When Iris bloom in the dooryard

One of the iris from my Dad’s grave popped into full bloom in our doorway this morning, a beautiful purple blue.

I dug a few roots up several years ago in Fairlawn Cemetery at Comanche, Oklahoma, one early spring.

Every year they come up, around the blackened, jagged remains of an old oak tree stump.

When Dad was buried there, almost 40 years ago, the tree was alive. It

twisted upward in a half spiral, its weathered bark curving over his grave.

Dad would have loved the tree. The artist would have taken his pencils and sketched it on one of his pads. Like him, the tree had character.

The irises were there then, although I didn't notice them much because of the freshness of the grave, and the shape of the tree.

Several years ago though, the tree died, and rotted. I'm not sure when it

came down, but I suspect one of those southern Oklahoma windstorms snapped it off at the base.

I go back to the cemetery at the north edge of the poor little red dirt

Oklahoma town a couple of times a year, driving up the gravel, listening to

it crunch under my tires, and get out and walk toward the grave.

I used to be able to find the grave because of the tree, and now I look for

the stump and irises.

Four graves in a row, north to south.

Dad's grave, looking north. It's wet because I planted flowers and cleaned the stone.

The northernmost, a four-foot white marble pillar, tilting a little, was my

great-grandfather--Batte Peterson Clark:.

B.P. Clark

April 11, 1855

July 26, 1916

Next is a flat stone, my great grandmother:

Mary U. Watts Clark

1848-1923

Then there's granddad's flat stone:

Erle T. Clark

Jan. 14, 1890

Dec. 4, 1963

Then, Dad's gravestone, only about two to three miles north of where he was born:

Terrence M. Clark

Jan. 21, 1914

Dec. 14, 1973

"His Spirit Lives In His Paintings"

There is a space, room for one more grave.

Then there is the stump and the irises. Some of which now burst into bloom every year in our dooryard.

I can stand there, and walk between the graves and stump, and talk, and memories bloom again.

Just like the irises every spring,

Power pointless

I hope this isn’t pointless and powerless.

“I hate powerpoint,” a colleague said recently in a national meeting, while a speaker fumbled for some techie to make “Powerpoint” work on the computer screen.

In the meantime, the audience figited, lost interest, and most of all, lost the point.

Powerpoint is a computer program that is supposed to help speakers, to help education by superorganizing presentations with cute graphics, point by point slides on a big screen everyone can see.

But most of the time it does far more harm than anything else. First of all, most people who use it have no idea of readability factors breaking every typographic rule, and slides are cluttered with stupid graphics and colors and gimmicks sliding across the screen that look terrific but can’t be read. Secondly, the speakers feel compelled to read, word for word, everything on the screen, which is as exciting as a English teacher reading out of a textbook. Then, most times, the program won’t adapt to the new computer, and techies take over, trying to make it work, since nobody bothered to test it ahead of time. Then if it does come up, it probably has obscure computer codes showing and little boxes for the cursor to click. Then it may be off center or poorly lighted. And  in the dark room, students go to sleep or text away, bored out of their skulls. Technology doesn’t make a teacher…that’s the point.

The audience meanwhile, suffers. We’re experts at this in academia, but this ineptitude and insult to education and communication is also invading churches, chambers of commerce and schools.

We are at the mercy of the technocrats. Neil Postman in Technopoly says techies are the priests who can run the machine but have no expertise in the message, in the content. But since it’s the fad to use it, the teacher is shackled. I’ve seen a witty, and very good speaker—a vice-president at UCO speaking to the entire faculty--reduced to slavery to the system and incomprehensibility because the Powerpoint didn’t work right, and then couldn’t be read since the equivalent of the entire Constitution was on screen in 6-point type.

Technology the tool controls us, rather than the other way around.

Powerpoint is used to stifle greatness and impose structure. It is needed by poor teachers, but they can’t use it, and it brings great teachers down to their level.

How would it work in the “real” world? If these were major advertising agencies vying for a multimillion-dollar account, Powerpoint would lose the sale. Nothing matches good posters and visuals controlled by a prepared speaker with passion.

That’s what power point does—rob a speaker of passion.

One shudders to think what Powerpoint would have done to Socrates, or Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount, or the Declaration of Independence, or Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, FDR’s radio chats, or Churchill’s “blood sweat and tears,” Ike with the troops on D-Day, Bastogne’s “Nuts,” or Ghandi, or Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” or Art Linkletter or Robin Williams’ humor. Or Billy Graham’s sermons.

“”Blessed are the….”and Jesus pauses and waits for the techie to change the slide…and the wrong one comes up…”Pharisees who strain at a gnat.” Can you see this? We might all be speaking German if Churchill had to wait for Powerpoint to work before he could put the English to sleep with another boring presentation.

Today, we live in a world of no oratory or passion and Powerpoint will make sure that continues, a crutch of mediocrity.

At a meeting in India, one speaker  got laughs when he said, “Here’s my Powerpoint.  I have a point, and you have the power.”

The US military in the Mideast is crippled by Powerpoint, and the story made the front page of the NY Times this past year. Two power points a day paralyzes the officers and us. No wonder we’re not winning.

Nor teaching.

What we have is a comedy of the pointless and a powerless fad.

I don’t want to be pointy-headed and point fingers with these pointed remarks however.

So, wait till I get this on a power point presentation, and you can go to sleep.

What’s the point?

Is it pointless?

Is it powerless?

Get the point?

Tiger cruise, part one

Note: This is the first part of a story I wrote for Edmond Life and Leisure edmondlifeandleisure.com about my cruise aboard the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Aberaham Lincoln. It will be continued next week, so you'll have to wait. I'll include photos of this trip of a lifetime. Moral--be a good teacher and take care of students, and they always manage to say thank you, in ways you never expect.

“We’ve got a really big gas tank,” said the Navy officer, a former UCO journalism student.

He was talking about one of 11 of the world’s largest and most powerful warships, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, CVN 72. Commissioned in 1989, it’s still running on the original uranium in its two nuclear reactors.

Lt. Cmdr. Steve Curry, UCO 1993, is the new public affairs officer aboard the ship, which just returned to its homeport in Everett, Wash., after a six-month deployment.

The size of the “gas tank” aboard the Nimitz-class carrier only hints at the enormity of the pride of the U.S. Navy, a virtual city—or castle--at sea.

Me and Lt. Cmdr. Steve Curry, aboard "The Abe" in San Diego.

Lt. Cmdr. Curry had invited me as his former professor, and a cousin from Fort Worth, aboard for a four-day “Tiger Cruise” from San Diego to Everett. We were among about 300 other “Tigers”—family members, relatives and friends--on what I refer to as my “Pirate-proof cruise,” the last days of its trip home across the Pacific.

You can’t adequately describe an experience, a warship like this that costs $1million a day to operate. But four words stand out to me: size, science, people, pride.

The stunning size of the ship is the first thing that hits you—20-foot-tall rudders, 4.5 acre flight deck, 20 stories tall, 1,092 feet long, 257 feed wide. The more you learn and see, you’re equally awed by the science and engineering that makes it work. But the crew is the real story, 5,500 counting the airwing and its 70 aircraft.

Since the airwing departed for on shore deployment between Hawaii and San Diego, I didn’t see any of the cool catapult launchings that can take a jet fighter from 0 to 180 mph in 2.4 seconds.  Or can stop one in less than that, from 180 to 0—in all ddkinds of weather, day or night.

But there were still about 3,500 men and women aboard (15 percent of the crew is female). Average age is about 20-22. And everywhere I went, I was impressed by the dedication and professionalism and pride of the sailors…they’re proud of their ship and the job they do, every day, 365 days a year.  The Lincoln just earned the coveted ‘Battle E’ award. The crew refers to “The Abe” as the best ship in the Navy.

“Good morning, Abe,” comes the announcement over the ship’s intercom. It’s either the XO or the Captain talking to the Tigers and crew about the coming day. But old salts would feel at home, because the Bosun’s whistle precedes it and all announcements. But if you’ve waited until this announcement to be stirring, you’ve missed breakfast.

Serving stops at 0700. So you’ve missed omelets and eggs cooked to order, fresh biscuits and gravy, and more. But you can still stop by the officer’s wardroom or the enlisted mess areas for fresh fruit, cereal, milk, juice, toast, energy bars, and of course coffee, any time of the day. You won’t go hungry.  The crew consumers 180 dozen eggs a day. The 15,000-20,000 meals cooked daily include 600 gallons of milk and 900 pounds of fresh fruit. And of course, 80 pounds of coffee. “Coffee keeps the Navy afloat.”

This old truck

I've been wondering why I like old trucks so much.

Most recent was a 1969 Chevy C10 pickup that my uncle Mike gave me...only had 43,000 miles on it. But I didn't have the time and the money to properly restore it, so I sold it. But, I still like old trucks.


I wore a short sleeve shirt today with pictures of old pickups on it. One of my students commented about me being "old."


Got me to thinking...now I know why I like old trucks. We have a lot in common.


The headlights are getting dim.  The front grill is missing a few parts. The rear bumper is a crooked. The frame may be too. The dashboard has a lot of cracks and wear. The upholstery is a little ragged at times.


The paint's peeling and rust is showing from all the dents. Part of the headliner is damaged or missing.  The mileage is piling up, and the tread on the tires is almost gone.


It still gets pretty good mileage, but the fuel requires more additives.  The horn is raspy, and the sound system is getting weaker. There are a lot of rattles.


The transmission is intact, but doesn't always function smoothly. shifting gears.  The radiator leaks from time to time. Most of the hoses are pretty worn.


It doesn't start as quickly as it used to. The joints and axles still work, but need more grease. The springs and shocks are pretty well shot. It sometimes wobbles a little on the road.


The compression is still excellent, but it won't go as fast as it used to, and the trade-in value keeps dropping.


And then there's that noisy exhaust.

East Texas cousins

Families spread out over the years and miles from relatively simple beginnings. In the early years of the 20th Century, in East Texas, Thomas Ezra Culp, whose daddy had been a Texas Ranger, married Sophie Elizabeth Beard, and they had six children, four girls and two boys.

The four Culp girls.

They're all gone now, except for one surviving widow of the baby in the family. But they were a prolific bunch, with 14 children born to them, beginning in 1931. Three of the cousins have died tragically, all children of one of the boys, the first of the children to die. His name was J.C, but he was know as "Addy"  because he had his adenoids out I think, or "Son."

Most of the cousins still live near their deep East Texas  roots, from across the line in Louisiana and to near Austin. One of the girls, the third to be born, was my mother, and my brother's, Francis Faye Culp, born in 1909. She died in 1980. Our family of four moved from Fort Worth west to Albuquerque in 1951, so we didn't get to see as much of our cousins, except in summer vacation trips, though we have lots of black and white photos of many of us as babies from the earlier years. I migrated to Oklahoma and my brother to Lubbock, so we still don't get to see much of them.

But we just completed our third first cousin reunion. The first was held 21 years ago at a cousin's beach house near Galveston, and another was about eight years ago at Livingston. This time, we went to a cousin's beautiful ranch style home at Plum Grove, 20 miles east of Conroe and about the same from rapidly expanding Houston. Many brought kids and grandkids and great-grandkids--45 in all, feasting on bar-b-cue, stories, old photos and more photos.

I think it's remarkable because it shows how much life has changed. Who has that many cousins any more? And that stay in touch?

That's enough details. Here's the group shot.

From left: Charles (Lindy) Culp, son of E.T. Culp the baby of the Culp clan--his mother Lamerle is still alive); Carole Gee Wilson (second daughter of Ima), David Culp (on of E.T.); Charlotte Faye Gee Guidry (oldest daughter of Ima); Brenda Gee Reed (kneeling, youngest daughter of Ima); Jerry B. Clark (youngest son of Faye); Charles Lutrick (oldest son of Gladys); Sandi Gee Russell (kneeling, third daughter of Ima); Sara Beth Lutrick Foote (daughter of Gladys--the reunion was at her and her husband Bob's house)); and me (Faye's son).