.  By making a big a deal out of individual sexuality, the BSA has wrongly thrust that issue onto local Troops.

A scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.  Nowhere in there does it reference sexuality.  I will continue to love scouting and maintain my commitment to the kids in my Troop.  And I will keep faith that, at some point, the Boy Scouts of America will embrace the true meaning of their charter and open the doors of scouting to all by abandoning this antique and contradictory obsession with homosexuality.

So, today is a little more pointed than most of my entries.  I suppose that happens when you see something you love making a bad decision or heading off in a wrong direction.  The reality is that scouting, just like the scouts themselves and their volunteers, is not defined by this one issue.  There are millions of us out there who say “let the kids join; let the parents volunteer” regardless of this issue of sexuality.  Don’t mistake my passion for contempt – I love scouting and the opportunities it presents.  I am just a little sad and embarrassed today by the direction BSA is taking here.

Wherever you are today, whatever you are doing, I hope you can take some time to reflect on what is best about scouting in America; the kids. Their decency, their commitment to solid scouting principles, the promises they make, and keep, on a daily basis. I hope you can spend some time being assured that there are a million or so volunteers all pulling hard in the right direction and I hope you can join me by keeping that faith that someday, someday soon, we too shall overcome this.  Until the time that we do, like many things in scouting, the struggle to achieve will in the end serve us well.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.

Yours in scouting,

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

Why we celebrate...

A remarkable series of events occurred this weekend prompting tonight's late-night post.  The weekend began with a celebration - a friend was retiring after a career spent in the military and in law enforcement.  He is my son's scoutmaster and the troop was invited to attend the celebration.  As assistant scoutmaster,I attended with them and was very happy to participate with them as they honored our skipper. The speeches and tributes were all really great, but what really caught my eye was just the love and pride his friends and family had for him. It was a great celebration well earned by a very great cop.

The next morning we welcomed three of the troop's senior scouts to our home so they could lead training exercises with a younger scout (my son).  Leading the training was necessary to satisfy the rank advancement requirements moving the three of them from Star to Life scout at our recognition banquet tomorrow night.  Life scout is the final rank a scout achieves before gaining the rank of Eagle scout.  (As a side note, less than 1% of all American men have achieved that goal - these are terrific kids and this milestone is a really good one to celebrate.  They are on their way).

So great fun was had watching these young men lend themselves to the development of a younger scout and to watch these brave and accomplished leaders handle the delicacies of offering their required training while simultaneously being whipped at Candyland, Old Maid and Go Fish by my five year-old daughter.  We will have a great recognition banquet tomorrow night.

After the boys left, we ran errands related to my nephew's Confirmation at church tomorrow morning. This rite of passage within the Methodist church carries with it a gathering of the clan and an opportunity for hearts bound by common blood to be again warmed by the common experience of family.  It will be so nice to see everyone; brother, sister, mom, cousins - just to be with them and smile, hug, drink in their good humor and the pride of another family milestone reached.  It will be a great day.

As I said, we were out running errands (new pants for the ever growing 12 year-old who, I am certain, is keeping several textile mills in business with the rate at which he is growing out of his clothes).  As it happens we live very near the campus of Michigan State University and Saturday was Commencement Day.  Everywhere we drove on campus, we saw moms, dads, proud grandparents and siblings embracing the new graduates dressed as they were in green robes and beaming from ear to ear.  There were no obvious estrangements, no observable fears, worries, or resentments - those ordinary human emotions that pop up in relationships from time to time.  From the outside looking in, all you could see was love and pride conjoined with relief and anticipation.  There too, clans were gathered to jointly mark the day with one of their own.  An opportunity not to be missed, a singular moment of shared joy too good to be traded for any other moment at any other locale.

A few of the errands we were running that afternoon also related to the Boy Scout recognition banquet planned for tomorrow night.  Given that my son is advancing to a more senior level of scouting, and that he is in my mind an outstanding young man and a fine boy scout to his troop, I'm looking forward to celebrating with him tomorrow night.  There will be a similar, albeit smaller, gathering of the clan to mark this milestone.  But the emotion is unchanged - an opportunity not to be missed.  One more chance to say to one of my family's younger young men "I see you! Do you see me seeing you?  'Cause I was wondering if you saw me seeing you because I wanted you to know how really neat I think you are."

I was reflecting on that sentiment - those goofy but heart-warming words spoken by my mother so many times in my youth - and it dawned on me that THAT is exactly why we celebrate.  To come together and say to the celebrant "Do you see me seeing you be great?  Because I wanted to make sure you knew I know how really neat you are..."

And I think that is pretty neat.

So wherever you are, whomever you are with, I hope you find the time to celebrate the good things in those around you.  We are reminded all too often that the only time we are promised is this exact moment we are living right now.  And if we are lucky enough to string together these moments and others like them in sufficient quantity, then we ought not take for granted a chance to join with our families, our friends, those people we think are really neat, in celebration.  In the end, it's our joined lives and the very living of them that we are celebrating.  To quote the great Bruce Springsteen, "It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive..."

So thanks for stopping by my blog and including me and my little corner of the world in you being really neat in your little corner of the world.

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com

The Hunger Games; reality, and My Reality

Long ago I gave up on any ambition of being "cool."  I WAS cool, once - long ago when the Earth was still young and MTV still played music videos - I was a pretty cool guy.  Readers of this blog who knew me in high school will not remember me as cool; because I wasn't back then.  But in college - well that was another story.  I hit my stride in college and there lived a pretty cool existence.

That being said, as I sneak up on my 30th high school graduation anniversary, I admit that I do not know any current songs, recognize any current tv stars, and cannot even begin to fathom the circumstances under which I would pick up one of those dreadful "Twilight" books and lend to it any of my precious time.  I realize that I loved Seinfeld and that show went off the air 14 years ago.

So, when my nearly 12 year-old son asked, it was with a high degree of anxiety that I bought the wonder-boy the Hunger Games books.  He loves them.  I thought perhaps they were too dark for my liking.  When I was a boy his age, honest to God, I was reading the Hardy Boys (read every one of them two or three times), The Chronicles of Narnia (thank you Mr. Seiter for sharing those books with me in 5th grade - I have worn out three sets in my lifetime) and was fixated on the tales of King Arthur, the Three Musketeers, and Robin Hood.  My books had old fashioned heroes and old fashioned themes of good and evil and the hero always fought hard and won the day.

So when junior said he wanted the Hunger Games I wanted to demonstrate enough trust in him to buy them and give them over without first censoring them.  I hadn't heard of these books except that I knew they were wildly popular with young kids - which to me meant they must be filled with inhumanity, cruelty and sex gushing off every lurid page.  But, rather than censor the books, I engaged him in a thoughtful discussion why we read, what we hope to get out of reading, and what to watch for about the ideas we let others put in our heads.  He humored me with the same degree of patience a 5 year-old uses when needing a restroom.

After the lecture, delivered with skill in a locked and moving car in order to frustrate any plans he had on escaping, I gave him the books. He read the first book in about 2 days, a fact which convinced me that my innocent, terrific, wholesome little boy who still gives hugs and kisses before he goes to bed had just read "Tropic of Cancer" meets "Lady Chatterly's Lover." 

When he asked me to take him to see the movie this weekend I was impressed that he would invite such parental scrutiny into his lurid world of post 20th century pop culture.  Then it dawned on me that I was his ride.  I said "yes, of course" and then promptly went to the interwebs to see what I might learn about this story.

I subsequently learned that the novel, written by Suzanne James in 2008, was inspired by the author's dim view of "reality" television.  Already I was pleased.  I too share a dim view of reality television.  It celebrates the most base instincts, emotions and pleasures in all of us.  Whether it is man's inhumanity to man and the effront to civility represented by any number of survival games, or our pop culture's celebration of the shallow, vapid, and empty-headed morons being paid millions to impress us with their stupidity and complete lack of depth - I find reality television to be anything BUT reflective of reality. 

I find it analgous to hunting bear with a bait pile of doughnuts and pie filling.  The bear knows that what it consumes is probably going to end up killing it, but it is there, and easy to consume, requires little effort to digest, and virtually no effort to acquire.  The bear can't resist it and those who desire to control the bear's behavior know exactly what to feed the bear to get it to do what they want it to do.

So we saw the movie and I was impressed by what I saw; both on screen and in my son and his good buddy.  The movie celebrates courage and humanity while shining a bright light on the toxic portent of reality tv.  At the movie, the kids cheered for the right reasons, held contempt for the vile characters, and were moved by the most humane parts of the story.  I walked out of the theater happy and proud that, 30 years removed from the stories of my youth, the modern knights of literature were knights no less than those I cheered on in Arthur Rex.  The good guys were as dauntless and bold and human as any that I encountered in any of my favorite stories.

My reality for the weekend was that I probably worried for nothing - that the child sharing my house was not going to be any more of a miscreant after reading the Hunger Games than I became after reading The Catcher in the Rye. For that, I am relieved and a little proud of my son and the good company he keeps.  My belief that a company of good boys will, by and large, grow into a company of good men with just a little trust and support was affirmed by what I saw tonight.

So, thanks for stopping by my blog today.  I hope wherever you are; whomever you are with today, you are crafting a great story of good guys, heroes, courage and faith.  The kind of story where the hero is tested, shows strength, loves, hurts a little, and in the end wins the day.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

"Whattya mean the parents can't watch?"

My daughter takes ballet class.  Of course she does.  Why wouldn’t she?  She is an American kid of the girl variety; pigtailed and turbo-charged.  She needs something to do; so why not ballet?  Despite the fact that it is nothing fancy or extravagant (the blogging world has yet to turn me into an overnight “hundredaire”), it means the world to her.  She jumps, tumbles, learns French words and gets some very solid girl time once per week.  I love that she is in ballet even though the decidedly “anti princess” part of me is watching these dance teachers like a hawk.  No princesses allowed.

So that attitude kind of sets the stage for understanding my tenuous relationship with ballet class.  At its most basic level, I agree to pay them and have the half-pint there dressed and ready to go at the appointed hour.  That’s my side of the deal.  And I love that my daughter loves it.  Truly, she can hardly contain herself on “ballet nights” because she is so excited to go and dance, and flip, and tumble for 40 minutes.  What really feeds my concern, however, is their side of the deal.  It seems that in exchange for me paying them and having the kiddo here at the appointed hour; they take the kiddo and go into a room where the parents may not tread and play music for 40 minutes after which the child appears rosy cheeked and asking for food and water. Yes, what is really giving me heartburn over the whole deal is this idea that the parents are not permitted to watch ballet class.

For those of you with non-dancing kids, I will repeat that.  The. Parents. Are. Not. Permitted. To. Watch.

Hmmmph.  Nothing in my recent memory has made me feel so old and grouchy as being told I cannot watch my daughter dressed in her cute little ballet dress (funded by yours truly) and her fancy little ballet slippers (also provided by the SmTD Endowment for the Arts) with her hair braided and gorgeous (done each night before class by her mom) flip, and leap, and giggle, and strive, and overcome, and achieve.  I want to see her soar; but I also want to see her struggle to get there.  I want to cheer at the recital, but I am being robbed of the journey that precedes that finish line.  Telling the parents they can watch at the recital and two practices a YEAR just feels like someone is being a ninny about the whole thing (to me anyhow – and I realize that dance class has been this way since the first cavemen took their cavedaughters off to cave-ballet class and the first cavewomen said “take it outside, bub.”)

So instead of sitting there bursting with pride, enthusiasm, fear, hope and all of the other really good things that grip a parent watching their kid apply herself; I sit with all the other parents in the hallway, fiddling on the smart phone or reading books.  I sit there wondering how much joy I am missing; wondering what images I might be seeing the memory of which will warm my heart and blur my vision well into my old age. I sit there, writing this blog entry and deleting it over and over because it sounds so crabby in comparison to how much my daughter LOVES ballet.

I sit and wonder how things would be if we handled baseball, or swimming, or football this way.  When I had knee surgery, my wife had the option of watching the operation from the hospital’s operating theater.  If a surgeon can slice into the really ouchy parts of my body and somehow withstand the observation of some uninvolved yet otherwise interested third party, then, and excuse me for saying it so bluntly, what the hell kind of atomic research are they doing at 5 year-old ballet class that I can’t sneak a peak of my daughter being every bit the 5 year old whirlwind I imagine her to be?

So, I will make this promise.  I will keep my grousing about ballet class limited to these electronic pages, and I will follow up this grouchy rant with some assessment of my feelings AFTER the recital, but for now I am contentedly grumpy with ballet class.  Maybe next term I will just have to sign up with her so I can get inside the door.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.  I hope that wherever you are, whatever you are doing today, you are doing it in a fashion that those who are warmed by the mere thought of you can cheer you on, wave to you, and chant your name.

Dennis

smalltowndad@hotmail.com