Lone Ranger arrives in Waller County

Who is that masked man?
Get used to the question. I hear it a lot. I use it a lot. It goes with the territory of being the owner/president of the Lone Ranger Fan Club. Yes, you are now stuck with a fanatic of a 75-year-old masked cowboy as the General Manager (editor, reporter, photographer, whatever) of this here fine newspaper.
Don’t worry, I am somewhat normal. In addition to Westerns, I also like sci-fi/fantasy, especially Star Trek and Star Wars. First and foremost, however, I am a Christian. But since Christians outnumber Lone Ranger fans (at least where I’m from), I tend to stand out a little more for my fanaticism than my faith.
Believe me, I am much more interested in being faithful to God than I am interested in the faithful Indian companion.
Having lived most recently in the Texas Panhandle area, I was in good company. There were churches on every corner and people took great pride in their church and their faith. Being new here (four hours on the job at the time of this writing), I have a lot to learn about the degree of belief (or lack thereof) in this county.
In fact, there is a lot I am looking forward to learning about the communities we serve. I hope in time that you will come to know me just as well, be it through my column or, preferably, in person.
I am admittedly bad with names and will have to ask your name at least five times and introduce myself twice before I finally put names and faces together. Still, I hope that won’t discourage you from coming in the office or stopping me on the street to say hi.
One of the things I hope you learn about me is my love for community journalism. I am a firm believer that while a newspaper may be owned by a person or corporation, it really belongs to the people of the community. It is truly for the people, by the people. As a one-man reporting staff (with correspondents), I can’t be at all places all the time, especially if I’m stopped on the street to meet someone.
I will do my best to cover the news and events of the community, but I will also be depending on you, the readers, to send us stuff to put in the paper. That is the interactive aspect that is mutually beneficial. I encourage people to participate in the newspaper, either by submitting items to run, suggesting stories or writing letters to the editor.
Together, we can really go places. I want the Waller County News Citizen to be the best newspaper it can be, and I’m sure you’d like to be the best one you read. I plan to be here a good long time so I hope this will be the beginning of a great relationship.
At least for now you have an idea of just who this masked man is.
Hi-Yo Silver, away!

Hereford a hard place to leave

In my first column for the Hereford Brand eight short months ago I noted that Hereford is good people.
I still say this is the friendliest place I’ve ever been. The people in Hereford are truly remarkable. They’re hard-working, kind, considerate and very helpful. I can say that I’ve not met anyone here that I didn’t find likeable or at the very least somewhat agreeable.
Those in public office have been outstanding to work with. Good news or bad, everyone has cooperated with me and not tried to hide anything from me. I can’t tell you how rare that is with government in general.
City Manager Rick Hanna has bent over backward on many an occasion to help with stories or even to suggest them. County officials have always been upfront with me about things, even when it put them in a bad light. The school district does a phenomenal job of providing the paper with information and photographs. The same goes for the law enforcement agencies.
Hereford is the kind of place where folks still say hi to strangers and often make sure they’re not strangers for very long. A prime example of this is my friend Shawn Wyly.
Shawn lives just outside of Amarillo, but he’s an ol’ Hereford boy. I’m sure many people here know him or know of him. I met Shawn three years ago when I moved from Colorado to Amarillo. He was teaching a Sunday school class at Paramount Terrace Christian Church.
I have never met a more honest, hard-working and God-fearing man in my life. I am a better person for having known him. He has done a lot to lift up and encourage me and my family, especially during our early struggles after moving here. I think he is typical of the kind of person one finds in Hereford.
I don’t know how much of Hereford’s character is shaped by the geography and climate, but one can’t help but notice that folks here value the rugged individual spirit of the West combined with the biblical Golden Rule. A person from Hereford will not ask for help unless he really needs it, nor will he wait to be asked to offer it.
I had many high hopes of settling down in Hereford and raising my family in this place and with those values. But, as the saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, try telling him your plans.
Sandy and I have prayed often and at length these past few months for God to show us where to live and what to do with our lives. We did so with the mindset that Hereford would be our home and it was only a matter of time before he showed us the house where we would live and the job Sandy would be doing.
Not long ago, God answered those prayers in a very clear and bold way. He provided Sandy’s grandfather’s house to us, not in Hereford, but in Rosenberg, which is on the west side of Houston. Her grandfather has been wanting to move into a senior apartment, but doesn’t want to sell his home yet due to the poor market conditions. It meets a need for both of us.
At the same time, I was offered a job nearby in Hempstead as the general manager of the Waller County News Citizen. As they say, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
I leave Hereford with nothing but good feelings and no regrets. This town has been great for me and will always have a soft spot in my heart. I hope that I will have opportunities to return and see folks I have dared call friend and a place that makes me feel warm inside, though as if it were home.
In my absence I leave a mostly new news crew here at the Brand. I trust them to your care and know you will treat them right, just as they will do their best to take care of you.
Many of you have been introduced to Eddie Farrell, who will take on most of the reporting duties. Tyler Jameson will be doing a lot of the layout of the paper and will also do some reporting. Desarae Phipps is a part-time staff member who mostly handles obituaries, police reports, Meet Your Neighbor and lifestyles. I am confident you will not be disappointed in their efforts.
That leaves two people on the editorial side who have been the backbone of this operation in my time here. The publisher, Grover Ford, came here three months after me and has done an outstanding job with the paper. At a time when the industry is tanking and papers are downsizing and laying off staff, the Brand has grown and added personnel.
He is a newspaper wizard and has been the best mentor I’ve had in this business. I will miss him more than he knows.
That leaves my intrepid sports editor, Skip Leon. What can you say about Skip? I’ve never know anyone who loved his work more, laughed as hard (or as often) and been as dedicated and dependable as Skip. Y’all already know what a treasure he is.
He has the second-longest tenure on staff next to pressman Rick Castaneda and he has now been slapped with the franchise tag. If this were the NFL, he’s what you’d call a future hall of famer.
Alas, I hate long goodbyes and I’ve rambled long enough. If you want to keep up with my writings, I will continue to post my columns on my blog at joesouthern.blogspot.com. Feel free to join me there. I’ll see you in cyberspace!

Does God transcend time? I think so

A great thinker I am not.
It goes with being a guy, I guess. When we are focused on something important like a workshop project, a really good football game, or women, we can think as deep as the best of ’em.
The rest of the time, well, … let’s not go there.
Women on the other hand can think deep, wide and often.
My wife, for example, frequently complains of not being able to sleep because her brain is too busy. I can’t say I’ve ever had that problem. By the time my head hits the pillow it’s usually just a matter of seconds, perhaps minutes, before the internal lights are out.
That being said, I do have a tendency to daydream, especially during my hour-long commute from Amarillo.
In recent weeks my pastor at Washington Avenue Christian Church has been preaching about how big God is. Coincidentally, it’s the same thing we’ve been studying in our Sunday school class. I’ve also had that conversation several times off and on with a friend of mine back in Colorado.
I have come to the conclusion that the human brain is incapable of comprehending all that God is. God made everything that exists, including time. I still have a hard time understanding how anything can exist outside of time, but apparently God does.
Follow me now into my private little twilight zone for a minute or two. God is eternal. Eternity has no beginning and no end. Yet everything in the physical universe is governed by time – and has a start and finish.
Human beings see time in the linear way God created it. It only moves in one direction. Its beginning and end are hidden from us. We don’t know when and how things were created. We just know they were.
I don’t think eternity is linear at all. I think it exists without boundaries. It has depth and dimensions as well as direction. I think that is how God is omnipresent. He can and does visit every moment in time. Because of that, he appears to be everywhere at once, at least from our limited perspective.
I take a lot of comfort in knowing that God resides in eternity. I would hate to think he is limited by the confines of his creation. And there is no doubt in my mind that God created the universe and everything in it.
Evolution is an interesting concept, but it has fatal flaws. It cannot tell us how matter came into existence. It cannot explain how such and amazingly complex universe was formed and functions as orderly as it does. It cannot explain how life came to be. It cannot explain time.
To understand God – as much as we are capable of understanding him – is to know that all those things will be made known when we reach the next life after this.
I’ve heard it said that some think Hell is an existence in eternity separated from God. I think that much is given, but I think it’s going to be a lot more painful than that. But that’s another topic for another day.
I mention that because I was trying to fathom what oblivion would be like. What would it be like if nothing existed? What if you were self-aware, but there was nothing else to be aware of. That would be an empty, lonely existence that spanned beyond known time. That in and of itself would be hell.
I am comforted in knowing I have an eternity in paradise awaiting me rather than eternal oblivion/damnation. I am also comforted in knowing my thoughts don’t go much deeper than that. I don’t know about you, but this is giving me a headache.
I’d rather think about much simpler things like football, cheeseburgers, sunny beaches and intimacy with my wife – and not necessarily in that order and most definitely not at the same time.
Women are very adept at thinking about multiple things simultaneously. So can most children. I think the human male loses that ability about the time the hormones kick in. That’s when men develop the one-track mind.
My wife can watch television, talk on the phone, browse Web sites on her laptop computer and maintain two instant messaging conversations without missing a thing. My children can do that to a certain degree as long as two or more of the elements involve electronic devices.
Yet when women try to focus on just one thing, they go bonkers. I think they have too much mental energy to handle just one thing at a time.
Well, there I go again, trying to think too much. I should know better than to try and understand women. I will have to accept on faith that they are creatures wonderfully and perfectly made by God and, like all the other mysteries in life, will be explained at a time of God’s choosing.
I just don’t know which mystery will be harder to understand – time or women!
(Joe Southern’s column and other writings can be found online at joesouthern.blogspot.com)

Writer's block a sure sign of brain damage

Never stare at a blank page for more than five minutes at a time.
On that note, it has now taken me about 20 hours to start this column. That is 20 hours, 10 cups of coffee, 15 trips to the bathroom, a dozen consultations with my staff on their stories, a half-dozen meetings with my boss and a brisk walk outside.
No matter what I do, the page never seems to fill itself. It’s what they call writer’s block. It’s a near-fatal disease for a journalist. You know you’ve got a pretty severe case when you start writing a column about it.
Maybe I should just call in sick. Or at least brain damaged.
Being brain damaged is a prerequisite for journalism. It goes with having an open mind in the name of being fair and unbiased. I’ve learned from my liberal friends that the more you open your mind the more susceptible to brain damage you are. That doesn’t mean I’m closed-minded – I just don’t buy everything that I’m told like some in this business will do.
I’ve been in this business long enough to understand why the ranks of editorial staffs are filled with left-wingers. They’re taught at an early age to be open to all viewpoints and to value each one equally.
In journalism school you learn to value freedom of the press at a much higher level than the average American. You’re taught to value all freedoms and you’re taught to treat the crackpot with the same level of respect as the most distinguished statesman. After you’ve listened to enough crackpots (and statesmen for that matter) you begin to believe some or all of what they say. At the very least you defend their right to believe and say what they want and you put those beliefs on a level with your own.
Heaven forbid that you actually stand for something and reject the stuff that is contrary to your beliefs … or common sense. Does that mean you don’t give a voice to those whose beliefs are contrary to your own? No. You give them their voice, but keep it in context.
Just because someone comes to you with a great list of health benefits from poison ivy stew doesn’t mean you should print the story that says poison ivy stew is the new great thing. It may be the culinary thing of the day for that person, but you still have an obligation to point out the side-effects of poison ivy. Too many people in this profession are too quick to run with kooky cook’s story and accept it at face value.
It’s that kind of thing that causes brain damage in journalism. And when that kind of brain-damaged news get out there, the next thing you know you’ve got a whole community of people who think it’s OK to eat poison ivy.
On the other hand, part of that brain damage comes from the cynicism one gets from covering all the weird and stupid stuff that people do. You build up a certain amount of callousness to various crimes. It’s a survival instinct. You can only feel so much for those who suffer in what I call “bleeding heart” stories. After you write your umpteenth story about a kid with cancer, you begin to detach emotionally. You have to, or else you’d go bonkers.
It’s that kind of thing that creates such a jaded, morbid sense of humor in journalists, cops, doctors, firefighters, morticians and the like. Trust me, if you are extra sensitive to human suffering, the last place on earth you want to be is in a newsroom on deadline.
So you can see, this profession can and will assault your brain and your common sense from many directions.
That’s why so many people leave the profession after just a year or two. Those of us who hang on learn to either thrive on the absurdity of everyday life or we become jaded automatons who go through the motions each day. I’ve been both at various times in my career.
I’ll let you figure out where I’m at now.
And when you do, please let me know. It might help me to think of something to write for this space in the paper. I’d hate to think I wasted it writing about something as mundane as writer’s block.

Thanksgiving a day to strategize for shopping

By the time you read this Thanksgiving will be but a bloated memory (or is that a memory of bloating) and Black Friday will be in the books.
At the time of this writing, however, the leftover turkey is still warm in the fridge and the newspaper ads used to map a Black Friday strategy are still spread across the dining room table. The morning will come extra early as we seek to join a few million of our closest fellow insomniac shoppers to take advantage of early bird doorbuster specials.
Actually, my wife, Sandy, will be busting down the doors for early-hour specials. I will be at the stores interviewing other early birds to talk about the great deals they’re getting. And while I’m there I may pick up a thing or two. That’s one of the perks/curses of being a journalist.
I used to be a morning person. That changed sometime between college and parenthood. Now I really have to drag myself to get out the door before oh-dark-thirty. Of course getting to that point requires a lot of work.
For the past three years we have been blessed to have my parents come down from Colorado to spend Thanksgiving with us. They’re really good about watching the kids while we go shopping. By “watching” I mean being physically present in the same house, because I doubt too many eyes are open.
This year I was the one to get up early with the bird on Thanksgiving. Throughout the day as we cooked, cleaned, ate some more and sat around, we kept pulling out the ads and mulling over the specials. They’re not real great this year, at least not for our family.
Still, there are a few items that we would like to get.
Now, I have to take this little detour to tell you that as we were eating our feast, Colton, my 5-year-old, piped up and said “this is my favorite kind of chicken!”
Anyway, I have been shopping and/or reporting on Black Friday for about 15 years. The first time I did it I was in North Carolina. I went to Wal-Mart because I wanted a really cheap VCR. They let me in the store ahead of the crowd so I could get pictures of the mob coming in. By the time I took a couple pictures and paused to write down some names, the VCRs had vanished. About a hundred of us complained, so they took rainchecks and sold them to us the next day after a new shipment arrived.
There was a time about seven or eight years ago in Colorado where I got out of bed at 4:45 a.m., pulled on clothes and drove to Wal-Mart where I got in line. I bagged my items and was back home in bed by 5:35. In less than an hour I had done almost all of my Christmas shopping. I usually reserve that kind of efficiency for the evening of Dec. 24.
In fact – and this is a true story – I bought the last Tickle Me Elmo in town on Dec. 24 at 9 p.m. I know it was the last one in town because I started at 7 p.m. and hit every single store that sold toys until I found it. That was the year it was the “must have” toy.
Now things are different. There aren’t any “must haves” for Black Friday. There are some really good deals, but nothing that we can’t live without. Maybe we’ve finally learned to be thankful for what we have. More than anything I’m just happy to have a day with my family and my parents. I know there will come a time when these youngsters are grown and gone with families of their own. And when that happens, Sandy I and will be the ones crashed on the couch while they’re out busting down doors in the wee hours of Black Friday. And by the way, I’m convinced they call it Black Friday because most of the shopping is done while it’s still black outside.
I will be making a stab at a thing or two this year, but for the most part I will stick to my tradition of doing most of my shopping the evening of the 24th. That’s when the stores are really ready to make a deal. And it may be black out then, but it won’t be early in the morning.
P.S. If you ever want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. It is now Friday morning and Sandy got called in early to work and missed out on about half of her shopping spree. I made it to Wal-Mart and conducted interviews and took pictures.
And in a mode of deja vu, the one item I wanted was sold out! I cam back to the office and looked online – and it was sold out there as well.