County should prepare for undesirable growth

As you have undoubtedly seen on the front page of this week’s paper, a company called GreenFirst (a subsidiary of Green Group Holdings) wants to build a landfill off Highway 6 just north of Hempstead.
If you’re like most people – and I’m assuming most of you are – the idea of having a landfill in our back yard is less than appealing. In fact, I heard tell of organized opposition to it well before the project was officially announced to the public.
To be sure, no one wants a landfill near their home. I don’t. But before flying off the handle, I think the folks at GreenFirst deserve to have their say. It’s only fair to give them an ear just as residents would like to be given an equal chance to be heard.
As undesirable as a landfill may be, we need them and they have to go someplace. Whether or not it should be just north of Hempstead on Highway 6 is not for me to say. As someone whose livelihood depends on the economic prosperity of this community, I certainly don’t want to see it in Hempstead’s back yard.
Wherever it goes, there will be fierce opposition. The same goes for the proposed power lines that CenterPoint Energy wants to run across the middle of Waller County. I expect people in the county will be in full protest mode for quite some time over these projects. It should be noted, however, that the county does not have the power to say yay or nay to projects like these. That power is in the hands of state regulatory agencies.
The power lines and landfill are symptoms of a much larger problem the county has failed to adequately address. It comes as no surprise to anyone that massive growth is on its way to Waller County from Houston. I hear it talked about frequently. But what I have not heard is a lot of talk about how to manage it. It’s a simple matter of being proactive rather than reactive to growth in the county.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe Waller County has a long range development plan. Does the county, or its municipalities, have regulations in place governing what type of development and industry can locate here? Are there designated zones for what most people would call undesirable growth?
Several times I have asked Hempstead Mayor Michael Wolfe if the city has ordinances governing sexually-oriented businesses. I have yet to receive an answer. If it doesn’t, what’s to stop someone from opening a strip club or adult video store in the heart of downtown or next to a church or school?
As far as the landfill issue goes, I don’t think the county has any ordinances designating proper zones, distances from residential areas, environmental protections or the like in place. The same could be said for the location of power transmission lines, sewer plants, chemical plants, pig farms, slaughterhouses, prisons, shooting ranges, nuclear power plants, or any number of things people don’t want in their back yards.
It’s hard to fault companies wanting to locate here. I do, however, fault local government for not being prepared for the growth it knows is coming.
Waller County is close enough to the Houston metro area to be convenient, yet far away enough to be unseen. That makes Waller County an ideal spot for developers to locate their undesirable projects. Believe me, they are thinking way ahead of us country folk out here. They’re going to get their infrastructure and industry in place before we’re organized enough to regulate or stop them. I know the county is working on fire and building codes, but that’s hardly enough.
There is a community near my hometown in Colorado that was home to a regional landfill. When it closed, two more opened nearby to take its place. There was nothing the residents could do to stop them because there were no laws governing such things. You can be sure there are now.
If the people of Waller County don’t wake up and take care of Waller County, you can bet Harris and other neighboring counties will take advantage of that. The same thing goes for each of the cities. Regulations don’t necessarily have to be limited to unwanted development. As the growth comes, do you want to see super-sized box stores taking over? How about another trailer park? Perhaps a high-rise apartment building or condo is what you would like to see in your neighborhood.
Now is the time for Waller County to give this some serious thought. As the saying goes, if you fail to plan you can plan to fail.

She overcame much to get that diploma

There she stood in her teal gown and mortarboard with her gold honors sash draped over her shoulders and her high school diploma in hand.
Sure, to a newspaper reader a high school graduation is no big deal. They happen every year. So another kid made it – so what. Thousands do every spring.
Well, the graduation last Friday of Heather Southern in the Hickory High School Class of 2011 in Chesapeake, Va., is a big deal to me and her mother. My firstborn child and only daughter went through a lot to reach that important milestone.
Her parents separated when she was 3 years old and divorced when she was 6. In her 12 years of schooling, she has attended seven schools in three states. In her early years, she bounced back and forth between two families and 11 different houses, not counting the three she lived in before the divorce. Both of her families have been through spells of extreme financial difficulty.
Stability has never been hers, yet there she was, an honor student beaming with a pride that outshone that of her parents and grandparents combined.
She did it!
I was happier and more excited for her than I was for my high school and college graduations.
Though Heather struggles with a lack of self-confidence and is unsure about her future as she heads into junior college this fall, she can go with the knowledge and confidence that she is a strong-willed survivor. She has remarkable skills at adapting to her environment.
Heather has her mother’s book smarts and my creativity. God has blessed her with incredible gifts and talents. She did better in school than either of her parents and did so amide the turbulence of her life. She is also a terrific artist and was awarded the Level 4 Art Student of the Year award from her school.
If you think I’m just another proud parent bragging about his kid, you’re right. What parent wouldn’t be proud of their child, especially considering all she accomplished under the circumstances?
Congratulations Heather, YOU did it!
On a side note, we sure packed a ton of sightseeing while I was in Virginia for Heather’s graduation. My parents drove out for the occasion and the four of us stayed very busy. In addition to all the graduation hoopla, we also toured Historic Williamsburg, visited my old haunts in North Carolina, including stops at the Wright Brother’s monument and the beach on the Outer Banks. We ended the trip with a quick tour of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Most of our time was spent in the Smithsonian Institution’s museums. We did visit the new World War II Memorial, which is absolutely incredible.
It was the first time Heather and my parents had visited the museums and we took in Air and Space, Nature and Science and American History. I’ve visited most of those before, but noted the exhibits had changed quite a bit. The original Wright Flyer had its own room and it was very cool seeing it the day after seeing where it made its historic first flights.
I was really disappointed with the American History Museum because a lot of it was being remodeled. The thing I most wanted to see was Clayton Moore’s Lone Ranger mask, but it was not on display.
Our last stop, however, more than made up for my disappointment. We went to the new Air and Space facility just outside of Washington in Virginia. There on display was the test space shuttle Enterprise. It was an awesome sight to behold. I got to see a Concord, the Enola Gay (the plane the dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan) and a Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird, amongst scores of other historic aircraft.
The biggest bonus came while we were viewing the Enterprise. The rest of the family moved on and I lingered to take a few more pictures. That’s when they began ushering everyone out of the room. As I left, NBC news anchor Brian Williams was escorting former astronaut and Senator John Glenn into the facility. I was among the throng of people ignoring Williams and reaching out to shake Glenn’s hand as he passed by.
Once clear of the crowd, Williams led Glenn over to where his Mercury Friendship 7 capsule was displayed. That was the craft Glenn flew in as he became the first American to orbit the earth.
All of that would never have happened for me if my dear, sweet daughter hadn’t risen above her upbringing to become the wonderful young woman and high school graduate that she is today.

The measure of a real man

Zefram Cochrane, the fictional character from Star Trek, was quoted as saying “Don’t try to be a great man, just be a man.”
With Father’s Day coming up this Sunday, I thought I’d take a look at manhood and what it means to be a man. The broadest definition means all of mankind, male and female. That’s not the definition I’m going to use today. My focus is on the male of the species, primarily the adult male.
Technically, all adult males are men. Our society, however, has a different definition of a man. A real, red-blooded, American man is John Wayne, Gen. George Patton, the pre-Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, or the fictional Col. Miles Quaritch, the tough, scar-faced Marine played by Stephen Lang in the movie Avatar. A real man is tough, strong, stalwart and unbendable.
It’s my hope to dispel some of those myths. A real man is all of those things and none of those things. A real man is tough, but he is also vulnerable and has a soft heart. A real man is strong, but he is also humble and meek. A real man is stalwart, but he is also thoughtful and tender. A real man is unbendable, but he is also flexible.
To truly be a real man, one must first be a follower of Jesus and have a heart modeled after God’s own heart. He is resolute in his beliefs and has a passion for compassion. A real man is tough in that he can defend his beliefs and can take criticism for what it is. He proves he is tough not by what he can do, but by what he does not do. A tough man does not give in or is easily moved.
Underneath his tough exterior is something worth protecting. It is a loving, tender heart. It is a man who is willing to be vulnerable and to open himself up to the wants and needs of his family, his loved ones and those who cannot fend for themselves. His toughness is like the shell that protects the egg inside.
A strong man is not necessarily muscular or powerful. Physical strength is what most of us think of when we define strong. A true strong man is one unyielding in his values and beliefs. He is humble before God and leads with the heart and attitude of a servant. A strong man puts others before himself. He uses his strength to help other people. He is mentally and emotionally strong and dependable.
The stalwart and unbendable man tends to be one and the same. They are firm and unyielding. Those are good traits when it comes to beliefs and values such as truth, honesty and integrity. There are times, however, when even the most stalwart man must learn to be flexible, understanding and willing to yield. No man is perfect and the man who will not own up to his faults and mistakes is not worth a lick.
A real man will learn to listen to all sides of an issue and try to put himself in the shoes of the other person. He will be kind and understanding. He will not be so inflexible that others cannot work with him. In his my-way-or-the-highway world, you’re better off hitting the road.
In the same light, a real father is one who will give up a round of golf to play catch. A real father allows mistakes but disciplines disobedience. He shares his time, his cookies and his glass of iced tea on a hot, summer day. He reads more than he watches; encourages more than he discourages; slays dragons, vanquishes monsters from closets and squishes spiders; compliments more than critiques; gives without taking; loves mother and child unconditionally; and prays for and with his family every day.
I’ll be the first to admit that I fail at this as much or more than I succeed. But each day I strive to meet this standard and to be a better man than I was when I went to bed the night before. I battle my demons and strive to win the day for my God and my family. They are the only ones who will determine whether or not I succeed. That is a measure I cannot gauge for myself. After all, my life is not about me. It’s about my service to God, my family and those whose lives I touch, no matter how briefly.
Those things may not make me a great man in the eyes of the world, but I hope it will mean the world to those eyes that are on me. A real man couldn’t ask for anything more.

Permanent weight loss requires major change

The waist is a terrible thing to mind.
Remember that little twist on the United Negro College Fund campaign slogan?
How about the Special K pinch-an-inch test? Those old television commercials from the 1970s showed people who would be obscenely skinny by today’s standards pinching an inch around their waists. Nowadays, if you can grab some flab…
Believe it or not, there was once a time when I could not even pinch an inch on my now-rotund frame. I was a three-sport athlete (i.e. benchwarmer) in high school and was very active in intramural sports and swimming in college. The day I was handed my high school diploma, I weighed in just shy of 150 pounds dripping wet.
I ballooned to 170 pounds by the end of college and managed to stay in the 180-190 range throughout most of the 1990s. I had to give up health club memberships about the time my first marriage ended in the late ’90s. I tried jogging, but bad shins put an end to that.
Enter the 21st century and a decade of no regular exercise, a sedentary occupation and an addiction to the Internet and I found my 5-foot, 10-inch frame hoisting 260 pounds of pure bulk. A couple years ago I volunteered for a medical study which had me very carefully counting and recording my calorie consumption. In three months I lost 30 pounds. Then my part of the program ended. Since then, I have put about half of that back on.
You may ask why my weight weighs so heavy on my mind. Apparently the obesity epidemic is weighing on a lot of people. Everywhere you turn there is some kind of reminder about ways to lose weight or stories about childhood obesity. Recent events have put this problem on the forefront of our lives in the Southern household.
Of the six of us, three are obese, two are normal weight and one is underweight. That is about to change. Our diets are about to undergo a radical transformation. My wife, who has hypoglycemia, has always had to watch her sugar intake. She recently had to have her gallbladder removed and must now avoid fat in her food. When you throw in my middle son who has Celiac’s disease – an intolerance to wheat – and you have a dining nightmare.
In order to accommodate everyone, we will be making a radical lifestyle change at the dinner table. I also plan to start counting calories again, at least for a while. Most importantly, however, I intend to increase our level of activity. Eating less and exercising more are the only surefire and natural ways of controlling your weight. Pills, surgery and other methods only attack the symptoms of obesity, not the problem. Simply put, it requires a change in lifestyle and habit.
Growing up in the days before personal computers and home video, we spent a most of our free time outside playing. My brothers, neighbors and I rode our bikes everywhere. We jumped on our trampoline for endless hours at a time. We ran around the neighborhood playing some wicked games of hide-and-go-seek, kick the can and ghost in the graveyard. We played little league baseball, fished in a nearby stream and pond and went swimming whenever we could talk Mom into taking us to the pool. We were always on the move. It was great. We felt good and had fun.
Today, my kids give their thumbs the biggest workout as they manipulate video game controls. In the last 10 years, they’ve seen more movies and watched more hours of television than I did in the first 20 years of my life. I became content to let them vegetate in front of a screen so I could have time to explore the Internet and email friends. It’s sad that I have more face time with a computer screen than I do with my own children.
I’m just taking a guess here, but I bet this is typical for most parents my age. It’s time to say enough. It’s time to take back our lives. No longer will I be a slave to Facebook and the almighty donut. I am committed to spending more time with my family than I do on my home computer. (Unfortunately I can’t eliminate my work computer.)
We will watch what we eat and make sure to get moving outdoors (sorry kids, the Wii doesn’t count) at least a little bit each day. I want this change to become a permanent habit. After all, the waist is a terrible thing to mind.

Journalistic journey needs guiding light

The year was 1981. A 15-year-old boy in his first year of high school decided to take a typing class.
One cold January day he was telling his typing teacher about the new camera he got and how much he loved to take pictures. The teacher, being the advisor for the student newspaper, knew that her photo staff was about to graduate that spring and she was on the lookout for new recruits.
She invited the boy to join the newspaper staff as a photographer. He did and the rest is history – my history. That is how I got into journalism. I love photography and page design. Over the years I have come to love writing and editing.
I spent the rest of my high school days as the photo editor of the Niwot South Paw. I then went to Adams State College where I joined the student newspaper, the South Coloradan, as its photo editor. I remained in that position for two years. The next year I became the associate editor and then editor my senior year. In the spring of 1987, I graduated as one of the last journalism majors at ASC. They changed the degree to mass communications after that.
From there my career took me to a weekly paper in Minnesota for two years, a small daily in northeastern North Carolina for seven years, my hometown paper in Colorado for eight years, Amarillo for two years and Hereford for just under a year. I am now at the two and a half year mark at the Waller County News Citizen.
It’s not that my career path is of anyone’s business but my own, but I bring it up to demonstrate that I have been in the occupation for a long time. In all those years, I have seen this industry go through significant change. Right now newspaper journalism is undergoing its biggest transformation since, well, ever.
If you are reading this in print it means you are A.) Old, or B.) A youngish person into the whole “retro” thing. Chances are that you are reading this online, most likely on www.yourwallernews.com or Facebook. From my perspective, printed newspapers have a relatively short lifespan. Soon it will all be online. Stories will no longer be days old, but minutes old. There will be more video and interactive elements. What you get now on your computer is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
As pulp editions pass away, old goats like me will have to adapt to the new ways or move on to more exciting careers like public relations or Walmart greeter. I understand that some of you reading this are thinking “if newspapers are going away, why should I subscribe?” That’s a very good question. Print editions will survive for a few years and they still offer things that you will not get online.
Many papers offer print-only news and content. Not long from now, I hope to have the Waller County News Citizen offering news that is print-only and online-only. Eventually we want our readers to migrate online. Same goes for advertisers. We also respect the fact that we still have a sizeable readership that doesn’t use a computer or does not like reading stories online.
This brings me to the point of this column. Print or online, this is where it becomes interactive. I need to hear from you, dear reader, about what kind of news/content you want to see in print and/or online. I can use my vast industry knowledge (aided by my ESP) to figure out what is of interest and importance to you. Or I can do what I’m doing here and asking you nicely to let me know.
I hope to revamp the paper later this year, but I want it to be relevant. I don’t want to change for change’s sake. I want this to be a publication that you just can’t wait to get your hands on each Thursday (which is also known as “Monday” by many of our postal customers).
I know that local news and sports are our meat and ’taters, but what can we offer in these paper pages that will keep you reading well into the digital age? Do you want state news or Houston news? Perhaps local business news or entertainment features? What about games and puzzles (Sudoku, etc.)? Do you like the local columns or should we do something different? Maybe there were newspaper features from yesteryear that you long to see again.
I don’t know what you want unless you tell me. The same goes for features on our website. Please, drop me a line at jsouthern@hcnonline.com or send a letter to me at 705 12th St., Hempstead, TX 77445. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thomas a picture of grace, integrity

I saw a picture of grace at the last Hempstead City Council meeting. It was truly an image of a Godly man in action.
It was the last regular meeting for Alderman Fred Thomas III. Just two days earlier he lost his seat by four votes to Charles Hegemeyer.
Thomas appeared to be very distracted at the meeting and made or attempted to make many of the motions or seconds. Afterward, I asked him if he was going to ask for a re-count. He said no and that he was going to do the Lord’s work and if God didn’t want him in office anymore, that was OK with him. Thomas is the pastor of Greater St. Peter’s Baptist Church.
After talking with me, he went over to Hegemeyer, shook his hand and gave him his congratulations and blessing. It was humbling and very gracious. I could see that Thomas enjoyed serving on the council and he will miss it. But I couldn’t help but be very impressed with the way he carried himself with the utmost dignity and integrity during this transition.
I respected Thomas before, but now I hold him in very high regard. He took the high road out of office and I admire with the way he did it. He could have been stubborn and called for a re-count. He could have given a rant about race, religion, age, or politics in general. He did none of those things.
In all of my few dealings with him, he has always been friendly, helpful and encouraging. The world could use some more people like him. I will miss seeing him at the big table every other Monday. It was always a pleasure working with him.
I do look forward to getting to know Hegemeyer. At 23 he is young and inexperienced, but he will bring a perspective to the council that it is lacking. His views as a youthful, political outsider should help give the folks at City Hall a slightly different take on the business as usual.

Rapture
Just in case you missed it, the Rapture was to have taken place Saturday evening. I was ready for it. But then as a believer in Jesus Christ, I am to be ready at any time. We do not have an appointment with God, but rather he has an appointment with us.
It’s kind of like having a doctor’s appointment. You know as you sit in the waiting room that you will see the doctor. The doctor, however, knows when he will actually see you, not the other way around. You could wait anywhere from five minutes to 50 minutes or five days, whichever comes first depending on a complicated mathematical formula that involves the number of patients in the waiting room versus tee times at the country club.
Seriously though, I pity those who genuinely believed that Jesus was coming to call home his followers at a predicted time. If they had actually read an actual Bible, they would have known that in Matthew 24:36 Jesus says, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
Paul reiterates that in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3: “Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.”
The way I see it, if the angels and Jesus himself do not know the time, there is no way a preacher with a billboard is going to know. The secret is to always be ready for Jesus’ return. Like the Boy Scout motto says, Be Prepared.
It is safe to say that anyone who makes bold predictions about the exact time Jesus will return is going to be wrong. Unless of course you spend the rest of your life predicting that he will come now … now … now...
For those of you who do not believe that Christ is coming again, you’re in more eminent danger than you know because the world is scheduled to end next year as the Mayan calendar expires.
Toodles.