Ex Cathedra

He just called from USC to say he successfully defended his dissertation.  He’s now Patrick Douglas Crispen EdD!

My grandfather was the first in our family to work in an office.  He was a timekeeper for the Union Railroad.

My father was the first to have a Bachelor’s degree. He was Comptroller of a company that ran a chain of variety stores.

I was the first to skateboard around Dead Man’s Curve.

Now Patrick is the first in our family to get a Doctorate.

I’m telling my younger son, “Your turn!”

Home happy from great Thanksgiving with our  family in Pasadena & the high desert.

Patrick and Christine gave us the most amazing Thanksgiving ever.

Last night younger son and I watched the teevee machine.

During Rachel I tried to slip in a word about how cool 3D geography is. He told me with rolled eyes he already had Google Earth on his iPhone and made it clear that my friends and I were chisling our VRML geodata into shale by sabertooth fat light.

He’s picking his 2nd career now. We watched “Son of the War Room” and and I also noodged him about poli sci.

Today would have been Kelly’s and my 42nd anniversary. I’m dropping random notes around my Facebook and blog friends. It hurts like hell. I can’t come up with a closing line for this post, but some things don’t really have endings.

Here’s an article in Beacon Press’s blog about Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps’s mom

When my son Robert was 8 or so, I saw him do a one-handed pull-up on some
bars by the pool and took a look at his lats and said “Backstroker” or maybe
“Chimpanzee.” I never was really sure.

He made pretty good progress through swimming lessons at the Y and did
pretty well on swim team. But he never had the superstar talent or
fanatical love of swimming it’s supposed to take to become a superstar.
If I had dreams of making my fame and fortune off of him, there’s still
time. Maybe he can become a porn star.

I got what I wanted. If he fell into he water, chances are he won’t drown,
and he enjoys swimming and water skiing.

And he became a good man. A man with the clearest sense of right and wrong
I’ve ever seen.

My other son Patrick is also a good man, a kind man, who married way above his station, and if he keeps working, he’ll be my son the doctah (EdD).

I think I did pretty well. So did Debbie Phelps.