Farewell Football

This past Saturday was my last day at football out here in the Yay.  I’ve loved, absolutely loved going to football each week.

The Legend brought me along about 10 months ago or so.  He knew I’d been wanting to play.  I’d never actually played football before, other than middle school gym class – which was incredibly intimidating as a future NFL quarterback was in my gym class.  - But I’d really wanted to try playing because I was having such a hard time finding football fans out here.  I figured people who play football were likely to be fans.

Not only did I find football fans, I found an amazing group of people who were welcoming to anyone who showed up.  As long as you were willing to get on that field and try, you could play.  No one asked “so, where are you from?” or “what do you do?”  like they did at every other Bay Area meeting, group or event I’d been to (aside from church).  I felt so happy; I didn’t feel like an outsider.

The group changes every week.  It’s whoever shows up for some amount of time between 1pm and sundown, even though we rarely actually start playing until well after 2pm.  Some weeks, we have one game at a time with teams of 5 or 6.  Other weeks, we have two games at the same time with teams of 7 and several subs.  Often, the number of games and sizes of teams fluctuates through-out the afternoon as people come and go.  That only adds to the welcoming atmosphere.  Come for as long as you can, even if it’s only 30 minutes.

This week was extra special.  I arrived shortly after 1 and stayed all afternoon until we didn’t have enough people remaining to keep playing.  It was after 8pm by the time I walked off the Berkeley high school campus.  Several of the other players declared that since it was my last day, I didn’t have to rotate out if I didn’t want to, so I played most of the day.  (People sometimes argue about rotating out, so I usually volunteer to go to the sidelines so others can play.)

My team insisted I try quarterbacking.  “This is ridiculous,” I insisted back.  Our team of 8 players had 4 or 5 decent quarterbacks.  The other team had one, The Legend, who’s usually only a fill-in QB.  They kept urging me to give it a try.  “I can’t throw.”  “Just one drive.”  That one drive turned out to be one play.  We scored!

- I better not try playing QB ever again; I’ll ruin my 100% completion record. ;)  -

There was also more extra fun.  One of our usual quarterbacks brought her camera and herded everyone together for a group photo so that I could have a picture of everyone.  That was quite the task!  And, in addition to the photo, I got the sweetest present ever.  Another one of the usual quarterbacks got a small autograph football; everyone wrote little messages and signed it.  Absolutely perfect present.  I felt so special.

I am really going to miss this group, and playing football.

Fun with Munchkinhead Day 6

Saturday is football day.  So, I took Munchkinhead along and she joined in the fun.

Every Saturday, people gather at Berkeley High to play flag football.  Having grown up in football-focused Cudahy, I’m still amazed the public is allowed on Berkeley’s football field.  It’s a nice field, too, turf.  Whoever shows up gets to play.  It’s never exactly the same group, though there’s certainly regulars who show up nearly every week.   The Facebook group is huge, and usually about 30-some people come out.

This week was a little odd – the normal equipment guy was out of town and the people who had the equipment were a bit late, and there was an extra amount of aggression than usual.  Perhaps it was the heat.  We still had lots of fun though.

Munchkinhead and I were never on the same team, and we didn’t even play in the same game until the end.  For most of the afternoon, there were enough players to have 2 games going at once, six players per team.  The winners of the first set of games played each other and the losers played each other.  After that, enough people had to leave that we switched to one game with seven players on each team. By the last game, we were playing with teams of 5, the smallest number that works.

Munchkinhead did well.  The Legend told me she got a few flag pulls.  And a bunch of us saw her break up a pass, which was awesome.  I started out doing not so well, but then got better as the day went on (and everyone else got tired).  I even got a touchdown!

Between yesterday’s nearly-11 miles of walking and today’s over-4 hours of football, we’re both sore and pooped, but happy.

Go Team Go!

I was so excited when Jenny started working at CC.  Finally, I had someone to talk football with!  And not just any football, real NFC North football.  You see Jenny’s a Bears fan, and out here in Cali, a Bear’s fan is the next-best-thing to a Packers fan. 

Jenny ought to be a Packers fan, really.  She’s from the UP, but at 4 years old, she felt sorry for the getting-their-bums-whooped underdogs and started rooting for the Bears.  And she stayed loyal.  But her husband and most of the rest of her family.  They’re Packers fans.

When Jenny found out she was expecting, she knew her family was going to smother her daughter in Packers gear.  An idea for the perfect present popped into my head.  I love knitting blankets; I could make a baby blanket for her new daughter.  And I could make it so both parents would approve.

It was my first foray into color-work.  I knitted as usual, just switching yarns when I wanted to switch colors.  The colors didn’t go together the way I expected; there were lacy holes along the diagonal lines.  After trying a few other techniques, I decided I liked the style this method created best.  For the middle joint, where the colors changed on the same stitch every row instead of on a diagonal, I alternated the color-switching between two stitches.

Originally, I tried doing orange and yellow yarn together in the middle so that one team didn’t seem to be preferred.  But it looked awful.  I removed the orange yarn and decided I’d even things out by choosing an orange blanket binding for the edges.  Baby blankets aren’t the same without a silky edge.

Since I knew the baby was going to be a girl, I put a little bunny rabbit appliqué on one side.  On the other, a football.  I was very excited with the blanket.  Jenny loved it, and I hope little Stacy is loving it, too.

 

Football and all those Famous Folks

This past holiday season, I had the wonderful opportunity of going to visit Alfred and Nathy-Boo at their home in Cleveland.   My dearest sister put up with me let me stay for a whole week!  We had tons of fun.

Now, in case you haven’t noticed from previous posts (about skirts and socks and life), Alfred is a huge Packer fan.  And I’m pretty fond of football as well.  So I knew she’d at least think about it when I begged, “Can we go to the Football Hall of Fame? Please? Pretty please?”  And we did.

One snowy morning, we got in her car, fishtailed out the driveway and sludged down the freeway to Canton and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.  It’s a drive that, to Alfred, is a bit of a roadtrip, but in Bay Area terms is just around the corner.  We had fun counting cars spun out in the ditches on our way there.

The museum – or whatever it is – is pretty neat.  I liked the exhibit on old football gear the best.  My top favorite was the old nose guard that was supposed to prevent broken noses.  Players stopped using it when it became apparent that the guard caused more broken noses than it prevented.  Reminds me a bit of discussions around a current piece of equipment…

The busts of all the inductees was pretty neat, too, especially since there’s so many Packers.  Sadly, there’s less Packers than Bears.  The video display of Ditka is also very cool, but Ditka’s such a part of American culture now that anything with him would be cool.  I didn’t know he used to be a player, so I learned something new!

Alfred didn’t take too kindly to one of the displays, which amused some of the other patrons.

The part of our visit that surprised me most was something that shouldn’t have been surprising; I’d just forgotten.  We were practically the only females in the place, and definitely the only females without male accompaniment, even though it was quite busy.  You see, where we come from, everyone’s a football fan.  There’s no such thing as football widows.  The loudest screamers and angriest yellers are always my aunts.  Mommy’s great-nieces have jerseys practically as soon as their born, same as her great-nephews.  But I guess the rest of the country isn’t quite the same.  Wisconsinites really are the luckiest people on earth.

And we got our picture taken with the Lombardi trophy!

One Little Rabbit Jumping on the Bed

~a guest post by Daddy Bunny

One of the great things about being a rabbit is that even though I turned 18 a few years ago, I still get to live with my mom.  I stay home all day munching the everlasting carrot Uncle Nathy-Boo gave me for Christmas, playing with my brothers and sisters and hiding in Mom’s bed.  On really adventurous days, I even hop down the hall to visit Malaria and Giraffe in the living room.  But the best adventures are when my mom takes me on trips with her.

We’ve been all sorts of places together.  This month, we went to San Diego.  Last month, we went to Las Vegas and Monterey.  The month before that, I got to ride on a train in my own little cheese-shaped seat and my mom took me to my first Packer game.  We went to Uganda, and Amsterdam, and Iowa, and Portland, and Washington, D.C.  We even went to Lake Tahoe.  And that’s all this year!

My absolute favorite trips are the ones where I get to see my aunts, my cousins and Grandma and Grandpa.  That happened a lot this year. We went to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Wisconsin four times.

I love Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  Gibby and Foo Foo are always there to play with me.  We play hide and seek a lot with my mom and my Aunty Munchkinhead.  Sometimes, Aunty Alfred is there and she brings my cousin Timmy Bear along.  Then they get to play hide and seek, too.  If we’re really good little rabbits and gibbons and bears, we get to play board games with our moms and Grandma.

And when nobody’s watching, we go exploring in Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  Even though I grew up there, and Gibby and Foo Foo still live there, the place is so big, there’s always lots to explore.  There’s a fabulous slide in the hallway, behind a little square door.  It’s so much fun!  We climb up the bookcase to the door, sit down on the ledge, slide down the ramp screaming “weeeeee!” and then there’s this huge drop of and we plop right into a pile of fluffy clothes.

Gibby loves to hang out in the bathroom. With the poles holding up the shower curtain and the long neck on the part where the shower water comes out, there’s lots of things for him to hang on and stretch his long arms.  Foo Foo and I hop along the hallway floor and peek through the railings above the stairs.  It’s a nice little place to watch the activity below.

And when I really want a lot of fun, a lot, a lot of fun, I scamper off to Grandma and Grandpa’s room.  They have this giant bed with pretty, soft blankets on it.  It’s the perfect place for a bunny like me to work on my hopping skills.  Sometimes I hop so high, I can even pretend I’m a bird!

My mom says we’re going back to Grandma and Grandpa’s in a few weeks.  I can’t wait!

Finally Some Football

There are a lot of things that are different out here in the Yay compared to back home.  A lot of new things for me to get used to.  No snow, ever.  Being one of the tallest people around generally, unless I happen to be around other Midwestern transplants.  Avoiding getting stuck behind a Prius the way back home we try to avoid getting stuck behind someone with a AAA sticker.  Etc.

By far, the strangest thing I’ve found out here is that there are people who don’t watch football.  Can you believe this?  It’s so crazy, after nearly two years, I still can’t wrap my head around it. 

Not watching football.  I mean, it’s like not going to church.  Oh wait, the people out here don’t do that either.

 

Back home, a typical Fall Sunday involves starting the day with church service, sitting in the pews with people already wearing their Packers jerseys or decked out in dressy team colors.  On super big games, or after a big win, someone’s likely to offer up the Packers during prayer.  Service ends promptly so everyone get home before kickoff.  -  Our church once had a pastor who would let church run a bit too close to noon.  Church goers were not pleased.  The pastor asked, “What’s more important, God or football?”  But this is a false dichotomy as God is not church and church is not God.  Besides, hadn’t the pastor heard, God’s a Packer’s fan?  He wants to go watch the game, too.

Then it’s home to gather around the game.  Snacks, cheering, jumping, clapping.  Sharing the anguish of a close loss, hugging after a great win.  The laughing, the yelling, the love for the team no matter what.  A warm afternoon filled with sunshine and family and a common bond.

Nothing like that out here.  No one in jerseys.  Service runs long, not that it matters since the games start before church in the morning.  No one even talking about football.  And it’s not just the church setting where it’s odd.

I don’t see regular people in jerseys on the streets.  If any, maybe a few thug-looking folks in downtown Oakland in Raiders gear.  The supermarket has one sign for the Raiders and one for the 49ers and one for Cal football and that’s about it.  Few people at the local sports bar on game day.  Stadiums that aren’t sold out.  So few regular game day football parties that I’ve never heard of one.  And what really struck me as odd, there are no office pools.  No squares to pick, no point spreads, no last numbers of the scores, not even a simple one team over the other.  Nothing.

It’s all so very strange. What do these people do instead?

This Sunday is the biggest Sunday of the year.  It’s a Packer game Sunday, and not just any Packer game Sunday; it’s Superbowl Sunday!  And finally, there’s some football talk.  I even know a few (albeit very few) people having Superbowl parties.  Finally!

People are getting into it, and they’re choosing the right team. ;)  Yesterday, at the Warriors basketball game, there was a guy in a Packers jersey!  (Rodgers’ away jersey.)  Earlier, while I was walking down the stairs at BART with my Packers gym bag, someone walked past and yelled “go pack!”  My local supermarket has a Superbowl display made out of soda can boxes.  Even people at my office are talking football.  It’s all so wonderful.

 

I’d like to add, I’m very grateful for Twitter and the amazing Packers fans and players I follow on there.  They help keep football alive in this alien word called California.

My First NFL Game

Last Sunday, I got to go to my first ever live NFL game. It wasn’t a Packer game, but hey, we can’t all be Mommy.

I missed the tailgating, because the bell choir was playing in church.  We played Phantom of the Opera for the end of the service since it was Halloween.  I love that music!

Anyway, I got to the parking lot just as Mr. Trizzle and his friends were packing up to head into the stadium; perfect timing.  Our seats were way, way, way up top near the goal line.  It would have been perfect for watching marching band.  Wasn’t too bad for watching football either.  I had a lot of fun watching the game with Mr. Trizzle and his friends.

I was surprised how few Raiders fans were in costumes.  On tv, it looks like the fans always come dressed up, and this was Halloween!  There certainly were a lot of people in Raider’s jerseys, even old Jamarcus Russell jerseys.  The oddest thing to me, being from Wisconsin, was that there were open seats, and lots of them, in nearly every section.  Now that’s something you’ll never see at Packer game.

It was the Raiders vs. the Seahawks and the Raiders were playing really well.  Not as well as the week before when they set a scoring record and completely creamed Denver, but good enough that it wasn’t a very close game.

But the game wasn’t the most interesting thing to watch.  The most interesting thing was the birds, filthy birds.  Seagulls had swarmed over the parking lot as the tailgaters left their vehicles.  By the middle of the third quarter, the seagulls were starting to migrate to the field.

They perched on the scoreboard at the end of the field.  They swarmed around the outer edges of the field.  And then, they began to swoop down into the stands.  Soon, there were flocks of seagulls everywhere you looked.  Worst of all, they were exactly where you didn’t want to look.  Up.

By the fourth quarter, the seagulls had lost all fear.  They came low, they came often.  They were landing and resting on empty seats not far from people.  And they had started dropping presents.

Mr. Trizzle got a small present on his trouser leg.  Being the big, tough man he is, he got a napkin and took care of it.  The people four rows in front of us fled after one guy got two presents.  Then more people started to flee.  I was getting scared.  Cleaning goo out of long hair is not as easy as wiping it off a pant leg.  But  I was sticking it out.  More people fled.  We fled.

The game wasn’t over.  There was a minute and half or something like that left.  We traipsed down the long, winding ramps to a lower level and ducked under a covered area with open seats.  The Raiders got another touch down, right before we ducked into the viewing area.  We did get to see the extra point, though. 

The Seahawks may have lost, but the seagulls sure won.

The Packers Beat the Vikings, so Why am I so Glum?

Sunday Night Football, a national game, meaning a Green Bay game was actually on in the San Francisco Bay.  I was ecstatic.  Curled up on the couch next to Mr. Trizzle, I was all set to root for my team.  Let’s go Pack!

And I did.  And we won.  But I wasn’t ecstatic.  I was just eh.  Why?  How could this be?  We won!  We defeated our arch enemies, ‘that expansion team from out West,’ that traitor Darth Judas Favre.  But no, there was no massive elation.  No overjoy.  Not even the silly laughter I’d had at the end of the Raiders blow-out 59 to 14 victory earlier that day.  Nothing.

It wasn’t a real win.  It was a present handed to us.  And I don’t mean handed to us by Favre’s three interception passes, two of which went straight into Packer hands and the third caught in a flying leap over the intended Viking’s head.  No, it was a present handed to us by the refs.

Coach Childress called it the “Worst officiated game [he’d] seen.”  I kind of agree.  The Packer touchdown that was out of bounds.  The overturned Vikings touchdown where having two hands on the ball and holding onto it was somehow not having control of the ball.  I’m sorry, but with better officiating, that game would have been a loss.

Ok, ok, so you want to argue how there’s rules and challenges and Childress could have challenged the Packers’ touchdown and didn’t so it’s valid and fair.  And I suppose you’ll make some argument for the validity of the overturning of the Shiancoe diving catch pass, too.  Fine, go ahead, because I think there’s something else bothering me than just bad ref-ing and a stolen win.

When Favre comes out on that field, on Lambeau field, in a Vikings jersey, it’s like seeing your ex-boyfriend show up at your party with his new girlfriend.  Your stomach lurches, your mouth goes dry, your heart pounds into your throat.  You hate him.

But you also feel protective.  There’s no way that new vampire he’s with is going to hurt him.  And when the evening starts going badly for him,  when you see him sad, left alone in a corner, hurt, you feel sad.  You feel pity.  There’s nothing you can do, and even if there were, you probably wouldn’t want to, but still.  It sucks to see someone that used to mean so much to you shriveled and worn, and hurt.

Watching Favre Monday night, even just the little head that pops up and blinks from the stats bar on the bottom of the screen, was depressing.  The grey hair, the wrinkles, the tired half-grimace half-nothing expression on his face.  It’s too much.  He’s struggling, yet trying so hard.  The officials unfairly take the game away, we fracture his ankle, and by the end of the night, he seems like just a lonely old man, deep sadness set in the eyes brimming with tears.  How is it possible to look at the hurt in those eyes and not feel the tiniest bit of compassion?

 

The NBC announcers were speculating that someday Green Bay and the Packer fans will forgive Favre and there will be a Favre Way or something near the stadium.  Maybe someday, but I doubt it will be while he’s alive.  We’re hurting, too.

1 Million Toilets for India

Did you know that there are more cell phones than toilets in India?   My goodness, can you imagine having to share a toilet with 3, 4 or 5 other people?

The people of India are suffering horribly for this lack of toilets.  Sharing toilets with more than one other person is highly unhygienic.   The facilities get dirty quickly and can not be cleaned as often as necessary to keep them free from deadly bacteria.  Obviously, since we in America require one toilet for every two people, if not one for each person, everyone else in the world deserves the same amount of toilets.  It’s a human right.

This is why my dear friend, Tremainz and I have decided to start 1 Million Toilets for India, so that children across India can grow up safe and happy, without the degradation and disease that comes from having to share a toilet with too many people.  We’re going to include everyone on the Indian subcontinent, too.  After all, country, continent, it’s all the same to us.

You Can Help!

Here’s how the project works.  You, rich white people who have never been outside your little bubble world, save for that two-week vacation to a third world country that totally changed your life, you are going to donate money and stacks of toilet tissue to us.  See how simple it is for you to help save the world!

Then we, the people of 1 Million Toilets for India, will solicit donations of old toilets from people in Africa.  We will take your money and buy more toilets from African toilet manufacturers.  Now, we’re helping those starving people in Africa, too!  Next, we’ll have those toilets and tissue packages shipped across the country of Africa to India.  This will help all sorts of local economies by employing drivers.

Once we get to India, we’ll use a group of volunteers sourced from our program staff, the African companies that donated and delivered the toilets, and some lucky donors who win our special contest to go to India and get their life totally changed, again.

What about the Indian toilet manufacturers and installers?  Who cares!  Clearly, if they knew what they were doing, India wouldn’t have this awful toilet shortage.  They must be terrible at making toilets, so we’re going to ignore them.

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I hope, dear readers, that you realize what is written above is totally tongue-in-cheek.  Tremainz and I did develop this idea together.  The joke amused us for several days at least.  Spawned by the 1 Million T-Shirts for Africa ridiculousness [I’m not giving it a link, google it], we went off on a sarcastic binge against junk aid.

But this foolishness about junk aid has made me begin to question what I always thought of as decent aid.  I started wondering where to draw the line.  Is any aid really decent or good?

Donations of Infringing Goods

This past week, I attended INTA, the International Trademark Association’s annual meeting.  In the Exhibition Hall, generally full of vendors peddling their oh-so-useful trademark services, was a booth for World Vision. 

World Vision was there to solicit donations.  Donations of infringing goods that would otherwise be destroyed because of their violation of trademark law.  Their display featured a series of pictures of smiling African children and adults wearing Chicago Bears Super Bowl XLI Champion t-shirts and hats.  For those of you who don’t know, the Bears didn’t win that Super Bowl.

I looked at those pictures, at first slightly amused.  It didn’t last too long.  I soon learned where those pictures were taken.  Zambia.  Monze, Zambia.  The Monze, Zambia I called home for two years.

The Local Economy

My first thought was the tailors that sit outside the store fronts in Monze or under an insaka on their family compound in the village.  My second thought was of the people sitting in the dusty, crowded market in downtown Monze, selling salaula (used clothing imported from the West) and new clothing imported from Asia.  All these people lost something when the Bears swept down on Zambia as Champions.

Setting an Example

My third thought came not from my experiences in the Zambian community where these clothes were deposited, but from my training in intellectual property law.   What message does it send when we say, “you must stop counterfeit goods” with our mouths, and with our hands, fill the country with counterfeit goods?

The US government, the Zambian government, most of the other governments in Africa, are trying to teach their citizens the value of trademarks and not to infringe others’ marks.  There are many reasons for this, I’m not going to get into all of them here.  But I will mention the one most important in this instance.

Weak protection of trademarks discourages investment in the country.  It discourages new companies from forming within a country and it discourages foreign companies from entering the local market.  Bad, bad, bad.

Long Term Effects

How can we convince Company X that it should invest in Zambia, that it should open a facility and employ thousands of people and that its company will be protected from imposters when the population is taught that there is nothing wrong with infringing goods?

How can we convince Mr. Banda he should start a new business in Zambia instead of abroad when he’ll be subject to imposters and to having his company’s market overrun by free donations from abroad?  (This later issue is addressed well in Dambisa Moyo’s book Dead Aid.  I highly recommend it.)

Final Thoughts

I remain conflicted on World Vision’s program.  In general, I like World Vision and the organization's work.  But this clothing thing has made me question their other work as well.
I understand the idea that donating something is better than destroying it.  But how about just not making it at all?  Do we really need to have our Super Bowl champions shirts available immediately after the game?  What’s wrong with waiting a day or two? 

As for the infringing goods, how about removing the mark when possible, and recycling the materials when not.  There must be other solutions than drowning developing countries in our excess and illegal goods.

Go Bears!

No, not those Bears. 
These Bears.

Last weekend, I had the lucky opportunity of attending a Cal football game with my friend Short Artichoke.  She, like Mr. Trizzle, is a Cal alum, so this was a much bigger deal for her than for me.  Although, maybe not since she has season tickets and this was the only college football game I’ve been to. (Maybe I went to one at my undergrad, but that hardly counts.)

The game was at a really weird time because the tv networks decided it would be.  And there were random weird long breaks during the game for the tv network to show their advertisements.  All in all though, it was still a football game.

The stands were less than packed (the team has been less than stellar) and we were able to easily slide on into the students’ section.  I had heard from Mr. Trizzle that this was the place to be on game day, so I was pretty excited about the seats.

The students have some interesting traditions.  One really neat one is where they each have a stack of colored pieces of paper and some instructions.  Someone calls out a number and they all hold up the card that matches that number on the instruction sheet.  The result is a giant picture in the stands!  Pretty neat.  Many of the pictures had to do with insulting Stanford, even though the opponent that day was Arizona, not Stanford.  (What kind of a mascot is a tree?!)

One of the less neat things was this guy with a microphone at the bottom of the stands that was sort of a modern day version of the old cheerleaders with the megaphones.  He led cheers, but he didn’t always do it well.  Still neat to be in the cheering section though.

Most of the game was watching the teams trade punts back and forth, but then at the end it got interesting.  The game was really close, and ironically, Cal almost lost by scoring a touchdown.  Cal was up by 2 points with a minute forty left on the clock when they got the ball back.  So what did they do?  Immediately ran it in for a touchdown, and missed the extra point.  Now, there was a minute thirty on the clock, the other team had the ball and only needed a touchdown and two point conversion to win the game.  They came very close.

My favorite part was when Arizona was within field goal range, going for a touchdown and got a 15 yard penalty, which took them out of field goal range, because they had thrown the ball forward twice on one play!  That almost made up for Cal throwing interceptions in the end zone two drives in a row.

When we arrived, it was a gorgeous sunny day, but the sun soon set and it became blistery cold.  Mmmmm, just like home, memories of watching high school football games.  Even though I was freezing and huddled deep into the Cal sweatshirt Mr. Trizzle had so generously leant me, it felt good.  Yes, I hate being cold.  But I’d forgotten some of the loveliness that comes with being cold.  That tingle all over your body when you go inside.  The sharp air in your nose as you take a deep breath.  The complete awareness of every part of yourself that comes into contact with the world outside your clothing.  Drafts through knits, gusts that send chills up loose sleeves.  You know you’re alive.  It’s wonderful.

I had a wonderful time with Short Artichoke at the game and am very happy she convinced me to brave Berkeley for it.  Maybe I’ll get to go again next year. :)