Author / Jim Cota

Posts by Jim Cota

Jim lives in Indianapolis with his wife and four kids and feels lucky to work with the fine folks at Rare Bird. An occasional writer, tweeter, and shooter. If you need to know anything else about me, this should do it...

Extreme Shepherding

So, this is a slightly convoluted path, but I was reading about Google launching their new live search results feature. To see it in action, I went to the site and entered “Tiger Woods.” Yikes. Well, the live search worked, but the results were depressing to say the least. So then, while showing it to Michael, we decided to pick another top news item. To do this, we visited the top search trends page.

Looking at the top 40 searches in the last few hours opens a window into the soul of humanity. Unfortunately, this window doesn’t say much about us that’s very uplifting. But, there was this gem, lurking at number 30: Extreme Shepherding.

Well, there’s simply no way to avoid following that link. Here’s where it led:

College Teams to Honor Vets With Camo Uniforms

Sometimes stories just make me smile. This morning I read that the college football teams of Maryland and South Carolina will don camouflage uniforms when they play on Saturday, November 14. The idea is to honor vets and raise awareness of the Wounded Warrior Project, which acts as an advocate for injured service men and women in Washington and provides services and programs for them. I’m all for it. And, apparently, so are the players.

“Ooooh,” South Carolina defensive tackle Ladi Ajiboye said Tuesday after seeing the camouflage cleats the Gamecocks will wear. “I could wear these the whole season.”

The black with tan camouflage uniforms, designed by Under Armour, will have a Wounded Warrior logo on them. Instead of players’ names, the backs of the jerseys will have words such as courage, loyalty, integrity and service.

The effort should pay off. The 23rd-ranked Gamecocks play No. 2 Florida that day, and Maryland faces No. 15 Virginia Tech, so viewership should be pretty high.

[Read more about the Wounded Warrior Project]
[Shop for Under Armour/Wounded Warrior Gear]
[Read more about the uniforms]

God Bless Mr. Stroup

Some time ago, I lamented that too many blogs were full of stories and comments that focused a laser beam on all the things wrong with this world. I, too, fell into the trap; using these pages as an opportunity to vent some frustration about something I had seen, or read, or encountered.

I remember deciding one day to make an effort to include more positive words than negative, to shed light on people that are doing the right thing, even when no one else is looking. The story I share with you today is that kind of story:

Mr. Stroup, the 8th grade Bible study teacher at Heritage Christian School in Indianapolis, began a tradition thirty years ago that continues even today. Watch this short video, hear his story, and be inspired. And then ask yourself, “Is there something I can do that could have this kind of impact on the lives of others?”

God bless you, Mr. Stroup. Keep it up.

Parents of the Year, Two Years Running

So tonight I was going through iPhoto looking to cull some images that weren’t useful and hopefully post a new update to the Cota family album. During this exercise, I came across this picture and, after a brief moment of “What the…”, I remembered the context.

We had gone down the street to a neighbor’s house for dinner. Since they are originally from Portugal and Italy (it must be some sort of custom or something) there seemed to be no shortage of wine at any given time. This photo was taken with my iPhone, sometime around midnight, and doesn’t really begin to describe the scene.

Well, at some point, Char looks at me and says, “You know, we really should be getting home.” I, of course, agreed. So, we gathered up the kids…

Yes, I meant that; and no, it’s not a typo. The kids had been playing pretty well up to this point, so we gathered them up, put them on their bicycles and…

What? Oh, yes. You heard that correctly, too. Since we just lived down the street, we decided to walk down. The kids chose to ride their bikes. So we loaded everyone up and headed back up the street. Laughing, of course, because by now it’s 2am and we have two kids riding their bikes up the street on training wheels. This is not exactly a stealthy way to get anywhere, much less up a bumpy blacktop road in the middle of the night.

But in the end, I’d do it again. (And, in fact, I think we may have.) Because this– heading home at two in the morning with kids in tow and laughter following– is what neighborhoods are meant to be.

Lily’s Creek

lilys-creek

After hiking through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on Thursday, we stopped on the way back out of the park and walked down to a clear (and very cold) mountain stream. The kids had changed out of their boots and into their Crocs and were walking around on the rocks in the creek. Fearful that they might slip and fall in, I told them all to take off their shoes and walk around barefoot. I have some priceless video of this… the water was probably 50 degrees.

Well, it was only a matter of time before it happened: Lily, while standing fairly close to me, slipped and fell. She got up, slipped again, and I grabbed her on the way down. She slipped again while we were trying to get/keep our footing but I still had ahold of her, so she was okay at this point. (I should also note that the water was moving pretty fast and was probably 3 feet deep right next to where she slipped. Oh, I was also holding the video camera through all of this… tense moments!)

She was crying, not because she was hurt, but because she was terrified. After a few minutes, she got herself under control and we walked up to the car to change out of her wet clothes. I mentioned while we were walking how proud I was of her because she dealt with it and got over it very quickly. It was impressive.

Later that night, we were sitting in a restaurant and Char asked the kids to turn over their placemats and draw a picture of their favorite thing from the day. Of course, Jack drew picture of Lily falling in the creek and crying. (He’s such a putz!)

When we asked them to share their pictures, Lily got pretty bashful and started crossing things off and hiding it. It was clear she didn’t want us to see it, so (of course!) we forced it out of her. To my surprise, she had also drawn a picture of her falling into the creek. Except in her picture, though she was dripping wet, she was smiling. She had also included me in her picture holding on to her. She wrote, “The best part of my day was falling into the creek because Dad was there to catch me.”

Here’s a picture of what will always be known as “Lily’s Creek.”