Mad for 'Queen's Gambit'

Given that I learned how to play chess from a Mad Magazine in the early 1960s — an endless source of amusement and marvel to my parents, including my chess-playing father — you might guess I'd initially be more curious about the seven-part Netflix dramatic series "The Queen's Gambit." When Ann suggested watching it, I was in the middle of several other obligations and assumed it was a spinoff of "The Crown," which I've enjoyed through three seasons.

Yeah, I know. Your move.

But when two friends who agree on nothing else heartily recommended the series, I decided to give it a try, however reluctantly. After all, chess is a little like baseball — thrilling enough in an edge-of-your-seat sort of way for the players involved but slower than the more popular hard-contact sports most U.S. spectators crave.

Verdict: Terrific. This Cold War tale set in the 1960s about an orphaned American youngster who discovers a real talent for chess and becomes an international competitor in a sport largely the domain of boys and men is a winner for three very different reasons:

First, though the series is quite leisurely paced — the fictional plot draws some from the life of late chess champion Bobby Fischer — the characterizations are always vivid and compelling, not just that of Beth Harmon as she battles private demons and addictions along the way but also among the wide range of rag-tag competitors with whom she competes for cash and confidence.

Second, series director Scott Frank, chief photographer Steven Meizler and film editor Michelle Tesoro absolutely love actress Anya Taylor-Joy's eyes and facial contours, especially when she's sitting across from a chess opponent, formidable or not. The actress has in the past dismissed any notion she's conventionally beautiful, yet she is strikingly breathtaking in this series and the filmmakers savor her features through everything from framing hairstyles to highly effective use of lighting and shadows.

Third, this movie is rare in a society that too readily dismisses science, math and expertise in favor of reality-TV figures, professional athletes, grandstanding politicians and movie stars: Not only does it focus on Beth Harmon and her friends and supporters, most also chess competitors, it also doesn't reduce any of them to the usual insulting stereotypes. It lends them great diversity in personality and dreams and weaknesses and hopes. It actually celebrates people who use their minds, portraying them with a depth and charm and individuality seldom evidenced in our times and the popular arts.

Beyond that — well, dig those crazy ceilings in Beth Harmon's chess-obsessed mind. And rejoice at the uplifting finale set in a Russian park full of old men playing chess, one of whom looks especially familiar.

"The Queen's Gambit" has reportedly spurred an interest in chess, hardly surprising in pandemic times but encouraging in an age of misinformation-peddling and intellectual laziness abroad in our land. Let's hope, at least in some small way, it prompts a greater respect for those who employ fertile minds and intellect in addressing and solving our societal and political problems rather than forever creating or complicating them.

Take heart, dear voter

Let’s admit it. Our holiday season doesn't seem very seasonal or holy this year. Not only are some who presided over Thanksgiving feasts now wondering if they sawed a couple of branches off the family tree but many remain anxious or discouraged at the unprecedented spectacle of a U.S. president defeated for re-election so frantically employing legal forces and powerful political allies to resist leaving high office come January. If so, take heart at the developments below and give belated thanks where appropriate. In some ways we have much for which to give thanks:

– In a Nov. 27 U.S. Third Court of Appeals decision reaffirming a lower court ruling, Judge Stephanos Bibas – a President Trump appointee – nonetheless made clear that Trump's legal forces offered no legitimate grounds and no evidence to toss millions of Pennsylvanians’ votes: “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. The Trump Presidential Campaign asserts that Pennsylvania’s 2020 election was unfair. But as lawyer Rudolph Giuliani stressed, the campaign 'doesn’t plead fraud. . . . [T]his is not a fraud case.' Instead, it objects that Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State and some counties restricted poll watchers and let voters fix technical defects in their mail-in ballots. It offers nothing more."

– Responding to a fact-free lawsuit by renegade Trump attorney Sidney Powell alleging Dominion Voting machines switched Trump votes to Joe Biden votes, Dominion issued a statement including this: "Claims that 941,000 votes for President Trump in Pennsylvania were deleted are impossible. The 14 counties using Dominion systems collectively produced 1.3 million votes, representing a voter turnout of 76%. Fifty-two percent of those votes went to President Trump, amounting to 676,000 votes processed for the president in Pennsylvania using company systems. Dominion doesn't even operate in some of the contested districts, including Philadelphia; Allegheny County, PA; Milwaukee; and Dane County." Powell's work here and elsewhere is regarded as so laughable – a real stretch if you’ve read federal rulings reflecting absurd challenges by the rest of Trump’s legal beagles – that the president severed any connection she had or did not have with the rest of Trump's team. (Quick Nov. 30 addendum: As if suddenly deciding not to be outdone by Powell's bizarre claims, the president in a freewheeling Nov. 29 Fox News interview suggested the Department of Justice, run by one of his most protective loyalists, might have helped steal the election from him.) 

– When Michigan state Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and State House Speaker Lee Chatfield were summoned to the White House amid Trump effort to scuttle the 157,000-vote lead that Biden had in that state, the two Republicans said they only discussed the process of verifying Michigan’s presidential election results. Their Nov. 20 statement after leaving the White House: “We have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan and, as legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan’s electors, just as we have said throughout this election." Michigan’s votes have now been properly certified.

– In comments on Nov. 13 and since, embattled Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a diehard Trump disciple and Republican who represents South Carolina, not Georgia, contacted him to raise doubts about Georgia's signature-matching law. During the conversation, Sen. Graham reportedly raised the specter that biased poll workers had counted ballots with inconsistent signatures and that Raffensperger might consider dumping all mail-in ballots from counties that had shown higher rates of unmatched signatures. This charge will complicate Graham's public vow as chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to oversee an investigation of voting fraud in the presidential election, given he now stands accused of conspiring to fraudulently alter a federal election vote tally, a federal crime.

– In a Nov. 12 statement, the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which ultimately reports to the president, issued this statement: “The Nov. 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double-checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result. When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised." This was sufficiently inconvenient that President Trump fired his very own DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director who stood by the statement. Later, when Christopher Krebs was interviewed about his abrupt dismissal by presidential tweet as well as allegations the election had been rigged by China and a long-dead Venezuelan dictator, he responded: “Look … we can go on and on with farcical claims alleging interference in the 2020 election, but the proof is in the ballots.”

It's relevant to point out that many of those accused of electoral malfeasance in these scattershot, mistake-ridden Trump legal challenges in battleground states across the republic happen to be work-a-day election workers, many of them patriotic volunteers who take solemn oaths to put aside any and all partisan sentiments and conduct fair and free elections. From all evidence, including sober court rulings as well as eye-opening court transcripts of exchanges between colossally unprepared Trump lawyers and incredulous judges (and, yes, I've read many of the rulings and exchanges), these extraordinary everyday citizens are doing their duty to degrees that would mystify too many of our out-of-touch elected officials. Two letters to the editor I published during my final week at the Waco Tribune-Herald (just days after the contested Nov. 3 election) highlight the good that goes on at the local level, despite presidential efforts to tarnish such individuals and their dedication, this year unfolding amidst a deadly pandemic gaining unprecedented rates of infection:

"I publicly thank Russell Larkins, election judge, and all the election clerks at Tennyson Middle School for their excellent work in running a polling station on Election Day. For the first time in 45 years of voting, I didn't just vote this year, I also served as poll watcher, observing the voting process and making sure, to the best of my ability and training, that they followed the rules, allowing all eligible voters to vote and making sure no one was abusing the system. This team earned an A+!

“Made up of regular citizens like you and me, they warmly welcomed potential voters, checked their identification and voting registration status, congratulated first-time voters, watched them sign in, made sure they knew how to work the voting machines (and no, they are not touch screens!) and let them vote in privacy and peace. Then they gave them their ‘I voted’ stickers, thanked them for coming and then, fully recognizing our pandemic times, carefully sanitized the voting machine for the next voter.

"There is a lot to be done - all while wearing appropriate anti-COVID-19 garb! "It was heartwarming to see how friendly this election team was to each person who came through the door; they maintained those warm feelings all the way through the process. They were also careful and conscientious in allowing people to vote - no voting fraud here! When there were problems with identification or registration lists, they went through all steps possible to let people vote properly, but they did have to turn down potential voters who for various reasons were ineligible to vote this year. They followed the rules even if you and I might question some of these rules.

"Last Tuesday I saw democracy in action in its most basic form, with a multi-ethnic, multi-racial team of citizens helping other citizens of all ages, races, genders and ethnicities exercise their rights as citizens to vote. I was then, and still am, proud to be an American."

                                                                                                                          Bill Lockhart, Woodway

                                                                                  * * *

 

"We should not let this election cycle end without recognizing the heroic service of our poll workers the past few weeks. I salute them all, especially one woman who worked at the polling place at Bosque and Cobbs who, in my view, represents this group at their very best. Her name is Iris.

"I was asked to drive a disabled veteran in his 80s to the poll last week and was happy to do so. When we arrived, I went inside to ask someone to handle curbside voting for him. Iris came out immediately and got his photo ID and returned inside the polling place. There was a lengthy delay and I became concerned, so I went inside to talk to Iris. She explained that my veteran had sent in a mail-in ballot already but that he hadn't signed it correctly. She needed to do the paperwork to allow him to vote on a provisional ballot that would replace the mail-in ballot.

"When she came back out, she explained all of this to him, then walked him through the ballot since it was clear he couldn't manage the keypad on his own. The entire process, from arrival to departure, probably took close to an hour. Throughout the entire process, Iris was courteous, professional and knowledgeable. "We're lucky to have selfless, caring people like Iris protecting our democracy and we should never take them for granted."

                                                                                                                         Mike Raymond, Waco

Such letters make me proud, even more so after reading conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks’ reflections, “The Rotting of the Republican Mind,” of Nov. 28. They're a wakeup call about vigilance in the future. An excerpt:

“In a recent Monmouth University survey, 77% of Donald Trump’s backers said Joe Biden had won the presidential election because of fraud. Many of these same people think climate change is not real. Many of these same people believe they don’t need to listen to scientific experts on how to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. We live in a country in epistemological crisis, in which much of the Republican Party has become detached from reality. Moreover, this is not just an American problem. All around the world, rising right-wing populist parties are floating on oceans of misinformation and falsehood. What is going on? Many people point to the Internet — the way it funnels people into information silos, the way it abets the spread of misinformation. I mostly reject this view. Why would the Internet have corrupted Republicans so much more than Democrats, the global right more than the global left?”

Democracy in America? Probably safe this go around, thanks to a handful of courageous state and local officials, Republican and Democrat, who put a far higher premium on the voters and dedicated and maliciously maligned election workers than a deceitful president and misinformation-peddling minions conspiring to overturn the will of the American people. This was admittedly a hard-fought election that real estate tycoon and reality TV star Donald Trump lost under a constitutional system he never quite grasped and his followers view with respect only when vote tallies go their way. Thanks this season also goes to federal judges who, whatever their ideology, whoever appointed them to the bench, still recognized the greater peril to our democracy and their own vaunted institution of the federal judiciary, a trust they would have had hell regaining had they gone along with Trumpian lawsuits.

Yet we're left to marvel at the tragic spectacle of a nation where many Republicans – not all but way too many of them, including our congressman-elect – have sought to shatter confidence in our electoral system. In doing so, they have aided, wittingly or not, global adversaries who work day and night to undermine our system of bottom-up self-governance and our national unity. The worst of this nightmarish circus involves friends, neighbors and co-workers more than willing to shelve democracy and forsake the Constitution just so long as it means four more years of Donald Trump in the White House. And that's more than disgraceful.

Wishing upon a reality TV star

One can debate whether last week’s virtual introduction to the newly expanded Magnolia Market at the Silos, the wholesome, all-American tourist mecca forged from an old cottonseed mill in downtown Waco by successful reality TV superstars Chip and Joanna Gaines, was ill timed or perfectly timed. The Zoom press conference for Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce members briefly distracted from the emerging question of whether another reality TV superstar elected president in 2016 on the nostalgic slogan of “Make America Great Again” was mounting a dramatic White House exit for their entertainment and his ego or an unprecedented assault on democracy in America.

In fast-growing, robustly conservative McLennan County of a quarter-million people, a Central Texas county where 61 percent of us subscribed to four more years of ratings-mad, crowd-obsessed real-estate tycoon and marketing dynamo Donald Trump, even after mismanagement of a pandemic contributed to hundreds of thousands of American dead and left his cherished economy reeling, the Gaineses by sharp contrast did what they do best: skirted politics and accented the positive, the inclusive and the compassionate. They showcased a very different sort of American nostalgia, this Waco-themed complete with a Katy Ballpark wiffle ball diamond, named for the stadium that stood at that spot for much of the 20th century, and a somewhat faithful (but only somewhat) reconstruction of Second Presbyterian Church, once upon a time at North 13th Street and Jefferson Avenue, built in 1894 and now resurrected at Magnolia as a generic house of worship, sanctuary and contemplation.

Expanded right on through our pandemic times to the tune of $10.4 million, the site now conjures up one of those idealized versions of Americana into which screenwriter Rod Serling often transported weary, emotionally wounded characters in episodes of "The Twilight Zone," along the way offering heartbreaking lessons on the perils of slipping too deeply into bygone days. (One might argue Serling's terse screenplay for "Seven Days in May" is more appropriate lately. In my book, it's required viewing for every American.) Yet the Gaineses' vision of America is compelling at best, innocuous at worst. Leaf through their upscale seasonal magazine, Magnolia Journal, and one finds thoughtfully articulated "manifestos" by renovation expert-turned-lifestyle guru Chip Gaines, mixing Texas masculinity and boisterous hospitality with rare humility and nuance:

"We believe everyone deserves a seat at the table and everyone has a story worth telling. We believe in human kindness, knowing we are made better when we all work together. We believe in courage, cartwheeling past our comfort zones and trying something a little bit scary every day. We believe that failure needn't be a negative thing; rather, we learn from our mistakes and fail smarter next time. We believe in doing good work that matters and, in choosing that, nudging others toward doing the same. We believe that newer isn’t always better and that it’s time for the pendulum of trend to swing back to the basics. We believe in unearthing beauty, however hidden or subtle it might be."

In the same vein, Joanna Gaines, proud of her Korean heritage, welcomes multiculturalism and more in her new children’s book, “The World Needs Who You Were Made to Be,” which “shows the beauty of celebrating our differences and taking care of one another.”

Such Magnolia manifestos and storybook morals seem wildly incongruous in the Age of Trump, an era of xenophobia and self-delusion and deceit that began well before their popular series "Fixer Upper" first aired and is likely to outlast even Trump's embattled presidency.

As power couple Chip and Joanna Gaines seek to lure back an estimated 30,000 shoppers and gawkers who each pre-pandemic week since 2015 have swarmed Magnolia Market at the Silos, their internationally popular brand sits uneasily alongside that thunderingly touted with success by the nation's reality TV show president, beaten for re-election in 2020 by a greater margin of voters than he himself garnered in 2016, yet unwilling to abandon the world stage without the most desperate, even embarrassing of legal fights and cheap shots. As chamber members considered expansion of Magnolia Market and some openly pondered how they might further piggyback on the presumed resumption of its commercial success, it was nonetheless impossible to ignore the news headlines of the moment: The president's undisciplined and unprepared legal team was striking out in one federal court after another in attempts to invalidate broad swaths of the American electorate through conjecture and conspiracy theory rather than hard evidence of election fraud.

For all the local malcontents who in recent years have blamed the Gaineses for everything from traffic congestion downtown to spiraling property values to sometimes saccharine and arguably even naïve views of societal tolerance and acceptance, the wholesome vision offered by Chip and Joanna certainly includes more opportunities and more pride than when Waco was readily identified with the deadly 1993 Branch Davidian siege 10 miles east of town and rock guitarist-turned-apocalyptic cultist David Koresh's hold on trusting followers right to the fiery end. Whatever else, the Gaineses have spurred a downtown revitalization that only a few years ago seemed a long shot, even though city officials, civic leaders and chamber boosters earlier laid the foundation for such a comeback. Yet in only five seasons of their hit TV show "Fixer Upper" and their home-furnishings-cum-good-times marketplace extravaganza, the Gaineses have without question made it easier to pursue entrepreneurial dreams in Waco or sell a home (if one really wants to leave now that things are getting interesting). The attitude by many is that the Gaineses' success lifts all boats.

Certainly, the Gaineses and their staff have done their bit. During a casual survey I took of the place during the torrid summer of 2018, a Magnolia Market at the Silos employee dutifully resupplying foldout maps and directories of Waco offerings politely asked if I needed suggestions on where else to go while in Waco. She not only suggested such local attractions as the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame & Museum, Waco Suspension Bridge and Cameron Park — the 414-acre municipal park, complete with two rivers, amazes first-time visitors — but she even suggested places one might rank as local competition: The Findery just down the street and Spice Village over at RiverSquare. That summer the Magnolia momentum continued unabated, as any visitor to Magnolia Market, its insanely popular bakery (and those cupcakes) and the nearby breakfast-and-lunch eatery Magnolia Table could testify: I saw license plates from Wisconsin, Florida, Illinois and California. And if you wanted to add a touch of politics to the mix, Joanna Gaines talks about folks who sit down as strangers at what might be called communal tables at either Magnolia Table or the Silos and leave better acquainted with how other folks live and believe.

Trip Advisor testimonials confirmed the huge appeal, such as the woman who during a road trip from Kansas City to Galveston to embark on a cruise ship talked her reluctant husband and teenage son into stopping off at Magnolia Market: “And it did not disappoint. I loved that there were so many things to do and see outside while you waited. The fellas played some soccer, photo-bombed people trying to take pictures of the Silos (sorry y’all), I sat on a swing and chatted with some other people visiting, went to the garden. Just awesome all around. I got my shirts, a mug and a popsocket and we were out pretty quickly.”

Most visitors offered similar experiences, even if noting high prices and crowds. One of the few to grouse was a man from Alabama whose wife not only had Magnolia Market at the Silos on her “bucket list” but hoped she would meet Joanna on the grounds. After dismissing the parking, the merchandise and the lines and getting into an argument with his wife, he wrapped up his review by noting: “Oh, well, I am in the doghouse for deciding to leave the wife in line and finding a place to sit.” (For the record, he thoroughly enjoyed his later visit to the nearby Waco Mammoth National Monument, which President Obama declared part of the National Park System in 2015 at the urging of city, Baylor University and local philanthropists. No word on his wife’s reaction to the place.)

And whatever else, the Gaineses do seem more disposed to charitable endeavors than some reality TV show pretenders, including the most famous of all, ordered in 2019 to make $2 million in restitution for illegally using charitable funds for political purposes. One example of the Gaineses bolstering their reality TV image with genuine reality: turning over the pristine Magnolia grounds to what some might label the motley congregation of Church Under the Bridge, whose open-air Sunday gatherings include many of the poor and the homeless as well as students from nearby Baylor University inquisitive about Christianity in action. When inexhaustible Pastor Jimmy Dorrell and his congregation faced temporary displacement from their longtime site on South Fourth Street beneath roaring Interstate 35 because of long-term highway construction, the Gaineses offered Magnolia, otherwise closed on Sundays. Another example: When funding dwindled at a critical point for The Cove, a startup nonprofit offering homeless students a place to study, freshen up and even get counseling, the Gaineses rode to the rescue with sufficient funding to bridge the difficulties. And the list of charitable efforts by no means stops with these.

When Amy Gaston, Magnolia's director of local marketing initiatives and events, described the old wooden church reimagined and reassembled on the expanded Magnolia grounds — and to standards less than acceptable to local landmark preservationists — she spoke of it as a place of sanctuary and solace. Indeed, it offers what many abandoned churches offer: a powerfully iconic symbol of what each of us imagines the Christian faith can and should be, not what it too often is, especially in these turbulent days when religion is hopelessly mixed with politics and corruption to the point of undermining its use as any sort of moral or ethical compass in American life.

"The original plan was to essentially pick up the building and move it to the [Magnolia] grounds because we felt like it could really be this beautiful anchor to the new portion of our grounds," Gaston explained. "But as we got in there, we realized that a church built in 1894 has a lot of damage to the foundation and roof and all that. Our team has worked really hard to preserve as much of the history and original pieces as we can, but the structure itself is new. If you go in it, you'll notice the wainscoting, the railings, the pews, the floors are all original to the property. They were just deconstructed piece by piece and then laid over a great new foundation."

Built in a Queen Anne style and one of the oldest church buildings left in Waco, the original structure over the years also housed a Seventh-Day Adventist congregation and then Waco Community Church members led by radio evangelist German P. Comer, "The Dixie Fireball," known around Waco for wearing red suits and driving a red Thunderbird and breaking out into "God Bless America" with little to no provocation. The Waco architect who bought the church building in 2009 with notions of turning it into a wedding and events venue eventually surrendered the idea because of steep renovation costs. He was happy to sell it to Magnolia, he told the Tribune-Herald, because he feared homeless people slipping into the crawlspace come winter would set it ablaze.

"We get a lot of questions about it: 'Why would you put a church on the [Magnolia] grounds? Are you going to hold services? Is Chip going to be a pastor?' Some really random questions like that," Gaston said of the church, full of masked visitors just days before Thanksgiving. "But really the purpose of this building and this moment is that Jo wanted a place on the grounds where people could come by and rest. I think we can all relate to that in this season where it's busy and crazy and inundated with messaging and things and all the hard parts of being a human right now in 2020. I think it's just a beautiful representation of who we as a company hope to represent, people who are both local, Wacoans to be sure, and then people who come to experience our great city."

Some visitors reportedly mistook the six small shops now open and lining the way to the church for short-term rentals, an understandable notion given how Magnolia's success has swept Waco up into a tourism boom the past few years, raising attendance numbers at picturesque Cameron Park Zoo and sparking guided tours of the city. One of the less enviable tasks the City Council now faces is regularly passing judgment on property rights and neighborhood integrity — specifically, who prevails when a homeowner wants to turn some property into a short-term rental abode to supplement income and neighbors rebel at the thought of strangers and traffic loose in the neighborhood. The Magnolia shops actually showcase collections curated by Joanna Gaines, including one stocked with books by the Gaineses. Still, one could likely find tourists happy to briefly lodge amidst this bustling, resolutely homespun American marketplace.

The wiffle ballpark was touted as a further salute to times past. Chip Gaines envisions it as a loving tribute to the old baseball park where Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, among other greats, once played, Gaston said — "a really fun nod to just the good old days, right, like how do we get back to just simple living, and we felt this wiffle ball field was a great way to do that." Again, along with idealized religion and lifestyle commerce focused on turning the American Dream into reality and transforming house into home, the ballpark adds to the feel of small-town nostalgia, evoking sportsmanship, hardiness and heroic athletes large and small.

Left unmentioned was a visit by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt to the original Katy Park just weeks after its opening in spring 1905. The president was bound for a reunion of his Rough Riders in San Antonio. His address to Wacoans heartily complimented all Texans, rejoiced at the coming together of veterans from warring sides of the Civil War that had ended precisely four decades earlier and even offered insights into leadership. The latter are worthy of repeating in present times of governmental gridlock and political cowardice and mounting problems left unaddressed:

"In public life there is no peculiar genius or brilliancy required so much as we require certain humdrum, everyday, commonplace qualities. You need in the first place the quality of honesty. Unless not merely the public man but the average private citizen is honest, and I do not mean merely technically honest, I do not mean honest to the extent of keeping out of the penitentiary, I mean genuinely honest — unless he is that, the abler and the more courageous he is, the more dangerous he is. You must have honesty first, but that is not enough. The honest man who is a coward is of no earthly use to himself or anyone else. Together with honesty, hand in hand with it, must go courage. You men of the great war know that it was not enough that a man should love his country. You need to have honesty as the first trait, and courage is equally indispensable, and these two qualities are not enough. In addition to honesty, in addition to courage, we need the saving grace of common sense. If we have these qualities combined in the average man, we can be certain that the problems before our nation will be settled, as I firmly believe they will be settled, aright for future generations."

Gaston also touted the upcoming Magnolia TV network, referring chamber members to the Gaineses' Magnolia Journal for details. Series include "Restoration Road" in which Waco-based Gaines friend and carpenter Clint Harp "hits the road in search of incredible historical structures in need of restoration while exploring their origins and dreaming of their future"; "Inn the Works," in which engaging Lindsey Kurowski and her team "set out to renovate historic Oak Knoll Lodge in California and bring it back to its former glory — all while simultaneously learning the ropes of running an inn"; and "Self Employed," in which Fort Worth entrepreneur Jonathan Morris "travels the country to share the inspirational stories and challenges of small-business owners along with their journeys to building their dream jobs." And we're promised a return of "Fixer Upper," the reality TV show "that started it all" in which the Gaineses with resourcefulness and humor renovate and freshen past-their-prime dwellings in the Waco area. (The Gaineses initially decided to quit the HGTV show after five exhausting seasons of transforming homes all over McLennan County.) Many of the new programs focus on what the Gaineses describe as "the work of builders and designers as they unearth hidden beauty and make worn things new again."

When I asked Gaston about the continuing impact of the pandemic and what tips Magnolia might offer other businesses in surviving its economic burden, she was appropriately humble:

"For us, similar to everybody else, with the pandemic and closures and then the reopening, we've had a steady climb back to where we would want to be. Traffic is currently down about 30 percent, but I would guess that's pretty common across the board. But what we're really encouraged by is our guests' willingness to just experience us differently. If you've been by our property, we have our mask signs up and obviously we have extensive cleaning, hand sanitizers, all the things the state recommends, and then of course all the things that all of us are trying to do to go above and beyond to keep, really, the core of our community safe. We recognize we hold an incredible responsibility to do our part in keeping Waco safe because at the end of the day that's really what matters to us."

For those respectful of our nation's past, cognizant of its present and hopeful for its future, the Magnolia credo — perhaps best summarized by a slogan marking a Magnolia Table food truck, "The Good Ol' Days Are Still to Come" — raises legitimate questions about the powerful slogan "Make America Great Again" upon which Donald Trump campaigned and won the highest office in our land. Bolstered by Trump's reality TV image via the long-running series "The Apprentice" of a shrewdly successful if merciless ("You're fired!") entrepreneur in real estate, marketing and development, the MAGA brand was warmly embraced by a massive segment of Americans beginning in 2015. Many were anxious, fearful, even resentful about the nation's fast-changing demographics and the alleged dismantling of traditional values and tenets, many of these cherry-picked from the Constitution, Bill of Rights and Old Testament, even as other constitutional articles, amendments and biblical verses were conveniently ignored or discounted. Early in my interviews and discussions with local Trump supporters, tough, unflinching immigration positions were regularly cited as good reason to support this dynamic, charismatic if unorthodox maverick; yet as his actual presidential policies of separating desperate brown-skinned immigrant mothers and children at the border and incarcerating them in kennels under sometimes squalid conditions became too horrible for even Trump apologists to defend in polite company, many shifted to citing the robust economy as good reason to continue supporting Trump. After 2018, this was regularly invoked as full justification in forgiving other transgressions, constitutional and otherwise.

All this ignored the fact the economy Trump inherited in 2017 had already experienced strong job gains and steady economic growth for several years under his predecessor — the nation's first black president, one whom Trump beginning in 2011 worked to delegitimize by tweet and on cable-TV news by claiming Barack Obama was foreign-born and possibly not even Christian. Many Americans also ignored the gutting of governmental regulations by executive fiat to goose the U.S. economy to further heights under Trump, notwithstanding the fact some regulations ensured clean water, clean air and workforce protections. Example: the 2019 announcement that the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump would snuff an Obama regulation crafted to prevent occurrences such as the 2013 fertilizer plant explosion that blew a quarter of the town of West off the McLennan County map, complete with 12 first responders literally blasted to smithereens. (Three others were also killed and hundred injured.) I remember the mayor of West, who served as a volunteer firefighter the night of the explosion, telling me in November 2019 of the EPA decision: "I guess what I'm upset about more than anything is that, if like me these people had gone to 12 funerals in eight days, then they might have asked themselves, 'Did we do enough?' Look at the memorial [to the blast victims], look at those names, look at those people who died. If after all that they can say they did enough — well, I want to hear that. If they have a quarter of their town blown up, destroyed, I want to hear them say they did enough."

The cruelest irony is that this presidential blunderbuss never grasped that smartly, boldly and consistently rallying a stunned and confused nation to common resolve in resisting a deadly virus was critical in preventing more devastation to the economy than was necessary. One can only imagine how much goodwill and cohesiveness Trump might have inspired — and how much he might have invigorated his re-election bid — had during the Fourth of July holiday period he skipped self-glorification and fireworks at Mount Rushmore and resisted dismissing COVID-19 as a serious health threat on the South Lawn of the White House and instead masked up and braved the environs of some pandemic-ravaged hospital to help serve up lunch and encouragement to medical personnel emotionally, physically and mentally drained from working with patients suffering COVID-19 agonies. Imagine had he shut up long enough to hear out staff concerns and grief, then offered evidence of appreciating the frustration they experience daily when skeptical Americans dismiss COVID-19 as little more serious than the flu, when Americans ridicule neighbors for wearing masks. (And Trump has made such dismissive comments himself.) In weekly public health briefings since spring, city and county leaders as well as local physicians spend much of their time scotching infectious conspiracy theories and addressing malignant complaints about masking mandates and COVID-19. Only Wednesday, as many Central Texans set off for possibly perilous Thanksgiving gatherings with new local cases and hospitalizations exceeding state and national rates (and Texas itself setting a record high number of new daily coronavirus cases at 14,648), Dr. Marc Elieson of Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center in Waco expressed weariness at frustrated messaging:

“There is certainly mask fatigue in the community. I was at the grocery store yesterday and, while there were a lot of people there and it was very crowded, I counted at least six people who had no mask on whatsoever, not to mention the countless people who kind of had it hitched just below the nose or even below the chin. It’s still an issue and it frightens me. Someone recently asked me: ‘You talk about masks and using masks and social distancing. When are people going to finally get it? What [else] can be said?’ My answer was: ‘I have no idea.’ We’ve said it, we’ve tried to be clear, we’ve tried to be helpful. The governor has even made a state mandate that we are to wear masks and to restrict some of our activities, but we’re still not there as a community and consequently we’re seeing this huge surge and people are getting sick and some people are dying.”

And, finally, to touch briefly on the other major crisis of 2020, imagine the president’s electoral prospects had he called activists from summertime city streets to the White House to discuss racial injustice and, given his considerable influence on Republicans and law enforcement, cobbled together something in terms of useful legislation, something demonstrating the qualities he touted in his 1987 book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal.” Instead, his ego demanded that he echo the very sentiments he originally encouraged in his most loyal base. And so positions hardened and civil strife continued, incurring more damage and costing more lives on both sides of this uniquely American conflict on race, equality and justice for all.

The concept of appreciating different viewpoints, let alone different ethnicities and races and religions, surely cannot be foreign to Trump, given his supposed marketing prowess. Consider this Sept. 16, 2016, excerpt from a column by Washington Post writer Dana Milbank, who stayed a night in the new Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.:

"Examining my posh surroundings — Italian bed linens, French table linens, Chinese duvet, Korean TV and, yes, Mexican tequila ($14 for a shot of Patron Silver) in the minibar, er, 'private bar,' I came across the Gideon Bible in the nightstand with a note on 'TRUMP HOTELS' stationery: 'If you would like to continue your spiritual journey, we also offer the followings [sic]: Talmud. Quran. Gita. Avesta. Tripitaka (Pali Canon). Shri Guru Granth Sahib. Book of Mormon. Kindly contact Housekeeping should you wish to have one delivered to your room.' Sure enough, minutes after my call to housekeeping, a pleasant woman arrived with a copy of 'The Glorious Qur’an' in Arabic and English, along with a brown prayer rug and a compass pointing in the 'direction of al Kabaa' in Mecca."

It's interesting also to ponder the dueling campaign messaging that dominated Trump 2020 yard signs: Some read, "Make America Great Again," others read, "Keep America Great," raising questions about the success of Trump's first term even as he stumped hard for a second. Complicating matters: Trump in 2016 never exactly defined when American greatness was so unquestioned and so utterly unproblematic. Was he referring to the post-war era of the late 1940s and 1950s? Some of us who are white might well agree it bristled with optimism and opportunity; those who are people of color and remember the worst of Jim Crow segregation laws might say otherwise. Was he referring to the 1920s and even '30s when many Americans pressed isolationism to prevent being swept up in another world war — one that nevertheless ensnared us in 1941 when, thanks to our neglect of global matters till late in the conflict, the Axis powers were far harder to dislodge and vanquish, especially after their dispatching of our naval fleet in the Pacific and their overwhelming of Europe and Asia? Perhaps the American greatness to which Trump referred is the period before the nation's first black president. Yet Barack Obama, whatever else, did stabilize the battered economy handed to him in 2009, for which he received no credit or no thanks from Trump in 2017 or beyond. Like the Gaineses to a degree, Trump may well have avoided too much specificity about what actually qualified as "good times" in a nation where inequality has been an issue from the very start.

In the final analysis, strategies heavily rooted in turning back the clock to some fractured, incomplete ideal of past times may work if it comes to refurbishing your home or office or adopting a certain lifestyle, but as practical policy such strategies too often fail to acknowledge the complications that some of us, all things considered, care not to revisit. Worse, they offer a limited, even unworkable range of options for dealing with present and future complications. Surely the issue of manufacturing in the United States proves this, given latter-day automation advances, labor costs at home and abroad and the economic realities of price-per-unit in a competitive global marketplace. Bullying corporations by tweet and press conference is not a sustainable policy, even if President Trump occasionally seemed to manage it for a time. Nor is simply building a border wall by violating the Constitution's Article I powers and then walking away from immigration and economic realities about certain jobs left wanting. Even right-wing Republican Congressman Bill Flores acknowledged as much in his Central Texas district well before Trump's election. As the retired oil and gas executive remarked at a local immigration forum in 2014: "If you talk to farmers around here, they’ll say it’s hard to get laborers, or get laborers legally, because they can’t get visas. If you talk to people in road construction here in Waco, they’ll tell you, ‘I can’t get enough laborers and I’d like to import laborers, but I can’t do it legally because I can’t get the visas.’ And if you go to the hospitality businesses in Bryan-College Station — the hotels, the restaurants — they’ll tell you they can’t get enough people.”

The notion of passing political judgment on phenomenally successful reality TV stars and the themes they champion in their programming and marketing might seem a fool's errand had our nation not gone off and elected one of them president of the United States. Perhaps it's one more thing about which Americans must now be more vigilant.

Don't be the turkey

 

This time of year at the Whitaker household, the looming question arises: How many days must we allow the turkey to defrost? Three? Four? How many pounds is that bird again?

But for many American families this pandemic year, another question predominates, or should: Will all of the guests coming for Thanksgiving have properly quarantined for two full weeks beforehand to ensure they don't infect and perhaps sicken and kill some of us? Or: Is anyone even bothering to quarantine? And: Is their idea of quarantining the same as my idea of quarantining?

Medical experts say two weeks are the maximum incubation period for the virus that causes COVID-19, which more Americans are now contracting than at any other time during the past nine months of viral spread. Given statistics suggesting many of us may be pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic, some well-meaning individuals could join in Thanksgiving gatherings and infect kinfolks and friends without knowing it. And with the president of the United States more focused on his losing re-election (or, rather, trying to overturn the election results) than the unprecedented viral spread claiming lives on his watch, and with Texas' Republican governor now less inclined to provoke radicals within his own party as he did earlier through bold public safety orders, this much is evident: We're on our own.

Yet we're on our own only so long as we can be positive everyone around our Thanksgiving dinner table has demonstrated the same unerring caution. The weakest link endangers all. As a 74-year-old friend remarked of his grandchildren — both in their 20s — "I love them, but I'm not too sure how they spend their nighttime hours!" Which is why he and his wife are doing pizza alone this Thanksgiving and holding out a Christmas get-together as a possibility, even though both believe the pandemic will continue to obligate mask-wearing and safety precautions well into 2021. (And, if it's relevant, both voted for a president who has often ridiculed mask-wearing throughout this pandemic year.)

"I'm concerned, I'm deeply worried, that with this degree of prevalence of the virus in our community, some families getting together for a meal could prove fatal to loved ones," Dr. Jackson Griggs, CEO of Waco's Family Health Center, said during a weekly press briefing last week. He recommended enjoying the holiday with only members of the immediate household. If families must welcome others to their table, he stressed keeping the gathering as small as possible; setting up the dinner table outside; keeping chairs six feet apart; remaining masked except when actually dining and drinking; and appointing a "respected voice of authority" in the family to be the enforcer to keep everything and everybody safe.

A medical staffer gauging people's temperatures prior to entry into one of our two hospitals in Waco the other day told me that her mother was absolutely committed to having the whole tribe over on Thanksgiving Day, if only because some family members have died in recent years and she wants to enjoy the company of siblings yet remaining. Yet Mom herself, it seems, is unwilling to entirely give up simple pleasures one might question in a pandemic growing worse by the day. For instance, she continues to gather with friends at the local pancake house once a week. This routine might work out as long as pancake club members otherwise exercise rigorous safety precautions — and as long as anyone in their individual orbits does likewise.

Still, it's an all-American pandemic game of Russian roulette.

Given skyrocketing case counts, hospitalizations and deaths in recent weeks, physicians and hospital administrators have good reason to fear the worst. The president and his most fervent disciples have thoroughly politicized mask-wearing, portraying it as everything from a needless annoyance to a threat to individual liberty. No local instance sums this up better than retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West, a political firebrand who in his campaign to chair the Republican Party of Texas, led a Texas Freedom Rally in Austin on Memorial Day weekend in which, amid crowd-pleasing references to Bunker Hill and San Jacinto, he branded mask-wearing mandates among other health measures tyranny, then got into an accident on Interstate 35 on his motorcycle during his return home. His skin was saved (literally) by physicians and nurses dutifully wearing masks at Waco's Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center. They did so to prevent infecting their celebrity patient.

Ironically, when West, suffering from a concussion, fractured bones and multiple lacerations, emerged from the medical center into a crowd of well wishers two days later, there was hardly a facial covering in sight. Nor has West changed his tune about mask mandates if his subsequent fire-breathing appearance at Waco's Church of the Open Door just before Election Day is any indication.

Many of the rest of us have meanwhile grown weary of the daily discipline and safety precautions, all heaped atop the ugly ramifications of alleged "virtue signaling" and possibly offending someone. More and more dismiss as exaggerated the dangers of SARS-CoV-2. One sees fewer and fewer of the yard signs that proudly proclaimed "Waco: We are in this together." Erected in the spring, some were yanked as political season heated up and campaign signs elbowed their way onto the field of battle. And why not? After a while, the upbeat signs of spring just seemed irrelevant, passé, naive, unnecessarily provocative. And it turns out we're not built of the same sturdy stuff as the Greatest Generation, and by now many of us are even willing to admit it.

And, more and more of us ask, given daunting circumstances of division, disease and delusion: Why should we forsake seeing family and friends one more time? It may well be the last time we see one another, considering the dark uncertainty of our times.

The past week or so I've noticed the number of people not wearing facial coverings increasing in public venues, including around all those grocery checkout clerks and stockers who this spring won plaudits as frontline workers almost on par with dedicated, selfless medical personnel. In the checkout melee at H-E-B the other day, surrounded by patrons stocking up for the big Thanksgiving holiday, some took notice of a woman with a toddler and a person I assumed to be her mother, all with flaming red hair; none of the trio possessed a mask or demonstrated a care in the world. The woman's sweatshirt read: "All aboard the crazy train."

Those involved in weekly COVID-19 press briefings in Waco display longer and longer faces. Dr. Marc Elieson of Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center regularly assumes the role of Grim Reaper, gravely reminding any who listen how many weeks it can take for people to suffer and languish and finally die of the virus, even after they’re hooked up to ventilators, and how people of all ages can become debilitated for weeks, months, perhaps permanently, because of severe damage done by COVID-19 to the heart, lungs and kidneys. As our situation worsens statewide, the governor, unwilling to be stung again politically, pivots and blames locals for not actually enforcing the public health measures he has allotted them by gubernatorial proclamation.

And in Waco, new 35-year-old Mayor Dillon Meek, an attorney, tries to walk the tightrope between all these conflicting dynamics, reading nervously from a script during his first press briefing: "For the sake of those community members who have a higher risk of severe illness and death from this virus, whether family members we care for, our coworkers or those we pass in the grocery store, we must exercise caution as we go into the Thanksgiving holiday. We are a country that desires to celebrate Thanksgiving and a time of thankfulness with those we love the most. And we are a country that believes strongly in our rights to make our own decisions. And I believe that. But we must recognize these decisions can affect others."

All this raises broader, justifiable questions involving governance and political theory. One wonders if what passes for federalism in the United States even allows for a concerted national strategy when so many powers not constitutionally allotted to the federal government are reserved to the states. In many ways, the real power in battling all this lies with 50 or more governors and state legislatures, all of varying degrees of intelligence, competence, integrity and political courage, and to a more limited degree the mayors and county judges. This means residents must fear not only their own state and local leadership deciding poorly but the poorly run states surrounding them. The wildly uneven patchwork of public safety measures from state to state, a friend notes, "is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool."

"Rugged individualism is a terrible way to deal with infectious disease," Yale law professor John Fabian Witt, author of "American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19," said during an Oct. 26 interview broadcast on C-SPAN. "Collective authorities through democratic processes to help communities flourish is really the alternative. One way to think about this is that we have a myth in this country that freedom comes from the government staying out [of problems]. In moments of epidemics, freedom comes from figuring out a way collectively through government to give us all the resources — vaccines and the like — that will help us flourish." 

Yet this raises the biggest question of all, one we can contemplate long after the turkey is reduced to scraps and bones and the guests have gone: Is it fair to entirely blame government at all levels for repeated failures and self-interest when so many of us individually are also willing to bet lives — ours and those of others — on simple pleasures and simple joys? In the days and weeks after Thanksgiving, we will have our answer.

Defining frivolous

Given that our nation has never before witnessed the peaceful transition of power threatened in the 223 years that presidential administrations have changed hands, one marvels at the audacity of the "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington, D.C., last weekend. As a pure spectacle, the event was remarkable in its riotous mix of U.S. and blue Trump flags waving in the breeze as an estimated 10,000 protesters marched to the U.S. Supreme Court to press the illegitimacy of a presidential election in which their man came up short in both the popular vote and the electoral college.

But that's about it. Instead of soaring oratory, we witnessed mob-like threats of violence and resistance to the death on behalf of President Trump. Instead of meticulous evidence of a stolen presidential election that so many claim, we heard conspiracy theories no more substantial than the vapid Trump-commissioned lawsuits challenging election results in battleground states, one after another after another dismissed by federal judges.

The personal belief some of us have about demonstrating empathy for others might justify such expressions now for our obviously crestfallen Trump-supporting friends and neighbors. But if we empathize for those Trump supporters who believe his defeat means the end of American greatness, it's only fair to remind them that many Democrats, independents and principled conservatives felt exactly the same when this profane, boastful business tycoon and reality TV star won election to the presidency in 2016. It might help if Trump supporters recalled that Trump's presidential opponent showed grace in making a concession speech within hours of election night returns. It might help if Trump supporters recalled that the president of the United States almost immediately invited Trump to the White House to begin in earnest the process of a peaceful transition of power that is the hallmark of American democracy.

Not enough to quiet the cries of a stolen election? How about this Nov. 12 statement from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which last I checked ultimately reports to President Trump: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double-checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result. When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised."

My survey of the legal challenges that Trump's dwindling army of attorneys filed indicated none were likely to change vote tallies significantly if at all. Take, for instance, those suits complaining about Republican poll watchers not having enough access to the ongoing balloting process. While a federal court might agree or disagree, how does this indict the voter or negate the ballot cast? Are we the people to be penalized because of some regulation about poll watchers and its enforcement? A judge might order future elections to change distances for poll watchers, but that same judge is unlikely to take it out on the average voter or the almighty democratic process. Even certain judges not above doing their party a favor here and there before the election are unlikely to invalidate broad swaths of voters after the election.

Beyond that, Trump legal eagles astonishingly fail to grasp that states are given considerable leeway in how each runs elections. And, yes, this means wild, sometimes baffling inconsistencies in election protocols from state to state, a source of frustration for many of us in the peanut gallery come Election Night. But welcome to American History 101: This is the direct result of states' rights vigorously pressed back during our nation's founding. In fact, when Democrats pressed an election reform bill in 2019 that would have standardized certain election protocols across the nation, Republican Congressman Bill Flores, elected from Central Texas during the tea party tidal wave of 2010, voted against it because it "allows Washington bureaucrats to overturn state election laws." Other Republicans voiced similar reservations in 2019.

Of federal court transcripts made available thus far, the most outrageous I've seen showed a Trump attorney actually trying to redefine the long-established legal meaning of "hearsay" in arguments with an astonished federal judge. You just know how that debate is going to end.

Anyone constitutionally grounded in laws and tradition can only settle on one adjective concerning these lawsuits as well as this entire "Stop the Steal" movement behind them: frivolous.

Newspaper Days: Afterword & Foreword

As Waco Tribune-Herald Editor Steve Boggs noted on my final Saturday night of duty a week ago in a dark, downright haunted Trib newsroom, some folks will find irony that my retirement kicked in the day unofficial election returns indicated that voters (ultimately, more than 5 million of them) gave President Trump his eviction notice. In short, it’s time for each of us to move on to the next chapter in life. No parting gifts for me because the economy is devastated and my profession is struggling; no farewell lunch with cherished newsroom colleagues such as Steve, J.B. Smith, Tommy Witherspoon, Carl Hoover, Rod Aydelotte and Mike Copeland because of rising COVID-19 fears and case counts; just terrific memories as a reporter, editor and columnist long in Texas journalism: more than 25 years in Abilene in rugged West Texas, more than 18 years in Waco on the winding Brazos River and Interstate 35, “Jerusalem on the Brazos,” rubbing shoulders with colleagues and superiors whose help, encouragement, insights and talents regularly inspired me to better myself, even as their attributes reminded me of my shortcomings, even when I was in so many instances the boss. (Photo by Rod Aydelotte shows the Trib editorial board in 2019 with Trib editor Steve Boggs left, publisher Jim Wilson, two days younger than me, right; Jim retired this summer.)

Memories range widely: from scaling rattlesnake-populated, cacti-dotted West Texas peaks with outdoorsman and pal Tommy Wideman (who maintained the rattlers and cacti rendered these peaks more mountains than hills when it came to the climb), to surveying the stunning, often underestimated wrath of the elements while tagging along in Air Force relief efforts aiding the hurricane-battered Caribbean and blizzard-gripped Northeast. From relaxing around Hill Country campfires with singers and musicians at the Kerrville Folk Festival and newspaper compadre (and considerable musician) Jim Conley, to downing vodka shots toasting long-dead relatives with members of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and my wife, Ann, after dead-of-winter sessions re-recording the massive score for Universal's "House of Frankenstein." From interviewing engaging, intellectually playful Democratic Congressman Beto O'Rourke in the highly competitive 2018 Texas Senate race (and kicking myself for not asking his take on the biography of Julius Caesar he carried with him), to conducting an extraordinarily lively roundtable of local Trump supporters (one of whom I later encouraged to run for public office, given that I was far more convinced of his good judgment than that of his presidential idol; another I added to the newspaper's Board of Contributors to play defense for the president if he so chose).

From reassuring rattled film composer and lounge-music king Les Baxter about a production goof by our mutual friend, Hollywood journalist Tony Thomas, that saw Baxter's score for the 1960 film "Black Sunday" marketed incorrectly as an LP album under the title of a 1963 film "Black Sabbath" (which Baxter also scored), to tracking down British composer Philip Sainton's lost music for John Huston's 1956 film "Moby Dick" in England. (During a visit to see friends and film composers John Morgan and Bill Stromberg in Los Angeles that wound up at the home of Bob Burns, so-called "patron saint of special effects for B movies,” Ann sat briefly in the title object from George Pal's "The Time Machine" but, unfortunately for her, she wasn't whisked away to better times and better companions.) From laughing away an evening with Mexican comedian and frying-pan instrumentalist Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez while discussing Groucho Marx, John Wayne and all those chicken thieves Pedro seemed doomed to forever portray in U.S. films, to enjoying long Petroleum Club lunches with charismatic politician-turned-adventurer-turned-filmmaker Jack Cox, a diehard anti-communist who used to say John F. Kennedy wouldn't have been shot in Dallas in 1963 had Jack beat John Connally for Texas governor in 1962 because Jack never would have invited JFK to Texas. From working as a troubleshooting "closer" with talented journalist J.B. Smith, gifted designer Kim Gorum and resourceful illustrator Scott Fagner on a revelatory investigative series about the immigration crisis from the perspective of desperate Mexicans who perished in Arizona's Sonoran Desert and their grief-stricken families back in Mexico (notified through a unique program at Baylor University's Department of Anthropology overseen by Dr. Lori Baker), to working as project editor on a nine-week introspective series marking the 10th anniversary of the deadly 1993 Branch Davidian siege and at one point visiting Mount Carmel and interviewing Davidian survivors, some of whom still awaited the resurrection of apocalyptic cult leader David Koresh, to researching and writing my own exhaustive essays as a busy opinion page editor and columnist (a post for which veteran newspaperman Carlos Sanchez tapped me, continuing evidence of his confidence in me, for which I am ever grateful). In my final months on the job, I tackled such subjects as the toxic mix of politics and evangelicalism in the Age of Trump; the political fallout of COVID-19 from a distinctly local perspective; police reforms during a summer of unrest over racial injustice; and the pluses and minuses of voting centers, the latter undertaking actually an elaborate defense mounted from copious notes I assembled for a hastily scheduled appearance on National Public Radio. I was later dropped because there wasn't enough "gender balance" in the national lineup of guests slated — hey, that happens — so I simply recycled my notes into another Sunday column.

From hanging with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rush Limbaugh, Paula Poundstone and a young George W. Bush at the Republican National Convention of 1992 (when the Republican Party began its ugly metamorphosis into what it is now), to joining award-winning Trib photographer Rod Aydelotte at President Bush's Western White House outside Crawford in 2008 where I learned about the bored international photographer who took bets on how long he could keep his finger in an ant-bed hole while waiting for a Bush press conference to finally begin. (Incidentally, I believe I'm still the only one from Trib ranks who actually got to ask the president a question, given that local press were encouraged to attend press conferences but questions by tradition came only from the traveling White House press corps.) From making chili with "Zen Chili" author and countercultural beatnik Sam Pendergrast, editor of newspapers small and smaller across the dusty Southwest (and whom I used to pay out of my own pocket to add to the Abilene Reporter-News' thin reporting ranks on weekends), to covering colorful characters and oddball happenings across a sprawling stretch of sun-baked Texas as a daily Page One columnist during a 12-year stint, arguably the most enjoyable journalistic pursuit I've undertaken, even if subjects included such footnote characters as a broken-down dancer from Dean Martin's Golddiggers and the amiable dachshund she trained to be a fashion runway model. From a lively 2000 interview with political iconoclast and wrestler Jesse Ventura about political reform (yes, really), to spending an afternoon in 1982 on a Vero Beach, Fla., beach with blonde bombshell Donna Rice, who later sank Sen. Gary Hart's reckless presidential campaign, to reveling in nationally known, Waco-based naturalist Fred Gehlbach's vast if wildly ricocheting knowledge about wildlife in 2005 as we toured the Cameron Park Zoo's newly opened Brazos River Exhibit (including a story the 70-year-old, owl-obsessed lover of nature offered about the last ocelot in Central Texas and how it wound up at a local filling station).

From gaining pearls of wisdom about life, leisure and politics from friends such as former Ambassador Lyndon Olson and medical humanities pathfinder (and fly-fisherman extraordinaire) Michael Attas by a roaring bonfire beneath a full moon in a secluded pasture near Lake Waco once a month, to marveling alongside my good friend and longtime newspaper colleague Richard Horn as a state legislator representing West Texas actually acknowledged to us that he sure didn't want to chair any powerful Texas House committees because he sure didn't want to make any controversial decisions that might earn him criticism from constituents. (Richard and I also convinced legendary West Texas theater operator Frank Sheffield what great business he would do if he programmed Tim Burton's "Ed Wood" at his moviehouse — a film that did so poorly that week at the local box office that Richard and I felt morally obligated to sit in the empty auditorium night after night and watch the movie over and over.) From scaling the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal in the jungle-lush Yucatan Peninsula with big, barrel-chested Texas journalist Bill "William Tells" Salter (later publisher of the Odessa American), to interviewing for two rollicking hours gregarious, life-loving Waco philanthropist, insurance magnate and eternal optimist Bernard Rapoport in his book-crammed tower office as he talked about education, hunger, his friends the Clintons and the pride Americans should feel in promptly paying their taxes. (Interestingly, Rapoport often asked guests what they thought. You really don’t find that often among the very wealthy. And he really focused on one’s intellect. I remember his saying of one prominent Wacoan, “He’s a nice boy, but he isn’t a thinker.”) From lunching with John Ford troupe veterans Harry Carey Jr. and Ben Johnson in Abilene, to swapping progressively outrageous pearly gate jokes with actor William Campbell and an informal Friday lunch bunch of misfits and ne'er-do-wells called The Bovines including my lanky, high-humored friend "Bubba" Ephriam, a former standout athlete who notably broke the color barrier in Texas varsity sports in 1955 at Pecos High School and himself briefly did bit parts in the "Tarzan" TV series in Hollywood. (Incidentally, Campbell, a joyful presence noted for everything from "The High and the Mighty" to "Star Trek," won kudos that afternoon for the most outrageous joke, which I tried with limited success to reprint — boss and column creator Glenn Dromgoole, editor of the Abilene Reporter-News, let me print it but without the punchline! Part of the forbidden punchline: “You’re gonna hate Wednesdays!”)

One of the most rewarding aspects of my career involved several years working closely with community journalists on the Tribune-Herald Board of Contributors, which my colleague and friend Sandra Sanchez one day casually suggested we rebuild, given that it had fallen into decline well before she and I arrived on the opinion-page scene. (Some of its "current" members were dead and buried.) Our resurrected board demonstrated the newspaper's strong faith in and vivid commitment to our versatile community. Many of our writers offered poignant, insightful and unexpected takes on national melodramas unfolding, which in turn freed me to focus more on local and state issues, including a deadly melee involving rival motorcycle gangs; an ammonium nitrate explosion that killed 15 people in the nearby Central Texas community of West; a hothead district attorney mired in conflicts of interest and prosecutorial incompetence; and continuing battles over voter rights in Texas. That said, many of their pieces eclipsed my own in the online readership we were able to measure.

Obviously pandemic times preclude immediate retirement plans I had, including traveling to see longtime friends in San Angelo, McAllen, Abilene, Fort Worth, Austin, El Paso, Tucson and Los Angeles, as well as taking in-person life-learning classes via Baylor University. I have a mountain of books and music beckoning. I have writing and editing projects looming. I have a pooch who demands long walks both mornings and evenings. I have a loving, patient, good-humored, supportive and reassuring wife who, yes, demands some time in between all this after years of competing with the demanding mistress that is the newspaper business. And I've started this blog where all entries but this one will be concise, fleeting, to the point. But the broader question remains: Any advice from graying sages who have preceded me in smoothly transitioning from a hectic, sometimes obsessive work schedule to the tranquil, deeply introspective retirement that Cicero spoke of? “How wonderful it is for the soul when — after so many struggles with lust, ambition, strife, quarreling and other passions — these battles are at last ended and it can return to live within itself.” Anyone?