Changing of the Season: Spring Edition

Spring is a very temperamental season kind of "like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get". We experienced a wild one this year as we were spoiled by the mild winter and the week in early March with 70-degree days followed up by an April that had its moments of warmth and chill. Finally, Ohio hit its stride with the month of May as the temperatures climbed, although we have lacked the spring thunderstorms I so greatly enjoy, I do believe the warm weather is here to stay including the 90+ degree Memorial Day we are about to experience. 

There are so many reasons to love the spring months, for not only do they bring the warm weather but the end of another school year! The last few weeks of a school year are always the toughest when the warm weather finally arrives your mind checks out and your finals loom in the background just an afterthought. I just finished what amounts to my 18th year of going school and I can promise you spring fever never goes away. 

Nevertheless, I digress out of the school spectrum and into the other grand things about spring. The greenery that comes alive all around is a huge reason why I love spring, things look so much better with color. Having nature in full-bloom is a great advantage especially when you’re biking since I can tell you biking miles and miles is made a lot more enjoyable when you have pretty things to look at. I actually have a goal of biking 1000 miles this year, so far I'm around 200 or so and with a little bit of luck and good weather I feel I can make it! I also really love spring for the arrival of thunderstorm season, a feeling I get quite a few strange looks for, but come on what is better than sitting outside listening to thunder and watching lightning light up the sky with rain coming down. And of course, one of the best parts of the arrival of spring is the start of baseball season! There are truly very few better ways to spend a Friday night than in Cleveland watching the Indians play while enjoying a beer and good company, and just for a final touch of panache a brilliant fireworks show to boot! Of course, I am missing one other great component to the arrival of spring and that is all the random fun times life brings with family and friends throughout the warm season!

The Art of Writing a Wedding Toast

When I was asked by two of my best friends from high school to give a toast at their wedding I of course happily accepted not thinking much of the complexities to it. Fast forward a few months and just days before the wedding and I found myself looking down at the paper with what may have been the toughest writer's block I've ever encountered.

As a guy who has made it through 5 years of college I have obviously given my fair share of speeches but those were all vastly different from this one. First off before tonight the largest crowd I've ever spoken to is probably about 20-30, so multiply that by ten and that will be about the amount of people listening to me tonight. However, what makes this the hardest is the actual content of the speech. When writing speeches for class you're always tweaking your speech so to contain as much info as possible while staying in the time constraints of the professor. The most relieving part of giving an academic speech is that you don't have to worry about not being entertaining since your speech is purely meant to inform so naturally you will have a few listeners who will drift off during the words.

Meanwhile the wedding toast I'm about to present tonight comes with a totally different set of goals to achieve. There isn't necessarily a time limit but since everybody will be itching to get the celebrations kick started, the attendants always appreciate a short speech. So this leaves me a compact time frame to give my speech and within that time, I am out to tell the guests a romantic tale about the newlyweds. This is where I had trouble finding a short, sweet but thoroughly engrossing tale to tell in the toast. I wanted to make my words truly encapsulate their relationship and send them off into the married life in the best way I can manage with words. Finally, I found the perfect way to do it! I just closed my eyes and went through a montage in my mind of the happy couple together through the years and all the stories we have to tell. Then I merged them all together into what I hope I will come to find out tonight as a true speech from the heart!

Cutest Girls In The World

The Beach Boys in their 1965 hit song "California Girls" claimed that they had been all around the world and each area's women had their own unique merits but nothing compared to their hometown Cali girls. Now in my almost 23 years of existence on this planet and all the places I've been I was of the thought that not one area's women were any hotter than the next (although a girl with a British/Aussie accent does get some added interest). In recent months I have come to change my tune on this view although it is not dependable on a geographical area, more so on a personal interest.


I have grown up being a die-hard baseball fan. Anybody who knows me knows that once March rolls around my head is concerned with little else besides baseball until October/November and the ending of the World Series. I've always told everybody that whomever I marry will of course be the love of my life, but my first love will always be baseball. As fate would have it though I recently made the discovery that, they're girl baseball fans and many of them are just as avid fans as me! This has led me to the new conclusion that the cutest girls in the world are in fact female baseball fans! There's just something amazingly attractive about a girl who can name all 30 major league clubs, tell you what the different stats means, can discuss a team's successes and struggles, and of course loves heading to a ball game and sitting in the bleachers even through a 16 extra innings contest. 


So in closing if you are a baseball fan like myself and you know a girl whose just as big as a fan as yourself than odds are she radiates awesomeness and is in fact one of the cutest girls in the world!

Source: http://www.victoriassecret.com/ss/Satellite?ProductID=1265789746154&c=Page&cid=1332988410274&pagename=vsdWrapper&search=true

Jackie Robinson: An Unsung American Hero

Yesterday Major League Baseball celebrated Jackie Robinson Day, celebrating his break of baseball’s color barrier becoming the first African American player in the major leagues. The day was first established in 2004 in honor of the trailblazing second baseman; every player in the league sports his number 42 on their jersey, which was retired across the league in 1997. Jackie Robinson maybe well known to members of the baseball world and fans of the sport but when it comes to his recognition to the common population and his placement in the Civil Rights Movement he appears as little else than a footnote.

No African American player had played in professional baseball since the 1880's and since their ban, they found their competition in the Negro Leagues. Robinson spent just a year out of college in the Negro Leagues before Branch Rickey, the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, offered him a minor league contract in 1946. The deal hinged on Robinson’s ability to turn the other cheek to racial epithets. When asked about this provision Robinson responded "Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?" Rickey replied that he needed a Negro player "with guts enough not to fight back.” Robinson would make his debut in the big show just a year later on Opening Day, April 15, 1947 and went on to win the Rookie of the Year Award. During his first season, he received countless racial slurs from fans and players including teammates. Dodger’s manager, Leo Durocher, finally made the ultimatum to his team "I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin' zebra. I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded." Once more on top of the racial epithets, he played a game that presented a great many dangers to his person throughout the season and at one point in his rookie year, hereceived a 7-inch gash to the leg during play. Robinson was not the only player who struggled for acceptance in the big leagues; Hank Greenberg was a Jewish major leaguer who also experienced racial epithets throughout his career. Greenberg gave Robinson words of encouragement during their encounters and even fellow Dodger teammate Pee Wee Reese backed up his new teammate saying, “You can hate a man for many reasons. Color is not one of them" while standing with him to boos of fans at a game in Cincinnati.

In the end Robinson's career spanned 10 years with the Brooklyn Dodgers in which he posted a career .317 average and compiled 1,518 hits. It saw him win Rookie of the Year in 1947,National League MVP in 1949, World Series Champ in 1955 and a six-time All Star from 1949-1954. He is a member of Major League Baseball's All Century Team, which features the likes of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Lou Gehrig and CY Young. And finally was elected to the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. His breakthrough of the color barrier in 1947 predated the first landmark Civil Rights case of Brown vs. Board in 1954 placing him as a trailblazer for African American rights. Even Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Robinson as "a legend and a symbol in his own time", and that he "challenged the dark skies of intolerance and frustration". Yet when it comes to his stories making it into the history books and into the minds of Americans, it seems to only be a legendary tale known to us followers of baseball. Therefore, I encourage you, even if you're not necessarily a fan of baseball, to brush up on the tale of Jackie Robinson: An Unsung American Hero.

You Are Cordially Invited to Hug A History Major Day

It appears as if we virtually have a day for everything nowadays. In fact, just the other day on March 31 we celebrated National Cleavage Day, now there's a holiday I never knew existed! The holiday, which was started by the Wonderbra Company in 2002, claimed, "It is a day for women to realize that their cleavage is something unique and that they should be proud of it!” Meanwhile another advocate said, "It gives men a legitimate reason to stare at boobs". Makes you wonder if men or women are truly behind the creation of this celebration but either way it seems both genders win in the end! 

Nevertheless, I digress National Cleavage Day is not the only one of these uniquely created unofficial holidays that exists. There's National Hat Day (Jan 15) Singles Awareness Day (Feb 15) Peanut Butter Lover's Day (Mar 1) Kiss Your Mate Day (Apr 28) Lost Sock Memorial Day (May 9) Go Fishing Day (Jun 18) National Nude Day (Jul 14) National S'mores Day (Aug 10) Fight Procrastination Day (Sep 6) Leif Erikson Day (Oct 9) Sadie Hawkins Day (Nov 13) National Chocolate Covered Anything Day (Dec 16). There are many more where those came from and believe me can some of them really give you a laugh! At any rate, let us rewind to 2 years ago when I noticed there was an event being broadcast about called Hug a Science Major Day, which I could see as a worthy cause. I mean science majors spend so much time in their labs they are due some human interaction at some point in the day.

It got me thinking though, as a History major, which I think many of you will agree was probably one of the subjects you liked the least in school, we deserve some love too. I mean after all most of our time is spent studying people who are dead! Therefore, I decided to try out an experimental holiday for the world to show some love to History and pinned it for the last Friday of April. The first Hug A History Major Day did amazingly well gaining over 500 attendees! Unfortunately, last year it only garnered 61 attendees, which was a sad showing compared to its inaugural year. So for this years’ event on April 27, I am hoping that with a little extra campaigning and help from you guys we can get it back up this year! Now just in case you guys are confused on what the day stands for, you don't have to be a history major to attend but just have a general interest in some facet of history whether its clothes, movies, literature, or music basically everything has ties to history. And I promise you history may have seemed boring back in school but in reality, it really can be fun demonstrated in the right way! So let's show some love for History and follow the link below to attend and please invite your friends! 

3rd Annual Hug A History Major Day

Il Bacio by Francesco Hayez

Time Travel is Possible with a Bit of Nostalgia

Who says you need fancy equipment like a flux capacitor to time travel! Time travel is possible and all it takes is your imagination. Nostalgia is a funny thing it can take you places you have been to long ago, or places you experienced recently, and even in some cases to places, you’ve never been. For me nostalgia is quite the experience. It virtually serves as a mental time traveling device with its ability to at a moment’s notice ship me to a time long ago, in some cases to a time I may have never experienced.

The definition of nostalgia is as follows, “a yearning for the past, often an idealized version from one’s good old days”. Now by that definition one would find it hard to say they experience a fondness for a time that they never lived. Well if that’s the case then sign me up for the new type of it. I think it is this gift, if I can call it that, which has truly formed what, has eventually turned into a love of history. The ability to develop a fondness for a bygone era that no one else around me experienced is a trifling one but one that makes for an interesting outlook on the world. Even in the simplest of settings for instance taking a walk through a forest, my mind under the effect of nostalgia will constantly conjure up a historical image of time long ago. I have experienced similar phenomena in many other places especially when those places are flooded with historical significance all around like Boston.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Boston for a 4-day whirlwind tour of the city over the Fourth of July weekend in 2011. I virtually found myself continually taking trips back to 18^th century colonial America and even at one point looking over the balcony where the Declaration of Independence was read out picturing the congregation of people gathering to hear that controversial document. While in Salem, I developed an image of the small Puritan seaside colony and being able to walk on the same ground as the colonial men and women did hundreds of years before at least for me created some kind of bond that materialized in my head. This very similar phenomenon happens to me about everywhere I’ve been with a rich historical past Savannah, Portland, Washington DC, Roanoke, and St. Augustine.

Nevertheless, I don’t just experience this for places of great historical significance it happens just as often with flashes back to times of my own life. The last few weeks of my undergraduate career, walking around campus was just like watching old videos of myself as every step I took I saw in front of me an image of myself from the past. Another example where I experienced a blast from the past was this past summer when I endeavored to read all seven of the Harry Potter books in preparation for the final film's debut. While reading these books over again for the first time in years my mind took trips back to when I first read the exact same pages I was poring over in the present. And I tell you what it can get to be quite the headache having your mind experience nostalgia from your own life and that of a fictional world all at the same time! 

Even apart from these special experiences of nostalgia I experience this phenomena just on a regular day's routine whether it’s going for a bike ride, visiting a friend or family member, or just sitting outside at my house. It really is a wonderful feeling so I advise you next time you feel a trip down memory lane approaching buckle up and enjoy the ride!

Boredom: Life's Greatest Motivator

We have all had our fair amount of time spent being bored. In fact I'd wager to say as students many of us spend at least a small part of each day visiting our old friend boredom. Now we all probably deal with our boredom in different ways depending on what environment you may be experiencing it. For example boredom usually sends me daydreaming to pass the time or occasionally some doodling in my notebook. In cases of experiencing boredom at work or just plain waiting on someone I've ventured into singing to myself and just other various random things to keep my mind occupied for the time being. And of course there is the favorite time killer, to completely zone out into a state of daze and confusion and do absolutely nothing.

Now boredom home can often times be a much different beast than when you experience it in public. Often times boredom at home can lead to more productivity then you'd normally do when you have goals to achieve. In the past I've applied my boredom to cleaning my room, getting ahead in my homework, reading a book I've meant to read for ages, watch movies, exercise, write, and it times of amazing creativity try to create a new invention! But I will also admit boredom can lead to things that really make no sense and later on when looking back on what you did you'll say "What was I thinking?" Unfortunately, or fortunately for you readers possibly, I found my boredom creativity outlet through deciding to make a comedic YouTube video with a friend. Looking back on this video years later I just have no answer for what went through my mind and how bored must I have been to do it. But I digress here is the video and just remember boredom can make us do curious things. Enjoy!