Where I live, oak pollen is as high as it has been since 2019. All sorts of us are having allergic reactions. I may be having one, but it also may be a plain old cold. I never know. Regardless of the cause I have almost no voice, a foghorn cough, and brain fog. It’s…

Several years ago, in the short period of time I ran regularly, Peter and I went on a running cruise in Alaska. We gathered with a group of about 90 runners and some walkers with the plan to run four times during the week. The first ‘race’ was a simple 5K around and around on the…

I grew up in what I often describe to friends as a “no whining” household. My parents made it very clear in a variety of ways that we were responsible for our responses to what life threw our way. A complaint of “that’s not fair”, usually elicited a response of “Who told you life was…

Let’s consider the lowly preposition. It’s defined as a word that governs and expresses a relationship between a noun or pronoun and another element in the clause (New Oxford American Dictionary). We learn about them somewhere along the way as part of grammar though I think I began to pay attention to them when trying…

I saw these few bluebonnets on my walk in the neighborhood last week. And two days later saw my first redbud tree in bloom. These are harbingers of spring in my part of Texas. Then a cold front blew through and the early morning temperature was in the thirties, and the forecast calls for highs in…

Early in the spring semester of 1983, a faculty member from the McMurry College History department came by my office. Fane Downs was in the middle of her second career at the time. She had been a “professional” Girl Scout serving in roles as District Director and Camp Director in West Texas. Then she went…