September 2003

Manor back-loop

DuShun came by after work and we rode the Manor back-loop, racing the setting sun. 34 miles, average speed 17.0 mph. That average includes a lot of in-town riding–when we were out on country roads, DuShun mostly rode point and set a fast pace of 22-25 mph. It was all I could do to hang onto his wheel.

Now I need to eat. A lot.

Walter Richter, RIP

Walter Richter, a neighbor who lived one block north of me and onetime member of the State Senate, has died. I never knew him very well–we’d say hi when he’d be out walking his little dogs. His wifewidow Dorothy–known as the Mayor of Hyde Park–is quite a character, and I imagine that in his day, Walter was too.

Later I just received the following obituary. I’m afraid I don’t know the source for attribution.

Walter H. Richter, former Texas state senator, died September 8, 2003, at his Austin home. Walter Hoppe Richter was born September 17, 1916, in the Double Horn community southeast of Marble Falls, Texas. Four months before Richter’s birth, his father, Walter Herman Richter, died accidentally. Richter and his sister Esther Marie were raised by their mother, Bertha Lenore Hoppe Richter, and grandfather, George Hoppe, on the family homestead, which had been settled in the mid- 1800’s by their German immigrant ancestors. The family survived the Great Depression through subsistence farming, cotton picking, perseverance, and frugality. After graduating from Marble Falls High School in 1934, Richter attended Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College (now Texas State University). He became a member of the White Stars, a secret campus political organization (of which Lyndon Johnson was a founding member). Richter was elected editor of the school newspaper and student body president. He received a B. A. in 1938 and an M. A. in 1939. After graduation, Richter organized and ran the journalism department at his alma mater, receiving a B. J. degree from the University of Texas in 1942.

In 1938, Richter met first-year student Dorothy Jean Sample of Stockdale, Texas: “I was a smart alec graduate student at the time and my reaction was Wow!” They were married June 14, 1941.

During World War II, Richter served in the Navy as a supply officer in Ipitanga, Brazil. After the war, he purchased a small-town newspaper, The Stockdale Star, of which he was publisher and editor from 1948 to 1951. From 1950 to 1954, Richter worked for the Steck Publishing Company of Austin, traveling throughout West Texas helping high schools develop yearbooks. In 1954, Richter went to work for Gonzales Warm Springs Foundation, a physical rehabilitation center, serving as Executive Director until 1962.

Elected to the Texas State Senate in 1962, Richter served during the 1963 and 1965 legislative sessions. He sponsored legislation leading to the creation of the Texas Department on Aging.

After leaving the Senate, Richter was appointed by Governor John Connally to lead President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” in Texas as Director of the Texas Office of Economic Opportunity. One year later, Johnson appointed Richter to head the five-state Southwest Region of the OEO.

Subsequently, Richter lectured at the University of Texas School of Social Work on social policy, social change, and the legislative process, while heading the Community Council of Austin and Travis County. Later, Governor Preston Smith appointed Richter director of the newly created State Program on Drug Abuse.

In 1970-1971, Governor Smith appointed Richter chairman of the Texas delegation to the White House Conference on Children and Youth. President Jimmy Carter appointed Richter to serve on the U. S. Architectural and Transportation Compliance Board, which was charged with making all federal buildings accessible to the handicapped. Richter also served as co-chairman of the Texas Environmental Coalition, one of the earliest volunteer organizations to work towards protection of the state’s environment. He actively supported and served as statewide president of United Cerebral Palsy of Texas. He served for a decade as Chairman of the Government Relations Committee of the Texas Social Welfare Association, currently the United Way of Texas.

After years of government service, Richter served as Director of Government Relations (“lobbyist”) for the Association of Texas Electric Cooperatives until his “retirement” in 1985 at age 69. After retirement, Richter, recruited by Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, served one year as Deputy Agriculture Commissioner. Richter also served as Chairman of the Travis County Democratic party and co-authored a book of political humor with Chuck Herring: Don’t Throw Feathers at Chickens.

Honors include the following: Distinguished Alumnus, Southwest Texas State University; naming at SWTSU The Walter H. Richter Institute of Social Work Research; Public Citizen of the Year, Austin Unit of the National Association of Social Workers; recipient of the first Walter Richter Humanitarian Award of the SWTSU Alumni Association; recipient, Marble Falls Centennial City Father Award; Lifetime Achievement Award, Marble Falls/Horseshoe Bay Chamber of Commerce; Citizen of the Year, Gonzales Chamber of Commerce.

Richter was a member of Lions International for over 60 years and numerous other organizations. As a lover of people he participated in and organized reunions and gatherings throughout his life. Being a journalist at heart, he continued to write columns and newsletters at every opportunity. His personal papers have been donated to the University of Texas History Center.

Family survivors include a wife, Dorothy Jean Richter of Austin; a daughter, Robyn Richter of Marble Falls; a son, Gary Richter, his wife, Susan Wukasch, and their daughter, Molly Richter, of Georgetown; a nephew, Carl Weaver of Fredericksburg. Private burial was at the Texas State Cemetery on September 12, 2003.

Wa-oops

A pet peeve of mine is Chinese character tattoos. These are often translations of some sentiment the victim wishes to express in code, but have been translated in a way that probably won’t make sense to a native speaker of Chinese or Japanese. In other cases, they are unidiomatic or just plain wrong.

Take a gander at the two kanji above. The one on the left, å’Œ, is the character for “peace,” popular as a tattoo, on T-shirts, decorative rocks, etc. The one on the right looks exactly the same, but for one crucial stroke. In fact, it is not an actual character at all (near as I can tell), though my first guess was that it means “apricot” (I was close: 杏). It is the one on the right that I saw tattooed on the small of a woman’s back on Sunday.

What’s the correct etiquette in this situation? Should I tell her “Hey, I know you wanted the character for ‘peace’ tattooed on your back, but you wound up with something that sorta looks like ‘apricot'”? Or should I leave her in blissful ignorance, as an inside joke for those of us who know the code?

Later: Apparently other people are writing about this problem too.

I give up

I’ve pretty much quit blogging about national politics. The news is so uniformly awful, the principal actors so bogglingly loathsome, the agendas so completely evil, and the real truth so hard to pin down that it just doesn’t seem worth it.

Or as Teresa Nielsen Hayden put it, I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.

When people seriously consider the possibility that Bush intentionally started forest fires as window-dressing for his forest “thinning” plans, when former insiders and former generals are blasting the Bushies over Iraq, and when previously sympathetic British government officials suggest administration complicity in the 9-11 attacks, then you know the distance between you and the wearers of tinfoil hats is…the thickness of a tinfoil hat.

Tuesday-night course ride

Got together for my first ride with both DuShun and Caeasar in over a year. DuShun took us on a loop he’s been riding–halfway to Buda, then east to Nuckol’s Crossing to make a circuit around the Tuesday Nighter course, and then back home on Slaughter Lane. 32 miles. After a long-ish hiatus from the bike, and a 30-miler the day before, I wasn’t feeling too perky, but with them taking it relatively easy, I managed to hang in there.

Afterwards I met Gwen and her gang at the Springs. Gwen convinced me to get into a yoga position to stretch out my bad hip. I tried to be a good sport and went along. I did not achieve enlightenment before my extremities fell asleep.

Today I am toast.

Decorator’s Dilemma

Now that there’s an all reality show, all the time network, they are no doubt casting about for programming concepts. The makeover show, which has had its most notable success in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, is a popular sub-genre, what with Trading Spaces and many others of that ilk. Also popular are the “hideous challenge” type shows, where participants wind up eating cockroaches and that sort of thing.

I propose a blending of these two types: a professional decorator is required to make over a home using nothing but materials bought at Hobby Lobby, Lillian Vernon, or equivalent. Kitsch is not allowed as a theme.

The makeover shows seem to be based on A) an “intervention” by well-meaning friends, followed by B) generous servings of smugness by the rescuing decorator, and finally C) the intervenee admitting the error of his/her past ways. In this show, the tables would be turned: the decorator’s friends would stage an intervention on him, saying “Alphonse, you’ve become too smug, and too reliant upon $6000 wall coverings.” Being forced to work with schlocky material would take Alphonse down a peg or two, which is gold, I tell you, television gold. Imagine Alphonse’s horror as he minces through aisles of synthetic plants, tchatchkes that mix farmhouse and patriotic themes, pre-decoupaged gewgaws, etc, afraid to touch anything. I don’t expect the decorators will embrace a new design ethic as a result, though.

Hell, I’d watch it.

360 ride

Rode 360 today, my first serious ride in a while. 30 miles, and I’m not saying what my average speed was. I felt really out of shape.

Various observations:

  • There is now a bike path that allows cyclists to bypass a hairy section of Barton Springs Rd. If you are riding outbound, go straight across Stratford when you get to the end of the pedestrian bridge. This will run alongside Mopac and deposit you close to Rollingwood. I imagine it’s accessible if you are riding inbound (which would be good, because you could avoid that awful left turn later), but haven’t tried that yet. The city did a good job with this–kudos.
  • There is a shitload of new construction on 360, to my great dismay. I noticed a bunch of new apartments going up on the bluff over 360 northwest of the bridge. Not sure who is going to live there.
  • What had been Cycles 360 has been replaced by 360 Bikeworks (or something like that). Apparently Richard, the original owner, couldn’t run the place profitably, so the managers bought him out and re-opened the store. Glad to see it back.

Yet another social network

Friendsurfer. How many of these things are there–excluding the numerous parody sites?

This one caught my eye because it shows a fire-twirler in its banner graphic. Friendster has been notably popular among my fire-freak friends–I wonder if there’s any connection.

Fighting back at spam

Paul Graham suggests that when your spam filter identifies a message as probable spam that it automatically ping any URLs mentioned in the message–perhaps repeatedly–to drive up the spammer’s web-hosting bandwidth costs. If lots of people do it, spam suddenly gets much more expensive to send. I like this–it fights fire with fire.