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One of the perks (or curses, depending on how you look at it) of working for Disney was having a Silver Pass. The Silver Pass entitles employees and three friends or family members to have access to the amusement parks. Whenever friends or family visited me in LA, I usually took them down to Anaheim to spend the day at Disneyland. I went, not because I enjoyed going, because it was a spectacle and it was free. In my three years at Disney, I maybe visited the park over a dozen times. On one of my last trips, I came home, took the obligatory post-Disneyland nap (PDN) and then wrote this.

—

Humans are not biologically evolved
to visit Disneyland.

At around 4pm in the afternoon,
kids get whiney and annoying,
parents get grumpy.
No one looks happy trying to
maximize their dollar to fun ratio.

The breaking point comes when
fanny packs outnumber smiles.
A long day of waiting is punchuated
by brief moments of forced adrenaline.

Being voluntarily assaulted by bright colors,
the perpetual crescendos of background soundtrack,
as well as resisting a biological fixation on crowds
is exhausting.

In the past year, I have stopped using an alarm clock (or my phone’s alarm clock) to wake up in the morning.  In addition to my technophobic refusal to be ruled by machines, alarm clocks create unnecessarily stress starting my day and make it difficult for me to remember my dreams.  The challenge of being alarm clock free, however, was that I didn’t want to be as disciplined about the time I went to bed.  It took me some experimenting and research to figure out the alarm clock’s Achilles’ heel:

To wake at a consistent time–even with variable to-bed times–is to eat something as soon as you get up in the morning.   Your body will  respect this eating schedule and wake you up at the same time each day.  The only downside it makes it really hard to sleep late on weekends–but afternoon napping is fair game!

Worked on this logo project this weekend with Dave and Evan.  Went through several rounds of exploration until we finally settled on the last logo design.  We wanted something that was fun, playful and simple .  The first round was decidedly too cartoony.

Round two was a little more serious, a little more iconic. Tried some different type faces and imagery that was slightly less illustrative. I also had the idea of a kid on a swinging trying to swing really really high. I think it was an interesting idea but started to get a little too whimsical and poetic.

The rocket ship seemed like the more interesting silhouette.  Tried two more figures to see if I could come up with something that was a little less nostalgic than the kid on the swing. Jet packs and climbing seemed slightly more adventurous.  Although I think the execution never really got there. Also, with this round, I tried to de-emphasis the “kid”.  I really wanted the focus to be on clouds, flying, imagination than kid. Even when you say “cloud kid” the emphasis is on the first word.

The forth round was an attempt to take all the comments, and make some initial choices about direction. All three designs used a rocket ship, all three had two words with different text emphasis.  The rocket ship was a much more interesting item to focus on because it has a really strong silhouette value but also could look really great illustrated in full color.

With the fifth round I really wanted to show a high detail and low detail version of the logo to see where the strengths and weaknesses were. I also wanted to make one last attempt at the figure logo. There was something that was really interesting about the swinging kid, jet pack kid. In this forth one, which I anticipated would be a throw away, I decided to add a kite to the climber from the other round.   However, it kept reminding me Dreamworks’ boy fishing.  The first option was by far the strongest. I got rid of the de-emphasized text for “kid” because it was hard to read the tail of the jet with the skinny ‘k’.  I could, however, accomplish the same effect with color or grayscale.

This is getting pretty close to the final branding. After tweaking the rocket for the full color version, I decided that the black and white version needed to match for cohesiveness.  I’m pretty satisfied with the result. It accomplished all of the things we were looking for. The full color version on the white background needs some color help, but we may end up favoring the reverse logo anyways.

We decided the logo needed a little warmer color–overall it was looking a little too cold.  I also added a few highlights on the ship to make it appear a little shinier.  

You know those romances where you become so involved in the continuous cycle of breaking up and making up that any normal healthy relationship seems preposterous? That is, in an essence, my relationship to the cold.

The good times were spent making snowmen, going ice skating, sledding on the golf course, going home to a toasty house and sipping hot chocolate. The bad times were my parents refusing to turn up the thermostat while I walked around the house in an oversized cheap sweatshirt and itchy wool socks.  It was also being incredibly frustrated with the hot-blooded polar bears that roll down their car window all the way, leave the door open and put the fan on full blast. And it was shoveling our landing-strip of a driveway until my hands were cemented cold and battling the Boston winters on my frozen metal bicycle.

Now that I live in Los Angeles, I miss the cold. We broke up several years ago and it hasn’t been the same since. Over time, my closet has been purged of all the scarfs, gloves and long underwear. A black fleece ski jacket is the only remaining item I’ve been unable to shake from the clutches of my harping closet.

The cold I experience here is a more of a dull annoyance than those passionate winter months that you think will never end. Many houses in southern California are ill-equipped with insulation or proper heating. Also, it is difficult to find decent wind-proof, cold weather gear for the handful of chilling evenings.

Tonight is an especially brisk night and I’m considered doubling my bed blankets to avoid goosebumps from the drafty single-pane window nearby. When I close my eyes tonight, I’ll think of those New England months that I long to complain about.

Last week Alex, Sonia and I finally put together our organic garden. We created four simple steps with some 2×12 boards positioned with some stakes. On the top tier we have four tomato plants, then some lettuces, cauliflower, onions and strawberries. Our first strawberry came in a couple of days ago.

I posted this in response to the current YRUU Steering Committee’s letter, “YRUU Steering Committee Letter on End of YRUU Structure.” Posted February 11, 2008 on their blog.

—

My name is Matt Moore, and I served as a Youth Council Representative for the Ballou Channing District and two terms on the YRUU Steering Committee from 1999-2002. I then served one year as Youth Observer to the UUA Board of Trustees, followed by two years as a member on the Journey Towards Wholeness Transformation Committee. My mom, my sister and I have collectively served five terms on the YRUU Steering Committee over the last eight years.

In my tenure and subsequent observations, I’ve learned that YRUU has never possessed an effective institutional memory. Year after year, YRUU was presented with a constant flood of novice enthusiasm and energy. The byproduct of this system what twofold: it could create quick and and dramatic changes in culture (e.g. the sudden shift of YRUU focus towards anti-racism/anti-oppression work, the rapid adoption of consensus, or proliferation of new ice-breakers). Also, this constant turnover of energy was an inherent weakness. Given the motivation, more powerful institutional bodies like the UUA Board of Trustees, the President’s Office or the General Assembly could culturally and methodically dismantle the structures which had served youth for over two decades. So what happened? Why was YRUU such a threat?

The current Steering Committee (of which my sister is one of the active members) gave a good summary of the issues which have unfolded in the final hours of YRUU. However, I believe this dismantling started many years ago during my years of involvement. I want to explicitly underscore that this dismantling happened because the UUA felt threatened by the greater youth movement and exploited the inherent high turn-over of leadership and the poor institutional memory of YRUU.

Youth in church basements and at weekend cons don’t represent a threat to congregations. That is, they rarely have an opportunity to upset the structures of power and authority which guide the congregation. In the eyes of churches, weekend cons and church basements are suitable places for youth because they don’t interfere with the stewardship of the congregation or district. More often than not, participation of youth within congregations is by invitation only (e.g. an offer to light some candles, participating in a coming of age ceremony, serving food at church functions, reading during a service). But the continental youth moment represented something much greater than the invitation only status.

This started at Youth Council 1999. Four important events happened at this Youth Council: 1) the adoption of the resolution “It’s Time We Do Something About Racism in YRUU!”, 2) the rejection the annual budget for the first time in anyone’s institutional memory, 3) the first time there was an anti-oppression training at Youth Council, and 4) the approval of a resolution to support the adoption of a Youth Trustee to the UUA Board of Trustees. The next Youth Council was the first to do away with Roberts Rules of Parliamentary Procedure and, in it’s place, introduce Formal Consensus. This was a tremendously exciting time for YRUU. The YRUU leadership of time, including that of the Youth Office, was one of radicalism and a strong thirst for destroying the status quo. The main voices in the movement were ones of passionate dissent.

It’s also significant to point out that the youth population of the Youth Caucus at General Assembly 1999 (Rochester, NY) was huge. No longer were a hundred or less youth attending General Assembly. Three, four, and even five hundred youth were attending—each summer bigger than the last. I consistently attended GA from 1997-2004 and saw this steady upward growth. The youth community was spotty and disjointed but politically they were energized. Youth were workshop organizers, delegates, and rowdy participants. They rallied around statements of conscious, they sat in a block in plenary, they voted for their youth observer to the Board of Trustees. For such a small part of the entire Association, they constituted a significant voice at General Assembly and even more importantly, they were heard.

At the same period of time, small groups of youth were also meeting regularly with the UUA Board of Trustees as part of an internal restructuring effort. And here is the problem: the youth that were participating politically in all these decisions had no officially sanctioned accountability to the Association. The UUA is an Association of Congregations, as I was repeatedly told when I was a Youth Observer to the Board. Youth Council nor Youth Caucus nor Con Con nor district YACs nor Steering Committees nor district conferences were viable memberships to the Association. The only thing that mattered in the eyes of the Association were invitation-only congregational youth groups. When they are talking about accountability of youth, they are really talking about money, membership, and dues. While these youth organizations represented a significant part of a youth’s experience in Unitarian Universalism, none of the youth institutions paid dues to the Association. Yet, they had the privilege of being given an annual budge—a privilege not given to Affiliate Organizations (for instance, CUUPS). (Technically, both YRUU and CUUYAN are considered “Sponsored Organizations”, although that’s a meaningless definition—literally)

The Board of Trustees now had the motivation and the means to dismantle YRUU. The budget for Synapse (the annual YRUU newsletter) was removed, the funding for Con Con was removed, the Youth Office was restructured and given new leadership, and now Youth Council is being removed. These things were changed as a direct result of the leadership decisions of the Association. In addition, the Board of Trustees took it as their prerogative to appoint the youth working in the Youth Office and the adults At-Larges at Youth Council (both previously selected by the YRUU Steering Committee) as well as the selection of the Youth At-Large Trustee. The Board not only controlled the money but now they had a direct mechanism to hand-pick youth leadership.

If you look at many of the youth that were hand-picked by the Board and put onto Committees and in positions of power—and I unfortunately include myself in that group—they are what a former YRUUer would call “STARS”. Which stands for: Smart, Talkative, Articulate, Responsible and Solo. These were talented youth but who were able to adapt to the adult culture but who were not part of the larger youth movement anymore (the term “Uncle Tom” comes to mind). They were individual young people that were coaxed and nurtured into these token positions with no meaningful political ties to decision making bodies of YRUU—mainly Youth Council.

Simultaneously, many of the youth that had been instrumental in becoming a catalyst for change at the 1999 Youth Council were quickly aging out. The voices of radicalism and dissent had become phased out and the intense internal struggle with racism and oppression had momentarily crippled the spirit of YRUU. The youth movement was in desperate need of energy and new youth leadership. Instead, funds that were once used to create community were funneled into educational training conferences—where the primary goal is not to build culture and community but to teach leadership, anti-racism, spirituality, and youth advisor skills. I’ve lead these conferences and on day one described the conference to the participants as a “working conference.” Trainings don’t constitute a threat to the Association and they are an adequate consolation prize for the YRUU death.

For those of you that have an institutional memory to share please help construct the rest of this picture so that future generations of youth in Unitarian Universalism can see what a fucked up deal they inherited.

Alex and I prepared this photo scavenger hunt list for my friend Esther that’s visiting the Cod this week for vacation.

• the jolly captain
• manny ramierez jersey
• “see you next summer” melody tent sign
• ocean state job lot (either one)
• a pineapple door knocker
• the christopher’s restaurant sign
• yarmouth trailer park
• cumberland farms
• cape bowl
• a member of the 12 tribes at the common ground
• scargo tower
• pufferbellies
• white whale at lightning falls
• slice of spiratus pizza
• a rotary
• cuffy’s of cape cod
• christmas tree shop
• sagamore and bourne bridge
• seagull
• woman walking a golden retriever
• a volvo and saab parked next to each other
• umass bumper sticker
• luke’s super liquors (or a packy)
• rockwell kent ceiling of the cape cinema in dennis
• margareta boot at sam diegos
• someone playing golf
• pinball machine at craigville sub and pizza
• buddha at tiki port
• a construction, utility or police vehical parked outside dunkin donuts
• cape cod potato chip factory
• couch from sid’s home furniture
• the island queen
• spanky’s clam shack
• the crystal pineapple
• tent or kayak outside ems
• cape wind bumper sticker
• bahgins of any kind
• your face listening to 96.3 the rose
• welfleet drive-in
• dunes at the national seashore

I messed up my finger this weekend. Here are possible reasons for the swan-neck deformity of my left middle finger (brought to you by Alex Carey).

1). I got in a vegan bar fight when some douche decided to yell “freebird” during my karaoke version of Bob Seger’s “Nightmoves”. I smacked him and he threw his beer stein into my hand.

2). I was an audience member on the Uri Geller and Chriss Angel’s new hit show “Phenomenon”. I was called up on stage to do the bending spoon trick except the spoon stayed straight. My FINGER! AHhhh!!!

3). I kept poking my ex girlfriend on Facebook.

4). I bought a new TV on Craigslist from a Russian down the street. He wasn’t there when I went to pick it up. He left a note that said leave $10 under the door. I did right, took the TV and left. What I didn’t know, however, was that in a drunken stupor he inadvertently left out a zero–the TV was for 100 bucks. He threatened me via email but I refused to pay. On Saturday a huge man in matching Adidas warmups and a gold chain came over and snapped my finger into the shape of a swan. And he said for every 10 bucks I owe, he’ll swan another finger.

On Fridays at 12:30, a group of people I work with play ultimate with a group of people from Warner Brothers at Johnny Carson Park in Burbank. Last week a guy was taking pictures of us and posted one on his photo blog. I’m to the left, John Enney is in the middle and Elliott Baumbach is right. We won.

My fear of the substance began when I was forced into craft projects that involved glue, construction paper, and lots of glitter shaking. Recently, I listened to the B-52s “Love Shack”, I was thoroughly distressed by this lyric:

Glitter on the mattress
Glitter on the highway
Glitter on the front porch
Glitter on the hallway