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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I cranked up the television about 45 minutes before the first presidential debate. We only have over-the-air channels beamed into a single television, and subsist primarily on Netflix and Amazon — and not much of that. I wanted to make sure everything was working properly before the event. That is how I ended up watching “Dancing With the Stars.” There I saw our former governor, Rick Perry, tangoing with a beautiful woman less than half his age. He was wearing a black-and-white toreador outfit that led me to conclude Gov. Perry has considerably more courage — or less sense — than most...
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Autumn has officially arrived, which generally means little in East Texas as far as a break in the weather. As climate change continues wreaking havoc, with massive storms, heat waves and other freakish weather, no one knows when the first cold snap actually will arrive here. This year is certain to be the hottest year on record, according to NASA. Last year was the hottest year before that, and 2014 the hottest prior to that. See the pattern?
At the same time a dispiriting number of flat-worlders — including the Republican nominee for president — continue to deny climate change exists,...
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A woman named Julia is harassing me, calling my cellphone at all hours of the day, from all across the United States. In the past week, Julia (not to be confused with my wife, Julie) has called from Sanford, Florida; Winchester, Missouri; Bayonne N.J.; Gig Harbor, Washington; and Stone Mountain, Georgia. It is getting tiresome, these calls from a woman I do not know — nor do I wish to make her acquaintance. But I must admit Julia gets around. I wonder if she has a private plane or just drives through the night, eventually stopping somewhere to give me a ring.
The call always begins the same...
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Fifteen years ago on Sept. 11, like most Americans, I recall exactly where I was when the attack began. I sat alone on that Tuesday morning in the newsroom of the Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches, laying out the editorial page for the next day’s paper. It was my routine: Show up about 7:30 and produce the page before the doors open the phones started ringing. As always, the 19-inch television mounted on the wall was broadcasting CNN. My standing orders, as editor/publisher, was that the police scanner was always on, and the TV as well. If something newsworthy happened, we needed to be on top of it. It made...
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Labor Day is just around the bend. When I was growing up that meant school was about to commence. Now it means classes have been underway for a couple of weeks, and most students and parents get a three-day weekend. Labor Day also means summer’s days are drawing down. Already, our oak trees are beginning to shed leaves, presaging the arrival of autumn. Eventually, slowly, fall arrives. This is East Texas, after all.
I got to thinking about my first day of public school — Sept. 5, 1961 — 55 years ago. The school district in tiny Allenstown, N.H. did not offer kindergarten at the time, so my first...
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People can lose their life in a library. They ought to be warned.
— Saul Bellow
A few weeks ago while in Beantown, I slipped into the Boston Public Library to make a pit stop. When one is a tourist with a pea-sized bladder, knowing where to find clean public restrooms is a survival tactic. I am quite adept at this, though it does not appear to be a marketable talent. I guess I could develop an app that allows visitors to find the best restrooms, but that likely has already been done. And I have no idea how to create an app anyway.
The Boston Public Library’s main branch is in Copley Square...
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PROVINCETOWN, MASS. — We are standing near the top of the tallest all-granite structure in the United States, looking out into Provincetown Harbor on the tip of Cape Cod, the slim crooked finger of land that curls out and up from Massachusetts, as if to beckon visitors. Below us, as we climbed 252 feet to the top of this narrow tower, lies this picturesque village, whose population swells from about 3,000 year-round residents to 60,000 during the summer.
Below us is Long Point, the end of the crooked finger that forms this peninsula. On Nov. 11, 1620, the Mayflower, with 102 men, women and children,...
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