Archive for September, 2005
Sleepovers Under Burning Skies
Here in A36, we’ve got company tonight: Seaver-alum Micah Kafka is staying over while we wait to see if his place and the others among the sprawling suburbs 10 miles north of Malibu survive the day-old wildfire currently consuming some of the more beautiful parts of SoCal.
So far, it looks like campus is safe. While we’ll continue to watch the action unfold on cable news, Micah enhanced our view of the situation with some photos he took on his way out of the evacuation…
More photos available on Micah’s blog
A Debatable Reality
My datebook tells me that the combination twenty-two units of class to attend, a flight to command, a radio show to broadcast, an undergraduate fellowship to complete, and a sanity to maintain already make for an all-too-full fall term.
But, the startling realization that I’ve already expended half the magical moments of college and the belligerent attitude that this only comes once in a lifetime led me to engage yet another endeavor last week: I provisionally joined the Pepperdine Speech & Debate team.
While the aforementioned logistical barriers dictate that my involvement with the activity will be limited, I joined just in time to compete in last weekend’s parliamentary tournament at Claremont-McKenna College on the other side of Los Angeles. Though a steep learning curve (we were shut out our first four rounds), the experience was also richly rewarding (we were undefeated in the continuing rounds on the second day). It was a fun, fair rhetorical ravaging on topics ranging from marijuana, to foreign policy, to pollution reduction.
Beyond learning the semantics of the alter-reality called collegiate debate, the experience was tremendously informative in learning how a “nuanced” worldview looks at matters of disagreement. In short, I think the experience did more in a weekend to educate about the thought process of my political adversaries than two years of classroom exploration have explained on the matter. It was also powerful a powerful realization that many of my core principles simply can’t be impenetrably articulated in five minutes.
Taken as a whole, the weekend of banter was an excellent opportunity to sharpen the skills of rhetoric and logic while indulging the abundance of free snacks and amusement of folks that took this far too seriously. Theoretically, I’ll have time to do one more tournament this semester–and as an added bonus, this evening the debate team auditioned for spots on an upcoming History Channel program. Who knows where this craziness could lead to?
With diabolical debate partner Brendan Groves
Destination Dallas
Everything is bigger in Texas–even the weekends.
Though I’d been through the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport a half dozen times, until this weekend, I had never stepped out of the terminal and into the Lone Star state. Realizing that my own brother would soon be a permanent resident of the Jumbo State, I seized this weekend as an opportunity to visit a new destination and a great friend, courtesy of Texan tourguide Justin Coppedge.
The trip was a 40-hour whirlwind: I arrived 6 AM Saturday and began trying for standby departures at 8 PM Sunday. In the interim, Justin took me back to his higher education home at Austin College in Sherman, TX and allowed me to experience some quintessential Texicana: a campus tour, a stop through the town art festival, his cousin’s little league soccer game, Texas-style church, a Sunday afternoon movie matinee, and some great food.
While short, the visit was a stupendous break from my typical to-do list. If you’re interested in sporting goods store gun collections that would make Rambo jealous or burgers thicker than bike tires, I recommend you pay a visit to our nation’s other proud red state.
Media bonus: Justin tells me that a popular Austin College Facebook group is entitled, “Exit 61 Is The Best Part Of Sherman, TX.” To test that judgment, we revved J. Clyde (his Camry) to the maximum legally allowable velocity and subjected ourselves to this Lone Star highway physics experiment. The results were documented on video (0.5 MB, requires QuickTime).
Departing Dallas with Doog
All In A Day’s Work
The novelty of American college life has struck me as particularly curious in this new semester. I’ve caught myself wondering, “Am I really the same person–in the same skin–that I was just an hour ago?” Perhaps it’s the diversity of this semester’s schedule that brings me to wonder.
A composite day might look like the following: shortly after rolling out of bed, I find myself shocked into morning consciousness as Pacific saltwater behemoths crash over me during a once-weekly surfing class. An hour later, I’m dry but still sneezing salt as I take furious non-English notes in my second-year Chinese course. A brief pause for lunch gives me a few moments to collect my thoughts before heading into the radio studio for a broadcast headed to the ears of the unknown. A few hours more and a costume change brings me to find myself sitting in a blue uniform discussing the particulars of the classical profession of arms. And that’s just the daylight hours.
What to make of it all? Someday, I suppose, I’ll realize just how many dimensions of education this diploma contained. And, as Andrew recently wrote: at least I had fun.
Media bonus: My journalistic stars aligned and rewarded me with two pieces in this week’s campus newspaper: a 9/11 remembrance editorial (available online or via PDF download) and an investigation of the Segway scooter’s relevance to campus (available online or via PDF download). Also, roommate Taylor turned an idle camcorder and an available evening into a tour of our apartment (7.1 MB, requires QuickTime).
Our Generation’s Crucible
Once again, I seek the advice of my best critics: you.
One of my audiobook selections for the drive from Colorado was Stephen Mansfield’s recently released The Faith of the American Soldier (reviews | prices). Mansfield does an outstanding job connecting spirituality with the profession of arms. His book is a quick and fascinating read worthwhile to anyone interested in understanding how this generation has confronted their country’s call to war.
Rather than my usual habit of repeating an author’s words, the long weekend gave me enough time to write some of my own. The following is a piece I put together this evening and plan to submit to the campus paper in hopes of connecting with this year’s 9/11 anniversary. Constructive criticism welcomed with open, platonic arms. (There’s my last laugh, Andrew 
OUR GENERATION’S CRUCIBLE
John Deniston, Class of 2007This Sunday’s four-year anniversary of the September 11th attacks brings pause to observe another crucial yet silent milestone in America’s response to terror. As of June 7 of this year, the time elapsed since 9/11 has surpassed the span of America’s involvement in World War II—from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the final surrender at Tokyo Bay.
The realization that we have been fighting a Global War on Terror for a period longer than it took our grandparents—the Greatest Generation—to engage and defeat imperial Japan, fascist Germany, and their Axis partners might cause some to question our progress and reconsider our mission.
Discerning our prospects for victory against terrorism requires both an understanding of the complexities of fighting a war in this new, uncharted territory and an appreciation of those we have sent to fight it.
Our grandparents stunned the world with an Allied victory in only 1,365 days: time that included the Doolittle Raid and Midway, the invasion of Normandy, and the atomic results of the Manhattan Project.
Our own progress in four years, though, should not be underestimated: the terror sanctuary of the Taliban is gone and Saddam Hussein is not torturing his own people any more. Three-quarters of Al Qaeda’s original senior leadership have been killed or captured. A.Q. Kahn’s marketplace of destruction that provided nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea and other nations has been shut down. The Iraqi people have gone to the polls in impressive numbers and will soon be voting on the first democratic constitution in the region. On our own doorstep, the FBI announced the August 31 indictment of four men accused of planning terrorist attacks in Southern California.
Despite these victories, attacks in London, Baghdad, Sharm el-Sheikh and elsewhere remind us that our enemy is not yet vanquished.
If the script to ultimate victory were known—as it is the historical hindsight of World War II—it would be easy to measure our progress. But, in a war against enemies who do not mass on borders or even have a conventional chain of command, traditional metrics are not very useful.
Instead, we are inspired by another measure: the courage and skill of those we have sent to do our fighting. While we fight a far different war from that of our grandparents, the sacrifice, principle, commitment, and bravery of our uniformed peers surely matches that of the Greatest Generation.
The brave Americans on the streets of Kirkuk and Kabul bear a strong resemblance to their predecessors that fought from Bastogne to the Bismarck Sea. The average age of those storming the beaches on D-Day was only 19. Today, the average soldier at war is just 21.1 years old.
While these men and women are not much different than those giants on whose shoulders they stand, the more meaningful truth is that they are not much different from you and me.
We should be proud of our warriors not only because of their success, but because they are truly us. We should be confident of our victory because these brave Americans represent the best our nation has to offer—if they cannot win, we have lost.
Author Stephen Mansfield writes of our generation at war, “They were not expected to do well. The conventional wisdom pegged them as spoiled offspring of guilt-ridden baby-boomer parents who plied them with toys but never told them who they really were. They lived, we were told, in a materialistic, amoral, “online” world that hardened their souls and sickened their minds… They gave us Columbine, after all, and a dozen other symbols of decadence and decline.”
Our brothers and sisters-in-arms have exploded such pessimistic expectations faster than a “target of opportunity” on the first night of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
They have postponed college educations, said goodbye to fiancées and best friends, left behind the certainty of hometowns, and shunned the familiarity of life as you and I live it. They have traded all they have for a chance to be part of something larger than themselves. And they have fought valiantly.
They know what they are fighting for. One embedded journalist noted, “Soldiers I encountered were trained, ethical, thoughtful, and intelligent. It was not unusual to talk to a private or private first class and be absolutely astounded at how well he could talk about why they were there.”
Their confrontation with the brutal realities of war has caused them to embody sacrifice, the sincerest tenet of any religion. The most popular emblem carried by members of the military in Afghanistan and Iraq, outside of official insignia, is a small shield paraphrasing the words of Joshua 1:9: “I will be strong and courageous. I will not be terrified, or discouraged; for the Lord my God is with me wherever I go.”
They are not perfect. Just as you and I, they have lapsed in judgment and erred in justice. But intervening against injustice has not taken someone wiser or more senior, for they have done it themselves: the whistleblower at Abu Ghraib was twenty-four year old Specialist Joe Darby of Waynesville, North Carolina.
One journalist, writing of his experience at the front, commented, “The press back home doesn’t have it right. We are doing these people a disservice. I haven’t found Animal House and Debbie Does Dallas over here. What I found was Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan.”
These are our nation’s soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. These are our generation’s peers. These are our response to the terrorists of 9/11. These, I hope you will agree, are our heroes.
What It Means To Be Young
A 15 day journey over an ocean, through the memory of a friend and hero, across a roadtrip, and into a new semester bring me squarely back to the familiar home of blogging. It’s great to be back.
To rejoin the story from where I last left off: after returning from Israel, I spent precisely 45 hours in Colorado re-packing my bags and re-aligning my life before stepping on a plane to Zurich. I had originally planned to make it a 24 hour-turnaround but was delayed by the overbooking ripples of the British Airways strike. Thankfully, though, an extra day at home allowed me to both realize and remedy the fact that I hadn’t done nearly any of the specific, tactical planning necessary for a successful European sojourn. It stuns me to realize firsthand that a teenager (er… twenty-something) sitting on one continent can plan the traverse of another with nothing but Google and imagination.
Following a successful 7 AM arrival in Zurich, I absorbed as much Swiss culture as I could in a trip to the supermarket and headed directly to the train station, where I cashed in the first day of my five day Eurail Pass on a day train to Vienna. The train ride was quite pleasant and also became an intimate cultural education when our train was halted, emptied, loaded onto buses, and driven through the mountains to bypass track construction. I’m fairly sure that the sweet, German-speaking old lady I sat next to on the bus still doesn’t know that I didn’t understand a single word of her warm narrative.
Pulling into Vienna in the early evening allowed me to keep my appointment of a rendezvous with the one and only Jen Hillmann. Jen and I walked across the same high school graduation stage two distant years ago and, as has been the case with many members of our Class of ‘03, we have been able to maintain a vibrantly platonic friendship despite divergent tracks of schools, states, majors, and travels. Five days prior to our crossing of paths, Jen completed a six-month, three continent Christian service tour and training program spanning points from New Zealand, to New Delhi, to the “new” Middle East of Bahrain, Emirates and more. Needless to say, we both had some stories the other was eager to hear.
The conversation and travel saga of the next six days was a whirlwind to live, let alone to narrate in stop-by-stop detail. To offer an abridgement: we fully utilized the unlimited nature of our train passes with journeys from Vienna to Berlin, to Fussen (near Munich), to Prague, and finally to Frankfurt. We encountered a number of memorable spots found in the tourbook (standing on top of St. Stephens in Vienna; touching the Berlin Wall; touring the castle that inspired the Disneyland equivalent; and walking the Charles Bridge in Prague) and a multitude of unforgettable moments not promised in the brochures (the rush of a Vienna theme park ride most analogous to strapping yourself to a fan blade and throttling up to 68.3 MPH; the humorous 1 AM heartbreak of realizing our train left without us, as we unknowingly but patiently waited right next to it; the hilarity of carrying home groceries from a German supermarket that didn’t give bags, and the ironic realization that walking for sixty minutes in Prague didn’t lead us past a single establishment selling anything edible).
Though a seemingly rapid itinerary, I found a week of Europe to be the carefree moments of quintessential summer that I had been waiting for through California, South Dakota, Virginia, and Tel Aviv. While I’ve been blessed to find friendship and travel at other places and at other times, this particular combination struck me with the poignant truth that such freedom, such adventure, and such companionship is exactly what prior generations mean when they celebrate the wonders of youth. Why such gifts are lavished on folks who have yet to give something back to society, I do not know… but I sure am grateful for the experience.
Decompressing from a fully-loaded twelve months led my back to Colorado and left me with the desire to begin the process anew. The pause between my return from Europe and my departure for California was providentially timed perfectly to allow me to remember, while surrounded in the fellowship of friends and family, the 365-day anniversary of Mark Heinmets’ departure from life as I know it. I’m awed by how much Mark remains a part of my daily thoughts and vocabulary of life. His legacy lives powerfully on in those who knew him best, a truth most incredibly embodied by his remarkable parents. My generation’s daily reality of war and natural disaster brings the probability of loss increasingly closer to home. Mark’s parents, though, re-define my concept of how to live through such heartbreak with purpose and grace. He would be proud.
Following the requisite 1200-mile highway tour to California, punctuated by audio books and excitement made possible by vulcanized rubber (see below), I find myself lunging into the swift current of another semester. It’s busy, it’s uncertain, it’s tiring, and it’s hard… but it’s truly great. I wouldn’t have “being young” be any other way.
Media bonus: Photos from the Europe trip have been posted to the gallery. Also, I sliced together a four minute video documenting one of the surprises in Roadtrip 2005: California Edition (5 MB, requires QuickTime).
