i guess ...
... i really should update this journal thang before any stray soul who might have ever cared completely forgets everything except "oh, he's that guy who kinda looks like grizzly adams but never writes anything in his journal" ... yep, that's what you'll be thinkin ...
this year started off better than most. the usual intense distress period around the anniversary of her passing has become almost bearable, thanks primarily to a greater common understanding between myself and my (step-)daughter [ the basic problems were compounded by my attempts to minimize the effect on her, to my own detriment ... she's becoming such a wonderful, companionate and professional care-giver like unto her dear mother ... ]
things have also been more-than-hectic due to the olympics this year. months and months of planning leading up to a lengthy campout there to do our/my part to insure safety ... granted i was getting paid, but i don't generally do the lengthy cyber-astronaut thing since i've been alone ... the boys did get to hang with me there alot (it's so nice when your kids maintain an academic standing which gives their teachers no excuses when i ask that they come along with me ... i'm not bragging as much as i'm just grateful we don't have to run those gauntlets too ...)
the games went very very well i thought ... security worked primarily as planned, and no incidents of any merit.
i got to a *few* events, my kids saw bunches of them but, as i tell those brave souls who are sometimes my professional conscripts on these little soujourns: if we were supposed to screw around, there'd be KY in the supply cabinet...
it was also very interesting for me in that i saw a different side of the games than i had before. they were in LA in '84, and i was an attendee to a few events there. but this time, with alot of activities around and in various locations, i had an awakening to the underlying nature of the games which you don't get on TV (at least not anything in the US) ... the international athletic communal nature of the sports thereat ... TV coverage seems ever to have a 'homer' (home-team) flavor to it, sometimes broadening just a tad to include Canada as one of 'us' but usually not much further ... medal counts and hyped-and-focused pressure on 'our team' to perform, sometimes directed at mere children, many amateurs at that ...
but at the games, many of the various teams and participants seemed to know sundry others of their 'opponents' quite well, sometimes to the point that it seemed artificial to hang with their own 'team'. sure, the various teams had 'houses' where their own cultures were maintained, customs promoted ... little outposts of 'home' ... but it was the progressive-dinner nature of the international visitation with team members mixing that was both fascinating to watch and difficult to 'police' without wrecking it for everyone ... since 9/11, it's the paranoiac predictive game that drives you just a bit nuts ...
it seems that (my) lesson was perhaps the critical, raison d'etre for the immense expense is: that people of a common purpose and yet perhaps conflicting backgrounds can beat their carbines into skateblades for two weeks and get along. at least that's the part i value against the cost to me personally ...
i also felt a bit sad for the few dark spots on the canvas: the pairs event squabble and the doping / blood juicing situations. the russian team (overlords') sabre-rattling signalled ghostly echoes of cold-war miscalculations ... the misappropriation of sport as a tool of politic and propaganda. win at all costs, a sadly all-too 'american' mantra, really is pathetic measured against honor and sportsmanship. still, i think things ended well, or well-ish ...
i'm also soooo glad to be an american, a north american, and a beneficiary of a lifetime of substantial freedom. gone (for the most part) are the days of mass-paranoia about defections among athletic teams during things like the olympic games.
yet, there are far too many people still tied by ideologies which bind and gag... i remember perhaps a decade ago a visit by some russian colleagues (their first) to the US and california. they were, to a man, dumbstruck by a supermarket; the concepts of surplus and choice were practically overwhelming. these were scientists, PhD's, like kids in a candy store ... we have so much, we value so little ...
on a more personal note, it was good to 'hang' with a number of my old grad-school compadres (and com-madres?), as a number still live and work in the SLC area... rekindled some superbly-aged friendships ... and a few a little more ... no romance but no regrets either ;)
...
i decided to wait to push this out until after the bulk of the LJers had re-evolved into humans ;) i'll poke Ly to read this when she returns ...
this year started off better than most. the usual intense distress period around the anniversary of her passing has become almost bearable, thanks primarily to a greater common understanding between myself and my (step-)daughter [ the basic problems were compounded by my attempts to minimize the effect on her, to my own detriment ... she's becoming such a wonderful, companionate and professional care-giver like unto her dear mother ... ]
things have also been more-than-hectic due to the olympics this year. months and months of planning leading up to a lengthy campout there to do our/my part to insure safety ... granted i was getting paid, but i don't generally do the lengthy cyber-astronaut thing since i've been alone ... the boys did get to hang with me there alot (it's so nice when your kids maintain an academic standing which gives their teachers no excuses when i ask that they come along with me ... i'm not bragging as much as i'm just grateful we don't have to run those gauntlets too ...)
the games went very very well i thought ... security worked primarily as planned, and no incidents of any merit.
i got to a *few* events, my kids saw bunches of them but, as i tell those brave souls who are sometimes my professional conscripts on these little soujourns: if we were supposed to screw around, there'd be KY in the supply cabinet...
it was also very interesting for me in that i saw a different side of the games than i had before. they were in LA in '84, and i was an attendee to a few events there. but this time, with alot of activities around and in various locations, i had an awakening to the underlying nature of the games which you don't get on TV (at least not anything in the US) ... the international athletic communal nature of the sports thereat ... TV coverage seems ever to have a 'homer' (home-team) flavor to it, sometimes broadening just a tad to include Canada as one of 'us' but usually not much further ... medal counts and hyped-and-focused pressure on 'our team' to perform, sometimes directed at mere children, many amateurs at that ...
but at the games, many of the various teams and participants seemed to know sundry others of their 'opponents' quite well, sometimes to the point that it seemed artificial to hang with their own 'team'. sure, the various teams had 'houses' where their own cultures were maintained, customs promoted ... little outposts of 'home' ... but it was the progressive-dinner nature of the international visitation with team members mixing that was both fascinating to watch and difficult to 'police' without wrecking it for everyone ... since 9/11, it's the paranoiac predictive game that drives you just a bit nuts ...
it seems that (my) lesson was perhaps the critical, raison d'etre for the immense expense is: that people of a common purpose and yet perhaps conflicting backgrounds can beat their carbines into skateblades for two weeks and get along. at least that's the part i value against the cost to me personally ...
i also felt a bit sad for the few dark spots on the canvas: the pairs event squabble and the doping / blood juicing situations. the russian team (overlords') sabre-rattling signalled ghostly echoes of cold-war miscalculations ... the misappropriation of sport as a tool of politic and propaganda. win at all costs, a sadly all-too 'american' mantra, really is pathetic measured against honor and sportsmanship. still, i think things ended well, or well-ish ...
i'm also soooo glad to be an american, a north american, and a beneficiary of a lifetime of substantial freedom. gone (for the most part) are the days of mass-paranoia about defections among athletic teams during things like the olympic games.
yet, there are far too many people still tied by ideologies which bind and gag... i remember perhaps a decade ago a visit by some russian colleagues (their first) to the US and california. they were, to a man, dumbstruck by a supermarket; the concepts of surplus and choice were practically overwhelming. these were scientists, PhD's, like kids in a candy store ... we have so much, we value so little ...
on a more personal note, it was good to 'hang' with a number of my old grad-school compadres (and com-madres?), as a number still live and work in the SLC area... rekindled some superbly-aged friendships ... and a few a little more ... no romance but no regrets either ;)
...
i decided to wait to push this out until after the bulk of the LJers had re-evolved into humans ;) i'll poke Ly to read this when she returns ...