Covering Elections Changes With Technology

Another Election Day approaches. Voters who did not cast early ballots will go to the polls to decide a number of contested state and local races, as well as two important propositions concerning Northeast Texas Community College, a valuable regional resource. Once again, after a hiatus of a decade or so, I’ll be working to get out a paper once the polls close and the results are known. This will be fun. I covered my first election as a journalist — and not just as the photographer — down in San Augustine, which is deep Behind the Pine Curtain. I was 26 and fresh out of graduate school...

A Little Girl Grows Up

We met six-and-a-half years ago at Pizza King in Longview on a spring Saturday afternoon. She had a cheese pizza. Mine was veggie, extra jalapeños. Her blond hair and cherubic face with flawless skin captured my heart. As we sat down, she held one of the Harry Potter novels in her arms like a shield. She was 10 and eyed me warily. Who is this funny little man coming into my life, she no doubt wondered. Abbie is the daughter of the woman who would become my wife, aka My Beautiful Mystery Companion. Now she is my daughter as well, and I am blessed. On Saturday, Abbie turns 17, which seems...

Saga Of The Singing Courthouse

“You don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know what it’s like. To love somebody, the way I love you.”—   The Bee Gees |———| I was taking a photograph of a city worker installing new banners along the light poles downtown the other day and humming along to this venerable Bee Gees song as the music wafted through the square. It was coming from the Titus County courthouse, of course, from the speakers installed along the roof. The sky was a brilliant shade of blue after the storm passed through, and it finally felt like autumn. I really wanted to just sit down on a bench,...

Harley Clark and Hook ’em Horns

Col I met Harley Clark in 2005 while attending a 50th anniversary celebration in Austin of the “Hook ’em Horns” sign that his buddy  invented one night while making shadow figures on the wall of a dorm room.  Clark, who was the University of Texas head cheerleader in 1955, introduced the sign to the world at a pep rally where he unilaterally proclaimed the symbol for the Longhorns was now the official hand signal of the university.  Sports Illustrated called it the best-known sports gesture in the world. Somehow I ended up walking in a parade down the Drag in front of campus the Friday...

I met Harley Clark in 2005 while attending a 50th anniversary celebration in Austin of the “Hook ’em Horns” sign that his buddy  invented one night while making shadow figures on the wall of a dorm room.  Clark, who was the University of Texas head cheerleader in 1955, introduced the sign to the world at a pep rally where he unilaterally proclaimed the symbol for the Longhorns was now the official hand signal of the university.  Sports Illustrated called it the best-known sports gesture in the world. Somehow I ended up walking in a parade down the Drag in front of campus the Friday...

Washing Chickens and Spiking Lambs

I wandered through the livestock arena at the Titus County Fair last week, looking for photographic subjects. Participants, mostly high school students, were grooming their steers, fluffing up their hair with industrial-strength blow dryers. It was warm and aromatic, a familiar smell of bovines and sawdust wafting through the Indian summer afternoon. As always, being at a livestock show evokes fond memories of my two older daughters — both now in their 30s — and their forays into animal husbandry as members of the local 4-H club. We never tried to raise steers or heifers. That is a tremendous...