Welcome to the Richardson High School Message Forum.
The Message Forum is an ongoing dialogue among classmates. The goal is to encourage friendly interaction, including interaction among classmates who really didn't know each other. Experience on the site has revealed that certain topics tend to cause friction and hard feelings, especially politics and religion.
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The Cowboys are pathetic. I don't blame Dalton. Kicker goes one-for-four. Hail Mary goes right through the hands of the guy that I said was the real deal a few weeks ago.
Different topic. Someone mentioned the death of economist Walter Williams. When I lived outside of Philly, Williams lived around the corner from me, even though he was a professor at George Mason, outside of D.C. I spoke with him once while he was doing yardwork.
I admired Williams and Thomas Sowell as two conservatives with the strength to take positions that were unpopular among their fellow black people and liberals in general.
Wayne, I read one time where LBJ could have been one of the worst!
David, This (season) for the Cowboys eerily reminds me of being in the 3rd or 4th grade.....and watching the new team go 0-11-1.
One major difference of course were the caliber of players (some) now......and how much is paid them!
But something is terribly wrong with that defense! They are last in the league in points allowed, and seem to play
well at times......but "tank" big time on many plays. I think it is 30-32 points a game average!
I see Jones sitting alone up in the suites and wonder how much he'll let this team bleed before making BIG changes. I guess when AT&T (after we take the masks off!) stadiums' attendance falls to 30-40k per game......thats when he'll get rid of some of the cancer.
And, I know Tony Pollard gives them a change-up.......but ever since Zeke signed the big contract his performance has fallen way off. And usually if you don't hit the hole right away, with that stutter-step of his;in the pros....the play is OVER! (i guess Zeke is doing his best Leveon Bell impression, or he has lost confidence in the line)
They are much too fast....and can tackle the back right away; generally. I notice Pollard hits the hole right away.
And btw, when he ran that kick back 70 yards.....man he had another gear!
Anyway, back in the sixties........I think they DID play hard.....and were just as tough, if not tougher than these guys today. They also had a great coach.....
I remember asking my Father about the team. He said, "Oh Jer, they're not going to win right away.....because they are a new franchise. BUT, they WILL win with this coach. I think he is going to be great!"
Turns out he was right of course until the abrupt dismissal in 88'or 89. But it was finally then....that he and I agreed the game had "passed him by".......j
Tom Landry was just a young whippersnapper of 64 or 65 when he was fired. Pete Carroll is 69!
I suspect that Landry's comment about the game passing him by was his graciously self-deprecating way of moving on and encouraging others to move on as well.
I'm impressed that you knew Walter Williams. Him, Nixon, and Ernie Banks -- I'm a little jealous.
Did you see that Chuck Yeager died, too? He was 97 so it wasn't exactly premature. In the movie and even more so in the book The Right Stuff, you could clearly see what a larger than life character he was -- an incredible pilot and human being.
That makes me think that the larger than life Americans I admire most from the past are all like people from another, greater civilization, if not planet: Washington, Madison, Robert E. Lee, Joshua Chamberlin, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Alvin York, George Marshall, Eisenhower, Audie Murphy, Jimmy Stewart, Patton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, etc. I can't imagine them in contemporary society any more than Julius Caesar or Cincinnatus or Leonardo da Vinci.
I'm again feeling like a cranky old man: I also saw where YouTube (I hate words with capital letters in the middle) banned videos showing fraud in the latest Presidential election or those with claims that the election was anything other than fair. The slipping away of the freedoms that made our country great is accelerating at a maddingly giddy pace. Even in the darkest times in Obama's regime, I would have dismissed as paranoid anyone who suggested that the American press would become something akin to Pravda, that the internet would become policed for content by third-world totalitarians, that corrupt politicians would blatantly steal an American election, that anarchy and looting without consequences to the perpetrators would be encouraged by the American political, business, media, and educational elite, that "politically correct" would be anythng other than a joke, and that the worst of crybaby campus snowflake coercion would become the norm in the larger society.
I SO agree with the last two paragraphs you wrote above. I, too, am astounded at the pace of our country's deterioration or decline. What can we DO about it, other than vote? I haven't been sleeping well lately, worrying about what is coming down the pike, especially for my grandson.
Do you have grandchildren?
Hoping Professor David has some great advice for all of us! Pray a lot, I suppose?
Of course, I didn't know Nixon, Williams, or Banks -- just had brief experiences in which they were the primary figures. I'm trying to think of other famous people I have met, and I can only think of John Connally, who had no interest in talking with me, a mere student.
Well, I forgot about my experience at UT as chair of the Ideas and Issues (Speakers) Committee. I met someone whose name probably means something to you as a lawyer - Abe Fortas. Also, Ralph Nader, Gloria Steinem, Jack Anderson, Larry McMurtry (had a one-on-one dinner with him), Edward Albee, Ken Kesey, and others whose names have slipped my mind. I met Ladybird once in an incident that I have described on these pages. I met some show biz people in New York when my son was on Broadway.
The Ernie Banks meeting was especially memorable because he was very engaging and asked me about myself. It probably lasted about 20 minutes, and his handlers had to remind him that he was on a schedule. I don't think famous people normally ask about others because they are so used to others asking about them. I'm trying to figure out what I did with the two dollar bill he gave me.
Yes, I heard about Chuck Yeager on the radio. I still remember the scene in The Right Stuff with Sam Shepherd as Yeager, walking by himself in the desert after a crash.
I knew lots of astronauts when we lived in Clear Lake, but they aren't famous. One was the first black astronaut, Guy Bluford, who was a student of mine at UH Clear Lake. I did meet Alan Shepherd at the Club at Falcon Point in Katy. That was very cool. We met four of the widows of Challenger astronauts, and the son of one of them was a good friend of my son. Two woman astronauts, both of whom performed extra vehicular activity, were members of our church in Nassau Bay, Kathryn Thornton and Kathryn Sullivan. They were the only American women to do an EVA at that time, and their joke was that for a woman to do an EVA, she had to be named Kathryn and belong to St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
Kathy Thornton was kind enough to record a video for my wife's elementary school in Plano when Martha retired. I sent her a script to make it easier. It was mostly for the kids, but it included a part at the end that was specific to Martha's retirement. I also spliced a bit of Kathy's induction into the Astronaut Hall of Fame. Below is the 5-minute video, but I wouldn't expect anyone to watch it.
I'm pretty sure that when person meets a celebrity, it doesn't confer any importance on that person. Mine were merely happy and memorable experiences, like your cruises, photos of which you have shared. And I am pretty sure that none of the experiences I mentioned had anything to do with my career.
However, when I was secretary of the Faculty Senate at UT Dallas, I served on the Faculty Advisory Committee for UT System, which required about four trips per year to Austin. During part of that time, the Chancellor of UT System was William McRaven, the four star admiral who was in charge of the raid to kill Bin Laden. I did have some interaction with him, and he was gracious enough to put personal inscriptions in four copies of his book (Make Your Bed), which was derived from the commencement address that he gave at UT before being named Chancellor. The speech has been mentioned on these pages before.
If you haven't seen it, watching the speech is a good use of 19 minutes.
I have met a few celebreties....but other than a round of golf, with several I shared a cart or scramble team with, I am sure I was forgettable to them.
How do you (I) make myself memorable to someone, celebrity or not?
I am now thinking of people who have made themselves memorable to me, other than by being a celebrity.
How did they do that?
Shared points of common interest or knew people or things I was familiar with...
Shared times we both lived through.
Made me reflect on myself? Paid me a compliment (rare?)
Were totally engaging and gregarious with me and on subsequent occasions were also that way.
I think those last two hit the nail on the head for me.
Here's a message from a Democrat Michigan state legislator, the "honorable" Cynthia Johnson. She was subsequently removed from committee assignments by the Republican Speaker of the House.
I remember hearing most, if not all, of the people you mentioned speak in that auditorium in the Student Union at U.T. Seeing people I'd only heard of in real life was fascinating.
I also remember Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller speaking there. Alan Ginsberg spoke outside on the West Mall. Jorge Luis Borges and Carlos Fuentes spoke in Spanish at Batts Hall for the Spanish Department. Jane Fonda, Norman Mailer, and Abbie Hoffman were in Gregory Gym. Gerald Ford spoke on the steps of the tower. I enjoyed seeing all of those people.
I managed to actually piss off Nader -- in the question and answer, I asked if maybe making cars seem safe to drivers was actually dangerous to pedestrians and bicyclists since drivers feel like nothing can hurt them. The question infuriated him. I went there thinking I would like him -- but found that he was a sanctimonious jerk.
I loved Larry McMurtry's books -- especially the Houston/Rice series, the ones about Flap, Emma, Patsy, and company, but after watching the question and answer thought he was kind of a mean fellow in person. My sister went to his bookstore out west of Fort Worth and afterwards he bought her and her friend cups of coffee at Dairy Queen and sat and talked to them for a time -- they found him delightful.
Mailer did one of the funniest and most outrageous things I've ever seen. He'd just written that book making fun of feminism, so the NOW types were out in force and booed and hissed at him when he came out. He looked around and said something close to, "I see there are some people here who don't like me. Would all the feminists present please hiss." Of course, the place echoed with passionate hissing for the next few minutes. He walked back up to the front of the stage and waited for it to die down, then shrugged and said, "Obedient little bitches, aren't they."
Fonda had Tom Hayden with her -- she gave a nice commie speech, then took questions. He stood behind her and fed her the answers. At that time, she was one of the prettiest women I've ever seen and he was one of the ugliest men.
I thought it was fascinating seeing those people in person. When I was in law school, we had an annual speaker come for a day. Gerald Ford was one. I went to his talk, enjoyed the lengthy queston and answer, and was included at the luncheon with about a hundred others. Griffin Bell and Bill Hobby were there other years. We got to interact with all of them. Ford was surprisingly bright -- a couple of the most liberal professors (who were fiercely intelligent) argued politics with him and he stood his ground easily. He discussed how he picked the Supreme Court nominees -- by reading their previous opinions and choosing judges he thought did the best job. Hobby was down to earth in a way I didn't expect.
Bob, that is a good question. I guess you have to ask an LGBT person.
I sort of just feel there is a somewhat naturally justified antipathy of them towards Trump. What do you think?
On a side...I watch a lot of Amazon and Netflix. Last night I watched an old Jay Mohr comedy spot titled Jay Mohr "Funny for a Girl."
It had a routine he invented about what if his son or newborn son was gay and what or how he would respond. It's a histerical 1 hour comedy routine wiht basically nothing political in it. It was a fun watch, for me, at least.
It's from 2012, so before the Trump time. It is pretty funny to listen to a Californian comedy guy do an hour with no Trump jokes. Sort of refreshing.
SNL made lots of fun of Ford. Somehow, however, he was able to muddle his way through Yale Law.
You really took advantage of the opportunities at UT!
Lowell,
I was in a seminar in which Rostow spoke. Also his wife Elspeth. I recall one person saying that Espeth was smarter than Walt. Don't know if that was true. He had a PhD from Yale and was a Rhodes Scholar.
When I first got to U.T., my Dad sent me downtown to see his friend, Larry Temple Esq., who worked closely with Ben Barnes, Speaker of the Texas House, to get a part time job. I decided not to take it as I had been raised by my maternal grandfather to be a staunch Republican and all the business people I knew in the oil and gas business in Amarillo were Republicans. I had little respect for LBJ and the whole lot of them. I have always regretted that decision as I could have probably learned a good deal. I might have become one of those Manchurian candidates had I got my foot in the door with that bunch.
At this Christmas season with everyone staying home, the relatives have been sending gifts by mail. Everybody has been on facebook and thinks they are a comedian.
Steve, there's an easy alternative if you're hankerin' for a brownie -- Ghiradelli Brownie Mix. Or an even easier solution -- drop a hint to your church ladies.
I have run into a dilemma when ordering brownies at public places. You never know if you are making a racial faux pas when asking for brownies from a liberal whitey or a brown person with a "black lives matter" shirt.
I think the answer to "How long" is 46 years, since the 1974 release. Here is Ace, with Paul Carrack singing lead. Interesting how differently he sings it now. He looks a bit different now, too, unlike all of our RHS classmates.
I have noticed and am appalled by what I see. Hollywood is trying to direct what is socially acceptable in this country, what I see as an attempt to subvert Judeo Christian morality.
The one you missed is when a young couple is shown. Over 50% of the time it is a mixed race couple.
I, too, have noticed the overrepresentation of minorities on commercials. My favorite is the Buick commercial. A black couple is driving along in a nice new Buick, and one is saying it's a Buick and the other saying it's an Alexa. At the end of the commercial you see a couple of outdoor diners, both black. The two waiters at the restaurant are white.
I think advertisers are loathe to represent minorities as service workers or in any way that suggests that they are not in at least middle class.
They're not pandering so much as they are protecting themselves from cancel culture criticism. Remember the Bush 41 ad against Dukakis that showed black felon Willie Horton? Bush caught all sorts of crap for that. Moral of the story?
By the way, I watch sappy movies on the Hallmark Channel (don't laugh) and I think they must hire every black person in Canada (all six of them) for their casts.
Speaking of Hallmark, there is a movie called If I Only Had Christmas that is appearing this week. It's a cute movie (yes, I said cute) with a lot of references to The Wizard of Oz along with similar characters. If you watch it, keep track of all them. It's clever.
Back to the overrepresentation of minorities, I must say that I think it is useful to see them in higher lever occupations. Growing up, I only knew black people in low-paying menial jobs. That became the expectation. It seemed odd to see a black person in a more responsible position, and that probably isn't fair to the black person who really deserves the job. So maybe working to remove the stereotype is not such a bad thing.
