Ed Spivey Jr. was working as art director of the Chicago Sun-Times Sunday Magazine in 1974 when God called him to join the fledgling Sojourners community and work for its publication, then called the Post-American. The fact that Ed has not heard from God SINCE is not what’s important here, because Ed figures God had other things to do, what with making the world a more peaceful place. Why the world is still not a more peaceful place is none of Ed's business and he would never think to criticize God for slacking off since, who knows, God could have been sick or something.
But, 46 years later, Ed finally retired from Sojourners, content to have fulfilled his life-long dream of working hard for very little money. The only downside is that Ed is too old now to pursue his childhood plans of being either a cowboy or an astronaut. But such are the sacrifices one makes when one responds to the call of the Lord, even if immediately after that, the Lord apparently changed His or Her phone number.
Of a more biographic note, Ed holds an associate degree from Vincennes University. He then transferred to Indiana University where, despite his diligence at attending several classes each semester, he was denied a bachelor’s degree because a psychology professor did not appreciate Ed’s refusal to complete his rat experiment. Apparently, Ed’s was the only laboratory rat that bit, so Ed insisted on wearing thick motorcycle gloves when handling the animal which, the professor insisted, skewed the rat’s response to stimuli. Ed told the professor what he could do with stimuli, which unfortunately did not put the professor in the mood to accept Ed’s alternative suggestion, which was to study the response of rats being loudly cursed at while simultaneously being flushed down university toilets.
Since his college days he has made a bit of a name for himself, and not just “You, There,” which is the name his mother called him when she forgot. Ed won numerous awards for his design of Sojourners magazine, and his monthly humor column consistently garnered top honors from both religious and secular media associations. His book A Hamster is Missing in Washington, D.C. won the top prize in humor at the Independent Publisher Book Awards in New York City. (Due to scheduling conflicts, Ed was unable to attend the gala banquet, but had he gone he would have ordered the fish.) The book sold out of its second printing and Ed is now working on a second volume.
Ed is married and has two daughters, all of whom refuse to walk in public with him, on account of the little whoop-whoop sound he makes when he sees a fire truck. His beloved granddaughter, however, likes it when he does this.
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H'rumphs
I'd Like A Window Seat, No Faxing, Please
Frequent flyers are reacting with suspicion to the announcement that the airlines will soon be providing on-board facsimile service to their passengers. Laptop computers are bad enough, said a friend who inevitably ends up between a pair of eager computer slaves clacking away at their keyboards. But now you won't even be able to go to the bathroom without threading your way through the lines of people waiting to use the fax.
Alarmed by this latest development, we here at the H'rumphs Megatrends Desk predict the following scenario for the future.
NEWS ITEM, DATELINE 2001: The Federal Aviation Administration, in its strictest move since the 1990 ban on smoking aboard airliners, limited in-flight fax transmissions to transcontinental routes. The ruling comes a scant six months after the FAA required all faxing passengers to sit at the rear of the airplane, thus freeing up the bulk of seating for non-faxers.
One airline spokesperson predicted major fallout from the business community, noting that some travelers cannot be expected to fly for even an hour or two without faxing. Asked about the recent Surgeon General's report citing the societal damage of fax abuse, the source noted another study commissioned by the airlines that came to the opposite conclusion. "Our study shows that fax use is a personal choice, of no detriment to the transmitter, nor to anyone in the same room.
