Governance & Membership
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2025 President's Messages
May 2025
As my lovely bride would be the first to tell you, TU’s petroleum engineering school did not expose me to much poetry, nor is poetry one of my passions today. However, this particular poem has always haunted me with its simple phrasing and evocation of a terrible battle. During World War I, Maj. John McCrae served in the Canadian Artillery Brigade as a surgeon in the Second Battle of Ypres, Belgium, and penned this poem in May 1915 after losing a comrade and former student. Maj. McCrae was not pleased with what he had written and discarded the poem, but a fellow officer rescued the poem and sent it to newspapers in England, where it was published. The inspiration for the visual images was wild poppies that sprung up in ditches in that part of Europe in the spring.
April 2025
The ruler’s executive orders were a problem for the rebellious house of representatives. Other concerns were the ruler’s elevation of foreign-born individuals without regard to the impact on the resident population and the ruler’s insistence upon arbitrary taxes, as well as his confiscatory policies, not to mention the ruler’s conflict with the Jews. Ultimately, the house of representatives passed a bill that the ruler could not veto, and for a time, it seemed that the conflict was resolved.
Does that sound sort of familiar? Yes, no, maybe?
March 2025
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” – Dick Butcher to Jack Cade in William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2, Lines 71-78
In context, Jack Cade was describing to his henchmen all of his plans for England if he could overthrow and replace the king. Some of Mr. Cade’s ideas were for the king to set the prices for basic necessities – like food (cheap bread) and beer (making it illegal to drink small beers) – to do away with the existing monetary system and to dress all the people in the king’s mandatory clothes (so all the people would be like brothers and worship the king). Mr. Butcher’s statement about killing all the lawyers was either 1) a comedic quip to the effect that getting rid of all lawyers would be another benefit to the citizens of the revolutionary kingdom of which Mr. Cade wanted to be king or 2) a serious suggestion to Mr. Cade as a way to advance his revolution by removing supporters of the existing legal system.
February 2025
“Do a good turn daily” has been the slogan for both the Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts of the United States of America for over a century (well before I was a Boy Scout in the ‘60s). In today’s vernacular, we might say, “Do a good deed daily.” For many, this may evoke the old comedy routines showing a scout “helping” (dragging) an elderly woman across a busy street and the scout stating, “There you are, ma’am, safely across the street.” To which the elderly woman replies, “But, young man, I did not WANT to cross the street!” followed by a rim shot and laugh track.
January 2025
“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative,” is a quote attributed to H.G. Wells, author of classic science fiction novels. The quotation comes from Mr. Wells’ last book, Mind at the End of Its Tether, an incredibly pessimistic read so unlike some of his other classic science fiction that I enjoyed in my youth, such as The First Men in the Moon, The Time Machine and The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, to name a few. I recall but cannot locate the science fiction novel (loosely based upon Great Britain’s historical forced immigration of convicts to Australia, among other places) in which I first saw an iteration of the quote, i.e., “Adapt or die,” which was a warning given to involuntary immigrants. Both quotations are harsh but instructive.