[afro-nets] Supercourse Newsletter, August 30, 2004

[Ron LaPorte <super1+@pitt.edu>]

Supercourse Newsletter, August 30, 2004
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www.pitt.edu/~super1/
 
The Marathon Run to 2005 in 2005
 
Dear friends, we are close, very close to 2005 in 2005. It is a 
Marathon run. We are in the final stretch. Eugene reports that 
we have 1874 lectures. We need 126 more lectures in the next 4 
months. We can do it!! As you pull together your lectures for 
teaching this semester, just look through you lectures and see 
if you want to contribute 1-2 of your prize lectures to teach 
future generations of students. Remember, when you retire, or 
when you die, so do your lectures. Why shouldn?t you lectures 
live on? Please think about contributing, it would be wonderful, 
the prevention teachers in Nepal, the Netherlands, New Jersey, 
and Nicaragua will most appreciate it.
 
Olympics:
 
Aren?t the Olympics fantastic? Imagine ourselves as Phidipedes, 
running the Marathon in 490 BC. I am sitting here watching the 
Marathon on a Sunday morning. Since the beginning of the Olym-
pics, I have been glued to the TV. As the Argentineans became 
the leaders of football and basketball, Yuriorkis Gamboa Tole-
dano from Cuba won the 51 kg class in boxing, the incredible run 
by Hicham el-Guerrouj from Morocco won the 5000 meters, and the 
US the 400 meter relay. Could you get better excitement in any-
thing on TV? I, of course, root more for athletes from our Su-
percourse team countries! That means we root for 151 countries!!
 
We want to capture this Olympic spirit, and now that the games 
are over with, we will push forward, very strongly with the 
Olympic lecture. The Olympic spirit is in many ways the Super-
course spirit. We both have brought the world together. The 
Olympics do this for exercise and competition; we do this for 
prevention and health. An arranged marriage is obvious as we 
compliment each other very well. We have one year to capture a 
million students with the Supercourse exercise, and health lec-
ture. Several new ideas have been suggested to us. The Olympic 
organizations in most countries have not been extremely respon-
sive. We are considering an alternative, grassroots method. 
Every country has a prevalent pool of former Olympic athletes. 
They should be relatively simple to find with your help. If you 
know a former Olympic Athlete, please think about how we can 
contact all the Olympic athletes in your country.
 
Jan and I were just up at Lake Placid, NY which was the site of 
the 1932 and 1980 Olympics. The Olympic spirit is still there, 
and one can feel it. The Supercourse needs to continue to build 
on the Olympic spirit. It is interesting that there are other 
international. groups which we might work with. At the airport, 
we saw lots of kids coming back from the Little League World Se-
ries. This is a global competition in American Baseball. An ad-
ditional group might be something like the Rotary. We have a lot 
to give to them, and they would give to us a huge distribution 
system. We do not want to work with any group that has a politi-
cal agenda. Please send us your ideas.
 
We would very much appreciate your thoughts about finding Olym-
pic athletes for a bottom up approach, as well as other poten-
tial distribution arms.
 
Thank you Greece:
 
For those of us who are Olympic Junkies, the Greek Olympics were 
the best. How fantastic it is to run the Marathon on its origi-
nal route! Our friends in Greece did a wonderful job. The Super-
course must find a way to partner with the Olympics to bring the 
message of prevention into the schools.
 
Time for School again!!!
 
Best regards,
Phidipedes, Ron, Faina, Eugene, Mita, Soni, Abed, Ezzeldeen, 
Monique, Samar, Julia, Thorpe, Suad, Shabina
mailto:super1+@pitt.edu