When we say “it’s a dog’s life” these days, it is usually taken to mean living a pampered existence. That is not how the phrase, which dates back to 16th-century England, originated, however. Our canine companions did not have it so great 500 years ago. They lived in crude kennels and subsisted on table scraps. Thus, the English described poor folks living in squalid conditions as living a “dog’s life.” People whose lives were headed on a downward trajectory were often described as “going to the dogs.”
It has only been in the last century that the fortunes of dogs have improved....
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Fifty years ago, on Good Friday, a 7-year-old girl was found with a scarf tightly bound around her neck in Allenstown, N.H. a few blocks from our home on Valley Street. Susan Fanny was in the next-door home of a 48-year-old woman, Loretta Fanny, first reported to be her aunt. It was determined a few days later that Loretta was actually a second cousin.
There was no school that day, because it was Good Friday. I was home alone, not uncommon if my mother had errands to run. My dad was at work as always. This was a small town of about 1,000 people, considered safe, where neighbors watched out for each...
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I have followed with great interest the dustup over the attempt to change Stephen F. Austin State University’s logo. I spent nearly 20 years total in Nacogdoches, first as a student, then running the newspaper a little more than a decade after graduating. I know many of the folks involved at the university in making the decision that sent thousands of alumni, students and other ’Jack backers to their keyboards to register their protests online. I taught journalism part-time at night there for nine years while working at the paper. And I followed with great enthusiasm the Lumberjacks’ fine...
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I recently read Robert Gates’ memoir, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” an engaging account of his tenure as secretary of defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, from 2006 to 2011. It is quite unlike any political memoir or autobiography I have read — utterly unvarnished, plain-spoken and as candid account of Gates’ years serving two presidents during two wars as one could possibly expect.
The advance reviews made a big deal of Gates’ criticism of Obama’s leadership in pursuing the war in Afghanistan. Bob Woodward in the Washington Post notes Gates concluded...
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