Integrity, Africa, and Land

Yep.  Plen­ty of “eth­i­cal short­falls” in the Teams, and I agree with *** regard­ing the “you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t try­ing” prob­lem.  It sure affect­ed me, and I still strug­gle with myself (not just the stu­dents) every day with that atti­tude.  The sto­ry you told me about not steal­ing toi­let paper from Yosemite has stuck with me as well.  It’s such a pow­er­ful move, and it seems eas­i­er to remain in integri­ty than to regain it, but it also seems to be like a good diet; you’re always only the next meal away from liv­ing in integrity.

Was just read­ing Greg Crouch’s book where he talks about going to West Point.  Integri­ty was so impor­tant there that pro­fes­sors usu­al­ly left the room after they’d hand­ed out tests.  One time, the pro­fes­sor left the room and a stu­dent opened his book and start­ed work­ing on the test using his book.  The rest of the class was amazed and shocked until one guy leaned over and said, “Hey, this isn’t an open book test.”  The stu­dent who’d been using the book went white in the face, imme­di­ate­ly closed his book and ran out of the room to go find the pro­fes­sor and con­fess his mistake.

That sto­ry struck me par­tic­u­lar­ly, prob­a­bly because I’ve heard so much shit-talk­ing about oth­er ser­vices and start­ed to believe it with­out check­ing.  That changed for me with the Marines when I read One Bul­let Away by Fick, and this sec­ond sto­ry got me think­ing about why I viewed oth­er ser­vices with, well, fuck, I’ll just say it, dis­dain.  Total­ly igno­rant of me, but some­thing that I was­n’t con­scious of.  Def. some­thing I’ll start adding in to my duties as an instruc­tor; teach­ing our stu­dents that they ain’t the be-all end-all of war­rior-dom, and that integri­ty is not exclu­sive to the elite.

Hope your trip to Africa was fun, sure seems like a lot of folks are head­ing over there.  I guess it’s a good time to be a black dude in the Teams, eh?  Have often thought of doing some kind of busi­ness there, some­thing to do with sus­tain­abil­i­ty but then I fig­ure why the fuck should I work over there when I’ve got neigh­bors who don’t get it?

Planed that red­wood slab down again today; it got moldy last time as I did­n’t treat it with any Mur­derDeathKill type seal­ers.  I think I’ve fixed that prob­lem now.  Have been read­ing 3 of VDH’s books, all of them are good reads.  Car­nage & Cul­ture, The Land Was Every­thing, and Who Killed Homer?

Yeah, I’m not sure how the whole thing will go down on work­ing with you and oth­er guys I dig, and I want to make sure I actu­al­ly MOVE on it at some point instead of talk­ing about it, but I still think we’re in the best kind of patient­ly wait­ing stage, and when the time is right it’ll all come togeth­er.  In the mean­time I’m giv­ing the sub­ject pret­ty con­sis­tent low-inten­si­ty thought, and it’s nice to think about.

Ok for now,
NFH