the poets from the interagency

Below is a limerick some of my colleagues from work wrote yesterday after completing an arduous 80-hour intensive training course. We all got a good laugh when they got in front of everyone in the training and performed the stanza they had each written.

*Disclaimer: To understand some of this limerick, minimal working knowledge of the language, "acronym", is necessary. [that was a joke]
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There once was an R&S team
That built up a full head of steam
But when it deployed
With budgets it toyed
In hopes of achieving the interagency dream

The State guy strolled into the room
With loafers and briefcase and groom
He stared at the sky
And kept asking why
And left with a feeling of doom

The security sector’s a threat
But DOD is now here so don’t fret
Move out of the way
We’re going to play
And to hell with the national debt

USAID arrives in pigtails and sandals
“Let us work with the people to make candles!”
We can increase their dough
‘Cuz sustainability we sow
Besides, we have plenty of money to handle

There was much conflict at FSI
As 10 painful days passed by
But we learned how to ACT
As a matter of FACT
And now it’s time to say “Good Bye!”

opera in the ballpark

My friend David and I properly paying our respects to the field.

Just about anything you do inside the confines of a ballpark will be memorable. The Italian opera, Barber of Seville, is such an example. One can hardly forget Figaro's thunderous voice amplified for all to hear inside the ballpark. Who would have thought that baseball and Italian Opera would go together so well. The Barber of Seville, the first Italian opera performed in America, was performed in New York City in 1825; very close to where the first recorded baseball game was played. Two decades later, just across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, the game of baseball was born. On this night, more than 150 years after their birth in America, baseball and opera amalgamate.




If this picture doesn't make sense to you, we need to talk.

A friend called me "Moonlight" earlier this season at a ballgame.

Archibald "Moonlight" Graham: Major League ballplayer who only appeared for two innings in a major league game in 1905, and never got to bat. Graham later received his medical degree and practiced medicine for 50 years in the state of Minnesota.

So why did my friend call me "Moonlight?" Well, I could think of a few reasons. Perhaps because the character portrayal of Doc Graham in the 1989 movie, "Field of Dreams" has Doc Graham coming back to the game of baseball to live out his dream of playing major league ball. Is the nickname a sign that I need to come back to the game? Maybe. But it's going to be a little depressing when I see some little kid choking on a hotdog in the stands and know that my career is over. Talk about ultimate torture. How could W.P. Kinsella, the author of "Shoeless Joe", (the book from which the movie Field of Dreams was produced) write such a despondent reunion between Doc and the game of baseball? I can only imagine stepping onto the ballfield, magically gaining back 60 years of my life, returning to the prime age of 26, only to have that dream stolen from me because W.P. Kinsella thought it would be a nice "twist" in the plot.

So, no I don't want to be "Moonlight Graham." I don't want to be a doctor, and I sure don't want to come back to the game of baseball and have a little girl who can't digest her food properly take it all from me. So don't call me "Moonlight;" it's depressing.

baby steps

One day, one day...

However, I've got to pay my dues. Most of the crew members who sail these yachts around the world in the Volvo Ocean Race have decades of experience, and plenty of time to complete the nine month journey out at sea.

For now, I will continue to race the 420s and FJs (shown in the above video) on the Potomac River.

play-don't hate.

I've been on somewhat of a "Haiku kick" lately...

Put down the A-K.
Learn to play ball; live in peace.
Prevent the hate storm.

PFP in the middle east

Click here to read a fascinating story about the non-profit organization, Play For Peace, and the influence their basketball programs have had in peace building throughout the world. The story was written by Chad Ford; my college mentor and a writer for ESPN.com.

sports for peace in the slums of Kenya

The non-profit, Sports for Peace, is doing some great work in the slums of Africa. The organization has projects paralleling much of the research I did last year in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. The densely populated Kibera squatter community in Nairobi, Kenya, hosted a 3-day basketball program with 30 girls from the slum. The focus of the program was to engage the girls in, and promote, team-building, self-empowerment, goal-setting, and social activism.