I went to the Wednesday night Salsa instruction at Mojito's again this evening. This time Bachata Greg, http://www.BachataGreg.com, was back to teach the class. The style is "On 2", New York Style, which is different from the Los Angeles "On 1" style. I'm starting to get a little better, so I just have to keep going several times a week to really pick it up.
Before going, I even got in 45 minutes of studying time for my MCPD exam.
Check out http://www.SalsaATL.com for more info too.
I went back to the Take Hold Ballroom 7:30 beginners salsa lesson tonight. Last time, Jimmy Rumba, the instructor, of http://www.JimmyRumba.com, tried to give me special instruction to figure out the cross-body-lead, but I had a lot of trouble, but thanks in part to http://www.SalsaBootCamp.com, I figured out that move and most of the basic steps. Tonight was much better, though by the end of the lesson I could not remember enough steps to finish the final mini-performance with my partner. I think I'll need to go two to three more times to the beginner class before really mastering it.
As usual, check out http://www.SalsaATL.com for more information.
According to http://www.justsalsa.com/salsa/dance/steps/ the basic pattern looks like the diagram below. Visit the link for more information.
Here are some videos about the basic step and cross-body-lead.
First, from people who know what they are talking about, from http://www.Addicted2Salsa.com:
The Basic Step
The Cross-Body Lead
Tbe Basic Step
The Cross-Body Lead
A few months ago a good friend of mine told me about John C. Maxwell, a pastor and motivational speaker who has written numerous best selling books about leadership. I picked up a copy of his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership in audio format, read by the author. This little book / CD is worth reading / listening too.
Maxwell recounted the process of learning leadership in his own life and discussed the events, people, and mentors that went into this process. He said he still considers himself a work in progress. I found Maxwell's book worthwhile listening, but even more so than that I was particularly interested in a quote he read that he attributed to James Allen's book As a Man Thinketh. Maxwell said his father had given him a copy of the book at age 14 and it changed his life forever. I was listening to the CD in the car, so when I got home I bought a copy of As a Man Thinketh in MP3 format, read by another man named James B. Allen.
The book was written in 1902 and shows its age in only a handful of anachronistic details that are not very important to the overall message of the small volume. It took the narrator only about one hour to read the whole thing. Each sentence is filled with clarity and eloquent communication about the proper attitude that a person should take toward circumstances and life.
The only fault I find with the book is that he makes he point about "all things", both good and bad, being due to one's own thoughts alone a bit too adamantly. I mean, after all, nobody brings upon hurricanes or floods because of something they think. No child brings about the condition of being born in a poor country with little food to eat, and no innocent victim of terrorism brings about his or her death.
But, this criticism is really pretty minor compared to the overall content of this small book. The overall moral of the book is that individuals bring about their own misery or own happiness by either casting off or accepting responsibility for their own lives and the effect they have on other people in their presence. The chapters of the book are:
His concluding chapter "Serentiy" is a beautiful passage that recalls the stories of Jesus calming the waters and Buddha taming desire. Allen's descriptions of the calmness of mind and temperament to which men should aspire perfectly describes my own wish, my own goal for my mind and my thoughts.
Interestingly, the message reminds me of a line in U2's song Acrobat from the 1991 Achtung Baby album that reads:
In dreams begin responsibilities
I have thought often of that line and the truth it embodies so simply. This line comes from the name of a short story by Delmore Schwartz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delmore_Schwartz
Regarding Allen's book, you can read the entire work online because it is part of the Gutenberg Project, or google it to find MP3 recordings of it. To read it, just visit this site: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4507
Here is the final passage "Serenity" I mentioned above. The brief essay "The Ocean" in my book Metamorphosis conveys a similar message with similar storm and water symbolism.
Click here to listen to me reading this section aloud.
SERENITY
CALMNESS of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the
result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is
an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary
knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.
A man becomes calm in the measure that he understands himself as a
thought evolved being, for such knowledge necessitates the
understanding of others as the result of thought, and as he develops
a right understanding, and sees more and more clearly the internal
relations of things by the action of cause and effect he ceases to
fuss and fume and worry and grieve, and remains poised, steadfast,
serene.
The calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to
adapt himself to others; and they, in turn, reverence his spiritual
strength, and feel that they can learn of him and rely upon him. The
more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his
influence, his power for good. Even the ordinary trader will find
his business prosperity increase as he develops a greater
self-control and equanimity, for people will always prefer to deal
with a man whose demeanour is strongly equable.
The strong, calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a
shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in a
storm. "Who does not love a tranquil heart, a sweet-tempered,
balanced life? It does not matter whether it rains or shines, or
what changes come to those possessing these blessings, for they are
always sweet, serene, and calm. That exquisite poise of character,
which we call serenity is the last lesson of culture, the fruitage
of the soul. It is precious as wisdom, more to be desired
than gold--yea, than even fine gold. How insignificant mere money
seeking looks in comparison with a serene life--a life that dwells
in the ocean of Truth, beneath the waves, beyond the reach of
tempests, in the Eternal Calm!
"How many people we know who sour their lives, who ruin all that is
sweet and beautiful by explosive tempers, who destroy their poise of
character, and make bad blood! It is a question whether the great
majority of people do not ruin their lives and mar their happiness
by lack of self-control. How few people we meet in life who are well
balanced, who have that exquisite poise which is characteristic of
the finished character!
Yes, humanity surges with uncontrolled passion, is tumultuous with
ungoverned grief, is blown about by anxiety and doubt only the wise
man, only he whose thoughts are controlled and purified, makes the
winds and the storms of the soul obey him.
Tempest-tossed souls, wherever ye may be, under whatsoever
conditions ye may live, know this in the ocean of life the isles of
Blessedness are smiling, and the sunny shore of your ideal awaits
your coming. Keep your hand firmly upon the helm of thought. In the
bark of your soul reclines the commanding Master; He does but sleep:
wake Him. Self-control is strength; Right Thought is mastery;
Calmness is power. Say unto your heart, "Peace, be still!"
To listen to the segment, click on this link:
High School Program Explores "Human Side of Religion"
from Atlanta by wsharpe@wpba.org
High schools can seem islands. All day long, students and teachers only see each other. But at 3 Atlanta private schools, there's a program that is getting some students to see beyond the school walls.
It discussed how students in religious high schools don't often get exposure to people of different background or faith traditions. It was encouraging to hear the students remark that they found each other, in most ways that matter, very alike.
I consider myself nonreligious. I tried very hard to believe in some kind of literal interpretation of Christianity about four or five years ago, but found that it went against reason. When I say literal, I do not mean believing that the Bible is inerrant or fully dictated by a supernatural creator, I mean more simply a literal belief in the resurrection and its attendant miracle accounts. I can't really call myself an "atheist", because to me that term is meaningless from the proper perspective. You, no matter who you are, are likely an "atheist" with respect to Zeus. But, Zeus was once considered the supreme high god. In fact, the first Christians were called "atheists" because they disbelieved in the Roman gods!
After wracking my brain for a couple of years on the topic, I finally concluded that it's perfectly fine to disbelieve in miracle stories that offer no evidence. After all, disbelieving in miracle stories means I can fully enjoy my reason and own experience coupled with the past 150 years worth of photography, videography, and other media-making machines which reveal exactly zero instances of confirmatory evidence for supernatural events. There has also never been in the history of man, so far as I know, a case where someone had a limb severed that grew back through the help of prayer. I have, however, seen people who lead extraordinary lives without as many limbs as most of us. To me that is a testament to their courageous will.
While disbelieving in miracles I can still enjoy the parables of Jesus and the golden rule that Rabbi Hillel stated long before Jesus as "That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it", without believing in things like virgin birth, resurrection, or many holy saints coming back from the dead and walking around Jerusalem as stated in Matthew 27:52.
Finally, when I say I disbelieve in miracles, I am not saying that I categorically deny the possibility of such things. I am simply saying that all events in current history are far more parsimoniously credited to natural explanations than to supernatural explanations.
But, long before I resolved this question in my own mind, I had the great experience of attending a university filled with people from every possible religious tradition. Georgia State University has a rich cultural sampling of all kinds of traditions from Christian, to Muslim, to Hindu, to Buddhist, to non-religious. This taught me the very important lesson of trying to seek first the similarities that others had with me, rather than trying to distance myself due to differences.
I want to make a few more observations about the power of prayer and its utter failure to regrow limbs for people who have them severed. This topic has been explored in far greater detail on http://www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com/, but I can summarize my own position quickly.
People who maintain that prayer has the power to heal disease, but draw the line at severed limbs are actually denying the power of prayer. They are positing a line of demarcation between the supernatural and the natural across which we must not go. Couple this with the fact that zero cases of spontaneously regrown limbs has ever been observed, and you have evidence that further makes it more parsimonious to attribute other prayer-assisted healings to something other than prayer. It does not matter what that something other is.
To summairze this point: if you pray for something that is thought to be physically impossible and it does not happen, but you attribute that failure to its implicit physical impossibility, then you are specifying a naturalistic litmus test for the feasibility of miraculous interventions.
On the other hand, if you pray for something that is known or thought to be physically possible, and it does happen, but you then attribute it to supernatural causes, you are grossly violating Ockham's razor by introducing additional entities into the explanation. It is far more parsimonious to state that some unknown natural cause led to the fulfillment of the request than to say that an identified supernatural one did.
This post has grown rapidly from the original topic, but it's all in the same category to me. I would just like to see some of those exploratory high school programs expose students to the non-religious as well.
After all, considering that we are but one planet in a universe that contains more stars than there are grains of sand on the earth, there is a faint possibility, however slim it may be, that on some other planet there exist non-Christians, non-Muslims, non-Jews, non-Buddhists, non-Hindus, just plain non-human beings.
How incredible and humbling this universe is that each day we learn something new to correct or revise our old understanding. How amazing it is that while the ancients thought stars were simply holes in a canopy that was not too far away, we now know them to be suns unto their own, with planets orbiting them just like our own.
I am forever indebted to the work of Carl Sagan for his expansive view of life and this universe and for his skepticism which would admit of no evidence for the supernatural, no evidence for extra-terrestrials, and no evidence of a supernatural creator. Yet, he never made fun of anyone or belittled them. He understood history and understood that all of our ideologies and philosophies were our best attempts throughout our existence to explain this paradox of existence.
The following clip of him reading a passage from his Pale Blue Dot book is astonishing and humbling.
Here is the excerpt in full, as listed on Wikipedia.
In a commencement address delivered May 11, 1996, Sagan related his thoughts on the deeper meaning of the photograph:
"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish this pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
I just got back from the J's Salsa Social. As always these events are a lot of fun. I'm just a double-left-footed rookie at this, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying myself. A few months ago I was at Havana Club with some friends of mine and we saw how much fun people were having dancing salsa. We said to ourselves that we had to learn to do this instead of just sitting there at the table. One of the women we saw dancing there was at the social tonight and I got the opportunity to dance with her. She helped me learn to do a cross-body-lead correctly. She said she has been doing salsa for about 8 years.
I also met a woman who works for http://www.HowStuffWorks.com as an editor. How cool is that to work for that site? She said she actually teaches salsa at Georgia State University.
Jason and Anahita, featured in the picture above, did an excellent performance at 11:30. Jason said it was the first time he had performed in front of an audience. I thought they did an awesome job. I wish I had their skill! Practice, practice, practice, right?
I definitely recommend giving it a try. Here are some resources for getting started:
http://www.SalsaATL.com - Has a good calendar of Atlanta area salsa events, and mailing list for announcements
http://www.HotlantaSalsa.com - Another good site for Atlanta are salsa information
http://www.Salsambo.com - This one someone told me about tonight as another good source of lessons and information
http://www.jssocial.com - The web site for Jason and Jorge's salsa social
http://www.dance411studios.com/index.html - Dance 411 studios at 749 Moreland Avenue where the social is held, only about 3.5 miles from my condo!
And, to see how much fun the events are, check out the photo gallery here:
http://www.salsaatl.com/newsite/gallery2/main.php - You have to login to see the images full-size.
I just got back from the first event for the current round of Hands On Atlanta TeamWorks!. If you're not familiar with the program, here is a short excerpt about the program that you can read in full by visiting the program web site.
Hands On Atlanta TeamWorks!
The TeamWorks! experience begins with a kick-off event where participants meet their team members and make project selections. Teams then participate in 3-4 volunteer projects over 2 months. At the end of the program, all the teams reassemble at a closing project where volunteers get a chance to share service experiences and brainstorm additional steps toward building a better community through service. Teams are encouraged to reflect upon and discuss the nature of their service together.
To find out about TeamWorks!, call 404-979-2846 or e-mail: TeamWorks@HandsOnAtlanta.org.
Today's event consisted of helping remove some non-native invasive plants from the William H. Reynolds Nature Preserve in Clayton County in Forest Park. The main invader was the Elaeagnus plant. From it's entry on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaeagnus, the plant is described as part of the Elaeagnaceae family with these characteristics:
Elaeagnaceae, the oleaster family, is a plant family of the order Rosales comprising small trees and shrubs, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, south into tropical Asia and Australia. The family has 45-50 species in three genera.
They are commonly thorny, with simple leaves often coated with tiny scales or hairs. Most of the species are xerophytes (found in dry habitats); several are also halophytes, tolerating high levels of soil salinity.
They definitely were thorny! At one point a big stretch of thorns on one if its shoots smacked me across the forehead. No damage thankfully.
I will definitely have to go back to the preserve sometime just to enjoy the area. Here is more information about the history of the preserve. You can read more about it on the preserve's web site.
In 1976 Judge William "Bill" Huie Reynolds donated 130 acres of wetlands and woodlands to Clayton County. His desire to preserve a spot of beauty and serenity for the enjoyment of both man and wildlife was realized in the founding of the nature preserve named in his honor. His gift was not only the land but his example of stewardship and his brotherhood with nature.
Here are just a few of the of animals you can see by visiting the trails. Learn more at this link.
One of the volunteers there today was not with Hands On Atlanta. He actually lived right next to the preserve. It was funny when we were walking to the work area and I asked him where he lived after he had asked me. He pointed to the right and said, "I live there."
He told me he studied Horticulture and Landscaping in college.
Here is where the preserve is located in relation to downtown Atlanta.
The Book:
The Boxes:
The Components:
The Close Up:
The Task:
Build the Perfect Gaming PC.
The Team:
Josh and Michael.
Will they succeed?
(If they don't, they have some serious reading problems that our readers are not likely to fix since the book tells exactly what they need to do!)
