Not your father’s golf mag
“Old Game, New Breed”: Bogey Magazine
Google Tips
PC Mag’s “20 Great Google Secrets” is worth checking out. Included are syntax search tricks, an overview of their beta services like Phone Google, searching within a time frame, etc.
Kids
The theme to our weekend was kids. First we saw “School of Rock,” which as you know, is about kids who drink from Jack Black’s rock goblet. Saturday we attended a wedding at a beautiful facility in West Austin. There were cute kids everywhere. Sarah and I became friends with one particularly sweet girl. She seemed sad when we told her we had to leave. Coincidentally, she is from Lexington and her dad works at Tempur- Pedic (I think). He told me that he thinks Mayor Isaac is a communist. Today was just like any other Sunday– four hours spent at the gymnastics center. My cousin was in town because her daughter’s gymnastics squad was competing against regional teams. They left Austin with a respectable third place trophy. Anyway, like them kids. Think I might want me one someday. Maybe two.
Unfortunately, I didn’t accomplish several things I had hoped to finish. This includes posting the interview with Margret (see below). I did get a creative urge to redesign the web site, which ultimately resulted in lots of frustration and and me rolling back to what you see now. Rock. Maybe there will be some new stuff to look at soon…
Quaker Quotes
You never know who you will meet at the HEB on Oltorf. Not so much in a cheesy “Keep Austin Weird” kind of way, but you can run in to some seriously interesting people at this grocery. Like the elderly gentleman who rides around on his three-speed bike (not in the store) with a button on his collar that says, “Just your friendly neighborhood atheist.” If it’s stories you’re looking for, rest assured you will go home a hero.
A few weeks ago I struck up a conversation with a woman in the solo checkout line near the produce section. Like a good boy scout I helped her with her groceries and then agreed to mow her lawn the following weekend. I guess I should mention that she is 79. At first I thought it was neat that Margret was an Austin City Council member in the 70’s. Then I realized she’s a member of the American Friends Service Committe (a Quaker organization) and a pacifist. Later I learned that she wrote a book called “Vietnam Viewpoints,” published in 1968. She has had many years to cement her views on war and social justice but her outlook is shaped by more than just a long, active life. As a “half-Jew” from Dusseldorf, Germany, she lived through the Holocaust. Her mother didn’t. Intrigued yet? In Margret’s own words from an article in the Christian Science Monitor back in 2001:
“We didn’t look up. At that moment we wondered if we could escape without someone spitting at us. Instinctively we headed home, though we knew home would offer us little protection: The name-caller was Frau Wirth, our next-door neighbor.It was 1939, and although this woman had been harassing my mother for years, we realized then that there was no more recourse for abuse, no more refuge, no more safe haven for a Jewish person in Germany.
My mother was Jewish, my father was not. As a “half-Jew,” I was spared being sent to the camps. But my mother and most of her relatives weren’t so fortunate. They perished.
Six years later, soon after the war ended, I emigrated to the United States.
In the early 1950s, I returned to Berlin. As I stood in front of the burned-out ruin of what had been my birthplace, a woman dashed out of the house next door, raced down the street, and disappeared into the subway station. It was Frau Wirth.”
I’m interviewing Margret tomorrow and will try to have the transcript online by this weekend…
