life – Page 37 – chuck.goolsbee.org

Love notes from my Alma Mater

Little known fact about me: I graduated from Texas Tech University in 1985.

I attended Tech specifically to study under a professor by the name of Frank Cheatham. Frank taught Design in a method that can only be described as “brutally efficient.” I have a lot of respect for Frank. He was a VERY difficult (but excellent) man to learn from, as he demanded that students *think*, and develop the conceptual skills required, not just the technical ones that are taught in most design programs. Frank had a strong will and ironically those that RESISTED him actually did better in the long run. I was one of those resistors. If you were weak willed, you would basically just do what he implied and your work reflected “Frank” rather than “you.” This meant that you would be unready to stand alone in an intellectual and conceptual way in an industry that was based entirely on intellectual concepts Your ability to promote and defend your ideas became your measure of success.

I argued with Frank a LOT. But it served me well. To illustrate his “brutality” the best example is just number of students. I started the program with approximately 95 other aspiring students, FOUR of us graduated. I’m sure every student experienced the “you should change your major” speech from Frank Cheatham. When it came it felt like a devastating attack on your core values, but in reality it was a challenge for you to defend them. Google tells me that Frank Cheatham died in 2003.

Anyway, I enjoyed my time at Texas Tech, but I do not have any particular fondness for the institution itself. It was merely the broker between myself and the source of my *actual* education, which came from Frank and other faculty there, such as James D. Howze. I met some great peers there too, and still stay in touch with a few other Tech alumni from time to time*… but I have no real affiliation/affection for Texas Tech, or Lubbock. It was just a place I spent four years, got an education, and left.

Texas Tech does have some Ninja-elite Alumni finders though, because they never fail to track me down… no matter where I move. It isn’t like I let them know when I move. I have never sent them a dime, at least after my last semester there in 1985! But they track me down and send me newsletters, credit card offers, invitations to football games, etc. They even found me when I was in the UK!

They’re a 2nd tier University, with a serious inferiority complex, driven by history and location. Every state has one of those, such as the cow college here in my home state. They just try harder because of it. Of course in some situations effort will never get you to rise above your true limitations. Like black roots on a bad hair dye job, the reality peeks out around the shiny polish applied over everything.

I received a communication from the Texas Tech Alumni today… an email newsletter. In it, was this verbatim series of headlines:

CNN Spotlights Recovery Program
Business School Ranked 3rd in Big 12
Meat Evaluation Team Wins National Title
Experience Gourmet in Lubbock

Sigh. What can I say?

* If you were in my class in Design Communications, or shared space in the first floor, short wing of Clement Hall between 82 and 85 let me know!

Reasoned Discourse.

OK, so it is unedited, and over half an hour long, but well worth the listen.

Here are two grown men, with diametrically opposing viewpoints, having a reasonable discussion. One is an official of the Anglican Church, the other a noted Atheist and author. Note how they allow each other the room to state their viewpoints without interruption of condescension.

Here in America, land of the 1st Amendment, this sort of thing just doesn’t happen on TV. Instead our short attention spans and W-inspired “you’re either with us or against us” mentalities demand shouting matches and near, if not actual, fisticuffs. With everything wrapped up but no real progress made before the next commercial break. Witness the three-ring circus that has become of the 24-hour “news” channels. Sigh.

I wish I could discuss “big issues” with people I know. Unfortunately I can’t, since reasoned discourse is practically dead these days. I prefer to engage in discussion, not argument. I don’t want to raise my voice to be heard, nor be shouted down by those I know, even know and love. Therefore I choose to remain silent and not share my views very much. It is a shame.

Happy Birthday Christopher!

Today is Christopher’s 17th birthday. It is the first time he has been away from home on this day of the year. He’s 10,000 kilometers (6000+ miles) away. We’re going to call him later tonight.

I thought I’d share some photos of him over the years, in context of the usual subjects here on my website. The above photo was him in 4th grade, heading off to school in Wanborough, Wilts. Behind him is our trusty Volvo 440TD, a nice little Diesel car we owned in the UK.

Below are a bunch of photos taken on various rallies (some you have seen before), with Chris doing his usual stellar job of TSD Navigator. He’s REALLY good at it.

I miss you Chris!

Above: on the Deception Pass Bridge during the Tulip Rallye.

Above: Seattle Jag Club “Fall Colors Tour”

Above two: on the annual Poppy Rally in British Columbia. Due to weather issues, we took the Jetta!

Above: Seattle Jag Club’s Mt. Rainier Drive

Above two: The fateful 2004 Run To The Gorge

Bill Maher: New Rules: March 16, 2007

HBO: Real Time with Bill Maher: New Rules: March 16, 2007

“after 9/11, President Bush told us Osama bin Laden could run but he couldn’t hide. But, then he ran and hid. So, Bush went to Plan B: pissing on the Constitution and torturing random people.

Conservatives always say the great thing Reagan did was make us feel good about America again. Well, do you feel good about America now? I’ll give you my answer, and to get it out of me, you don’t even have to hold my head underwater and have a snarling guard dog rip my nuts off. No, I don’t feel very good about that.

They say evil happens when good men do nothing. Well, the Democrats prove it also happens when mediocre people do nothing.”

Well said.

The guy’s a dork, but…

…I have to agree with most of what he says here.

The current administration is made up of liars and people incapable of doing right, the war is a disaster, Iraq’s future is destined to be far worse than its past, and we, the USA, and specifically the Bush administration has squandered the opportunity of all time.

I guess even blow-hard New Yorkers are occasionally correct.

Bush supporters keep chanting “cut and run” in answer to his suggestion. But really… other than “stay and watch our soldiers get killed” WHAT THE HELL IS THE STRATEGY? Seriously. Has anyone in the Bush administration EVER laid out for us what their strategy actually is? What is the PURPOSE of this conflict? What is the exit strategy? Can they finish ANY job they start? Remember Bin Laden? Afghanistan? Hello?

Ugh.

WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER

Wil Wheaton’s Geek in Review: WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER, Part I
Wil Wheaton’s Geek in Review: WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER, Part II

Ok, so I have this William Shatner story that I have to tell. If anyone knows Mr. Wheaton (or even has a TypeKey account so they can comment on his blog) and can pass along the URL, maybe he’ll get a chuckle out of it.

The scene is New York City, in the autumn of 1988. I had recently married Sue (9/9/88…. guess who picked that hard-to-forget date?), and my parents lived in NYC at the time. My dad was transferred there for work on a two year assignment and they decided to “live like tourists” for those two years and experience NYC to the fullest. Sue & I flew out from Seattle and stayed with them for about 4 or 5 days. Mom & Dad had met Sue just once, very briefly before we for all practical purposes, eloped, so this was a more formal “get to know Chuck’s new wife” visit. We too were swept up in the “Goolsbee’s Do Manhattan” theme. Sue had never been in NYC, so she was awestruck by it all. The whole time she was playing up her whole country girl persona and asking when we would see a celebrity. None were to be found. My parents took us and my little sister (who was in high school at the time) to a Broadway play. “Phantom Of The Opera” (I found it to be rather lame and overdone… but I guess all my years of art school ruined me for appreciating simple melodrama.)

So Sue & I were sitting in our seats, waiting for the show to start. My parents and sister were sitting in the row in front of us, a little to our left. Our seats were perfect (too bad the play sucked) right in the middle of this huge slice of parabola that was this very nice theater. Sue is chatting with my sister diagonally in front of her as I’m just sort of scanning around at the architecture. My eye catches sight of … you guessed it “WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER” edging down our direction from the right side of the theater, but two rows below. I nudge my wonderful wife and whisper, “You wanted to see a celebrity? Well here comes William Shatner.” I see my little sister’s eyes light up, and Sue says ‘Who is that?” I answer: “You know… Captain Kirk.”

What followed was one of those exquisite moments in time. Where physics seems to become irrelevant and time suspends and elongates. Here we were in a huge, crowded, acoustically perfect space. There were hundreds, if not over a thousand people all around us, every one of them murmmering their little conversations while they passed the time awaiting the rest of the crowd and the dimming of the lights. Sue, finally getting her wish, was basking in the presence of celebrity… even if she really wasn’t sure the stature of the celebrity she was in close proximity to. WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER (thanks Wil!) was accompanied by a woman, who was shuffling along the row of seats in front of him. Just as the two of them passed directly in front of me, time and space distorted even further and at that very moment came one of those silent pauses in a crowd where all noise ceases. It was as if every person in the entire theatre had just completed their sentence, hitting the terminal punctuation mark with a pause for breath, in a perfectly synchronous, simultaneous fashion. That silent pause was just long enough for all echoes to settle and be absorbed. At that very moment you could have heard a pin drop.

Except no pin dropped.

Instead my wife opened her mouth and uttered in her rarely used, but distinct Oregonian Hick tone:

“He’s SO fat!!”

Those three words filled the acoustically perfect, and perfectly silent-for-a-fraction-of-a-second-before-and-after, gigantic space of the theater. The words blurted out and orbited the space. They travelled at the speed of sound and reflected off every surface of that theater and were absorbed by every human being there. Eardrums wiggled and three tiny bones did their little jitterbug dance to the tune of my wife’s flat Oregonian-by-way-of Alaska accent. I felt like a black hole had just opened in the seat next to me and the universe did a huge optical zooming effect towards us. I gasped “Sue!” an instinctively shrank a few sizes in an attempt to blend in with the velour pattern of my padded seat. It was one of those moments that could have provoked an interstellar war lasting generations. Thankfully before a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers unleashed electric death, the vast murmur of the crowd returned.

WILLIAM FUCKING SHATNER never even blinked. But the sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruiser female companion of his rotated her weapon turret towards my wife and flashed her twin phaser banks while narrowing the firing slits in a very threatening manner.

If looks could kill, I would have been widowed before my first anniversary.

Weird coincidences

I just got off the phone with my father. He is in the Houston, TX airport, about to board a plane for Buenos Aires, and subsequently Santiago. This is a trip with my mother scheduled probably about a year ago… well BEFORE we knew that Christopher was going to be in Chile. Of course Santiago is over 500 miles from where Chris is living. But, to add even more irony to the situation, Christopher’s host family is travelling to Santiago tomorrow, and staying through the 20th! Their daughter is leaving as an AFS exchange student to Japan for one year. (can you imagine flying from Santiago to Tokyo? What a marathon!)

We’ve been trying to coordinate a meeting, which is difficult between three parties and over 70 degrees of Latitude, even with email and cellular phones! My father finally confirmed, just prior to boarding, that he has spoken with Christopher, and his host-father Gerardo, and they have made the arrangements. I had my dad pick up a book to bring down to Chris, as it seems he has almost run out of reading material (which made up half of his luggage!)

I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Oh, the photo above is Christopher, in an especially geeky teen-age moment, during the Seattle Jaguar Club’s Mt. Rainier drive a few years ago. It has no relation to any of the above, I just figured the post needed a picture of Chris. 😉