Archive: February, 2014 - Gary Borders

Fake UFO Photo Led to Newspaper Job

The email landed in my work inbox the other day. Kilgore College will host the 51st annual East Texas Regional Science Fair starting Friday. Project are available for public viewing right after lunch. I plan on moseying over there to take a look. After all, my science fair project has a lot to do with me becoming a newspaper photographer in high school — a step up from working in the mailroom stuffing circulars into the papers. That had been the second rung on the career ladder from being a paperboy, as described in last week’s piece. For my tenth-grade science project, I decided to demonstrate...

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Still Just a Paperboy

Nearly every Thursday afternoon when college is in session, I run a short delivery route for the student newspaper, of which I’m the adviser. I deliver papers to three locations at the Longview center before heading home, while a student worker covers the considerably larger Kilgore College campus. The first time I did this last August, it occurred to me that I had come full circle. Forty-five years ago, I began peddling newspapers downtown for the afternoon edition of the Longview paper. As soon as I got out of school at nearby Foster Junior High, I rode my banana-seat bike to the office...

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Dreaming of A Snow Day

Our little piece of the Pine Curtain recently experienced a semi-snow day. A mild ice storm earlier this week prompted the administration to close the college campus at 3 p.m., cancel night classes and delay opening the next day until 10 a.m. I reckon, at least looking at the 10-day forecast, this is as close as I will get to reliving the childhood indulgence of a snow day. This winter I have jealously observed as cities to the south and west — places where I used to live, such as Lufkin, Nacogdoches and even normally arid Austin — have been whacked with winter storms that closed schools...

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Wrong Numbers and Mistaken Identities

Identify theft is a hot topic lately, with cyber crooks swiping millions of credit card numbers from Target and other retail outlets. Certainly one can’t be too careful when most of us conduct much of our business online, relying on passwords to access bank accounts, credit cards and even Netflix. I am quite cautious, using several passwords and never having the same one for, say, the bank account and my email.  I have a mental image of this army of unshaven weasels hiding in dark rooms, hunched over screens trying to break into my account so they can run up a tab with amazon.com and cost me untold...

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