Banksy -- Farewell, College Inn -- 6-15-21

[Matthew Deegan]

The PAX (8):  Heisenberg, Fracker, Dark Star, Unfinished Business, Pudd'NHead, Shrubs, Prime (EC + Warm-up), Dookie(QIC) --- Aggie and Wolverine for PLC & Coaching

AO: "Banksy" -- Charlottesville High track -- Charlottesville, VA

Total Time: 45 minutes

NAKED MOLESKIN (NMS):

The Monday night chatter featured lamentations of the shuttering of a 68-year-old Charlottesville institution: The College Inn on The Corner.  Throughout the beatdown, the PAX offered YHC wide-ranging reviews of the food.  Shrubs was confused by the menu.  Dark Star had a thing for its feta pizza.  PuddNHead thought it made the best food in the United States, maybe even the Western Hemisphere.  Fracker thought it was a youth hostel.  Unfinished Business claimed a large Pepsi from its fountain made you forever a college sophomore.  YHC -- a Jersey pizza snob -- thought the cheese pizza there was just OK.  Collectively, the PAX Yelp rating averaged out at 3.9.

We also exercised.  Wolverine and Aggie stopped by, sipping their coffee and hanging over the fence of the track like two proud coaches admiring their athletes.

But let's get back to the main thread here: Cheers to you, College Inn, for withstanding the test of time on The Corner.

WARM-UP:

-Side Straddle Hops

-Hillbillies

-Don Qs

-3rd Graders

-1 lap around track

-Mosey to corner of Grove Rd. and Concord Dr.

THANG:

Partner Dora

-Partner 1: Run to 1721 Concord Dr. and run back to corner of Grove and Concord

-Partner 2: Run up Grove hill til intersection with Meadowbrook Heights Rd., then run back

***Partner who gets back first does LBCs, AMRAP

***Once both partners return, do 10 partner merkins

***Switch routes til you've done both 3 times

MINI-THANG:

-Mosey back to field on track.  First Nation Bear Crawl from one end zone to the other.

-1 400m & 1 100m run

MARY:

-Low Slow Flutters

-Freddie Mercuries

-Pickle Pounders

-American Hammers

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

-Sign up for a Saturday morning workout on the Bridge Ministries campus in Buckingham County.  

CIRCLE OF TRUST (COT):

We’re at the tail end of Commencement season, and I’m a sucker for a good Commencement Address.  The best ones inspire you to think, reflect, and grow.  So I was drawn to the speech that NY Times writer and author David Brooks gave at Boston College on May 24.  

Brooks reflected on what we’re going to go through over the next few months as American society opens back up more fully.  He called it the “Great Unmasking”.  

He said this:

“For 15 months, we’ve been wearing masks...But of course, we don’t only wear physical masks, but also psychological ones. Productivity is a mask. I’m too busy to stop and see you. The meritocracy is a mask. I judge you by what school you went to and what job you got. Essentialism is a mask. I can make all sorts of assumptions about you based on what racial or ethnic group you are in. Fear is a mask. I don’t show you myself because I’m afraid you won’t like me. Emotional avoidance is a mask. I hide parts of myself because I’m afraid to confront my own feelings.

...So as we take off the physical masks, it seems important that we also take off some of the emotional ones, too.”

Brooks then offered some goals that I think are worth considering:

“One of my goals in the months ahead is to try to undo what Covid tried to do to me. Covid tried to distance me, isolate me...I hope to show I wasn’t broken by this hard season of life, I was broken open; that social distance will be replaced by social closeness and social courage.

I hope to practice what a friend calls “aggressive friendship”: being the one to issue the invitations, willing to see and treasure the singularity of each human person...I’m hoping to just be available a little more. There are just random times when a friend or maybe a stranger on a plane or in a line wants to connect. I’m hoping that if someone knocks on my door they will find it already open.

It was said of the novelist E.M. Forster, “To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest best self.” Who wouldn’t want to be that guy?”

So as we continue the Great Unmasking this summer, let’s strive to eliminate the social distance that COVID forced on us with a renewed purpose.

Thanks for the chance to lead,

-Dookie