the world passes overhead

Every so often at the Al Wooten Center I have a conversation with a kid that reminds how different their young world is from the one I grew up in.

The girls met my sister when she came to visit me a few months ago, and haven't stopped asking about her since: "Where's Bethany," Natalie asks, "is she ever coming back?" "She'd like to," I said, "but she's all the way over in Chicago. And you know what? This summer she's actually going to India!" Natalie's mouth opens and her eyes get big--clearly this bit of information is interesting to her. "You mean she gunna get on a airplane?! Oh my God, I would die!!" and she turns with Elia to join the rest of the girls in their game of wall ball.

I laugh softly to myself--without meaning to be, the kids are often hilarious and completely endearing as they verbalize whatever comes to their mind. I don't think anything more about that short conversation until after most of our kids had trickled out of the center and I was left alone on the playground, shooting three attempts in the pleasantly muggy late afternoon. As I stand there enjoying the relative quiet, I suddenly become aware of another sound, one that's always there and therefore just part of the normal, unnoticed background noise in South Central. Initially it sounds far-off, but then gets closer, until it's right overhead--the vaguely eerie rumble of jet airplanes passing overhead as they fly in and out of nearby LAX.

I look up at the plane, and think of Natalie. I'm suddenly aware for the first time of how the sky is actually crisscrossed with planes. I think of the enormous bustle of people, cargo, and ideas that move in and out of LAX every hour, brought in by those planes from across the United States and the world. If you look hard enough you can almost see the invisible arteries that connect LA to the rest of America and the global economy.

But if you're Natalie what you see is this massive aluminum rocket that you would be terrified to sit in. You see this because for you the act of getting on a plane and going somewhere is likely as foreign as the world beyond South Central, and we humans are naturally hesitant when encountering the unknown.

The big wide world flows like a river in the sky over the heads of the kids. I wonder how many of them will learn to reach up and touch it.

getting after it, day to day

On Thursdays I meet up with a couple Navy recruiters and a group of aspiring enlisted guys looking to join EOD, SWCC, Air Rescue, Dive or SEALS. Before running hill sprints and going for a trail run we gathered up in a large dirt clearing for some 'beat down.' This is a colloquial term they use in the Navy to describe group PT sessions that are typically very intense, with lots of repetitions, little rest, and long static holds in various uncomfortable positions. I don't run into that many other officer candidates in the recruiting pipeline that I'm in, and this group is no exception. Out of eleven or so enlisted candidates I am the only officer candidate, and this means that the recruiters running our training often expect me to step up into a leadership role.

Halfway into the beat down, and shortly after completing 50 pushups and holding the position for two or three minutes a lot of us were starting to fail. I could feel myself losing strength in my core. That's when Petty Officer Quinteros calls me to front of the company, facing the rest of the group: "Alright, Polhamus, mountain climbers. 25. Go." As the leader it's my job to yell out the four-count rhythm, making the exercise doubly-tiring. "1-2-3, ONE! 1-2-3, TWO!".... In the midst of the pain a voice inside asks why I'm here in the dirt suffering like this, but I keep the tempo moving. We finish the mountain climbers, chests burning, but are kept in the pushup position for close to another minute before we are allowed to drop to the dirt.

Five seconds of rest and then: "On your backs! Flutter kicks. 50. Go!" I begin the count again: "1-2-3, ONE! 1-2-3, TWO!".... We're getting pretty damn tired. We finish the count and are told to keep our feet six inches of the ground. The recruiters, along with a retired former SEAL who's joined us, wander through the crowd, loudly castigating anyone who's slacking or falling behind. "Alright, once all those feet are six inches off the ground I'll start the count down!" the SEAL says. Some guys are really hurting. We get from 10 to 6 before one guy drops his feet. Officer Quinteros didn't miss it, though: "Get 'em back up! Start again!" 10... 9... 8... I can hear the labored breathing of a bunch of suffering dudes, and my hip flexors and abs are burning. Then something clicks inside. I realize that we're all at our limit, but that it falls to me as the aspiring officer to set the tone. "KEEP EM UP! COME ON!" I yell at the guys. 7... 6... 5... "COME ON! DON'T DROP!" 4... 3.. 2... 1... and done.

A SEAL I greatly respect recently told me that to lead lions you have to be one. As I aspire to that privilege I find myself becoming a stronger man and hungering for more. That's why I spent the morning in the dirt at Eaton Canyon.

a longer road ahead

It's been since July 2010 that I've been pursuing officer training with Naval Special Warfare in earnest. This road's been fraught with more adversity than I expected--the rigors of physical training, challenges navigating the military bureaucracy, and an unforeseen curve ball regarding my medical eligibility have all tested my resolve. I posted a good physical screening test (PST) score two weeks ago, re-wrote my essays, and submitted my application packet ahead of schedule. After a few months of intense training and fighting illness I looked forward to a couple months of lifting weights and letting my cardio fitness sag.

No such luck, though. For the first time ever in the NSW OCS application process the selection boards are going to be interviewing candidates, and part of this involves taking a PST the day-of. Since I've been on this path I've had the constant experience of the rules of the game changing just as I'm getting to know them. I'd hoped this would be a season to rest my body a bit and focus on building strength and muscle mass that I tend to lose in the pool and on the track. As it is, it's time to put my head down and focus on getting faster, stronger, and tougher than ever before. When I see that board in August, I will destroy my current best posted score. This is an important part of the test. There is no room for self-sympathy here. Mental and physical preparation for combat and to lead men under the harshest of circumstances is an ongoing work. Rest has its place, but the kind of discipline I have to subject myself to now pales in comparison to what will be required of me in BUD/S and the training evolutions to follow should I be successful in reaching my goal.

Upon reflection, what at first had the disheartening impact of a shifting goal post looks like a blessing. I don't have the luxury of complacence--a luxury that so frequently has a toxic affect on our sharpness of the mind, softness of the heart, and strength of spirit.

--

On a completely different note, here are links to two topics that have been getting me thinking recently. The lesson? Whether in economics or physics, always question your paradigm.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/neo-voodoo-economics-why-can-t-washington-get-its-act-together--20110519

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqIubmnzckY

White house correspondents' dinner

Whatever your political bias, these are good for a few laughs. The first is President Obama's address at the White House Correspondent's dinner, and the second is from the keynote speaker, Seth Meyers. My friend, Ire, and I were marveling at the fact that the President manages to be just as, if not more, funny/charismatic than the guy who's paid to do this for a living.

President Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mzJhvC-8E.

Meyers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YGITlxfT6s

When in England I found myself wishing that we had an equivalent of Prime Minister's Questions back home. It's encouraging to see that the state of our Democracy is such that an event like the Correspondent's Dinner can take place each year. We're a bit less off-the-cuff here in the States than our British counterparts, but the effect is nonetheless similar--to promote a climate of openness political discourse where, post-theatrics, real conversations about policy can occur. We're quickly approaching a season when we will need this kind of conversation as much as we ever have before.

starting this up again

I've been surfing around online looking into literature for young adults that I might use to engage the college prep class I teach at the Al Wooten Jr Heritage Center in South Central every Tuesday. The kids are bored out of their minds with my current program of mini online research projects and math homework assignments... I was discouraged to the point of throwing in the towel last week after a particularly fruitless session. Yet I realized after last Thursday's fundraising dinner in honor of the center's founder, Ms Faye Rumph, that the kids and staff are too much a part of my new LA family to just walk away. If I'm going to stay, then, a change of strategy is called for. Thus my research into good material for a potential book reading.

After a few hours of fruitless searching for something that would connect directly to the experiences of South Central kids while at the same being an interesting, easy read, I paused to think about stories that moved me at that age. The top two I came up with were 'Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton and the memoir 'This Boy's Life' by Tobias Wolff. Wolff's account of his own coming of age, much of which takes place in the backwoods town of Concrete, WA (less than an hour from my hometown), resonated with me in a particularly deep way. It's become easier with time to look at myself more in terms of who I am without at the same time ruminating on the road that led me here. Just thinking of the book, though--about what it meant to me as a freshman at Options High School and what I hope it could mean to my kids, opened up the floodgate of carefully contained memories and emotions.

When Robert LaRiviere assigned us that book I devoured it. A screwed up, sad, confused kid with little sense of direction, at the time I fooled myself into thinking that my life was riddled with a comparable amount of adversity to young Tobias'. It would take me until well into college to begin to disabuse myself of that self-sympathetic notion, but the fact was that I identified in a profound way with his sense of displacement, yearning for identity, and a way out. Wolff's description of the grey, rainy days in the backwaters of Skagit county, in a small town hidden in the middle of a rolling, evergreen forest hit me right in the heart. Some people like the peace and quiet, but I had a sense since I was a little boy that lives get lost out there. Beautiful as it is, I sometimes felt those forests were full of ghosts lamenting what could have been but never was. That I looked out of the window in Robert's portable classroom at the same grey sky, felt the same misty cool rain slowly work its way into my coat sleeves on the walk to the downtown bus station, and heard the same rustle of the pines on a windy day as young Tobias would have connected me that much more intimately to his story. Wolff's bruising, haphazard, relentless struggle out of an abusive home and the gloom of Concrete planted something deep inside my heart that would sustain and drive me in the years to come.

And I only fully realized this just now, sitting at my computer on a lazy Sunday night, wondering how on earth I can grab the attention of a group of kids full of such boundless promise but confronted with such difficult circumstances. That restless, 14 year-old me made his way to Stanford eventually, and it changed everything. That's also where Mr Wolf is currently a professor, though for absolutely no good reason at all I've never met that great man. It was totally improbable that either of us would ever make it there, but that deep restlessness that 'This Boy's Life' helped stir up in my first year of high school made me willing to try. Hunched over my desk at the SAT testing center as a sophomore at Western Washington University, rain dripping off the pines outside, I felt worlds apart from that incredible campus to which I was seeking to transfer. I threw the dice, though, and hit a pair of sixes. In life sometime all your tenacity, all your carefully planned energies, hinge on factors beyond your control. But you've got to play to win, to dare to say 'this can be, and will do all that I can do bring it about.' I pray that at least one of my kids will do the same.

Thanks Prof Wolff.

so that's where this craziness began...

As I'm approaching my sixth late night of writing up stats reports in LaTex for this take home exam that's due tomorrow afternoon I ask myself "why am I doing this, again? A stats degree doesn't make me a scientist anyhow, and those kids in Comparative Social Policy have way more free time than I do..."

So it occurred to me tonight, as I was biking home from watching a panel of a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian talk about religion in the public square, that my dad would frequently share a bit of thinly-veiled statistical wisdom with me as a boy. "Aaron, what's the probability that if you flip a coin 10 times and it comes up heads every time, that the next flip will be tails?" "Mmmmmmm, I don't know," I would say, as kids who aren't quite sure where their parents are "going with this" do. "Exactly the same!" my dad would say with a gleam in his eye and that little boy's grin that he still has today when he gets excited about something (probability theory?!). How incredible that, in spite of all that past baggage, all those failed attempts to be tails, an evenly-weighted coin had a clean slate, a 50% CHANCE, to be tails at each new trial.

"Wait a minute," I thought, "something about this seems fishy..." But of course I was still learning to do things that I still struggle with today, like basic arithmetic, multiplication by 11, and spelling, so I just let that sense of unease percolate in the back of my brain. Day, after day, after day. And only now, after stomping off on this wild goose chase of a degree, am I able to frame the issue more clearly. You see, it's a very simple question of joint versus individual trials involving an outcome that can only take one of two values. As it turns out, the probability of flipping a coin 11 times and only observing tails on the 11th flip is (almost) exactly 1/2048, even if the probability of each individual flip attaining that outcome is constant at 1/2. Remember that, guys: joint trials of independent events tend to be less probable than the aggregated individual outcomes of which they are composed. There's some real life-directing wisdom in this, so use your imagination and reach for it.

But where I was going with all this is to say that it's your fault, dad, that the muddled fascination (or perhaps confusion) with mathematical quantification of uncertainty that you planted in my brain 17-odd years ago drove me into this masochistic choice of degree here at Oxford. Which is, of course, my back-handed way of saying that I am in awe of your fascination with the world and deeply grateful for all that your sense of wonderment, especially in things as simple as a coin flip, has contributed to the odd character I am today.

Thinking of coins and campfires as I write time series models and wrestle with spatial statistics tonight,
Aaron

home(?) again

Man, that was quick. The time in South Africa blinked by, and I'm once again settled quietly back into life at Oxford, preparing for the upcoming term. But though this was a quick trip it was also a full one, and in some ways it feels like I've been away from Oxford for much more than two and a half weeks.

I spent most of the day after arriving back in Cape Town from Zim with Matthew before rejoining my crew at the Zebra Crossings hostel. As alluded to in the last post, the time with my cousin was very significant relationally. It was an enormous blessing to learn a bit about this person who I've always looked up to from a distance, but with whom I'd never moved much beyond casual conversation. Matthew is sincere, warm-hearted, and well-spoken, and as we talked about everything from life goals and relationships to favorite beers I felt that we connected as friends. It was also good to speak about our common side of the family: where we come from shapes who we are, and over the course of the trip I was filled once again with deep appreciation for the extraordinary trials that my father and his sisters braved to become the caring, accomplished, intellectually-alive people that they are today. Polhami are strange folk, as well, and we spent about as much time joking about our foibles as reflecting on our trials.

The rest of the time in Cape Town was filled with more good things: trips to the townships, including lunch at Mzoli's in Guguletu after church, touring Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela wrote "Long Walk to Freedom" during his long tenure or imprisonment, and visiting an election day rally during a pitstop on a road trip to Knysna. We also had the honor of meeting Desmond Tutu the day before last Wednesday's elections. This remarkable man was the first black Archbishop of Cape Town, chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-Apartheid South Africa, and is a renowned advocate of peace and justice in the world. He recently came under fire from many of his colleagues when he denounced Jacob Zuma, head of the ANC and soon-to-be president of South Africa, as unfit to lead. The ANC and its founding fathers led South Africa to freedom, yet the party has been wracked by corruption and fraud in recent years, and many argue its leadership has been inept in meeting the country's most pressing challenges. Jacob Zuma--who has claimed that cold showers prevent HIV transmission and just recently succeeded in having charges of money laundering in a multi-billion dollar arms deal dropped on procedural grounds--represents the worst of what the ANC has to offer in the eyes of many South Africans. Though Tutu expressed no desire to see the ANC voted out of power, his hope was that the minority opposition parties could rally to prevent it from obtaining the two thirds majority necessary to unilaterally amend the constitution. Dissenting voices are essential to functioning of healthy democratic institution, and Tutu's view was that the ANC had grown lazy and corrupt over the course of its unchallenged stay in power.

But this little diversion into politics distracted me from what I wanted to say about the man himself. At age 77 he shows his age a little bit, yet his quick laugh, bright smile, and self-demeaning sense of humor reveal a warm and gentle spirit that has not hardened through years of trial. It was humbling to sit in the presence of this man, who three weeks earlier I had watched break down weeping on film as he listened to one of his African brothers describe how he had been tortured under apartheid. As we sat down together in his office he said "let us begin with a prayer," and invited the Holy Spirit to come and animate our hearts, giving us joy and inspiring us to love one another as Christ first loved us. That place in his heart where God's spirit dwells is the secret of the man's charisma, and though his political perspectives were helpful it was simply seeing his joyful spirit that moved me the most.

As in Rwanda, the limited amount of time spent with community leaders and servants in South Africa affirmed my belief that what the world needs more than anything else is men and women who are alive in their gifts, and having oriented their lives around a purpose beyond their own gratification. I met a lot of people in South Africa who exemplify this, and challenge me to consider whether I am doing the same. I believe that the most fulfilling purpose around which an individual life can be oriented is Christ, yet I am convinced that God smiles all of those who strive to live fully, sincerely, and selflessly, partnering together through his Spirit to bring about a renewed creation. And lofty theological musings aside, people like Desmond Tutu, Edwin Cameron, Lindela, Kanisua, Sindatenda from BEEP are incredible because they are down-to-earth, joyful, passionately-committed people who give more to their communities than they take.

Big words. Words come easy. The nagging question in the stillness and quiet of a lazy Sunday morning, though, is whether I live this way. Here, back at Oxford, exams a month away, I continue to pray for wisdom to make the most of this time, and for a heart that desires to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God in the world.