Opinion

CONFUSED ABOUT VOTING? Voting clerks in parts of Texas are confused, too. All the political chatter about problems with the U.S. Postal Service and voting by mail has some election officials telling their voters to cast absentee ballots by bringing them to the main office instead of dropping them in the mail. They’re also telling voters to bring approved voter identification if they vote that way—just as if they were voting in person—and not to bring anyone else’s ballot, sealed or not.

AS OF THURSDAY, COVID-19 had killed 14,590 Texans. That’s the official number.

ARMED WITH LAPTOP, CAMERA, and tape recorder last Wednesday morning, I arrived at the County Exhibition Center for state Rep. Ken King’s town hall meeting. I entered the room and was greeted by a friendly group of my fellow-citizens who had come to hear their state representative speak.

IT WAS A SIMPLE STORY about a meeting of a non-profit organization. Received too late for the print edition, we posted it on our Facebook page, as is our custom.

More than 5 million acres have burned in wildfires on the West Coast. Thousands of structures have been destroyed and tens of thousands of residents of Oregon, California, and Washington have been displaced. At least 27 have died, with more still missing, and the fires continue to spread. In Idaho, today, hundreds of firefighters are battling more than a dozen fires, relying on regional and state firefighting resources that are already stretched too thin.

PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS OFTEN promised to make his tax returns public. Thus far, he has not.

WE WERE REMINDED, this week, of the true purpose of Labor Day—to pay tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers. While the rest of us were settling in for a quiet three-day weekend, our city’s street and water department crews were called to work early Saturday morning.

By The Honorable Beverly Woolley, The Honorable Peggy Hamric, The Honorable Marsha Farney, Jenifer Sarver, Donna Parker, Cathy Cody, Linda Garza, and Maria Garza Brown WE KNOW SCHOOL WILL look different this year for our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. We hope all Texas students and their teachers have a safe and successful year.

THOSE NUMBERS ARE PEOPLE. It’s easy to forget, when you’re taking a daily look at a dashboard tracking the coronavirus, at the closed businesses and unemployed workers across the state that mark the path of the recession, at efforts to educate Texas kids in classrooms or in their homes, or at the logistics of breaking the social distancing blues with some college football.

“Teachers are writing wills.” That was the headline that stopped me in my tracks one day in the midst of preparing for our back-to-school coverage and the Pigskin Preview edition. Stopped me cold. Said “Go no farther until you have considered what this means.”