My favorite month has arrived. November brings fall foliage, predictably cooler temperatures, Thanksgiving and the end to Daylight Saving Time. I awake at first light unless there is a reason to set an alarm. Since I largely work an afternoon/evening shift at the library, there is seldom a reason.
That means I don’t awaken at the tail end of DST until 7:00 or so, sometimes later. This makes me feel like I am already running behind on my morning routine — working out, writing, researching — all the activities I try to get done before heading to work. Now it will get dark earlier, but sunrise...
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Early voting is well underway for the Nov. 8 general election. Hence, the number of email and text message fund-raising pleas filling my inboxes has increased exponentially in the past week. Clearly, I somehow landed on a mailing list that was shared with folks running all over the country — Pennsylvania, Arizona, Iowa, Wisconsin and Florida, to name a few. Nearly all of these go into the promotions inbox of my Gmail, so each morning I hit “select all” and send them all to the trash. For grins, I decided to let them accumulate, not so I can actually donate money, but to collect the subject...
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The rain at last returned on Sunday, the first appreciable moisture in about seven weeks. I have been waiting on another bout of wet stuff before planting ryegrass in Pancho the Donkey’s pasture. Since we had the pond built, that roughly two-acre plot became mainly bare soil, since the dirt guy spread the excavated soil around the pond. Pancho subsists on a bit of grass at the front and back, and the square bales of hay we supply regularly. Plus, there’s the breakfast buffet my Beautiful Mystery Companion provides a few times weekly: a bucket of shredded wheat, apples, grapes, bananas and carrots....
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I held Old Camera Show and Tell for my photography class at LeTourneau University the other day, dragging a box of old gear to campus to explain what using a camera was like in the dinosaur days. This is the fourth fall semester I have taught this class. It fills to capacity each time offered. That is not because I am a great teacher – or even a particularly good one – but because it is an attractive elective, especially for the engineering and aviation students who are looking for something a bit less onerous to add to their courseload. I enjoy interacting with the students, who are intelligent,...
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Finally, it feels like autumn in East Texas. The air is crisp in the morning, the afternoons tolerable. Our yard is graced with hummingbirds darting about, drinking from the feeders or feasting on the rosebuds. Soon they will head south, and the blackbirds will arrive, if last autumn and winter were any indication. We are hopeful waterfowl will find our pond this winter. Some rain would be helpful, as an unusually wet August has been followed by cloudless skies for several weeks. I am holding off planting ryegrass until rain arrives, though I plan to hook up the borrowed disc harrow and get the ground...
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I hopped out of bed Saturday morning and stumbled to my closet to grab some clothes. Our master closets each have a window looking out on the front porch and the pasture beyond. This sounds strange but is actually quite a pleasant feature of this house on a hill – a view of stately oak trees, verdant pasture, white cross fence along its edges, the occasional squirrel, birds splashing in the bird bath. A Peeping Tom would have to commit serious trespassing to spy me in my underwear, such as walking onto our front porch from the highway a few hundred yards away. The sight would likely cause an intruder...
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This is Banned Books Week, and the news is dispiriting — especially here in Texas, the nation’s leader in banning books. That is clearly not something of which we should be proud. PEN America, which keeps track of such things, has been defending free expression and the unfettered exchange of ideas for 100 years. In today’s climate, they have their work cut out for them.
The non-profit organization, whose members over the past century include many of the nation’s finest writers, both in fiction and nonfiction, just released its annual report on book bans in schools. From July 2021 to June...
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Little brother Gregg came over from the Dallas area last weekend to work on the tractor again. It was leaking fluids in two spots, something that never would have been noticed if it were parked outside. But I keep it sheltered in the shop, figuring it will last longer that way. The shop is also home to my woodworking area, a 12x12 foot CrossFit gym, and a bunch of storage boxes. When we bought this place, I figured we would never fill this cavernous building. Now, a little over a year later, it is pretty much full. Someday, we will downsize…
The tractor has consistently had small but annoying...
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A friend of mine texted me last Sunday morning: Gary, there’s something wrong about Sunday morning without a newspaper. I replied that I agreed completely. The Longview News-Journal recently dropped its print editions to three times weekly -- on Wednesday, Friday, and a Weekend Edition delivered out where we live on Saturday. There is no newspaper waiting at the ends of our driveways on Sunday morning. When one has spent a lifetime — I’ve been reading newspapers since I learned to read — anticipating that fat Sunday morning paper, it takes some adjustment.
To be clear, I completely understand...
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The drought appears to have broken, at least here on No-Name Farm, where about 7 inches of rain came down as an early birthday present for yours truly. Not that I can take credit, but I was not accepting blame for the drought in the first place.
I was at the library helping with student worker orientation that Sunday evening, when my Beautiful Mystery Companion texted me a photo of Poncho’s Pond. After just an hour or so of rain, it was already halfway filled. Before the rains came, Pancho’s Pond was a large rectangular hole in the ground containing maybe a foot of water. The fellow who built...
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