Entries this day: general_assembly

general assembly

26-30 (or so) june 1999

written 7 July 1999

"How was Utah?"

This is a common question posed by my friends, and I've not yet written my official definitive answer.

For those of you thinking, "Utah?" here you go:
I attended General Assembly, the largest Unitarian Universalist convention of the year. This year it was held in Salt Lake City. The week consists of lots of workshops, some worship, and plenary, where we as a democratic group decide what issues to focus our collective resources on.

I go there just to meet cool people and hang out.

Last year I met Jen at GA. She's my friend in New Hampshire, who I went to visit and we saw Blue Man Group together, and she came down here and is checking out Rice University and she came to KTRU with me one time. That Jen.

So this year, Jen flew down to say HI to me and Wende, and to say HI to Rice, and to attend GA. Wende drove us to the airport (Wende went to a family reunion and missed most of GA) and dropped us off.

Normally I would have skipped this part, but once we found our gate, I went to go P and when I came back, Jen had volunteered us to give up our seats so we could get $220 each!! That's totally awesome, but unfortunately the next flight was 5 hours away. That was cool, though because we would make almost $50 per hour, but I didn't want to miss 5 hours of hanging out with our homies at GA.. hmmm.

Turns out that we didn't have to wait. But we did give up our seats. We got moved to First Class of our same flight!!

First Class was pretty cool. We got beverages even before the plane took off, in real glass glasses, no less! Once we were flying, we got steamed wash cloths to pat our faces, or warm our hands, or wipe our noses, or clean our ears. I patted my face and cleaned my ears. They were already clean so oh well, but it was fun.

Bottomless orange juice is one of my favorite drinks in the world. I had plenty on this day. Before we got our food, the stewardess carefully and precisely unfolded napkins onto our tray tables. Breakfast was fresh fruit: strawberries, grapes, peeled kiwi and fresh heated sliced bagel with cream cheese on the side.

I had milk and orange juice with my breakfast and soon had to P again. I normally would skip this part, but interestingly, while I was trying to go out of the restroom, a guy was in the way, and he wasn't responding to stewardesses' repeated, "sir; you'll need to move; he's trying to open the door." and suddenly, kerthunk, he collapsed in front of the door!

I proceeded to read the directions on the soap dispenser, and the toilet diagrams, and the ingredients of the deodorant spray, and the ingredients of the soap, then played with the sink water faucet, then the sink drain, ... then read the ingredients of the soap and wondered who gets paid to design diagrams to explain how to flush toilets then fortunately the door opened.

"Sorry; he passed out" was the only explanation I got. I didn't really want more than that; I kinda felt bad for the guy, who was now nowhere in sight. Hmmm.

A Stephen King-ish image flew through my head. Jen assured me, however, that he had gone back to his seat (the guy who passed out, not Stephen King).

Jen and I played lots of Cosmic Wimp Out, a dice game reminiscent of Yahtzee, but way simplified.

So that's it about the flight. First class and a guy passed out.

On the first day, after we had checked in and met Mya, our two doors down hotel neighbor, I saw a woman about my age standing in line to register our same hotel. I was in my bouncy "HI" mode, so I bounced over and said "HI!"

Her name was Lucy, and she had had a pretty cruddy time reaching GA; she arrived by train, though I have not heard much more about the event than that. We talk talk talked, and interestingly enough, she ended up staying in the same room with Matt, Jen and I.

The site

Most of General Assembly events happened in The Salt Palace, a pretty nice convention center. (Better picture here) Most people stayed in hotels within one block of the Salt Palace. Salt Lake City has some big blocks, though! All streets are two way streets and are wide enough so that a horse drawn carriage can turn around within the street.

Jen, Matt, Lucy and I all stayed in the Wyndham, in part of a block of rooms reserved for young adults.

The youth who attended GA mostly all stayed in the Best Western across from Salt Palace, this was the site of 24 hour talking and chilling and some big games of Silent Football!

The Mormon Temple stood majestically nearby. Many of my friends visited it during the week, with varied reports as to how cool it was.

The Salt Palace had some huge halls (as could be expected from any big city convention center) that we used. One room was about 500 x 500 x 100 feet for a total of 25,000,000 cubic feet of air in there (I think that's bigger than Bigg's office!) We used it as the exhibition hall, where hundreds of tables were set up advertising grass roots campaigns or organizations, selling stuff and stuff and stuff, or just whatever people wanted on a table near lots of UU foot traffic.

In this hall the Young Adult group had a table. We sold chalices, resource books, T-shirts, and just generally advertised ourselves.

My bowl

Last year at GA there was a table called "Empty Bowls" in the exhibition hall. At this table, basically people donated bowls (usually hand made), other people purchased them, and the money went to help feed the hungry in some manner. People who purchased the bowls got to eat soup during one lunch.

This year I brought a bowl to be donated, but there was no Empty Bowls table!! It had transformed into Empty Shelves, where people could purchase books that had been donated and the money would help a poor urban school purchase books. But I had a bowl!

I wandered around the tables in the exhibition hall looking for one that might allow me some table space to sell my bowl.

This was a painful process for me. I loved my bowl! I had hand painted it at The Mad Potter (same pottery studio in several of my recent entries) and it turned out wonderfully well. I had painted a landscape of trees on the outside, and on the inside, an ocean of fish and a shark and whale and a sunken ship at the bottom. I painted a manta ray near the bottom, and swimming on the surface, a duck in honor of The Far Side. (No other aspect of the bowl had anything to do with The Far Side, but I when I painted the duck, I thought of The Far Side.) On the bottom I painted "painted with love by Rob" and put the date and my email address. Okay, I am an Internet junkie.

I finally found a table that would sell it for me, and I put a $45 price tag on it. For four days it didn't sell. By that time, a few bowls had collected on the Empty Shelves table, so I moved my bowl there. From the Empty Shelves people, I got a receipt for $25 (the price it cost me to make the bowl). I just got an email recently:

Rob,

Just wanted you to know that the colorful and charming bowl you donated to
the UU General Assembly now resides in Whitefish, Montana!  Its sale added
to a generous donation UUs made for books for a local SLC school.  The
school has a bilingual population and their shelves were quite empty.

I really appreciate your thoughtful donation, and I will enjoy having this
happy momento of a good and meaningful week.

When I wrote back for confirmation that I could use the email, I got this reply:

Sure, it's fine for you to use my message on your homepage.  I enjoyed
reading your story of this great little bowl.  I do feel the love and
caring love you put into it, and want you to know that it was admired right
from the start!

Actually, I found  this whimsical bowl on the second day of GA.  It was on
one of the back tables to the left, and a lady there told me the part of
its story she could recall.  I picked it up and loved it immediately, then
continued around the room looking at books and "stuff", and for a chalice
for our little fellowship.  The following day, the bowl was on another
table, and I picked it up again and went through the same ritual of just
holding it.  Finally, on the following day, when I found it once again on
the Empty Shelves table and it about jumped into my hands, I knew that it
was certainly following me for a reason!   I just admire all the
imagination which went into it, the vivid, happy colors, the shining
quality.  And the duck on top.

I hope that if I get to the Nashville GA next year there will be another
bowl there by Rob--and that there will be an Empty Bowls project, as well.

I haven't written back to see if I can use the above email.

Lucy

Lucy and I had great fun hanging out together. We talk talk talk talked, ate breakfast two or three mornings together, went swimming twice, and just generally reconnected from a past life or two. Twice we stayed up until like 4am talking about anything and everything.

We played on a treadmill down in our hotel's weight room; we found that just standing on it would make the tread move downward, allowing a nice feet massage as feet passed over the roll bars! This was beyond exceptionally hilarious at 3 o'clock in the morning!

On a previous evening, a group of young adults were all at a worship or something that ended at 11:20pm. Our pool closes at midnight and Lucy and I had planned to swim that night. We calculated: 15 minutes to get to our hotel, 5 minutes to change... that will give us 20 minutes in the pool! GO!!

So we ran from the Shilo hotel to our hotel, which was 4 big Salt Lake City blocks away (that's like 8 normal city blocks) and changed, ran down to the pool. And let it here be known that walking quickly for me is the same speed as Lucy running; her legs are shorter.

Several people came a tad later to join us; the pool did not close at midnight exactly. I delighted in cooling off in the pool, boiling in the hot tub, then baking in the sauna, then jumping back in the hot tub, then the pool, then sauna, then pool, then hot tub and back and forth, left right, upside down all crazy fun until a hotel guy came walking through at 12:25am, "okay pool closes in two seconds!"

It was more like five minutes before we all left dripping and drying off. On the same floor was a 20 year high school reunion! Should we crash it in our bathing suits? Truly I think we might have if it weren't so late. I was personally pretty tired, and the general consensus of our group was that we wouldn't appreciate it if our respective 20 year high school reunions were crashed in a similar manner.

So instead of crashing the party, we went to our rooms and crashed.

Actually, it was a bit more involved than that. A couple of people were all, "meet downstairs in the lobby at 1am" and so I changed, went down there and promptly found myself falling asleep on the couch in the hotel lobby.

Wow. I was amazed at how astonishingly drained was my energy! Was it the heat from the sauna and hot tub? The mixture of jumping between all three extremes? I don't know, but I was just exhausted.

No one made it down by 1:10am, so I left a note and went to bed.

Dearest Water Sprites

I regret to inform you that upon closer examination
of my physical energy level, I will not be able to
attend any After-Pool-Festivities.

I wish you a most delightful evening.

       With Love
       - Rob

I don't think anyone else read the note.

Bridging Ceremony

One of the most incredible organizations of which I have ever been a part is YRUU. Young Religious Unitarian Universalists gave me peace, love, happiness during high school - a place where I was truly loved for being myself. Where I didn't have to wear certain clothes in order to fit in. Where I could express my true emotions, be my true self, and be honored for that - unconditional love is a rare thing to find during high school.

YRUU started in 1983, I was a youth member from 1985 to 1990, and it still goes strong. Now I am an adult advisor in this community - I volunteer my time and energy for the youth; they hang out and talk and play and worship and do whatever they do.

One of the beautiful things about YRUU is that new freshmen youth are always growing into the group. Usually a little unsure at first, they are embraced by the older youth and welcomed into the group. On the other extreme, older youth leave YRUU into the big unknown of Adulthood. Older youth who know they don't quite fit anymore in YRUU often feel fear of the unknown, sadness to leave their friends, the unknowable, "what do I do now?"

The Bridging Ceremony builds bridges between YRUU and young adults. It welcomes the older youth into the young adult group. Though mostly symbolic, the ceremony represents an important milestone in a youth's life.

I think last year was the first year that General Assembly had a Bridging Ceremony. Young adults were present, and each youth who wanted to bridge paired up with a young adult. One at a time, each pair walked to the front of the room where the youth spoke their name into the microphone, picked up a piece of clay (representing how their future can be molded to any shape), and a copy of UU Backpackers, a faith for the road.

Other than the 30 or so youth who bridged and the young adults who escorted them, about 60 people showed up last year. Absolutely incredibly moving experience.

This year, 160 or so youth bridged. The audience crowded with a couple thousand people. Beyond absolutely incredible.

Jeremy L-N chose me to escort him across stage. I was absolutely thrilled and flattered.

After the ceremony, we all trekked across the street to munch fruit, crackers and various cheeses, punch and stuff. We munched and talked and had a great time.

Barefoot

I am so thankful that I was able to run around barefoot the entire week. None of the hotels complained, and I even walked through the nearby mall for like an hour, including eating lunch and no one said anything (until a security guy saw me as I was leaving, "next time you need to wear shoes.").

There was an outdoor water fountain begging for me to play in it. Wearing no shoes I happily obliged.

The fountain was a single straight row of about 30 spouts, splashing right up out of the sidewalk. The sidewalk basically sloped down into a trough shape and the fountain nozzles were in this trough, keeping the water contained.

           |                     |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
           |                     |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
  ----\    |    /----     ---\   |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |   /---
       \---|---/              \--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--/       

       end view                                edge view

The day was delightfully warm and sunny, so I decided to take a walk through the fountain. Using one bare foot, I found that I could entirely block the spray from a single nozzle. Blocking the spray of each successive nozzle with each successive step, I walked the entire length of the fountain and never once got a huge spray in the crotch. I got my shorts plenty splashed, but nothing compared to what I would have gotten if I had just run through a single nozzle without blocking it. That was so much fun!!

(Warning - starting now and the next two sections involve blood and stuff. Go to the Silent Football heading if you don't want to read it.)

Last year at General Assembly, I cut my foot on the escalator. I basically misstepped while running up the escalator barefoot and gouged my big toe on one of the little groove things that escalators have. I did not get stitches, but I had to bandage up my foot for the rest of the week.

Stitches

This year at General Assembly, after the beautiful Bridging Ceremony, after the reception, I was running downstairs in one of the hotels. These were soft carpeted stairs. These were soft carpeted stairs with a little row of lights at the bottom of each step with a strip of wood above each light.

------   
      |                 
      ]			legend:           
     p  <------                           
      -------           -   carpet
             |          |   carpet        
             ]          ]   strip of wood 
            p           p   row of lights
             -------
Side view of steps

In the above image an arrow <---- points to where my heel clipped the strip of wood as I ran down, resulting in yanking free a flap of thick skin from my heel. As soon as it happened I was like, "ow; please don't be bleeding." I looked down and it was bleeding. Unfortunately I was 3 big Salt Lake City blocks from my hotel. And more festivities were planned for the evening! Shriek!

So I stepped gently out of the hotel, hopping and hoping not to bleed on anything. As I crossed the street, I looked behind me and saw little blood splats each place I put my foot down. Doh.

To my hotel I ran, through the grass as much as possible, and gingerly through my hotel lobby, waited for the elevator, unfortunately leaking onto the floor and then up to my room to wash my foot.

I sopped a hand towel with blood (not soaked, but definitely spotted) and applied pressure for about 30 seconds, then I put on socks and shoes and went back out.

The same elevator was waiting for me on my floor, so I attempted to clean its carpet with a little spit and elbow grease, but it didn't get all the blood. When we reached the ground floor, I wiped my blood off their marble floor, but some of it had dried. To the front desk I went and told them I bled on the floor and the guy threw away the towel for me.

worship

Now I was late (from running 3 blocks, not from time spent on my injury). I now ran back 3 blocks plus 1 block to the Shilo hotel for worship. The room was dark, worship had started, so no one commented on my wearing of shoes.

The worship was led by Kim(?) - basically she offered some different Tibetan techniques for meditation and invited us to meditate for about 5 minutes. This meditation time was well received by me.

dancing

Each night at GA there was dancing going on at one of the hotels: two different rooms with different themes or genres each night. After the worship, as people made plans for the evening a few people asked me, "hey are you going to the dance?" At first I was like, "um, uh, I dunno..." then, "um yeah, I might be there" then, "yeah yeah I'll probably be there for a bit" then, "that's where I'm going now!"

So the heel of my sock was entirely soaked in blood, but it wasn't like seeping through my shoes or anything (good thing they are black leather hightops) so I danced. I mostly danced with Christine. We hadn't previously met, so we were just random chit chatting while slow dancing. Oh wait, let me back up a bit.

I had on my name tag two little tiny red flashing lights. These came from a button from Wende's bookstore that Wende gave me some time ago. I immediately ripped that button apart, removed the lights for a later date. GA was that date.

As Christine and I danced close together, my blinking red lights were right by her breast, apparently to the amusement of some people around us. I heard this later from my friend Tara, and I thought it was pretty funny. I told Christine about it later and she thought it was funny too. Wende, who was with me when I told Christine, didn't think it was quite as funny. (note: Wende objects to the preceding sentence.)

ultimate

After dancing for a while, the time came for Ultimate Frisbee. It was about 12:00 midnight and people were supposed to meet at 12:30 at the Shilo next door. I went there, found no one but Kim (who did the worship) so she and I went to the park where Ultimate had been played the previous night. We talked for a while about life and meditation and stuff for 20 minutes until the rest of the group finally showed up.

Ultimate was great; my foot felt only slightly throbby and a good time was had by all. But now blood was in fact leaking out through the mesh in the heel of my shoe.

the game

At about 1:30am, I walked to the Best Western, where the youth were playing a cool weird game called The Game. I had never seen it before, but I assume I'll play it someday soon.

Bryn, one of my youth in Southwest District saw my foot, and brought to my attention the fact that I probably ought to at least look at it. She offered her bathroom for this purpose.

(okay, this might be gross) Against the pristine clean white bathtub, my blood shone brightly like in the movies. My sock was fully soaked, heel to toes, a lot of it brown and icky. The blood mostly squeezed right out of my sock; it apparently wasn't cotton. I flapped open the flap of skin to let the water wash over it, and the electric pain stab through. Bloody watery rivulets flowed down the drain. Something gross was under the flap of skin. I thought it was fleshy meat at first, but I pulled on it and felt no pain. I pulled it entirely out and decided it was a blood clot about the size and feel of a pulverized raisin.

"I need to get stitches."

So we went back down to the front desk, where the hotel staff guy was working on something and didn't notice us. I picked up the courtesy phone on the counter and dialed the front desk. He answered and I said something like, "hello front desk, this is Rob at the front desk." He turned around and we all had a good laugh. It was 2:30 in the morning.

He called a cab, and Bryn pleaded that I let her go to the ER with me. So we went and had a delightful time as I got stitched up. The one not-yet-a-nurse guy Matt was fun; he's working as an intern there while going to school for his bachelor's degree. Dr Welch was friendly and explained that the skin was so thick that the stitches might not hold, but she would "tack it down" so the skin could act as a natural band aid. I lay face down and bit the pillow as she injected lydocain in 4 spots. The first stitch I could not feel at all. The remaining three I could feel and I bit the pillow again for each one. She quickly tied up all the loose ends and I got four layers of bandages, plus an Ace bandage. We called another cab and left.

Dropped Bryn off at her hotel amidst lots of youth who had now heard what happened. I went to my hotel and was pretty much able to walk with no problem. I just stayed off my heel and went to bed.

Next morning I woke up and tested stepping on my foot. The pain was astonishing when I put weight on my heel, but no problem at all when on the ball of my foot. Blood had soaked through all four layers of bandage and the Ace bandage, so Jen found someone who had a car and went with me to the hospital. The nurse did not re-admit me (saved hundreds of dollars there, and I'm very thankful) but just unwrapped my foot, declared it all good and re-wrapped with new gauze. Cool.

For the rest of the week (and even now some) I just walked on the ball of my foot. But dangit; I couldn't go swimming for the rest of the week.

More Stitches

In the morning before Jen escorted me to the hospital again, she said something like, "I've never had stitches." Ironically, that night, Jen was playing Ultimate and ended up with ten nice blue stitches above her right eye. Right in the eyebrow area, so they are hardly noticeable. Was our room cursed? Neither Matt, Lucy, nor Wende were injured during the week, so we think it was not the room.

Silent Football

The same night that Jen was busy getting stitches, I joined a Silent Football game in progress, with Mimi as Madame Dictator. The game was huge compared to a Southwest District game, like 30 or more people, so their rules were a bit more lax than ours. They had one cool rule that we will probably adopt: the assumed names of players changed during the game to fit their character or mannerism or for no particular reason except "what is funny?" My name became Mademoiselle Butt Cadet or something like that. That's funny.

The game included Nathan S and Jeremy L-N doing a "Shake Your Booty" dance-off to see who would get to be named Captain of the Butt Cadets. Jeremy won by popular applause, but Nathan was later named Rear Admiral, and quickly pointed out that Admiral out ranked Captain, so Nathan therefore was truly the leader of the Butt Cadets.

The game is bizarre, and Lucy, who was with me, but didn't know the rules when we started, loved the game by the end, though hadn't quite figured out all of the hand motions for movement of the football. There was, of course, relatively little football motion. The game lasted 3 hours I believe. I love Silent Football.

Wende

Wende missed most of General Assembly, as she attended her family's family reunion until Sunday night, when GA had only 1 full day left. She was well received by everyone but had a tremendous sunburn and spent a lot of Monday morning sleeping.

Monday afternoon we joined 30 other young adults at Olive Garden, but had to wait a while for our table as we had made a reservation for 20. Interestingly, the 10 of us who waited for our table were served first.

Closing Ceremony

Because of the delay at Olive Garden, we ended up arriving late for the General Assembly closing. The closing ceremony was more moving than the Bridging Ceremony. Nick Page (or is it Paige?) led us in songs and chants and hand motions and love that must be experienced to be understood. The GA choir sang hugely and wonderfully... wow.

At one point, all the youth (3 rows worth in the front of this auditorium) all left and a few minutes later began to pour onstage. I began the clapping. For fully 3 or 4 minutes, the entire time it took for the youth to file onstage, the entire assembly of thousands gave them a standing ovation. Talk about honoring the youth. Having arrived late, we were in the back row. I stood on my chair for this ovation.

When the whole ceremony was over, energy was so high that we just floated out. Incredible.

Lagoon

Wende did not just fly to Salt Lake City to sleep off her sunburn, eat Olive Garden, and float out of the closing ceremony. She came to join Jen and I at Lagoon Park the day after GA.

Lagoon deserves nearly its own entry, but suffice to say it had 4 pretty cool coasters (rate 2.5 on my scale of 5).

One was a small smooth steel coaster called Collosus the Fire Dragon. A tad bigger than Viper at Astroworld, it has 2 loops and 2 good low level swoops great for pictures.

Another was Wild Mouse, with small cars and 180 degree turns; lots of fun.

Jet Star II has the same track type as Whizzer at Six Flags Great America in Chicago, but is way more compact and has tighter more neck-crunching turns.

Last is a wooden roller coaster called Roller Coaster. It has basically two circuits and a few big humps and lots of small humps. Nice.

They had a ferris wheel type ride, on which each car could spin freely on its own axis. Jen and I rode that and began by spinning the car 20 times in a row, turning it upside down and locking the brake, and having a generally dizzy fun time. Her stitches didn't enjoy it quite as much, unfortunately, so she slept for about an hour at the first aid station while Wende and I rode other stuff.

The Lake

After Lagoon, we drove to the Lake. That's the Great Salt Lake, of course. Wende really wanted to see it, and I kinda did but was kinda bummed cause I still couldn't swim. Once we got there, I didn't feel so bad. It looked like an ocean with essentially no waves.

Flight Home

Wende had flown in from Austin, while Jen and I came from Houston, so our return flights were different. Jen and I didn't get first class seats, but got a lot of sleep on the way home.

So there it is; in summary General Assembly was great great great. permalink