Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Saturday, June 18, 2005

ELKAN, YOU THE MAN

I am in New York City this weekend to celebrate my great grandfather, and part of what he did in his life. He left here a "small" but pretty powerful legacy. He gave something to the great city of New York exactly one hundred years ago, way back in 1905. The man's passion for one single thing (music) has been perpetuated and relived each summer for most all of the 100 years hence, and you know what they say, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, so a century of playing just off Broadway isn't too bad.

The symbol for the tradition that Elkan Naumburg built survives and thrives in the form of a small gray concrete structure, not from musical notes he had written or his performance abilities. It manifests itself as an architcturally simple but ornate shell sitting in New York's Central Park. It breathes today with the free concerts performed there several times each summer.

Somehow the shell has remained, perhaps endured is a better word, impervious to most (not all) of the weathering and modernization on both "sides" of it. It still seems to fit right in, though, right where it has always fit.

BE HERE NOW?

Yes, it's a little bruised and battered for sure, as anything that has spent most of 100 years in Cental Park might be, but there it freestands, ancient even, mostly unrenovated. Still, it is a very small edifice that in its own tiny way may be as important as a part of Manhattan as many of the much larger, more famous marvels that reflect the shine of the modern Big Apple. This 1923 construction is known simply as "the bandshell" in Central Park. That's all it is, too, just shelter for the band, a place built for the "players" to play in and for the glorious sound of the instruments to naturally become amplified and distinctly clear.

An orchestra could fill the air with music back in the day. Now it must always compete for that "air" time with the rap or raggae concert a block and a half down, but that's just the way it is. The idea was, and actually still is, to invite people into the wonderful world of classical music and to the classical composers of another time and place.

The shell weaves a colorful transit mixed tapestry of time, where the past (old school) can live mostly in harmony with the present (Nu), and it can do so without totally losing its own old soul.

Maybe in some ways, and in the wake of the way 911 has perceivably changed New York and New Yorkers, the old bandstand stands perhaps more elegantly than ever, even if some locally have publicly decried it as a relic or even worse (sounds familiar) since like 1993.

A different kind of a SYMBOL FOR FREEdom

It (bandshell) does not precociously TRUMPet itself and who it works for the way so many "other" buildings do. As it should be there is only a small mention of the man Elkan himself on the old shell.

I am very proud to have been lucky and enough to have a son to pass this Naumburg ancestor's name on to. My youngest son is George Elkan Naumburg, 2 yrs. old, but honestly I never thought about where all that name pride came from or why it was so important for and to me to pass on this particular one (Elkan) to another Naumburg. Now I understand.

INTERVIEW WITH A RAM'PIRE – CHAPTER 666 – SATAN'S TALE (tail)?

BROKEN CYBERWRITER

I cannot even begin to say how many times I have tried to write and "post" the next part.  I won't even go there to explain why it wasn't up 5 days ago.  I just want to get it over with, so I'm starting all over again.

Q - How did the life in eligibiliy Hell story finally end up?

SUNDAY MORNING

When I awoke that Sunday things did not feel right to me.  No big surprise there.  Soon after I arose that morning a voice began to call me from within, or maybe he started while I slept, who knows?  Later on he/it was shouting.  I always listen to this guy.  I have always trusted the "inner voice" when the chips were down or whatever, but I had spent most of this morning trying to ignore it.   All he kept saying was that "nothing good can ever come of this".  It sounded like a refrain, or maybe it was just a chorus of boos, a resounding comment about the direction things were headed. Occasionally the "lose, lose" possibility we were looking at entered my head, too.

At some point the combination of us (CSU lax) having committed an "error", and seeing little or no chance for reasonable compromise, I decided that it would be me who decided our fate, and not some Committee or Board.  I did not want it to be lawyers either.  I wanted reason, but we were way past that.

Drag me by my heels to THE HIGH ROAD

A - I chose to stop the madness at some point.  I called no one for advice or consultation just then, and perhaps I should have, but the truth is that the 2005 buggy was already way too out of control for my tastes, and there would be no way for us to go to Minnesota and just be a lacrosse team trying to get by to the next round.  This was agony, but I did what I felt I had to do.

I called and told the MDIA power that is that I was withdrawing our appeal sometime before noon. "They" were thrilled. Great. That made me feel so much better. NOT.

STELLLAA!  (Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire)

My biggest blunder was self reporting what I perceived to be a small problem. If that is the worst mistake that I ever make in my life, then I can live with myself okay.  What really makes me wonder about where we are in human evolutionary terms is a fact that is pretty clear to me now. Self-reporting a problem will cause more bleeding way more often than it will offer up a Band Aid.  I get it finally, really I do, so kids, take it from a pro, never turn yourself in.

DIRTY LAUNDRY

It would seem that we live in somewhat of a blood-thirsty society where trash is king much more often than the truth reigns.  A good story sells better than the real one will, unless, of course truth becomes stranger than fiction. That's just the way it is. I suppose I will have to deal with that fact for some time to come.

57 CHANNELS AND NUTHIN' ON (Bruce Springsteen)

I do try my best to channel a tiny bit of our (human) need for conflict and violence into a good place (lacrosse) where kids and coaches can really learn from and teach one another, and where they can also, in theory, gain knowledge about the "rules" of the game and maybe life, too. This little group of 2005 lessons doesn't seem all that helpful to me just now.

SELF PITY

I know that self pity is not very attractive, but here goes anyway. It seems like I have jumped on a lot of grenades lately while some others may have walked to or run for cover. Yes, the buck stops here, but just the same I don't think I can survive another such explosion. I am a cat who is running out of lives. If the passion goes astray there can be no meaning anyway.

CAN I GET A JOB DESCRIPTION?

I try to create situational opportunity for the best to come out of and in people in the realization of team and the possibility of a dream. That is how I see myself. That is what I think I do.

Well, for all I feel and all I care about and all I give to this program that I have tried so carefully and systematically to build at and for the Colorado State University, this season has left me sitting in a "mud puddle" of sadness and loss, and you know what?  I will never believe that I, and more especially this group of players known as the 2005 CSU lacrosse team deserved what came down upon them this year from the more than one organization that have the unilateral authority to pass judgement on all they survey, often while sitting ever so pristinely in their single windowed "ivory" towers.

NO ONE EVER SAID ANYTHING WAS FAIR –

The truth is that as much as I bank on karma credit nothing is really ultimately guaranteed to be fair.  You have to make it that way.  One can never "rely on the kindness of strangers". I think that I will add non strangers to the list.

It is also my hope that the next time any team needs a "life-rope" that they will not be thrown a hangman's noose instead.

50 YEARS OF HIGH EXPECTATIONS

If nothing else comes from this "tale of woe", at least we will never ever let something like this jump up and bite us to death again. Fear of pain remains a greater motivator than the object of pleasure will ever be. This translates into much future self auditing.

RULES REIGN - COMPASSION IS AN HISTORICAL CONCEPT

We must become an organization that takes on ever more responsibility if we want to continue to grow as a team and a program.  By the size of the expectations placed upon us, you'd almost think someone around here was getting paid, or at least maybe someone other than me was donating lots of dollars to the program. 

NEXT UP VAIL - "Let's get the band back together" Joliet Jake

We already had one desertion from Team Vail, our Rock-it Pocket/CSU family team.  I guess it fits the year. He got a better offer, so I guess family only goes so far.  Sometimes I wonder if I do all this because I'm some kind of sicko-masochist. On paper he did get a "better" offer. Would I have done the same thing? Never. Am I mad at him? No. Disappointed? Yeah, sure.

RAWHIDE

Maybe on the Flip calendar this has been the year of the "Maverick".  Things and people have been tip-toeing away from the herd instead of cattle.  Oh well, screw it.  Head ‘em up, move ‘em out.

GET OVER IT

It is time to move on now, and I'm sure I speak to myself more than I speak to anyone. Once now becomes later, these are the kind of challenges that really juice me.

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