DESTIN, FLORIDA — The wind is whipping from the south-southwest at up to 25 mph Another band of storms has rolled in from the sea, sending up whitecaps along the beach as the waves slide to shore. Thunder peals in the distance. The beach is abandoned on this mid-May Monday afternoon, all the beach chairs safely inside their storage boxes before being sent careening down the sand. Gulls fly about, buffeted to-and-fro from the wind. I am sitting on a fourth-floor balcony of our condo, wearing a hoodie, and feeling pleasantly chilly. An especially stiff gust of wind compels me to flip the hood up over...
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Yes, I love Vermont, but it’s the season of the sticks
— Noah Kahan, “Stick Season’
Stick season in Vermont is the period between fall and winter, when the leaves have tumbled to the ground, but the snow has not started falling — a time of transition. Kahan is a young singer-songwriter who is heavy on my playlist in East Texas’ current season – mowing time.
I have been mowing around the margins since the grass began coming back, mainly the fenced backyard and close to the house, while leaving much of the acreage alone until the wildflowers went to seed.
Thus, on May 3, after...
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PORTLAND, OREGON — Without overtly meaning to do so, we retraced much of the steps of a trip we took here in March 2023 to visit our beloved friend Glenn McCutchen and his family here in the Rose City. Glenn passed away on April 5. We came here for the memorial service, held on a misty Saturday morning in the stately Westminster Presbyterian Church. It was a lovely service.
We booked a day before the service to explore downtown Portland, where we stayed in the historic Hotel Lucia. This nine-story hotel, built in 1909 and housed in what is an extension of the original Imperial Hotel, captivated...
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My days as a graduate student are numbered.
I began this journey in January 2023, enrolling in six hours in the College of Information Science at UNT. My quest was to earn a certificate in archival management, which requires passing 15 credit hours, or five courses. The R.G. LeTourneau Archives, which I work in as part of my job at the Estes Library, received a hefty (for us) grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services, which is funding both my tuition, a stipend and other costs to help organize and make available the digital content of the archives to anyone with internet access.
When...
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Mollie the Maltese and I have enrolled in a Brain Games class at PetSmart, both of us intending to improve our reasoning power and learn new tricks. Readers may recall we took Gatsby, our rescue cavapoo, all the way through classes to become a registered therapy dog. With that completed, we enrolled Mollie in the intermediate class, primarily to improve her social behavior.
Mollie is an adorable and intelligent dog who truly believes that she is a Great Pyrenees put on this planet to alert us to any possible danger. She stands alert and barks ferociously, a 90-pound bark in a now 11-pound body....
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I met Glenn McCutchen for lunch at a café on Timberland Drive in Lufkin in late August 1990. He had moved from Atlanta, Georgia, where he was executive editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, to become editor and publisher of The Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches. I had been the editorial page editor of the Lufkin Daily News across the Angelina River for just more than a year. Both papers were owned by Cox Newspapers, headquartered in Atlanta. I was about to turn 35, and Glenn was 46, already blessed with his distinguished gray hair and beard, piercing blue eyes peering behind rimless glasses....
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I started back in a CrossFit gym a few weeks ago. My recovery from shoulder surgery is essentially complete, though I can tell you if it is about to rain. That shoulder starts aching. And my surgeon absolutely forbids me from lifting any weight overhead. As a friend of similar vintage who has battled shoulder injuries finally concluded, “Why would I ever need to lift 100 pounds over my head?” Agreed. There are plenty of other workouts still available that get my heart rate up, leave me short-winded and sweaty, and get those endorphins kicking in.
My coach, Alex, just opened his stand-alone...
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It has been nearly 34 years since Michael Busby, one of my closest friends, died from lung cancer at the far-too-young age of 36, in June 1990. I think of him often, even decades later. Michael was a renaissance person who loved books as much, if not more, than I do. We met in Nacogdoches in 1974 while both attending Stephen F. Austin State University. I co-owned a modest, and ultimately unsuccessful, bookstore in a small two-story house next to the fire station on North Street, where Austin Bank is now.
Michael worked across the street at Pizza Inn (now Cotton Patch Café) and would come over...
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Four years ago, the world had largely shut down, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world. Schools closed, non-essential businesses either shuttered completely or went to curbside only service. I shot photos of empty mall parking lots for an online piece for Texas Highways, talked to folks by phone on how it had affected their jobs. Interviewees included longtime local sports editor Jack Stallard, on what it was like to cover sports when no games were being played, someone in the oil and gas business worried about the effects on the economy, a health care professional on the massive stress of dealing...
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HOUSTON — We spent a few days of Spring Break in the Bayou City, where spring has fully arrived, with azaleas and wisteria in full bloom, and the weather was chamber-of-commerce perfect — a season that lasts about two weeks before summer arrives here for an extended visit. Our first stop was St. Arnold’s Brewery, the oldest craft brewery in Texas, located just north of downtown.
We arrived just in time for a tour of the brewery, which began operating 30 years ago and has expanded into an impressive operation. A young man took a small group of us through a tour of the brewery, closed on Sunday....
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