Opinion

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.

GAIL WATERFIELD’S LETTER (at right) appeared on my desk this week unanticipated. It is a contemplation of home and of aging—and how our definitions of both inevitably change.

THE PANDEMIC FELT so far away out here. My husband and I live eight miles south of Glen Rose—the nearest town of any size—barely over the Somervell-Bosque county line.

MOST OF THE VOTE counting is over. Most of the noise, with any luck at all, is behind us—although, the Electoral College voting happens in two weeks. Cross your fingers, if you haven’t stuck them in your ears.

AT THE FREEDOM FORUM, we’ve thought about creating t-shirts that read: “Free speech: Complicating Thanksgiving Dinner since 1791.”

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC has laid much of the American economy on its back—but a bright spot made the disaster less crippling than it might have been. That is the Paycheck Protection Program, which funneled money to workers through small businesses.

THE LAST 10 DAYS of election fracas have recalled to mind a prayer, from the evening of Nov. 4, 1992, less than 24 hours after William Jefferson Clinton defeated George H.

IN A POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT like Washington, D.C., the kinds of legal perils encircling Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton might be grounds for firing, impeachment, or congressional investigation. Paxton, indicted more than five years ago on securities fraud charges, has not yet had his day in court.

FOR OVER 11 DECADES, savvy Hemphill Countians have set their holiday clocks for 11:30 am on the first Friday in December—the date of the Annual WCTU Bazaar. Some of us schedule playoff football games around the event.

FOR ANYONE WORN-OUT from the election and disillusioned by the state of our politics (and that probably covers most of us), we now have the perfect antidote–Veterans Day.