It was beginning to look as if we would not be able to escape from the Gilmer square last Saturday morning.
My Beautiful Mystery Companion and I had driven up to watch the East Texas Yamboree Queen’s parade because our nephew, Connor, was marching with the Harmony High School Band. He plays trombone and is also a talented pianist. However, it’s not practical to march while playing a piano.
The Yamboree began in 1935. Like most everything else, last year’s was canceled, and there was a three-year hiatus during World War II. Other than those years, the Yamboree has been a Northeast Texas...
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My beloved Red Sox and the nearly-as-beloved-but-not-quite Houston Astros are locked in a tight series for the American League pennant, with Game Six coming up tonight. The Astros whacked the Red Sox in the last two games at Fenway. We had hoped to be at Minute Maid Park along with son-in-law Matt and daughter Mere, who are leaving for Germany for a year or so in a few weeks on a work-related project. Alas, a sick kitty waylaid those plans, so once again I’ll listen to the game through satellite radio and magically streamed through my hearing aids. I don’t have access through television, since...
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I began my first woodworking project in several years this week, while enjoying a rare weekday off from both the library and teaching a photography class. I am building a toybox for Mollie the Maltese, who has quite the collection of dog toys and seems to enjoy every one of them. Like an ambulatory toddler, she leaves them scattered throughout the house. One of my jobs is to pick up after her and stuff them into the dog bed she no longer uses, now that she has discovered the joys of sleeping on a couch.
We enjoy watching her prance over to the toy pile, stick her nose into it, and pull out one to run about...
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“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
— The late Sen. Patrick Daniel Moynihan
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Facts are under attack from many quarters these days. This was brought home to me personally when I called a gentleman who wanted to talk about something in Capital Highlights, the weekly column I write for Texas Press Association. It runs in about 100 papers across the state, mostly in weeklies and twice-weeklies still bringing the news to their small-town readers. In Capital Highlights, I aggregate news out of Austin by culling from state agency email newsletters,...
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The fog rolled in not long after sunrise, enveloping the trees, floating lightly above the front pasture. The air was cool, though not for long. Soon the sun would burn off the fog, and summer lingers in the afternoon. It feels like autumn in the mornings, temperatures close but not quite to sweater weather when I first step outside. It’s coming, though. This year, for the first time I can recall, it actually felt like autumn on the first official day, at least that morning.
I was outside on this early morning because a convoy of trucks and tractors had pulled in behind our house, parking...
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