Fifteen years ago, on Feb. 1, 2003, on a cloudless, spring-like Saturday morning as I walked out of my door in Nacogdoches shortly before 8, a sonic boom rattled the windows. NPR had just reported the shuttle Columbia was headed to land in Florida. I figured the boom, followed by a series of rumbles, was the shuttle passing overhead. I had seen the shuttle pass over on past flights, a quick flash of orange streaking across the sky, but not this time.
As I have written before, minutes later, pieces of the shuttle began raining down over Nacogdoches and much of Deep East Texas. I rushed to work...
Read more...
My mom would have been 88 today. Mary Grace Adrian Bourque Borders was born on January 26, 1930 in Boston, and grew up in Concord, N.H. She studied in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital and became a registered nurse. Mom met our dad in Boston, when his naval destroyer, the U.S.S. Norris was docked at the shipyard for repairs. They married in 1953. After my dad left the Navy, they moved back to N.H. and bought a small house in Allenstown, N.H., about five miles from Concord.
Everyone called her Mickey, a nickname she acquired in nursing school, though she was always vague on the details....
Read more...
Note: I was asked to recount my memories of Victor B. Fain, long-time editor and publisher of The Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches. Mr. Fain was inducted into the Texas Press Association Hall of Fame at the mid-winter conference going on this weekend in Galveston. So I decided to expand those remarks into today’s offering.
I was working as a dogcatcher for the City of Nacogdoches in 1977 during my final semester at Stephen F. Austin State University, a depressing job I was desperate to escape when I spied the ad in the Sentinel’s classified pages: Part-time position as lithographer at The Daily...
Read more...
I am sitting in the Margaret Estes Library on LeTourneau University’s campus on a Thursday morning. This is where I hibernate every other Thursday when the housekeeper comes in to clean house. Yasmin is an amazing housekeeper, and all humans and animals vacate the premises while she performs her magic. Sam and Rosie are dropped at the Canine Beauty Shop to be bathed. Tater and Tot, the now-grown cats, spend the day outside. My Beautiful Mystery Companion and daughter Abbie are also on campus, mom teaching, daughter learning.
The library’s namesake, Margaret Estes, became publisher of the Longview...
Read more...
For our annual Christmas lunch, I assured my Beautiful Mystery Companion that daughter Mere, in for a visit, and I would handle the bulk of the cooking duties and give her a break. I bought smoked turkey and pulled pork from the brewpub/restaurant that Mere and her husband, Matt, own in Houston. She went to Hebert’s in Houston (still mourning that the local store closed) and brought several tubs of jalapeño crawfish dressing. My BMC bought a ham, and would cook green beans, while I would handle the mashed potatoes. Mere would make the salad.
My BMC prepared the ham the day before to lessen...
Read more...
I’ve been playing possum… with a possum.
We feed our two cats in the shop, which is an attached one-car garage. Our den used to be the other half of the garage, so it is easy to let them out there and open the door to the outside so once fed they can do their business. If we feed them inside, Rosie the Smart Dog will figure out a way to steal their food. Rosie lives to eat. She eagerly sits as we eat, waiting for crumbs to hit the floor. The cat food will disappear before Tater and Tot have had a chance to swallow a few kibbles, if Rosie has her way.
Cats and dogs eat differently. Dogs,...
Read more...
So this is Christmas, and what have you done
Another year over, a new one just begun...
— John Lennon
|———|
As it has since I sped well past the half-century mark and now avidly read AARP magazine, looking for senior citizen discounts, Christmas sneaked up on me. I have ignored the Christmas motif dominating most stores since before Halloween. The reality that the holiday was indeed upon us came as I made the annual trip in the old truck with its long bed to the storage unit. I filled the bed with bins and boxes of Christmas decorations, collected by my Beautiful Mystery Companion...
Read more...
AUSTIN — I have been waiting for this occasion for several months. One day in the spring, I was walking the Lady Bird Lake trail, on the part bordering Caesar Chavez Street across from the old Seaholm power plant, which has been reconstituted into restaurants and retail. It is now surrounded by high-rise condos. Across the street from the old building that once housed part of the plant — which retained its cool art deco signage: City of Austin Power Plant — a new contemporary building was going up. At the corner, though the building was not complete, was a sign consisting of seven metal letters...
Read more...
My Beautiful Mystery Companion gave me a handsome Gentlemen’s Hardware logbook for my birthday a few months ago. It is 51/2 by 81/2 inches, wrapped with a cloth strap and Velcro to secure it. The strap has a pencil holder, and the logbook has a ribbon to mark what page you last wrote upon. My original plan was to leave it in the glove compartment for taking notes while on the road, but it is too large for that. So I have begun using the logbook to make lists of things to do, or recording what occurs at meetings, or while on conference calls. It is old school, but I like its heft, the sturdy covers...
Read more...
The media is under serious attack these days, with cries of “fake news” flying whenever a story is printed with which someone prominent does not agree. It has been a pretty effective tactic since there actually is a lot of fake news out there. The local newspaper on Sunday publishes a wrap-up of the most prominent fake news stories that circulated in the prior week. At least so far, nobody is being threatened with fines and even jail for reporting the news. I think the present occupant of the Oval Office would bring back the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, th
ough I doubt he actually...
Read more...
