First Comes Love...Then Comes Marriage...Then Comes A Baby In A Baby Carriage

A Guitar and A Voice…..A Match Made in Heaven

Bilal - Think It Over

Mara Hruby and Nate Mercereau (Attic Of Love) - The Panties

Theophilus London - ACCEPT THE NEW

I've been too lazy to write lately, but never too lazy to groove with some good music.  Check it out!

Gotta LOVE the bike!!!

Old Rag Mountain Hike

Here are some pictures from my most recent hike. Thanks to Brian, Jermaine, Kevin and Samir for joining me.

Music for the Soul

In honor of Black History Month I decided to combine two of my passions. I took my love for Music and Crossword Puzzles and created my very own puzzle. I hope you all enjoy it.

To check your results, send me an email at stu00005@gmail.com and I’ll forward you the answers. Or you can solve the puzzle interactively and find the solution online at:

http://justcrosswords.com/Music_for_the_Soul_custom7227.html

Clue: It's Black History Month...


I created my puzzle at justcrosswords.com

Sports 1st in Social Change

As the Inauguration of our 44th President approaches I started thinking of the various social milestones in our country’s history. The more I delved into my research the more I found that it was sports that were in many cases years ahead of the rest of society in embracing change and tackling injustice. Baseball was integrated in 1947 (17 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and the first female Olympic champion was in 1900 (20 years before women were granted the right to vote in 1920). So as much as we appreciate sports for their entertainment value, I thought it was important to also remember the contributions of our sports trailblazers towards social change. So I’d like to take this time to say a thank you to: Jackie Robinson, Althea Gibson, Billie Jean King, Bill Russell, Charlotte Cooper, Arthur Ashe, Alice Coachman, Doug Williams, Arturo “Arte” Moreno, and the countless others who made great sacrifices and aided in ridding our society of discrimination. While we may still have a long way to go, I truly believe one day that the race, sex, age, or sexual orientation of our political candidates will be just a footnote in history and not the headline. Just as in sports today the only color that matters is that of the uniform and not of the participants.

StuffStuartLikes

I'd be curious to see what some of you like...

Family
Friends
Laughter
Interesting Conversation
The Redskins
Porterhouse Steak/Cream Spinach/Baked Potato/Guinness Stout (Favorite meal)
Belgium Beer
Gin & Tonic
Jazz
Reggae
The company of that special woman. What up TW!
Jerk Chicken
The Sports Section
Sudoku
Hiking
Sitting in the grass and listening to good music
Comedy
Del Ray
Internet Radio
Flea Markets
Doing nothing
Dexter on Showtime
Stuffed Green Peppers
Frozen Margaritas – No Salt
Silence
Prince (Old stuff/New stuff not so much)
The Beach
Stumbling across great new music
North Wilkesboro, NC
Peace
The color green
Jeans
Coffee
Shopping
Crossword Puzzles
Biking

10-Hour Hike

For those of you that read this (all 2 of you), you know that my previous post spoke of a 5-hour hike through George Washington National Forest. Well this time Samir and I decided to get a bit more adventurous. This time it was Shenandoah National Park and a 7-hour hike, or so we thought. Samir and I got started on our 7-hour hike planning to take in some nature and get a little workout. Well long story short, we got lost. There I said it, {ladies insert men with directions joke here}. Somehow, Samir and I managed to turn a 7-hour hike into a 10-hour hike, complete with deer, black bear, darkness, and not enough food or water. And you know what; I loved every sweat inducing, muscle twitching second of it. I guess I'm learning to enjoy the journey. Either that or I'm a little nutty, draw your own conclusions. But anyway, here are a couple of shots…Peace!

Don’t miss the miracles

This past weekend I went hiking with a couple of friends, shout out to Samir and Aimee! Our day started around 6:30am with overcast skies and mother earth showering us with rain. But undeterred, we ventured out on our 1.5 hour drive to Mill Mountain in the George Washington National Forest. We arrived at our destination just before 9am and got our gear and minds ready for the 6.5 hour hike through Mill Mountain with a “short” crossover to Big Schloss to take in the must see vista. Initially I wondered if the crossover to Big Schloss was worth the extra 2 hours of hiking, but it really was in so many ways. As we all know there is something extremely rewarding about setting a goal and reaching it. But the thing I’m learning to appreciate even more than achieving the goal is the process. It’s the hawks protecting their nests, the chipmunks harvesting for the winter, the mushrooms so varied & unique that only a power greater than man could’ve created them. Long story short, it’s the journey. A quote from Thich Nhat Hanh says that “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” We’ve all heard very similar quotes before, yet we still walk past miracles everyday and fail to recognize them as such. Ask a blind man about the miracle of seeing a flower or a deaf man about the beautiful sound of a rolling stream. Why do we have to be without before we appreciate being with? I don’t know, but I do know that everyday I’m trying to be more thankful, more appreciative and more of a protector of the endless miracles of our earth. Having said that, after 5 hours of basically walking on a Stairmaster my body and mind started to wander to the car, a shower and my bed! But then I refocused my thoughts to the natural beauty of my surroundings, focusing solely on my walking meditation, and before you know it I had reached the goal. Now the initial goal was to reach the summit and conquer the hike, but as I look back, the things that flash in my mind when reflecting are the hawks, the chipmunks, and the mushrooms. These things may pale in size to the mountaintop, but I’ve found that these are the first things I mention to friends when discussing the hike. Amazingly, if we allow ourselves to recognize the miracles then we have a greater chance of truly comprehending them. For the word comprehend comes from the Latin roots cum, which means “with”, and prehendere, which means “to grasp it or pick it up”. To comprehend something means to pick it up and be one with it. I’m finding that through nature I am learning how to comprehend people. Again to quote Thich Nhat Hanh, “if we want to understand a person, we have to feel his feelings, suffer his sufferings, and enjoy his joy”. Whether we’re talking about nature or our fellow man, let’s put forth the effort to comprehend it. For if their feelings are our feelings then we wouldn’t hurt them.

Are you cultivating weeds or orchids?

Question, are we raising our children or just allowing them grow up? There is a difference.

Did you just allow those weeds to grow up in your lawn or did you raise them? I bet they just grew up there and you look at them with distain every single day. Then why do we allow our children to just grow up and not raise them? If we don’t want society to look upon our youth with that same distain as an unwanted weed, then let’s start raising our children again, please! Unattended things like weeds just grow up in your lawn, but those prize winning orchids, they were cared for, nurtured, and tended to. You raise award winning orchids, you don’t just throw out the seeds and let them grow up on their own and expect them to be the best. So why do we just spread our seeds and leave them to grow up on their own? Whether we’re talking orchids or children, if you want the best out of them, you better take the time to care for, to nurture, to tend to, and to cultivate them. Otherwise you are limiting the chances of them reaching their full potential.

Our children are going to grow up regardless, but how do we want them to describe their upbringing? Whether we do it or not, someone or something is going to raise our children; i.e.“the streets raised me”, or “I was raised by loving parents”. Young people raised by the streets understand and abide by the rules of the street. Young people really raised by their parents will understand and abide by the rules of their parents. I know what you're thinking, does raising your child ‘the right way’ guarantee that they’ll turn out to be happy and productive citizens? No, no more so than raising your child ‘the wrong way’ guarantee that they’ll turn out to be dysfunctional adults. But I’d rather fail at trying to do the right thing than succeed at doing the wrong thing. We must start doing the right thing.

Long story short: Raise your children! Don’t just allow them grow up. Because after all, “you were raised better than that”.