One week in and I already messed up on my T-Shirt Tuesday series. I have a good excuse though, my cat, Oliver, chewed up the power cable to my MacBookPro and I didn’t have my computer for a few days. It cost $72 at the Apple store, including the student discount, to replace it, in addition to the funeral costs related to Oliver’s untimely demise.
In t-shirt news this week comes an excellent selection from Threadless, including a new must-have for me called T-Minus, and also some long-awaited reprints from Design By Humans, including one I missed out on called Controlled Chaos. I discovered a great source for typographic tees called Snakes and Suits, which is definitely worth a look. Also, Barack Obama’s campaign is holding a t-shirt design contest that should yield some awesome results considering an already awesome selection of fan-created tees (1, 2, 3).
A close up of "Refraction"
This week’s feature shirt from my closet is “Refraction” from Design by Humans.
"Refraction" from the front.
It is funny that five to seven years ago (when I was a teen and I cared how others thought of me) you were “gay” if you (as a guy) wore any colors other than black, red, or gray. The dominant fashions of the late 90’s and early 2000’s except for the “prep” style all followed this rule, but none more stringently than the “skate” style. With the skate style now melded into the more general “west coast” style, blacks, reds, and grays, are still around, but often as the base shirt for a design full of color. Bright Pinks, Purples, Blues, Greens, Yellows, and every other color imaginable have emerged, and people my age and younger now can wear whatever they want and not have their sexuality brought into question. As a person who sees color as expressive, and as a person who is very loud, passionate, and expressive himself, this is a good thing for me. I credit the mid 2000’s “Real Men Wear Pink” fad (which I avoided with a ten foot pole) as the opening that made it okay for us guys to express ourselves.
That said, my selection of “loud” designs is still limited, perhaps for more subconscious reasons than not. But when it comes to loud designs in my collection, not one beats “Refraction”.
It looks great on me.
When I first saw this design on DBH, I thought of the classic Pink Floyd Album cover like it. The beam of white light begins around the back of the shirt and hits a prism on the lower left side, exploding into swaths of brilliant colors. The brilliant design is pleasing to the eye and exciting, and makes a statement when worn. I picked this shirt up for $14 during a sale, but at $19 this shirt is still worth every penny.
This was my first shirt from DBH and I’ll warn you, the inks on this one don’t hold up as well as store-bought and Threadless tees. I have begun washing this shirt in dark-colors-only loads on a gentle cycle to maintain the quality. But even a little worn out, “Refraction” is still loud and proud and easily one of my favorite shirts in my collection.
I have already shot the pictures for next week’s selection, in hopes of having T-Shirt Tuesday posted Monday night. Until then…
western region OA gets a facelift
One of the two areas of focus on my first attempt at blogging was related to leadership, which I had experience in due to my scouting program, called the Order of the Arrow. I was a hugely active member of the group at a Section level, and served as W4C Section Chief in 2006. Apparently, I was also one of the last Section Chiefs for W4C.
Yesterday, via the blog of my good friend Chad Wolver, a former Western Region Chief, I got a fresh look at the newly realigned Western Region. I had heard rumors about an upcoming realignment, but seeing the details of it made it real. If you can throw the feelings of shocked, excited, bittersweet, curious, and scared into a blender and set it ‘puree’ mode, and then add a proverbial cherry of hopefulness to the top, the result would be my feelings about this monumental change.
Below are two images, the first is of the current Western Region map. The second is of the map to take effect next year.
A map of the current Western Region
A map of the soon to be Western Region
At first view, there seems to be a lot in common. But the details reveal the changes.
The first thing I noticed is also the most saddening change… the realignment comes loaded with a completely new way to designate Sections. Instead of the W-number-letter pattern, the new Sections will be designated with a W-letter-number pattern. This is hugely significant. The w-number-letter pattern is as old as Sections are, 35 years to be exact. The west has survived realignments before, but keeping the designations similar have allowed some Sections to maintain an identity for years. Even though most Sections are only trading a lodge are two, they are also completely losing their identity, which will be difficult to rebuild and comes with a moderate to major financial impact as well.
Over the years, Sections, mine included, invested hours of time and uncountable loads of money into their brand. Artwork, websites, web domain names, cut-and-paste materials, web networks, etc. will all need to be reset or rebuilt from the ground up. As an simple example, the Section paid almost $100 four years ago to buy our web domain, and now over half that investment is lost. This example seems trivial (oohh, $100), but it was one of a few I could actually measure, as most of the losses cannot be valued (ex. how can put a price on pro-bono digital artwork that now must be re-done?).
The actual realignment is not all that surprising to me, as I have been suggesting some similar changes for a while, but only in side conversations. Some of the really large sections are split up and now smaller and more manageable, and other sections that had difficult political issues with an uneven mix of various sized lodges now seem more balanced out. These changes will add two Section Chiefs to the West, giving us more voting power at National, which should also help us all out as well, potentially yielding us more National Officers than in years past (because the last two years have been great for us).
For the changes to my area, I both heartbroken and hopeful. For the first time in 51 years of Conclaves, Papago and Wipala Wiki will no longer be in the same Section, the realignment splits us up. Our relationship and teamwork is as old as our Lodges are and now we are split apart, even though we are based only 100 miles from each other. I know the Tucson/Albuquerque connection will be really positive for Papago and Yah-Tah-Hey-Si-Kess Lodges, but I fear the distance will hurt the Section’s growth… they’ll need a killer set of leaders to get them going. I also hope that Wiki and Papago maintain a relationship despite now being in separate Sections, we did some good work together in the past. As we say goodbye to Papago, we say hello to Tiwahe. Wiki and Nebagamon will now be teamed with Tiwahe, which is a great Lodge thats not too far away for us. They are based out of San Diego County, California so they bring in another huge population base to our Section. I expect our Section will become one of the strongest in the West, because with San Diego and Phoenix and Las Vegas all in the same Section, we have lots of population to draw from and some excellent destinations for conclave. (Who wouldn’t want to do back-to-back beach and Vegas conclaves?)
I will be a presenter at the 2008 Western Region Gathering of Chiefs and I am excited to be attending this one in particular because I will be able to discuss these changes with many Region dudes. It will be interesting to go into detail with them about the changes. Like I said already, I am overall hopeful for these changes and look forward to seeing the growth of the Region–that is, after some of the wounds have healed.