What a Wonderful Day!

Today marked two wonderful years with Sharon Salmon, my Honey Bunny! She managed to find the time to come and visit me this week so we could be together on our two year anniversary, despite me still having to teach, the week before our last marching contest of the season no less! It was wonderful seeing her, and I can't wait until I see her again.

But today was wonderful for many other reasons. The high school band had a phenomenal rehearsal today, just the kind you want the last couple days of the season. I think they're going to be very successful at the ZIA marching festival. Will it be trophy winning successful? I don't know, that's up to the kids. But as far as I'm concerned the amount of musical improvement they've made the past two weeks is success enough for the season, regardless of how placements and trophies turn out.

I also was observed today. I'll spare this blog the details, but it went very, very well. It was the perfect encouragement I needed at this point in the semester. I was just starting to feel very, very burnt out. But it's amazing what some honest approval and constructive criticism can do for the spirit. Something to take note of while teaching students!

I also received word that a friend of my is petitioning Canyon Masonic Lodge #730 for membership, though it was totally unknown to me that he was seeking membership. While I missed the actual stated meeting for the month tonight, it was good to hear that good men are seeking to becoming better men in Masonry. I truly think we're on the verge of a Masonic revival as my generation starts to reject the superficialities of our culture in favor of a life more deep in meaning and spirituality. I also think the Masonic Lodge is the perfect place for men to seek that deeper meaning of life. And with marching season almost over, I can spend more time at the Lodge, which I very much miss.

So yes, it's been an amazing day. Thanks life! I needed this one. :)

Not Enough Hours in the Week

Mondays are fourteen hours long, Tuesdays the same. Wednesdays are nice, only up at the school then hours then. Thursdays? Those are twelve hours, and Friday's have football games, so they're typically sixteen hours long. Then either rehearsals or contests on Saturdays. Which leaves me Wednesday evenings and Sundays to take care of all the extra stuff I need to get done.

Stuff like trying to find time to order my cap and gown. (I can't make it to the WT bookstore during the day, how am I supposed to manage?) I need to sit down and find time to order graduation announcements. I need to take my GRE in case I don't get hired on in Canyon, so I have a back up plan for the next year, i.e., graduate work at WT while I tech and teach lessons with the CHS Band. (Although hopefully, I'll just get a job. I'm working on the assumption that nothing will open up, however.)

I also would love to find time for extra sectionals with my drum line. I hate pulling them out of rehearsals to work on music, because then they're missing drill work which they really need. But what options are left to me? With the lessons I teach, classes I have, and set rehearsals I've already set up, the only time I can do outside of class sectionals is Tuesday or Wednesday nights at 7:00, or Sundays. That obviously wouldn't go over well for a variety of reasons. I'm willing to give up the time, but I don't want to ask that of my students, or their parents.

I wish I had time to sit down and figure out all this graduation/graduate work stuff. I think I finally have graduation set up and good to go, but I want to be taking grad school courses in the spring (unless my dream job opens up over Christmas...) and that's a whole other test and application that I haven't even started on.

Honestly, I'm just glad I managed to squeeze my music certification test in and pass it. Squeezed it in on a Sunday no less, I was lucky. Only Sunday testing option in the panhandle this semester. I think I was blessed that opportunity was available. Now I only need another few small miracles, and my life will be on it's ideal course.

Regardless, I need another weekday to fit everything in. One where the banks aren't closed, and the world doesn't shut down like on Sundays. Because Sunday afternoons are great for rest, but just don't cut it when trying to catch up on life.

The Proverbial Axe

As an Infection
Is expunged from the body,
By such means is health preserved;
That is nature's way.

Is it not our obligation
To rise above nature
And to cultivate
Rather than eliminate?

How much more fruitful is an acre
When toiled and labored,
Planned meticulously,
Than when left to its own devices?

Only when a stone is squared well
Will it find its place
As part of a greater construct.

Before we cut off a limb,
Perhaps we should treat the wound?

It is fine to cut out a cancer,
Until you see all your problems as cancers.

Deep Breaths

If a background check is mandatory I shouldn't have to pay for it. Unless we're dealing with the government, of course.

I think what frustrates me more about it is the absolute lack of warning. If one of my friends hadn't said something, I would have walked my happy butt into the administration building of CISD and filled out the paper work, then had to walk right back out, because I can't shell out the money. I have to choose between eating and putting off my background check another week and a half? Yeah, that's a hard one.

We received an email from the education department telling us to get the background check done, where to get it done, etc, etc. But not one mention of a mandatory fee, cost, price, money, anything of the sort.

Unlike every other major on campus, I'm already student teaching. Been doing it off and on since May, hitting it hard the past two weeks. I don't have time for a job. I'm poor. Yes, probably poorer than you English Major. That poor.

I hate surprises. I hate fee surprises even more. And mandatory fee surprises just might be the most pernicious and evil of all.

To be fair, apparently this will cover the cost of the hard copy of my Teaching Certificate, once I manage to miracle the money to take my last certification test.  Why finger printing and a piece of paper cost fifty-five or sixty dollars is beyond me, other than a tax on would be educators. I guess it's the same reason my electronic certification tests, which are all multiple choice, cost $125.00 to process and email me my scores.

*sigh*

Yeah, most underpaid profession I think is right.

Raised

On the evening of August 17, 2010, I was raised to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason. Boy, it's been a long time coming, but it made the anticipation worth it! Very excited that I am now wearing the ring that's been sitting on my desk for the past few weeks. Hopefully, sometime soonish, I would like to take a few pictures of myself dressed up in my apron, more for me than anything else; though if I do, I'll probably post a picture or two here as well.

Already have a couple of brothers dropping hints about the York Rite, which I am most certainly interested in since the brother who sponsored me is the Right Eminent Grand Commander of Texas. But as with all things in college, I think it will come down to time and [most importantly] money! Perhaps some of the brothers with real jobs will cut a deal with me, allowing me to pay them back over time... how far can you stretch the poor college student excuse in life? The Lord knows its still true in my case.

A Mason and a Man

My Brother, Masonry means much more
Than the wearing of a pin
Or carrying a paid-up dues receipt
So the Lodge will let me in

You may wear an emblem on your coat
From a finger flash a ring
But if you're not sincere at heart
This doesn't mean a thing

It's merely an outward sign to show
The World that you belong
To this great Fraternal Brotherhood
That teaches right from wrong

What really counts lies buried deep
Within the human breast
'Till Masonic teaching brings it out
And puts it to the test

If you practice out of the Lodge
The things which you learn within
Be just and upright to yourself
And to your fellow men

Console a Brother when he's sick
And assist him when in need
Without a thought of personal reward
For any act or deed

Walk the world in such a way
That the world can see
That only the best can meet the test
Laid down by Masonry

Be always faithful to your trust
And do the best you can
Then you can proudly tell the world
You're a Mason and a Man

By: Bro. C.F. Reynolds

Angel of Light

As the sun sets
And cloud blankets Earth
I stand upon a mountain
Looking down upon
God's Creation

And like a sweetly singing angel
A voice, lucent in the dusk,
A song sings the wind,
Brushes the plains,
Kisses His Work
With gentle blessings.

And that Precious Gift,
Womb of our very civilization
Breathes deeply and sighs,
The sweet exhalation
Of God Himself.

I'll let the video speak for itself.

The Perpetual Adolescent

An interesting article in the Weekly Standard that actually dates back to March 15, 2004. It was recently brought to my attention by the Art of Manliness blog by Brett McKay. It covers manhood, maturity, the 'man boy' attitude of today's male youth (though it doesn't use that term), and how, in our youth culture in America, we are seemingly incapable of separating physical youth and energy from emotional and mental maturity. It's a long one, at seven pages, but it'll repay you in dividends. Stay with it, its worth it. Some excerpts below:

"WHENEVER ANYONE under the age of 50 sees old newsreel film of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak of 1941, he is almost certain to be brought up by the fact that nearly everyone in the male-dominated crowds--in New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland--seems to be wearing a suit and a fedora or other serious adult hat. The people in those earlier baseball crowds, though watching a boyish game, nonetheless had a radically different conception of themselves than most Americans do now. A major depression was ending, a world war was on. Even though they were watching an entertainment that took most of them back to their boyhoods, they thought of themselves as adults, no longer kids, but grown-ups, adults, men.

[snip]

The increasing affluence the United States enjoyed after World War II, extending into the current day, also contributed heavily to forming the character I've come to think of as the perpetual American adolescent. Earlier, with less money around, people were forced to get serious, to grow up--and fast. How quickly the Depression generation was required to mature! How many stories one used to hear about older brothers going to work at 18 or earlier, so that a younger brother might be allowed to go to college, or simply to help keep the family afloat! With lots of money around, certain kinds of pressure were removed. More and more people nowadays are working, as earlier generations were not, with a strong safety net of money under them. All options opened, they now swim in what Kierkegaard called "a sea of possibilities," and one of these possibilities in America is to refuse to grow up for a longer period than has been permitted any other people in history.

[snip]

Two of the great television sitcom successes of recent years, "Seinfeld" and "Friends," though each is different in its comic tone, are united by the theme of the permanent adolescent loose in the big city. One takes the characters in "Seinfeld" to be in their middle to late thirties, those in "Friends" in their late twenties to early thirties. Charming though they may be, both sets of characters are oddly stunted. They aren't quite anywhere and don't seem to be headed anywhere, either. Time is suspended for them. Aimless and shameless, they are in the grip of the everyday Sturm und Drang of adolescent self-absorption. Outside their rather temporary-looking apartments, they scarcely exist. Personal relations provide the full drama of their lives. Growth and development aren't part of the deal. They are still, somehow, in spirit, locked in a high school of the mind, eating dry cereal, watching a vast quantity of television, hoping to make ecstatic sexual scores. Apart from the high sheen of the writing and the comic skill of the casts, I wonder if what really attracts people to these shows--"Friends" still, "Seinfeld" in its reruns--isn't the underlying identification with the characters because of the audience's own longing for a perpetual adolescence, cut loose, free of responsibility, without the real pressures that life, that messy business, always exerts.

[snip]

The old model for ambition was solid hard work that paid off over time. One began at a low wage, worked one's way up through genuine accomplishment, grew wealthier as one grew older, and, with luck, retired with a sense of financial security and pleasure in one's achievement. But the new American ambition model features the kid multimillionaire--the young man or woman who breaks the bank not long out of college. An element of adolescent impatience enters in here--I want it, now!--and also an element of continued youthfulness.

The model of the type may be the professional athlete. "The growth of professional basketball over the past twenty-odd years, from a relatively minor spectator sport to a mass-cultural phenomenon," notes Rebecca Mead, in the New Yorker, "is an example of the way in which all of American culture is increasingly geared to the tastes of teenage boys." 

[snip]

Self-esteem, of which one currently hears so much, is at bottom another essentially adolescent notion. The great psychological sin of our day is to violate the self-esteem of adolescents of all ages. One might have thought that such self-esteem as any of us is likely to command would be in place by the age of 18. (And what is the point of having all that much self-esteem anyhow, since its logical culminating point can only be smug complacence?) Even in nursing homes, apparently, patients must be guarded against a feeling of their lowered consequence in the world. Self-esteem has become a womb to tomb matter, so that, in contemporary America, the inner and the outer child can finally be made one in the form of the perpetual adolescent.

[snip]

The greatest sins, Santayana thought, are those that set out to strangle human nature. This is of course what is being done in cultivating perpetual adolescence, while putting off maturity for as long as possible. Maturity provides a more articulated sense of the ebb and flow, the ups and downs, of life, a more subtly reticulated graph of human possibility. Above all, it values a clear and fit conception of reality. Maturity is ever cognizant that the clock is running, life is finite, and among the greatest mistakes is to believe otherwise. Maturity doesn't exclude playfulness or high humor. Far from it. The mature understand that the bitterest joke of all is that the quickest way to grow old lies in the hopeless attempt to stay forever young."

Written by Joe Epstein. My God, this man is brilliant.

The Entered Apprentice

What gave you the urge a Mason to be?
To join our Fraternity ancient and free,
Was some Brother talking a bit out of turn?
And did you cock an ear to see what you could learn?
Or did somebody give you a hint on the sly,
That you'd not be invited but would have to apply?

Or was your wife's father a Past Master no less,
Well what ever it was there isn't a doubt,
That you'd hardly a clue what the Craft's all about,
Until tonight when you stood at the door,
Divested of metal and sightless and poor.

You knelt there in prayer when the questions had ceased,
You passed round the lodge and advanced to the East.

Your vows being taken and hoodwinked no more,
You continued your journey once more round the floor.
At the north eastern corner the lesson was plain,
That Charity must be a Freemason's aim.

You retired from the Lodge, would have welcomed a rest,
But in no time at all you come back fully dressed.

You summoned your pluck standing there on the floor,
You'd endured quite a lot but there wasn't much more.

The piece-de-resistance, the Charge came at last,
And for truth and for wisdom it can't be surpassed,
You'll hear it again a hundred times yet,
And I hope that its lessons you'll never forget.

Thus your First Degree ended,
It had been quite a day,
Now please listen carefully to what I have to say,
You're one foot on the ladder, and your climb will be slow,
But when you reach the top just look humbly below.

And think of tonight when you stood at the door,
Divested of metal, sightless and poor.

Source: By Brother Walter Perkins

Quote from Pike

Found this quote on another brothers blog. It's excerpted from Pike's morals and dogma, and I thought it was poetic.

"To make honor and duty the steady beacon-lights that shall guide your life-vessel over the stormy seas of time; to do that which it is right to do, not because it will ensure you success, or bring with it a reward, or gain the applause of men, or be “the best policy,” more prudent or more advisable; but because it is right, and therefore ought to be done; to war incessantly against error, intolerance, ignorance, and vice, and yet to pity those who err, to be tolerant even of intolerance, to teach the ignorant, and to labor to reclaim the vicious—these are some of the duties of a Mason."

Albert Pike

Old Spice

This might just be the greatest commercial in the history of commercials.