Nassau Bay picks new city manager

November 1st, 2015

Jason Reynolds

Jason Reynolds

The Nassau Bay mayor and City Council have selected Jason Reynolds of Arlington, Texas as the new city manager.

The task force, comprised of Mayor Mark Denman, Mayor Pro Tem Sandy Mossman, former Mayor Don Matter and former Johnson Space Center Human Resources Director and Nassau Bay resident Harv Hartman, reviewed over 75 applicants.

At a Special Meeting on Sunday, Oct. 4,Council met and made the final decision to offer the position to Reynolds, who was the development operations manager for the City of Arlington.

Reynolds has accepted the position and is excited about this opportunity to join the City of Nassau Bay. “I am awe struck by the community and like the vision of their leaders. It seems like an excellent place to live and work,” said Reynolds, who is a retired Army paratrooper with a passion for community service.
He holds a certification as a Certified Public Manager. He also has a Master of Urban Planning degree, a Master of Business Administration and a B.S. in Workforce Leadership.

“It was an arduous, but certainly worthwhile, effort for our task force to search for City Manager Chris Reed’s successor,” Mayor Denman said. “We will never replace Chris, but we think we found someone that will continue his great work and progress; and that includes working with the great staff he has assembled. The city is functioning very well, we do not want to see momentum interrupted, employee retention is very important to us. I am confident Jason will jump right in and ensure we stay on the great path Chris and staff have put us on.”

Reynolds will officially begin work Nov. 1, and current City Manager Chris Reed will remain with the city through the end of this year, offering his full support during this transition.

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Brisket for Breakfast

November 1st, 2015

gosbbqLexington, Texas

by Michael Gos

“Let me sleep on it.”

We have all said that at some point in our lives.  Most of us have done it many times. It is one of those things we don’t even think about—we just say it robotically.  It’s instinctive because deep down at some subconscious level, we know it is the right thing to do.  Can you imagine what would happen to a centipede if someone asked, “What do you do after your 13th leg hits the ground?”  Asking for time to sleep on an issue is like that centipede walking.  We don’t have to stop to contemplate what we are saying.  We just say it.  And that is a good thing.  I’d hate to imagine the human version of that centipede lying in a crashed and crumbled heap trying to figure out what he was supposed to do after the 13th leg.

Lexington is a tiny town, just over one square mile in size with fewer than 1,300 residents. Every Saturday, farmers from around the area come to town for a cattle auction that starts just past noon.  But long before that, they go to breakfast—at Snow’s Barbecue.

Over the years, I have made it a point to try all of the best barbecue joints in Texas.  I guess you could say I am an aficionado.  My wife thinks I’m more of an addict.   It’s a matter of perspective, I guess.  I keep track of the rankings published by the “experts” (people who are supposed to know more about this than I) just in case a new upstart place breaks into the elite level.

I had tried all the rest of the top ten places in Texas, but because of the difficulty in scheduling, this one remained. Texas Monthly said it was the best brisket in Texas.  The New Yorker topped even that, calling it the best barbecue in the world. But to get some, you have to go on a Saturday and get there early.  Snow’s opens at 8 a.m. on Saturdays only.  They close when they run out of meat, generally well before noon, but the brisket runs out long before that. Be prepared to wait in line.

While a lot of the patrons are getting large amounts of brisket to take home and eat later, enough are having it for breakfast that the tables (both inside and out) are usually full.  I got there at about 9:30 and I was glad to discover that Miss Tootsie Tomanetz still had brisket coming off the pits.  (Yes, a woman pit master! Do you know how rare that is in Texas?)

I was in line less than a half hour when I got my plate full of brisket.  I grabbed a couple of cups of the free beans and the usual “fixins” — pickles, jalapenos and onions. Then I sat down and dug into the most heavenly brisket I have ever experienced.  After savoring the first bite, I tried the second with a dollop of the fabled sauce they make.  It was sacrilegious!  The best sauce in the world would only serve to lower the quality of this piece of perfection.  I never touched the sauce again.  The meat was magical.  I couldn’t call this a religious experience.  It was more than that.

As I drove through Hill Country later that day, I kept thinking about my morning and the experience I had at breakfast.  I’ve been to all the barbecue places in Lockhart and Luling, several in east Texas, many in West Texas, some around Abilene and even Cooper’s in Llano.  Never have I had an experience like this.  Was Tootsie’s brisket really that far beyond everything else I’ve tried?  Or was there something else at work here?

Miss Tootsie Tomanetz visits with a regular at Snow’s BBQ

Miss Tootsie Tomanetz visits with a regular at Snow’s BBQ

There is something special about mornings — something that makes the world look better.  Get up early and listen to the birds putting on their morning concert.  Look around.  Smell the coffee.  Everything seems so much cleaner, so much clearer, so much brighter.  Hondo Crouch called it “that magic time of day when just thousands and thousands of insignificant miracles are happening.”

After a good night’s rest, our minds, like the day, are clearer.  We can think things through better and consequently we can make better decisions.  In the morning, when everything is new, we are far more likely to see what is true and to see it clearly.  That is something we know instinctively, so we say, “Let me sleep on it.”

I don’t claim to be the first to discover this principle.  Ernest Hemingway’s most recent posthumously published book (July 2000) is titled True At First Light.  What might be different in my way of looking at it is that I see this as more than just a simple truth—it is, in fact, a metaphor for something much larger.
Seeing the truth, and seeing it clearly, sometimes requires more than just a fresh day at first light.  Sometimes it needs a fresh start altogether, a whole new beginning.  Most of the positive major events in our lives are preceded or accompanied by new beginnings.  We change jobs, partners, geographic location or maybe our way of looking at the world.

These new beginnings allow us to see the world more clearly, to operate with heightened senses that allow us to take in and process more information — more of the detail that has always been available to us but that we were unable to access because we were in old patterns, using old ways of thinking.  The new beginnings allow us to see truths that were previously hidden from us by the hazy light of mid-day.  Only in the early morning light — of day, and of life — can we see the world without its shadows.  Truth requires new beginnings.

Perhaps Ms. Tootsie’s brisket isn’t really that much better than all of the other outstanding barbecue places I have visited over the years.  Maybe instead, she has hit on a universal truth and learned how to capitalize on it.  Like our minds, our physical senses are at their peak in the early mornings. Our senses of sight, smell and most important, taste, are working at their absolute best. That creates a golden opportunity.

So I took a night to sleep on it. The next morning I decided maybe her real secret is brisket for breakfast.

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The Mists of Time

October 1st, 2015

Mission San Francisco de los Tejas

Mission San Francisco de los Tejas

El Camino Real, Texas

By: Michael Gos

Why are we so interested in history?  Sure, there is that fact that if we fail to learn from it we are doomed to repeat it.  But that only works on a logical, rational level.  We have to think about it in order for it to become a factor.  The real draw we feel seems to be more visceral—something in human nature.  It gives us wisdom, I suppose, but there is still something else that pulls us to it.  And it seems the more we learn, the more we want to know.  Soon we find ourselves looking further and further back in time—Rome, Greece, Lascaux.  We have even developed a series of tools that help us to connect to people and events in history.  We have historical markers along our highways, historical parks and sites like Colonial Williamsburg and the Alamo, and even a history channel.

Growing up in Indiana, I didn’t have the good fortune of a Texas history class in school.  Of course, I knew about the biggies—the Texas myths.  The whole world has heard about Austin’s colony, the Alamo and the Republic of Texas.  But beyond that…nothing.  When I finally found my way to Texas, that all changed.  I became ravenous in my appetite for historical information and time has only sharpened that desire.

For over 20 years I have heard about El Camino Real de los Tejas, the King’s Road.  And for the same 20 years, I’ve wanted to see it.  It ran from Natchitoches, Louisiana, to San Antonio and then branched off into smaller roads that ran all the way to Mexico City.  In all, it was over 1,000 miles long.

It is advertised as running “roughly” along Louisiana Highway 6 and Texas Highway 21.  But I didn’t want to see the approximate route; I wanted to see the actual road, to stand on the same dirt that thousands of American refugees traveled to find their way to that paradise on earth that is Texas.  In my research I discovered that there are still a very few places where you can see the original road.  The problem is that most of these places are hidden in the deep woods and on private property.  But I had heard that if you are willing to hike a bit and can orienteer, there is a place where it can still be seen—in Mission Tejas State Park.

Mission Tejas is one of the Civilian Conservation Corps parks, but for me the main historic interest went a bit further back in time.  The namesake old log church, Mission San Francisco de los Tejas, is amazingly rustic, right down to the old iron axe used as a door latch.  It was the first Spanish mission in Texas, operating long before the more famous ones in San Antonio, and was located here because of the proximity to El Camino Real.  It wouldn’t last long as a mission however, as the local Nabedache Indians eventually ran off the priests when they believed that the holy water used in ceremonies was causing sickness and death from smallpox.

There isn’t a real trail to the old road, but we were told if we walked along the park road to a spot about halfway between the mission and campsite number seven, then head down the hillside and into the woods, we just might get lucky and eventually stumble our way to a rare stretch of the old road still surviving today.  Heading down the hill, we made our way along what couldn’t even be described as a deer path and we managed to lose track of that a time or two.  Backtracking allowed us to find the last good spot and re-evaluate our path from there.  But eventually we ran out of “trail” altogether and had to switch to trail blazing.  We meandered around for about 20 minutes seeing nothing but dense woods.  But then, we looked up and there, in the middle of the dense forest, it lay.

Now, more than 150 years later, it had become overgrown with grass and low brush, but years of compressing by human feet, horses and wagon wheels had made the soil so compact that no trees could grow there.  Right there, in front of us was a long tree-lined corridor, less than 20 feet wide that was once the most traveled road in Texas.  We took our time as we strolled along it, thinking about all the history and all the famous people who came across this very spot where we stood.  It was awe-inspiring.

There is no question—it was a thrilling experience.  I was surprised at the depth of my reaction.  It tapped into my soul.  The last time I felt this way was on a train to Oxford, England.  As we neared the university, the skyline filled with spires.  For the first time in my life I experienced my profession, education, as elevated to the level of religious fervor.  And it was all because of the history of the place. Worlds apart (old versus new, Europe versus America) and separated in time (1090 A.D. versus 1800), these two places affected me in the same way—they touched something deep inside that I didn’t even know was there.

Why do we react this way in the presence of history?  And why is the reaction greater the further back in time we go?  When I have questions like this, I tend to turn to the experts: philosophers, researchers and psychologists. Carl Jung had something to say about it.  He argued that the human psyche, that universal consciousness we all share, is not of today, but rather, reaches back into prehistoric ages.  The further back we go, the closer we get to touching that true essence of who we are as human beings.  And it feels good.

It is really easy in the rush and madness that is our world today to lose track of ourselves.  We are so absorbed in the matters at hand that we have neither the time nor the inclination to think about who we are as members of our species. My wife says when I have a task in mind, I am totally blind to everything else going on around me.  She says I could walk right past a fire in the kitchen while on my way to take out the garbage and never even notice.  I like to call that my highly developed ability to focus, and it has served me well over the years.  She is not convinced.  But when I am “in the zone,” I get a lot done, so I apparently value that focus over my human psyche.

As the sun fell low in the sky, we headed back through the woods and up the hillside to the mission.  We still needed to drive to Nacogdoches to our base camp for the night—a log cabin deep in the woods with its own long history.  It was time for a rest and a chance to maybe give up that power to focus, for just one night.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about all the men and women who walked that same road I stood on that afternoon.  They carved out the Texas I so love.

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It’s Magic

August 1st, 2015

IMG_0723By Michael Gos

El Camino del Rio, Texas

A lot has been written about the most beautiful drives in Texas.  Most people include on their lists the Willow City Loop near Fredericksburg when the bluebonnets are in bloom and the River Road between New Braunfels and Canyon Lake. There is almost unanimous agreement that the number two most beautiful drive in Texas is the three sisters (Ranch Roads 335, 336 and 337) from Vanderpool, through Leakey and on to Camp Wood.  And number one on just about every list? Of course, El Camino del Rio (FM 170) that runs along the Rio Grande from Lajitas to Presidio.  The run from Lajitas to the Santana Mesa Overlook just beyond the teepees at the roadside picnic area is particularly spectacular. So on about a third of my trips to the Big Bend area, and every time I take a first-timer, I take an afternoon to enjoy the drive.  On several previous trips I had noticed a sign indicating a “Contrabando Movie Set” but I always passed it by.  On this trip I had plenty of time to kill so I thought, “Why not?”

To me, movies have always been sheer magic.  The ability of the cinema artists to create creatures and settings that I know don’t exist, yet look so real, has always fascinated me.  I had seen this particular “town” before in the movie The Streets of Laredo and in the Brooks and Dunn video “My Maria.”  But here, on the actual set, I was disappointed.  I found myself wondering how I could have possibly seen this place as real in those works.  It just didn’t work for me now that I was really here.  I could easily tell that everything was fake.  I couldn’t tell for sure what the real composition was, but it looked like stucco over chicken wire.

That got me to thinking about just how the artists made something like this look so real on the screen.  What is the secret behind that feat?  Was it computer-altered?  Did they play with the lighting?  How did they make this place look like a real frontier desert town 150 years ago—like Boquillas looks today?

Before I left, I took a few photos of the buildings on the set anyway.  The “town” may look lame, but at least I would have a few photos as memories of an unproductive side trip.

But long after I left, the dissonance remained.  Why did something so clearly fake convince me on the screen?  Whenever I am faced with questions like this, I generally “think out loud,” mulling over my concerns and questions.  Unfortunately for him, my best friend Kevin is generally the victim of these ruminations.  So later that night, I gave him a call.

Kevin is an engineer and has a strong scientific orientation, so I was somewhat surprised to hear him say he believed that sometimes it is better not to know how things are done.  His experience had been that once you know, it loses the magic that made it so special in the first place—sort of like finding out how sour cream or hot dogs are made.

At first the artist side of me had a positive reaction to that.  My right brain understood the magic of creativity.  But deep down, I too have a fairly strong scientific orientation.  As I spent more time thinking about what Kevin said, I began to think that he had to be wrong.  At least some of the time, understanding how things are done makes you truly see what is magical in our world—magic you would have never known existed if you didn’t understand the workings behind the scene.

Consider the memory system in the first and second-generation computers.  Physically, the core memory unit was a large square frame box with thousands of small wires running from top to bottom, lined up in rows from front to back.  Thousands more wires were strung running from left to right, again lined up in rows, front to back.  None of these crisscrossing wires actually touched, but they came very close to it.

Wherever two wires “near-crossed”, a little metallic donut circled the juncture.  To store something in memory, the donuts were magnetized or not (1 or 0).  How do you magnetize the right donut in this matrix of thousands of donuts?  You shoot 55% of the electricity needed to magnetize down the vertical wire that intersects the donut and 55% of the electricity needed down the horizontal wire that intersects.

The result is that in only one place in this massive structure is there enough power to magnetize a donut, and that is where the two wires near-cross.

Now here’s the magic.  As we look at it now, this design is so simple, elegant and easy-to-understand.

And yet, who would think of such an approach to the problem of computer memory?  What kind of a mind comes up with something like this?  What happened in that guy’s head sure feels like magic to me.

Or even more so, try out the one of the early methods of detecting whether a fetus would have the genetic disease cystic fibrosis.  Before genome work, one way researchers could determine if the baby would have cystic was to take a sample of the amniotic fluid from the mother’s womb and put it on a live clam.

If the cilia in the clam stop moving in 30 minutes, the baby would be born with cystic.  Again, simple, elegant, and it makes perfect sense.  Among other complications, cystic fibrosis clogs the alveoli in the lungs.  Cilia are some of the smallest structures commonly available in living organisms.  It stands to reason that what will clog the alveoli later will clog cilia more quickly.  But again, what kind of a mind thinks like this?

After I got home I loaded the pictures into the computer.  When I took my first look at the photos on the full screen, I was stunned.  They were magnificent!  They looked as real as the town looked in the movie and video.  But I was there in person; I took those photos. I know the “town” didn’t look like that at all.  Yet here it was on my computer screen—as real as it could be.  How did that happen?  How did my photography skills, lame as they may be, make that happen?

It took me several weeks to figure it out…and I’m still not positive I have it right, but I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with my abilities as a photographer.  I think what is happening is the man who designed and built the Contrabando movie set had the uncanny ability to see, not with human eyes, but with the eye of the camera—an ability I clearly lack.  He could see what the camera would see and he built accordingly.  The photos I brought back give strong evidence for this interpretation.

Life is a never-ending process of learning.  As a child, I sometimes found it to be a chore.  There were a few things I found interesting, but for the most part, learning was work, pure and simple.  I’m sure a lot of other people have viewed school that way as well, at least for a while.  But at some point in life most of us figure out that learning isn’t really work at all; it’s fun.  Let’s face it, we all love magic.  I guess the more I learn about how things in the universe work, the more magical it all becomes.

I think it’s time to take apart that old-time crystal radio I have in the attic.  I always wondered how that worked.

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La Vie Dansante

July 1st, 2015

GosimageBy Michael Gos

Hondo, Texas

While some people know Hondo, Texas, as the birthplace and childhood home of Luckenbach’s Hondo Crouch, most of us know it because of the rather famous signs along highway 90 at either end of town.  And it is probably a good bet that if you don’t live in the area, your only experience with Hondo is as a milestone on the way to Garner State Park.

I was passing through town, not on my way to Garner but rather to Marathon in Big Bend country, when I decided to stop at the Sonic to share a couple of cheeseburgers and a diet cherry limeade with my ever-hungry running buddy, a Labrador retriever.  We were sitting outside at a picnic table and eavesdropping on a family sitting nearby.  Apparently the parents were trying to convince their thirty-something son that he should move back home to San Antonio.  Through the conversation, I was able to determine that he lived there in Hondo and worked as a night produce manager at the local HEB.  His parents seemed disappointed at both his choice of job and home.  They said he should be able to do much better than that given he had a college degree, and they practically begged him to come back to the city where good jobs were more plentiful.  He replied that he wanted to live in Hondo because from there it was a short trip to both Concan and Bandera, two places he seemed to be rather fond of.  They kept reminding him of the fact that he could probably find a better job in the city.  The repetition became tedious even for me.  I could only imagine what he must have felt and how many times he had heard this before.

Failing to get through to him with their first ploy, they even tried asking him to consider taking a job in the city and commuting the 45 minutes or so to and from work.  He balked at the idea of giving up an hour and a half of his day driving to work.  He said that was time he could spend in much more pleasant endeavors.

As my dog and I were leaving, I heard him say that he would rather work in a grocery store the rest of his life than live in the city.  For me, the conversation was mercifully over.  I’m sure he wasn’t so lucky.

I think most of us understand that millennials, those reaching adulthood around the turn of the century, think differently than the baby boomers or generation X-ers who came before them.  While we older ones work long hours and often take our work home with us, millennials give a good eight-hour effort and then, when the day is over, it’s over.  Work is completely out of their minds.  There is a total separation between work and life.  We boomers went where the jobs were—lived where we had to live to get those jobs; the millennials decide where they want to live and then find a job there.  They feel that life is too short, or too important, to let work dominate or dictate major life decisions.

I would imagine that this pattern of questioning the values of a younger generation is not unique to boomers and gen X-ers.  Throughout history, each generation has looked at the ones coming up after them and seen young people who they view as somehow inferior.   Most of the time they have been wrong.   I think my generation might be the exception.  As boomers, our parents were from what is often called “the greatest generation.”  Perhaps they were right in their view of us.  While they went down in history as the greatest, we boomers are likely to go down in history as the most pathetic generation.  Look at how we have taken the world we were given in the fifties and early sixties and changed it into the world we see today.  History will not look kindly on us for that.  But even in spite of our own shortcomings, like all generations before us, we tend to see the millennials as lazy and prone to making irrational decisions.  We think they should spend more time and effort bettering themselves and planning and preparing for their future.

Personally, I have mixed feelings on this.  There are times when I lament time I have wasted.  I wish I had begun earlier with savings, retirement planning and home ownership.  I’m sure that would have made my parents rest easier.  It certainly would have made retirement more realistic.  But then, at other times, I think about the time I spent in Guadeloupe, Martinique, London, Paris, Oxford and Cozumel and wish I had done more of that.

But you can only dwell on the past for so long.  Eventually you have to think about the future—and the diminishment it will bring.  I already see signs of it physically.  I am beginning to realize that things I used to do easily are becoming more and more difficult.  I did the South Rim hike in a single day in my 40s and 50s.  Today, I’m not sure I could do that, even if I didn’t have to carry a backpack. I know it is probably inevitable that, should I be fortunate to hang around the planet long enough, I will no longer be able to keep living in my house and keep all of the many things I love.  My library alone would over-fill most apartments in “senior living” complexes.  As we begin the downward slope on the bell curve that is life, it is only natural to ask if it was worth all that effort we put in to gather all this “stuff.”

The French have a philosophy called La Vie Dansante.  There is no equivalent phrase in English, probably because English-speaking people just don’t think this way.  Language always reflects the thinking of a culture.  A word-for-word translation is “the dancing life” though it has nothing to do with dancing.  The closest equivalent I have been able to come up with is something like “life is too short to spend any part of it doing anything other than having a good time.”

I’m beginning to think the French, and that young man at Sonic, may have had the right idea.  When you think about how short our time here is and the way it will ultimately end, I wonder if we should be thinking less about tomorrow and more about tomorrow’s yesterday.  All things considered, La Vie Dansante may be the wiser choice in the long run.

That young man will probably continue dancing his way through life and be no worse off for it—and we boomers will probably continue to see him and others of his type as irresponsible and poor decision-makers.

And we will probably be wrong.

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Heroes and Villains

June 1st, 2015

IMG_0272By Michael Gos

Carrizo Springs, Texas

In everything we do, we are governed by rules that have been set up by society to keep things running smoothly. I’m not sure who in antiquity set up the original rules, but most of us seem to have at least a vague awareness of them and follow them without question.  Call it instinct if you will.

In the realm of romantic pursuit, for example, the rules are simple, but very strict.  The man chases the woman over an unspecified period of time.  This process continues until she decides to catch him.  But it is absolutely essential that he have no idea of this second facet or the rule.  He must forever think he was in absolute control of the pursuit all along.

It’s not just in romance; everything we do in our lives follows pre-set parameters.  When you go to see a doctor, for example, the rules are simple.  You tell him what is wrong, then just step back and listen.  After all, he is the expert.  You would think this is even more critical in emergency situations but recently I watched as a small woman, unhappy with how the team of doctors was addressing her very sick husband, took over and started demanding a series of things be done. For some reason I still don’t understand, she got her way.  A few weeks later, I saw how each of those same doctors had come to love and respect that woman because of, or maybe in spite of, her role in creating a positive outcome from a dangerous situation.

I thought about that for quite a while and it eventually became apparent to me that while most of us follow the rules, there are a few people who don’t.  This woman’s choice to battle against the rules, and the people in authority, turned out to be heroic behavior.  And all parties concerned came to appreciate it—after the fact anyway.

I was in the Mount Hope Cemetery in Carrizo Springs.  I had made the journey because I wanted to find the graves of the old Texas Rangers that I heard were buried there.  Ranger graves are marked with the circled star of their order.  Since most of these graves were from the late 1800s, the markers are now weathered and covered with rust but they still stand out as special among the other graves.

I’ve always been fascinated by the stories of the old Rangers, from Bill McDonald’s famous “one riot; one ranger” story on the positive side, to the atrocities that have been attributed to some of their ranks (such as Leander McNeely’s executions).  This intermingling of the heroic and the villainous intrigues me.

Many years ago, when I was still in college, I read a newspaper story about the death of a fellow I knew in high school.  Back then he was a hoodlum.  He was well-known for administering beatings and otherwise terrorizing the smaller and weaker classmates, even some as much as four years younger than he.  He spent most of his high school life in trouble.  According to the article, he died trying to save a child who had fallen on a set of railroad tracks just as a train was approaching.  He didn’t know the child but jumped in anyway.  He managed to push the boy to safety seconds before the train dispatched him.  He apparently forgot the rule about not standing in front of oncoming trains.  As a result, our high school villain died a hero.  That started me thinking. What goes on in a person’s mind that can cause him to act the parts of a hero and a villain both?

I think the answer may lie in the root cause of both behaviors.  The two traits may have a common source, a single cause if you will.  It is sort of like the black and white yin and yang diagram from eastern cultures, with one major exception.  Though intermingled, yin and yang are true opposites; they interact with each other yet they are always separate.  In the diagram, there is either black or white.  There is never a gray.  Heroic and villainous behavior patterns, on the other hand, aren’t really opposites.  They don’t just interact like yin and yang; they can blend.  I think that may be because they are really the same thing—two sides of the same coin.

Consider for a moment the concept of love.  Ask most people you know what is the opposite of love and almost without exception, they will answer hate.  But really, when you think about it, aren’t love and hate really the same thing—a strong emotional attachment to someone or something?  Yes, one is a positive attachment and the other negative, but they are both a form of interdependence—of continued emotional involvement.  In reality, the true opposite of love is indifference.

I think the same is true of heroes and villains.  At their root, both are a function of a single personality trait: anti-social thought and behavior.  For some reason both heroes and villains are prone to habitual violations of the rules society sets up to govern the things we do—the rules that most of us follow.  There are some people who just refuse, or are constitutionally incapable, of following those rules.  Whether the person breaks bad or good, becomes a hero or a villain, the cause and process are the same. Sometimes, as in the case of my high school classmate, both results can co-exist in the same person giving further evidence that the two are just manifestations of the same concept.

For me, the Texas Rangers certainly exemplify that notion.  It takes an unusual kind of person to seek out the life of hardship and danger the 19th century Rangers led.  These were men who, by virtue of their career choice, showed that they were not governed by the same set of norms or rules that guide you and I.  Some were heroes and some not so much.

Unlike my classmate, or the woman in the hospital, I don’t think I’ve ever been bold enough, or enough of a rule violator, to qualify as a hero or as a villain.  Frankly, it is unlikely I ever will be in the future either.  I’m just too old to become a renegade now.  My wife calls me “Crunchy Granola” because I always color between the lines.

But just between you and me, it really has not always been quite that clear cut.  Over the years I have observed and sometimes even experimented a bit with this concept.  After all of that, I have come to only one conclusion.   Rules were meant to test the creativity of intelligent people.

I probably shouldn’t say any more than that.

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Looking for Patterns

May 1st, 2015

Man Rowing Bamboo Boat

Man Rowing Bamboo Boat

By Michael Gos

LBJ Grasslands, Texas

I have very few memories before the age of three. One of the earliest memories I do have, however, is the discovery that I hated cities and loved wild places.  I never thought about why I felt that way.  When you are four or five years old, that just is not a part of your thought process.

As I got older, those feelings intensified.  By and large I was an obedient child, but when I was in trouble, it was almost always because of wild places.  By the time I was seven or eight, I would head out almost daily into the few acres of woods that remained near my childhood home.  It was the only place I felt comfortable.  My parents didn’t share that comfort.

When I went away to college, weekends were often spent camping at a state park.  Even in the Indiana winter, I would take my tent, along with lots of newspaper to place under my sleeping bag, and head out to the wilds.  Still, I never questioned why.  It was just the way the world was.

I guess the first time I really thought about it was when I was in my forties.  I had come to Texas to work at the University of Houston.  It was my first time living in a large city and I was terribly uncomfortable, all the time.  When I took the job, I expected to feel that way so I never gave it much thought.  It was only after I had been there awhile that I began to see this as an issue.  At U of H I met several people who not only tolerated living in the city—they claimed to love it.  That took me by surprise; it was an attitude that was totally foreign to me.  The discovery that there were people who saw things differently made me begin to question for the first time, why I felt the way I did.

Whenever I know I have to go to a city, I research a few potential road trip destinations, just in case the need should arise. I was at a conference in Dallas.  After being there a full day, I had to escape. I got into the Jeep and drove to the LBJ Grasslands.

I’m not sure why, but I have a driving need to see the entire array of what nature has to offer.  I love beaches, hills, open plains, deserts and deep woods; my absolute favorite is the mountains.  But this place was different than any of those.  Bordering two zones, forest and prairie, the LBJ Grasslands feature rolling hills with lots of open grassy areas comingled with patches of forest.  It is not one of the more beautiful places in Texas, but still it felt so much better than Dallas.  And frankly, I was excited because this kind of environment was something new to me.

It made for a pleasant morning.  I had the opportunity to walk along the edge of a small lake, to drive down dirt and gravel roads, and most important, to hear nothing for several hours but birds and the wind.

In the early afternoon, I walked a trail through a heavily wooded area and got to thinking once more about why I was so uncomfortable in Dallas yet loved it in this rather unremarkable wild spot.

My first thought was that my situation had something to do with the archetype of the garden.  In Western art, literature and mythology, the garden represents the Garden of Eden—the world as it was before it was spoiled by man.  In our culture, this archetype shows up most powerfully as a trip to the wilderness.  Early American literature is full of such references.  When things get rough, man retreats to the wilderness where he can get in touch with his true humanity and experience the world as the creator intended.  Most of us are familiar with Thoreau’s Walden but there are countless other examples as well.

But as man paves over more and more of the world, those wild places disappear and he is forced to create small, artificial garden spots to allow him a small idea—a remembrance if you will—of the real thing.  Some are in city parks, some in backyards.  Wherever they appear, gardens have come to symbolize the idea that life was better, more fit for humans in the past.

Joseph Campbell claims that we humans all share the same archetypes, regardless of the culture we come from, because we all share the same concerns and insecurities.  We know instinctively that we can’t be the kind of humans we were designed to be unless we are in an environment that was designed with us in mind.  But those environments are rapidly disappearing.  Their replacements, cities, are dehumanizing.  We rely on the archetype of the garden in our art and our stories to remind us of what it was like to be human.

While that made sense to me, and helped to explain how those who liked cities could deal with the tremendous loss in their lives of the places where we truly belong, it didn’t feel like the entire story.  I sensed that, for me anyway, there was more.  If all I needed was to be in the original garden, the wilderness, I could pick just one spot, say the Big Bend region, and stay there.  But I don’t.  I need to be in all the various types of wild places.  And not just to see them, but to study them, to try to learn their secrets.

Sunset was closing in and it was time to head back to the Jeep.  I came across a small herd of cattle grazing on land leased from the Park Service.  A mother cow stood with her baby beneath her; he was stretching out to get at his dinner.  I watched as he drank and then as he walked around the hillside, exploring his world, and trying to learn all there is to know about the place he lives.  And finally I understood.

Like that calf, I am trying to learn all there is to know about the world I was placed in.  Not the world of cities—that is man’s creation—but rather, the world that was created for man, the world of the Garden.  As I study these places, I am looking for patterns—things that repeat in the different spots I explore, even though those places appear to vary radically in nature.  I am convinced those patterns are there.  I just need to train myself to see them.

I thought about those patterns and why I have such a need to find them—about what they might reveal. Assuming that the universe was created logically, rationally (and I believe it was), those patterns just might give me a tiny glimpse into the great plan behind the design—in other words, into the mind of God.

It was dark by the time I got back to the Jeep and it was time to head out for dinner in Denton and then back to Dallas.  I had made no progress this day on seeing patterns.  But I did feel just a touch more human for having spent time in one of those wild places I’m sure was designed for me to occupy.

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Personas

April 1st, 2015

gosimageCrystal City, Texas

When I was a kid of about seven or eight, I wanted to be Popeye. Since I was smaller than everyone else, not much of a fighter, and frankly, a bit wimpy, I believed life would have been a lot easier for me if I was big and strong like Popeye. Since spinach caused the transformation in him, I just knew that if I ate enough, it would happen for me, too. In my effort to achieve that goal, I craved spinach and could easily eat an entire can myself. My parents reminded me that kids hate spinach, but their words didn’t change things; I still wanted to eat it three meals a day. It wasn’t until decades later that I realized I spent my early grade school years living with two personalities—the weak little guy the world saw, and the one I had in my mind and believed was the real me—Popeye Junior.

Standing in front of the statue of Popeye in Crystal City a few months ago made me remember those days. Crystal City proclaims itself the Spinach Capital of the World and so it seems only fitting that there be not one, but two statues of Popeye in town. As I looked up at one, I remembered back to when I was at that young age and first realized I had “multiple personalities;” not of the clinical disorder magnitude—more like different, antagonistic sides to my nature.

As I moved into later grade school, I picked up a yet another “me”—sort of a western cowboy/Indian. I remember reading about the Sioux in fifth grade and being fascinated by the lifestyle they led. The great outdoors and horses…they were always my dream.

Sometime in high school I picked up another side—the beach bum. Growing up in northern Indiana, just a few miles from some of the prettiest beaches in America was an influence I’m sure. Also by this time, I had grown to be considerably bigger and stronger than most of my classmates, so I had no further need for Popeye Junior. He went by the wayside.

And so it went for several decades with personas coming and going until finally, decades later, the turmoil subsided and I settled comfortably into a collection of personalities that I have learned to live with. Each has its own unmistakable traits that allow anyone around me to quickly determine what “mode” I am in—just look at the clothes I am wearing or hear the music I am listening to. My students always are surprised when I come to work dressed very differently from what they see as my “norm.” Some personalities are just too hard to hide.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to be consistent—to be the same guy all the time. But apparently that is not realistic. I decided I would be satisfied if I could just control which me was showing at any given time. Even that turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. Before I go to class or meet people for work purposes, I have to sit alone and get myself pumped up. I have to convince myself that it’s show time—time to bring out the persona that is appropriate for the situation.

I know what you are thinking. “Quit whining. Everyone has that problem.” And you’d be right of course. I’m sure everyone has at least two, the professional persona and the person they really are, and most people have more than that. Nearly everyone negotiates the transition smoothly every day, so how hard can it be?

Maybe I’m just lazy, but for me, it is hard work. But more important than that, having to manipulate my personas to match a situation just doesn’t feel honest. I spend a great deal of effort trying to project a “me” that is not who I am at the moment; I try to be something I’m not. And that got me thinking—there are a lot of people who make this the defining characteristic of their lives.

 

 

While most of us go about trying to match the various sides of who we are to the roles we play in life, I can’t help but think of those who try to force themselves to project a persona that is not even remotely close to who they are. I tried that once myself. Right out of college I did a stint selling advertising for a radio station. I hated every second of it. I dreaded getting up in the morning and my job performance was dismal as a result. No amount of experience, or money, was ever going to make me suited to that job. And yet, there are people who do exactly that their entire lives. They work at jobs or run with groups of people that do not suit who they are. They try to convince the world, and maybe even themselves, that they are something they’re not.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Whether it is my multiple personas or the guy who goes through life pretending to be someone he isn’t, why can’t we just be who we really are at this, and every moment in time? Am I any less effective as a professor because I am wearing jeans and boots today rather than a tie? (Okay, I guess maybe I am a little less successful teaching Plato when my mind is on Luckenbach…)

It seems to me the real question for all of us is how did we get ourselves into this position in the first place. We assign ourselves roles that we must play, and for each role, we have to assume a different persona. An upper-level manager at work has to be a very different person than the husband and father he becomes when he walks in the door in the evening. And then there are those times when he goes “out with the guys;” that requires him be yet another person entirely.

As a result, we expend a great deal of time and effort trying to fit our naturally square pegs into life’s various round holes. Life is complicated enough without adding impersonation to the list of critical skills. If I have to be someone I’m not just to be able to fulfill the roles I’ve assigned myself in life, perhaps I should be asking if I’m choosing the right roles. And if the answer is no, it is important to understand, and to truly believe, I can change those choices any time I want. I’m not saying it will be easy, but with a can or two of spinach, I think it is doable.

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Border Crossings

March 1st, 2015

IMG_0311Langtry, Texas

The history of Texas is full of “colorful” characters, many of whom had less-than-commendable lifestyles, particularly early in life.  One of my favorites is Judge Roy Bean.  Known as the “Law West of the Pecos,” a title he created for himself, Bean became the justice of the peace in Pecos County in 1882.

A new railroad was being built along what today is Highway 90.  Since the nearest court was in Fort Stockton, 200 miles away, the Texas Rangers needed somewhere closer to bring local suspects to trial.  Bean happened to own a tent-saloon in Vinegaroon, a spot within 20 miles of 8,000 railroad workers, so the Rangers decided he was their man.

As judge, Bean used only a single law book.  Some say it was a book of Ohio statutes; others claim it was the Revised Statutes of Texas, 1879 edition.  It doesn’t really matter who is correct because it is unlikely the book was consulted often.  Bean made decisions based on his notion of what the law should be, rather than what a book said.

When the railroad moved further west, so did Bean’s saloon/courtroom. Eventually it found its permanent home in Eagle’s Nest.  Here he built an impressive—at least for its time—wooden structure that would be his base of operations for the rest of his life.

Bean had a long time unrequited love for actress Lillie Langtry and named his new saloon the Jersey Lilly in her honor (Okay, so he wasn’t a great speller), and shortly after, changed the name of the town from Eagle’s Nest to Langtry.

Certainly Bean’s style of justice has been the object of much derision over the years.  The bulk of defendants were found guilty on the spot and fined the amount of money they had in their pockets at the moment.  Lesser offenses might draw a sentence of buying a round of drinks for everyone at the bar.  He refused to forward those collected fines to Austin and though some in the state government objected, they soon learned to live with it.

But he was also well known for a very different reason.  He regularly took the profits from both his bar, and from court fines, to buy food and medicine for the area’s poor on both sides of the Rio Grande.

Lesser known, though, is the fact that Bean was a border crosser of another type.  That is, he started out as an habitual criminal.  Prior to taking the position of justice of the peace, he had committed a murder in Chihuahua, escaped a long prison sentence for assault with intent to kill when he made a successful jailbreak in San Diego, killed a Mexican official in northern California in a fight over a girl and was run out of San Antonio for criminal business practices when he was caught selling rustled cattle, watering down milk and selling timber from a neighbor’s land.

Even though as judge his decisions were occasionally suspect, it is undeniable that he made a successful crossing from a life of crime to that of a crime fighter.

Whether we recognize it or not, we are all born with boundaries that come as a result of a variety of things beyond our control: things like who our parents are, where we live, our physical abilities and inabilities, and of course, our social class.  Much of my academic research has been in the area of working class students and their experiences with college and ultimately with moving into the managerial/professional classes.  We know a lot about the kinds of things these students have to deal with in their quest to become border crossers.  As children, they are trained in a set of class codes and etiquette rules that, while encouraging good behavior, make college performance difficult (e.g. never question authority, contentions are valid because of who states them, etc.).  Beyond that, they often lack many of the prior experiences their more fortunate classmates have (books in the home, learning-based vacations and family outings, etc.)  And all these problems are exacerbated by the fact that working class students are completely unaware these differences exist.  In fact, most cannot even hear the differences between their own speech patterns and those of their professors and fellow students.

In spite of all that, some are successful.  They finish college, sometimes even go on to grad school.  They take jobs that are managerial/professional in nature and live a very different life from that of their parents and siblings.  I am living proof of that.  But this success does not come without a cost.  Almost universal among successful border crossers is an estrangement from family and lifelong friends.  Because they now live in a different world, the border crossers cannot discuss their lives with people from the old neighborhood.  They no longer have anything in common.

I will forever remember the day I first brought my elderly father to see the house I had recently purchased and moved into.  As we pulled into the driveway, he looked at it strangely.  I parked the car and got out.  I couldn’t wait for him to walk in and see the magnificent view of the lake he didn’t yet know was there.

He just sat there.  I went around to his side and opened his door.

“Come on Dad.  Let’s go inside and get a beer.”

He looked up at me and asked, “How many people live here?”  At that moment I fully realized how great the distance between us had become.  I had crossed a border; he stayed behind.

One day in 1903, Judge Roy Bean went on a world-class drinking binge in Del Rio.  He returned to Langtry early in the morning and was dead that night.  Some historians, taking a romantic view, claim the cause of death was that he had lost the will to live.  It seemed that with the turn of the century West Texas was moving forward, and that was more than he could handle.  The locals swore that the ground breaking for a new power plant on the Pecos River sent him over the edge.  He is quoted as saying that the world was changing and he was being left behind.  Apparently, the new world provided one too many borders for Judge Roy Bean to cross.

I’m convinced that we all need to move beyond the boundaries that we are born into and that surround us.  More important, we need to overcome the ones we construct ourselves.  That is part of the human drive—to break out of the restrictions we face—to cross borders.  I’m also convinced it is really not all that hard to do.  Millions of people have crossed borders in their lives.  Many have crossed several.

But I am also convinced it is not without a price.  The question is…is it worth it?

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Blue Palms Bar & Grill

March 1st, 2015

bpBy Logan Timmins

Having been open now for just a couple of months, Blue Palms Bar & Grill is already impressing locals with its exclusive menu selections, quality ingredients, and outstanding service. They are quickly making a name for themselves as an excellent eatery addition to the community, sure to succeed.

David and Cindy Burington, owners of the new dine-in restaurant and cocktail bar, opened their business on Jan. 9. David Burington has an extensive background working in Italian food restaurants, mainly. “I worked as a line cook, a prep cook, became a supervisor, then a general manager, then a kitchen manager, and also as a chef,” Burington says. “I even had some training in Italy.”

Despite his brother’s encouragement to open an Italian food place of his own, Burington other plans. “I didn’t want to do that,” says Burington. “I wanted to do something different—I wanted to have a place with a great menu and lots of variety; always creating new items and specials.” Serving instead cuisine coined “modern American,” Blue Palms Bar and Grill is exactly what Burington had envisioned.

“We didn’t want to get stuck as just a steak house or a seafood restaurant or an Italian place. We have such a great variety here.”

frutti de mareThe Buringtons are excited to serve a selection of appetizers, entrees, and desserts, many of which done in ways that this area has never seen before. Moreover, Burington guarantees 100 percent fresh ingredients with “nothing frozen, and always very high quality.” Unlike many other restaurants, Burington says that everything on the menu is made in house. “Everything is home made,” Burington says. “If we can physically make it, we’re making it.”

As for the seafood and the meats, Burington says he has only a select list of approved suppliers that he will work with to ensure quality. “Unlike a lot of restaurants, we get deliveries 6 days a week,” says Burington. He explains that because everything is fresh, they know where it’s coming from, and they are certain of the high quality, they never have to worry about buying extra to make sure its good. They don’t worry about waste because they do everything in house. “We’ll get a delivery in, sell it, and then have the next delivery to replace it,” says Burington. “We don’t have to worry about food sitting in the freezer going bad or getting freezer burn.”

Though Burington acknowledges that there seems to be a “pretty good mix” of dishes that are ordered most often, he highlights a few favorites that receive a plethora of positive feedback. Some of the appetizers: The Southern Ceviche, one of Burington’s recipes made with citrus cured gulf seafood and served with lavosh crackers, as well as the Short Rib Raviolis, made with homemade pasta and stuffed with Shiner Bock braised beef, wild mushrooms, spring onions and black pepper cream, and the Crab Cakes which are likely to become the new people’s choice in the area. Entrees that Burlington says “everyone always loves,” include a proprietary coulotte steak exclusive to Blue Palms, and a divine chicken roulade creation that Burlington says is a “simple dish, done very well.” Home made desserts like the house cheesecake with a European style, the Texas pecan Cobbler, and a delicious bread pudding topped with bits of candied bacon are hard to resist.

The Buringtons understand the importance of providing quality food and service, but it’s even better to be able to do that and keep prices affordable for most diners. Burington says, “Amazingly, even with the quality ingredients, preparation and care put into our menu, the prices are very reasonable. For what you’re getting, you won’t find better bang for your buck.”

Onward and upward, Blue Palms Bar and Grill is demonstrating a commendable distinction in dining here in the Bay Area. Proud of the success thus far and looking forward to continued growth, Burington’s outlook is deservedly optimistic: “We are in a great area, and I think if we keep doing a great job, more and more people will love coming here to dine. I am very happy.”

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