Just saw this.
SO FUCKING WONDERFUL.
I love Jon Stewart with all of my heart.
Just saw this.
SO FUCKING WONDERFUL.
I love Jon Stewart with all of my heart.
Saturday treat: Mumford & Sons
Almost two years ago, I wrote my first guest post for tuneage. It was on Mumford & Sons. The band has since exploded - being nominated for a grammy, featured on major movie soundtracks and playing shows across the world.
A new (fairly high quality) Mumford & Sons track is making the rounds online. It comes from a live session the band did for a Colorado radio station.
The song is currently Untitled but I couldn’t help my excitement in sharing this beautiful track - Marcus Mumford’s crooning voice, heartbreaking lyrics and those fantastic harmonies have me hooked.
Of all the things that need to be done to prepare for summer camp, I chose to spend most of Friday prepping for Bouldering 101. This is a picture from that class last year, on a boulder problem I put up called ‘Young Pattowan.’ This is by far one of my favorite parts of summer.
This is a route called ‘Southern Boys Don’t Wear Plaid.’ It’s a beautiful climb; a 5.11 is the grade I was told. It starts easily, and then you get up to where this photo was taken. You wind up in this big overhang, with decent enough holds, but a big reach to make it out, and I’m too short so my feet kept peeling off and I would just hang for a bit until I could stab them back into something. The worst part is that if you come off anywhere under the overhang, you’ll swing out about 20 feet because it’s top-roped. In any case, it’s the biggest rush I’ve gotten in the past month of climbing.
Most people know what the itch is. For me, I get it with music. I started playing in bands when I was 17, and have hardly stopped since then. And now I have a job that keeps me from playing with a band in any sort of consistent manner. I just jump into gigs when I can fit it in. And these last few have left me wanting so much more. They’ve been 3 and 4 song sets, which is fine if they didn’t come around just once a month. What’s worse is that they’ve been acoustic deals. Don’t get me wrong, I love playing acoustic stuff, but I like it in the sense that other instruments get to show up, or that different options are on the table with an acoustic guitar. What I’ve been playing hasn’t been any of that; and it hasn’t been with talented musicians, so I can’t do anything challenging.
I have the itch to play my electric with a full drum kit; I want to play big, thick tones. I want to finish and have that little ring in my ear. I love that. I want to have the speakers in my face sound like a wall of sound. I have an itch not to hold back and I don’t know when I’ll be able to scratch it.
props to the Smithsonian for this killer campaign.
It’s the National United Methodist Camp and Retreat Leader’s Conference. It’s not amazing. And it’s in Western North Carolina. Which is pretty close to where I currently live. Last time they had it, it was in California. But that’s just how luck is.
The internet in this place is amazing, though. I guess that’s relative to what I’m used to. But I almost think it’s too fast. The pages load so quickly, I don’t have time to really get ready for them. It’s like it’s loading them before I click. Too fast.
Lastly, I made it up to Max Patch today, before I made it to the conference this evening. It’s an amazing bald mountain top. Technically it’s not bald; it has grass. Which is really weird. Just a full mountain top of grass. The view is amazing. And now that I’ve hiked it, I can say that I’ve hiked a part of the Appalachian Trail. It’s part of the section I’m hoping to do as a week long kind of thing later in the Spring.
So there it is, the update. For now…
I promised a few people that I would keep this blog more updated now that I cannot see or speak to many of you. But I’ve failed. My apologies.
So far things are going quite well. I’m getting settled into the new living arrangements, sans television and internet. That alone has been an interesting experiment. Work has started to gain traction in the past few days now that I’m moving out of the learning phase and into the doing phase. Summer camp from this angle is a whole different animal.
My boss who shares my name (we’ve maintained the big/little distinction from last summer) has some big ideas about summer. And I’m finding that his leadership style is a lot like mine. Which is good and bad. He has ideas and he passes them on to me, and I’m essentially supposed to make it happen. The same thing happens when there is an issue; he says okay and I’m supposed to come up with the solution. He doesn’t want to spoon feed anything down the line. And he continually makes his focus the group of us up here. On that note, it’s great that we all are good friends. What I’m finding out about my boss is that his leadership style encourages creativity and critical thinking. He’s not just passing things down the line so he doesn’t have to take care of them. He takes an active role in watching my process of coming to a solution; a sort of silent support structure.
All that is to say that I see a lot of the way I like to lead others in the way he leads me. And I’m seeing the pros and cons of doing it this way. This past summer I led my staff with a very hands-off approach. And now, going through the frustrations of learning from scratch along with the highs of creating solutions has me tweaking my leadership approach. It’s going to be an interesting few months preparing for summer.
For those of you involved in summer with me (many of you talk to me regularly anyway): there are some really interesting changes being tossed around the office. We’ve had a couple of meetings where I’ve realized a lot of program structure is up for grabs. It’s going to be a wild ride.
And to close, I’ll apologize again for my absence. Hopefully when my laptop is up and running again I’ll be able to write in my apartment. Then I’ll just need the internet to upload my magic…
Now I’m off to interview some minion that wants to work here.
“Wagon Wheel (Old Crow Medicine Show Cover)” by Mumford & Sons. ♥
So this is my new harness. It’s pretty legit. I did a lot of research and found one that had all the features I cared about. All the reviews were good and it won a lot of awards. The facilities manager at camp (who I now work with) told me he needed a new one as well. I told him this was the one I was getting, and now he’s getting it too. If you knew the two of us, it makes a lot of sense. It’s a partner thing, for those of you who get that reference.
In any sense, I’m getting this new harness in the mail but I don’t think I’ll have a place to use it for a while because of the weather. Maybe Chris and I can just wear them around the office and clip random things into the gear loops.
I’ll probably just wear it around my apartment with all my gear just to hear that jingle of metal quickies and ATCs on ‘biners. I love that sound.
