Reflections on Joining Vitality

Very few times in our lives are we truly inspired to do something greater, not only for ourselves but for others. I feel like this is the first time in my life that this has happened. I have been greatly affected and inspired by the Vitality In Action Foundation and the amazing people that work for the foundation. I know that I will forever be touched and changed by this organization.

It all began when I was working at a restaurant in Arvada. Working as a server at a restaurant, you meet all kinds of people on a daily basis. Sometimes, people come in to simply enjoy a great meal with family and friends, while others come and try to strike up a personal conversation. Anjali Arnold, the Managing Director of the Adaptive Ice Skating Program for Vitality In Action, came into the restaurant one night and changed my life.

Thank You Remarks by Rusty at the Vitality Fair

We've been stunned at the incredible reception we received last Saturday at the first ever Vitality Fair.  We drew a crowd of over 150 and international skating talent, all in support of our Adaptive Ice Program.  After the program, Founder and President James (Rusty) Stout took to the mic to thank the community that came together in mutual support.  As our first large public event, it was a moment for both celebration and reflection.  As such, we thought it fitting to post Rusty's remarks from the evening.

Good evening Vital People! Thank you for joining the Party. We do hope you've had some fun. Mom always taught the two keys to community are Please and Thank you. So first, three Pleases:

PLEASE join Apex Park and Recreation District and the Vitality Community for Cheap Skate after the show. We'll have a good time and get to know each other a bit better. As you leave this evening, PLEASE take care so that you can PLEASE keep coming back to have some fun recreating – however you choose to participate!

And now it's time for the Thank You's – there are a lot more than three of those so please bear with me – it's an emotional time and I am a passionate guy.

Everyone here is participating in the launch of the world's first adaptive skating program aimed at mainstreaming elite ice skating. That's a really high bar for human achievement and we're doing it right now, right here, the right way – EVERYONE IS WELCOME and EVERYONE here has given their time, money, and talent to build this community, the necessary FIRST STEP on this particular journey. Everyone -- audience, cast, crew, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, all of us make up the Vitality Community. Folks, WE ARE VITALITY – THANK YOU! And Thank you Apex Park and Recreation District. You have graciously accepted Us into the Apex Community and given Vitality a home.

Mobility Gratitude

By Jessica Gingold

Tonight, after too many vinyasas to count, a wobbly, but convincing headstand, low lunges, high lunges, half splits, full splits and the happiest baby pose you could imagine, I was instructed to thank myself. I was told to have gratitude for my healthy body that allows me to do all the physical activities I want. In that moment, I was grateful. I was grateful for the practice I had just had. I felt a deep strength in the prior 90 minutes I rarely encounter in the day-to-day. Still, underneath that gratitude, I felt a sadness. The truth is, my body is limited. I can do yoga, but frog pose hurts. I can walk briskly, but it’s been ages since I went on a run.

From age eight to eighteen, I spent more time gliding on ice than walking. I never fully fit into the competitive figure skating world. My first skating outfits were bought at a dance store from the sale bucket. I had a skating dad, thus I did my own French braids and they were often a little lopsided. One of my early programs was to Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin; even when I would skate a clean program, the judges never really warmed up to it. I did not cut back on school to pursue my dream of going to the Olympics. Still, I was a figure skater.

Skating was my outlet and my balance. I was a straight A student with a social justice activist family. Most minutes of life were full of intense, complex ideas. When I was on the ice, it was just me. I loved the challenge. I was never the best skater, but I was solid. I landed my double axel early, and successfully earned my gold medal in Moves in the Field and Freestyle. When I was 16, I had to write about my spirituality for my progressive Unitarian church group. God is still something I am growing to understand, so at age 16, God was not the subject. Instead, I wrote about the transcendent feeling of landing a clean double axel. So while I was perhaps a non-traditional skater, it was deep in my soul.

When I got to Colorado College, the first order of business was setting up the Colorado College Figure Skating Club. Our club went on to host two regional competitions and several shows. However, I never got to compete freestyle at our competitions.

Small Successes: the Mahala Boys

Mahala is a word deceptively simple given the complex construct it houses. In fact, it is probably this complexity that makes the word so thoroughly Moldovan. In Moldoveneşti, mahala means neighborhood. It is descended from the Turkish (and in turn Arabic) word mahalle, a term introduced throughout the Balkans during the period of Ottoman rule. In literary (i.e. Romanian) Romanian, however, mahala has come to mean more of a slum. Before even arriving at the complexities of the actual Moldovan mahala then, the word itself is a signpost showing the historical fork between Romania and Moldova. It is a very Eastern European dark irony that the word for neighborhood in Europe’s poorest country means “slum” in the same language spoken by its richer neighbor to the west. If Romanians often point out politely that Moldovan Romanian is an archaic and rural dialect, then the word mahala captures the subtler unspoken chauvinism between these richer and poorer neighbors.

Even in Moldova, however, a mahala is so much more than a geographical boundary. It’s an agricultural system, a living map of generations of familial histories, and a complex network for the exchange of gossip and information.

Peace Corps Volunteers, on the other hand, come from outside the community – we arrive mahala-less. So often, we are reminded of the frustrations that implies when trying to work with our adult colleagues – not knowing the right person to talk to in order to cut through the red tape, not knowing a particular history that prevents two potential partners from working together. But our tabula rasa also grants us some potentially powerful freedoms, particularly with students.

Just snap them off for a bit…PLEASE!!!

By Nancy Ester-Sager

That’s my lifetime plea, but of course I know I can't just snap off my legs. If I did, I'd probably misplace them. I must have been meant to do something with them, or they wouldn't be mine.

They are mine!! They hurt. They fight me, and I would never trade them.

Up until recently, I have felt like I belong (or didn't belong) in two different worlds, the disabled world, and the normal world. Now I realize I am in the right world, it’s not like anybody else's. It’s just mine, and it's the exactly where I need to be.

I have a condition called Myotonic Muscular Dystrophy. At first glance, I don't look like I have anything wrong, but very few muscles in my body have the ability to ever fully relax. I have often become dizzy from the pain that it causes me. I can get very stiff and have difficulty getting my brain and my body to work together. I prefer to think of myself and my body as two different things, because that is exactly what they are.

Vitality Skating: Welcome to a New World

My whole life on skates has been spent trying to get used to being on blades - literally - to find my feet and to feel them through the prosthetics we call skates is still my main task after 35 years. In perfect irony, Vitality In Action has asked me to devise programs on ice for people who may very likely have no feet at all, or just one foot. And I am all at once humbled in a way I can’t even express. We wear shoes – those can be considered prosthetics. We have to learn to walk in them and to use them. I get that. By logical extension, skates are no different. But after all these years on the ice, as a scientist, I’m still studying and experiencing how we learn to skate.

As Managing Director of Vitality In Action’s Adaptive Skating Program, I put together the foundational skills curriculum, both on-ice and off-ice for people who could have an artificial foot or leg, people who are aging or are recovering from injury or habilitating from surgery. A Vitality Skater could even be someone who’s been too scared to ever get on the ice…but always wanted to. Something I’ve dreamed of my whole life– my own skating school – has literally been handed to me through Vitality In Action. Vitality Skating is the US Figure Skating Association-registered house of the Adaptive Skating Program. As the director, I develop, formalize and solidify the learning bases that will be individualized for each and every skater based upon his/her own special needs. Vitality Skating programs offer the creative modifications to help those who never thought they’d be able to skate to do so.

Why IOWA?

Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa, is an excellent demonstration of normal human vitality. It's in Iowa, after all, which is the definition of normal according to North American cultural standards. If you find it in Iowa, it's normal, and if it's normal, you'll find it in Iowa. Perhaps it's because everyone seems to have been through Iowa at one time or another and they inevitably have a conversation with an Iowan in the process. Iowans love to talk and they really do try to include everyone in the conversation. Unlike Las Vegas, where what goes on there is supposed to stay there, what goes on in Iowa gets mainstreamed to North America, meaning really spread around. While Iowans may not have witnessed something personally, they've heard about almost everything from "reliable sources." There are very few secrets in Iowa. That's why the US states grudgingly tolerate letting Iowa act first in the Presidential nomination process. The rest of the continent may not like the choices Iowans make but at least the conversation is out in the open and it is something we can normally trust. That open conversation is vital to individual achievement and mobility.

It is the nature of the Iowa City community to include people with disabilities in the health conversation mainstream and you can see it in the spontaneous interactions between strangers. In early June of 1995, I had been driving the standard thirty minute commute to Iowa City on a daily basis. Just after entering the city, I once again observed a fellow, our hero, moving along the sidewalk, controlling his motorized wheelchair's joystick with mouth and tongue. On this particularly pleasant late spring afternoon, he was headed south on the walk as normal. He picked his way through the obstacle course of broken concrete in typical fashion until an odd bounce of the chair dislodged the joystick from his mouth and knocked it out of reach, stopping him immediately. He needed a jump start at that moment, just as a graduate student type wandered toward him. Our hero made a quick request for assistance, the student moved the joystick back into its proper position as though he'd done it countless times before even though he hadn't, they exchanged pleasantries, and both proceeded on their way to forgetting the incident even happened at all. That simple yet powerful act of support was all that was necessary for our hero to achieve normal mobility. The abnormal nonchalance, the sophistication of the interaction made it extraordinarily memorable. It was an encounter between two individuals who were both in the mainstream of the community and interacting as peers. That's when I started looking for a place to live in Iowa City.

The ability to move around physically, socially, and intellectually with ease is the essence of our vitality. In Iowa City, people with the most serious mobility impairments achieve uncommon vitality because there is a tremendous amount of sophisticated support for doing so at all levels in the community. That provides a most excellent environment for Vitality In Action Foundation to take the action necessary to make our Mobility Laboratory successful and develop innovative recreational opportunities for everyone. That's why the path we've charted in "creating mobility for a lifetime," will go via Iowa. We're excited to be at work in Iowa and we have already been warmed by a hearty (normal) Iowa welcome.