Editor's Commentary

I’ve never been a cat fan. I hate cats. And yet… I’m mourning… a cat.

Perhaps my dislike for cats stems from my allergic reaction to them. Perhaps it has to do with my distinct dislike for finding feline feces in flowerbeds. Or perhaps it’s genetic – my father hated cats, too. He always hated them from the time he was a boy right up through my formative years.

So imagine my surprise when I came home from college one day to find that my Dad had a cat of his very own. It was living in his barn; and the first time I saw it, he was sitting in a lawn chair, drinking a beer, and petting this cat in his lap. Was this the Twilight Zone?

Dad explained that this wasn’t really a cat. It was more of a chicken, he said, which didn’t make any more sense.

It seems that an old momma cat had chosen the barn behind our house at some point as the place to birth her litter of kittens. Soon after, the momma left and so did all the kittens except for “Kitty,” who chose to stay behind, hanging out with the chickens and eating nothing but chicken feed and the occasional mouse.

Dad soon gave her a proper name, Kitty Laverne, and she became a permanent resident at our house for the next couple of decades. It was several years before Dad broke down and started buying actual cat food for Kitty. But, even with the change in diet, she stayed true to her chicken roots and remained a loyal friend and, I think, defender of her feathered companions. Through the coldest winters, she stayed in the barn with no heat other than the light in the brooder on which she slept.

Over the years, it was common to see Kitty in my Dad’s lap as he sipped a beer and enjoyed the beauty and tranquility of his backyard oasis. Kitty didn’t have much use for the rest of us, although she would let us pet her occasionally. She was mostly interested in Dad, and she showed him the most affection.

Given all that, I think Dad’s death in 2006 probably affected Kitty in some way that we will never understand. She stayed on, guarding the chickens and doing her own thing, and she still never paid me much attention.

Unless, that is, I put on a pair of work boots, some blue jeans, and one of Dad’s blue work shirts to go work in the yard. And then, Kitty was all over me, getting in my lap, rubbing against my legs, and generally getting underfoot. I think she was looking for something familiar, and anytime I wore that outfit, the results were the same.

My brother got the same reaction when he wore Dad’s boots, and it was he who became Kitty’s primary caretaker, seeing to her health and wellness over the years.

As our kids grew and after my Mom’s passing, Kitty Laverne was a constant at our house, tying us to the past and something special from a time that we cannot recapture. Russell and I could spend time with Kitty, and in some strange way, we were spending time with Dad… or maybe just something connected to Dad.

Kitty developed a tolerance of children right away. She initially would shy away from kids, but she grew to enjoy their occasional petting although she never really wanted to play.

There were times that Kitty would disappear for days. We would begin to think she was lost or worse, and then she would show up… usually looking pretty rough and having been in a fight… sometimes for her very life apparently.

As the years went by, we began to joke that Kitty must have eaten the mouse from the movie The Green Mile. She seemed almost immortal this cat who thought she was a chicken.

Immortal perhaps… but not indestructible.

Last Thursday, one week before Thanksgiving, Kitty met her end. She was hit by a car or truck in the alley behind our neighbor’s house. She had just gotten over her latest injury and was doing what she loved… prowling around not far from the barn she called her home.

Kitty Laverne, as best we can figure, was about 22 or 23 years old. That’s like 107 for a human. That’s a remarkable achievement for an outdoor cat… or a chicken.

My kids and my nephews were very sad to see their sweet Kitty pass on. My brother especially and I were harder hit… losing a member of our family and a link to our Dad. And yet we believe she’s probably happy that she’s finally found that guy in the blue shirt she’s been looking for these past eight years.

This Thanksgiving we’ll say a prayer for the one cat that could ever call our house home, and we’ll give thanks for family and the memories that we all cherish for those who have gone on before us.

Rest in peace, Kitty. The barn will never be the same without you.

A good many local residents were surprised by the recent news that Clarendon ISD Superintendent Monty Hysinger had been named as the lone finalist for the top job at Dumas ISD. The Amarillo Globe-News posted that news online Wednesday night, October 29, and the Enterprise followed the next morning on ClarendonLive.com.

No one begrudges Mr. Hysinger what is certainly a step up to a larger school with no doubt better pay and benefits that CISD can afford. Some observers, your editor included, had wondered if Mr. Hysinger might make a move soon given that he’s had a long tenure here – almost 16 years – and his youngest child is about to graduate from Clarendon High School.

The announcement in the middle of the school year was a bit of a surprise however; and the veil of secrecy employed by the Dumas Board of Trustees, while a common tactic across the state, is a method we hope the Clarendon school board will not follow.

In the search for a new superintendent, Texas law requires school districts to name finalists at least 21 days before a final vote to hire someone. Encouraged by the all-wise Texas Association of School Boards, many school districts keep their superintendent candidates hidden from public view by naming just one finalist, who then not surprisingly gets hired 21 days later.

Compare this to the process used by Clarendon College when selecting a president. In the hiring of former presidents Myles Shelton and Phil Shirley and current president Robert Riza, the Board of Regents appointed a committee of citizens and board members to wade through dozens of applications. The committee narrowed that field to three to five candidates, each of whom were brought in for a public reception and interview before being privately interviewed in closed session by the full board. Later, the board met again to make its final decision.

The college’s process demonstrates the importance of community interaction necessary for a successful college president. It also shows a healthy respect for the input from citizens and taxpayers in choosing the person who will lead one of the community’s largest groups of employees and a cornerstone of our economy.

Surely the superintendent of Clarendon ISD is on the same level of importance to our community as our college president. He or she will hold great influence of the livelihoods of dozens of citizens and – more importantly – chart the course of the education system that will mold the young minds that are the future of this city. You, as a parent and/or taxpayer, have a high stake and interest in who the Board of Trustees will chose to succeed Monty Hysinger, and every member of our school board has a duty to conduct school business as openly as possible… regardless of the prevailing veil of secrecy in our state.

We will soon know how our trustees will handle this situation. The board is scheduled to meet tonight (November 13) and three agenda items are directly related to the expected January departure of Mr. Hysinger. In his monthly report, the superintendent will discuss setting a called meeting to name an interim superintendent; and then later, the Executive Director of the Region 16 Education Service Center, John Bass, will discuss the superintendent search process and the naming of an interim superintendent. Mr. Bass’ comments are listed under “Personnel,” which often means a board will discuss that topic in closed session, away from the eyes and ears of the public.

We hope the CISD board bucks the state norm and sets a high bar for public involvement. Clarendon College has successfully done that, and it’s not unheard of for a Texas school to do it. The Beaumont Enterprise on Monday said many residents of Beaumont ISD want their board to follow the lead of the Austin Independent School District, which will narrow its own list of superintendent finalists next month and then “hold a public forum at which the community is invited to question the finalists.”

The paper quotes Austin ISD board president Vincent Torres as saying, “We’re hoping by giving them an opportunity at the end here to weigh in on who we have narrowed the field down to we’ll at least have some indication of how well they will be received and supported by the community.”

It all comes down to government transparency. The public has a right to know who is being considered to run our school. We are depending on the school board to include the public in the process and conduct this search in the light of day. We don’t need the names of every applicant, but we deserve to know who the top candidates (plural) are for the job.

The crosses and signs proclaiming Clarendon’s religiosity generate strong feelings among residents and travelers and even recently drew the attention of city officials. But the question remains as to what… if anything… should be done about them.

Alderman Sandy Skelton brought the subject up at the October 14 city meeting, but even he only sought a remedy for future signs and markers and did not propose doing anything about what already exists. That launched a discussion about a possible sign ordinance, which lead to the dusting off of the sign ordinance that has already been on the books for 19 years.

Interestingly, the biggest revelation at the meeting about the “end of the world” signs came from the man responsible for them. While the city ordinance requires a permit for signs and markers, Jim Griffin said he was told by former city administrator Lambert Little that he didn’t need a permit for what he was doing.

So basically, the city had an opportunity to have some modicum of regulation over the situation and didn’t do it. Now the chariots have left the coliseum, and there’s no rounding them back up.

The situation is, in part, an example of the city not properly enforcing the ordinances on its books. Why do we need all these rules and regulations? Well, in part, to keep Clarendon from looking like The New Apian Way, as Fred Gray described it last week.

Almost any eyesore in this town could be remedied by proper enforcement of the rules in place. But too often the city just looks at making new rules instead of enforcing the current ones.

A perfect example of this is the amendment passed this summer that changed the allowable weed and grass height from four feet (which does seem high) down to 18 inches. But then the city had lots of places where its own grass was over 18 inches. Maybe we should get all the properties under the four-foot level first.

As to the crosses and signs, Mr. Griffin told the city council that he sees himself as a servant of Jesus Christ and that it is his mission to make sure that every person coming through Clarendon gets witnessed to about Jesus.

The biggest problem with that is that not everyone wants to be the recipient of Mr. Griffin’s witnessing. Several travelers have even taken the time to write the Enterprise or the Chamber of Commerce to express their disgust, displeasure, or discomfort with the plethora of crosses and signs. This includes some Christians who feel the symbols are over the top.

Now in fairness, there are people who like the crosses and signs. An example is an email the Enterprise received this week and reprinted with the letters in this issue. However, it is probably safe to say that the people who are most excited about Mr. Griffin’s work and take the time to look him up and thank him or send us a comment are also probably people who are very devout and don’t need to be witnessed to. In other words, it’s preaching to the choir.

So what should be done about this issue? There probably isn’t much that can be done officially. Enforcement of the sign ordinance might have slowed the phenomenon or moved it back from the highway some, but it would not have prevented harsh messages like “9-11 Tragedy. Worse things to come!” Trying to stop that or remove it opens a whole can of constitutional questions about religious freedom, freedom of speech, and private property rights.

No, government rules are not the answer here. What Clarendon needs is for business and property owners to think about the cumulative effect these markers are having on our community as it is perceived by visitors. The cross or the sign in front of your business may be fine; but when it’s combined with dozens of others, it’s too much for some people.

As a businessman, I don’t care if you’re Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, atheist, or some worshipper of Greek gods. I just want you to come in and buy a subscription or place an ad for your garage sale. Likewise, I don’t care about the religiosity of passers-by. I just want them to stop for a bite to eat, pick up a gift at a local merchant, and possibly Stay All Night or Stay A Little Longer! And, if while you’re here, you are impressed with the good morals of our community and wish to receive some witnessing, feel free to attend one of our 18 (at last count) churches.

Goodwill is a valuable thing and one that is not easily regained once lost. Like the old shampoo commercial used to say, “You only get one chance to make a first impression.”

Literally thousands of dollars are spent each year from the city’s economic development corporation and hotel occupancy tax trying to make Clarendon a destination, an attractive place for visitors, a place you want to stop for a while, or place to relocate. Money and time are spent on marketing this community and putting our best foot forward. And then someone puts up four dozen sewer pipe crosses and starts freaking out the guests.

Thankfully, some of these signs and crosses have already come down. More need to. We want people to come here. We don’t need to give anyone an excuse to say they will never stop or shop our town.

Some of my earliest memories of my Dad are of him reading the funny pages to me on Sunday morning. I would crawl up in his lap or on the arm of his rocking chair and lose myself in the adventures of Nancy and Sluggo, Alley Oop, Rick O’Shay, the Peanuts gang, Prince Valiant, and Mark Trail.

Dad also read the paper the rest of the week… every day of the week. It was just part of his routine. He took the afternoon Amarillo Globe-Times and read every section of it literally from cover to cover. And, of course, once a week he added The Donley County Leader to that list of “must read” material.

He didn’t go to bed until he had read the paper, and as a result, he was one of the most knowledgeable men I ever knew about general information and current events. He stayed abreast of everything that was going on. It was such a part of his daily life. It is no wonder then that his obituary photo – if you could zoom out from the cropping we did on it – is one of him sitting in our den, reading the newspaper.

He took great pride in the work of The Clarendon Enterprise, and I have no doubt that, if he were here today, he would be bragging on his grandson, The Cub Reporter, every chance he was given.

Growing up in my family, the importance of the community newspaper was well understood. But it bears reaffirming in this modern age of iPads, smart phones, Facebook, and text messages. This week marks National Newspaper Week across America, and our industry’s theme this year is “Newspapers: The Foundation of Vibrant Communities.”

As graduate student at Texas Tech, I spent part of one summer studying the economies of 14 rural communities in the Texas Hill Country. I made it a habit to pick up the local newspaper everywhere I went, and I noticed one common thread right away. The strongest communities and the ones that had the most going on were the towns with the best newspapers. This was true regardless of the population of the town. The vibrancy of the community was reflected in the quality of the newspaper.

If you look around the Texas Panhandle, I think you’ll see that the same is true here. If you want to look at towns that are growing or are making things happen, you will likely find a strong voice in the local newspaper.

This is your newspaper. We cover your life from childhood and right up until they lay you to rest. It is in these pages that you find out not only about football games, pancake suppers, and cotton festivals, but also about tax notices, important meetings, and decisions that will impact your daily life. We also want you to think, and we therefore put forth opinions and editorials that are meant to drive positive change, improve our community, and give us all a better quality of life.

And we give you a voice to share your thoughts on important – and sometimes trivial – matters in order to encourage open and honest public debate.

Our job is to report, to editorialize, and to provide a platform for your voice. Your job is to read, to participate, and to pass that tradition on to the next generation. Working together, we will keep Clarendon moving forward and leave our kids with an energetic community that they will be proud to call home.

Thursday marks 13 years since the attacks of September 11, 2001; and as the intrepid Fred Gray points out this week, we aren’t doing too well in the struggle to win the War on Terror.

This column isn’t going to rehash the events of that fateful day. Suffice to say that your editor – and most Americans – are still angry about what happened. And rightly so.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves less free and less secure than we were on September 10, 2001. In the name of “security,” we have seen the size and scope of the federal government expand to the point where we allow ourselves to be violated at airports and think nothing of it as those we have entrusted with protecting us have turned their attention to collecting data from our own cell phones, making note of who we called, when we called them, and for how long.

The flagrant erosion of our privacy and civil rights have been foisted upon us equally by the Republicans and the Democrats. And while we’ve made spying on Americans our domestic war policy, the war overseas doesn’t seem to be any closer to resolution. Instead, we find ourselves further entangled in the hatreds that have kept the Middle East embroiled in unrest and discontentment for thousands of years.

What’s missing is finality. Like so many conflicts, the only way there will be lasting peace is when there is at last a clear and final winner. We’ve seen it throughout history. The North destroyed the South in the American Civil War. Before that, the United States marched all the way to Mexico City and captured the capital city to end the Mexican American War. And in the best example, Franklin Roosevelt declared that America would accept nothing less than the total and unconditional surrender of Japan in World War II. Clear winners, clear losers. That’s how you end a war.

That’s what’s laughable about Mideast “peace talks” or “truces.” They don’t solve the basic conflict, and they let smolder the hatred that is the underlying cause until it suddenly bursts back into flames.

For the US, we probably undertook the wrong tactic a long time ago, but we certainly did not react appropriately on September 12, 2001. So let’s rewind the clock for a moment, and install your humble editor as President of the United States, and I’ll tell you how I wish we had handled those trying times.

Start with the premise that we have a pretty simple foreign policy under the Estlack administration. You mind your business, and we’ll mind ours. We’ll stand by our allies if you mess with them; and if you ever attack the United States of America on our sovereign soil or our embassies overseas, we will destroy you. And by “destroy you,” I mean just that. We will come kill you, your old people, your women, and your children until the death toll reaches a point that you beg us to stop. None of our weapons are off limits to our use, and unconditional surrender is your only option after our Congress formally declares war on your sorry butt.

If that one paragraph had summed up our foreign policy in 2001 and prior, I think 9-11 probably would not have happened. But if it still happened, then our course of action would have become clear.

We’ll spend the afternoon and night of September 11 binding up our national wounds and taking care of our own. But when the sun rises on 9-12, a new world order would be in the offing. We knew who attacked us, we knew who planned it, and we knew which country was harboring that piece of human feces. After we ask Congress for a formal declaration of war on Afghanistan and the Taliban specifically and Islamic Terrorists in general, my first call that morning would have been to the leaders of Afghanistan: “You have 24 hours to deliver to our embassy – alive or dead – Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants. If you don’t, then may Allah have mercy on your souls because we are going to unleash nuclear Armageddon on you and your people. The clock is ticking.”

The next calls are to Russia and China to tell them we expect to be launching a few “drones” in the form of ICBMs in less than 24 hours; and if they know what’s good for them, they just need to stay the hell out of it.

The clock ticks down. We probably don’t get a delivery, and we hit the button and then watch what happens.

No Americans get cavity searches at airports. The government doesn’t look at your text messages. And we don’t waste time developing the Department of Homeland Security… instead we just let the Department of Defense do what it was meant to do… kill people and break things.

With Afghanistan a wasteland (not much different really – just fewer people), we would have asked “Who’s next?” and then taken appropriate action if Iran or Iraq decided to try something.

It’s that kind of action that stops those who would hurt you. The Jihadists want to consider us the “Great Satan,” so we should make sure they know they are in hell or on their way there. That would have been easy 13 years ago, now the cancer has spread. Now, a lot more people are going to die… on both sides… and this “war” won’t be over anytime soon.

It isn’t easy being free. Threats come from all around you. Sometimes it’s from those close to home; other times it comes from far away.

Being a journalist is particularly treacherous, especially in some parts of the world. Last week, a group of barbarians literally removed the head of one American reporter. The Islamic State – described by the president earlier this year as a “JV” terrorist team – is now proving itself to be the crazy of the crazies.

But you don’t have to travel to the far side of the globe to find crazies or to find people who don’t like to have reporters poking around. In recent weeks, we’ve seen evidence of this in the “Show Me State,” where police have been arresting reporters after a big brouhaha blew up when an officer shot and killed a man.

Was that shooting justified? That’s a topic for another column. What’s important for this discussion is that the death of a minority by a white officer brought the predictable rioting and lawlessness and the equally foreseeable over-reaction by the crisis-lovers in the White House. Ergo, the St. Louis community of Ferguson hit the national spotlight and reporters flooded in.

As of last Tuesday, a total of 11 journalists had been arrested in Ferguson.

It’s worth pausing here to say that the media usually tries to work with local authorities. Each group has a job to do, and the best journalists try not to do anything that would hinder police or other first responders. Our own paper has had a great working relationship with the sheriff’s office as well as fire and EMS personnel. In my 19 years of experience, we’ve only had two occasions where someone tried to interfere with our coverage. One was a wet-behind-the-ears deputy who didn’t last long, and the other was a volunteer who thought he had more authority than he did. In both cases, the press was still given access by higher ranking authorities.

But back to Ferguson. There the police are already under scrutiny because of the nature of the events, and arresting reporters didn’t help their image any. It’s bad enough that the local police are dressed up like paramilitary troopers (in camouflage no less!) so that the whole thing looks like a scene from “Escape from New York.” But coming down on two journalists working on their stories inside McDonald’s is really over the top.

It didn’t help that that a Missouri Highway Patrol representative told reporters that, unless they were carrying $50,000 cameras, “we may take some of you into custody.” Of course, he also said they would quickly “take the proper action” – presumably let them go – once they find out who the journalists are. The catch-and-release policy is probably of little comfort to The Washington Post reporter who says police slammed him into the McDonald’s soda fountain before arresting him without a charge.

To make the bizarre situation even stranger, President Obama took to his teleprompter to defend the “criminal” journalists in Missouri.

“Here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying or arresting journalists who are just trying to do their jobs,” B.O. said.

That’s a laughable comment, coming from the man whose administration has made it a habit of bullying, wiretapping, and intimidating journalists. I guess it’s okay for him to do it but not okay for some “Whitey” cop in Missouri to do it.

Here’s something for the Hypocrite-In-Chief to mull over. Under President Obama, the United States of America has dropped from 32nd to 46th in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index, which is compiled by the press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. The index looks at 180 countries on criteria such as official abuse, media independence and infrastructure to determine how free journalists are to report.

One German journalist had this to say about his treatment in Missouri: “I was in the civil war regions in Georgia, the Gaza strip, illegally visited the Kaliningrad region when travel to the Soviet Union was still strictly prohibited for westerners, I’ve been in Iraq, Vietnam and in China, I’ve met Cuba dissidents. But to be arrested and yelled at and be rudely treated by police? For that I had to travel to Ferguson and St. Louis in the United States of America.”

Beheadings and arrests are the extreme examples of hostile treatment of the press, but they show what can happen if we are not ever vigilant to protect our freedom. And trust me friends, if we don’t have a free press, we don’t have freedom. Who else is going to tell you what’s going on in Missouri or Syria? Who will stand up to report the abuses of government, whether in Congress, the NSA, or the city council?

“The media” is often trashed in the arena of public opinion. And people certainly have a right to their own beliefs and opinions. Reporting the news and printing commentaries on our life and times often results in someone getting their feelings hurt. Sometimes they get so bent out of shape that they let their emotions get the better of them, and they hurl insults or call for boycotts.

That’s fine. It’s their prerogative. But it is “the media” that will stand by their right to say those things even when they themselves would not extend it to others.

 The US House of Representatives last week voted to sue President Barack Obama, claiming the chief executive has overstepped the limits of his powers.

The Republican-led House doesn’t like the way Mr. Obama enforces some laws and not others, and they specifically don’t like the way his administration has chosen to enforce parts of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) but not enforce other parts of the same law.

They have a point, and this column largely believes the GOP is right to be upset with the president on this. However, a lawsuit doesn’t seem like a very good way to handle things. The House’s most effective tool remains its control of the purse strings, and they should pull those strings tight every chance they get, effectively strangling any Obama program they don’t like. Congress putting on the breaks is probably the only way we’ll ever get the shackles back on our government.

Expectations of Congress doing anything right isn’t too high right now. In fact, CNN posted an online story Tuesday with the results of an informal poll. They asked their followers on Facebook and Twitter to describe Congress using only one word. More than 5,000 people responded, and “useless” was the number one response, followed by “worthless” and “joke.”

And it didn’t get any better after that. The next seven most popular responses were “corrupt,” “incompetent,” “lazy,” inept,” “idiots,” “selfish,” and “dysfunctional.”

A word cloud – a graphic representation of the most popular words – showed virtually no positive responses to the question. And some words made the top ten look like compliments. Consider these responses: “criminals,” “traitors,” “crooks,” “losers,” and “crap.”

The article quotes a NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist College poll this week that reports only three percent of voters as considering Congress “productive,” and another poll showing Congress with a 15 percent job approval.

Who are these 15 percent that are pleased with Congress? They need to have their heads examined and their voter registration cards taken away.

Typically, individual Congressmen and Senators get high marks from their constituents. The old “I hate Congress but love my Congressman” phenomenon has been prevalent for years in politics. However, CNN says the Washington Post reported that 51 percent of people now disapprove of their own representative’s job performance.

Results for individual members of Congress weren’t available, but I suspect that our own Mac Thornberry still enjoys a pretty high approval rating by Texans in the 13th District. He shares our values and votes the way most of us probably want him to. Your editor disagrees with Mac occasionally, but largely thinks he’s doing the best he can in a corrupt and broken system.

As a body, Congress is out of touch with the people it represents, has no qualms about ignoring the Constitution unless they want to beat the president over the head with it, and mostly serves to spend money we don’t have to fund a government that generally only makes life more difficult and more expensive.

You can blame it on gridlock if you like. You can point to the fact that Republicans don’t like Democrats and vice versa or that things are more polarized that ever in Washington. But the fact of the matter is things don’t seem to get better whether we have united government or divided government. The government itself is the problem.

Obama had his time with his party in control of both houses of Congress, and yet nothing much was accomplished other than a poorly written health care law that causes more problems than it solves. George W. Bush had his time with his party in power, and yet there were no great strides in rolling back government. The last Bush administration was a study in lost opportunities and, unfortunately, lost freedoms.

Some say that term limits are the answer to this vexing problem. A House full of inexperienced Congressmen, however, would put all the power in the hands of entrenched Congressional aides. The same thing has happened with the executive branch where bureaucrats are running the show largely without the president’s knowledge or permission.

The quality of our Congress and our White House won’t get any better until the people demand it. But the people, for all their supposed frustration, are largely indifferent to Washington. And that is the biggest problem.

School starts in just more than three weeks, and I’m not ready any more than my kids are.

We’ve had a great summer, you see. A 1970s type of summer filled with carefree times for the kids, riding bikes in the neighborhood and going on adventures with the neighborhood kids… which happens to include their cousins.

This was amplified by God gifting us with weather the way I remember it growing up – not as hot and with periodic thunderstorms. This 1970s climate was evidenced by the presence of neighborhood wildlife that has been scarce in recent years. We’ve had lots of fat hop toads, horny toads, and at least one green lizard running about. One local resident even reported on Facebook that he had seen fireflies near his front porch several days ago!

For summer vacation, we went hiking and fishing, and the kids got to capture tadpoles at their aunt’s place in Colorado. But most importantly, they spent most of their time letting their imaginations run wild and just being kids.

That is unfortunately all about to change as we get sucked back into the meat grinder that is modern public education where we get back on “schedules” and spend months doing pointless worksheets, trudging through AR books, and signing off on daily discipline logs… like parents need more paperwork.

I recently read a well-written blog in which a father penned an open letter to their child’s Kindergarten teacher. The author set the groundwork for the school year, said just what he thought of modern education, and longed for his child’s creativity to simply be unleashed. To which I say, “Ditto.”

To say I don’t like the modern school system would be to put it mildly. Don’t get me wrong. There are lots of fine people at our schools, and they all have the best intentions. In fact, I’m intentionally writing this now, before we even know who our kids’ teachers are this year, so that hopefully no one takes anything personally. I don’t really hold any teacher at fault for the situation anyway. I just think, for the most part, it was better when I was in school. I also want to say that I have a good working relationship with the school administration, but our education system is, unfortunately, corrupted by government standards, statistics, and nonsense.

As an entering second grader, Ben has already read more books than I read between Kindergarten and my senior year. I don’t know that we’ve accomplished anything, other than spur a deep dislike in our household for the stupid Accelerated Reader program. (My kids tell me “stupid” is a bad word, but sometimes it fits.) I learned to love to read without having a book a day shoved down my throat.

I could go on all day about the AR program. I think it ultimately drives a lot of kids away from reading, and, as you can imagine given my profession, I believe that isn’t a desirable outcome.

Let’s turn our attention to school supplies. Why do I have to send $1.50 for an AR folder that costs 50¢ at the store? Why doesn’t the school just budget a couple of hundred dollars and buy the stupid folders? (Sorry, there’s that word again.) Use my tax dollars wisely, please. Maybe we could skip the year-end trip to Wonderland and spring for some of these “essential” supplies. Indeed, maybe we could just skip the entire last week of school. We’re not learning anything that week anyway.

Why does a Kindergartener need ten glue sticks? When I was in Kindergarten we made one jar of Elmer’s paste last nine months.

And why do I need to put my kid’s name on the school supplies? Modern education just puts all the supplies in community buckets where we put them in our own individual boxes and had to keep up with them. Last year, my son complained that one of his classmates had bitten all the erasers off all the pencils. I’m not sure what was more disconcerting… the possibility that this other child had eaten a lot of rubber or the idea that my child was using a pencil that someone else’s little darling had been slobbering on. Either way, I wasn’t happy.

Then there’s the time issue. It’s a big ordeal if I don’t get my children to school by 8 o’clock on the dot. And that’s as it should be. We need to be punctual. But the school also needs to be appreciative of my time and not waste it unnecessarily. Specifically, if I have to take off work to go get my kids, I would appreciate it if you had them ready to go promptly at 3:30. I shouldn’t have to wait 20 minutes for the pep rally to end when I need to get to back to work. Think about the schedules of working parents when you plan things.

Our school system, unfortunately, spends a lot of time doing what parents should be doing. I blame welfare, the disintegration of families, and a lack of church-going for a bunch of that. Kids should be ready to learn and ready to interact with other children and with adults and know how to behave.

This summer was a reminder of how things should be… simpler and better. We need a quality of education and not just a quanity of eduction. We need a school that produces better than average students, better than average citizens, and not just better quantitative data and test scores.

The nation got something of a birthday present from the Supreme Court Monday, sending conservatives’ hearts soaring and unleashing the usual drivel from the left.

Just in time for Independence Day, the court ruled 5-4 that the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, violates the constitutional rights of Hobby Lobby and similar private businesses by requiring them to offer their employees contraceptives that the business owners say are contrary to their religious beliefs.

The decision is being hailed as a victory for religious freedom in that the government is prevented from making an employer doing something contrary to his or her religious tenants. Democrats, however, are wringing their hands that women might have their employers all up in their business – so to speak – in terms of what contraceptives they can have.

This is not the case, of course. Women are free to go get whatever contraceptive they want. The court just says the government can’t compel your employer to pay for it through your job’s health insurance.

It’s not surprising the outrage from the left on this topic. Democrats don’t have any problem with the government sticking its nose in all our private health care matters. In fact, the president’s answer to this ruling is that he will simply find a way for the government to pay for contraception for women who are adversely affected by the decision.

The real outrage is that the government is even involved in this issue at all. It is most unfortunate that this is just a narrow ruling dealing. It does nothing to overturn Obamacare. It is simply another chink in the armor that demonstrates how flawed the law is.

The High Court, led by John Roberts – who is either incompetent or a traitor, maintains that the ACA with its individual mandate is constitutional. But the Supreme Court has made mistakes before, and this is one of them. Obamacare violates the very spirit of the Constitution and only through Roberts’ delusions or blatant misinterpretations can one say that the Founders ever intended such a bureaucratic monstrosity to be foisted upon the American people.

The court needs to revisit the law as a whole and tackle some basic questions. Why should employers be required to provide health insurance at all? What gives the government the authority to tell businesses they have to provide this level of coverage or that level coverage? And in what alternate universe is it okay for the government to require citizens to buy a product (in this case health insurance) just as a condition of existing?

Your health care is or ought to be your personal business. This is about business and ought to be controlled by the free market. You have no right to “free” contraceptives. If you want it, you should have to go buy it. If you can’t afford it, then keep your pants on. That would solve a lot of society’s problems anyway.

 

Meanwhile…

Clarendon celebrates its 137th July Fourth this week, and we take pleasure in presenting you our annual Pioneer Edition of The Donley County Leader, recapping the news of yesteryear.

For history buffs like your editor and Donley County Historical Chair Jean Stavenhagen, it is easy to get lost in the research. We set out looking for something, and then become distracted by some point of trivia or an unrelated story that simply begs us to read it.

It is always striking to see so many themes repeating themselves in our history. The issues that face our people don’t change much as evidenced by our article selections this year. Recent rains have given us relief from a torturous drought, but we’ve had droughts before and will again. The Black Sunday storm from 1935 drives home the point that things are not as bad as they could be… or might be.

As our Chamber of Commerce Board continues to reinvigorate that organization and consider such issues as dues and management, it is somewhat reassuring to know that we are not the first to deal with those issues. It was topic for discussion 67 years ago.

And as excited as we all are over the new playground being dedicated this week, that too is history repeating itself. For in 1947, the Lions Club and several other organizations installed new equipment for children in the park. And sadly, we find in our files that feeding hungry kids was also a hot issues then as well. But six decades later, good people are still rising to meet that challenge.

This is the story of our people. We face obstacles and overcome them. We try to do right and leave things a little better than we found them, and then we pass it to the next generation, hoping they will do the same.

What does this newspaper mean to you? Perhaps it’s a source of information, a chronicle of your life’s story within this community, or a way to keep up with your kids or grandkids in school. Perhaps you rely on it for entertainment or just to see what’s going to happen next. Maybe you just read it to make sure you’re not in the obituaries this week or to find out where the best garage sales will be. Maybe its editorial stances or columns rub you the wrong way, but you still read it to be in the know.

A good newspaper can be a great asset to its community. If you look around at small towns that are successful, you will most likely find a vibrant newspaper there as well, covering the news, pushing for progress, and keeping a watchful eye on elected officials.

In my college days, I participated in a study of the economies of 17 communities in the Hill Country and, given my field of study, I picked up a paper in each one if it was available. Without exception, the busiest towns had great newspapers.

One hundred and thirty-six years ago this week, your newspaper got its start with its primary mission to report the happenings in a fledgling colony and to attract more settlers to the area. What began as a monthly publication on the banks of the Salt Fork of the Red River grew and changed – and even moved – with Clarendon, reporting the ups and downs of life in Donley County.

Publishers have come and gone, and the name has changed; but whether you grew up with it as The Donley County Leader, The Clarendon Press, or The Clarendon Enterprise, our community has been fortunate to have a solid newspaper that supports its people as much as its readers and advertisers support it.

Earlier this year, the Enterprise was the focus of a feature by ProNews 7’s Larry Lemmons that talked a lot about the paper’s place as the oldest newspaper in the Texas Panhandle. One of the interviewees for that story talked about the uniqueness of still having a local paper. That comment may have seemed odd to many people, but imagine what it would be like not to have your local paper, not to have someone to count on to cover the Broncos or the Owls, or not to have a place to advertise your local business, or publicize your garage sale.

For people in Wellington and Memphis, that scenario became a reality last week with the merger of those papers, along with the papers in Childress and Hollis, into one new publication called the Red River Sun. It is not the intent or the place of this column to second guess or criticize the owner of those papers for this decision. The Enterprise does however sorrowfully reflect on the loss of three unique Panhandle institutions, each of which have existed for more than 100 years. The Childress Index and the Hall County Herald (long known as the Memphis Democrat) were both founded in the 19th century, and The Wellington Leader, as its nameplate trumpeted, had been “A Builder in Collingsworth County for 105 Years.”

Each of those papers were pioneers of their communities and were at one time or another helmed by legendary newspapermen. Their archives are the repositories of history for their counties, and their pages tell the stories of the people who helped settle this land.

The next few weeks will certainly be a transition time for Memphis and Wellington, and hopefully it will go as smoothly as possible. But there is understandably some trepidation among the people of those towns, and very likely a sense of loss for readers there.

Another long-running paper, The Paducah Post, closed last month with little fanfare, leaving the folks of Cottle County with no local news outlet.

These are not the first closures or consolidations we’ve seen of historic Panhandle papers. More than a year ago, the Motley County Tribune and the Briscoe County News were folded into a new publication, the Caprock Courier. And McLean and Lefors were long ago brought under the umbrella of the Groom News.

We live in a time of change for the newspaper industry. Large papers who lost their focus have gone under, and other papers have slimmed down due to tough economic pressures. The digital revolution brings its own pitfalls and opportunities for newspapers, and today’s young adults consume news very differently from their parents and grandparents.

The Enterprise, by whatever name, has been covering the news since 1878, and we are continually grateful for the support and faith of our readers and advertisers. We will change and adapt as best we can with the times, but we are not going anywhere. More and more of our readers receive our news and columns in some electronic format, and this editorial is the first to have been published digitally before it was printed on paper.

Our commitment, however, remains the same as it was 136 years ago… to provide you with the best news coverage possible and to promote the growth and development of Clarendon and Donley County. We’ve never wavered from that, and we never will.