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In the beginning, there was only darkness. Then everybody’s favorite therapeutic apparition said, Let there be light. “Well,” He continued under His breath, “besides all the gazillion other lights clearly visible from the infinite tapestry of the universe.” So there was light. New light. Then millions — if not

If you live in a place long enough, you begin to think you know it. Or that it defines you or becomes part of your DNA. And if you were born there, its role in your identity is official. But that certainly wasn’t how I felt at the March 8, 2022 regular meeting of the Hill County Commissioners Court in Central Texas,

A good friend emailed me a couple weeks back and asked me why Donald Trump had recently spoke in Conroe, Texas. I didn’t know. I hadn’t known Trump was even visiting Texas. I haven’t been watching the news a lot lately. I emailed her back: “No. Probably a motivated gaggle of his fans there. It’s

A good friend emailed me this past Sunday morning and asked me why Donald Trump spoke in Conroe, Texas, the day before. I didn’t know. I hadn’t known Trump was even visiting Texas. I haven’t been watching the news a lot lately. I emailed her back: “No. Probably a motivated gaggle of his fans there. It’s also, of

As a native Texan, I used to be fairly oblivious to outside perceptions of my home state. I never watched a single episode of Dallas, for example; but when I visited Western Europe in the summer of 1984, I was surprised that practically everyone I met assumed I owned horses and oil wells. Then, the […]

On Veteran’s Day it’s typical and appropriate to see countless homages, salutes and earnest formal and informal appreciation ceremonies for military servicemen and servicewomen in every electronic and paper medium that we encounter. It’s part of who we are. It’s part of how we got where we are. I get it. We all get it. […]

Fort Worth Weekly Critical Race History in Texas There’s no memorial to one of East Texas’ biggest civil rights champions, and we should all know why. By E.R. BILLS In late December 2015, Constance Hollie-Jawaid and I were still working on the final plans for the dedication ceremony for a Texas state historical marker commemorating the Slocum Massacre. The fight to get the marker approved had been grueling, and, on that particular day, we had traveled to Palestine, Texas, to me...

One of the greatest tricks our minds can play on us is the illusion of permanence. We get comfortable and we take things for granted. Sure, we see some things change around us, but there are certain fixtures in our lives we think will always just be there. Now, picture your hometown - the house you grew up in, your grade school, the field where you played ball with your neighborhood friends, the place where you had your first kiss - being completely submerged and lost to time as if it never ex...

For the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, the New York Times has released an interactive experience, What the Tulsa Massacre Destroyed, that takes viewers through the streets of a digitally created and historically accurate Greenwood neighborhood, demonstrating the destruction the massacre created. Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma was considered the “Black Wall Street” in the 1920s and after a group of Black individuals tried to stop the lynching of a Greenwood resident, a mob of white...

Several of these recommended books on the Chisholm Trail are available for free online. Writers and readers can’t get enough stories about those 1800s cattle trails. As you read this, I am out of the office. Yet I did not forget the statewide readership of the Think, Texas newsletter and column. In my absence, allow me to offer an Aug. 20, 2017, column about the Chisholm Trail written by my colleague Glen Seeber of the Oklahoman, a sibling Gannett newspaper in the USA Today Network. While the...