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Our new year is finally here. So is winter. One thing I did first this year was call my sister Sue. She is now in an assisted living home up in Edmond and I was happy to find she received a new phone for Christmas. It is easier to use, so she thinks. I hope she is right. We have had a history of tough luck trying to communicate over her old one. Sue is 4 years younger than me, and we enjoy our time during phone visits. I went to church yesterday and the preacher spoke quite a bit about time. He noted, correctly how we waste it, how we can’t control it or stop it from passing. So true.
Read moreLast December, the Virginia Military Institute removed a big statue of Stonewall Jackson. They are now hiding him in a museum. He was just one of many “celebrities” of the old south to vanish as American tries to change its history. I guess there really isn’t much wrong with the idea of change. The old South, as we knew it is gone. The idea of white people being able to enslave people of dark skin is long gone. And that’s a good thing in our land of freedom such as the USA basically is.
Read moreThanksgiving? Here again? It’s almost stylish these days to say: “Thankful for what?” Well, let’s just look back a bit. One in particular noteworthy year in my life was 1963. Fresh out of college and my military service behind me, things never looked any better. I was glad to have my military service behind me. The hard times of working my way through college had left Pat and me with sighs of relief. A new and first baby boy in our family was for sure a joy. And I was living and working in Ada. How could it get better?
Read moreMy mother sometimes got onto me for daydreaming so much. I had a teacher or two over at Stonewall that agreed with her too. She always admonished me to quit my daydreaming. As though one could. Like most people I think I was meant to travel. Go places. Someplace where they speak different languages. Dress funny. Eat weird foods. Places so far away you might need to get on an airplane or a ship to get there. But to get on an airplane means going through x-rays, being patted down. Getting a passport. Well sure. Pat and I, being the forever optimists, renewed our passports some time back. I guess we did want to be squeezed into an uncomfortable seat and be hurtled at speeds at nearly the speed of sound to one of these strange places.
Read moreSometimes this old Shakespearean quote applies to us. It sure did to people in Allen in 1938—a tough year for people here in Mustang land. I know it was for the Bullard’s. The business dad worked at in Allen was shuttered and gone.
Read moreTexas has a lot going for it. One of the things -- there is a lot of wealth and pride residing south of the Red River and the growth of North Texas continues unchecked.
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Covid perils are still holding forth. But just not so bad now as perhaps a week or two ago. And will it reload and again assert itself as the big news story of our time and be the killer it has been. I hope not. This Covid has terrorized the world long enough. Well, long enough for me. One doctor amazed at the denial among the anti-vaxxers reports that many of these deniers who have already been smacked down by this dreaded virus insist to the death (theirs) that they don’t have Covid. Such is the strength of the organizers of resistance to this happening. It’s very sad. But the denial is as real as the virus itself.
Read moreOne of the results of this Covid was Pat and I have watched a lot more movies here at home than normal. One would think when you glance background that I would have seen all the movies that I should. My tenure at Stonewall Schools (1944-1952) and before that my fellowships at Centrahoma should have been enough. But I must reluctantly admit most of what I know today I learned in the Main Theatre at Stonewall. Covid and the coldest winter ever gave me some chance to work on my “Master’s Degree” in movie watching.
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