Will, Conner, Mozart and Men In Jeans

Over the last 5 years, Will and I have developed a system of taking care of things around the house that works for us.  I bring in most of the money, pay the bills, run the errands and take care of  95% of the cooking duties.  Believe me when I say you do not want to turn Will loose in the kitchen, not if you value anything in there.  A good example of this would be an incident right before Christmas.  Will is the only one who drinks coffee or hot tea around here and sans a tea kettle or coffee maker, he would boil water in a sauce pan to make his hot drinks.  He fairly immolated one of my sauce pans when he forgot he was boiling water until the pan boiled dry enough to set off the smoke alarm.  As a result, he got a one cup coffee maker for Christmas in order to preserve my cookware.  Between the money he gave me and the money Mother gave me, I got new cookware and bake ware and I do not let him near it.  He is microwave capable and he has finally mastered the art of cooking a frozen pizza in the oven without it turning out raw or burned to a crisp.  That is about the extent of his cooking skills.  When I retrieved him from Nebraska and brought him to Texas, he was subsisting on raw Ramen, sandwiches and the occasional microwave dish.  However he is really good about cleaning up around the house.  He has bitched about my pos vacuum cleaner since I first brought it home, so he saved up some money and he bought a new vacuum which arrived via UPS yesterday.  He bought a Shark Navigator that was on sale and of which he is most proud.  It does work wonderfully well, he had just cleaned the house thoroughly last week, but he wanted to test the vacuum.  So he vacuumed the living room this morning and the new vacuum filled up a quarter of the bag less canister with dirt and dust, et cetera from an ostensibly clean carpet.  So yes I would say it works very well and will be of good service for a long time to come.  This means our place will be cleaner and I will no longer have to hear him bitch about the deficiency of the old vacuum.  A win-win for both of us.  

I was intending to bring you the following news item yesterday, but I forgot I had bookmarked it so I could blog about it.  While most of the world's football fans have their eyes on New York and Sunday's forthcoming Super Bowl, the best football news comes to us from the other side of the country in Oregon.  At Willamette University, place kicker Conner Mertens from the small town of Kennewick, Washington asked his coach for a meeting on Monday a week ago to discuss a subject of importance to him.  Fearing Mertens was going to tell him he was going to transfer to another school, Coach Glen Fowles started a subtle soft-sell on the school when Conner arrived for the meeting. Coach Fowles said Willamette offered great opportunities, the personnel was top-notch, the academics were stellar and Mertens' future with the team was bright.  Conner could only laugh and say "I'm not going anywhere, Coach".  

Instead telling Coach Fowles his plan to transfer out, Conner revealed that he was bisexual, had a boyfriend and was going to tell the world about it.  Conner has thus become the first openly bisexual active college football player in this country.  The decision to come out was not an easy one to make. Like most young men who discover themselves to be L, G, B or T, Conner struggled with it but finally made up his mind to be true to himself.  On Monday of this week, Conner  tweeted a lengthy letter to his hometown in hopes of changing hearts and minds and giving local LGBT youth someone they can point to with pride:

"You are not alone. You do not need to come out but you do need to know that you do not have to go at this by yourself. The aloneness you're feeling is temporary and it will get better. This place is changing...changing for the better. I made the decision that if I could prevent one person from feeling that self-hatred, loneliness, desperation and a thousand other emotions that I felt, I would. I will be damned if I let anyone tell you that you are wrong or weird or not normal.  Love yourself and allow others to love you. Be who you are and know you're not alone."  

Willamette University released a statement of full support for Conner and all their students.  The statement reads:

"Willamette University fully supports Conner Mertens and respects his contribution to a more humane and just world.  Willamette University is, at its core, a community of people dedicated to learning. Our motto, "Not unto ourselves alone are we born," is our guiding principle. It tells us that we have a responsibility for each other.

Willamette's inclusive campus community inspires students to find and pursue their passions. By transforming knowledge into action, we learn about ourselves.  Our student-athletes work hard to succeed in competition and in the classroom, but they don't stop there. Willamette students apply what they've learned to their lives, their careers and their communities. This is the essence of our motto and what it means to be a Bearcat."

Conner's story has garnered  huge national coverage and he has received overwhelmingly positive support from friends, family, team mates, coaches, school and other scholar athletes around the country.  I applaud his decision and his desire to help others to overcome the struggle he himself has faced.  To ramp up his courage before coming out to anyone, Conner turns to his I-pod and he  listens to Sara Bareilles' Grammy-nominated song, "Brave.".  The words to the song are most appropriate:

Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
And since your history of silence
Won't do you any good,
Did you think it would?
Let your words be anything but empty
Why don't you tell them the truth?

You can find Conner Mertens on Twitter @ConnerMertens. You can also email him at connerjmertens@gmail.com.  Take time to send him a little love, won't you?

Your Musical Moment for today features a 1963 recording of Mozart's Piano Concerto Number 24 in C Minor, K491.  Hans Swarowsky leads the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and the Piano Soloist is Denis Matthews.  You can also hear Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in a 1961 recording of Mozart's Bassoon Concerto in B Flat Major, K191 with Bernard Garfield as the Bassoon Soloist over on my tumblr. 

Finally for today, there is a decidedly delicious group of denim delights in this week's edition of Men In Jeans on display below the video.  You can also check out the Hottie of the Day! on my tumblr.  Thanks for the visit, see you again tomorrow.  Until next time as always, Enjoy!