Free Hugs!

Rob sent me the link to this video and I shamelessly stole it for a blog entry. Thank you and sorry, Rob.

Watch this video first, and then I'll talk more about it. Bring tissues.



I then got to checking on this and found the back story and the guy in the video who evidently started it, Juan Mann - according to Wikipedia, a pseudonym and a homonym of "one man." Here's a link to his story. Check out "How it all started."

Then I browsed YouTube for a while and I found that there are videos for locations all over the the world, apparently; among them NYC, Toulouse, France, Tel Aviv, Miami Beach, Peru, Amsterdam, Scotland, and of course, Austin.



How about a hug?

Lady Longhorns - Season ??

We’re not sure exactly when we started attending Lady Longhorn games; it was not long after the Irwin Center opened, and that venue – better known as The Drum – celebrated its 30^th anniversary recently. There's also a poster in the back of what was Rob's closet for the '81-'82 season. We were certainly there during the 183 – 0 winning streak against all other Southwest Conference opponents. We were there (well, Mom was) when they won the National Championship in 1986. We were there when the Final Four was at the Irwin Center and the Ladies were no longer in it. It’s been a long run.

We’ve seen almost every notable Women’s Basketball player in person at one time or another; most of the players in the WNBA came to the Drum during their collegiate days. We’ve seen other folks of note as well – James Michner was a fan; Ann Richards before, during and after she was Governor (in fact we ate supper with Ann and her companion Bud Shrake one evening before a game. Well, okay, we sat at the same table). Barbara Jordan, Rick Perry, Darrell Royal, Mack Brown, Ricky Williams, Cat Osterman – and of course coaches such as Pat Summit, Vivian Stringer, Van Chancellor, Sue Gunter, and Jody.

And we’ve seen some not-so notable folks as well. For several years, whenever the band plays the Wabash Cannonball, there is a wannabe cheerleader across the way that gets up in the aisle and goes through the same routine that the cheerleaders perform. She’s – well, let’s just say that she’s past her cheerleader days and form – but she gets a big hand anyway.

Jody’s retired and the new sheriff in town is Gail Goestenkors (Coach G because it’s easier). She’s young and talented and headed for big things – as soon as she recruits a team with more ability than the one she inherited. The run continues.

A little light reading

Retirement means that there’s a lot more time for reading. And that means looking harder for things to read. After all, it really doesn’t take very long to go through the latest Reader’s Digest. My current backlog is a stack of paperbacks about 2 feet tall on loan from a friend. They are his collection of the Matt Helm adventures.

Matt Helm is the character invented by writer Donald Hamilton in the early ‘60s. Helm is sort of a poor man’s James Bond, a rougher, tougher individual than Bond ever thought of being. Hamilton wrote 27 Helm books, which were published directly to paperback during the period between 1960 and 1993; my friend has collected 22 of them. There were even a couple of Matt Helm movies, with the hero played rather tongue-in-cheek by Dean Martin.

Unlike Bond’s attraction to fancy cars, fancy settings and amazing gadgets, Helm most often drives around in a pickup with a camper top – often in the Santa Fe area or the American Southwest in general. He often sleeps in the camper and his only gadget is the sharpened edge of his belt buckle.

The stories are very formulaic and predictable: Helm’s assignment is always to put himself in danger so as to get close enough to some bad person who is a threat to the safety of America in order to eliminate him or her. Along the way he will meet and bed (always chastely off-screen) one or two attractive women; he will let himself get beat up and then captured by the bad guys and the women will invariably get killed (there’s a lesson in there somewhere). Helm will at the last moment find some imaginative way to free himself and carry out his mission, leaving his secret Agency to whisk away the bodies he has stacked up along the way while he goes home to hunt and fish in New Mexico.

It takes but an hour or two to read each book and thus qualifies for light reading. Too bad there are only 27 of them.

A Pleasant Lull

Things are in somewhat of a lull here, after the busyness and excitement of the Holidays. It doesn't make good blog material, but it has made for a quiet and pleasant period.

About the most excitement we've had was the kitchen faucet leaking. There's a mysterious timing about holidays and family get-together and plumbing problems, isn't there? I can still take you to the exact place in the yard at the house in Breckenridge where you would dig to get to the pipe to remedy plumbing problems there. Our leak was even something that I could reach and fix (after waiting a week for American-Standard to send me the life-time warranty parts).

Oh, and there was the little rodent issue. While I was under the sink I noticed rodent droppings. There has been absolutely no indication anywhere else that we had critters, but when the exterminator came for quarterly service he set some traps (and left us a big box of traps in case we needed more). Sure enough, we dispatched one - a rattus rattus - commonly known as "Roof Rats" and we did some damage to another. No activity in several days but the traps are still set!

Austin Grad did not get a Certificate of Occupancy for their new building as quickly as they had planned (Hello, this is Austin... the city that invented bureaucratic run-around and delay!), so they had to postpone the semester opening for a week. Mom starts back Tuesday, but it's a short drive and free parking!

And I actually went to the office a couple of days this past week, so I guess our lull is about over.

What the West would have been like with Shetland Ponies

Okay, it has nothing to do with retirement, Austin, or our family, but I thought it was funny.

Celebration of a Surrendered Life

We almost missed it. We were doing normal Saturday things this morning; I was balancing the bank account and Mom had begun to read the paper, when she called out, "Lowell Davis passed away! There's a memorial service for him at 11 this morning at Brentwood. We should go." It was already 10:20am, so we scurried about a bit to get dressed and hurried to the service.

For the benefit of the two or three readers outside this family, Lowell and Odessa Davis were a most unusual couple; elderly when they arrived in Austin, they had already led a life full of adventure and intrigue, and they acted as if they were just getting started. They were married for 74 years.

They met in China - each a missionary from a different religious affiliation. They decided Jesus was bigger than either affiliation, so they set an early example of unification and married. They worked together in China for a dozen years until a friend whispered to them that the Japanese Army of Occupation had Lowell on a "Terminate List" and they fled on foot with 2 small children and the clothes on their backs, leading a group of similarly threatened refugees to safety, hiding by day and fleeing through the countryside by night.

Lowell was silent about his reason for being on the list until just recently. It seems he was going up in the hills with his binoculars and reporting ship movements in the harbor to a friend of his. When Lowell's son heard this explanation he exclaimed, "Dad! You were a spy!" Lowell just shook his head and said, "I wasn't spying. I was just sharing information."

Back in the US, they were both educators for many years, but usually at poor, out-of-the way schools - sometimes in areas were the primary population was some indigenous group. I don't know why they came to Austin to retire, but that's when we got to know them. They lived in a mobile home and made an arrangement to put the trailer just south of the church building, where they stayed for a number of years. There are plans to plant a tree on that spot soon.

There was even a family relationship to Lowell; he was in some manner related to Aunt Audene, who was married to Granddaddy Brown's brother Eddy - parents of Sandy Brown Lowe and Randy Brown. Audene was at the service.

Lowell and Odessa were an integral part of Brentwood for many years. Odessa's sharp mind slipped away and she's in a care facility now. Lowell couldn't hear a word that was said in church for the last several years, but when someone would ask why he kept coming, he said, "I want Satan to know which side I'm on."

Two of his children, Steve Fuller, and Lowell spoke at his funeral. Several years ago Steve taped several interviews with Lowell regarding his years in China and his service as an educator. This was part of the Library of Congress' Spoken History project. Steve talked about his interviews and the recorded voice of Lowell spoke to various issues Steve brought up. It was very seamless and quite well done. It was good to hear him again.

The Most Unusual Wedding

I have blogged about weddings before, but the one I did last night takes the wedding cake. Actually, I should say the one I did last night and this morning takes the cake, because the ceremony started in 2007 (at 11:30pm), paused to note the stroke of midnight ("You may kiss the bride or whoever is sitting close to you.") and concluded in 2008 with the "I Do's."

The original intent was to pronounce the couple man and wife on the stroke of midnight, but weddings always start 8 minutes late and you never know how long the Bride is going to dance, or how long one's sister-in-law is going to preach - uh, exhort the couple, or how long it takes to serve the audience communion. My hat's off to Kevin for skillfully working in the New Year and the New Family.

I know what you are thinking. I'll get to that in a moment.

The timing was not the only unusual aspect of this wedding. It appeared on the radar last Friday as a very simple wedding with one song to be played. By Sunday morning, it was a multi-year affair with PowerPoint scriptures, 3 songs on CD, 2 congregational hymns, a song leader, the afore-mentioned sister-in-law, a guy playing a guitar and a video count-down. Oh, did I mention the part about showing "Facing The Giants" on the big screens while the pre-wedding dinner was going on in the Family Room?

After explaining that no one was going to be available for the various video aspects of this wedding (with the Holiday, we barely scrapped up enough guys for Sunday) they reluctantly agreed to an audio-only version.

This was the 2nd marriage for this couple. They had married before, stayed together long enough for 2 boys to be born, divorced, essentially remained a couple for the sake of the boys and finally decided they needed to remarry. Kevin and his wife Karen (with 2 boys about the same age) met them while attending Brentwood basketball games; they got to know them, learned of the status of the family and helped counsel them back into a marriage.

Okay. Yes, I did say the Bride danced. Came down the aisle barefoot and in a long skirt and gave us her interpretation of Nicole C. Mullin's "When You Call on Jesus." All four minutes and fifty-seven seconds of it. Apparently she does this often at Shoreline. I think Kevin summed it up when he said to me later. "I'm pretty sure that's the first time that has happened in this auditorium." I have nothing to add to that.

Have a Happy New Year. I'm going back to bed.