Monday Meanderings - 4.27.2015

I posted a while back about visiting the Guatemalan embassy in Mexico City to get an official, stamped document for our travels. That prompted Barb to remind me of the story about the red rubber stamp.

Years ago while living in Abilene, Barb and I and were in a small Bible study group that included a couple who had lived in various interesting places, including Vietnam during the early years of the US "military action" there.

Ron, the husband, described how he and and his wife and others had set out to start an orphanage in that country to help deal with the overwhelming problem of children left parent-less by the on-going war and military conflict. He described how frustrated they were initially because they could not overcome the problems of bureaucracy and seeming indifference by those whose official blessing was needed in order to set up and run the orphanage.

He told of venting his frustration one day to a fellow American who was in that country on behalf of some other non-government organization, and that person inquired as to whether Ron had a red rubber stamp? "What red rubber stamp?" Ron asked. "Any red rubber stamp," the fellow responded. "It doesn't matter what the stamp says, but it must be liberally applied to all of your official documents, and you must use red ink with the stamp."

So Ron obtained an ornate, official-looking rubber stamp inscribed with the orphanage name and his name, and some other verbiage on it - along with a red ink pad - and began stamping all his correspondence, business cards and any other flat surface that he encountered with the gaudy stamp.

And doors opened like magic!

Officials who previously didn't have the time of day for Ron and his group welcomed them with open arms. Business got conducted, approvals were made, and the orphanage was in business! All because of a red rubber stamp.

Another follow-up. The AT&T Uverse service truck was back at the neighbor's house the other day. She had previously posted on a neighborhood bulletin board that the service call count was 6 (now 7), and the problem was still not fixed. That knowledge came in very handy when a sales person came to my door the other day wanting to sign me up for AT&T Uverse. Interestingly, the service truck was parked on our block - at yet another neighbor's house - when she knocked.

And apparently columnists and bloggers are running out of city ranking ideas. The most recent list is called "The 16 U.S. Cities that Top Every Internet List for Being Awesome." You know, “Best Places to Visit,” “Best Cities to Eat Your Way Through,” “15 Best Places to Be A Hipster,” etc. And yes, Austin ranks high on that list, though I don't give much credibility to a list that ranks Houston and Dallas above Austin in any category except traffic congestion.

Monday Meanderings - 4.20.2105

We were watching a "friendly" soccer match between the US National Women's Team and the New Zealand Women's National team the other evening, and during the course of the game the commentators mentioned that the New Zealand team might be a tad weary. It took them 53 hours to travel from Auckland to St Louis! There was a multitude of travel problems; probably the most enervating of which was a 25-hour delay in the Sydney airport! If I spend more than 4 hours in an airport you might as well just shoot me.

From IH-35 you can see a gaudy circus tent, erected in the parking lot of Highland Mall ( now the Highland Campus of ACC). It brings to mind that the days of the circus "Big Top" are mostly history. Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey has not pitched a tent since 1957, electing to set up only in sports arenas. The gaudy tent belongs to Circo Hermanos Vazquez, a Mexican circus that ventures into the US from time to time.

When I was just a young lad, my father took me to see the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus under the canvas big top. At the time, it was set up in the Montgomery Ward parking lot in Fort Worth. Mind you, the Montgomery Ward building itself was an impressive sight for a small-town boy; the circus was almost overload.

Probably my most vivid recollection was seeing Gargantua,  billed as "The Largest and Fiercest Gorilla Ever Brought Before the Eyes of Civilised Man!" Gargantua had a glassed-in, air-conditioned cage, and the story goes that he was given a fresh blanket each evening, only to tear it into tiny shreds the next morning.

Amazon introduced 1 hour delivery in Austin recently. With the PrimeNow App, if you are a Prime member member and you are in need of, oh, say toilet paper, punch up the order on your phone and an Amazon delivery person will show up at your door within the hour, merchandise in hand.

The cost for 1-hour delivery adds about 8$, (plus a tip) to your order. If you can wait for two hours, delivery is free. Amazon says they offer "tens of thousands of daily essentials, gifts and more" with the service.

And there are various social media reports that In-N-Out has added bacon to the menu, but that appears to be wishful thinking. I can't find any official confirmation of that.

He followed us home. Can we keep him?

The Belize River rises in northeastern Guatemala and winds 180 miles along the northern edge of the Maya Mountains, emptying into the Caribbean sea just north of Belize City. One of the cruise ship excursions is a ride down a 25 mile stretch of this river in a 40-person open boat, winding through a stretch of jungle before reaching the populated coastal area.

A chance for sighting local flora and fauna was the advertised objective of this trip and we aced it. Howler monkeys in the trees noisily marked our passing while indifferent crocodiles snoozed along the river banks. We saw fruit bats sleeping off the day, iguanas galore (they call them "bamboo chicken") basking in the sun, and manatees feeding (look quick - all you see is their nose as they come up for air).

And this guy met us several miles upstream.



This bottle-nose dolphin followed us down the river for several miles, entertaining us with frequent leaps out of the boat wake, then racing in front of the boat to wait and take up the chase again. Normally salt-water mammals, this guy, according to the guide, has been seen as far as 15 miles upstream, far from the brackish water that usually marks their boundary.

Monday Meanderings - 4.13.2015

It's nice when one's doctor attends the same church as you do. The orthopedist  who performed my shoulder surgery stopped me in the foyer to see how I was doing.  While he was adjusting my sling, I commented to his wife that her husband does make house calls - it just has to be a certain kind of house. She said "You have no idea how much "Church Foyer Medicine" gets practiced here."

Speaking of my sling, Barb and I were both at the vehicle inspection station last week - she in her car and me in mine. After she left, the technician pointed at my arm and said, "Did she do that?" For a while I was telling people who asked about my sling that she was the reason I had to wear it. I stopped doing that for fear that she actually would cause some damage over my glib response.

Another example that Big Brother Google is watching us. Last Monday afternoon a message popped up on my phone, entirely on its own, that said, "Right now it would take you 9 minutes to reach 10520 North Lamar Blvd." I'll let you guess what's at that address. Or, you can use the Google Maps link here.

The other day the Little Vietnamese Lady came knocking on our door. You may recall that this is the person that I ran off during pecan season because she was hogging all the pecans. I already had what I wanted, but there were others who came by from time to time and politely asked, so I wanted them to have a chance too. After a while, I relented and let her gather to her heart's content. You may also recall that after the pecans played out, she came by with a sack of apples for us. This time she had a pie. I really hoped it was a pecan pie, but it was pumpkin. I wonder whose yard she gathered pumpkins from.

Basketball season is finally over. How about that Championship game? During the course of the season, and throughout our extensive sports-watching, we have seen countless interviews with coaches, and inevitably the announcer will ask the question, "Coach, what's it going to take to beat (name of team here)? And not once - not a single time - has the coach ever stated the obvious: "Score more points." Duh.

In need of a license

I follow a Facebook page titled "Taste of Texas" and the other day the post was about an improvised marriage license. The post included only the content of the license, reproduced below, but a reader supplied the information that the source was originally an 1897 volume of Harper's Magazine.

The longer story add the background that clerk in question, Henry Osborne,

"pastured his cows on the broad acres around, bringing them home at night, and letting them go to grass in the morning. He kept a bell on one of them to help him in finding them; but one morning, as he was letting them loose, he perceived that the clapper of the bell was lost out, and, being unable to find it, he made a substitute by making fast in the bell his office-key."

"Not till he reached his office did it occur to him that he should want the key, but now finding himself locked out, he betook himself to other matters, proposing to recover the key at night. About noon a rough-and-ready young Texan, in buckskin dress, came riding into town, inquired for the clerk, scared him up, and asked for a marriage-license."

The story goes on to narrate how Osborne tried to postpone preparing the license, but the cowboy was set on getting married that day, so together they set out to find the cow, and the key.

"But the more they looked the less they found, and finally had to give it up. A bright thought struck the Clerk of the County. 'I'll fix you out!' said he, and they proceeded to a store close by the office, and there the county scribe indited the following autograph:

"Republic of Texas:

To all who shall see this present, greeting:

Whereas I, the undersigned, Clerk of this County, having this morning unthoughtedly tied my office-key as a clapper Into my cow's bell and whereas the said cow has gone astray to parts unknown, bearing with her the said key, and therefore the said key is rum inventus est—that is, can't be had:

And whereas one Abner Barnes has made application to me for a marriage-license, and the said Abner persists that he can not wait until the cow comes back with the key, but is compelled, by the violence of his feelings and the arrangements already made, to get married:

Therefore these presents are to command any person legally authorized to celebrate the rites of matrimony to join the said Abner Barnes to Rebecca Downs; and for so doing this shall be your sufficient authority.

Given under my hand and private seal, on the doorstep of my office—tho seal of the office being locked up, and my cow having gone away with the key—this fourth day of October, A.D. 1838."

The story is amusing enough on its own, but Barb and I once found ourselves in a somewhat similar situation. We desperately needed a birth certificate for our son, Rob - on a Sunday afternoon.

It seems we were scheduled to fly to Mexico on that very afternoon, and from there we were going on a couple of days later to Guatemala to visit friends of ours living there at the time. On Saturday night it occurred to us that we might need some kind of documentation, and according to the information at hand Birth Certificates would be sufficient.

Mind you, this was a much kinder, more genteel time for air travel. We found one for Barb, one for me, one for Julie, our daughter and... none for Rob.  In a panic, Barb suggested that we get a notarized certificate from Esther Stewart, the church secretary.

We wrote up a very official-looking document that avowed that Rob was our son, and that he had indeed been born, and that this fore-mentioned birth took place in the US of A on the specified date. There was space for the Notary to affirm that all this was true, and with a great flourish, we signed the document, and Esther signed the document, and impressed her very official-looking seal over it all!

Getting into Mexico was not an issue - you really didn't even need a birth certificate at that time. It was Guatemala that concerned us, so early Monday morning we hied ourselves to the Guatemalan Consulate in Mexico City (where we learned how Latin Americans queue up for an official line - by shoving themselves to the front) and we presented our son and our document to an official and requested a more "official" document to get us in and out of Guatemala.

The clerk puzzled over our letter for a while, then took it to a neighboring clerk, who also puzzled over it and discussed its merits in rapid Spanish. No doubt they were discussing the officialness of such a document, and after reaching agreement that they had never encountered such a fine and impressive document, the first clerk came back, rubber stamp it, scribbled something we could not read on the paper and handed it back to us without a word.

My guess, from this perspective, is that what he wrote probably said, "Let these ignorant gringos into the country, even though they have no idea what a real birth certificate is." Even so, like Mr Osborne's marriage certificate above, our homemade "Birth Certificate" did the job.

Monday Meanderings - 4.6.2015

Between the overall decline in postal mail volume (some 12-15% annually) and the fact that we now do so much of our correspondence/business over the Internet (thus helping to bringing about the aforementioned decline), it is becoming more common for the postal person to pass us by on his daily rounds. Some days we don't even get a circular or letter wanting to sell us some "senior-related" product - like hearing aids. Some days we don't even get bills! We refer to that as, after finding the mailbox empty, "either he hasn't been here yet, or nobody loves us."

Before my sister gets any ideas, I need to tell you that I made some similar statement about the paucity of mail I was receiving after I went off to college. She, bless her heart, proceeded to sign me up for every mailing list she could get her hands on. I don't know how many magazine tip-ins and printed "send me more information" ads she filled out, but it wasn't long before the workers in the post office at ACU were commenting on the volume. And once started, like spam email today, it was impossible to stop.

Graduating and moving a few times ultimately pared the volume, but I think I was still receiving catalogs for Women's Extra-Large shoes long after moving to Austin, years later. So, don't get any ideas (I'm talking about you, Pat). Walking out to the mailbox is a form of exercise now. Actually getting mail is not the big deal it once was. We will still feel loved. Trust me.

Went to Fran's for breakfast on a Friday a week or so ago, and there was a sign that said "Closed for 24 hours." On Saturday, the sign read "Closed - Spring Cleaning." A week later it was still closed. For some time now, the service at Fran's has declined significantly, so we sort of figured the place was going to close for good and this stretch of signs seemed to confirm that.

Mind you, there has not been any turn-over in the kitchen staff, and the food is still very good. That's why we kept checking back. And sure enough, this past Saturday the sign said, "Open for breakfast this Saturday." And they were! Maybe there was a new coat of paint on a wall or two in the dining room. Hard to tell. There was even a full complement of waitstaff tripping all over each other (literally). More than we can remember seeing in a couple of years!

Since I couldn't cram anything new into my bathroom medicine cabinet, I decided it was finally time to clean it out. It wasn't all that hard. Almost everything found in a medicine cabinet has a "use-by date" on it. So the cleaning consisted of checking the date to see if the expiration was in the current decade (don't judge; you've got 'em too.) If not, toss it.

But toss it where? I'm well aware that one should take certain environmentally-friendly steps when disposing of old meds and such. I finally decided that I could make 2 stacks. Those things that were so old they had lost all potency -  the packages marked expiring before, oh, let's say before the current century, and the other stack consisting of things that probably needed a hazmat suit in order to handle it. As a bonus, if I get one of those suits, I can also deal with the things that are multiplying in the very back of the refrigerator, too.

My very tenous link to the Kennedy Assasination - Stories for my grandchildren

I ran across an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about workers, engaged in a years-long effort to make electronic copies of old case files and destroy their paper counterparts, found an old Tarrant County court file that included documents trying to prevent the late, famed attorney Melvin Belli from representing Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald.

The two files contained the efforts of local attorneys to encourage the Texas State Bar to prevent Belli from representing Ruby, who gunned down Oswald on live television after he was arrested for killing President John F. Kennedy. Belli tried to prove that Ruby was legally insane when he shot Oswald in Dallas more than 50 years ago. But Ruby was found guilty of murdering Oswald and sentenced to die.

One of the documents is a letter that Belli, based in San Francisco, sent to 96th District Judge Fisher T. Denny stated in part, “I have no intention of being bound by (attorneys’) advice or suggestions. Knowing the facts, the State Bar of Texas may act as it is advised, and I say this respectfully.” Also in the file are letters from attorneys throughout the state asking the Texas Bar to sanction Belli for his comments. Eventually the cases were dismissed, according to the article.

So how does this have anything to do with me?

In 1964, I was working for a company called Fidelity Films. Our primary task was to film the Herald of Truth television series, but the company often contracted for commercial and sponsored work. In this case, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation hired us to provide a film crew for an interview with Melvin Belli to be aired later over the CBC network, and I was the sound man on that crew.

Belli, a colorful character known as "The King of Torts" (and by detractors as 'Melvin Bellicose') was famous for his many celebrity clients, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Errol Flynn, Chuck Berry, Muhammad Ali, the Rolling Stones, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Martha Mitchell, Lana Turner, Tony Curtis, and Mae West.He was defending Jack Ruby for no charge, apparently for the publicity alone.

We set up in a downtown Dallas hotel and representatives from the famous attorney were there to set some ground rules for the CBC crew - and for us. An emphasis of those guidelines was that the attorney's name was pronounced "BELL eye," NOT "Belly."

A bit later, Mr Belli and his entourage swept into the room, 5 or 6 assistants trailing behind him, Our crew chief stepped up to greet him and said - you guessed it - "Good morning, Mr. Belly."

 I don't remember anything about the interview itself, but I do know that the CBC didn't use us again. And that's my connection to this historical event.