I watch very little television most nights. Sometimes I catch Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” if I can stay awake long enough. I do watch Monday Night Football or the occasional Red Sox game I catch televised down here in the South. But even then I keep the sound off and a book in my lap.
But over the past year or so, our family has developed a guilty pleasure for a show filmed not far from East Texas. I’m talking about “Duck Dynasty,” of course, which features the Robertson family of West Monroe, Louisiana. The A&E network just concluded its third season following this family...
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The view outside my study window is once again a canopy of green that nearly blots out the sky. My time spent in this study, enjoying this view, has come full circle through the seasons. On this morning a cold front is beginning to push through, promising to push temperatures down 20 degrees in a few hours. A thunderstorm is brewing. The rumbles send the dogs scurrying so close to my chair that when I roll back from the desk I risk running over one or the other of their tails. They don’t like thunder and seem to blame it on me. Both Sam and Rosie cast baleful looks my way, as if to say, “Make...
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When our daughter decided out of nowhere to try out for cheerleader, I was silently skeptical. She had little gymnastics experience and admittedly couldn’t tumble worth a flip. All she possessed was great desire and enough athletic ability to have landed her on the Longview Lobo freshman volleyball team. Now she wanted to change course and try cheer. OK by us, but failure might be an option. Not in her head, I quickly learned.
She started taking weekly private lessons about three months before tryouts. Soon, in addition to hearing a volleyball bouncing off the wall of her second-story bedroom,...
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AUSTIN — It is strictly coincidence that I ended up testifying before a House committee of the Texas Legislature on April Fool’s Day. That august body, which meets for 140 days every two years, is in full warp speed with the session more than halfway over. I volunteer for a group that fights for freedom of information, open records and open meetings. That usually means battling a whole slew of bills each session against lawmakers trying to add more loopholes to make public records private. We win some, we lose some.
Sometimes the measure is well intentioned but misinformed, at least from...
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