The Texas Times Volume 26

Welcome to Volume 26 of The Texas Times! Yes, we're halfway through our third year in Kansas but old habits (traditions) die hard (not at all). This year wasn't the least bit interesting, but needs must ... so sit back, hold on, and try to stay awake.

Kids
Reagan is still living in Austin. His company has gone through a bunch of downsizing but he's still hanging on, doing his software engineering thing. If you're in Austin and looking for someone with three years of tip-top experience, though, please do let me know. He got a dog this year, so I'm including her picture here (as our first grandkid). Her name is Lola and she's paralyzed from the mid-section down. They have been very good for each other. She's the cover dog for a handicapped pet calendar for 2020 and you can follow her on Instagram here.

Hunter moved to Austin in spring -- after doing some serious snowman-building in Kansas -- to go through UT-Austin's Coding Bootcamp. He and Reagan live in the same apartment complex and it's good to know that they can at least hang out when they want. Hunter doesn't have a handicapped dog, but he has two (non-handicapped) guinea pigs. He's still looking for work in the web developer space so if you have leads I'd be verrrrrry happy to hear about them (as would he).

Hadley is a senior at A&M. She's a Communication major and a Business minor, and is graduating in May. She would love to work for the Association of Former Students (like a billion other people, I'm sure). She's been working for a PR company for the last several months, which seems to have been a good experience for her. I won't specifically beg you to hire her, but if you're in College Station or central Texas in general and need somebody who is good with people, I definitely can set you up with a terrific candidate!

Hollis turned 16 this year, so I now have the luxury  (for the first time since 1993) of never having to drive anyone anywhere. The highlight of his year probably was making All-State Chorus. He'll be going on some college visits this spring, and I suspect he'll end up back in Texas somewhere. He's a very bright dude and no trouble at all (knock on wood), and I'm not real fond of the idea of him leaving home. But of course it was the same with all of the other kids. Ah well. I've almost stopped wandering around the house thinking that I'm supposed to be doing something for somebody. Not entirely, but almost. It is a weird feeling for sure.

Paige and I are doing well. She has been getting up at 5 a.m. (!!!!!) to work out (!!!!!) every morning for the last six months or so. Those of you who know her will assume -- perhaps correctly -- that aliens have invaded her body. As of December 16, we've been married 30 years. Among other things, it's crazy to think that we're old enough to have been married for that long. I tell my students that the late 80s really weren't that long ago and of course they look at me like I have three heads. After all, Al Gore hadn't even invented the Internet back then. It's also crazy how easy the whole marriage thing has been. We almost had a bit of a crisis last month when I thought Paige said that she liked Jimmy Buffett, but thankfully I just mis-heard. (Seriously, just take a few seconds and imagine how you would feel if you found that out about your partner.) Anyway, things are still going well for us here at KU. Paige likes the people she works with a lot -- her administrative assistant and main fundraising sidekick are featured below -- and she has gotten a bunch done during her time as Dean. My research program has emerged from the black hole created by the Trinity Administrative Years and I'm enjoying being a regular faculty member again. My 5th-year PhD student just took a position at Oklahoma, my 2nd year student is awesome, and I'm having a very good time (of course) with the MAcc students.

Travel, Entertainment, and Other Random Stuff

Paige, Hollis, and I went to Spain in May / June. This is the first time we've taken anybody to Europe with us, but we cleared it with the other kids and they at least pretended not to mind. Because he did the Spanish immersion thing in Texas from Kindergarten on, Hollis is fluent and his accent is killer. So it was super-handy having him around. Spain had never been a big draw for me, but I have to say that I really enjoyed our time in Seville, Granada (my favorite), and Toledo (view of the cathedral from our apartment, below). Madrid was good, but the three smaller places were absolutely fabulous. If you missed my blog entries and wanna see what all we did, you can check the sidebar to the right (or elsewhere if they don't show up over there). Not sure what we'll do in 2020. Usually I've got it all worked out by now, but I truly have no idea. We shall see.

On the music front, 2019's biggest find is a literal hidden gem. No, I'm not talking about the guy playing guitar by himself in the Albayzin area of Granada (although he was quite good and quite hidden). I'm talking about Hannah Markley. She sings at our church. Paige talked Hannah into putting together a quick-and-dirty CD for our 30th anniversary, and it's one of the best gifts I've ever gotten. You can hear one of the tracks on my SoundCloud channel here. I'm hoping that she will be "discovered" at some point, because the world needs to hear this young lady sing. In terms of people you can actually find, all that I have to recommend this year are Mandolin Orange (here) and Phoebe Bridgers (here). I spent most of 2019 either listening to artists you already know about or hanging out at the UK 1940s Radio Network. One of my students stopped by one afternoon and commented "Wowwww ... that music is kinda old." Indeed it is. And you can get off my lawn, too.

Books ... well, I re-read a lot of early-to-mid 20th century stuff this year but the top new (to me) selections were All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, The Things They Carried, Stephen Ambrose's gigantic D-Day book, The Alhambra (by Washington Irving, mainly useful after you have visited the place), and everything Cormac McCarthy has written in the past 30 or so years. McCarthy is one of Reagan's favorite authors, so I thought I would give him a whirl. Good decision. Most of his stuff is rather dark but the writing is fantastic ... sort of like a less spare Hemingway (who is my favorite author) or a more accessible Faulkner (who I find borderline unreadable). I recommend you begin with All the Pretty Horses and proceed from there. The Book of the Year award, however, goes to David Martyn Lloyd-Jones's Studies on the Sermon on the Mount. The book contains 60 sermons the author delivered in the 1950s (I believe). Each of the sermons is about ten pages long, and the book is the single best thing I have ever read. Hands down. Period. The End. Shout out to Charles Leary for recommending it.

While we're on the topic of books, if you are looking for a children's gift book, you should pick up a copy of The Lost Words (which you can find here). I was just going to limit my reference to a hyperlink, but the concept of the book is so good -- and the book itself is so well-done -- that I decided to paste some info from the Amazon description below:

"In 2007, when a new edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary ― widely used in schools around the world ― was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. Apparently they were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of these “lost words” included acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter, and willow. Among the words taking their place were attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The news of these substitutions ― the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual ― became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world. 

Ten years later, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a “spell book” that will conjure back twenty of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. By the magic of word and paint, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories, and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature. The Lost Words is that book ― a work that has already cast its extraordinary spell on hundreds of thousands of people and begun a grass-roots movement to re-wild childhood across Britain, Europe, and North America."

The (over-sized) book is appropriate for kids of all ages. I've gone through it twice myself. Highly recommended.

Speaking of Lost Words, you may recall that last year I started a Prohibited Words List. The Prohibited Words List features words (1) that seem to have lost their meaning; and/or (2) that I find super-annoying. To quote last year's blog,

"The entries for 2019 are craft (breweries and distilleries), disruptive (as in disruptive business models), literally (which either means literally or not at all literally), and artisanal (as in artisanal literally everything)."

The entries for this year? I'm glad you asked. The first is "dialogue," which is anything involving a discussion where the party in charge is going to pretend to listen to what you have to say. Next is "optics." Apparently it is really sexy to say "I'm concerned about the optics" instead of "I wonder what people would think about this." Why? I don't know. Finally, I'm banning "myself." Almost nobody uses this word properly [Note: if it's not immediately following a preposition, there's a really good chance it's wrong]. As such, I think it's safest if we just eliminate the word from the language entirely. So ... to review ... if you're tempted to say something like "The optics of the dialogue really concerned John and myself," just please don't.

To close, I'm starting a new category for 2020 - Meme of the Year. I don't do social media (shocking) so I'm not exposed to many of these things. But we have a family chat that is ... well ... crazy active, and I also get things passed on to me from various other people. Anyway, my favorite for this year is inserted below. It's rather timely, given that we're in Christmas card season.

Annnnnd that's all for now. From our family to yours, I (we) hope that you have a happy Christmas, a terrific Hanukkah, a fabulous whatever else, and a safe and productive 2020.

God Bless,
Mike and Paige
mw0705@gmail.com
lpaigefields@gmail.com
1118 Brynwood Court
Lawrence, KS 66049