Columns & Editorials

In late December of 1972 I was a 16-year-old high school kid growing up in Floresville, Texas 30 miles south of San Antonio. A very rare thing happened at the NorthPark Theater on Loop 410 and IH 10 in North San Antonio. There was the world premiere of a movie. Not Hollywood, not New York, but there was an actual world movie premiere in San Antonio.

Dear Aunt B,

On our little farm in Lone Oak, Texas, we have cattle, a horse, ten chickens and a little Aussie-Pom dog named Toby. I’m just going to say it: Toby is a chicken chaser. He acts a lot more like an Aussie than a Pomeranian. However, our chickens, as you can imagine, don’t much like being chased. Our chicken coop is against the barn a good 200 yards in back of our house, and in between is the cow pasture. Lori and I have invested a great deal of time attaching rabbit fencing to the cow panels that surround our back yard. We have put up 200 feet so far and every time it seems like Toby won’t get out…he does. We only need to put up about fifty more feet and the entire back yard should be completely puppy proof.

Two years into the pandemic and we have yet to find our footing. The call to “get back to normal” continues, but I think “normal” no longer exists nor will it ever exist again. But isn’t that a good thing? As we look back at “normal”, should we be eager to return to that place? Do we want to return to low expectations and low achievement? Let’s look at what “normal” was.

Watching a campfire flame flicker and dance can be mesmerizing or inspiring depending on the point of view of the watcher. Similarly, watching the actions of a teacher who is teaching a lesson to their class can also be mesmerizing and inspiring. The best teachers enthrall and enchant their students with the lesson being taught. Sometimes the material being covered doesn’t seem to invoke an enchanted response from the students in the class– just as often the most basic lesson catches a student so completely that the rest of the year goes easier for that student to the point that the learning becomes nearly effortless.

Dear Aunt B,

When you reach the appropriate age, it’s easy to apply for Social Security retirement benefits – just go to Social Security’s website and fill out the online form. But there’s another part of the application process that a surprising number of people ignore – the part that asks how much money, if any, you want withheld for federal taxes. And if you skip this section, you could face an unpleasant surprise when it’s tax-filing time.

Dear Aunt B,

Aesop was a storyteller in ancient Greece who lived over 500 years before the birth of Christ. He was also a slave, but because of his ability to learn and tell stories we now know him two and a half millennia later because he was a storyteller. His fables lived on through oral tradition and weren’t even written down until a couple of centuries after his death. By then, a lot of stories have creeped into the volume of his work and were attributed to him. A lot of Aesop’s fables, most of us have never heard. However, many told during our childhood have become part of us, stories like: The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Lion and the Mouse, The Fox and the Grapes.

It’s refreshing to see the increased interest in homeschooling. It is a great time for parents to trust their ability to ensure their children learn not only the academic content required by the state, but the moral, spiritual, social, and ethical standards that best suit their families. Homeschooling removes children from environments where parents have limited control and allows them to teach their children in an environment that they select and supervise. Given the conditions of many campuses and classrooms in our public schools, this can be a positive move for many families.

Now that spring break for Forney ISD is finished, the last part of the school year begins with time marching just a bit faster than perhaps students, teachers, and parents want. It is again a time of last “firsts” for students and parents– last first game, meet, theater opening night, band concert, state level event. But it is also time for many first “firsts” –first varsity start, first starring role, first solo performance. The teachers in Forney ISD also are working even harder to get all of their students ready for the end of year testing and utilizing the grants that were funded last fall by the Forney Education Foundation.

When you’re driving these days, it’s pretty hard to get lost because your smartphone’s Global Positioning System (GPS) can get you just about anywhere. And as an investor, you can have a similar experience by employing another directional tool – a personalized financial strategy.

It turns out that living in a 130-year-old house is a constant adventure. We are constantly finding things that we didn’t know were there. One thing for example, Lori was checking the filter in a return air grill that is no longer in use. When she pulled out the filter, she found a Brinkman Flashlight that still works. A couple of weeks ago she found a nice picture frame behind one of the wardrobes the previous owners had left behind.