The Texas Times, Volume 20

Volume 20. Wow. I've been writing these things for longer than most of the students who are sitting here in my final exam have been alive. I think I wrote last year's edition during my final exam as well, so this may well be my first real Trinity University tradition. And speaking of Trinity, remember when I told you that one of our main goals was NOT to have our arrival coincide with Trinity breaking its string of 21 consecutive years ranked (by U.S. News) as the #1 small university the West? So far, so good on that account. However, we found out this week that Hunter was granted admission for next year ... so the jury is still out on whether our family's association will be accused of causing Trinity to jump the shark.

Kids

Proceeding, as is the norm, in chronological order ... Reagan is a junior at Trinity and is still very much enjoying his time here. After thinking that he was going to be an English major with an emphasis on Creative Writing, he has now decided to major in Religion. Theories abound on the specific reason for the shift, but he seems happy with it and is planning on minoring in Creative Writing. He got a lot of extremely positive feedback on his writing this semester -- both fiction and non-fiction -- and will be starting the process of collecting rejection notices (aka submitting stories to journals) in January. He's still involved with The Children's Shelter, the university choir, and his 3-man band, The Daytrippers. He is also growing a hideous, mangy, pretend-a-beard.

As mentioned above, Hunter has been admitted to Trinity and will start the next stage of his development here next August. Trinity was the only school he was interested in, which pleased us mightily given that kids of faculty don't have to pay the $35,000+ yearly tuition bill. Clearly, getting a top-notch education for the cost of room and board is a Major Win. He's planning on majoring in Computer Science or some sort of Communication angle that involves the more creative aspects of technology / code writing. He'll also be involved in choir and, presumably, community service work that is comparable to Reagan's. Lest you think that Hunter is all grown up or whatever, don't even go there. He's still hilarious, quirky, maddening, clever, and - most accurately - unexplainable. The fractional parts change from day to day but the sum is still very much the same.

Hadley is a Sophomore at Alamo Heights High School. She got her braces off this year (we paid for them twice!!!) and has her driver's permit. Sigh. She's playing soccer for the San Antonio United club and also managed to be one of five Sophomores who made the varsity soccer team at Heights. The program there is very strong, so she is pretty fired up. The coach told her that he was bumping her to varsity to play defense, because they "don't need any more forwards." For most of you that will mean nothing. For the rest of you, he doesn't seem to be kidding. I've told Hadley that I think he is viewing her more like a utility infielder in baseball, but in their first scrimmage she only played defense. So I guess we'll see how that goes. She claims to like playing defense (????), but clearly I am not a fan of it. The only thing worse than being the parent of a defender would be being the parent of a goalie ... but we're hoping for the best. Other than soccer, she's just doing the usual stuff. So far she has managed to stay out of trouble and minimize her interaction with boys (I hear those two events are not necessarily independent), and she still seems to really like us a lot. So that is cool.

Finally, Hollis is in 5th grade at Woodridge Elementary. He's still in the Spanish Immersion Program (all-Spanish-all-the-time) and seems to be liking it fine. Actually, I think he would be sort of surprised to go to school and speak English during class at this point. He's continuing with piano and he joined the San Antonio Children's Chorus this year. He also started playing team tennis in the division that consists of kids who haven't had coaches and/or haven't been playing competitively since they were in the womb. For a good bit of his life, obviously, he hasn't really been able to do much sports-wise, so it has been good to see him branch out a bit there. He also participated in the Cotillion program this fall, and honestly I think that was the highlight of his year. He very much digs dressing fancy and dancing with similarly well-clad young ladies. The manners part was less of a hit, but still ... overall it was a big success. Most importantly, we're happy to report that since the placement of his shunt in June of 2012 (if you're out of the loop on that, you can read a summary of it here), he hasn't had any further medical issues. Knock on wood and praise the Lord (both literally).

Us

Paige and I are fine. We celebrated our 24th anniversary this past week. Traditionally, the 24th anniversary is associated, gift-wise, with a musical instrument. However, because Paige doesn't really play an instrument anymore - much to the chagrin of flute and bassoon aficionados across the world - I decided to get her a couple dozen donuts instead. Practical. Sweet. The numbers work. Of course we're still in the midst of my annual 10 Days of Anniversary Celebration (daily gift fabulousness from December 16 through Christmas) but as a way to get things rolling I thought the donut thing was pretty solid.

We also remain happy with our decision to leave Texas A&M. Trinity has problems just like any university, but our colleagues are nice and several of the people we've met in other departments are terrific as well. There are some cranks and total nutcases ... but again, you're going to have a sizable number of those in any group of academics. We continue to believe that the newly formed School of Business has a lot of promise, we're having a good time with our students, and for the most part they're working hard and not complaining too much. And really that is all we can ask for. OK, well that and money for the School of Business so that we can hire a few more faculty. If you wanna make a donation, let me know. By the way, in addition to our standard day jobs involving teaching and research, Paige is now chair of the newly formed Finance and Decision Sciences department and I have temporarily taken on the responsibility of being the School of Business' Director of Accreditation. She is happy with her position. I am not happy with mine. But again, hopefully it is verrrrry temporary, given that Trinity definitely did NOT hire me for my administrative prowess.

Random Stuff

Music: My recommendations for the year are as follows -- Milk Carton Kids, Aoife O'Donovan, and The Lone Bellow. I feel like I was a bit late to the party for a couple of these; nonetheless, the recommendations stand. Chris Thile's solo mandolin album featuring some of Bach's violin sonatas and partitas is absolutely brilliant as well. And my appreciation / infatuation with Julie Fowlis continues to grow. If you can watch this and not have to consciously force yourself to breathe at some point during the performance, please don't tell me.

Television: Weird, right? When have I ever had a television recommendation? Sorta random since Paige and I never watch anything, but when we have watched stuff this year it primarily has been from one of two boxes: (1) the original late '50s to early '60s Twilight Zone episodes; and (2) the original Alfred Hitchcock Presents / Alfred Hitchcock Hour episodes. All of these things are available streaming from either Netflix or Amazon Prime. The stories are great. The acting is terrific. Everything is in black and white (as God intended) and is from the time when men wore suits and drove real automobiles and people listened to Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra and, even better, Nat King Cole. Every time I sit down to watch one of these things, I experience an immediate (and indescribably fantastic) time warp. I experience the same thing in my office every day when I'm listening to WHRO's 1920s Radio Network (which extends through the 1940s). Today I even strategically timed my office hours to correspond with the Jack Benny Show. No, I am not kidding. And if you would like to read more on my views related to the General Demise of America, you are welcome to visit this link.


The College Station House: For the non-business readers in the audience, a "liquid asset" is something that is convertible into cash without a substantial loss in value. For a company, examples typically would include inventory, accounts receivable, and investments. For a person, examples most emphatically would not include a six-bedroom house in College Station, Texas. So ... if you know of anyone who needs something like this, let us know. The house has been on the market for close to two years at this point and if we don't sell it by June of 2015 we'll have to pay tax on whatever gain we're able to manage. What that means, of course, is that you still have some time -- but not a lot of it. Complacency is not encouraged.

Clothing: My top discoveries in the past two years are Drake's of London (ties) and Dapper Classics (socks). Those who are feeling particularly generous may make your Christmas selections for me from the former, while those who don't like me as much may opt for the latter. If you don't want to have to deal with the hassle of international shipping, Drake's has a small but fine selection at Mr. Porter. I'm doing what I can to make things as efficient for you as possible ...

With that (and my annual Christmas carol recording), I'll close. Please let us know if your travel plans include the Alamo City. And no matter what holiday you're celebrating, we wish you peace and good cheer!

God Bless,
Mike, Paige, Reagan, Hunter, Hadley, Hollis, and a variety of animals
1009 Garraty Road
San Antonio, TX 78209
mw0705@mac.com
paigefields@satx.rr.com

Experimental Success

My experiment seems to have been a success. In fact, it was far more productive than I imagined it could've been. About 8-9 days ago, I decided that while we were on vacation in the central New Mexico mountains, I would pretend that email and the Internet had never been invented. Given my periodic rants about the Decline of Society and the fact that I have not ever and will not ever use my cell phone for anything involving "data," going Off-The-Grid would seem to be easier for me than for most people. And it was. But the ease with which the experiment was conducted is not nearly as impressive or important (to me) as the realization that it spawned -- namely, that I am rarely more useless than when I am sitting in front of a computer.

Several people have written about the downsides of the Internet in general (and social networking in particular) far more eloquently than I could manage, so I will leave that cabbage singly chewed. What I will note, however, is that these things truly are, as Bill Keller notes so beautifully, "the enemy of contemplation." The speed with which my 15 year-old daughter compulsively swipes through Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook posts, tapping whatever needs to be tapped in order to assent to the amazingness of whatever status update or bit of cleverness or ridiculously filtered picture is posted is astounding. In a very real sense, it is the crack of this generation. Is it as harmful? Not explicitly, no. But it is an addiction. And it is a productivity (defined in many different ways) killer. And I believe that the second-order effects -- e.g., the utter decimation of people's attention spans -- will play a huge role in pushing us down the path toward Idiocracy.

In Hadley's defense, she spent a considerable number of her vacation hours reading, playing cards, hiking, and even simply playing outside at the park down the hill ("OMG Dad, I can't believe you are embarrassing me like this"). All four of the kids, ages 10 to 20, were similarly involved. In fact, it is one of the greatest reliefs of my life that whether our travel plans involve two days at the beach, a week at grandparents, or a month in the northwestern US or Canada, everybody is always totally on board, eager to do whatever we're doing and not at all happy when it is time to return home. The boys are far less tethered to technology than Hadley is, but even she comes around pretty well within a day or two. Although I don't believe I am in any way responsible for this "sanity," I do appreciate it.

Where does this leave me? My job pretty much requires me to sit in front of a computer for most of the time on most days. Even if I wanted to embrace the Truman / Eisenhower era entirely, it would hardly be possible for me to do so where my work life is concerned. But I can, with no problem, do away with social networking (particularly since Twitter has long been my only guilty pleasure). I can also check email a lot less frequently. And finally, I can greatly reduce the time I spend in front of a computer when I am NOT at the office. I spent my non-hiking downtime this past week reading books, writing this entry (longhand), jacking around with the kids, playing the guitar, and just thinking. Imagine that.

Is it really necessary that I alter my behavior? Probably not. But it seems like a worthwhile venture, given that I was more at peace this past week than I have been in a long, long, long time. The mountains and cooler weather always help with that, but I do believe that the complete absence of digital distraction was almost as important. So ... henceforth, I will be working toward preserving at least some semblance of that absence in my everyday life. I'm not ready to part company with Cotten Music and Umanov Guitars and Drakes of London, but most of my other "friends" will need to get their mouse clicks from someone else.

As a final note, if you're on Twitter and I don't have your email address and you WANT me to have it, let me know. I think I have most of you covered but a few might have slipped through the cracks ...

Peace,
Mike

Fashion and the Decline of Society

Yesterday was my birthday.

I am 46 years old.

Instead of taking pause to lament my continued slide into middle-agedom, I thought I'd reflect instead on a couple of occurrences from this past week that struck me as noteworthy examples of what is wrong with America. I'm not talking bright-line things like the national debt, taxes, and various in-the-news social issues. I'm talking more about signals ... metaphors, if you will, for our collective Condition.

After church last Sunday, we went to lunch at a restaurant here in Alamo Heights. When we finished, I went to HEB (gigantic grocery store, for those of you who are not in Texas) to pick up a few things while everybody else popped into a pet store in the same shopping center. Across the entire length of our interminable, extremely average, and ridiculously overpriced lunch and my 15-minute circuit of HEB, I did not see a single man who was wearing a tie. Granted it was a billion degrees outside, so I wouldn't have expected to see many suits (although that's what I was wearing). But really, it was (1) early Sunday afternoon (2) in Texas (3) where a decent proportion of the population does still attend church, and the only ties to be found were those that were being worn by my boys and me. I thought that was sort of bizarre. It's not that I was LOOKING for this, mind you. I just happened to notice and thought it was weird.

Fast-forward to Tuesday. I needed to get a new jacket altered, so I stopped at the tailor on my way to the office. I usually don't wear a tie when I go to the office during the summer, as Trinity's campus is a complete dead zone between June and late August. But I wore one to the tailor shop because I always feel like they're more conscientious when clients at least sort of look the part. Anyway, I went to the office after that and then stopped by Central Market on my way home. When I was at the meat counter, I had the following conversation with the mid-20s guy who was waiting on me:

Meat Counter Guy: What kind of job do you have where you wear stuff like that?
Me: Excuse me? (no clue what he was talking about)
Meat Counter Guy: Where do you work? What do you do?
Me: I'm a professor at Trinity.
Meat Counter Guy: You dress like that every day?
Me: In the summer? Not always. Other times, usually.
Meat Counter Guy: Looks sharp. I'd like to dress like that.

I've frequently commented that when America was truly great, TV was black and white and men wore suits to baseball games. And hats, too, dammit. Did they call them "fedoras" then? Ummm ... I don't think so. In the picture below, from 1951, Harry S. Truman is not wearing a hat (I suspect it is resting in his seat) but there is no shortage of gentlemanly attire across the entire stadium. This is when I would've liked to have been in my prime. With all due respect to "Midnight in Paris," I firmly believe that having been an adult male in 1950s America would be worth being dead in 2013.

Contrast the class of 1951 with this representative modern-day example. Not a tie to be found. In fact, I'm pretty sure I only see two shirts that might reasonably even accommodate a tie. And baseball caps don't count as hats. Granted, these people are Phillies fans, but still.

Where am I going with this? At some level, it makes no difference what one wears. I dressed pretty formally during the first half of my career at A&M, but gradually gave up across the last 8-10 years such that ultimately my wardrobe was Dri-Fit and jeans. Did that make me a worse teacher, a less capable researcher, or a less qualified / less interested student mentor? No. Is there anything inherently wrong with it? Not really. The point is that over time, I succumbed to the ease of a casual office environment despite the fact that I've always viewed the decimation of the dress code as being symbolic of the general downfall of society. I mean really, think about it. Over the past 50 years, as dress has become more casual, so has everything else -- manners, morals, speech, education, relationships, attitudes about personal responsibility, you name it. I'm not suggesting that this landslide was brought on by casual dress, obviously. That would be stupid. I'm just noting that it's one of the many indicators I point to as evidence of Society In Decline. (NOTE: Toward that end, if you have not watched Idiocracy, I recommend that you do. It is a crude and vulgar comedy and it got bad reviews, but as social commentary I believe that its view of the future of America is spot-on.)

People need to dress nicely. People need to hand-write (not email) Thank You notes and speak the King's English and keep their elbows off the table. Why? Because in a civilized, educated society, decorum matters. Or it should, anyway. My view is that if we're still paying attention to things like this, we've not completely lost sight of bygone (and vastly superior) eras, including the one in which kids roamed neighborhoods / fields / hills / hollers and carried pocket knives and BB guns and said "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" and didn't get trophies just for showing up to participate and families ate meals together and used the "good china" and paid for stuff BEFORE they got it and drug stores had soda fountains and music was vinyl (and free of both profanity and Autotune) and if you wanted to smoke you could smoke (I don't, but that's hardly relevant) and churches had sanctuaries with uncomfortable pews instead of worship centers with coffee stations and valet parking ...

And things like this abomination did not exist:

Here we have an American flag hat, purchased at Target. Patriotic, right? But look carefully. First, it was made in China (Strike 1). Second, the more-than-casual observer will note that the number of stars on the field of blue is 17 short (Strike Infinity). Hunter bought this last night, without looking at the tag or counting the stars. He discovered the "problems" when he got home and would've taken it back if I hadn't insisted on keeping it for the sake of posterity. I really find this to be borderline unbelievable.

Were things perfect when men wore suits to baseball games? Hardly. Opportunities for women and minorities were not exactly extensive and two of my four kids (and possibly my wife) probably would be dead if their circumstances were pushed back 60 years. So I get that "progress" has been made on a few fronts. But since I'm the guy who is writing the column, I'll reserve the right to take a Luby's approach to things. Give me all of the medical advances and a couple of cherry-picked cultural improvements and I will gladly go back to the late 1940s -- when the Meat Counter Guy not only knew what a tie was, but probably wore one to work.

Peace,
Mike

PS: I will be on vacation in the New Mexico mountains from July 9-16. I'm not going to look at a computer while I'm there and I don't do data on my phone. I'll check for texts every couple of days, though, so if for whatever reason you need to get in touch with me, fire away.

One Year In The Books

A year ago today (June 4, 2012) we moved from College Station to San Antonio. As many of you know, our decision to move came after several years of dissatisfaction with the direction of Texas A&M ... and even then, our decision certainly was not angst-free. It was obvious that College Station was no longer the place we needed to be and a ridiculous sequence of unbelievably impossible events made it pretty clear that God was paving a very specific road to San Antonio. But when you're changing directions after 18 years -- old dog, new tricks -- and forcing four kids to come along as well, things can be rather complicated. The boys were fine with the idea but Hadley was super-stressed, and of course we knew that all of us were in for major adjustments.

In addition to all of the usual move-related stress, in June of 2012 we still had no clue what was going on with Hollis' medical condition. He had missed over 20 days of school since September, had several lumbar punctures, multiple hospitalizations in Houston, countless brain MRIs and CT scans, and yet nobody on his neurosurgery team had been able to figure out what was going on. In fact, he had another severe episode the day before we moved to San Antonio, which meant that he and Paige were back in the hospital in Houston while the rest of us supervised the movers and drove to San Antonio on the 4th.

In short, the first half of 2012 was the most stressed we have ever been. We were anticipating a positive experience at Trinity, but Hollis' medical future was still completely uncertain and we obviously were very concerned about the adjustments the kids were going to have to make.

Fast forward to June 4, 2013 and here is where we are ...

• Paige and I worked our tails completely off from July through May, but we had a good time and we're very happy to be here. We like Trinity, we like the people in our department, and we definitely value what Trinity tries to do for its students. We love the feel (and the size) of the campus, and next year should be a bit easier with our new class preps out of the way. Hoo. Ray.
• I don't do Facebook, but Paige just sent me what Reagan posted today (completely independent of my entry here) ...  "It was on this day last year that I drove to San Antonio with a sprained foot and two dogs in the back. I have officially lived in San Antonio for a year, and life has been amazing ever since."
• Paige also sent me what Hadley posted on Facebook this afternoon. "Today marks the one year anniversary of my move from College Station. This year has gone by so fast and it's been great. I've met some amazing people this year and I've made so many new friends. I can't believe a year has passed so quickly. Last summer, I never would have imagined my life to be like it is. Whenever I miss College Station I can talk to my friends here or back there and I know that I'm not alone. Honestly, I thought I would hate San Antonio, but I love it! I miss all of my friends in College Station and I hope to see y'all over the summer! This entire year has been all in all fantastic, and I can confidently say that I'm glad I moved. I was so upset about moving at the time and I didn't even give it a chance. I did, originally, dislike San Antonio, but as soon as the year started I loved it. I can't believe that a year ago, I didn't know anyone here existed, and now I can't imagine life without them! This past school year has been a blast and I'm so grateful to all the people who were willing to make me feel welcome the first couple of weeks. I'm so glad that I got to make such amazing friends this year and I love everyone of you! I don't know what I would do without y'all! Thanks for making my first year a crazy, fantastic adventure :)"
• Hunter doesn't do social media, but he has told us numerous times that he is way happier here than he was in College Station. And he was perfectly fine there.
• As for Hollis, he loves it here too. And (insert sound of knocking on wood) he has had no further  brain / spinal cord fluid complications since June of 2012. If you've not seen the short summary that Paige wrote on that and you are interested, the link is HERE. I can't give an adequate one-sentence summary of what was going on and the (again, completely ridiculous) sequence of events that got him fixed, but suffice to say that while the brain shunt might NOT be the "cure," having almost a year of peace in that department has been wonderful. And we hope and pray that he will continue to be problem-free for ... well ... forever.

In closing, I'd like to thank those of you from College Station (primarily students, but a couple of faculty thrown in for good measure) who have provided me with so many positive memories and wonderful life-long relationships. I'd also like to thank those of you in San Antonio who contributed so fabulously to our first chapter here.

Thanks Again and God Bless,

Mike