East Bernard Express (East Bernard, Tex.), Vol. 71, No. 14, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 3, 2014 Page: 4 of 10
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Page 4 Thursday, April 3, 2014
East Bernard Express
Bill Wallace, Editor & Publisher
bwallace@journal-spectator.com
Keith Magee, Managing Editor
kmagee@journal-spectator.com
Burlon Parsons, Associate Editor
bparsons@journal-spectator.com
P.0. Box 111 • Wharton, Texas 77488 • 979-532-0095 • 979-532-8845 fax
Periodicals Postage Paid at East Bernard, Texas 77435. Annual
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Wallis; $39.00 per year elsewhere in Texas; $59.00 per year out of state.
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It's a small
world, V2.0
Several weeks ago, Linda
King from the Milam Street
Coffee Shop sent me some
information about the Java
Jam benefit they were hav-
ing on March 14 for a young
woman named Molly who
used to work there.
I had never known her last
name, but as I was getting
the story ready for the new-
paper, I noticed her last name
was Coffman.
I casually thought to myself
that I had a high school class-
mate with the same last name,
and I didn’t think that much
more about it.
OK, you can probably see
where this is going. If not, or
perhaps if you’re an Aggie, I’ll
fill you in on it.
So the night of the benefit,
there was a great turnout, and
about $2,200 was raised to help
Molly with her medical ex-
penses with Stage 4 Hodgkin’s
Lymphoma.
Molly’s dad was there, and he
got up, spoke and thanked ev-
eryone and casually mentioned
that he was from North Texas.
After he spoke, I went over
and asked him what part of
North Texas he was from. First
he said Denton, and then he
said that he graduated from
Gainesville High School. Before
he could say Class of 1975,1
already knew.
It was Mike Coffman, and
after I said my name, we knew
exactly who the other person
was.
That’s not too bad, consider-
ing we could recognize each
other even wi thout all of that
1970s hair we had back then.
It was funny how he men-
tioned Denton first. I had lived
in Denton before I moved to
Wharton, and many of us
Gainesville folks, when asked
where we were from, would usu-
ally say something like north
of Dallas, or north of Denton,
since not everyone knew where
Gainesville was located.
We both sang in the high
school choir, and he knew that
I always wanted to go into
journalism. But we hadn’t seen
each other since we graduated.
I made it to a couple of class
reunions, but he never did.
It was good to see him,
and it just goes to show you
that the world isn’t all that
big after all. When I first got
here, I found out that Wharton
resident Janice Harris is also
from Gainesville, and her dad,
Warren Flowers, was my boss at
the first newspaper I worked at
in Gainesville after graduating
from the University of Texas at
Arlington.
I was glad to see that the
benefit Java Jam was a suc-
cess. And even though I knew of
Molly when she worked at the
coffee shop, it made it a little
more special to know that we
helped a child of one of my high
school classmates.
■
Random thought: I saw a
photo of Boy George the other
day in a magazine.
It said he’s 52 years old.
Shouldn’t he be called Man
George?
Keith Magee is managing
editor of the Wharton Journal-
Spectator and East Bernard
Express. He can he reached at
kmagee@journal-spectator. com.
No foolin'
‘Doc’
Blakely
Pokin’ Fun
There is an old saying, “A
fool and his money are soon
parted.” What I want to know
is how does a fool get enough
money to part with in the first
place?
Well, I can illustrate that
with the story of this young
fellow that dropped out of col-
lege. He always bragged that
he was personally invited by the
dean to leave, an honor bestowed
on none of his friends. Within a
few years he was a millionaire.
A reporter interviewed him and
asked how he did it. He told the
reporter he made it in the stock
market, and the secret was to
buy low and sell high.
The reporter asked, “How do
you know when it’s going to go
up?”
“Don’t you read the papers?”
he asked.
“Yes, but those economists
who write those columns are not
always right.”
‘Yes, if they were always
right everybody would buy when
they said buy and then every-
body would be rich and money
wouldn’t be worth anything
because nobody would want to
work for anybody else.”
I think this guy should be
teaching in college with that
kind of understanding of the
fiscal system. He further went
on to say that he bought and sold
lots of stuff. His philosophy was
to buy something for a dollar and
sell it for two dollars. “That 2%
interest on your investment soon
adds up,” he remarked. I think
he’s been listening to my banker.
Years ago when I was teach-
ing everything they had a book
for in the Agriculture Depart-
ment of our fine local college,
I taught a course in nutrition.
When it came to balancing ra-
tions, the students all whipped
out calculators to figure percent-
ages.
That’s when I learned that
students had absolutely no
concept of logic because if they
hit the wrong decimal point by
accident, they still accepted the
answer the calculator gave them
since it is never wrong. For ex-
ample, I would ask them to mix,
in theory, 100 pounds of feed, 10
percent of which was to be cot-
tonseed meal. The question was,
“How much cottonseed meal do
you add to the ration?” Many
of them would answer “1,000
pounds.”
“Amazing,” I would say, “how
did you come by that number?”
All puffed up with pride the
kid would say, “I multiplied 10
x 100 on my trusty calculator. It
says right here it’s 1,000 pounds.
You want to see it?”
‘No, I’ll take your word for it,
but does it seem logical to you
that you have a sack to put the
feed in and you are going to add
1.000 pounds in there before you
even add anything else and that
sack can only hold 100 pounds?
The answer is 10 pounds, not
1.000 because you forgot to move
your decimal two places to the
left before multiplying. Now
what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to switch to soy-
bean meal. That weighs less per
pound than cottonseed meal.”
Yep, they walk among us.
Doc Blakely is a humorist and
motivational speaker who resides
in Wharton. For more informa-
tion, visit www.docblakely.com.
The older you get, the more
you talk about your ailments
A few days ago when my wife was
reading a book by Barbara Bush, Re-
flections: Life After the White House,
and she chuckled out loud, I had to
know what she was chuckling about.
“Barbara says,” my wife replied, “’It
is horrible to get older and have to
listen to others’ ailments when yours
are so much more interesting.’”
That made me chuckle, too, be-
cause I was just thinking how much
more I talk about my aches, pains,
symptoms, and medical problems
now that I’m an old man, than I did
when I was younger. In fact, when
we were younger, we never even gave
our medical problems a thought.
For example, years ago when I was
still teaching at the junior college, a
group of my colleagues and I met one
Friday night a month to play bridge.
Believe me, we talked about every-
thing imaginable, from politics to
campus gossip, but only once in those
years do I remember anyone men-
tioning health issues.
One of the guys mentioned he had
a cold. “Drink some more beer and
you’ll get over it” was the response,
and the issue was never brought up
again.
Nowadays, it seems that whenever
I get together with someone my age,
the first thing we talk about is to
compare our medical conditions and
prescriptions.
Mark Twain once said that life
was made up of ups and downs, and
unfortunately, the downs outnum-
bered the ups, so it would help a lot
if we learned to laugh at ourselves.
Let’s face it, when you’re 79 going
on 80 like me, you are going to have
CAT scans, MRIs and blood work for
stuff you never heard about, and on
and on; so it really does help to laugh
a little bit about all this — it does
for me. You can always find a little
humor in it.
Most recently, during my CAT
scans, the nurse inserted a tube in
my veins — three times. Each time
she did, my vein would pop the tube
right out. She would get it in fine,
Ray
Spitzenberger
Images
but each time, my vein would say,
“Get outta here, ka-pop!” The first
time it scared me, but the second and
third time, I thought it was hilarious-
ly funny. You can imagine how many
times I’ve told that story both to those
who want to hear about it and those
who don’t.
It seems like the older people get,
the more they like to discuss their as-
sortments of aches, pains, conditions,
treatments, etc., sometimes to the
extent that the younger generation
no doubt thinks we are all hypochon-
driacs. Well, some oldies are hypo-
chondriacs. When we start talking
about our hip replacements and heart
stints, etc., the hypochondriac listens
to us with excessive concentration to
determine if one of these might be his
next health issue.
I’ve been in more than one conver-
sation with my elderly peers about
the problems associated with macular
degeneration, possible treatments,
and even some vitamins you can take
for the condition You can bet that
someone in the group has the prob-
lem, and someone has horror tales
about it.
Now imagine the hypochondriac
hearing the discussion, but not at
all understanding that it’s an eye
disease, yet suddenly deciding he
must be suffering from it, saying, “My
knee caps have really degenerated;
I’m gonna really have to have that
checked out. It could be that’s my
problem, too!”
The number of people who are true
hypochondriacs are few, but, come on,
admit it, everyone of us has a little
hypochondria in us. I think that
was proved when Betty Macdonald,
famous for The Egg and I, wrote The
Plague and I, about the period in her
life when she suffered from tuberculo-
sis. After women all over the country
read The Plague and I, doctors’ offices
were flooded with people who were
sure they had the symptoms of TB.
Seriously, of course, we are preoc-
cupied with our medical problems,
especially in the winter of our life; we
are preoccupied because it becomes
a huge part of our daily life. When
you’re younger, the doctor tells you,
“Oh, you don’t have to have that
test until you’re 40,” bringing much
relief to your heart. But when you’re
twice 40, you get the book thrown
at you! Yep, you gotta have that
dreaded colonoscopy. Yep, you gotta
have those three biopsies! Yep, you
gotta get stuck, so you might as well
get friendly with the needles, and
you can. When I was younger, if a
tube had popped out of my vein three
times in a row, I would have either
fainted or run so far from the nurse,
she would never have caught me!
Nowadays, I consider it good fodder
for conversation.
I doubt that there is anyone who
has had more treatments and surger-
ies than Barbara Bush (unless it’s
her husband, George Sr.), yet she
has always remained light-hearted,
laughing about the funny things and
setting an example for others with
geriatric ailments.
The older generation is often faced
with medical issues that are serious,
and they’re not a laughing matter;
but, at the same time, taking a light-
hearted attitude helps us to smile and
to keep us going.
Laughing about it or screaming
about it won’t change the medical
issue, but laughing in itself is good
medicine.
Ray Spitzenberger serves as pas-
tor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in
Wallis, after retiring from Wharton
County Junior College, where he
taught English and speech and served
as chairman of Communications and
Fine Arts for many years.
Davis vs. Abbott:
Equal pay for women
“March Madness,” usually applied
to collegiate basketball, but this year
it could also describe Republican
Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott’s view of his
campaign for governor.
Team Abbott was seriously trying
to change the subject after they sent
Abbott off in Februaiy campaign-
ing with shock-rocker gun jock Ted
Nugent as a crowd draw to underline
his pro-gun credentials.
Abbott learned, a bit too late, that
Nugent had referred to President
Obama as a “sub-human mongrel,”
and bragged about affairs with under-
age girls. Abbott’s team hoped desper-
ately to side-step that, and return to
bashing Obamacare and Obama, and
his Democratic opponent, state Sen.
Wendy Davis.
So Team Abbott attacked Davis
because her law firm — her partner
is Brian Newby, Gov. Rick Perry’s for-
mer chief of staff — had served and
is serving as bond counsel for several
public entities in the Dallas-Fort
Worth area. Abbott’s bunch says this
is a conflict of interest and unethical,
although it is legal.
But, just as the Abbott group was
rolling out that blast, Abbott was
asked on WFAA-TV’s “Inside Texas
Politics” show on Sunday, March
9, whether, had he been governor,
he would have done as Gov. Perry
had done, and vetoed extending the
federal Lilly Ledbetter equal-pay-for-
equal-work principles to state law.
Abbott talked around the ques-
tion, saying he believes in equal pay
for equal work regardless of sex, but
never said whether he would have ve-
toed the bill passed by the legislature.
That did not go unnoticed by
Davis. She was the Senate sponsor
of the bill Perry vetoed. It had been
passed with a bi-partisan support
in the Republican-dominated Texas
House and Senate.
So while Abbott’s bunch tried
repeatedly to gain traction on Davis’s
public bond business, they instead
were having to play defense. First
it was for Abbott ducking the veto
question. And then when he finally
acknowledged, through a spokesman,
that he would also have vetoed the
bill, Davis and the Democrats turned
up the heat.
It probably didn’t help that Gov.
Perry, on MSNBC, said Davis con-
tinuing to talk about the equal-pay
bill was “nonsense,” and wouldn’t
have made any difference. Because it
would have.
The 2009 Lilly Ledbetter act
changed federal law so a woman
paid less than men doing equal work
could sue within 180 days of her most
recent check that reflected the dis-
crimination, instead of the first check,
which could have been years earlier.
She might never have known about
the pay discrepancy until well after
the limitation on filing had expired.
Adding the same change to state
law, as at least 42 other states have
done, would give women the same ac-
cess in state courts, in addition to the
less accessible and more expensive
federal courts.
Other developments, either
brought about by Davis charges,
gimmicks or reactions to stumbles by
Abbott and Republican backers, have
kept the equal-pay issue bubbling:
• The executive director of a
newly-formed group called Red State
Women, Cari Christman, said on
WFAA-TV that while “we believe
Texas women want and deserve equal
pay,” a law isn’t necessary because
“women are extremely busy,” without
time for lawsuits.
• On Monday, March 24, Davis
appeared at Scholz Garten in Austin,
asking when Abbott would respond
to questions about news reports that
women attorneys in his office make
$6,000 a year less than men.
“I have a message for Greg Abbott
today: Stop hiding behind your staff
members. Stop hiding behind your
surrogates. This Texas gal is calling
you out,” Davis said.
“Act like a Texan and answer this
question for yourself: what on earth
is going on at your Attorney General’s
office? Why do you think it’s OK to
pay women in your office less than
men when they do the same work?”
An Abbott spokesman said the
men had more experience.
• On Tuesday, March 25, Team Da-
vis said an “Act Like A Texan” digital
clock had been added to their website
(it takes a little guesswork to find it)
tallying second by second how long
Abbott hasn’t personally responded to
questions on the equal-pay issue.
• On Wednesday, March 26, the
12-member Texas Senate Democratic
Caucus, which includes Davis, sent
a letter to Republican Lt. Gov. David
Dewhurst asking him to assign an
interim committee to study the equal-
pay situation in state agencies.
“ ... Texas can do better,” the sena-
tors wrote. “And Texas will be even
greater when we assure all people
are treated equally. We believe that
unequal pay for equal work is unac-
ceptable in Texas. We are hopeful
that you agree and will, as a result,
establish this interim study.... “
Look for the equal-pay issue to
also be used nationally this year in
Democratic campaigns.
Contact Dave McNeely at davemc-
neelylll@gmail.com or 512-458-2963.
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Wallace, Bill. East Bernard Express (East Bernard, Tex.), Vol. 71, No. 14, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 3, 2014, newspaper, April 3, 2014; East Bernard, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth787188/m1/4/?q=green+energy: accessed June 30, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Wharton County Library.