Loss.

This week my uncle Ted lost a very dear friend of his, Dr. Vert Mooney, in a car accident. This man was one of the primary reasons that my uncle moved to San Diego. Dr. Mooney was one of the premier spine surgeons in the world and from what Ted said was also an incredible intellect and an all around thoughtful and loving person. Though I have only met Dr. Mooney once in my life, I feel as though I knew him well. More than anything, I know how much he meant to Ted. When I got the voicemail from Ted that Dr. Mooney had passed, I cried. It was as if I was channeling Ted's loss.

Sometimes it takes the loss of someone to realize the close bonds that you have with the people who are still living. I feel lucky to have people in my life that I feel vulnerable enough to cry for.

Hip Hop for Health

Tonight I had the opportunity to attend a Hip-Hop for Health program event at Berkeley Middle School just outside of St. Louis City. This program was established by St. Louis County Department of Health and is one of the 20 programs I work with through my job. I have been looking forward to this event since I heard about it last year from the folks at the health department. The kids train for 6 weeks with professional hip-hop dancers from Best Dance Center in St. Louis and they learn a dance routine that they present to parents and teachers at the end of this time. As part of the program they also receive lessons in nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle. I had so much fun at the event and I even wanted to get up and dance myself. But wisely, I didn't... these kids were WAY better dancers than I will ever be. These pics are from tonight. I took them with my phone so the quality is not the best but you can see how much fun they were having, how talented they all were, and what a great workout hip-hop dancing can be.

There were three teams red, white, and black and each team had a different routine:

Then they all got together and performed a routine:

There were some professional dancers from Best Dance Studio:

Student essay winners read their essays aloud. They talked about topics such as the importance of calcium to bone health, exercise to maintaining a healthy weight, and small portion sizes:

I liked this sign, it was on the wall on the way out of the gym:

In the cafeteria they had a variety of games set up for parents to experience the types of physical activity that the school has been providing to its students. Here are some geo-mats for a giant game of Dance Dance Revolution which is one of the many ways that they have incorporated dance into their daily gym classes at Berkeley Middle School:

They also had TVs set up so parents and kids could play games that involved racing bicycles and boxing using electronic boxing gloves (hard to see but in the background). These are all forms of technology that the school has been able to acquire to keep kids active and entertained thanks to funding from the Missouri Foundation for Health:

Fruits and vegetables were the snack of choice, YUM!

I can't wait until next year!