David Soubly

This is Part Two of the Norman Conquest.

A while back, I told you all about Norm, in this reflection: The Norman Conquest, Part One. In Part One, I suggested that Norm represented a kind of common man — certainly me, if not you.

It’s time to look at the other guy.

This is Norman, never Norm, in the same way that King James isn’t, well, King Jim. You just don’t do that. (1)

Every organization has a Norman. He’s the larger-than-life individual, whose curriculum vitae transcends the mortal;...

I was thinking the other day about Mom, which is strange but not strange, because Mom left us about twelve years ago, but Mom is still with us, so strange to think about her and yet not so.

I don’t know who reads my stuff, but I suspect a whole lot of you are younger than I am, which is what happens when simple math and demographics and all that conspire to remind me that I’m about 75% through the journey, do what I may to postpone the inevitable.

So, younger than me, you may either be (1)...

When, against blue morning
those harriers pierced twin shells,
mingling blood and steel, fire and stone,
profaning heaven with their smoky issue;
when, in otherworldly blaze,
the slender, stricken towers
shrieked from sky to earth –
Into the assembled storm
plummeted the confusion of our century.

Did our children’s voices,
raised in morning song,
pause,
innocence faltering, set aswirl
atop a world so suddenly gone mad?

Would these shattered stones could rise,
undilapidate;
would that severed souls...

It seems that the United (more accurately, Un-tied) States of America is all in a tizzy over a recent string of rulings.

These rulings have been handed down from on high — specifically, from the United States Supreme Court, or SCOTUS, as it is widely known. Because of the recent shenanigans, rule bending, and general rigging of the SCOTUS nomination process by the United States Republican Party - also known as "GOP," or Guns Over People — the Supreme Court might well be labeled the Supreme...

This is one of those stories that has nothing to do with what the title suggests.

Normans abound. I’m not talking about the Normans who won the Battle of Hastings as part of “1066 and all that.” (1) I’m talking about people named Norman, of which there were two who stood out in my experience.

One we called Norm (never Norman); the other, Norman (never Norm).

Let’s start with Norm. (Norman will wait until Part Two.)

Norm was a guy who’d reached nearly the end of his career by the time he...