Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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At a glance Clayton Hammond Barber Born: Dec. 19, 1971, in Fort Benning, Georgia Next month: Oscar Robinson calls himself an Eisenhower baby and says he grew up in the right time to watch his country change: "I went from Jim Crow's South to an integrated America." Betty Williamson tells Robinson's story in The News on April 1. PORTALES - Clayton Barber, a lineman for the Roosevelt County Electric Cooperative, says he is exactly where God wants him to be. The Portales resident...
My book-of-the-month summary for February is “The Ig Nobel Prizes” by Marc Abrahams (Dutton, 2002, 240 pages). The official criteria for winning is for “achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced.” The unofficial criteria is the “achievement must first make people laugh.” The awards are handed out at Harvard each year by Nobel Prize winners, with most recipients actually showing up. Some winners: • The Southern Baptist Church of Alabama produced an estimate of h...
Actor Matt Damon was criticized for saying there’s a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation. Both need to be eradicated, but shouldn’t be conflated. In coming to Damon’s defense on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” the host said, “The ‘nothing is funny’ people are trying to take over the world and we can’t let them.” Maher admitted being a male predisposed him to being “aggressive and over-sexed, but I don’t concede that it makes me...
I have been good for several weeks, but the devil in me is back. Here are the front and inside of my 2018 original Valentine’s Day cards. • “I believe in Destiny — You met her at the mall last week.” • “You looked so beautiful at our wedding — Sorry I couldn’t make it.” • “You have a great personality — And six frightening ones.” • “You are like the sun — Always burning me.” • “I love the sound of your name — In divorce court.” • “I know you love the Cowboys — But didn’t know...
High Plains resident “Mary” can identify with the 13 California siblings imprisoned and abused by their parents. Growing up with nine siblings in a northern state, she said she lived a constant nightmare. “The violence in our home was so extreme we covered our heads whenever our parents approached,” Mary said. “We were afraid for our and our siblings’ lives.” Her father, who worked for the federal government, announced at 39 he’d never return to work. Her mother, who had...
My book-of-the month summary for January is “The Handy Science Answer Book” (Visible Ink Press, 1994, 523 pages). Compiled by the Science and Technology Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, it provides answers to more than 1,200 frequently asked questions. Excerpts: • Heating water drives out air bubbles. As a result, heated water forms denser ice — which is why hot-water pipes burst before cold-water pipes. • Dimples remove air drag on golf balls by making ai...
Dolores Penrod, 88, composed part of her own recent memorial at the Portales Cemetery. Read by retired professor Bob Taylor, Penrod — June 10, 1929-Dec. 11, 2017 — wrote in the third person: “Death is as much a part of life as being born. Dolores believed in the fullness of life that God wills for his children… “She firmly believed that life after death is not the issue, but life before death is what matters — not pie in the sky by and by, but the power of love to redeem huma...
Even though we sometimes support different candidates, Sid Hicks and I have been friends since the hippie era in our small east Texas hometown. Our craziest stunt was hopping a boxcar on the spur of the moment in college in Commerce, Texas, the night before winter finals. We thought it would stop in Greenville, 18 miles way. Instead, it stopped in Plano, 70 miles away. Coatless in a freezing rainstorm, we hitched a ride with a hippie chick transporting marijuana into Dallas in...
At Christmas, I got what I asked for: a garden omelet and pancakes. An unexpected bonus was a knitted toboggan from a Texas inmate who is almost a relative through a broken romance (not mine). The knitting on the black-with-blue-trim pate-warmer is exquisite, and gives me comfort in knowing — if she chooses not to pursue the career that got her where she is today — she has a bright future in weaving legal yarns. The eastern-most destination of my 2,000-mile holiday trip was...
CLOVIS — If you want to know about the character of retired Clovis High School Band Director Norvil Howell, ask a former student. Jerry Large, now a Seattle Times newspaper columnist, remembers the time Howell stopped in to visit Gattis Junior High band students about 1967. "I was playing something wrong so he started playing my horn and talking me through it," said Large, an African-American. "I was surprised he put my horn's mouthpiece in his mouth. At that time, that was n...
Mark Twain said of New Year resolutions: “Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. “Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. “Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds.” In that spirit, here are my resolutions. I will: • Expose my feelings but not myself in public. • Not suffer in silence when I can blame other...
During Thanksgiving I was given a room for the handicapped when I asked for an AARP discount at a Lubbock motel. After videotaping myself performing gymnastics in the shower, I was invited by USA Gymnastics to try out for the Olympics. Chance, the lab/weiner dog I occasionally sit, and I went skiing in Ruidoso. The resort insisted on renting him four skis. The bright side is he accidentally won the 12-and-under downhill when he slid into all the other contestants. I took a...
My book-of-the-month summary for December is “How the Body Works (100 Ways Parents and Kids Can Share the Miracle of the Human Body)” by Steve Parker (Reader’s Digest Books, 1994). The book is one of 50 I picked up for $10 (including a $3 donation) at this year’s Portales Public Library sale. I find the human body to be as mysterious and fascinating as any aspect of the universe. The building blocks for our bodies arrived from space — thus, we are all space cadets. Here are...
Rarely do I post political opinions on my Facebook page. Once in a blue moon I offer my two-cents of data-driven defense for a poor soul being egregiously attacked by sans-facts gang-pouncers on someone else’s page. Generally, my political postings are restricted to the “Democratic Oasis” Facebook page I established in 2015. Those discussions tend to be fairly robust critiques of decisions hurting the powerless rather than unabashed personal bashing of those hurting them....
Editor’s Note: “Dear Cuzins” is an advice column written by cousins Chef Juandel, The Anglo Mariachi Cowboy and Bootlegger Sloan. Cousin Wendel checks for libel. Deer Cuzins, Wit awl dis taulk bout cexual herassmint an molestin lil girls ima fraid tu evin barehug uh womun long enugh tu envite em tu my shack beehine thu katfish pon tu woo em wit uh lil shine an squirral stewe. If ah evin giv em a frendli patt on de reer dey run like ahma prevert fo ah kin evin tale em ah wasa...
Although the best fiction I’ve ever written is my resume, my lack of knack doesn’t stop me from being spellbound by wordsmith magicians birthing truth from lies. As young Navy spies in the ’70s, Sheila Schelling and I became separated in the jungles of Guam. Since I barely survived the monsoon coconut hand-grenades, until she recently resurfaced on Facebook, I never knew if the Ogden Nash devotee had pulled a Robinson Crusoe. After the North Carolina artist recommended readi...
Outsiders watching Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore waving a pistol at a rally must have thought they were dreaming — or nightmaring. Ignoring past transgressions with his younger pistol, his lack of empathy for Dreamers and women needing health services from Planned Parenthood, being suspended from the State Supreme Court twice for flouting judicial rulings about religious symbols on taxpayer property and same-sex marriage, and colloquializing about “blacks and whites fig...
Recuperating in Dallas the past week, I broadened my horizons by channel surfing to see what enlightenment I have overlooked with my busy High Plains sports schedule. Like a deja vu thunderbolt of doom, I discovered Jimmy Swaggart, 82, preaching on his SonLife Broadcasting Network. After prostitute scandals in 1988 and 1991, he had disappeared from my radar. As I watched, I pledged to keep an open mind. First, a quick recap of Swaggart’s life. At 17 he married his 1...
The approaching anniversary of my mother’s death at 92 on Nov. 7, 2010, makes me reminisce about our differing political views, and the traits I inherited or acquired from her while growing up in the east Texas countryside. Diplomatic to a fault, Fay Sloan was too sensitive about causing even a hint of friction with her favorite son (me) to talk politics. Although I can’t definitively speak for her, in her latter decades I believe Mother generally voted Republican. Since my...
My book-of-the-month summary for October is “Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People” by Elizabeth Brown (MJF Books, 2010 edition, 244 pages). The book offers coping skills for those manipulated by screwed-up people (SUP) into getting dragged into and blamed for their problems. SUP behaviors include blaming; refusing to consider other viewpoints; turning molehills into mountains; being self-absorbed and self-destructive; not open to reason; undependable; acting sup...
Although I’ve been called a Facebook philosopher, it’s only an honorary title until I receive my Ph.D. (doctor of philosophy) from Facebook University (FU). I have earned an associate’s in “Reactions,” bachelor’s in “Posts” and master’s in “Comments.” My thesis was titled “Fake Memes in the Age of Trump: Better to Blow Off Steam or Your Top?” My in-progress dissertation is “Finding Fact-Fathoming Friends, Delaying De-Friending from Deceived but Decent Dudes, and Hastening...
It may seem incongruous, but I’m offering consulting services for Republican candidates. Since they already have corporate, Confederate, wealthy, gunslinger and Christian voters (African Methodist Episcopal Church members may be on the rail), I can help them attract more brown, black, snowflake and rainbow votes. According to The Associated Press, only one in five Americans support deporting young immigrants brought to the United States as children. According to the a...
Some reflexive patriots, up in arms about blacks protesting experiences they’ve never endured by not observing rote rituals, ironically imagine they need military-grade weapons to protect them from the government the national anthem represents. The FBI defines a mass shooting as, “Four or more shot and/or killed in a single event at the same general time and location.” According to Newsweek, the library shooting in Clovis “marked the 244th mass shooting in the U.S. in 2017. To...
Either someone recently used one of my credit cards fraudulently, or my alter ego is still a party animal. My last statement had a mysterious charge of $345.56 from a big-box store in Lubbock. The day of the charge, I had been in Lubbock to contribute to an addition to my doctor’s house, and had shopped at the same store. However, I only spent $8.08 for dog food — although I don’t own a dog. (I have visitation rights to Chance, a 12-year-old black wiener-Lab, who has deposited...
My book-of-the-month summary for September is “Try and Make Me!” (2002, Signet, 242 pages) by Ray Levy and Bill O’Hanlon. Subtitled “Simple Strategies That Turn Off the Tantrums and Create Cooperation,” I bought it by accident thinking it was about keeping peace between Taylor Swift and Katy Perry fans. Coalesced by the authors over a long weekend at Levy’s house in Santa Fe, the book turned out to be strategies for parenting 2-12-year-olds – so I wasn’t too far off. Here are...
