Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it’s been
|— “Truckin,” The Grateful Dead
|———|
The phone call came a few weeks ago while I was talking to a fellow who I lean upon for spiritual counsel and advice. Mainly he just asks questions and prods me to do the same. Rarely does he provide answers, but our conversations have been invaluable.
I ignored the phone vibrating in my pocket until we were finished, then listened to the voicemail. It was an old friend and former newspaper colleague, who asked...
Read more...
Two days before last Thanksgiving, my father-in-law was stabbed while sitting in the day-surgery center at Good Shepherd Medical Center. A nurse died in that attack and three others were wounded. My father-in-law, Harris K. Teel, lived nine days but ultimately died as well. A defendant awaits trial on capital murder charges.
The reason Papa Teel survived a direct stab wound to the heart and had a chance of recovering was because of an extraordinary surgeon and human being, Dr. David Sadler. He brought Papa Teel’s heart back to life, sewed it back up and refused to give up even when others...
Read more...
For months I resisted subscribing to Netflix, the online streaming video service, despite entreaties from our 16-year-old daughter.
“We have enough digital distractions in this household eating up our money,” I proclaimed. Satellite television with a kajillion channels and rarely anything worth watching. Wireless internet, of course. A monthly cell phone bill that is equal to some folks’ car payment. Good thing we don’t have any car payments.
But then I took pity when she was laid up convalescing after a mishap and went to its website to gather information. For $7.99 a month, we could...
Read more...
Since I am off for the summer, with classes ended, of course I have lined up some house projects to fill the time. While I happily spend hours researching and writing, processing photographs and otherwise attempting to be creative, my body also yearns for physical labor that shows more concrete results than knocking out 500 words on a manuscript still many months from completion. “You are a project guy,” someone once told me, and I plead guilty. Besides, this rambling house always has something that needs fixing or fixing up.
Thus, a few days after work ended I tackled refurbishing the deck....
Read more...
My hometown made the Huffington Post the other day with this item:
A car dealership in Longview, Texas, is seeing the writing on the wall after discovering a huge spelling error on a billboard.
Six months ago, Gorman McCracken Mazda put up a billboard announcing a "Piece Of Mind Warranty" for all customers.
Problem is, they meant a "Peace Of Mind Warranty."
The spelling error faces away from the building so it went unnoticed by employees until recently when typo-conscious customers have been giving the dealership a piece of their own minds, KLTV reports.
"We’ve had several people...
Read more...
A friend of mine who lives in Austin recently spent a weekend in Deep East Texas with his younger brother. A goodly amount of one day, according to his email account, was devoted to hunting wild turkey. Or at least that was the plan. It turns out turkey were not in the mood to be hunted that day, but a herd of wild hogs crossed his path. Long story short, my friend was shocked by the appearance of so many hogs that he reacted like a rational hunter trying to pick off a 10-point buck at 200 yards — the distance he says the hogs were from him. In other words, he aimed carefully at one decent-sized...
Read more...
The school year is all but over, my first stint of full-time college teaching about to draw to a close. Next week will contain a flurry of finals, posting grades, wrapping up newspaper contest entries and getting in all the required paperwork. Next Friday night I will don the regalia of a faculty member and participate in graduation — for the first time as a non-student. I am excited about watching a few of my students walk the stage and receive their associate degrees.
Then, for the most part, the summer is free — a bit more than three months with paychecks still arriving in my checking...
Read more...
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....
Read more...
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...
Read more...
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...
Read more...
