Would You Take Fashion Advice from These Folks?

I know what to wear at the dojo: my gi with black belt and no shoes. In the garden and barnyard I wear jeans, T-shirt and cheap canvas tennies or workboots. I have difficulty dressing for any other environment. Teaching is a great challenge, because I have to try not to wear the same outfit every class. I'm trying to get some shoes or sandals to wear for teaching in June; I thought I'd found a pair: black, rubbery, comfy. I put them on after kobudo class and Kristina (who has just returned from France) said, "no." Josh, who has a special room in his house just for his shoes said, "are they comfortable?" Eric says, "They can't decide what kind of shoes they want to be. Sporty or elegant or summery. But I like them," he said. I will return the shoes to Meijers and try to formulate a new plan.

At the bar after working out, I pitched around the table for general fashion advice. Kristina advises wearing "anything leopard print." She was wearing a knee-length tight-bodice sleeveless leopard-print dress, leopard-print earrings and barrettes, and a pair of medium-heel, pointy-toed leopard-print pumps. Her sister Tori Grace said, "Filipinas are shoe whores." (The sisters have that in common with Imelda Marcos.) Jamie Blake suggested, "Short people should wear pointy-toed shoes." Tori Grace suggests that bandanas are always a good fashion accessory, but you need to research gang signs before you get too creative. Most days, Tori says she wears a long tank top, a short tank top and two belts. Eric, who is talking about buying knee-high converse tennis shoes, says, "T-shirts and jeans work for every occasion. For formal wear, add a denim jacket." Phil, who is holding hands with Kristina says, "Black. Everything goes with black, especially black." Shihan Wayne Kroll says he just tries to remember to put on his pants.

Meet My Brother George

I recall from my youth a cartoon in which Bugs Bunny was was playing the piano, and he turns to face the "camera" and says, "I wish my brother George were here." Christopher says this is a reference to Liberace, who had a brother George, and who wished that brother was there. To me it had seemed profound, because I, in fact, had a little brother George, six years younger than me. I used to make him pancakes in the shapes of rabbits, snakes, and other animals. Recently George, nicknamed Geo, needed me to write a biography for him to put on the Geek Group website (http://www.thegeekgroup.org/). It was fun; this (below) is what I came up with, though George didn't want to mention his middle name, which is Timothy. The rumor is that Timothy Leary came to Kalamazoo and gave my dad acid, and hence the middle name. Pasted in is an old photo of Geo.



George (T.) Campbell

George Campbell was born in 1968, and grew up on a small farm in Comstock, Michigan, where he learned to fix machines, find lost objects, load trucks with hay or anything, herd critters back into their pens and generally work hard. At a young age he was able to look at a machine or a system and figure out how it worked. He is resourceful and quite famous among his family and friends for being able to fix anything with baling wire and duct tape.

George is the person to call if there is water spurting from burst pipes in the ceiling or if a furnace seems to have exploded, or if your horses and donkeys have gotten loose and are running through the neighborhood. George can set posts and fence a pasture with the best of them. He is always generous with his time and talents, though his wife wishes he would spend more time fixing up things around the house, maybe remodeling the bathroom. In a difficult situation, George never loses his cool; he looks at every situation calmly and with a sense of humor.

On George’s sixth birthday, he received his first tool, a small adjustable crescent wrench, and he has been collecting tools ever since, retrieving them from the weeds sometimes when his brother got mad and threw them. When George was twelve he rebuilt the power take off clutch on the family’s farm tractor. When he was sixteen, George got tired of listening to his siblings fight and so lived in his van for a while. Later, he lived with his friend Ed in a house with three snakes (two pythons and a boa constrictor) that roamed around loose and preferred George’s waterbed to any other sleeping spot.

George worked for eighteen years for Comstock Public Schools, until the school system recently privatized their custodial and maintenance staff. He had worked his way up from general cleaning to building and grounds maintenance. He currently is employed as “the outside guy” at Loy Norrix High School in Kalamazoo, taking care of the sports fields and lawns. His previous jobs included roofing, brick tending and greenhouse work.

George’s background is mechanical rather than scientific, and his knowledge base is practical rather than theoretical. He passed he G.E.D. with scores than put him in the top 3% of high school graduates. George is also known as a person who can get along well with all sorts of different people and can make good use of the skills of others to get work done.

George regularly operates a forklift, a Case 731 diesel tractor with Rotovator, and a Ford 8-N with a Wagner Loader. He and his wife Darcy have three wild children (Krystal, Kayla, and Matthew) and one grandchild, Julianna. When he has spare time, he fishes for blue gills at Three Lakes, and he plays World of Warcraft.