Occasional Writing: Columns, Guest Editorials, Rants

(My monthly article in the January 2023 Brazos Living Magazine) I once heard about a man who lived his entire life in the same house. When he graduated from the local public school, he hired on as a car salesman in town and looked after his widowed mother until she died and then just kept … Continue reading Staying Put vs. Roaming

(I wrote this for the Op/Ed page of the Houston Chronicle soon after Hurricane Ike) ©  Houston Chronicle  Sept. 28, 2008 Back when Ike was the president and not a hurricane, my father, the superintendent of schools in a small East Texas town, took off three or four days every summer and our family would … Continue reading Galveston on My Mind

(This ran five or so years into my Sunday morning newspaper columnist days. If you're a tea drinker you'll think I misspelled Grey, but this is about a cat that was gray in color. Karen and I had four cats at the time and they popped up in my columns occasionally. We outlived them all.)The … Continue reading Earl Gray

(This newspaper column was published many moons ago) If the publishers of my desk calendar are correct, there will be a full moon tonight. Right there in today’s cubical they’ve printed the words “Full Moon” and a little illustration to make sure I don’t miss it.  So if it’s not raining or cloudy I’ll make … Continue reading Bella Luna

(This column was published on September 25th 2011, in my regular corner of the Brazosport Facts, where I pontificated for three hundred and seventy-eight consecutive Sunday mornings.) Okay, let’s make a list. The upper eastern seaboard was hit by an earthquake and a hurricane in the same week (a downright unusual couple of events by … Continue reading Mother Nature, Riled

Now shall I walk or shall I ride?'Ride,' Pleasure said;'Walk,' Joy replied.              ― W.H. Davies In one of his many essays Henry David Thoreau wrote that he believed an early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day. Robert Frost, another New Englander from a later era, agreed. In ‘The Pasture’, the short poem he … Continue reading Walking

I’m running out of places. The narrow red brick schoolhouse where I once progressed down a single long hallway from first grade through twelfth burned down long ago. It was an assembly line or sorts that took a dozen years (no kindergarten in our school back then in Oakwood) to traverse if you stayed the … Continue reading Magic Landscapes      

  Nearly everybody I see driving a car nowadays is talking on a cell phone. This certainly isn’t news to you.  And don't go thinking this is going to be another diatribe about the inherent danger of  driving and using the phone at the same time. I’ll leave that battle to someone who can come … Continue reading Of time, telephones, eternity, and Mrs. Appleton

  Happy May Day. And if you’re wondering what we’re supposed to be celebrating on this first day of the fifth month the line forms here, right behind me. Back when I was a gangling, crew-cut lad full of questions up in Oakwood I’m sure I asked, probably more than once, what the day meant … Continue reading Missiles, maypoles and mayhem

A professor once told told me successful authors are fueled by a constant intake of cigarette smoke.  Which must explain why none of my stuff has ever wandered anywhere close to a bestsellers list. But if there is anything to the theory about secondhand smoke being hazardous to health it's amazing I'm still here at … Continue reading When society’s habits went up in smoke