A Sign of the Times

A sign of the times, or simply a linguistic faux pas? I’ll let you decide.

Last weekend was freshmen orientation weekend out the ol' alma mater. This is a weekend where the kiddies come in, play games, get introduced to various university faculty and staff members, learn the rules and, among other things, participate in various service projects.

One such project involved a large group of newbies and their group leaders, students who volunteered to help teach the fish the ropes, cleaning up an area of road near our town’s cemetery.

Being the PR whore that I am, when I got wind of the project I grabbed my camera and rushed out to make sure the work was properly documented and sent to the local paper. Not that we would ever do something like that just for the public relations value, but you just can’t buy that kind of advertising.

Obviously, I have been out to the cemetery many times. I have several family members buried out there and I drive by it every time I visit my sister. However, I have never run across the family plot for our university’s founder.

He was a doctor who donated land and money to jump start the school back in 1908. He died in 1948 and is buried in the cemetery along with his wife, parents and one child.

As we are currently making plans to celebrate our centennial, one idea is to plan some special junk out at the family plot. Therefore, I thought I should know where it is. Another university employee who has done a lot of research and work on the idea was serving water and crackers to the students who must have felt like they were on a chain gang as they were lining up next to a chain link fence, hoeing and digging up weeds by the bucket fulls, dragging them to the dump truck and sweating profusely in the 90-degree temeperatures on a very humid day. I broke a pretty good sweat just standing there watching.

By the way, who in their right mind would decide that wearing flip-flops to go out and dig up weeds and trash in the hot/humid West Texas sun would ever be a good idea? Freshmen!

Anyway ... I ran across said employee as she completed handing out bottles of water. We struck up a conversation at which point I asked her, “Will you show me Dr. John’s Web site.”

Gives a whole new meaning to “visit myspace,” doesn’t it?