CHIHUAHUA CITY, MEXICO — When I told folks I was going to spend a week in Mexico and Big Bend working on a magazine story, a few acted as if I had signed my death warrant. “Are you going to have any security?” one friend asked. No, we didn’t, though there was certainly safety in numbers with five of us working together — including a scientist who lives and works in the city. My brother Scott had the wisest perspective, noting that many millions of people live in Mexico, and the vast majority get through the day just fine. I liked my odds.
I was the first to arrive at the airport in this...
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The finish line of the finest adventure on which I have embarked in many years beckoned, at most 300 feet away. A group of us were descending a peak known locally as Big Hill just off the highway in Big Bend Ranch State Park. The peak overlooks the Rio Grande. On this final day of a seven-day voyage from Chihuahua City, Mexico to the Big Bend area, we got up at 4 a.m. to catch sunrise. It was worth the lost sleep. We arrived in the dark to give the two photographers time to set up their spectacular array of equipment. I was the writer on this trip so I took a short nap in the Suburban as they set up, one eye occasionally...
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From the New York Times: The blue and gold braided beard on the burial mask of famed pharaoh Tutankhamun was hastily glued back on with epoxy, damaging the relic after it was knocked during cleaning, conservators at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo have said.
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I didn’t do it. I have an airtight alibi.
Epoxy? Really? I would have used Gorilla Glue. Epoxy is a pain because you have to mix the two parts together. Invariably I get some on my fingers and then spend the next week peeling dried glue from my skin. Gorilla Glue definitely can be tricky, because it expands as it dries and tends...
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Let me stipulate from the get-go that I am a lifelong New England Patriots fan for geographical reasons and subsequent force of habit. I grew up in New Hampshire until I was nearly 13, just 60 miles or so from where the then-Boston Patriots played. My godmother’s son was the team physician in the early 1960s. He provided me with a few autographed photos of the players in those pre-Super Bowl days. Running back Jim Nance, quarterback Babe Parilli and place kicker and wide receiver Gino Cappelleti were the stars back then. Nance once came to the grand opening of a gas station nearby, and I got an autographed...
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My mother would have turned 85 Monday. My dad would be 83 this summer. Both are gone now, dying three years apart in a nursing home I pass by several times a week. Unlike their siblings, they did not live independently into their 80s or 90s. It just wasn’t meant to be. Instead both declined over years until death became a blessing.
It was an honor to be their primary caretaker in those final years. That journey began eight years ago this month. My father had long been disabled by a botched medical procedure, at the same age I am now. For 17 years my mother cared for him, but it had become...
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A harbinger of the New Year has unhappily but inevitably arrived. I was walking around the courthouse square the other day and spied my first glimpse of Crape Myrtle Mutilation. All those lovely trees had been whacked back nearly to the trunk in a January ritual that is as ugly as it is unnecessary.
It happens all over the South. Perched on stepladders and armed with lops, landscapers happily hack away at these lovely trees, cutting the past year’s growth back. What remains are ungainly torsos. Most people apparently continue to believe that, for this loveliest of Southern ornamentals to bloom...
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NEW ORLEANS — A gray-haired man is standing just inside the entrance to the U.S. Freedom Pavilion of the National World War II Museum, located on the corner of Magazine Street and Andrews Higgins Boulevard, in the Warehouse District. Within eyesight is the towering statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee erected in 1884 at Lee Circle. Standing 12 feet tall on a 60-foot column, Lee, arms crossed, forever stares north, as if daring the Yankee troops to attack.
The man at the museum is clearly a veteran, judging from the ballcap he wears identifying his military outfit. He is a volunteer here, and I thank...
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NEW ORLEANS — It is two days before New Year’s Eve, the weather here finally cooling down to what passes for winter in the Big Easy, after a couple sultry days. My Beautiful Mystery Companion, daughter Abbie and I have taken a quick vacation here, thanks to a generous friend who loaned us her condo in the Warehouse District. On our last night before making the 400-mile trek back to East Texas, we have settled down in chairs of a parlor in the historic The Columns Hotel on St. Charles Avenue in the upper Garden District. We await the arrival of two of the city’s best known Cajun musicians,...
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One of my primary responsibilities as a publisher is to sell newspapers. That might appear blindingly obvious to most folks. But on innumerable occasions throughout my four decades in this business, readers upset with a story will say, accusingly, “You’re just trying to sell newspapers.” That always struck me as parallel with telling a car dealer, “You’re just trying to sell cars.” Well, duh.
Now that doesn’t mean we will publish anything. We have standards for libel, good taste, obscenity and relevance. But I can assure you that without fear or favor we are going to publish the news...
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It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees.
They’re putting up reindeer.
And singing songs of joy and peace.
Oh I wish I had a river, I could skate away on.
— Joni Mitchell
It is indeed coming on Christmas, ready or not. The other day at Rotary, the Vivian Fowler Elementary School Children’s Choir serenaded the group with Christmas songs. They sang flawlessly and enthusiastically. One little girl in particular danced and gestured with each song, smiling the entire performance. The magic of Christmas really is for children, and listening to them...
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