Facebook

All right, I've been on Facebook for a few months now, ostensibly to assist in the growth of my business.  In truth, I can't have a Facebook account that mixes business with personal business.  Some people who were invited to it thought things that I posted for business were worthy of their commentary, like the one idiot who, when I posted something about bankruptcy in Spanish, posted Yo quiero Taco Bell...LOL.  I deleted that offering.

Facebook has its utility.  For families that are dispersed over a wide area, it's a means for keeping up with each other.  Posting photographs of kids' events, momentous occasions or accomplishments, is much easier with Facebook, which has an immediacy lacking in other media.  Since I'm not favored with any family relations, Facebook from that perspective doesn't make any sense.

Karen has plenty of family who've adopted me.  They're wonderful people and it's fun to exchange pleasantries and other things with them.  I have a few friends with whom I connect on Facebook, but again, it's just not all that important to me.

There are, however, some things that have proven interesting about Facebook and how it's used.  From that perspective, Facebook is interesting.

Karen is an admitted people watcher, and watching people on Facebook is downright fascinating.  There are people who are nothing but snarky.  That's fun.  They find things I would never find and post them for my amusement.  That saves me the trouble of looking and gives me a good laugh.

Some people are unbelievably narcissistic.  Sure, having a Facebook account already means one is on the path to narcissism to a degree, but when one peoples the pages with picture after picture of himself, it gets a little tedious. Especially when said person has children and the number of photos of oneself equal or surpass those of his children, it's almost embarrassing.  Pucker those cheeks any tighter and the person may just shrivel up and blow away.

Politics is always a fertile territory on Facebook.  People who, in real life, wouldn't have the testicular fortitude to debate politics become raving banshees ready to man the ramparts on Facebook.  Some people with liberal tendencies have become so exercised over things Karen's posted they've unfriended her -- another concept that I'll discuss more, below -- even though they were merely position statements and not argument.  Family has even unfriended her over her political views.  And the hilarious thing to me, were it not so sad, is that these very same people post vitriolic stuff on their own pages for which they accuse Karen, unfairly, of posting.  Politics brings out the best hypocrisy in people.

This notion of unfriending someone mystifies me.  If a person is admired enough to ask him to join your page as a friend, why unfriend him when he states his politics?  I mean, if he was a friend before Facebook, didn't his politics become apparent sometime before he was invited to be a Facebook friend?  Sure, there are those people who don't know how to discuss politics properly, or are so argumentative and rude that trying to talk with them is futile.  But in Karen's case, talking politics for her is sport.  She's more diplomatic than most and argues facts, not emotions.  If anyone lacks the diplomatic gene in this family, it's me.  But compared to some people, I'm Henry Frigging Clay.  Yet these people rant and rave, descrying conservative views as if the Fourth Reich were about to be established.

Facebook still isn't that easy for me to navigate.  I'm going to start a page dedicated solely to my business when I get back from Up North.  And I'm not entirely comfortable about sharing things about myself with the world; that's why I have almost as many people blocked as I have friends.

I guess the upshot is that Facebook can be a useful tool but it can also be a divisive instrument.  There are friends and family that no longer talk because of slights, perceived or otherwise, that have occurred on Facebook.  I don't mind mixing it up, and would gladly engage in a debate here if anyone were interested, but since I don't want to alienate family or friends, I remain pretty tame on Facebook.

If I didn't, they'd have to rename it Smackbook.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Popular Shows I've Never Watched

This weekend Breaking Bad shows its finale.  From what I hear, it's an excellent show.  It has fans drooling in anticipation of certain plot twists that will resolve the show's biggest questions.  I'm happy for them. Unfortunately, I have no idea of what they speak.

Breaking Bad is simply the latest popular show that I've never watched.  Karen chides me as being a huge fan of television.  To a certain extent, she's correct.  But on another level, she's wrong.  I don't watch everything that everyone else watches either because the topic of the show bores me or because I don't find it entertaining.  Over the years, I've watched some series that have mesmerized me:  Oz, Dexter, Sex and the City, Cheers, M*A*S*H and All in the Family come to mind.  I'm sure there are others.  But the list of shows that I haven't watched may surprise some people.

ER -- I just don't get into shows with a medical theme.  The last one I ever watched was St. Elsewhere, and that was because of its irreverence.

Any Law & Order franchise -- For me, it began and ended with Hill Street Blues.  Well, that and Veronica Hamel.

Grey's Anatomy --  See ER, supra.  Besides, it's nothing more than a soap opera with doctors.  St. Elsewhere was the only doctor show I ever watched.

Any SUV franchisee -- See Law & Order, supra.

How I Met Your Mother -- I find this show insipidly stupid and a waste of Josh Segal's and Neil Patrick Harris's talents.

Mad Men -- I think I may have watched one episode of it out of peer pressure and found it boring.  I may be right and it's another soap opera dressed up in advertising, but I can't really say.  For all I know it's a tour de force, but I don't know that.

The Wire -- From what I hear, this was an excellent series.  Of all the shows on this list, this is one I wished I'd watched and one that I may go to Netflix when I have an open weekend when Karen's away.

Lost -- I didn't see how a series about people lost on an island could last a season, much less seven.  When I was cajoled into watching an episode, I saw that I was right.  Then when I heard about the finale, I was all the more thankful I hadn't wasted my time.

Beverly Hills 90210 --  I just wasn't cool enough.

Weeds -- The first season was terrific.  After that, it just got weird.

Friends -- Same as Weeds, this show was great the first year.  Then it jumped the shark in the second season.

The X Files -- Put simply enough, I'm not into sci-fi.

Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Legal -- As a practicing attorney, I can't stand to watch legal-themed shows.  I may do a separate blog post on that someday.  But these shows were simply ludicrous in their own ways and paled by comparison to LA Law, even if the latter tried to sell the preposterous premise that Laurie Partridge was an attorney.

Arrested Development -- Karen swears by this show.  I just never found time for it.  I may actually sit down and watch it.

The Simpsons/The Family Guy/South Park -- I don't do animated shows.  Period.

(c) 2013  The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Foreign Travel and Serendipity

I'm no Rick Steves when it comes to travel, but I've done some international traveling.  I like the thought of seeing different countries, the cultures that reside within them and the different ways people do the same things.  The roster of foreign countries in which I've spent any appreciable time isn't long:  Two weeks in Ireland, a year and two weeks in Spain, a weekend in Portugal and a fortnight in Italy.  Sure, I crossed into France, but I was there to get my visa renewed -- this was pre-9/11 -- for all of four hours.  I still haven't been to Canadia, for crying out loud.

When I went to Ireland, I went with my aunt the lawyer and her brother, my uncle, the priest.  I jokingly told people I had every contingency covered in case of an accident.  My uncle and I went over first, arranging to meet my aunt at Shannon a couple of days later.  We stayed in a B&B in Ennis, a small town nearby Shannon.  My uncle went to exchange some dollars for Irish pounds, so I went to a bar for a drink.  As I left the bar I ran into one of my floormates from my days at Illinois.  Needless to say, I was surprised, not only since I hadn't seen him in three years but because he had a German surname and had been studying German at school.  He's not one of the guys I'd have thought I'd meet in Ireland.

When I went to Portugal, it was by design that I'd run into a colleague, since I was going to stay with his family for the weekend.  Still, it was weird to see him in his homeland, my being so used to seeing him in Iowa.  It's sad how things turned out with him, but I'll never forget the weekend I spent in Coimbra and Oporto.  Those are places I'd love to see again.  If I did go back, I wonder if I'd run into Joaquim.

Spain offered the most fertile ground for running into people I knew. By far, the first and most surprising run-in was in the embassy.  I had been a graduate assistant at Iowa for a year -- which afforded me the opportunity to go to Spain, financially -- and in one of the first classes I taught, I had a pair of sorority sisters for whom the class was nothing more than an obligation.  Not accustomed, yet, to dealing with discipline problems, I cracked down as hard as I dare without making myself seem like a total jerk.  They weren't in my second semester class, so one can imagine my surprise when, in the embassy in Madrid to register my presence in the event of an accident, I saw one of the two in a line transacting some official business.  Not having seen me, I approached the girl from behind and tapped her on the shoulder, telling her, I sure hope you had a good teacher back in the States.  When she realized it was me, I'm not sure whether she was embarrassed or surprised to see me.  Whatever her reaction was, it couldn't have exceeded my surprise at seeing her in Spain.

Later, the day before I left Spain, I ran into a colleague outside the main post office in the Plaza de Cibeles. When I greeted Nancy, she told me she was traveling with another colleague of ours, Lea, who was off somewhere at that moment.  I wasn't nearly as surprised to run into Nancy, but even so, to run into anyone I knew in a European capital was surely bucking the odds.

Italy didn't present any opportunity to run into anyone, which is just as well.  I was sick most of the time.  But I did get to see Shaquille O'Neal's basketball shoe.  That's a story for another time, and yes it's huge.

Ironically, France and my brief stay provided the most surprising encounter.  I was only there for four hours, and since I didn't speak French and the French weren't particularly welcoming, I went to the railroad station to sit and wait for the train that would take me back across the border into Spain.  I was in the very station, I believe, where Franco met Hitler to discuss Spain's participation on the Axis side of the conflict, so for me my stay was already momentous.  But imagine my surprise when I saw a woman roughly my age wearing an Illinois sweatshirt!  There were only two of us in the place at the time.  Knowing how rough it is for American women traveling abroad, I approached her tentatively, unsure whether she was just wearing the sweatshirt or even spoke English.  It turned out she was a grad student who was traveling during the summer months as she did a year abroad, just like me.  Karen will laugh at my amazement at another coincidence, but what are the odds that two Illinois students meet in a railroad station in Hendaya, France?

Moments like these add spice to travel.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

The Sports "We" and Loyalties

(WARNING:  This post contains moderate sports crappola material, which may be harmful to certain readers, like Karen).

Today, Mike Greenberg was discussing with Mike Golic on Mike & Mike on ESPN the notion that sports fans assume the sports we -- akin to the regal we, just more pedestrian -- when referring to their country's teams or other teams they follow.  Greenie contends that rooting for a team for a significant amount of time or having attended the particular school gives the fan the right to refer to the team and himself, by extension, collectively as we.  Golic, on the other hand, says that only professional and former professional athletes have earned that right.  I'm more inclined to agree with Greenie on this one.

First of all, the matter that generated the discussion was the unbelievable come-from-behind victory of the American entry in the America's Cup.  Apparently, the American boat was down seven races and came back to win it.  Greenie's point, however, is well taken:  Although the boat is owned by an American, there was only one other American on board.  The rest of the crew was Aussie, Kiwi, a Dutchman and a Brit (the closest they've ever come to winning the thing since the first race, I'm thinking).  Is it legitimate to revel in what we won, asks Greenie.

That one's easy for me. Because the owner is richer than Roosevelt, I can't possibly take any satisfaction in the win.  Moreover, when over ninety percent of the team isn't even American, we didn't win it.  A conglomerate did.   But in the Olympics, when the U.S. wins, I claim we won, and as an American whose tax dollars support those athletes indirectly, I am justified.

But when I listen to sports radio, every armchair quarterback refers to his team with the sports we.  It's a little funny, but only when one hears the tone of their voices.  Even so, I understand how they feel and can't disagree with them.  There are, however, some rules:

To qualify for license to use the sports we, a fan must:

1.  Live in the city/town where the team is based and/or have supported the team for more than ten years.  The second part of the rule applies to those who have moved from the team's location.  For example, I live more than three hundred miles away from the Chicago Blackhawks, but I have supported them since the late '60's.

2.  Attend or graduate from the school being supported.  This is a little tricky.  Say someone attends for two years and transfers to a lesser school.  Can that person claim allegiance to the school from which he transferred?  Possibly.  Certainly if the person has supported the team for more than ten years.  See, Rule 1, supra.  But what about the new school?  Can a person claim allegiances to both schools?  What about graduate or professional schools?  I suppose if the person graduates he can, but it's a slippery slope.

Now, what about adopting allegiances?  For example, now that I've moved to another area, can I root for the teams based here?  I would say no, with one exception.  Since I am a diehard Cubs' fan, I can root for an American League team that competes with the other team in Chicago, since I am basically the enemy of this new area's team's enemy.  But I cannot eschew the Cubs for a new team.

Say, though, that a person moves to an area that has a team in a sport that wasn't represented in his former area.  For example, let's say that someone from Nashville, which doesn't have an MLB or NBA team, moves to Chicago.  Can he root for the Cubs (most certainly not that other team) or the Bulls?  Sure.

What about people from states that don't have pro franchises?  They're effectively free agents.  People in Nebraska, Iowa, Alabama, Montana and the rest of them are free to pick and choose.

But switching loyalties is just wrong somehow.  Just because the Cubs are mired in a 105-year slump doesn't mean that I can jump ship.  In for a penny, in for a pound.  Or, to paraphrase Sir Walter Scott, I may not change my sports allegiance like one changes his coat with the weather.  Once upon a time the Bulls stunk, and then Portland drafted Sam Bowie.  The Blackhawks couldn't get over the hump until Dollar Bill died.

I just hope the Cubs do it relatively soon.  I'm not getting any younger.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Songs I Know

I may have misled people by saying that I can't remember song lyrics.  Really, I struggle with them.  I can't tell you the words to Satisfaction despite the fact that I've heard it a thousand times.  In fact, awhile ago I listened closely to it and was amazed to hear what Mick Jagger was really singing about.

But there are a few songs whose lyrics I know.  Having said that, if I don't hear the song for awhile, I'm prone to substituting words that I think are part of the song or that I know rhyme with what I just sang.  Call it freestyle, call it poetic license.  I still maintain that I cannot remember the lyrics to most popular songs. Songs like Old McDonald don't count; anything that was used to brainwash me as a child doesn't count (although I do think Conjunction Junction is cool...).

Here then is the list of songs whose lyrics I can remember correctly more times than not.

Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue -- if for no other reason to spite Peter Jennings.

Fire and Rain -- I don't know why, exactly.  But now I'd like to know the backstory.

España camisa blance de mi esperanza -- In my mind, the unofficial national anthem of Spain.

Fly Away -- The lyrics were my mission statement at one time.

Black Water -- During eighth grade, this song became our song in the locker room for some reason.

Hijo de la luna -- The tempo and the lyrics made this a challenge I couldn't decline.

It's a Miracle -- This is what happens when a Barry Manilow album is the first album one ever buys.

We've Only Just Begun -- It was our eighth grade graduation theme.

Forever and Ever -- I plan to sing it to Karen.

Mine All Mine -- I was going through a rough patch at the time, so I played it incessantly.

Scarborough Fair -- It was one of the few songs I could play on the recorder.

Come Sail Away -- One of the few positive vestigial reminders of high school.

Let Me Serenade You -- Another song I'll sing for Karen someday.

Longer -- Ditto.

There might be a few more, but I doubt it.  As it was, I had to review the songs on my Ipod to figure out what songs I thought I could remember.  Given that I have over 4,200 songs and I could only come up with fourteen should be an indication of just how bad I am at song lyrics.

I'd have included the jokes I know but there are only three, two of them are well-known lawyer jokes and I'm not interested in wasting your time or mine.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Final Travel Visits

Today as I was driving to work in my new state, for whatever reason it hit me that I'll probably never go back to Illinois.  I suppose work could take me back there, but it's unlikely.  A trip to my alma mater could be in order, but I'm getting a little long in the tooth to cheer on a bunch of undergrads in sporting events in person when I can do so from the comfort of my own home.  Truly, there's very little that recommends that I return there.

That got me thinking about places that had meaning to me, either for one day or over the course of time, that I'll never see again.  Places that are etched into my memory because they hold a special significance to me that I know I'll never visit again.  In terms of tourist value, they hold very little.  But to me there's some significance, and I'm beginning to realize that with time and age considerations beginning to blend together, I'll never see these places again.

One that comes readily to mind is Cariño, Spain, not far from the port of La Coruña, whence the Great Armada sailed to its doom in the English Channel.  I went there in 1985 because I wanted to mail our Mother a letter with that postmark on it.  I took a bus that cost me about four hours there and back simply so I could send her a letter whose name translates in English to dear or affection.  My stop in the northwest was the last big trip I'd take, as I left Spain some two weeks later and didn't return for fourteen years. Cariño is a small little backwater town that has virtually no tourist value, but I went there for my Mom.

A little farther east is another smallish town with nothing to recommend it called Ribadeo.  I stayed there on my way to Santiago de Compostela only because a student of mine told me his company, ENDASA, S.A., had a plant there.  He told me candidly that it was a wasteland of a town, and he was right.  Whereas there is some romantic reason to try to visit Cariño again, there is absolutely no reason to see Ribadeo.  Even so, I treasure the little hórreo made out of aluminum that my student gave me as I left Spain, since it may very well have been made in Ribadeo.

Farther east still are two towns, Cangas de Onís and Arriondas, that hold very special memories for me.
Cangas has an old Roman bridge, seen here:

and is proud of its sidra, or hard cider.  A few years after I'd returned home, I happened upon a movie that won the Best Foreign Oscar, Volver a empezar, that was filmed in and around Cangas.  It's a small backwater town that made it into an Oscar-winning film, and I happened to stay in it.

Arriondas was the stop at which I got off the narrow-gauge train to make my way to Covadonga.  It's actually the place where a huge kayak and canoe race starts each summer:

I only spent five hours there, but I spent about three of them sitting by the Sella River with a pistola de pan, some queso manchego and jamón serrano, a cold Coke and my trusty Swiss Army knife and had one of the best lunches I ever had.  It was also where I walked into a bar to hear the theme from The Greatest American Hero incongruously playing loudly above the bottles of liquor lining the back wall.

Just inside the border I visited Hendaya, France.  I went there to get my visa updated (this is long before terrorism made travel so difficult).  I arrived in the very train station where Hitler met Franco and where the latter frustrated the former about not granting the Wehrmacht passage to attack Gibraltar.  I also had a chance encounter there that I'll save for another blog.  I'll never revisit Hendaya, if for no other reason than the French were rude there.

In Portugal I visited Coimbra, a university town north of Lisbon.  It's a beautiful town that I wish I'd been able to explore more.  I'll never go back there either.

The five star hotel into which I snuck into south of Valencia is another place I'll never visit.  That hotel was simply a place to rest my head, but it's the focal point of one of the wildest weekends of my life.  I'll never go back there either.

Door County, Wisconsin, has Cana Island, where there's a hundred yard causeway that, depending on the tides, one can walk across in water no higher than one's knees.  I'd like to show it to Karen, but there are so many other things we'd like to see and not nearly enough time.

But the only place that I'll never see again, in all likelihood, that means the most to me is our Mother's gravesite.  I know that she's not really there, but it's a touchstone for me.  It's nearby where I grew up, where she liked to paint landscapes and it's a simple, unaffected cemetery.  With urban sprawl, I don't know how long that will last, and I'm not sure I'd like to see her final resting place surrounded by subdivisions.  I have pictures of her tombstone and memories in my heart.  Those should do just fine.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Family Reunions

This weekend I will attend another family reunion, this time Karen's father's side of the family.  I've been to her mother's side's reunions, and for someone from north of the Mason-Dixon line, it was truly a culturally eye-opening experience, but in the best of ways.  Now I can't wait to attend the reunion in the holler each year, no matter how hot and buggy it gets.  Fortunately, I came into the picture after the FDA-disapproved foodstuffs were no longer served at that reunion.

This reunion will be north of the Mason-Dixon line.  I don't know what exactly to expect, despite what Karen's told me.  I know there might be chilly reception from a pair down there, because they follow the liberal mantra Do as we say and not as we do, having unfriended their own relative for Karen's differing political views.  Being the contrarian who's fiercely defensive of my girl, I couldn't leave well enough alone and jumped into the fray, no doubt worsening things.  Well, it wasn't entirely my fault, since this pair apparently needs remedial English courses to understand clearly what I said before taking umbrage...er, offense.

But I'm looking forward to meeting cousins, aunts and uncles who are near and dear to Karen.  More importantly, they've been supportive of her and all that she's endured over the last few years.  They're not judgmental (much, anyway) and they don't have some outmoded approaches to life that keep them from living it to the fullest.

Had we been attending one of my family reunions, assuming there were such a thing, it would look something like this:

 
I'm not exaggerating...too much.

So I'll enjoy meeting relatives of whom I've only heard Karen speak or whom I've met on brief occasions.  Sure, we have to drive down and then back because Sunday we have another first -- my first MLB game for Karen's team.  But I'm looking forward to meeting these folks and letting them get their measure of me.

Unless, of course, the intransigent duo tries to browbeat either of us about how horrible we are to share opinions that differ with theirs, in which case the reunion may resemble this:

Let the good times roll.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Old Men

I'm not quite an old man yet.  I'm getting there, and I can feel the aging every time I walk down the stairs (For whatever reason, walking up the stairs is easier than walking down them).  I've always maintained that I've always been older than my chronological age, and perhaps my body is finally catching up to my spirit.

Karen loves old men.  She sees them when we're out and coos, Isn't he adorable?  I just want to take him home with me.  I don't feel threatened because I'm reasonably confident I could take them, but I've gotten in the habit of noticing them before she does and telling her she can't fall in love with them.  Then when she notices them she coos anyway.

Our parents raised us with the idea that we were to respect our elders.  This is a noble idea, but it hurt me somewhat when I respected older people for whom the only reason to respect them was the year of their birth.  Be that as it may, I have been fortunate to know some very wonderful older people, and I've been privileged to have them in my life to whatever degree I had them.  Not every one of them was an integral part of my life, and some mattered more than others, but the thumbnail portraits that follow below give an idea of what these men were or are like and why they mattered to me in whatever degree.

There was a barber in my neighborhood back in Illinois who had a voice straight out of Andy Devine's family.  He was a Navy vet who had fought in World War II, so by the time I met him in the late 80's he was about to retire.  He'd not only served his country but had taken care of his family using the skill he'd learned in the service.  His shop was a throwback barber shop, not one of these upscale hair salons, complete with the checkered tile floor and the smells that accompany an old barbershop.  Once in awhile when I'd go in there there'd be another man in there.  One time the landlord was there, some insurance salesman who owned the building.  He was a German who'd served in the Wehrmacht in World War II but emigrated to the US after the war.  The old guy, whose name was Joe, once gave me a straight razor, the first one I'd ever owned.  I still have it somewhere, although I've never used it.  The one thing that Joe always did was tell me, after I'd paid him, was Just stay healthy! with that old cowboy sidekick's voice.  It never failed to make me smile.

The next older gentleman is a guy I met in my new state.  As profane as he is generous, I've shared more work lunches with him than anyone I know, and I've only known him for seven months.  He's been unfailingly generous to me, and he cracks me up with his profane conservatism.  Anyone who's a liberal usually has a few rude adjectives prefacing his or her name when he's talking about them. But this man has, at age seventy-one, helped me mover furniture twice without asking for any recompense.  He's talked to me about the nature of my new state, guns, hunting and fishing and life in general.  Although our relationship only counts seven months, I feel like I've known him my whole life.  If I mention that I'm interested in something, and he knows something about it, he offers to help me with it.  His kindness matches his profanity, but the whole package tickles me and humbles me at the same time.  I hope when I'm his age I have such a sunny perspective on life as he does.

There are many other men to whom I could refer, but the one man whose memory exceeds that of all others is a man named Henry Lilienheim.  Henry worked as a patent attorney with my late aunt who introduced me to him because she thought we might have something in common.  Henry, it seemed, like flamenco, and since I had lived in Spain, our introduction followed a natural progression for my aunt who never knew I hate flamenco.  I met Henry with great pleasure, however, because he was such a warm, inviting and gregarious person it would have been a mistake not to pursue a friendship with him.  As it turned out, this was one of the wisest decisions of my life, because I was enriched far more by knowing him.

Henry was Polish, an engineer by trade who had returned to Poland from France shortly before the Nazi invasion in 1939.  He went to Dachau, while his wife went to Magdeburg.  Both survived the camps and the war and found each other, miraculously, afterwards.  Henry told me that he'd been offered a position in David Ben Gurion's first Israeli cabinet but turned it down to search for his wife, not even knowing at the time whether she'd survived. 

Henry spoke nine languages.  He came to the States and became a patent attorney, no mean feat for a foreigner much less for an American.  He practiced for some thirty years with distinction.  His daughter, a filmmaker based in Canada, made a film about his life called Dark Lullabies.  Henry himself wrote a book about his experiences during and after the war called Aftermath.  It's a searing portrait of what he endured that bears reading.

As luck would have it, my law school was located directly across the street from his office.  I'd stop in, say hello to my aunt and then sit down with Henry.  Most of our visits were convivial, but one day I found Henry in a very somber mood for some reason.  As I sat down in his office he asked me if I believed that God existed.  The first thought that came to my mind was What do I tell a man who's actually been to hell and survived?  For one of the few times in my life I was able to give a diplomatic yet forthright answer and, I hope, managed not to upset him.  We talked for a few minutes about it and then changed the subject.  That one visit had a profound effect on me, and I can vividly recall virtually every minute of it.

Eventually, I graduated and began practicing and Henry retired.  Once he retired I lost track of him until I learned that some years later that he'd died.  Although we'd not spoken in a decade, I felt an irretrievable loss of a friend who, without setting out to do so, had taught me so much.  His gentleness of spirit, his breadth of knowledge and his forgiveness were such lessons that I remain indebted to this man.  Karen would have loved him.

The three men whom I've described were nothing alike. Joe was uneducated formally, the other two were attorneys.  One was profane where the other two never uttered a profanity.  One spoke nine languages fluently where the other two spoke only one, and one of them had difficulty with that.  But each of them burned a memory into my brain, a memory that I'll try to remember and utilize when I read my dotage.

I was -- and continue to be -- very fortunate to have known these men whatever the capacity.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Rip Van Winkle-isms

I'll be the first to admit that I'm getting older.  Even so, I think I have most of my mental faculties intact, albeit with some slippage that's only normal.  I'll never have a photographic memory, nor will I do exercises with the intent to boost my memory.   I play chess, Sudoku, read challenging books and live with Karen, so my mind is kept sharp daily.

Even so, I've noticed some troubling things that have occurred whose changes I missed.  By that I mean, all of a sudden, things are different or are commonplace and I missed when the changes happened.  Usually, I'm observant about these things, but these things I just flat out missed.  Perhaps I don't have as firm a grip as I thought I did.

For example:

When did politicians start saying I'm X and I approved this message?  Was there a test case where someone was sued because of the failure to say this?  I don't remember Reagan, Carter, Ford, Clinton or the Bushes (that just sounds weird) ever saying that.  Is this some ploy or is it the result of a legal challenge that carries with it serious consequences?  Whatever it is, I missed it.

On a similar note, when did people start saying I'm sorry for your loss when offering condolences to a person who lost a loved one?  About the only social thing our family ever did with any regularity when I was young was attend funerals of people whom I'd never met, and I don't recall anyone saying this.  I do remember hearing Please accept my/our condolences or similar niceties, but this generic, all-encompassing line jars my sensibilities.  Someone could say that to me if my Cubs lost a game, if I lost my keys or if I lost my marbles from hearing that line one too many times.  I suppose it's a succinct way of addressing the situation, but it carries all the emotional wallop of scraping gum off the bottom of one's shoe.

This next one's weird:  Cement mixers.  When I worked summers for my village, we put in sewers, streets, sidewalks and other things for the Public Works department.  I've been at the receiving end of a cement mixer (not like that...) and this is what I remember them to look like:

In other words, the high end went off the back.  Now, they look more like this:

When did this happen?  What inspired the change?  Scud missile launchers?  Is there some benefit to having the dispensing end of the barrel over the cab?  Is it a not so subtle message to the driver to place his load well?  I don't get it.

The next change has been gradual and I have been watching it.  I welcome it.  What I don't understand is why it took so long.  Commercial advertisements, at least on television, are featuring more and more biracial couples without making big deals about it.  The notorious Cheerios commercial that is infamous only for the reaction it garnered is the most notable one, but there are plenty of other commercials involving biracial couples not only with blacks and whites, but Asians and blacks, Latinos and whites, Latinos and blacks -- in short, any combination that might exist in real life.  I applaud the decision but wonder what took so long.

On another taboo subject, all of a sudden appeared is the use of profanity on network television.  Since George Carlin's routine Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television in 1972, artists have been pushing the boundaries.  But recently, words that heretofore would never be uttered on air are appearing all over network television.  I'm no prude, and I don't care whether they're said, but I wonder when laxity came to broadcasting standards.

When did lane-changing in intersections become legal?  I was taught to never change lanes in an intersection, but I see it happening all the time now.

Recently, Pope Francis came out and said that priestly celibacy is grounded in tradition and not Church dogma.  When did this change?  From what I remember, the Church was divinely inspired to make the change which, from all indications, in the fourth century there were two councils at which the requirement of clerical celibacy was an apostolic practice that had to be followed by ministers of the Church.  The Second Lateran council of 1139 laid down the rule forbidding priestly marriage.  Now it's not doctrinal or dogmatic?  What next?  Women priests?  Contraception?  Reading the Bible?  And the Church wonders why it has an image problem...

...When did Al Gore become a scientist?

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Reference Books

I am, admittedly, a bit of a bibliophile. That's a huge understatement, but it's also true.  I'll read almost anything, although given the choice, I have my favorite subjects.

A few years ago I read A.J. Jacobs' The Know-It-All which detailed his effort to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z.  It was an entertaining read, but I doubt I could pull off what he did, much less write a book about it.  Part of my interest stemmed from the fact that I find reference books interesting.  One of my favorite books is the Larousse English-Spanish dictionary that I bought in Madrid, Spain.  This will sound weird, but perhaps my favorite part of the book is the pictures section in the middle where it has things like the human skeleton, cars and motorcycles, tools, etc., with arrows to each item and both the Spanish and English words for them.  I could read that part for hours.

Somewhere along the line I found a book by someone named Thomas J. Glover called Pocket Ref at Restoration Hardware.  The ticket price that's still on the back of it reads $12.95 which, even for RH, seems a little inflated.  I doubt I paid that much, because I don't pay that much for books that don't include arcane subjects in which I have no interest.  I thought the book would come in handy one day and purchased it with little thought or care.

That day its handiness arrived was two days ago.  Waiting interminably for Comcast to untie the Gordian Knot that it created out of my phone number and email address, I had little else to keep my interest so I picked up Pocket Ref.  It turns out there's far more in there than I could ever have imagined. 

To begin with, one has to realize that this book measures all of five and a half inches by three inches.  Closed it measures an inch thick.  The print is fine and would challenge a geriatric, but when I remove my glasses I can read it just fine.

I was surprised at how much interesting information it actually contains.  For example, one section has animal names, with their groups, male, female and baby terminology.  To wit, who knew that a group of goldfish was called a troubling, or that a baby crab was either a zoea, a megalops or a dricthus?  The next time someone writes a sci-fi book, he should call something a Megalops...but I wouldn't call anything a dricthus, because that sounds like a body part that shouldn't be mentioned in polite company. 

It has information on batteries, their sizes and capacities.  It has graphic illustrations on the various knots and how to tie them.  There are conversion tables which helpfully provide the instructions on how to convert firkins (English or American) into other things, like bushels or gallons.  Until I learn just what a firkin is I probably won't need that one.

I can get Volcanic Explosive Indeces (VEI, not to be confused with REI), Core Drill Specs, Maximum Floor Joist loads by wood type, Tire Sizes and Load Ratings (paging Marisa Tomei) and the always helpful Torino Asteroid-Comet Destruction Scale which, from what I can tell, is utterly useless.

This is the book I'd need -- if they allowed me to refer to it during the games -- on Jeopardy or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.   The odd thing, though, is that I like paging through the book.  I suspect this confirms what Karen's known all along:  I am a nerd of the first order.

Somehow, though, I doubt I'll ever use the Math section.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Greek System

I attended proudly the University of Illinois.  It's a fine institution, with fine programs in engineering, business, architecture and law.  The campus is fine, although not the best in the country by far, and it was affordable when I attended.  I follow their sports teams passionately and take pride when alumni win important prizes in literature, medicine or other disciplines.

There was, however, a dirty underside to life as a student at the campus.  I don't know how this translates to other campuses or whether it's peculiar to Illinois.  I suspect that the dirt exists elsewhere but takes different forms.  At Illinois, however, the Greek System was unbelievably obnoxious.

Before all the apologists assail me, understand this:  I never once tried out, or rushed, for a fraternity.  I was never mistreated by a frat boy, nor was I made to feel inferior by anyone that belonged to a frat.  I didn't try to date girls in a sorority -- not that it would have made a difference -- and largely kept my distance from the houses.  In fact, I never once stepped foot in a fraternity or sorority.

Why, then, my disdain for the system?  To put it simply, it's elitist and hypocritical.  For all of those who tout the substantial benefits of the system -- and on this we can agree:  There are far too many of them -- the negatives outweigh those benefits.

Let's start at the beginning: The whole point of having fraternities (unless I specify, when I mention frats I'm indicting both them and sororities) is to promote brotherhood.  That is, after all, what fraternity means.  Didn't the French hail Liberté, égalité, fraternité during their revolution to oust the royals?  The Greeks have sullied that noble idea by claiming one thing and doing quite another.

For example, how can you blackball someone who wants to join your frat if you are promoting brotherhood?  Why even have a credo stating that the promotion of brotherhood is one of your chief goals?  I've discussed this with Greeks and they say that they should have the right to choose with whom they live, and so they should.  Just don't call it a frat then.  Call it a dinner club, a social club or whatever euphemism you choose, but leave fraternity out of it.  By virtue of the fact that you pick and choose among people you scoff at the notion of brotherhood.

The people whom frats choose to admit to their ranks typically fit into a mold.  There were frats that only took tall blond guys, sororities that only chose thin blonde cheerleader types and others that would only admit those girls whose daddies' tax returns deemed them worthy of admission.  I'm not making this up:  One sorority at Illinois when I was there required applicants to submit their fathers' income tax returns as part of their application.  What does income have to do with sisterhood?

The dirty little secret that the Greeks loudly protest is that the system is hugely racist.  When I attended, the whites had their houses, the blacks had their houses and the Jews had their houses.  Sure, there might have been an errant member here and there who slipped through the winnowing process, but by and large the Greek System was largely segregated. 

Add to that there were racist and anti-Semitic taunting that went on -- one time, the Jewish frat found a severed sheep's head in its mailbox -- and the whole notion of proclaiming the pursuit of brotherhood rings hollow.

I coached a girls' intramural football team that faced off against a sorority in the championship game.  The opponent came out with all their blonde ponytails hanging out of the back of their baseball caps and their frat boy coaches were on the sidelines imparting their superior knowledge. There had to be at least one frat boy per sorority player.  We killed them.

That game, because that league was open to all university squads, was played on mud fields outside Huff Gym.  The frat league final was played under the lights in Memorial Stadium on turf.  Brotherhood indeed.

One incident, possibly apocryphal, points the iniquities between Greeks and non-Greek students:  One house's rushees during Hell Week thought it would be funny to bring back some human brains from the on-campus cadaver room that was used for medical studies and put them on plates in the frat as if they were spaghetti.  The actives came home, yucked it up, and then told them to return them to the cadaver room.  In between the house and the cadaver room was the house's rival, so instead of doing the proper thing, the snuck into the rival's laundry room and dumped the brains in the rival's washing machines.  When they were discovered, the FBI was called in because no one knew whether a murder was involved.  When the prank was cleared up, the house got a $500 fine and was put on probation for a year.  Had a non-Greek done such a thing he would have been kicked out of school.

I toyed with the idea of rushing a black house just to make a statement.  I could have been mistaken, but the black houses seemed to promote brotherhood a heck of a lot more than the white houses.  Perhaps they would have thought I was making fun of them, but in fact I would have been making fun of the white houses, whose notion of brotherhood comes nowhere close to the dictionary definition.  In the end, I chose not to rush, if for no other reason that I couldn't afford it.

One incident in my senior year, though, made up for it all.  Friends from my days in the dorm stopped by a party at a house nearby where I was living off campus and broke into the kitchen, where they found frozen turkeys ready for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.  They smuggled out a few of them and gave them away, but wanting to keep one for themselves, brought it to my house and asked me to cook it up for them.  Having learned from our Mother how to do it, I readily agreed, and two weeks later we had ourselves a mighty fine feast, thanks to the fraternity that had enough money it could afford to have a beer wagon for its party (hey -- this was the early 80's).

I guess one could say that that time, the frat's turkey was cooked.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Syria

The discussion about whether the United States should intervene in Syria has been raging for a week or so, and it's time I weighed in.  I doubt very much that the White House is going to consider my opinion, but under the First Amendment I can say what I want without it infringing on that right.

Jorge Santayana was a Spanish-American philosopher who is famous for having uttered the line Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.  It's an easy enough phrase to remember, but for some reason this country has selective amnesia when it comes to military intervention.

After World War II, we assumed the role as the world's policeman.  Back then, Communism was the culprit we confronted.  Korea, called a police action and not a war, brought us to war to stem the tide of communism.  To be sure, the North Koreans were the aggressors, but when the conflict is examined closely, it was a civil war.  Many will try to suggest that the North Koreans were merely proxies for the Soviets, but now that the Soviet Union has disbanded, the North Koreans are still ready to invade and conquer the South, were it not for the DMZ and the United States' presence there.

Vietnam was another civil war masquerading as an action to stem the rising tide of Communism.  Avoiding the euphemism of a police action, the United States came up with the Domino Theory that justified its role in Vietnam, even though the goal was ostensibly the same:  Stop communism.

Thousands of Americans forfeited their lives in foreign lands that presented no threat to our country.  There may have been strategic reasons for our involvement in both wars, but realistically, there was no viable threat to our country in either of those wars.

We turned the table on the Soviets in Afghanistan, propping up the mujaheddin to defeat them in the 1980's.  But in so doing, we enabled the Islamofascists to strike back at us on September 11, 2001.  Wisely, we never had direct involvement in that conflict, but the ancillary results were harmful to our country.

Isolationism has been called naïve and narrow-minded.  For centuries, the Euros have stormed into countries, either to colonize them or because some vital national interest was arguably in play.  After World War II, as the only military power with both a pulse and a conscience, it fell to us to play the role of international policeman.  As both Korea and Vietnam demonstrated, we didn't carry out the role well.

Syria is a civil war.  The arguments can be made that some national interest is served by injecting ourselves into the fracas, but they're illusory.  The fact of the matter is that the POTUS wants to go in to make a statement that he kept his word when he made his boastful promise a year ago that the use of chemical weapons would cross a red line justifying our involvement.

The potential results of our involvement are all negative.  At best we take out some chemical weapons -- if the Assad regime hasn't hidden them already.  Even if we do, the Iranians or the Russians will merely resupply them or give the government forces more conventional weapons with which to defeat the rebels.

In the unlikely event our involvement turns the tide and allows the rebels to win, what does that mean for us?  Who are the rebels?  Are they friendly to us?  There are already reports that the rebels have significant Al Qaeda units fighting on their side.  Do we expect these fighters to counsel the winning rebels to engage in diplomatic relations with us?

Egypt recently went through a civil war.  Egypt is infinitely more important to us -- the Israeli-Egyptian peace, the Suez Canal, being Libya's neighbor -- but we stayed out of that civil war.  Libya was a civil war.  It has large natural gas reserves.  We stayed out of that one.  The Sudan went through a civil war in which far more people died than have in Syria.  We stayed out of that one.

The only logical conclusion that I can reach is that this push to bomb the Syrian government's chemical weapons is to prop up the POTUS so that he can be seen to be a man of his word.  He should never have made that promise.  He has made us look hypocritical and arbitrary when compared to Egypt, Libya and the Sudan.  There is no countervailing reason to involve ourselves in another country's civil war.  This isn't to suggest that the Assad regime should stand; I hope Bashir Assad burns in hell.  But we don't know who the rebels are and we have no vital interest in getting involved.

There is one interesting note about the use of chemical weapons that the MSM is sidestepping:  Just where did Syria get its chemical weapons?  It's long been assumed that on the eve of the second Gulf War, the Sunni Saddam Hussein shipped his WMD's to Sunni Syria.  Not one MSM (other than Fox) has even brought the subject up.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles