People We Like…vol. 2

my friend, rupal

following in bobby’s footsteps, i want to tell you about my college roomie, rupal. she is 24 yrs old, approximately 5′2, brown eyes, likes long walks on the beach…okay, i’m just kidding. i will tell you, though, a few details about rupal that defines who she is and why she has made such an impact on my life. she is indian (as in her parents came to the US from india), gujarati to be exact; she was the president of college feminists our senior year of college; she’s a book-nerd, like me; and she transferred to northwestern university the same year that i did.

that’s actually a good place to start.  i’m at this NU orientation for freshmen and transfer students and they herd us onto buses to go hear the school president speak. fortunately for us, the transfers were all together. in a classic forrest gump moment, i boarded the bus, thinking, “i’ll just sit by myself…oh, wait, there aren’t any seats left.” (it wasn’t quite like that, but it makes for a better story). anyway, i find myself asking “can i sit here?” to a total stranger who turned out to be rupal. from the moment i sat down, we got going.

me: i’m from AR (the south), transferred here mainly because of my boyfriend, i have a twin, etc.

her: i’m from iowa (the midwest), transferred here because i wanted to be here in the first place, i have little twin sisters, etc.

it kinda goes without saying that we were immediately best buds. we talked for three hours straight (through the president’s speech); we got mutually pissed off at a junior who thought that he could save two entire rows of the auditorium just because he had seniority; we determined to hang out soon. that night, i went back to my dorm (in the same building as bobby) and told him that i’d made my new best friend.

batgirl and superwoman!

we were roommates junior year, and i can honestly say we never had a roommate fight. pretty remarkable in the world of roomies!  we were perfect together. she’d cry, i’d listen. i’d cry, she’d listen. we talked politics, religion, boyfriends, feminism, food (she was a vegetarian, and i’m…not), family, race, school, work, and on and on and on. bobby never tires of calling me a feminist…and i never tire of explaining what feminism really is! one of the aspects of our friendship that i value the most is that we loved just talking to each other and we both kept open minds and open hearts. oh, and we watched “gilmore girls” and “one tree hill” together religiously.

rupal is solely responsible for introducing me to indian food. specifically gujarati food (food from gujarat, a state in india…vegetarian). we frequented devon st. in chicago (basically “little india”), pretty often. let’s just say it opened up a “whole new world” to me. she would order for us and i would eat! samosa, chuna masala, allu gobi, yogurt, and all kinds of other goodness of the earth! and of course we would eat with our hands only. then we would shop. rupal would stock up on indian groceries and bollywood videotapes, and then she’d have her eyebrows threaded. i never did it, but now i wish i had. makes for a very clean eyebrow! (i keep accidentally typing eyebrown instead of eyebrow…kinda funny because rupal always referred to herself as brown). it’s fair to say that rupal taught me everything i need to know about india. sweet, sweet memories.

another memory i’ll always cherish is when we went to visit each other’s families junior year. i was able to meet her dad. rupal’s mother died when she was sixteen, and rupal sort of took up that role for her family through high school. let’s just say she is clean, responsible, nurturing, wise, and a blessing to her family.

arati, rupal, avani

while visiting, i was also able to see her twin sisters arati and avani perform in an indian cultural performance (talents, dance, etc.). i got to wear a sari and a jewel on my forehead, and i loved every minute of it. rupal came to visit my family in arkansas too. she was lucky enough to help us throw our parents a 25th anniversary party. you know that was a hoot! she got to meet ALL of my family, and half of our church too! it took us about 13 hours to get home, but we had a great time.

i really could go on for days. i keep thinking of fun memories, sad memories…all true friend memories. she schemed with bobby on how to get the right size for my engagement ring for pete’s sake! she’s now finishing her last year in law school in iowa. she’s applied for a fulbright scholarship to research women’s rights issues in india. i love her for that. and by the way, i already told her i’m going with her. i just spent a weekend with her in chicago (she had an internship over the summer). we stayed downtown in her cousin’s AWESOME condo, with a wall of windows open to the chicago river and michigan avenue. i took her to the airshow and exposed her to the blue angels (yes, i take full credit). we went to devon and H&M, and rode the CTA all over town. we’re still making memories and i can’t wait for the many more to come!

FINALLY! i just wanted to mention that rupal recently recommended a graphic (as in comic-style) novel to me called Persepolis. i just read it and it’s awesome. you should too.

hopefully you can see why i love my rupal.

sunny rupal

 

People We Like…vol. 1

bobby posting:

We here at the Harrisonian are beginning something new today.  We like to write about our own world.  We like to update friends and family on the what-goings-on of life, love and learning on North Pine…but we both came to the revelation recently that we really like talking about other people even more.  So we decided to begin posting on “people we like”.  Sometimes they’ll be 850 words.  Sometimes they’ll be a paragraph.  All the the time they’ll be heartfelt.  I’m kicking things off with a dear friend of mine.

MATTHEW AARON SAX

The New Yorker's take on Matt

A couple of weeks before heading up to begin college at Northwestern University, I receieved an email from the school.  A guy named Matthew Aaron Sax would be my roommate.  It listed his phone number and where he was from.  New York?  We emailed a few times back and forth and shared the things we liked with each other.  He recommended I read Dave Eggers’ first book (which I did in 2 days) and I told him about a little known band named Sigur Ros.  He said he was a theater major who was aiming for Broadway and beyond…I told him I was going to be on SportsCenter one day.

Me and Matt met a few days later in September of 2002 and besides the fact that our mental pictures of each other were dead wrong, we became best friends immediately.  That first night at orientation, the other freshman just assumed me and Matt were Sophomores or Juniors because of how quickly we’d developed a chemistry and ease with each other.  How did a Jewish kid from New York become so close, so quickly to a Christian guy from Arkansas?  I think me and Matt can both agree that only God knows the answer.

That whole year, with the difficulty of being far from home, with me and Amy’s long distance relationship, with my father passing away over Christmas, Matt was always there for me.   And that whole year, with Matt in a constant on-again / off-again relationship with his girlfriend and everything else that freshman year can bring, I was there for him.

We didn’t live together again in college and I think Matt was the better for it.  Definitely career-wise.  Sophomore year Matt put pen to paper on the dream that he’d voiced all year long while living with me.  He began writing a one man, hip-hop musical.  The following summer he decided he was taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.  He asked me to join his production crew.  He’d raised all the funds and would help pay for my trip.  I just had to hop on board.  The only problem?  A few weeks before my pastor had approached me and the missus about joining in on our church’s inaugural trip to Kenya.  We’d already made our minds to head to Africa.  Matt understood…and just like not living together Sophomore year, I think we were both the better for it.

Sax in the New York Times

His show, “Clay”, exploded!  Rave reviews followed his raw performances.  He brought the show back to Northwestern for our Junior year.  It did so well that a big time theater company in Chicago decided to pick it up.  So while the rest of us were looking for jobs as we graduated college, Matt was setting up shop for a run at a theater on Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile.  After impressing Chicago’s critics, “Clay” wound it’s way to L.A. and Kansas City (where me and Amy saw the show a month ago).

Somewhere along the way, he managed to get picked up by one of the biggest agencies in the world and began seeing movie scripts in his mailbox on a regular basis.  He’d even been told by the director that he had the lead in this Ben Kingsley film which won the Audience Award at Sundance, but the producers called him a few days later to let Matt know they’d given the role to some kid from Nickelodeon’s “Drake and Josh”.

The news wasn’t even a bump in the road though.  Because after 4 years, Matt’s finally taken his own show back to his hometown.  “Clay” is now an off-Broadway production in New York City…right there on 42nd Street.  Pretty amazing.  The New York Times has written a piece on him.  On Monday, The New Yorker’s famed Lillian Ross wrote a piece about Matt. The Chicago Tribune, The L.A. Times…they all think this kid’s got the goods.  Heck, I even did my own feature on Matt during my senior year of college, but he’s actually still unhappy about that one!  In Almost Famous terms, my honest made me the “enemy”!

The greatest part about Matt though, is that through all of his success, we have stayed good friends.  I’m not “wowed” by any of his success and I think he appreciates me for that.  He knows that I like him for who he’s always been, and not just who he’s become.  We will always be authentic, good-for-life kind of friends.  That’s why he is “People We Like”.

 

No Place for Politics?

bobby posting:

Me and Taido did our usual hang out in the school lunchroom once a week thing today at North Little Rock High School.  There’s nothing easy or non-awkward about being there in the first place, but then some of the students from the youth ministry here at the church begin getting into political discussions about the two presidential candidates (sorry Taido, Nader doesn’t really count).  The discussions then turned into the revelation that a group of them had a heck of a time ripping out one candidate’s signs from yards all over town.

“Were they Nader signs?” Taido asked.

“Who’s Nader?” the kids asked with that same quizzical look they give us during our talks on any given Wednesday night.

“You don’t know Nader?”

“You mean NATO?  No they weren’t NATO signs,” they responded.  “They were signs for one of the presidential candidates.”

“Yeah…Nader is one of the…ahh…forget it…”

Again Taido…Nader doesn’t count.

Anyway, this whole discussion reminded me of the fall of 2000.  Me and my girlfriend at the time (now my wife) engaged in the same exact presidential-candidate-yard-sign-extraction-program back then too.  I have since repented of this, and also noted, that this in no way changed the outcome of that election.  That election also jaded me for the next go-around of Picking-a-President.  After all that happened in ‘00, I just couldn’t muster the care or desire or energy for another election.  Kerry and Bush really wasn’t all that exciting anyway…was it?

“Nader ran in that election too, Bobby.”

Anyway…

This election actually has me and the missus interested once again.  You see, we went to school in Chicago for four years.  While reading the newspaper in the dining halls at breakfast every morning, we were updated on a certain young, rising political star that represented the state of Illinois in the U.S. Senate.  We became very fond of this man.  In fact, this certain politician even spoke at our university’s graduation ceremony in 2006. At that point, as if we weren’t already, we became hooked.  But just how hooked can I be now, given my new-found role within ministry?  That is the question here today.  I guess not hooked enough to even reveal said candidate’s name anywhere in this paragraph.

Several days ago, I came across this story.  Nestled right along side it was the results of a survey that says “74 percent of Americans strongly oppose pastors endorsing candidates from the pulpit.”  All of this got me thinking about the whole role of politics within the church.  Me and the missus don’t really consider ourselves all that “political”, but we do have a real interest in this Presidential election.  We do hope for change (you see…both candidates are now for “change” so I’m still not showing my colors, right?  What’s that Taido?  Nader’s for change too?).  Anyway, we believe one candidate can bring about that change more than another.  But how much can we really say that?  Can I put a sign in my yard (I guess it doesn’t matter if the kids are gonna rip it out anyway!).  Can we finally put that bumper sticker we’ve had sitting on our computer desk at home for months on the car?  Can Amy wear that pin on her shirt instead of hiding it somewhere in her purse?  Can I engage in a real political discussion with students at the lunch table and give them my opinion?  Heck, you always hear “never talk politics or religion”.  Well…I’m a youth leader so I’m going to talk religion.  Why not do both then?!

Teenagers can be swayed by the littlest of things.  I know I was at that age.  That’s why Hollywood really believes this kind of action can help with an election.  The young can be fickle and malleable.  Can’t we all?  I would never want a student’s opinion of our ministry or leaders within our church or Christianity in general affected by my political taste.  If a student tells their parent that their youth leader is all about “So and So” and that parent’s on the other side of the fence…Well let’s just say many parents probably wouldn’t think twice on sharing their own “opinion” with me after that.  I suppose safety = silence here.  Just know I’m voting…and that I’m not voting for Nader.

“Really?  You see Ralph Nader is a great candidate for our country because…”

Actually, after listening to Taido, I believe I’ve changed my mind about who I’m going to vote for.  In fact, I’m so confident and sure of my decision that I’ll even pass my choice on to you.  I’m sure after seeing this, you’ll feel this exact same way.

 

Cutting Down Borders

bobby posting:

As I was mowing our front lawn yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice the clear line I was making between my yard and my neighbors.  Everytime I came to that edge I carefully trimmed right there on the imaginary line, taking care not to accidentally trim my neighbors grass.  As I was finishing our plot of land, something wild popped in my head.  Why not go ahead and trim the neighbors little section of grass as well.  They have an enormouse driveway and a little section of grass about 1/3rd the size of a normal lawn.  I checked the driveway.  No one home.  I slyly sneaked over there and blitzkrieged it like James Bond on a mission.  Can you stealthily mow a lawn?  I’m not so sure.  I finished it up and ran the mower back to my house to put the evidence away.

An hour later, me and the missus were sitting in our living room with the screen door opened to let that cool breeze into the house.  We were loudly jamming to a mix-tape of “world music”, which means that anyone approaching our house probably thought we were either a) toking it up OR b) frolicking on the rug.  Neither of which were true.  Except for the fact that someone did approach our house:  our neighbors!  Here was the moment of truth.  Busted!

The neighbors on one side of our house are the kind of neighbors you hope for.  Helpful.  Sweet.  Dependable.  Quiet!  The neighbors on the other side…the ones whose lawn I mowed?  Well they’re no good, obviously.  Why?  Because for some sick reason we, I mean I, always assume that neighbors are punks.  I am usually pleasantly SURPRISED to find otherwise.  In the meantime I go about thinking of them as stand-offish.  Now I’ve had some bad neighbors in the past that shaped that opinion.  It didn’t just come out of nowhere.  In fact, I believe I’d even had a moment like that with these neighbors.  I once set out some trimmed limbs from bushes and trees in our backyard on that “imaginary line” in the front yard.  I came outside the next morning to find those limbs off the “line” and significantly pushed into our yard.  There was no confusion as to whose limbs those were!  But does even that, does something that small and silly, albeit annoying, give me the right to judge?  Of course not.  That’s what makes me a punk.

Well the neighbors who I’d yet to describe in “correct terms” approached the door.  We had Erin’s dog over too…which made for two loud dogs barking…loud global music blaring…and Amy running off in her painting clothes so no one at the door would see her.  I’m sure it made a great impression.

I opened the door and met Marilyn for the first time.  She seemed like a sweet enough middle-aged woman, but she wore a look of shock on her face.

“Umm…I just wanted to thank you for mowing our lawn.  We really, really appreciated it.”

After hearing “we”, I looked over to see a middle-aged man standing on the line between their yard and ours.  That line of course now blurred by two freshly mowed lawns.

“Hi.  I’m Rick.  I just wanted to say, ‘Thanks’, as well.”

“Well I’m Bobby.  And my wife is Amy.  And we just thought we’d like to help if we could.  Nice to meet you guys.”

And that was about it.  Marilyn and Rick both looked at me, their faces full of gratitude and question marks.  But for me there was nothing confusing about it.  After moving home to Arkansas in March, me and Amy have been struck with the idea of community.  We want to know the people that do life around us.  We want to know church members, and familiies, and other twenty-somethings, and, of course, our neighbors.  We’d been wanting to get to know the house next to us now for 6 months, but had never really had the chance.  What I meant to say, was that I’d never really made the choice to take that chance.  Until last night.  Until I decided to take 5 extra minutes to cut down that border.  If you have 5 extra minutes today or 5 extra hours this month, whatever it takes, cut down whatever borders there are in your life blocking you from real, open community.  It’s worth it.

 

Happy Anniversary to Us!

bobby posting:

Well three years ago today, for the first time in my life, I woke up as a married man.  Yesterday me and the missus celebrated by grabbing a good breakfast together (by the way, the buzz is true:  Satellite Cafe is fantastic (and equally expensive!)).  Sitting there over some gourmet morning food, we had a happy revelation:  we still really, really enjoy each others company.  A lot.  For those on the outside, it’s probably a little disgusting.  But for us, it’s a whole lot refreshing.  We haven’t had a ton of “us” time in a long time…so even sharing that little meal was nice.

In the spirit of sharing, here’s a song I wrote for Amy while I was a sophomore in college.  By that time, we’d been dating 2 and a couple years.  The song is 1/2 tongue-in-cheek, 1/2 sincere…kind of like our relationship most of the time!  If you want to have a listen, just click here, then click on the “NUMBERS correct version” song in the audio player.

Thank you to everyone in our life who has supported us and always been there.  From family to friends to coworkers and even pets…a very sincere “thank you” from us.

 

Finally…

bobby posting:

Well the whole car debacle finally came to an end a week ago today.  I made the trip up to Evanston, IL (home of Northwestern University, where Amy and I both graduated from college) and picked up our new ride.  That goofy looking photo above of me by Lake Michigan was taken about an hour after the purchase.  I thought leaving the door open provided a nice car commercial type touch to the whole thing.

Our new Subaru Outback is literally our dream car. Seriously.  We’re not Ferrari people, or Mercedes people, or even Acura people.  I’d say we’re more Practical people.  We wanted a car we could grow into as a family that still got good gas mileage and, of course, that we still considered cool.  So say hello to the newest member of the Harrisonian Family.  Her name is Bonnie and we hope to have her for years to come.  (here’s hoping she doesn’t become possessed like the last car and go find any steep cliffs!)

 

blue blue angels

amy posting:

i saw the blue angels for the first time when i was a kid, with my family at an airshow. i used to love airshows. and i was amazed by the blue angels. if you need proof, here goes: my sister and i carpooled to school in elementary school with some friends on our cul-de-sac. my parents would leave for work and we were supposed to simply wait for our ride. well, ever so often, we would rebelliously open the garage door, hop on our pink and blue banana-seat huffy dreamgirls, and head to the “circle”. matt, jb, and kolby (carpool buddies) would meet us there. we’d ride to the top of the steepest driveway (not so steep the last time i went back…oh well), put our feet down, and count off. the two on the ends would start down the driveway. when they hit the curb the rest of us would start off. after they had gone around the circle, we’d all meet back up in our version of the classic blue angel formation. can’t get much better than that.

every time i see the blue angels, they inspire a sense of awe in me. it sounds cheesy, but they’re just SO cool. i saw them a few weeks ago during a practice (open to the public) at their base in pensacola, FL. the minute i walked onto the base, i was in that kid mode again. i love thinking about the history of all those planes and things. yes, i was the girl in the front row pointing and oohing through the whole show. they were able to do the high show because the weather was perfect and it was amazing. if i’d written this a few weeks ago, as i had intended to do, i could’ve told you all the formations by name. i did see a pair of dragonflies doing their best nose to tail formation, which i had always mistaken for mating in the past. at one point, the jets flew low and fast right in front of us, immediately followed by a flock of birds. i thought, “all this work and power just to do what they do.”

i love the blue angels. go see them if you get a chance.

 

The Birthday Boy

Today is the birthday of our one and only son. Zeke Glorious Ellington Harrison III turns 4 today. We picked up Zeke out of foster care while living in Chicago. A police woman found him roaming as a puppy in a pretty bad section of Chicago and took him in. But the woman already had 3 dachshunds. So as a puppy growing up, our Shepard-mix of a dog thought he was a little wiener dog! The woman kept Zeke until he’d outgrown her home and then turned him over to foster care.

Me and Amy had always talked about getting 2 dogs for our first married Christmas. Well it didn’t financially add up for us to go down that route then, but we still wrestled with getting one dog. I looked around and couldn’t really find one that I fell in love with. After a close call with one beast of an animal, we decided to give ourselves one more week to find a dog…or to just wait until after college. I then came across this photo online of a little guy named Zeke! We met Zeke at a Petsmart in the northern suburbs of the Windy City and it was love at first sight. From Chicago to Kentucky to Arkansas, he’s been there when we needed him most…including this week when Amy’s gone to Florida for the week with her family! We can’t imagine our home without our boy, and 4 years later, Zeke still hops up on you like a good little lap dog, only he’s now 75 pounds! Happy Birthday Zekers!

 

My Wife, the WEDDING Photographer!

bobby posting:

On June 21st, my wife and I made the trek back to Hazard, KY. Because of the amazing job that Amy did taking engagement photos for our friends Josh and Taran, she was now responsible for their wedding photos! It was a crazy day of rushing around and snapping every single moment, but ultimately Amy came away with some beautiful pictures. I can now say that those engagement photos were not Beginner’s Luck. She is just that good! I’m throwing in a few of my favorites, but if you want to check out a larger sampling, here’s a link to the black and white collection she made of the wedding. Hope you all enjoy them as much as I do. Great job, love.

 

Off the Cliff…

bobby posting:

Well I hope you like a good long story, because boy do I have one. On Saturday afternoon, with my wife at the lake for the weekend, I was leaving a meeting here at the church. I hopped in our trusty 2000 black Ford Explorer. This thing’s got 150,000 miles on it. It’s been to the beaches of Florida and the hollers of Kentucky…to the streets of Chicago and the mountains of Colorado. It’s been as faithful a part of our family as anything but our dog Zeke. As I was leaving the parking lot, I realized I’d forgotten a phone number on my desk for a call I needed to make. I zipped down to the backside of the church, left the car on, and parked by a couple of brick pillars that stand right outside my office. A minute later, I came out of my office and our family ride was gone. I’m talking disappeared gone. No sight of it anywhere! I ran to the front of the church to see if I saw someone driving away with a newly stolen vehicle. I asked a couple of kids around if they’d seen anyone driving my car. Nothing. No clue.

I made the walk back down to the bottom of our church with my head spinning a million miles per hour. Where could it be? I was only in the building for literally one minute. Then something popped in my head. There is a ton of shrubbery and trees than outline our parking lot on the backside of our church. Beyond that first couple of feet, it all drops off down a steep slope for about 30-40 feet into a jungle of vines and woods. Surely my car wasn’t down there. Surely not…

I peered down the cliff looking for something. Then I heard it. I heard my car idling down there…somewhere. I busted thru that forest like Rambo on a man-hunt. And there, at the bottom of this huge ledge, stuck between huge rocks and strong vines sat our Explorer, perfect upright. Windshield busted, driver’s door jammed in, back right tire flat beyond measure.

Somehow my car slipped into reverse while I was in the building…rolled back about 40 feet…made a 90 degree turn on its own…hopped a curb…and then rolled backward to its near-death. Police came by. They called more police just to let someone else see the fun. The tow truck company came. Then another tow man came to get in on the action. It was a Saturday block party right here at the church. With my step-dad there, it was like the beginning to some joke: So you got a policeman, a tow truck driver, and an accountant all in a church parking lot…

3 hours later, our Explorer clunked and clanged its way back up to level ground. The initial verdict is that it’s “totaled”. With the amount of mileage on it and the fact that it’s already 8 years old, there is little belief that the insurance company would want to “fix” it. What adds to all of this, is that the Explorer is our only car. Me and the wife have become pros at sharing one vehicle. For a short period of time last year, we actually did have two cars…but the old Camry died AS WE WERE ON THE ROAD MOVING BACK HOME TO ARKANSAS! Actually, the thing died right before we could even get on the highway. So now we are car-less. In Chicago, being car-less is very doable. In the suburban South…don’t even think about it. Everything’s a five-minute drive (at best!).

So now I’m sitting here in my youth ministry office on a Monday morning. I had just preached to our high school students to praise God in the good and the bad. I told them to begin their prayers by “adoring” God and to continue them by “thanking Him” for everything in their life. As soon as I rushed down that hill and saw my only form of transportation sitting there, I looked up the sky and began asking for ways to thank God for this situation. Whether or not I succeeded in that day, I certainly tried. I was thanking God for quality time with my parents. For the help of our tow-truck guys. For the fact that no one was hurt. For all the ways we’d been blessed with that car in the first place.

No we’re waiting to see how it’ll all turn out. Was this some crazy blessing by God to get us a car that gets significantly better gas mileage? I could see that being the case if the insurance company completely covers everything. But what if that’s not the case? Will I shake my fist at the heavens like Job? Probably not…but I still won’t understand why my car would shift into psycho-mode on its own and destroy itself! And I won’t immediately know how to respond to our ever-faithful Father. I know he’ll provide. But I’ll have to admit that seeing clearly will take me a while. Right now, we’re in the stage where we can only scratch our heads and laugh at the whole thing. For that purpose, I sketched out the scene for your own understanding and confusion! I’ve never seen anything like it…the darn thing just rolled right off the cliff.