Columns & Editorials

When Should You Take Social Security?

I am a middle-aged man. I am looking for a good woman to build a long-term relationship. As you can imagine I have had some bad luck in the past. Any help would be appreciated.

There is so much noise, so much racket in the world. We are assaulted by the sounds, the sights, the smells. Someone is always pushing, always pulling, always needing something from us. Do you feel this way, too? Recently, there has been much debate over what defines a woman. Oddly polarizing this commentary has become. Some groups stake their claim on the hill of biology. Their battle cry is a rousing “God does not make mistakes.” Others attack with a cacophony of righteous statements like, “God does not get to decide what I am or am not.” While I side with the former, my condensed disquisition pivots on a single mantra. It is based on the things we carry, we women of this world. God especially equipped us with this gift that cannot be replicated or faked or hidden or pushed into oblivion. We carry. Period with a “T.”

Snakes play a significant role in the legend of St. Patrick, the primary patron saint of Ireland and the man who inspired a wildly popular mid-March holiday. Though the notion of St.

My heart is broken. I don’t want to go into particulars because they are too painful. I realize this leaves you with little information to go on, but do you have any advice at all?

Dear Aunt B, I am angry a great deal of the time. I get mad about something nearly every day. It is not always something big, but I’m starting to wonder if this is a normal thing. I don’t like to get mad. It just seems like something always happens.

When I was around seven years old, I wrote a eulogy for a dying cat. I was a melodramatic child who lived out in the country in an area known for dog and cat dumping. The 70s were crazy times. Animal rescue wasn’t a thing. Pets seemed more, well, disposable, for lack of better words. At least, that is the way it seemed to me. Every morning was a new adventure. One day might provide the companionship of a heavily pregnant shepherd mix. The next day could have me wooing timid cats. We even provided a wayward goose with a soft place to land for a few months. We rehabilitated a nestless trio of too young bunnies whose mother had fallen victim to an evil tractor. Though never successfully hatched, there were many fallen swallow eggs coddled under lights, wrapped in the warmth of my mother’s heating pad. My father was not excited by the thought of spending money on feeding animal mouths over people mouths, but we did everything we could to help. Daddy was known to show up at his friends’ homes with a plea to accompany him to the animal shelter where a city address could enable a guy from the boondocks to drop off a collection of mutts no one wanted anymore. I would become inconsolable at the loss of “my” dogs and cats (the goose left town on his own), but daddy would sit me in his lap and tell me the story of Peter Rabbit and how he freed all the pets from the tar pit. “You see, DD,” my father would gently say, “if Peter kept all these animals, he wouldn’t be able to help all the new ones who needed him.” This was all before Emmanuel, though.

As the Executive Director of the Texas Association of Rural Schools and a former rural school superintendent, my insights into how state laws affect local school communities are shaped by my direct experiences. It's from this informed position that I stress the critical nature of the March 5 primary for the advancement of all students in Texas' public education system.

I am doing pretty good. Don’t get me wrong, I have life issues like the rest. Can you help me deal with my adult children’s issues? I thought the terrible twos were bad, but this is that on steroids. I need help.

Anxious all the time Dear Anxious all the time, I need to start this by reminding you that Aunt B’s advice is general advice. It should never be taken as personal therapy. All you are getting is Aunt B’s opinion of things. There are many people that know way more than Aunt B. All this being said, if you need professional help, reach out to someone. Do not consider my advice as professional help. If you are not sitting down with a professional talking one on one in a personal and professional setting, you are not getting that type of advice. I don’t believe you any longer need to be in person. I have heard of some good programs that you might meet with a mental health professional through an online portal. Just be sure and check out the organization and the individual's credentials.

February 12, 1899, the temperature dropped all the way to minus 23 degrees in the town of TULIA in our Panhandle. Reports from that time say the extreme “norther” that ripped through killed 40,000 head of cattle during that night! That February 11–13 cold spell in the Tulia area (Swisher County) affected all the Southern Panhandle area.

I compare myself to others all the time. I never measure quite up to the ones I compare with. This leaves me feeling like a loser. How can I stop this comparison thing?

We talk incessantly about loss around here. It isn’t that I’m an expert on loss. It is more that I am a student of loss. While not a class I intended on enrolling in, loss, and his partner grief, have proven themselves to be apt professors. See, I still want to see God’s beauty in this cruel world. You may say prayer is the answer. I happen to agree with you. But, how does one use prayer to the fullest in the face of the paramount tragedy, the death of a child? Professors Loss & Grief tell me it is by diving in headfirst. A shrinking wallflower does not an intentional prayer make. Now, I may have forgotten to tell you one important detail. I have flunked this class several times already. Many of my exercises remain nonsubmitted zeros in the grade book. Others have been masterfully plagiarized, nearly to the point of my expulsion. I may or may not have paraphrased a few Edna St. Vincent Millay poems into prayer assignments, but let’s have that remain between us, shall we? During my current enrollment period, I have managed to pass most of the class. I’m now in the do or die phase. Everything rides on this final grade. And, it is the direst assignment of them all. I call it prayer by practice. How do you show up for someone else when you still can’t emotionally handle your own stuff?