Opinion

TEXAS’ RIVERS ARE iconic. But the groundwater that sustains them is invisible.

I WAS IN SHOCK at this editorial (Field Notes, Jan. 21, 2021, The Canadian Record). Speaking of the inauguration you comment, “At last, for some of us, it was welcome news.” I have respected your liberal views; you were always fair and publishing my letters, and I gained in respect for you. I knew your dad, and my dad and he enjoyed their arguments at the Killarney Cafe. Most of all, he and I would take up arms to defend your right to express those views. Now it is evident that you are either very naive or complicit in believing and perpetuating the lies that have abounded from your party leaders. Now we see, beyond a doubt, that the concerted effort to do away with our Constitutional rights is in full swing. Almost everything you and the Demo-Socialist party have accused President Trump and the Republican Party of being guilty of, your leaders have been guilty of those very things. The Communist axiom, “If you tell a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it.” That defines the last four years of hate and spite that we the American people have had to endure. Already our freedom of speech is threatened, beginning on our college/university campuses. Now, the media are being told what to say and what to refuse. Preachers are being told what they must not preach, never mind the Bible. Now you will get what you want; with it, the government will control what you can write.

I’M WORRIED. Took a test last week and passed—or failed—with flying colors, depending on one’s perspective. The Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 is a screening tool used by medical professionals to evaluate worrywarts and to quantify the severity of their anxiety.

I LISTENED WEDNESDAY, with half of my attention and all of my hope, to President Joseph R. Biden’s inaugural words. Words matter to me a great deal, and these words—delivered after four years of hate-filled vulgarity and hollow, self-serving lies, which emanated like dry thunderstorm from Trump’s White House—these words mattered more than most.

FIVE PEOPLE DIED AS A RESULT of Wednesday’s mob assault on the U.S. Capitol—and their deaths will linger in the nation’s conscience.

Please join us this week in paying tribute to our own choice for Citizens of the Year 2020: the health care workers who have served selflessly, sacrificed daily, and risked their own health and safety, and that of their own families, in their tireless efforts to heal us and protect us from harm. Each of these men and women—regardless of whether they are doctors, nurses or aides, clerical workers or lab technicians, administrators or receptionists, maintenance workers or kitchen staff, paramedics or physical therapists—have been asked to perform additional tasks and work longer hours, under far greater duress, giving up time with their own families and loved ones to battle on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. We owe them honor and respect, and our heartfelt gratitude, for their willingness to rise to the immeasurably difficult task of saving lives and protecting this community.

AT THE BEGINNING of every year for the past 72 years since this newspaper has been under the independent ownership of the Ezzell family, we have published a statement of principles which has guided us in the week-to-week conduct of The Record. We have carefully re-read this brief public statement in light of our changing times, and from the perspective of years, and find no reason to change it in any way as we prepare for the beginning of another new year. — LEB

I LOOK MORE LIKE a bundle of laundry than a twinkle in anyone’s eye. It is my first Christmas, one to which I am blithely indifferent, swaddled in blankets and cradled in my father’s arms.

TEXANS ARE LEARNING that the state’s attorney general isn’t a very good lawyer. Ken Paxton sued four other states this week, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to toss the Electoral College votes from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin because of the election changes they made in response to the pandemic.

THIS HAS BEEN a strange year. This is a strange holiday season. This is a strange time to buy gifts for kith and kin. We are used to braving very large crowds at very large brick-and-mortar emporiums. We can still go to them, but being cheek-by-jowl among strangers is not healthy this strange year.