News item: A member of the Swedish Academy called Bob Dylan “impolite and arrogant” for thus far ignoring winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Repeated phone calls have gone unanswered. Dylan does not acknowledge winning the award while performing in concert — he appeared in Shreveport earlier this week — and a mention on his website has been removed.
First, let’s note I’m pleased Dylan received the Nobel, the first American to receive it for literature since Tony Morrison received the award in 1993. In 50 years or so, he has written more than 450 songs, many of which are firmly...
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The issue of naming cats popped up recently in our household. Our four-legged population has doubled with the addition of a pair of three-month-old kittens. They were dumped in front of my brother-in-law’s place in the country. That is a bad habit of some East Texans, dumping unwanted animals as if somehow that solves the problem. It just becomes someone else’s concern. As soon as Jim sent a cell-phone photo of these kitties to my Beautiful Mystery Companion, I knew we were about to go back into the cat business, after a hiatus of several years.
One of the kittens is orange and white with...
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HUGO, OKLA. — Under a cloudless sky, enduring temperatures resembling late August rather than early October, I walked among the tombstones in this modest town 10 miles north of the Red River. This is the Showmen’s Rest, part of the city cemetery. Here lie, among a few hundred others:
Big John: “The Man With More Friends Than Santa Claus.”
Donnie and Jone MCintosh: Circus, Fairs, Carnivals, Rodeos, Street Corners. “We Had the Good Life But the Season Ended.”
John August Strong, with a larger-than-life etching on a pillar celebrating his years operating the Big Strong John...
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Donald Trump’s tax returns, his refusal to release them, and the publication last weekend of pages from his 1995 returns, have become a key campaign issue — as they should. The pages leaked to the New York Times indicate he took an $891 million loss that year, which could have erased 18 years’ worth of tax liability. The operative phrase here is “could have.” We voters do not know because Trump uses an ongoing audit as an excuse not to release his returns — the first candidate in four decades to not do so.
This is patently absurd. If you are running for any federal or state position,...
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