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My sister should be in the Louisiana Youth Sports Hall of Fame and here is why. As I recall, it was the summer of 1979 and my family had just been torn apart by my parents’ divorce. Our whole world changed in a snap and my mom and us three kids moved from Mississippi to north Louisiana. Despite the drastic change of scenery, my mom was now a single mother with us three to tend to by herself. I was 11 years old at the time, my younger brother was seven, and my sister was six. Mom had to find a way to keep us busy and out of the house and the answer was baseball.
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I’m sad to write that my neighbor Mabel Akin passed away April 17 at the age of 104 years and five months. My acquaintance with Mabel was a mere blip on the radar of her life, but she left a lasting impression on mine.
Read moreIf every cloud truly does have a silver lining, the suspension of the STAAR test was my happy place. It is the one death I would like to see in Texas as a result of the Coronavirus, no others. I am hopeful the STAAR test is in critical condition, and now the time is ripe to drive a pointed stake deep into its soulless heart.
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As I write this column, it’s a beautiful sunny day outside and a pleasant change from some of our recent weather. All that sunshine jogged an April memory that I thought I’d share. Some of our old-timers may have similar memories.
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Every day of my life I have turned onto Washington Avenue and have driven through downtown Navasota. When I was younger, the streets were full of families going about their business, stopping into Noto’s or P. Nemir’s or grabbing food or ice cream. They smiled and laughed as they stopped to talk to their neighbors and fellow citizens, exchanging hearty handshakes and giving hugs. We epitomized good southern—good Texan—hospitality.
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Recently I sent a nephew of mine a list of some of the biggest mistakes to avoid on the job. He will soon graduate high school and is pursuing a trade instead of a college route. During these uncertain times, it is an especially scary world for a young person attempting to enter the workplace; a workplace that is in turmoil, much more than I would have ever expected at his age.
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You hear it all the time during flu season: wash your hands to prevent the spread of flu. You may have heard advice encouraging you to do the same to stop the spread of COVID-19, but do you know why this simple practice works so effectively? Washing your hands with soap and water breaks up the molecules of the virus and washes them away, preventing the virus from infecting you or others.
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In this age when you can search and surf to find every sort of weird imaginable thing on the interweb, a new layer of weird has surfaced. This time, it is the face mask. The masks have come out to prevent the spread of virus. And they have transformed our society from a friendly, smiling, “Good morning, how are you?” type of existence into an unrecognizable and expressionless set of eyeballs that look at you with a suspicion that you are about to infect the world. The masked masses have created the closest thing to a zombie invasion that I hope to ever experience.
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