Let me tell you about Tater, the coolest, chillest cat I have ever known.
When full-grown, Tater weighed more than 16 pounds. His belly nearly dragged the floor. He was orange and white, a Texas Longhorn cat who loved to talk. He didn’t simply meow but chirped at his human companions. Tater would lie on an ottoman or chair, enjoying the morning sun. When someone walked by, he would raise his head slightly and go: Row, Row, Row! (rhyming with wow, not mow). It is a bit hard to duplicate in words, so that is the best I can do.
Nothing fazed Tater. He took the arrivals and departures of other...
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Spring has erupted at Three Geese Farm, the trees raining pollen under a nearly constant wind, coating everything outside in yellow powder. Mollie, our white Maltese, has a tinge of yellow from going outside. Washing vehicles is a fool’s errand until the pollen ends. The driveway is filled with drifts of oak clusters, resembling seaweed washed up on a beach.
But the flowers. The Carolina jasmine climbing the black chain-link fence that keeps the dogs confined showers yellow blossoms that decorate the ground. The azaleas are popping out in front and back, now in their fourth season. During...
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I was sitting in a Dallas doctor’s office the other day, reading The Atlantic on my phone since I forgot to bring a book. This was about a week before that venerable magazine — founded in 1857 — made headlines when its editor-in-chief was accidentally put on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, with key members of the administration’s team planning an attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen, including the vice president, CIA director, director of national intelligence and secretary of defense. Elect a clown. Expect a circus.
The Atlantic is now owned by Lauren Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder...
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I first noticed a niggle that a health threat was on the horizon in late February 2020 while on a trip to Fort Worth. My Beautiful Mystery Companion and I popped in at a Texas Press Association conference so I could briefly meet with some folks, say hello to longtime colleagues, and enjoy a couple of days in Cowtown. News of a mysterious new virus out of China was beginning to spread. A few folks at the conference mentioned it, wondering how widespread it might become.
By early March, talk of what came to be called COVID-19 was beginning to dominate the news. A high school friend and I met at the CrossFit...
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I find myself talking to our dogs more than humans most days. I’m not sure if this is normal behavior or not. Nor do I exactly care. Truth is, with the exception of my family and a few friends, I prefer conversation with the pups to people. The pups actually pretend to be listening, cocking their heads and looking at me intently as I babble away. People, not so much.
We have two, sometimes three pups, depending on if granddog Teddy is visiting, which he does about half the time. Teddy, a year old, is half Havanese, half Maltese — a Havamalt. He is seriously smart, a problem-solving pup....
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I guess time just makes fools of us all.
— Father John Misty
It is no longer possible for me to deny that there is far more in the rearview mirror than ahead in the windshield. I am determined to spend time wisely. This might be an exercise fraught with failure, as Father John Misty (Joshua Michael Tillman) notes in his Dylanesque song, which you can listen to here. That song, which I love, strikes me as a version of the Yiddish expression: Der Mensch Tracht, Un Gott Lacht, or Man Plans and God Laughs.
When I was younger, rarely did time go by unplanned. I was a project guy, who spent...
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DURANT, OKLAHOMA – The Choctaw Casino & Resort towers over the flat landscape outside Durant with the 21-story Sky Tower and the 12-story Grand Tower bookending the casino, which boasts thousands of ways to lose money at slots, blackjack, poker, craps, or roulette. However, we are not here to gamble, although I did “invest” five bucks on a quarter slot machine. That was gone in about one minute and served to remind me why I retired from gambling more than 20 years ago.
We were here to see the Red Clay Strays, a terrific band from Mobile, Alabama. The Grand Theater at the casino holds...
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I had to get a new battery for my watch the other day. This required a trip to our preferred local jeweler, who performs this task for a reasonable price while I wait. I value such service these days of self-checking and automated voice prompts.
My Victorinox Swiss Army analog watch is nothing fancy. It tells me the time on a round face, no digital partner, and the calendar date. The date, just the number, is accurate as long as I remember to adjust it in 30-day months and in February. That’s it. There are no additional dials or features. My watch doesn’t tell me how many calories I have...
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We recently watched a television show where one of the characters mentioned “Occam’s Razor.” I opined to my Beautiful Mystery Companion and daughter Abbie that I was a strong believer in this philosophic principle — and somewhat surprised that it was being mentioned in a television show. That led to a brief discussion of its principles, which can be boiled down to this: The simplest explanation of an event or a phenomenon is usually the best and most accurate. In other words, an explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct.
Occam’s Razor is named after...
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Many people may rightly say, “I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked Indigenous people, never owned slaves.”
And, yes. Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now.
― Isabel Wilkerson,...
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