A commemorative plate hangs in our house, from Longview’s centennial celebration in 1970. It features a half-dozen scenes from the city’s history, such as the Lathrop Discovery Well in 1931 that ushered in the East Texas oil boom, and the Dalton Gang bank robbery of 1894, which is reenacted on the brick streets of downtown Longview every spring.
My dad was a 37-year-old commercial artist in 1970. We had moved to Longview 18 months earlier from New Hampshire to escape the harsh winters and sluggish economy. He quickly secured a job working as a sign painter for a company that held the contract...
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It was a perfect day for a hike, and my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I took full advantage. We arrived at Tyler State Park just past noon Sunday, paid $12 to an impossibly young park ranger, got a trails map and headed into the park to hike B Loop. The cloudless sky was a wintry shade of blue, but the temperature was perfect — 60 degrees with a steady breeze.
We drove around the park a while, looking for B Loop’s trailhead without success. The back of the map described it as being 3.1 miles long with many elevation changes, “making it a challenging but beautiful trek through the park’s...
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The Texas Legislature is back in session. For those of us who think transparency in government is critical to a functioning democracy, that means trying to block attempts to create even more loopholes in the freedom of information laws. Every session, a bevy of bills are filed to make it more difficult for the public to obtain information kept by the folks whose paychecks we fund. FOI advocates work tirelessly throughout the session to improve bad ol’ bills or block them altogether. They also work with legislators who understand the importance of government transparency. Fortunately, there are several...
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A scraggly camellia bush is planted in a cracked pot on our back deck. It has not fared well since making the voyage from our front yard, where it joined three others in an unsuccessful attempt to add some color to a small patch of grass. Too shady. So it was placed in the pot and transported to the back deck. Its counterparts did not survive the transplants, but this camellia has hung in there for a few years now. Its leaves are mottled with yellow splotches, no doubt infested with some plant disease of which I am woefully ignorant.
About a week ago, this camellia burst forth with a fat red blossom,...
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A harbinger of the New Year has unhappily but inevitably arrived. I was running errands. There is a church on the corner where I turn onto Fourth Street to head to the Big Box Stores to which I trek several times a week. This church has rows of crape myrtles on the south and west side of its parking lot. At some point in the past week, landscapers had performed their annual Crape Murder, as some call it. I prefer Crape Myrtle Mutilation. Two rows of those lovely trees, prevalent throughout the South, had been whacked back nearly to the trunk in a ritual that is as ugly as it is unnecessary.
It...
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One of the most valuable tools for a research nerd is the interlibrary loan service provided by both academic and public libraries. Through ILL, one can request books, articles, microfilm and even DVDs. One fills out an online form provided by the library one patronizes. I have availed myself of this service uncounted times over the decades. It never fails to provide a small thrill when I’m notified that an item has arrived through ILL.
For example, through LeTourneau University’s Margaret Estes Library (where I have worked part-time for a year as a reference assistant) I obtained three...
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As 2018 draws to a close, I can't help recalling another tumultuous and eventful year. It brings comfort to realize our country managed to survive the horrific events of 1968 a half-century ago, though not without scars and lasting damage — both to people and to the nation’s democratic institutions. I feel that way now about much of what has transpired this year. Once again, our country is in chaos. I pray the coming year brings a semblance of sanity, but I’m not putting money on it.
It’s fair to say that 1968 proved to be the most eventful year in my young life. It forever shaped the person...
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Christmas awaits. The hardwood trees are bare, the grass brown. Our neighborhood is awash with Christmas lights. Driveways are beginning to fill with the vehicles of families coming home for the holidays. As always, my Beautiful Mystery Companion has beautifully decorated our house while I wisely stay out of the way. My job is to hang the lights outside, treading carefully on the roof. I then wrap our outdoor Charlie Brown Christmas tree with 300 feet of colored lights and hang ornaments from the branches. I learned a few years back to caulk the top of each ornament, where the hanger dangles from...
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For the first time since I was a kid, I decided to keep a record of the books I read this year. I started a list in a notebook I carry with me, writing down the author and title each time I finished one. Then my daughter, Meredith, reminded me she had helped me sign up for Goodreads, a “social cataloging” website now owned by Amazon. The compamy began in 2006 and soon developed a strong following, now with more than 25 million members. Goodreads allows one to find titles, buy them on Amazon (of course), make recommendations, participate in polls, blogs and other activities in which I take no part....
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I have been using Gmail for my personal account for more than a dozen years. I managed to snare a simple address — garyborders@gmail.com — and have used it for personal business, while maintaining a separate address for work. As with all computer applications, Gmail gets updated on occasion, sometimes requiring me to get used to a different appearance or a slightly different way of finding emails.
For several months, a button appeared in the top right of the screen: Try the New Gmail. I ignored it, content with the old Gmail. I have enough technology issues to confront without voluntarily...
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