It was a lovely night for a rodeo, the storm clouds dancing around the area but never landing, a sweet spring breeze wafting through. The nearly incessant rain of previous weeks meant the dusty haze that usually fills rodeo arenas was absent. The Mount Pleasant Rodeo was kicking off its 51st year.
Rodeos are as American as it gets. The queens and junior queens, decked out in their finest Western apparel, open the night by bringing in the American flag and waving to the crowd. The crowd stands, hats off, while the preacher prays for safe rides. And a raise the hair on the back-of-the-neck rendition...
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In the course of a day recently, I did the following:
While driving to work, listened to music stored on my phone and played by some miracle on my vehicle’s stereo through Bluetooth technology.
Bought tickets to an upcoming Red Sox – Rangers game and stored the tickets on my phone. When we get to the ballpark, all I have to do is let the person at the turnstile scan my phone screen. (I’m bringing printed tickets as a backup. With my luck my phone will die just as we walk up).
Watched video on my laptop of B.B. King playing “The Thrill is Gone” in a tribute after his death.
Checked...
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Newspaper offices and trains have gone hand-in-hand throughout my checkered career. This current gig is no exception.
We moved our office downtown last August, on my birthday. It was not my intent to celebrate the final year of my sixth decade on this planet by sweating profusely and risking back injury while moving desks, filing cabinets and the like. But that is how it worked out. Football season was set to begin the following Friday, and I wanted us settled in our new digs before that commenced. Moving downtown proved to be a wise choice. Our walk-in traffic has increased immensely, and being...
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When “A Prairie Home Companion” first went on the air, Richard Nixon was a month away from being run out of the Oval Office. “Annie’s Song” by John Denver topped the pop charts. The Ford Pinto and the Plymouth Valiant were the best-selling cars in America, and the median price of a home in America was $37,400. It was July 1974, and Garrison Keillor and his troupe took the stage for about a dozen people in the audience in Saint Paul, Minn.
Today, the show is heard by four million listeners each week on more than 600 public radio stations, as well as abroaThank youd, according to its website...
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We celebrated our nephew Connor’s 10th birthday in a time-honored East Texas manner: grilling hamburgers, pitching washers — and plinking balloons and Diet Coke cans with pellet guns. The clan sat outside on a Saturday afternoon enjoying a rare respite from the incessant rains. Our swimming pool is still covered for its winter hiatus. For the first time since we have lived here, the water is lapping the edge of the pool and floating the cover. That’s how much rain has fallen this winter. When uncovered, and before the pool service shows up to rejuvenate it, that pool is going to look like...
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