A 12 year old boy saved his father’s life. Always a heart warming story!
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/2368992.html
Unfortunately, because it’s a happy story, I have no comments. Well, except that if you are having a heart attack, you should call 911 and NOT attempt to drive yourself to the hospital. Other than that, yeah for Daniel!
Last summer, my husband bought me a car. Yes, we discussed it before hand but, recognizing his superior knowledge and intuition regarding automobiles, he had the final say. And I am, oh, so glad he did.
Last Saturday dawned as the four days before it had–gray, cloudy, foggy, dreary, depressing, oppressively depressing, gray, blah, foggy. Get the point? Jael and I had a lunch date with some friends so continuing to hide out in the house was not an option. We got into my Volvo V70, with the five-cylinder turbo-charged diesel and five-speed manual transmission, and headed for the base.
2000 Volvo V70
While I detest weather such as we had that day, my car loves it. Never does the Volvo sound happier, shift smoother, and purr more contentedly than when the weather is crushing my soul. This is a good thing, as I absolutely LOVE driving the Volvo when it sounds like that and it has an enormous effect on my mood.
From the deep growl of low RPM’s to the throaty purr of high RPM’s (assisted by the turbo), the car wants to fly down the road. Only on foggy, dreary days do I have a hard time keeping it under 100 (kilometers per mile, about 60) on the way to base. On foggy, dreary days, I find myself flying along at 110-120 kph. As a ticket would NOT help my mood, I am constantly having to break the rhythm of the car’s song.
But even with the speed limit cramping my style, I arrived at the post office/meeting place with a happy heart. My morning funk had been completely dissipated by the joy of driving such an incredible machine. Better than Prozac.
I had a book when I was a young girl, twelve or so. It was called “Thundering Hooves.” It was about a girl who loved horses. She lived on a farm with her mom, dad and brother. She had had a young horse who threw her dad, who broke his arm, lost his job and subsequently, she was forbidden from having another horse. Her neighbor gets a new horse, an Arabian, and our heroine falls in love with it. She gentles the horse, who had been traumatized by harsh treatment. Her neighbor then sells the horse to the rich snotty girl, who is completely inept when it comes to handling the spirited horse. The heroine goes through a number of schemes trying to raise the money in order to buy the horse but things always seem to fall apart. But when the spirited horse freaks out during a parade, the rich girl is more than willing to trade our heroine her spirited but uncontrollable horse for the heroine’s more docile horse. Everyone’s happy.
Except me. Because this book doesn’t exist. Yeah, it really doesn’t.
*********
Until today when I realized that the book was titled “Pounding Hooves.” It was written by Dorothy Grundbock Johnston. Right there on Amazon. I’m seriously retarded. I’ve been looking for this book (mostly just because I couldn’t ever find it) and the whole time I was looking for the book by the wrong name. No wonder I couldn’t find it, eh?
Such is life.
“What is women’s studies?” you ask.
In short, women’s studies is the study of women – their lives, their works, their struggles, their accomplishments, their desires and fears, their future. In length, it’s much, much more – at least for me. Women’s Studies is the rejection of eighteen years worth of indoctrination. It is the shedding of a decade of willful ignorance.
I was raised believing that a women’s place was in the home. No, my parents would never have said, “A women should be in the kitchen bare foot and pregnant” but their disdain for working moms and feminists was clear. I was also raised in a Christian home where the man was head and the woman was submissive. “This models the church’s submission to Christ and to act any other way is a sin,” I was taught. Women were not allowed to preach or even lead prayer in church, teach to a co-ed group nor have any say in adult leadership (women were free to teach and lead male children). My exposure to feminism was through my Christian school, Focus on the Family, and people like Rush Limbaugh. Needless to say, my views were really skewed.
Even though I had a negative view of feminism, I couldn’t have given a definition if I’d been asked but I’d certainly not have guessed it to be anything like the one bell hooks gives in Feminist Politics: “[F]eminism is a movement to end sexism, sexual exploitation, and oppression.” If you had told me that was feminism in a nutshell I would have agreed wholeheartedly. But I didn’t know that definition (nor any other) and, as far as I’d been taught, there was no need for feminism any longer. Women had been “given” the vote, we’d complained enough that we’d been allowed into previously all-male schools and careers and now all was equal and fair. There was nothing left for feminism to do.
Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards’ essay, A Day Without Feminism, revealed to me how wrong that line of think is. No child care? I stay at home with my daughter but I can’t imagine a world where there is no other option. I was appalled to find out that the National Honor Society will rescind a girl’s membership if she gets pregnant. (What happens to a boy if he fathers a child?) The Pill’s side effects were horrifying. The double standard of curfews for college women but not for men made me furious. I was fascinated by the fact that women weren’t the only disregarded ones. Baumgardner and Richards write, “The absence of women’s history, black history, Chicano studies, Asian-American history, queer studies, and Native American history from college curricula implies that they are not worth studying” (A Day Without Feminism, in Women’s Voices Feminist Visions. 2009). I was shocked by what they said about newspaper want ads being divided into “Help Wanted Male” and “Help Wanted Female.” The restrictions placed on a married woman’s ability to secure financial services was mind-blowing.
By the end of the article I was furious. Furious that my mom had never talked to me about this. Furious at myself for never questioning the status-quo. Furious at society for making this information so easy to hide. Furious at the universe for being indifferent. Furious at the fact that change happens when people make it happen and those people are people like me.
Then I got scared. I realized then what Women’s Studies meant to me. Women’s Studies was going to be my own personal revolution. My world was shifting and I didn’t know what was going to happen and I didn’t know how it was going to look when it was done and I didn’t know if I was ready but more than anything, I knew that this was the right road. I knew that hiding from the truth was not the answer. I knew that facing this thing head on was the only way to be true to myself and all that I hold dear.
Women’s Studies is the study of women – their lives, their works, their struggles, their accomplishments, their desires and fears, their future. I am a woman and therefore, Women’s Studies is the study of me – my life, my work, my struggles, my accomplishments, my desires and fears, my future.
My daughter joined the Girls Scouts this last week. Most would not consider this that noteworthy. After all, 3.4 million girls and women are members of this “world’s preeminent organization dedicated solely to girls.” Over 50 million have passed through the ranks of the Girl Scouts. They were one of the leading organization on desegregation. They supported the war effort after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by growing victory gardens, operating bicycle courier services, and more. Prominent women such as, Barbara and Laura Bush, Tipper Gore, and actress Debbie Reynolds have been involved in the Girl Scouts. Their website claims: “In partnership with committed adult volunteers, girls develop qualities that will serve them all their lives, like leadership, strong values, social conscience, and conviction about their own potential and self-worth.”
What’s not to like, right?
Until I sat down last week and did some research, the only thing I knew about Girl Scouts was what I had “learned” growing up in a Conservative Christian home. And that was that the Girl Scouts were evil. They were partnered with Planned Parenthood, encouraged teen sex, promoted abortion and lesbianism and were all commies. Of course none of this is true nor was it taught to me outright. I can’t honestly remember having any conversations with anyone about the Girl Scouts and yet, I had these impressions.
It is always strange to question things you’ve grown up with, beliefs so deeply ingrained you don’t even realize they are there until you are blindsided by it. And I was completely blind-sided. When Jayme invited Jael to Girl Scouts my first reaction was to smile and nod and get away from this psycho as quickly as possible. Obviously she was evil and would work to corrupt my daughter if she had access.
And then I realized, wait a minute. What do I really even know about the Girl Scouts? … They sell cookies.
That was it.
They sell cookies.
That’s what I knew about the Girl Scouts, all nicely summarized in one sentence. They. Sell. Cookies. More research was needed and that’s what we did. We started with “What’s the big controversy regarding the Girl Scouts?”
Shirley Dobson says: “Jim [Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family] is also determined to protect children from indoctrination by “politically correct” ideas that are promoted by…homosexual activists who want to manipulate young minds …within the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.”
James Dobson himself said, in a 2002 letter to his followers, “[indoctrination] is what is behind the massive effort to install homosexuals and their influence into the Boy Scouts organization. The Girls Scouts have already been invaded, and now, according to one report, a third of Girl Scout leaders are lesbians.” This quote is followed by a little number 20 which, if you click on it, takes you to the reference which is one Kathryn Jean Lopez’s article, “The Cookie Crumbles” from National Review, 23 October 2000, p. 30.
Alrighty. Let’s find this report. Some time on UMUC’s library database and I’ve got it. Culture Watch is the column (which I think is an opinion column…of course, I think that National Review is largely an opinion publication anyway), Kathryn Lopez is the author and here’s what she had to say:
The Girl Scouts’ leaders hope to make their youthful charges the shock troops of an ongoing feminist revolution. It’s been a long slide…they dropped “loyalty” from their oath…in favor of “I will do my best to be honest and fair.”…[The Girl Scouts] executive director, Marsha Johnson Evans, has impeccable feminist credential: She had a 29-year career in the Navy, during which she earned the title of rear admiral, only the second woman ever to do so…she was the mother of the 12-12-5 affirmative-action policy, a mandate to make the Navy look more like America: 12 percent African-American, 12 percent Hispanic, and 5 percent Asain/Pacific.
Wow…I didn’t realize that being successful at your job gave you “impeccable feminist credential[s].” And shouldn’t we be proud of Evans for being only the second woman to become Rear Admiral? Isn’t that something to be proud of? I guess not.
Lopez goes on to say that the Girl Scouts advocate for sexual equality in sports (GOOD GOD! Girls playing sports! The horror!) and that the Girl Scout constitution has a “ringing endorsement of affirmative action in ‘recruitment, hiring, training, and promoting.’ Girl Scout moms are anti-gun…” Wow…I had no idea I was anti-gun. Huh. Who would have thought their mind control devices were so strong that with the signing of Jael’s registration form I became anti-gun.
In this same negative tone Lopez continues writing. She writes, regarding a Senior Scout resource book:
Some activities “you can do as a Girl Scout to address contemporary issues” include “organiz[ing] an even to make people aware of gender bias” or “help[ing] organize an Earth Day celebration.”…Girl Scouts can now earn the “Ms. Fix-It” badge for learning how to fix a leak, rewire an electrical appliance, or re-caulk a window, and the “Car Care” badge for checking fluids, filling tires to the proper pressure, and performing safety checks…Victimization is central to the Girl Scout worldview…
I’m confused. So, the Girl Scouts are bad for encouraging girls to learn how to take care of themselves and then they are bad for talking about victimization? Which way do you want it, Lopez? Oh…you just want to pretend that victimization just doesn’t happen. After all, we are in a post-feminism era with no further need of equality, right? Must be nice to be you.
Now Lopez brings out the big guns. Lesbianism. The Girl Scouts have them. She quotes from a book titled On My Honor: Lesbians Reflect on Their Scouting Experience. It is a collection of memoirs from lesbians who were in the Girl Scouts. Lopez writes, “Girl Scout staffers writing in the book claim that roughly one in three of the Girl Scouts’ paid professional staff is lesbian.”
And that’s it. That’s Dr. James Dobson’s “report.” Wow. A collection of memoirs, in which someone NOT speaking for the organization, claims that 1/3 of the paid professional staff is lesbian is a “report.” Reeeeeeaaaaaally? Also, “paid professional staff” and “Girl Scout leaders” are two VERY different things. When someone says “Girl Scout leaders” you think “troop leaders,” which are ALL volunteer, spend a lot of time with your kids and are NOT paid professionals. Holy. Freaking. Cow.
I’ve got other things to work on (like my first assignment in Women’s Studies…hmmm. Maybe Girl Scout people are raging feminists…)
We finally got an external hard drive so I can clean out the old computer and we can put on a new operating system. As I am going through my old files, cleaning out the junk and finding the good, I am stumbling across half finished almost blogs. I think, since I lack the motivation to do more, I am going to post them as they are.
The following was written almost two years ago. It just kind of ends at the end so…feel free to finish it. 
I have a problem. A friend sent me a link to a group which is rallying support for a Constitutional Amendment to protect parental rights from government intrusion without due process of the law. I researched it (I am still in the process but had to get some thought out of my head and onto “paper”) and while I agree in part, I disagree in part as well.
I don’t even know where to begin.
Here’s the part I’m currently upset at:
There is only one solution to this approaching storm: a constitutional amendment that places current Supreme Court doctrine protecting parental rights into the explicit language of the U.S. Constitution. This amendment will shelter the child-parent relationship from the coming storm, ensuring that parents have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their children.
No government, regardless of how well-intentioned it might be, can replace the love and nurture of a parent in the life of a child. Parents care, not because their children are “wards” for whom they are responsible. Parents are willing to brave danger and sacrifice, hardship and heartache to ensure the best for their kids. (the last two paragraphs from ParentalRights.org’s website two years ago.)
I want to draw your attention to a couple of phrases.
“There is only one solution”
Really. Only one. And you’ve discovered it. I am suspicious when anyone or any group claims to have THE answer. Sometimes there is clearly only one answer. In this case I see many answers. Not included in these viable answers are the movement they are fighting against nor the movement they are promoting. More on that later.
“This amendment will shelter the child-parent relationship from the coming storm, ensuring that parents have the right to direct the upbringing and education of their children.”
Um, last time I checked, there were numerous Constitutional Amendments that are currently being violated. Why would this be any different? Also, as I said in my previous blog (read it here), “[t]he only thing that guarantees a right is the willingness to fight and die for those rights.” An amendment is going to do jack-shit until parents are willing, when the government ignores the constitution (Privacy Act anyone?), to take up arms and have their last act in the world be dying for their children or leaving their cushy jobs and McMansions and fleeing the country, provided of course that we’ve not locked ourselves in with a giant wall across our borders. Until parents believe in their rights enough to do that, their rights cannot and will not, be protected.
“Parents care, not because their children are “wards” for whom they are responsible. Parents are willing to brave danger and sacrifice, hardship and heartache to ensure the best for their kids. “
Yeah, and I know a lot of people who aren’t this “model” of a parent. I’ve started meeting some people who aren’t from my church. Yup, I’m 27 years old and I finally have friends that don’t profess the exact same things I do. I’m growing as a person and it’s absolutely blowing my world apart. There are parents out there who are absolutely not “…willing to brave danger and sacrifice, hardship and heartache…” to ensure even the mediocre for their kids. There’s a gal I know who despises her kids. You can see it on her face when they whine at her. Total disgust. She pawns them off on sitters and nannies, refuses to instill the simplest rules or boundaries and then wonders why they are whiny little rotters. She’s not going to fight for her “rights” as a parent and when enough of people like her have allowed the government to roll over them, the government will realize it can do whatever the hell it wants, just like it’s been doing for a century.
Point Two with this group: The first story they present as precedent of the “dark clouds on the horizon” is the story of Rolin and Laura Sumey and their daughter, Sheila. By the time Sheila was 15, there had been numerous “problems” between her and her parents, resulting in Sheila running away a number of times. Extensive counseling was tried but ultimately failed.
In June, again conflict arose and Mrs. Sumey fearing her daughter would again leave home, called the police and they placed Sheila in a receiving home (I have no idea what a receiving home is and a cursory investigation has not provided results. If someone knows what they are, please share your knowledge), preventing her from running away. DSHS (Department of Social and Health Services) began to provide crisis intervention services (as is no doubt law when a parent calls the police on their child). Mrs. Sumey signed consent for Sheila to be in receiving care.
DSHS counseling did not result in reconciliation between Sheila and her parents and within a month, “Sheila filed a petition for alternative residential placement with the Pierce County Juvenile Court…A hearing on the petition was held, and the juvenile court concluded that: the family was in conflict; prior counseling and crisis intervention had failed to remedy that conflict; the conflict could not be remedied by continued placement in the home; and the reasons for the alternative residential placement were not capricious. The court approved the petition for alternative residential placement and ordered that Sheila be placed in a non-secure licensed facility. The court provided for rights of visitation for Mr. and Mrs. Sumey. The case was set for review in 6 months to determine what had been accomplished in resolving the conflict and reuniting the family.” (excerpt from the Law Offices of David S. Vogel, P.L.L.C.)
This is not the story the Parental Rights organization tells you. Here’s their story:
In the early 1980s, a landmark parental rights case reached the Washington State Supreme Court. The case involved 13-year-old Sheila Marie Sumey, whose parents were alarmed when they found evidence of their daughter’s participation in illegal drug activity and escalating sexual involvement. Their response was to act immediately to cut off the negative influences in their daughter’s life by grounding her.
But when Sheila went to her school counselors complaining about her parent’s actions, she was advised that she could be liberated from her parents because there was “conflict between parent and child.” Listening to the advice she had received, Sheila notified Child Protective Services (CPS) about her situation. She was subsequently removed from her home and placed in foster care.
Her parents, desperate to get their daughter back, challenged the actions of the social workers in court. They lost. Even though the judge found that Sheila’s parents had enforced reasonable rules in a proper manner, the state law nevertheless gave CPS the authority to split apart the Sumey family and take Sheila away.
Not quite the same story, it it?
Let’s take a look at the other stories they have on their website:
A thirteen-year-old boy in Washington State was removed from his parents after he complained to school counselors that his parents took him to church too often. His school counselors had encouraged him to call Child Protective Services with his complaint, which led to his subsequent removal and placement in foster care. It was only after the parents agreed to a judge’s requirement of less-frequent church attendance that they were able to recover their son.
After much research and an email to the lawyer who started parentarights.org (to which, when we asked for verification, he said, “I was the lawyer on the case), and then more research, armed now with the lawyer’s name, we were unable to find independent verification that this case ever existed anywhere outside of this lawyer’s mind. This is the story as he put it in another source. The boy’s parents wanted him to attend three church services a week and he wanted to attend only one. The judge ruled that once a week is enough church for a thirteen year old boy. I hate to agree but I must.
If a thirteen year old is being forced to go to church against his will, he is not going to be changed by anything he hears or sees there. By the time a child is an adolescent, the groundwork of character development is complete and it’s just polishing from there on out. Forcing him to attend church three times more often than he wants is going to hinder, not help, his “religious education.”
A West Virginia mother was shocked when a local circuit judge and a family court judge ordered her to share custody of her four-year-old daughter with two of the girl’s babysitters. Referring to the sitters as “psychological co-parents,” the justices first awarded full custody to them, only permitting the mother to visit her daughter four times a week at McDonalds. Eventually she was granted primary custody, but forced to continue to share her daughter with the sitters.
When her case finally reached the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in October 2007, the beleaguered mother was relieved to finally be granted full custody of her daughter.
In their October 25 opinion Supreme Court justices wrote that they were “deeply troubled by the utter disregard” for the mother’s rights. One justice referred to the mother’s right as the “paramount right in the world.”
Chief Justice Robin Davis summed up the case in one simple question.”Why does a natural parent have to prove fitness when she has never been found unfit?” he asked.
This one is a bit more serious. Misty, the mother in this story, had primary custody of her daughter, Senturi. Joshua, the girl’s biological father, had one day a week visitation and was to be paying child support. Christopher and Tanya, the babysitters, were his cousins. They watched Senturi frequently, though how frequently I’ve been unable to ascertain. They were paid for at least a portion of the time they cared for Senturi. When Misty decided to move to Texas to be closer to her family, return to school, and seek better employment, Christopher and Tanya, along with the father, Joshua, went to court. They claimed they’d cared for the child for months on end but I’ve been unable to find record of that claim being investigated. They claimed they were Senturi’s “psychological co-parents.” They were awarded complete custody for a while, then custody with visitation for Misty, then partial custody. When Misty appealed to the supreme court, they reversed the orders of the lower courts and returned full custody to Misty.
So the story as ParentalRights.org presented it was fairly accurate. The problem I have with them using this story as an example is that justice was done. Yes, the mother was deprived of her daughter and the daughter of her mother for a couple of months and that’s regrettable. But the court system did what it is supposed to do. When Misty was unhappy with the results of a lower court, she took it to a higher court and eventually, justice and reason prevailed. Do I think the lower courts were in the wrong? Of course! Do I think a constitutional amendment is the answer to some judge making a bad judgment? Absolutely not!
So the first story they present, they present falsely.
The second is apparently pretend. Maybe I’m being judgmental but if I were a lawyer and someone asked for verification of a case, I would do more than tell them I was the lawyer on the case. I’d give them a link to a court record or a newspaper article or something besides, “I was there. It happened. Take my word for it.”
The third story was a case of a court disregarding parental rights but then in the same court system it was resolved. The child was at no time in the care of someone whom the mother had not already approved. After a couple of months, it worked out. The lower courts were wrong but it’s not an amendment worthy wrong.
The next thing ParentalRights.org petitions against is the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UNCRC is not something I want the U.S. to ratify but it’s not something that needs an amendment to stop. The reason that the U.S. has not ratified the convention is because it already contradicts U.S. Law. …
For American Government, I had to write a comment about our two-party system. This was what I wrote:
The Constitution of the United States was a revolutionary work when it was written. The fact that our country has the longest history of uninterrupted democracy points to the quality of this first among many. Our constitution is also the shortest and as such, there are many things it does not mention. Political parties is one of them.
In order to make changes to our current two-party system, we must first make changes to our electoral system. Single-member-district-plurality (SMDP) leads, almost without exception, to a two-party system. Canada, with its unique population conditions, is the only major exception with five parties. However, as party choices on a ballot increase, as happens with proportional representation (PR), participation decreases, especially among lower income voters. The best solution is to combine the systems and use the strengths of each.
Congress should be elected using PR; the president with SMDP. The presidential election should be decided using one of the voting systems which fall under the heading of Condorcet method. In Condorcet voting, voters rank candidates in order of preference. “A particular point of interest is that it is possible for a candidate to be the most preferred overall without being the first preference of any voter. In a sense, the Condorcet method yields the “best compromise” candidate, the one that the largest majority will find to be least disagreeable, even if not their favorite.” (Wikipedia. September 22, 2009.) Example: Suppose 51% of the voters chose Candidate A as their first choice and 49% choose Candidate B. Under normal SMDP, Candidate A would win. However, if 75% of the voters chose Candidate C for their second choice, than Candidate C, being more agreed upon, would win. There is a lot more to it than I’ve described here but that’s the real basics.
That said, there are benefits to having only two strong parties. There is less to consider when heading to the polls. A voter’s choices are A and B. If all else fails, flip a coin. As Mr. Park said, a voter has a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right. The choice is not so easy when dealing with a multi-party system but a voter is more likely to find a party that actually represents her rather than a party that sorta-kinda-better-than-nothing represents her.
When there are only two parties, one is going to have the majority of the seats in the legislature. With proportional representation, there may not be a party in majority and it may be more difficult to get laws passed if cooperation between the groups does not exist. The flip side is that laws favoring one group over another are harder to get passed and the laws that do get passed are more likely to accurately represent the American people, their needs and desires.
Political parties that spring from a coalition of like-minded interest groups definitely have a place in proportional representation. The Green Party is a party gathered around the common interest of protecting the environment. The Christian Right Party would undoubtedly contain members of current Christian interest groups just as the Secular Humanist Party would contain members of the American Atheists and the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers.
Despite the struggles a change would require, changing to proportional representation in the legislature is something we should be fighting for. If we believe in a government of the people, by the people, than we must have proportional representation and the increased choices that goes along with it.
Wikipedia. Retrieved on September 22, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/racing-lady-luck-smiles-on-rebecca-1149063.html
8-12 large flour tortillas
4 large boneless, skinless chicken breast
4 C water
1 t minced garlic
1 t onion powder
1 ¼ C shredded cheese (Monterey Jack/Cheddar mix) – divided
1 t onion powder
1 t garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
1 C tomato sauce
1 T chopped green chilies (optional)
2 T flour
2 T butter
2 ½ C chicken broth
¼ C herb/garlic cream cheese
¼ C shredded Parmesan cheese
1. Put water, spices (1 t minced garlic, 1 t onion powder), and chicken breast into large deep skillet. Poach approximately 10 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.
2. Place cooked chicken in a deep bowl and allow to cool slightly, then shred using 2 forks.
3. Add 1 C shredded cheese, 1 t onion powder, 1 t garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste, and 1 C tomato sauce to the shredded chicken. Set aside while you start on the sauce.
4. In a large saucepan on medium high heat, combine flour and butter. Cook the flour for about 1 minute.
5. Whisk in chicken broth and bring to a boil; lower heat to medium, add cream cheese and Parmesan; whisk until combined. Simmer 10 minutes, until sauce is slightly thickened.
6. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
7. Meanwhile, place 1/3 C of chicken mixture on one side of tortilla. Wrap halfway around, fold in ends and finish wrapping. Place seam side down in 9×13-inch baking dish.
8. Pour thickened sauce over enchiladas, sprinkle the top with ¼ mixed shredded cheese and bake for 10 minutes or until bubbly.
9. Serve with sour cream, guacamole, salsa or plain!
What makes someone a hero? Is it a person risking her life for someone else? Is it a person putting the greater good ahead of his own good? Is it helping others? There are as many definitions of hero as there are people on the earth. While there may be many definitions of “hero,” one definition stands out to me.
My definition of a hero is someone who inspires me to better myself. There are not many people who do that but are a few. The one I’m writing about here is not considered by many to be very talented. I have heard people say he is, at best, a mediocre actor and, at worst, a terrible one but I have cried as he acted the part of broken hearted husband. I have read interviews in which directors he chose not to work with have accused him of being egotistical and his response was, “If my ego is healthy enough to say, ‘I’m not going to do a . . . rehash of the same film just because you want me to do it quickly,’ that’s my ego! My ego is that big!” and I applaud him for remaining true to his principles. I have heard his co-workers tear him down spitefully and I have seen him time and time again, turn the praise to others; the directors, his mentors, his co-actors, or the audience. I have read posts by people accusing him of being nothing but a meathead, his success running on nothing but his biceps. The truth is, he has worked very hard and sacrificed a lot for the success he has had. More than all this, he has inspired me; inspired me to better myself, to make my own dreams come true, through his journey to do the same. Who is this man?
This man is Vin Diesel.
Many only know Diesel as an action movie star and, for many years, that was the only way I thought of him. This began to change during a season of boredom. I wanted to find some new movies to watch and, having just seen Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick for the second time, I began to look for other movies he had appeared in. What I found was a career history I knew nothing about. There were the movies I expected, The Fast and the Furious, xXx, and The Pacifier, in which Diesel plays “tough guys.” What I didn’t expect was Multi-Facial, Strays, and Find Me Guilty, in which Diesel plays serious and deep roles. I didn’t expect to find that he had written screenplays and directed and produced films. I didn’t expect to find a fellow Dungeons and Dragons fan. I didn’t expect to find a man willing to turn down millions because “the script just wasn’t right.” I didn’t expect to have a life altering experience by him encouraging me to invest in making my dreams become a reality.
Vin Diesel knows a little something about investing into one’s dreams to make them become a reality. He started acting when he was seven years old in the New York theater scene. In his early twenties, he arrived in Los Angeles, expecting to become a star. After a year of auditions and rejections, he returned to New York, as he has said, with his tail between his legs. He had not secured so much as an agent. Unwilling to let his dreams die, realizing he could no longer rely on others to dictate where his future was going to go, he started writing a short film. Two weeks later, he was shooting and, as he said to Charlie Rose, “That’s where it all started.”
There had been no scripts for Vin Diesel so Vin Diesel had decided to make his own. He saved $3000 and instead of spending it on a flat screen T.V., he took the money and invested it into his career. He wrote, directed, produced, and starred in his short film titled Multi-Facial. The film is about an actor who can’t get hired because he’s too multi-cultural. He’s not “black” enough or “white” enough or “hispanic” enough, just like Vin. Vin and the friends who helped him produce it took it to Cannes Film Festival but were unable to procure buyers for it.
Disappointed but not defeated by this set back, Vin returned to Los Angeles and, again, began saving money. He and a friend worked as telemarketers, selling tools and light bulbs. In the course of a year they saved $47,000. Like before, instead of buying something to “look” cool, like a new car, Vin invested into his career, returned to New York and wrote Strays. Again, he produced, directed and starred in his film. This feature length film was accepted into Sundance Film Festival and, like Mulit-Facial, received rave reviews but no buyers.
Luckily, Diesel’s investment into his career was not without gain. Steven Spielberg saw Multi-Facial, wrote a part for Vin into Saving Private Ryan and introduced him to the Hollywood movie scene. Following Saving Private Ryan, Diesel starred in a low budget but well crafted science fiction film, Pitch Black. The year after that he starred beside Paul Walker in The Fast and the Furious. The next year he starred in xXx. And with those two, Vin Diesel reached the stardom he had aspired to.
It is not this stardom, however, that made Diesel a hero of mine. No, simple stardom is not enough. Many people are movie stars. Many people work hard to achieve their dream of being a famous actor or actress. What caused Vin Diesel to stick out to me is his commitment to the art; the art of story telling, the art of character development, the art of cinematography; a commitment which I share deeply.
Vin is, at heart, an artist. Vin Diesel chooses parts that present a challenge to him as an actor, preferring multidimensional characters and anti heroes to picture perfect heroes who are hard for people to identify with. Regarding his character Xander Cage in xXx, he said, “where as the predecessors [James Bond and the like] represented a country, I think xXx represents the world. He’s kind of this proletarian hero, this rebel hero that’s recruited…Xander…doesn’t want to be a secret agent but he is a guy that’s called to duty and he rises to the occasion.” Vin chooses scripts that tell original but relevant tales. During an interview with Shawn Adler he talked about The Chronicles of Riddick, which he helped develop. Regarding pressure he was feeling to make the film successful, he said, “The second I was able [to make] this epic that didn’t spawn from a book that was in existence for 50 years, that didn’t come from a comic book character, that was completely an original project, I felt like I was satisfied.” He loves the craft so much that he turned down over 25 million dollars when he chose to forgo starring in the sequel to The Fast and the Furious. He turned it down simply because the script was shallow and did not advance the characters or the story line.
Diesel attributes his commitment to the story and his love of the role, largely to his love of Dungeons and Dragons, a fantasy role playing game. He will freely admit to a long history of playing, calling it the training ground for imagination and credits it for much of of his love of story. His ability to create and imagine stories comes largely from his experiences playing this game. Not only does he freely talk about his experiences developing characters or acting as Game Master, he also wrote the introduction for “Thirty Years of Adventure: A Celebration of Dungeons & Dragons.” In it he says, “[W]hat kept us hooked [on the game] was the search for the character that represented our higher self. Playing D&D was…an opportunity to explore our own identities.”
It is this, this love of imagination, this love of storytelling, this love of developing real and relevant characters that made Vin Diesel a hero. He said to Charlie Rose, “There was a point in my life when I realized I could no long rely on everyone else…I could no longer empower the negatives or empower others to dictate where my future was going to be.” To Jay Leno he said:
If there’s any message that I could tell people about making their dreams become a reality, it would be to invest everything you have in it and instead of going off and buying things that you think may raise your profile amongst your peers, go off and spend that money on something that’s going to help you realize your dreams.
When he said that, my heart responded with a cheer. My heart also broke with the knowledge that I had not been taking the responsibility for making my dreams become a reality. I was not reclaiming the control over the direction of my life. I was sitting by, relying on others to make my dreams come true.
A month later, after many talks with my husband and many thoughtful days spent pondering what my dreams really were, I enrolled in college. I was 28 years old and I was no longer going to rely on others to make my dreams come true. I was going to take what I had and invest it all into my dreams. I was not going to sit by and let others dictate where my life was going to go.
Vin Diesel is a man worthy of respect. First and foremost he is a man of integrity, remaining true not only to his art but also to himself. Secondly, he is a hero because he encourages others to look within themselves to see how they could better themselves by taking control of their lives and their dreams. These two things are what caused me to see Vin Diesel through different eyes; to see him as an inspiration to us all and especially to me.
