Carpe Annum

It's 2013!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So my housemate Caroline and I were just speaking about this little coffee shop here that has become far and away my favorite spot in all of Scranton.  It's called Northern Light Cafe & Espresso Bar and it's essentially a hipster's paradise: comfy chairs, fancy coffee-flavored drinks, chess boards, local artwork, the whole nine yards (If you know my brother Paul, he would absolutely love this place...).  Anyway, it's that last category, the local artwork, that we were discussing as they have just recently switched out all the art on the walls to feature a new artist.  I'm not sure who that artist is, but the work is amazing.  These are the type of paintings you cannot simply walk by, they force you to stop whatever you were doing and stare like a gawky-eyed tourist on a first trip to Times Square in Manhattan.  Although this artwork is phenomenal, I can't help but feel a sense of nostalgia for the art that was used to hang there, the pieces I had become so comfortable with, the "regular" if you will.  I think that's a fairly common human experience, as the old adage goes "you don't know what you have until it's gone" and all too often we don't appreciate the artwork that is all around us until we realize it's gone and we no longer can.  In particular, I was a big fan of two pieces that used to hang in my favorite coffee shop, one read simply "Carpe Diem" and the other "Carpe Noctum".  Two short latin phrases - so oft used in our English speaking dialect - and seemingly at odds with one another.  Still, they caused me to think a lot about the meaning of those two phrases: "seize the day" and "seize the night", perhaps less at odds than I first imagined.  In fact, when combined together they encompass our entire day, thereby encouraging us to seize "life".  All of life, the good, the bad, the day, the night, the easy parts, those that are more challenging, everything.  And that's when we realized, this JVC year for us has been a "Carpe Diem" kind of year, a "Carpe Annum" of sorts.  The perfect opportunity to seize every moment in front of us for an entire year, a chance to really live the way these phrases encourage us to live, seizing each second of the day or night to make our lives more holistically fulfilling.  So it's with this newfound perspective that I'll be approaching 2013, as my "Carpe Annum" - attempting to make the most of every situation, every encounter with others, every opportunity I have.  If you have some time this year, think about ways in which we can all become better at seizing each day, each night, each year.  After all, none of us knows when the old artwork will be taken down for the next new set.

Sorry for that long intro, it was just a thought I had that I wanted to get down before I forgot!  A quick update on 2013 thus far here in Scranton: 

•        We celebrated the New Year with the Harlem JV house!  Counting down to the new year on a rooftop in NYC overlooking Yankee Stadium, it was fantastic.
•        January seemed to fly by with a long-weekend spent at our Re-Orientation Retreat, a chance for all of the JVs serving in the Northeast to gather and focus on the work we've each been doing at our respective placements, what's going well and what we need to continue to improve upon.  The weekend was incredibly refreshing and - unsurprisingly - I was in extrovert heaven getting to see so many friendly faces, some of whom I had not seen since Orientation in August!  
•        Now we're into February already, and the colder months have been quite rough here in Scranton, especially where the running/fitness aspects of our lives are concerned.  We do a lot more trips to the indoor gym rather than the outdoor runs that we were able to do in the Fall.  Still, it hasn't stopped my housemate Abbie and I from signing up for a 1/2 marathon this coming May!!!!! We'll be running the Cleveland 1/2 marathon on May 19th (if any of you are in there area, come on out and cheer us on! ...Funny signs are encouraged).  More on that as the date gets closer.  
•        We're looking forward to a great month of March, though!  it seems like I'll be celebrating St. Patrick's Day for the whole month (surprise, surprise, right?) with the first weekend featuring the local parade back home in good 'ole East Islip, the second weekend hosting our very own parade here in Scranton (known as one of the largest in the US!), and finally the third weekend being actual St. Paddy's Day! It promises to keep us very busy.  

So that's about all of my update for now, the only other update going on here is the start of the lenten season and how that's been affecting our spiritual lives here in Scranton...but that conversation is still developing, and would most likely make this posting intolerably long...so we'll save it for another post.  For now, peace to you and yours.

**PS: If you would, please keep my Aunt Chrissy in your prayers as she's having some surgery in the near future and - especially as I speak about the need to appreciate everything we have while we have it - there is perhaps nothing we need cherish more than the health and happiness of our loved ones.  Thank you.

God Bless, 

Tom

December (Christmas Time)

OK, so next-day isn't so bad...much better than I was doing =/

So, what happened in December, you ask?  Let's see...There was Christmas all around here in Scranton and the JVs jumped into everything from light displays up at Nay Aug Park to the Christmas events my company organized for the season.  There was also a brief journey into New York City with some Villanova friends to attend the annual Villanova Alumni Christmas party, and my kids had their first major performances of the Michael Jackson Review.  All in all, a fairly busy month, so let's see if I can't fill you in on all that happened:

The "Holiday House" just down the road from us on Moosic
Street, they decorate with extravagance for every major holiday.

It was Christmas time in Scranton!  Which, as a small town that was founded predominantly by Catholic immigrants many years ago, meant a whole plethora of different annual traditions from the lighting of the Times Tribune Tower (affectionately known to the Scranton house as "The Christmas Pole"), to the annual light show up at Nay Aug Park.  We had some fun getting into the season by visiting some of these festive spots around town:

The Guadalupe House Christmas Tree!
Decorated by yours truly, I might add.

We also had a few Christmas-related events at UNC throughout December.  We kicked off the month with the inaugural installment of a program called "Pop Up Studios" which features local artists who organize fun, quirky events around town, usually during Scranton's First Friday activities.  For the month of December, they paired up with the kids at our program to develop The X-Mas Games, a mash-up collaboration of traditional Christmas activities with themes of The Hunger Games, a popular teens novel series by Suzanne Collins (which, if you haven't read, I highly recommend).  The event featured activities such as marshmallow catapults with the objective of scoring points in cups of hot coco, ornament, cookie, and stocking decoration stations, as well as our very own student DJ providing Christmas music for the event.  It was a blast and I think the kids really enjoyed the opportunity to share their work with the Scranton community, and we had a surprisingly high turn out for a cold Friday in December!  

The other major Christmas events at work included a Christmas toy drive, at which any of the families who have children in our programs throughout the year are invited to come to a massive toy giveaway and select presents to wrap for their kids that Christmas.  It was an absolutely enormous undertaking, just to give you an idea of how many toys were given away, here's just one section of the "toy store" we had set up:

But I'd be lying if I said that any of these events were my favorite part of work during the month of December, no, my favorite event was definitely the theater kid's performances of the Michael Jackson Review.  I had the chance to work with these kids for about three months leading up to the performances, and as the musical director of a primarily music-driven show, I was probably more nervous about how it would go than the kids at times!  But the performances were fantastic, a really great way to give the kids a sense of great accomplishment as we packed the house of our small auditorium for both night's performances.  Here are a couple of the highlight moments from the show:

Malakhi in his "Billie Jean" leather jacket

The girls performing "I want you back" and "The Love you Save"

The whole cast at the end of "You are not Alone"

The little ones and their performance of ABC

The youngest member of the cast performed two big numbers in the show, this was "Rockin' Robin"

Three of our all-star girls performing "Ben"

Our biggest mash-up was a song combining parts of "Billie Jean",
"Dirty Diana",  "The way you make me feel" and "Beat it"

The finale with the kids singing "Heal the World" ...and our
very literal representation of this concept.

 Finally, I had the chance to leave the Scranton area for a short time in December with a visit to NYC for Father Peter's annual Christmas party at the New York Public Library.  It was so good to see some friends from school and the event was certainly a different atmosphere than our simplistic lifestyle back in Scranton.  All in all, though, it was a great little break from work and a reminder of some of the many different ways in which people celebrate the holiday season.  Of course, no trip to a 'Nova event is complete without getting to see some of my great friends, Madeline Reynolds and Sarah Loveland, who both attended the event as well.

So that about wraps up December in a quick few paragraphs.  It was definitely a great way to end 2012, and I'm almost caught up to present 2013-status!!!! Thanks for reading, I'll be back with one more post to update the New Year shortly!

God Bless,
Tom

November Recap! (Kindness)

So, you may have noticed the recent activity (or lack thereof) on my blog.  I am so sorry that this has taken a backseat to 1,000 other things lately.  BUT I promise to make it all up to you, in the form of some quick - appropriately titled - Monthly Recap Posts! yayyyyyyyyyyy....OK, here goes.

November:

Things that happened in November in order of importance:

1. I finished my first ever 1/2 marathon on November 18th, 2012 in the beautiful city of Philadelphia!

2. I spent Thanksgiving at home with the family on Long Island and it was a much needed break from the hectic day-to-day of JVC life in Scranton.

3. It started Snowing in Scranton! (please note: this will become a recurring theme of the winter season)
4. This month is the farthest back and, unsurprisingly, I can remember the least about it. Whoops.

#1.  The Philadelphia 1/2 Marathon:
So for the weekend of the 1/2 marathon myself and several of my roommates headed down to America's first capital, Philadelphia to stay with the Philly JVC house.  The JVs down there have become some great friends of ours and so every chance we get to spend some time with them is warmly received.  As I may have mentioned before my good friend and former roommate, Mike Meizoso and I had signed up to run the 1/2 marathon together some 5 months earlier and so we met up the night before to prep ourselves and swap stories of how training had gone.  The anticipation I felt that night trying to get some decent sleep before the run can only be compared to the type of giddy Pre-Christmas morning butterflies you experience circa 5 years of age.  Well, sooner than I would have liked, morning came and so did the race.  It was incredible to see all 15,000-some people who had come out to run all in one place.  Despite some knee pain at the time, I managed to perform very well during the race.  I found myself engrossed not just in the adrenaline-pumping nature of the event, but of the spectacle we (the runners) had created on the streets of Philadelphia.  I would pass people on miles 4...5...6, expecting to see less and less of the crowds as the miles went on.  Yet, surprisingly, the throngs of cheering strangers continued for most of the race, keeping me on pace and strengthening the smile on my face each time I would hear an encouraging scream or read some witty piece of signage.

My housemates & Villanova friends who came out to
 cheer on Mike & I in our very first 1/2 Marathon!

This brings me to what I learned that weekend of the 1/2 marathon (what? you thought I'd tell a story without an all-important moral fulcrum? c'mon now...).  A lot of my experience this year has involved relying on the kindness of perfect strangers.  Whether it was my first several weeks in Scranton, needing help navigating the labyrinth of local bus routes or consistently receiving generous support from local FJVs and others who know about our little house of volunteers, I can honestly say that this year has taught me the incredibly power of kindness (in particular, kindness toward strangers).  It would be an understatement to say that the hordes of people who came out to line up and cheer myself and my fellow runners on that morning helped me to finish the race.  They showed me the type of kindness and support that we hear about in prayer, the kind we are promised in the speeches of politicians, and the kind we scarcely feel except for in the wake of some great tragedy. I experienced first-hand the kindness of strangers one other time that weekend, on my way to Mike's apartment.  Please keep in mind, I had never yet visited my friend Mike's place when I began my journey there at approximately 8:00pm Saturday night.  Still, I plugged the address into my trusty GPS and proceeded to "follow the road".  As luck would have it, I had made an error in entering the location on my phone and as a result, the directions led me to a little town several miles North of where Mike actually lives.  As more luck would have it, just as I was calling him to get the correct address, my phone died.  And there I was.  Alone, with no phone, no address, no clue where I was in the middle of a small suburb outside of Philadelphia.  So, what to do, you ask?  Well, I tried my hand at something I had found myself on the other side of for quite some time now, relying on the kindness of strangers.  I pulled into the driveway of a house that looked well-lit (that's always the prerequisite for safety in these types of stories, right?) and approached looking for some kindness, a simple outlet to plug in my phone so I could call my friend and get back on the road.  What I found was so much more than I could have ever expected.  I met a woman and her foster children that live in the house, the boys were having some friends over for a night of video games, sports, movies and very little sleeping-"sleepover".  As I waited for my phone to charge, they shared with me their excitement at my participation in the race the next morning, the youngest sharing that he runs cross country at his school and one day wants to run in a 1/2 marathon of his own.  Even after my phone was charged and I got the address I found an outpouring of generosity as the woman volunteered to mapquest the directions on her own computer and print a copy for me, so as to avoid similar disastrous charge-related incidents from occurring.  With some last minute well-wishes and an offer of a drink for the road, I left the home of these perfect strangers.  Strangers who shared with me the same type of kindness that I saw in the faces of thousands more strangers several hours later as I ran 13.1 miles through the heart of the city of brotherly love.  I've kept that story with me for some time (admittedly, partly out of the embarrassment surrounding my dependence on my phone's GPS function) and in time some of the minutia of the story will inevitably fade from memory, but that feeling of genuine kindness, the kind that can seldom be expressed except in these moments of utter dependence on others, will endure.

#2. Thanksgiving at home was a blast.  I absolutely love my extended family, quirks and all.  To sum up the visit, this picture should suffice:

Visiting home and getting to witness the type of family upbringing that has made my life possible made me very grateful for all that I have and, I think, helped me to truly embrace the spirit of giving thanks.  It's hard to put into words, even by use of some quirky exemplar, how my cousins and family make me feel, perhaps I'll give it a try in another posting.  For now, let it suffice to say that my family made the list of "greatest things about November" and as a close 2nd to one of my greatest moments of the year, which should give an indication to how much they mean to me.

“I sustain myself with the love of family.” 
― Maya Angelou

#3. The Snow!  As you may have guessed, it's cold up here in Scranton.  I am continually reminded of this fact every time I wake up and my feet have managed to leave the comfortable warmth of the blanket, or in the icy cold shock of the run - no, mad dash - from the shower to the dresser drawer.  I thought some of those in more temperate regions might enjoy this snowy sight from our backyard in Scranton.

And soooooooooo, that's pretty much the month of November in a nutshell!  A posting on December's events to follow shortly (ie. when I get home tonight...I hope)

Yours,
Tom