Columns

For those who don’t keep up with the news, recently in north Texas, there have been eight school superintendents who have announced they are quitting or retiring immediately or at the end of the school year. According to news outlets, most of the separations were self-initiated and without questions of malfeasance related to the job or the law. The number of exits in a threemonth window is much higher than typical superintendent attrition statistics.

This was the “runner-up”for the back of my Mama’s funeral program this past February. My siblings and I appreciate your attendance at this celebration of the life of our Mama, Wanda Sipes.

Years ago, songwriter Mac Davis penned the lyrics to a song about a tiny orphan girl who evidently longed to experience being loved. In the song, “Whoever Finds This, I Love You”, she writes a note containing those words, and it into the wind. A lonely old man eventually found the note among the autumn leaves and read her plea for love. That was the beginning of a beautiful and warm friendship that both desperately needed.

Our friend, David, is a rancher who has handled and sold thousands of cattle through the years. One particular part of the job of raising cattle is roundup time in the fall. All those animals have to be gathered up so new babies can be branded, the unhealthy treated, older cows can be separated out to be sold or recreated as steaks, and the whole crowd counted and accounted.

Earlier this month, James Tiberius Kirk, Captain of the Starship Enterprise, and otherwise known as William Shatner, ventured where few have gone before — into outerspace. Not in his official capacity as a senior Star Fleet officer, mind you, but as a civilian just like you and me. Shatner made the suborbital flight atop a Blue Origin rocket at the invite of that company’s owner, Jeff Bezos (purportedly the richest person on the planet). And Shatner’s reactions to the adventure were much as mine would be, I’m sure: initially, terror at the thought that the rocket (fed up with the ups and downs of space flight) might decide to commit suicide by exploding, followed by the giddiness of gamboling about in the space capsule weightless as a feather, then amazed at the view of Mother Earth laid out below him. But finally, awestruck; awed at how thin and vulnerable Earth’s biosphere truly is. The only known life-sustaining biosphere in the whole of the universe.

We’re fast approaching the season for the annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s. Current plans are to be back LIVE and in person this year! No matter where you live, there’s a Walk close to you! Texas Walks are just part of the over 600 being held nationally this year.