Well, Let Me Say This About That is an interesting twist on current events, as told by Dallas’ finest and funniest Craig McCartney.
Recently, I’ve been reading books I first read when I was in high school. Having just finished Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, which was a real slog, I followed it with something much easier to get through. Mary McCarthy’s The Group, first published in 1963, was a New York Times best seller for almost two years and was adapted into […]
For the first time in quite a long while, I had to go to the bank this week to cash a check. As the drive-through has long since been closed, this meant actually going inside to do so. The young woman, certainly no more than 22 years old, was bright-eyed and smiling as I approached. Giving her the check, she […]
Social media—a misnomer if ever there was one. My old friend Miss Merriam Webster defines it as “forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages and other content (such as videos).” That’s a rather benign characterization that is somewhat incomplete at best and woefully […]
There was a big slide, we may have even called it the giant slide, that attracted kids from all over town when I was growing up in Tyler. It was bright yellow and had a dozen or so chutes defined by ridges about six inches high, and we would climb stairs to the platform at the top and slide down […]
Words. I love words. Those sounds or those characters that when spoken or written communicate a meaning, together with inflection and context can express our thoughts and feelings, connecting us with the other thinking beings on the planet we share with them. This includes most humans and all dogs. I have some favorites among them. Indefatigable, untenable and irascible to […]
Before any readers drop out thinking this column can only make sense to those who have been keeping up with the third season of The White Lotus, please be assured that isn’t the case. Mike White created the series, and he continues to write, produce and direct it. His formula is simple but highly effective. Start with a dead body, […]
I’ve been contemplating what fresh hell I would give my attention to this week in this missive, and Lord knows there’s plenty to choose between. That crazy chat group with some of the most powerful people in government texting details about upcoming American bombings in Yemen is dumbfounding. As a proud Luddite who is pretty dumb about most things technical, […]
I hated to mow the lawn. I hated any kind of yard work growing up. Raking, bagging leaves, but especially mowing grass. So when Karl and I found the house we live in years ago and years after I had last mowed, my only concern about buying the house was the size of the lot on which it sits. Just […]
“Why in the world would anyone do that?” This was a pronouncement, framed as a rhetorical question, often given by Mother back in the day. It could be about the latest outrage coming out of Washington or a wife putting up with a philandering husband. It might be the result of the neighbors painting their shutters an unappealing shade of […]
Our dear Marie Antoinette never really said, “Let them eat cake.” But, it has been attributed to her on her sad road to the guillotine. Even so, it may have been her attitude in the face of bread shortage in France in 1789 while her husband, Louis XVI, was king. But bread versus cake still makes a good analogy. The […]
