On the Rarity of Familiarity

I spent most of the day yesterday blessed by an uncommonly beautiful merging of two worlds, introducing new family to old friends without ever once really worrying about what either would think of the other, taking for granted that the things I loved in each would make them equally dear one to the other.  Only in retrospect does the magnitude of that assumption, and even more so the miracle of having been right in it, seem clear to me.  And so, this evening, as I sat to pen a brief thank you, I found myself wanting to capture the essence of the day in a way that would convey my gratitude for so much more than mere hospitality.  I found myself wanting to say thank you for a friendship that has spanned more than thirty-four years thus far, a full two-thirds of my life.

And so, as I was writing a "thank you" note tonight--not the obligatory kind required by social custom, but the kind you write for relief when your soul is full to overflowing and needs spill itself or burst--I found myself returning to that favorite phrase of mine from Robert Penn Warren, "the friend of your youth."  And coming to my own blog where I knew I could find the quote I was looking for, I found not only Warren's words, but my own, already echoing the very thoughts I'd penned tonight, and I was reminded that this was not the first time I'd felt this gratitude.  And therein lies one of the greatest benefits of blogging, or of journaling (which, blogging really is, just more publicly)--it gives us the opportunity to see our own thoughts return to us like kites upon the wind.


What I wrote tonight was this: "There are fewer than a half dozen people still in my life of whom I would use Warren's term and call 'friends of my youth.'  But when I think back to some of the very best times of my life, you are there.  And here you are again.  There are those for whom we don this or that persona, seeking acceptance, and there are those rarest few with whom there is no such thing as a persona; rather, we find our truest selves, our better and even best selves, drawn out, restored, presented to us again, whole and untarnished, as a gift."

What I wrote almost three years ago was this: "Because what such friends see in us, celebrate in us, treasure in us is that thing which is inscrutable to others, but which they see clearly, without needing to strike through any mask. And that thing is unchanging, even when we ourselves lose touch with it or forget its nature. The joy that we feel in the company of our true friends originates in the role they play in facilitating the emergence of that best self. And the overwhelming joy we feel in reunion with those friends after lengthy separation is, in some ways, as much a joy at reunion with ourselves as with them."

And so, to my friends, those friends of my youth in far better ways than Warren meant, thank you.  Thank you for welcoming introductions and for making a gift of re-introductions.  Thank you.  And thank you.

Another Look at Social Networks

Getting the word out.

From yesterday's Inside Higher Ed:

Not long ago, a woman I know got a phone call from a sibling who reported that one of their sisters had died a few hours earlier. It was painful news, if not unexpected given the sister’s long illness; the call was part of a narrative of grief that had been taking shape for a while. But in telling me about it, she also noted an odd and slightly awkward detail. She’d actually learned the news a bit earlier, on Facebook and via Blackberry, where it had been announced in a “status report” from her sister’s daughter. . . .

An individual’s death is a rip in the social fabric. And communication among those closest to the deceased involves more than transmission of the news. It is process of patching up what remains of that fabric, a reinforcement of bonds. By some implicit rule, we take it as a given that family will get the news before it is available to a world of strangers. Not that things always happen that way, of course, but the exceptions are felt as such.

The full article is here, and it's an interesting consideration of the ways in which our modern communication tools are affecting the rules of social interaction.

Nor is it coincidence that I would open and read that yesterday morning. Despite my recent musings about matching the right information to the right venue, I find that I've failed to do so. A family member was upset at me only yesterday because a major event in my own life that I thought I'd kept her informed on, I apparently hadn't. No death involved, but a milestone of similar magnitude nonetheless. Mea culpa. I learn. I'll do better.

Parents and Facebook

On a related note, I pointed out two months ago that the face of Facebook was aging. A consequence of that has been the issue of how much of a young person's life should be open to the view of his or her parents. Happily, that's never been an issue in our family. From the outset, I've been a part of the social network of my daughters. It was one of the prices of being allowed on the internet from our home.

But for some kids, especially those whose online personas are anything but laudable, the presence of their parents on Facebook has thrown a kink into the normal stretching of the wings that takes place for almost all college students in their first year. I can't imagine conducting myself in such a way that I would have been ashamed for my parents to know what I was up to, nor do I think my daughters have that problem. (Of course, academe being my world, my threshold of shock, my expectations, and my tolerance are all fairly accommodating. The disaster that resulted from my oldest daughter's accepting one of her older relatives as a "friend" wasn't all that funny to anyone but me.) I certainly had plenty of friends in college for whose parents ignorance was bliss. And I know all too well from the use to which I've put Facebook as a college administrator, those online alter egos can be all too telling.

The conflict which often ensues is the topic of the following interesting piece from last night's CBS Evening News. Enjoy.

Update [5/21/09]: I've removed the embedded player because it automatically started the video every time the blog was loaded. If you'd like to view the video, you'll find it here.

Find Me, Friend Me, Follow Me, Connect

It's overly easy these days to lead a more public life than most of us ever dreamed we could, or would, or could or would want to.

Long ago, I copied a saying from Markings, by Dag Hammarskjöld, to the effect that one should live every day so as never to be embarrassed if what you do is published in the newspaper. (If I had the book to hand, I'd quote it, but alas, most all my books are, once again, in boxes.) [Update: if I'd had the book to hand, I'd have realized the quote I was thinking of was from Illusions, by Richard Bach. I knew it was one of the two. Guessed wrong.] Today, much of what we do each minute is published on the internet. Today, we publish it ourselves, through MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, and so on. And what some people tell of their own lives, and proudly, our parents would have blushed to whisper. We can, if we choose, broadcast our location through GPS-enabled phones, for a few close friends to follow, or for all the world. Don't look for me to do that any time soon.

There's nothing in my life so scandalous or interesting that I would be embarrassed to have it published. (I've tried, for most of my life--not always successfully, I'll admit--to live by Hammarskjöld's advice, and more of it than the snippet above.) But I believe there are occasionally blurred, but mostly distinct lines between the things that would interest the readers of this blog and most of my "Friends" on, say, FaceBook. (Yes. I have a FaceBook account. I have daughters in high school and college. I was the Deputy Inspector General at a four-year college. But, if you're a long-time reader, you know all this.) For my friends and family, it may be enough simply to know that I saw Star Trek last weekend. For many readers of this blog, that event only has significance if I have something to say about the experience. (I will. Be patient.)

My life feeds this blog. Whatever contemplations you find here, whatever insights to human nature, whatever advice on relationships, whatever reviews of food, entertainment, or consumer goods--all those thoughts have their genesis in my life. Yet, my life per se, is not what this blog is about. This blog is about Life in more general terms--Life with a capital L.

All of this, really, is in response to readers whose curiosity was piqued by recent comments about my current travels or upcoming relocation. While this blog is not exactly anonymous--most of its readers know the author in some form, or at least feel that they know enough about the author to properly weigh his words--it has a thin facade of anonymity, or of pseudonymity, that has not fully exhausted its value. If only for myself, I'd like to preserve the illusion that the things I say here, at least sometimes, have a weight of their own, independent of any of the people the author is.

The "Doc" who authors TheyRodeOn, the "Doc" who will not let you escape his reach in freefall, the "Doctor" who lectures from podium and windowsill and makes sleep-deprived cadets stand in their chairs for nodding off in his literature or composition classes, and the friend, father, and brother whose blog some don't know exists are all one and the same and yet not. So, if you want to know what's going on with any one of me, you'll need to pick a level to drill down to, a window to peek in through. The deepest insights will always be here, and sometimes, the root causes as well. The mundane is out there to be had, just not here. Find me, friend me, follow me, connect. The view changes depending on which window you choose. The same heart drives them all.

Dream Big

First,thanks to JMG for passing this along.

I think I'll just offer it up here without commentary for the moment. Enjoy.

Embedding for the video below was disabled, but if you click on the still, it should open the YouTube page for you. Enjoy.

Reruns: If It Works for the Networks

Then maybe I can make it work here.

If you remember Monday's post, and if you're keeping track, then you know I'm only on line 5 of a 13 line itinerary. And travel plans keep shifting. No rental cars available at Charleston Thursday (I failed to account for spring break), so I drove, yet again, from Atlanta in order to teach my classes Friday (in just a few hours actually)--after which, I'll drive back to Atlanta, so that I can fly to Colorado on Saturday. I'll need a break to recover from spring break.

A number of new readers have joined lately, so I thought I'd suggest a few older posts worth returning to, especially if you're still working on figuring out just what this "Doc" guy is really all about. One of these days, I'll put together a "Greatest Hits" list (read: my favorites, whether they were hits or not). Meanwhile, here are a few I'm not ashamed of.

• See Off This Mountain: Long enough that it's in three parts, but rumored to be worth it.
• In Memory of Randall Combs: Because I miss him every day.
• "The Friend of Your Youth" Revisited: A serious contemplation of whether Robert Penn Warren got it right or not, coming down, finally, on the side of "not quite."
• Perspective: Time and Space: A meditation on the uselessness of anticipated regret and an urging not to let it rob us of a present joy.
  
• Getting to Know Me: An earlier list, much like this one, in case you have a lot of time on your hands
  

If you're new to They Rode On and you're here because you like to read the more contemplative things I write, then any of those above you haven't seen yet should be worth your time. Enjoy.

How many more do I need for the book deal? ;-)

Facebook: Networked Time Travel

I've had a Facebook site for years. I have daughters. With one in college and one in high school, I found it prudent to have both MySpace and Facebook sites, to be among their friends, and to remind them now and then of some of the pitfalls of our digital age. The day they are either one uncomfortable with my visiting their sites will be the day I know I need to worry. Until then, I consider it a privilege. It's like being asked along when the one daughter's college crowd, home for the holidays, invited me to visit the hookah bar with them. Having photos of that posted on one of their Facebook sites was another matter. But they're smart kids--the brightest in their class--and they were quick to discreetly remove those when asked.

But back to the topic of Facebook itself. You can find a good academic discussion of it here, or you can sign up for an account here. But the main point of this post will take less time to make than the intro itself. It's been made before elsewhere multiple times, but I'll say it for yucks anyway: if you have any stock in Classmates.com, sell it two years ago. Facebook is free. I've connected with more classmates via Facebook in the last week than in the entire existence of Classmates.com. That is probably true of the two networks as a whole. Classmates was a decent idea, just never worth the money. Facebook, on the other hand, figured out how to make free, pay. And therein lies the secret of their success.

It will flourish for a bit and then eventually settle into a more sane background hum for most of us, but during its current explosion, every day is like a class reunion of sorts. While the college kids still own the Facebook network in some ways, the current explosion of membership is being fueled by those kids' parents and everyone between. And for us, a lot of those friend requests are invitations to remember something we thought was gone forever: our youth. When you get a note from someone from whom you've not heard in 30 years, the face you attach to that note is his or her younger face, and with it, all those younger emotions that surround it. You can keep your mafia wars, your green beer, your time-wasting competitive Facebook applications of every variety. I have enough to do meeting my day-to-day obligations already. But those aspects of the service based on genuine human communication with people I care about, once cared about, or should care about--those I will steal the time for.

For it's better than stealing time. It's more like reclaiming it, if only for a bit. It reminds us, this time travel of sorts, that the things we liked best about ourselves before life chipped and dented and hardened our souls are still there within us. The person we were then is as ever present today as the person we would become was in every second leading to this now. I am never quite sure which way the memories flow best or how much of each experience is the result of the other. Is this pleasure all built on the recall of that, or is that pleasure as firmly founded in the destiny of this. Was premembering then as important to the moment as remembering is now? I think so. I think Merlin knows so.

25 Random Things

I was tagged for this exercise by Barry and by Becky, and blog-bud Buck's are up as well. So here goes. Here are the instructions (this will have a life both on the blog and on FaceBook, where both tags and the exercise originated):

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “NOTES” under tabs on your "PROFILE" page (you may have to add the tab by clicking on the + sign), click on "Compose New Message" and paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

25 Random Things About Me. Here goes:

1. Like most military aviators, I have a call sign. It's "Doc." Most of my skydiving friends don't even know my first name. Most of my non-skydiving friends have never heard of Doc. It's still funny to me to watch either group say, "Who?" when someone refers to me by the name they're unfamiliar with.
2. When I sneeze, I'm pretty sure the neighbors' (upstairs and through the side wall) china rattles. I know that you can hear me from at least one car back--my family makes a point of reminding me.
3. I shave with a mug and a brush. Back in the late 70's, hot lather dispensers were the newest gadgets. I've had hot lather virtually every shave since the first time I ever pretended with a plastic razor and Dad handed me down his brush. Some things technology can't improve.
   
4. But whipped cream out of a can is just fine. That I've been known to mainline.
5. The last time I wore my uniform was the day I gave my last final, last semester at the Citadel. If it stays the last time except for some future official ceremony, I will not be sorry. Thirty-one years is long enough.
6. I make kick-a** guacamole. It's the one real debt I owe my former mother-in-law. "People mess it up by complicating it." I complicated it tonight with cilantro, jalapeno, and powdered red savina peppers--but those are merely tonight's enhancements to the basic recipe Peggy taught me and that I've treasured for 25 years.
7. I haven't read anyone else's 25 things because I wanted mine to be pure. I'm looking forward to that later tonight.
8. I've performed onstage as "Curly" for two production runs of Oklahoma: Goldsboro, NC, in 1985, and Merced, CA, in 1987.
9. The funniest opening to an essay I think I've ever read was, "The subject of my S. A. is . . ." I don't remember anything from it after that. I was sitting in the auditorium watching others audition for Oklahoma when I graded it, and watching my future wife lose her role as Laurie by merely reading Ado Annie's part. She was freakin' awesome. The producer looked back at me from one row ahead, and I just said, "I know, I know. Now I'll have to kiss some other girl onstage." :-D
   
10. And in 1985, after moving to Merced and taking a role as a member of the chorus in a three-weekend run of Camelot (because I'd had the musical memorized since age seven and by the time I arrived in town, auditions were over and the principal roles filled), I filled in the second weekend as Lancelot because the principal had laryngitis. I had six hours to rehearse. I never missed a line.
11. I am not gay. Mom liked musicals.
12. I serenaded Tammy Bost with "If Ever I Would Leave You" at the ripe old age of seven, while her older brother and sister held her captive. I was a sucker for a pretty face from a very young age. Someone should have warned me.
13. I was 27 years old before I learned that my grandmother took her own life and older still before I really understood why Mom liked Camelot in particular.
14. My father is the closest thing to King Arthur I will ever know, and a better man than I expect to ever be.
15. The best grade I ever earned on an academic assignment was for my final paper in a technical writing class at the Academy. It was on hunting with a bird dog. The instructor put an A in the middle of the last page and plusses out to the margin. I think he liked it.
16. I believe in destiny,
    
17. because I've rolled a Spitfire with the top down,
18. thirteen days after cartwheeling an aircraft through the treetops.
19. And I've been struck by a water mocassin (leaving only two perfect holes, a slight scar and bragging rights, but no venom),
20. while I was trudging through a swamp to find the main canopy I'd cut away below a thousand feet less than an hour earlier. But I'm still here.
    
21. I had the highest IQ among those tested in my high school class. I was tested for admission to the Cullowhee Experience in 1974 because Ms. Strawser said, "I knew you had to be a genius because you have no common sense at all." At the time, that was accurate.
22. I met most of my best male friends in high school because we were pursuing the same girls.
23. I'm afraid of heights. But only when I'm below about 500 feet and not wearing a parachute.
24. I don't often drink alone, but tonight, I had a Vesper and a bowl of guac and chips to keep me company during this post. A textbook Vesper, right down to the champagne goblet. Vesper and guac alike are gone, and I'm done, save one final not-so-random thing:
    
25. I've felt like just about the luckiest guy in the world for almost a year now. She knows why I think that. I wish the same for all my friends.
    

And I'm not tagging anyone with this. My inbox is the equivalent of the dead letter office for chain mails and memes, but if you feel like sharing, you know I'd love to hear it.

Peace y'all.

The Best Job in the World

If you don't know about this contest, you can learn about it here.

I'm not applying for the job. But I have at least one friend who has. The video below is from the wife of a skydiving bud. I shouldn't be surprised. Boo and Renee host a pig roast every year that as many of us as can make it jump into. They've also mastered the art of getting their Christmas tree decorated without the hassle of doing it themselves: they put up the tree, put out the decorations, and then host a party. You're simply obligated to hang at least one ornament when you arrive.

I'm not surprised by the video job app below; it's really just one more line on a resume filled with class acts. You can view it through the YouTube link below, or you can see it at the job site and give it a rating. Enjoy.

He's Just Not That Into You

It's Valentine's Day. My Valentine and I celebrated by picking up burgers and fries at Five Guys in Cumming, Georgia, (I swear--it's the name of the town--I'm not making it up) and driving out to the base of Buford Dam to eat them sitting on the tailgate of the Jeep, watching the ducks bobbing for lunch, and the fly fishermen killing time while Etta James crooned from the stereo.

But this post is really about what came next. By now, those of you who are regular reviewers here should know enough to know whether or not to trust my taste in movies. Mostly, I'll just comment on whether a movie is worth your ten bucks and two hours or not. But occasionally, I'll feel strongly enough about one to actually say that you shouldn't miss it. Reign Over Me was like that. So was Once. At the other end of the spectrum was Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, which is the only movie I can remember seeing in the last decade that made me seriously want to kill myself.

Today's topic is in the first category, the do not miss this category. After a pseudo-picnic--the best we could do for a cloudy February day in North Georgia--we went to a movie.

Don Anderson likes to say that the measure of good writing is when you say, "I wish I'd written that." Well, this movie passes that test with flying colors. Great acting, great casting, and possibly the best script of its sort that I've ever seen. They so nailed it. All of it. Any book or film would be doing well to tackle the dynamics of any of the relationships in this movie and do it with fidelity to life. To tackle them all--the singles that don't want to be, the players, the committed unmarried, the faithful married and the cheating spouse, the mistress, the uninterested, the interested only for sex, the used and cast off, the list goes on. It would be an ambitious project just to sit around one night with friends and try to list all the various roles one might encounter in the world of relationships one decade into the 21st century. Listing them would be ambitious enough. To work them all into a single movie would seem over-ambitious. To work them all into a single movie with the honesty and fidelity which this movie does is, from my point of view, the work of gods and goddesses. It's based on the book by the same title

It is like Shakespeare's As You Like It, in that the right couples end up together in the end, and the right people end up . . . alone. It is better than entertaining. It's real. It's true. It's cathartic. It's the movie I'm most likely to remember from this year. It's the one, like Once and Reign Over Me, that I'd be willing to offer a money-back guarantee on. See it with someone you love or someone you want to love. See it with your best friend. Whoever you are, you will see people in it that you recognize, and you will be amazed at how well they capture them, their motivations, their emotions, their souls.

Grade: A+

What Frightens Me: The Case of Todd Newmiller

Below is a video you may not have time to watch. It's long. It is likely to amaze you. It may make you angry. Me, it frightens. Again.

I was at the appeal hearing, a part of which is presented in the video below. I was there because Todd Newmiller's parents are my friends. I've known them since 1991. Todd's father was one of my mentors when I first began teaching. I was also at, at least part of the original trial in Colorado Springs. I lived in Colorado Springs when the unfortunate death for which Todd was convicted took place. I noted the event in the morning paper. As the Deputy Head of our department, I learned of my friend's son's intimate connection with it very shortly thereafter.

In the beginning, no one doubted that Todd would be cleared of the crime. Knowing the facts of the case and watching the trial unfold and then watching the appeal left me saying, earnestly, that if I were ever wrongfully accused of a serious crime, the day I were released on bail would be my last in the United States. A lot of us said that.

This is, far and away, the worst miscarriage of justice with which I have any personal familiarity. And I do not exaggerate when I say it frightens me. I've reached that age where I have, as a rule, little faith in institutions in general. But one can get by on very little faith, so long as one is not reminded of why such faith is generally misplaced. Todd's case is one of those reminders from which it is difficult to return to complacency of any sort.

So, you've been warned. I doubt simply watching the video, if one is unfamiliar with just how egregious the railroading was, will be as profoundly erosive of one's peace of mind as experiencing the trials in person could be. Nonetheless, I'm compelled to say, view at your own risk.



Video originally posted at: Bearing False Witness, a site maintained by Todd's family and dedicated to publicizing his cause and the larger cause of all those wrongfully convicted.

A Conversation: "Where More Credit Is Due"

Over at The Archer Pelican, blog buddy Phil posted the following thought provoking proposition three days ago under the title, "Where More Credit is Due":

An emerging thought:

In America it seems to me that we often give too little respect to how hard things can be: whether the length of time it takes to mourn a lost relative, or how difficult it is to find the courage to apologize, or how scary it is to leave a job or a relationship.

That said, it also seems that we have to little faith in how strong we can be: whether in the ability to keep functioning while taking the time to cry, or the resolve to push our way through to saying what needs to be said, or the will to walk out a door and to keep walking while everything tries to pull you back.

I could be wrong, but that's the way it seems to me.

To which, a couple days later, I mustered the following response:

Phil, I'm gonna object to just one thing here. Well, not "object" so much as "recast." Among the things you think people don't credit the difficulty of is how scary it is to leave a job or a relationship. You're right, those things are scary, and sometimes one needs to summon the courage to do just that: leave. However . . .

A worse thing, I think (and recent experience of course makes this personal) is the corollary of that failure to respect the difficulty of a thing, i.e., the expectation people have that something should require little effort in the first place. This applies especially to relationships. If I understand you, you are saying that, in this country, we expect everything to come easily. And worse yet, we expect those things to be perfect. A good relationship is almost always the result of hard work, and even the best relationship is never perfect. Some relationships need to end, and the worst ones often take the most courage to leave. But our failure to respect the difficulty and complexity of human relationships sometimes means that people bail without really trying.

And trying to endure is not the same as trying to make a thing better. Better to bail than throw up one's hands and embrace martyrdom. But that false expectation of ease, I think, too often leads people to the martyr label before they have made an effort to make a thing better. Be it job or relationship. Again, some things are unfixable. I know that. But a corollary of your observation is that too many people don't think they should need to try.

I offer both here as an example of the reason I write or read blogs at all. They are, the ones I treasure most, like an ongoing seminar with people who are not only smart, they're my friends. When Susan Jacoby indicts blogs on the whole as anonymous venting by semi-literate, anti-rationalists in her book The Age of American Unreason (which I finished over the holidays and will have more to say about later and elsewhere), I can't help but think she lives in a different blogosphere than I.

Tommy Hyde, 1936-2008

The older we get, the shorter the time between notices of the passing of people who have touched our lives. And when we or they have traveled far and wide and settled in places far removed from the homes of our youth, such notices always bring a tinge of regret that we didn't get to visit one more time, to sit and chat under a cottonwood, or to make one last circle around the pattern in one of only two tail-draggers I've ever had the pleasure of piloting. Of course, Tommy Hyde's health in recent years wouldn't have allowed for that anyway, but I've no doubt that simply talking about it would have brought a twinkle to his eye.

I would have been a very young lad the first time I ever met Tommy during one of his visits "back home." He was a classmate of my mother, born only five days behind her in 1936, but if you read his obituary or biography, you'll see that while he was born in the same town as my parents and I, he moved away long ago, trading life as a Tar Heel for life as a Texan. And if you ever asked him about that, he had a fairly simple explanation: "I met Ruth. Those Texas women rope fast and tie hard." I've never forgotten that phrase.

I remember (or at least believe that I do, which is the same thing) several things from that initial meeting. He is, I'm pretty sure, the first man I remember clearly in a cowboy hat and pointy-toed cowboy boots ("Great for killing roaches in the corner," he'd said). I remember him explaining the word "gringo." And though he may only have been a decade-long resident of Texas at that point, he had already acquired the peculiar squint that I've since learned to associate with men who live and work under the bright, unrelenting sun of the Texas plain.

The next time I remember seeing Tommy (which seemed a long time later to me, young as I still was) would have been in the summer of 1978. I was a rising sophomore at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, sent for three weeks to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, for a program we called "Operation Non-Com." The idea was to find out how the non-commissioned officers lived and what sorts of work they did in the big Air Force. My first weekend down there, Tommy drove over 200 miles from his and Ruth's home near San Angelo and picked me up. From there, we drove over to the border, Del Rio I expect, and I made what may still remain, thirty years later, my only cross-border foray into Mexico. I honestly don't recall whether we made the drive north to his and Ruth's home that time or not (it would have meant an awful lot of driving for Tommy), but I did stop in there one other time, back when I was crossing the country one direction or another in my Triumph Spitfire. I spent the night, we went flying in Tommy's Cessna 140, and I went to dinner with them at the Lowake Steak House (as I remember it, circa 1980, this place in the middle of nowhere where cars congregated from all points like people flocking to Devil's Tower in the movie Close Encounters). Great food, but the company was the main thing.

I last saw Tommy on another visit back to NC. He and Ruth were making the rounds and I seem to recall this time it was not my front yard where I saw him, but the airfield of another local flying enthusiast. How long ago that was I couldn't even say. Time passes far too quickly these days. I've often thought that sometime down the road I'd have another chance to pay Tommy and Ruth a second visit in their Texas home. I'm sad that can't come to pass now. But I'm glad to have known him and to know his family still. I did at least get the happy chance, sometime between 1999 and 2002, during my second assignment as a professor in Colorado Springs, to return a little of that Texas hospitality when their oldest daughter and son-in-law came through town with their own little ones. And that is how life goes on.

One last story. Tommy was fond of aviation jokes, and though I'm sure he told me more than a few over the years, the only one I remember is the most telling. I suspect I remember it partly because it never seemed all that funny. But I suspect it never seemed all that funny because it contained more than a little bit of truth about how Tommy had always felt about the world of airplanes. It had to do with some fellow whose job it was to clean out the toilet reservoir from big commercial airliners. Somehow, a connection comes loose and he ends up soiled from head to foot, which inspires a friend or co-worker to ask in disgust why the heck he didn't look for a better job. I can still remember the squint of Tommy's eyes when he said, "So the guy looks at his friend and says, 'You've got to be kidding! And get out of aviation? No way, Jose!'"

I always suspected that particular story was a whole lot more metaphor than joke.

Godspeed, amigo. You'll be missed.

Anniversary Unnoticed #2

I've begun to wonder what it is about the fall and winter that leads more than a few of us to begin blogs in those months. Most recently, Phil celebrated his fifth anniversary of airing reflections publicly. Similarly, Buck recently celebrated the completion of his third year of a blog that, stylistically, has more 18th-century echoes than he probably even knows (and he doesn't strike me as the sort of person to sit around reading Samuel Johnson in his spare time, so I'm guessing those elements bleed over from an earlier career, 'dear reader,' whatever your views on that topic).

No doubt there are others whose anniversaries fall in this time frame, but which I've missed through sporadic reading or because they, like me, missed their own anniversary. 20 December was the two-year mark for They Rode On. It slipped by in a flurry of holiday activity.

On that particular day, I was busy flying to Colorado to spend holiday time with my daughters. That I even mention that here attests to the chameleon nature of such an enterprise as this. There are blogs where most of the readership is composed of people who are largely strangers to the author. There are others where the readership is almost wholly family and acquaintances. And there are many, I think, like this one--hybrids of sorts. I know there are strangers who read here, likewise there are family members and old friends. Best of all, perhaps, there are also people who were strangers once, and whom I've never actually met in the flesh, but whom I've come to think of as old friends. The life of the mind may be unique in that way, in its ability to bond people firmly and in a short time. There's less opportunity there to be swayed by superficial things.

And the beauty of a blog is that it allows that sort of yoking of dissimilar things. I had thought that eventually this would evolve into one sort of thing or another. Instead, it has remained as eclectic an endeavor after two years as it was on day one, perhaps even more so. To all of you who've come along for the journey, thank you and welcome to you. If anything, I would say make yourself more at home. Comments are the alms of the blogger. Some of us would write regardless, but it's always nice to know that someone's reading and to know that maybe what we've written makes them think, or smile. More than once, I've left nothing more than a smiley face as a comment at friends' places, just to let them know it wasn't the great void they were sending their missives into.

So, again, thanks to you all for tagging along, for commenting, for inspiring, and for tolerating. I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and is looking forward to an exciting new year. I think we are all going to find ourselves somewhat victims of that ostensibly Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." Soon enough, I think, our answer to that will be a confident, if somewhat jaded, "Been there. Done that."

Start With Your Heart

Some four years ago, I was the deputy head in a department west of here, when my boss complained one day of having a problem seeing. And a headache. And numbness in one arm. I promptly informed said boss, a full colonel, that she was going to the clinic with me, post haste. When she resisted, I offered to get the Dean of the Faculty, a brigadier general, to accompany us.

Stroke is not a thing to be taken lightly. I scares the bloody hell out of me.

North Carolina takes it seriously enough to create a Task Force dedicated to it. Complete with helpful videos. They're even entertaining. Sweetness and light.

But the best part? That guy hosting the "game show" in the awareness spots below? He's another of those few that Robert Penn Warren aptly termed "the friends of our youth." Governor's School of North Carolina alums, we were to be roommates at UNC-Chapel Hill, had I headed that way instead of west to the Colorado School for Wayward Boys and Girls.

Enjoy. (Left clicking on the icons will open the video in a separate window.)

Hat tip: Connelly

Quote for the Day: Frost

I'll inaugurate a new label for posts today: "Quote for the Day." Often circumstances or events bring to mind some appropriate passage or other from some work tucked away in a fold of my brain or a shelf of my office. I may as well share them.

Today's was brought to mind by a conversation yesterday with a dear friend whom I left behind with so much of my life in Colorado. He had opportunity over the holiday to spend time in the woods engaged in physical labor of the sort that being voluntary makes a sort of church. As he described it, a poem by Robert Frost came to mind. The entire poem is short enough to read in a few minutes, and well worth the time, but a short quote will suffice here to get the main point across. Frost's point and my friend's--Robert's point in Robert's words:

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

From "Two Tramps in Mud Time," by Robert Frost.

Slàinte an Rìgh, na Bàn-righinn, 's an teaghlaich rìoghail!

Or, if, like me, you need that translated: Health to the King, the Queen, and the royal household!

I'm behind and likely to stay that way in my reading of friends' blogs, but I took a moment over cappuccino this morning to catch up a little, and I learned that good friend Jay, aka "The Piper," celebrated a birthday a few days ago. I promised him a toast today, and in fulfillment of that promise, I here submit the proof: my glass sitting on the pier that projects from my abode into Shem Creek, across the harbor from Charleston.


The quality's not so good, having lost my real camera on the trip west with my daughter back in May. But you get the point. Jameson, on the rocks with a twist of lime. While pipes are decidedly Scottish, I've reason to believe that the "King" in this instance, prefers his whiskey Irish, and has the good taste, I think, to lean toward the distillery who's work is melting the ice in that glass.

Were it high tide, all that marsh grass would be awash, but such is not the luck at my morning and evening walks just now. Give it a week.

I was trying to explain to a friend (in the flesh) the other day how remarkable it feels to now consider some of my best friends to be folks I've never actually met in the flesh. Such is the blogosphere. But Jay, I have met, and his family. And I'll have to concur with Wayman Tisdale, a fine family it is.

Happy Birthday, Jay. Better late than never.

So Many of Me

[Note: It was a dark week last week, and this was written in the middle of it. But things got better by week's end. Exercise, I think, may have cured it--helped anyway. Did Crossfit workouts four of five days (more about that later). Too sore to be depressed. Thanks Lex.]

There are so many of me these days.

There is the teacher. He enjoys what he does. He enjoys his students, the freshmen particularly. He enjoys the works. The craftsmanship of Shakespeare never ceases to astonish. Things yet to comment on, unnoticed by others, and no time in which to do it.

There is the colleague. A recluse, mostly, these days. In early, office door closed. There late, office door closed. Wan smile and untrue answers protocol requires of polite questions. Deflection as defense against the rarer real concern. Never before so private. Never.

There is the neighbor. Friendly enough. That guy walking the beautiful dog morning and night. Politely conversational, yet unprying. Hardly gregarious, yet kind enough. Comfortable. Gone early most days. Home in the late afternoon and then home all through the evening. Quiet. Gone nearly every weekend. No one knows where.

There is the father. What to say? “The most important thing a father can do . . .” wasn’t enough. Now just to stay. To ride it out. To one day nap on a couch with a grandchild’s sleeping head tucked under his chin as once its mother’s was. Sustaining vision.

There is the son. There are two even. One almost his father’s clone, in mannerisms, in voice, in aspirations and resignation. Not wounded there, whatever Eldredge may think. Exception that, in so many ways. The other, wounded to the core in ways he’ll likely never fully understand and labeled “angry” over it.

There is the soon-to-be-ex. Him, I have no idea how to describe at all. He just wants it over. He isn’t bitter; just sad. He isn’t determined; just resigned. He wouldn’t go back; nothing has changed. He failed, somehow, at the one thing he thought most important. He isn’t procrastinating; he is paralyzed. He will be seeking help for this, for inertia he must yet cannot overcome. As fascinating, that, as psychosomatic pain. Phobia in another form. Shameful. Infuriating. And no object for disdain or fury but self.

Lou was right.

But there is one more. Tender. Hopeful. Sheltered. Understood. Under repair. If not whole, then at least gathering the pieces. Focused on, mindful of, longing for the one place where everything works.

Guest House

There are those to whom explaining ourselves is useless. There are those to whom we can explain ourselves and rejoice that they get it. And, for some lucky few of us, there are those who get it so well that they explain us to ourselves. This, from such a one to rescue me from my own all-too-frequent-lately dark days:

Of course there are days where you would feel depressed. You have had the rug ripped out from under your feet. It's the shock of facing of reality versus expectations you once had. At 49, you would have thought you would be willfully sharing your retirement and second career with the original Campbell Clan under one roof, that you would be there to coach into flight your youngest as she begins preparations for college, that when you came home there would be someone who had likely at least started formulating an idea about supper and who could not wait to see you, you thought you would be Christmas shopping for your wife and with your wife, you thought you would still be jumping out of airplanes (THAT is what is wrong with you right there), and you thought you would be living in a place surrounded by good friends. Even your transitional aspirations of a yellow walled cottage with a porch have shifted considerably.

Instead, you are working for peanuts, up to your eyeballs in debt, getting a divorce, living in a white walled box with just your dog, working for a place that pretends to be more military than it really is, you have no idea where you'll be next year, there is no warm body in your bed (regardless of whether it puts out or not), and when you walk in to your apartment it is the wrong kind of quiet. Both your kids live far, you are constantly shifting your schedule to put others' needs before your own, the weight of tax and divorce paperwork presses, student grading and curriculum planning presses, and day to day, you go without the healing touch of another human. Swats on the back don't count.

And with the diagnosis came a prescription:

You need to re-read Rumi's poem Guesthouse. It is just for times like these.

So, for those of you who've never read it, here is Rumi's "Guest House." Peace ya'll. Doc.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks
(from http://www.gratefulness.org/poetry/guest_house.htm).

Touch Me, Please

An article in yesterday's USA Today, states:

A new study from researchers in Utah finds that a warm touch — the non-sexual, supportive kind — tempers stress and blood pressure, adding to a growing body of research on how emotions affect health.

To which, all I could think of to say was, "Well, duh."

I have seen people holding everything inside let it go like a dam bursting because someone finally took their hand and looked into their eyes and said, "It's okay. I understand. I'm here for you." And it wouldn't have been the same without the touch. Touching--gently, firmly, calmly, reassuringly--says to a person, "I am willing to connect with you. I am not afraid of you. You needn't be afraid of me. It will be okay."

Of course, there can be too much touching, and there can be unwelcome touching, and I would never encourage anyone uncomfortable with touching to do so. There was more to Spock's Vulcan mind-meld than Roddenberry likely knew-- touch someone and they will know things about you, and you will know things about them. And for that reason, I'd never encourage anyone uncomfortable with human contact to go on a touching spree anytime soon. Anxiety is just as transmissible as calm through touch.

But calm is transmissible. Our souls can resonate with another like a guitar string next to a tuning fork. And to those whose natural pitch is calm, I would say, you are welcome to touch me anytime. The luckiest of us know someone like that and can't get enough of being near them. They touch us and the jangled dissonance of our stressed out psyches falls into sympathetic tune.

This is a case, I would say, of research merely quantifying what most of us already knew. Modernity and science "discovering" what many have known all along. Those many are called "touchy-feely" for a reason you know.

Or, as my favorite tuning fork remarked when I pointed out the study, "We're all really just mammals at heart."

So go ahead. Scratch my head and just see if I don't wag my tail.

The Coming Crash

Cormac McCarthy was right when he said in Suttree: "There are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse."

I've been saying for some time that, economically, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better. Part of that has been a carry over of a general sense I had, and have commented on before, that this year, the world as we know it, was going to change. Not a small change, but a major shift on its axis, the kind that leaves us measuring time in a new way: before the change, and after. It's not a personal shift I have in mind, but a shift for all humanity. It will feel personal, very personal. But our personal perception of it will only be a part of something larger.

I've been speaking from the gut, from personal experience, from a strange sense of foreboding and little else. Over at Enrevanche, Barry posted a piece in toto by someone qualified to speak on the economy from more than his gut.

If you need to keep your head in the sand in order to avoid despair, then don't read this. If you believe that knowing what's coming doesn't really make it any worse, if you're committed to seeing the crisis through to the other side by simply putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, then, by all means, read it.

We look back on history and we wonder how some of the worst things could have been allowed to happen. Where were the good Germans during the Holocaust? Why didn't someone stand up to Joe McCarthy sooner? How was the massacre in Rwanda allowed to happen? You can find your own example of something, I'm sure, that you just know you'd never have allowed to take place on your watch. Well, it's our watch now. In the coming days, probably years, there will be ample opportunities to show our mettle, or to burrow into a corner in the interest of self-preservation. I had said "cower in the corner," but I'll not cast that stone. For some, saving one life will mean putting other lives for which they're responsible at risk. The firefighter who's a sole breadwinner for a family does that every day. Not everyone faces that dilemma, and not everyone facing it decides for altruism.

We look back on history and wonder. When our children and grandchildren look back on the coming days and wonder, it will fall on us to explain. If we can.

Be kind to one another. Putting one foot in front of the other will carry our bodies through this. Nothing less than kindness will ferry our souls across.