Go Baseball!!!

It's that time of year again.

The time of year where I decided that I am going to get into major league baseball. I’m going to regularly watch games and keep track.

This is usually over by spring training but it happens every year.

But probably not.

For the last couple of years I’ve decided that I’m going to become a Milwaukee Brewers fan. I’ve been to their ballpark, saw them play, I liked their style.

While I’m good for a couple of games I can’t fight down the realization that these guys are the rivals of the Chicago Cubs, my former team that I buried and claimed to never have loved. The undead zombie Cubs continue speaking at me underneath the floor boards, “you know this is the year right?”

I cave, the Cubs win me back. I trade in Braun, the Brew Crew, and Miller Park and pick up my tired fandom of the Cubs again with the losses, the curse, and an aging crumbling ballpark.

Yes, I said Wrigley Field is a crumbling ballpark, because it is. I know there is glamour and glory behind it all somewhere but I can’t look past the fact that it honestly is in terrible shape. (If there is ever a time where a stranger will comment on one of my blog posts, this is it)

Coors Field

This year I plan to stay with the Cubs, as my NL team. Since I have a terrible time following one team I have it in my head that I also need an AL team and what more perfect team than the local talent, the Colorado Rockies?

So instead of one disappointing team this year I will have two.

Perhaps it would be easier rooting for teams that are exciting and win games but that would be defecting from my teams that I'm only half enthused about. I'm a better fan than that.

Apart from saying I'll follow baseball, and then not doing it, I have one more tradition that is even more consistant. The yearly tradition of informing my brother that the New York Yankees are evil and that I can't believe he roots for them. They are evil, bro, just find a new team.

Go Cubs, go! Hoist the white flag at Wrigley!!! This is the yea….is it football season yet?

Billie Holiday

“You have to have a little love in your life and some food in your stomach before you can sit still and listen to some damn fool’s lecture about how to behave.” 

                                                                                 –Billie Holiday

This is the quote that we have been using at the Harm Reduction Action Center's syringe access trainings. Things shouldn't be black and white when it comes to treatment and services for people with drug abuse, there is so much grey area. Much of life happens in the grey area so let's help people at least be safe about what they choose to do and give them some love in their life and food in their stomach as Billie says.

Border Re-immersion

Writers block. That’s what I’m blaming my blog hiatus on. Now this isn’t saying that the drought is over, it’s saying that I am sitting here with a cup of coffee and my entire iTunes library on shuffle (so far: Bon Iver followed by Neil Young followed by Miles Davis) and I’m feeling ambitious.

(Intermission as I realize my coffee is gone and I leave to go brew another cup)

I’ve been struggling this week, there simply has been too much on my mind and too much going on and not enough introverted recharge time watching 30 Rock or pretending to learn how to play a guitar.

Let’s cover the most recent event of worth talking about.

Last weekend the Urban Servant Corps took it’s annual border immersion trip to Las Cruces, NM/ El Paso, TX. Now if you’ve been following this blog you’ll know that this area holds a special place in my heart. I did live there for a year after all.

The USC crew in El Paso

I just never realized how special of a place it held in my heart.

It felt incredible to be back but was also bittersweet. Seeing old friends, coworkers, and areas that I’ve spent time in all in a blur of a couple days left me in an emotionally drained state, in a good way, for this past week.

The border is an incredibly unique place and I had basically forgotten it. I had moved onto the next thing and neglected to give it much thought any more. But being back reopened my eyes to how incredible and sometimes heartbreaking it can be. The culture is nowhere else to be found and the stories and struggles of immigrants hoping to find better lives only to find resistance from our country is frustrating.

My visit to my old work site was not what I had hoped for. While seeing coworkers again was wonderful I only saw a few clients and they were only as excited as kids getting socks on Christmas to see me. I realized that I had applied my current work environment to my old one. My job last year didn’t allow for many personal connections with homeless clients, it discouraged it. This year at HRAC I have formed friendships and know the name of almost everyone that walks through our door.

Don’t get me started on the 24 hours that we spent on a Greyhound bus over the course of the weekend, a time that was about equal to the amount of time we spent awake on the border. Ridiculous.

I didn’t tear up when I moved away from Las Cruces in August but I did when I was waiting to get on the Greyhound to be taken out of view of the Organ Mountains once again.

Goodbye Organ Mountains. Until we meet again.

Syringe Exchange for change...

...is a line I just coined but it is appropriate for this post.

In a matter of weeks my work place, The Harm Reduction Action Center, will become one of Denver's first syringe access programs.

Why do we want to give clean needles to junkies? Are we encouraging their behavior? Nope! We are encouraging them living healthier lifestyles even if it means still using drugs but shooting up with clean needles. Injection drug users are at enough risk already for violence and hatefulness from their communities, they don't want to have to worry about Hep C or HIV from a dirty needle.

Back to the Border

I'm returning to the border soon.

I'm going down on a border immersion trip with USC. To learn about the place that I called home for a year.

It will be nice to see the Organ mountains of Las Cruces again, to see friends who stayed down in Cruces and El Paso.

But it will be different.

It will be a weird feeling to be in my old house as a guest and to see all the new faces in Border Servant Corps.

I am excited.

Yet a tad bit nervous as well.

See you soon borderlands!

A church I can actually call home...

...and not only stomach but actually enjoy.

Growing up I had a very frightening view of religion, more specifically Christianity. I had been dragged along occasionally to a small church not too far from my middle school. The pastor was a good old fire and brimstone man. I remember him red faced and dripped sweat as he talked about hell but this could be an exaggeration of my memory. I do remember him telling us that to believe in good luck was sinful, so when I got home I threw out my lucky crow's feather. It was seeming a little devilish anyway, a crow as opposed to a dove feather.

I dabbled in and out of different church activities after that. I did a Christmas play so I could talk to and get the pastor's cute granddaughter, who was a year older than me, to notice me. No luck there.

I did AWANA with some friends for a couple weeks. It was a sort of boy scouts for Baptists. I only received one badge and I'm pretty sure it was the one for showing up for the first time.

That's about it when it comes to church before college, though that good ol' fashioned fear of God was infused in me. (I was a good kid, I said "gosh" instead of "god"; very important stuff)

In college I made a couple attempts at going to a big church in Cedar Falls. A big church because I could easily sneak in and out without being noticed and nobody ever knew if I missed a Sunday or two (or all but a few Sundays)

But I was frustrated. It seemed very fake to me. If a mainstream conservative church is what Christianity is then I don't want any part in it. No offense to anyone, it works for some people, just not me.

Soundtrack for this post: "The Age of Adz" by Sufjan Stevens

Book I recently finished: The Hunger Games Trilogy

Food last eaten: an old candy cane