By Tom Purcell “Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.” Those are the clever words of British humorist Terry Pratchett, who couldn’t have explained the aging process more succinctly.I know his words are true because I turned 60 this week. It’s a heck of a thing to have burned through six decades already. If I’d known 60 years would go by so fast, I would have taken…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com As the Vietnam war escalated during the 1960s, and the money and weapons we first sent into the war there turned into an ever-growing mountain of bodies of American young men, the number of very large and loud protests by the American public fed up with the pointless, and expensive sacrifice also grew. And there was escalating conflict between those who…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com The Texas Republican Party during their annual convention, passed a resolution. "We reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States," Words matter, and the specific wording here is significant. It is the “certified…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com In the 1984 movie Terminator, Skynet (artificial neural network-based conscious group mind and artificial general superintelligence system) becomes self-aware on August 29, 1997, at 2:30 a.m. EDT. It launches nuclear missiles at Russia, to try and provoke a counterattack when humans try to disconnect it. In June of 2022, A Google Research Fellow, Blaise…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com “There comes a time when you look into the mirror, and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.” Tennessee Williams I’ve spent years writing a sci-fi novel in my head based on a thought experiment first offered by Rene Descartes in 1641. While Descartes used…

By Tony Farkastony@polkcountypublishing.com The last fight I ever was in was in the sixth grade. It was over a tetherball. I was placed in charge of the item by the teacher, and having such things like responsibility drummed into me (being a military brat and all), it was something I took very seriously. When recess was over, I went to collect it, and was met with resistance from a classmate.…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com “Through measured debate, facts, moderate tones and actual discussion, problems can be solved.” Tony Farkas I disagree with this statement, and I doubt that measured debate, facts, moderate tones, and actual discussion can resolve that disagreement. The word “facts” is where this breaks down. A friend and I are driving together to a car show and see one…

By Tony Farkastony@polkcountypublishing.com History teaches us that belief is a powerful thing, and that people holding a belief can be forces for change. Take Christianity for instance. The Apostles died as martyrs for their faith, practicing their belief and preaching love and tolerance. While not perfect, Christianity in its many forms still exists today. It’s the prime example of what happens…

By Tom Purcell I started my first business in the 5th grade when I convinced a neighbor to allow me to cut her grass with her electric lawn mower. That project ended in immediate failure. The mower was powered by a long extension cord — a cord I ran over and sliced in two shortly after I began mowing. Such is the life of the entrepreneur, a life typically filled with lots more failure than…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com We all like a story about the triumph of good over evil. A favorite trope is the story of a schoolyard bully who someone finally finds the courage to punch in the face, the bully collapsing in tears. “He cried like a little girl,” we tell our friends. What do we mean by that? That suddenly his chromosomes switched from XY to XX? Do we mean that his sex…

By Trent Ashby District 57 Repsentative The tragedy and senseless act of violence that took the precious lives of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde leaves us all with heavy hearts. As Texans grieve over this unspeakable loss, we grapple with the unfortunate reality that something this catastrophic can take place in our own backyard. In a place where children are…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com “I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.” Attributed to Banksy "Someday soon, perhaps in forty years, there will be no one alive who has ever known me. That's when I will be truly dead - when I exist in no one's memory. I thought a lot about how…

By Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com Here we are again. A bullied kid turns into an angry teen who buys a couple of guns on his 18th birthday and takes out his frustration on children in an elementary school. And with a mid-term election fast approaching, politician’s outrage is raising to a fever pitch. The events are awful. Shouldn’t have happened. Heartbreaking. Of course, the senseless…

By Tony Farkastony@polkcountypublishing.com As a parent, one with school-aged children, the news from Uvalde is gut-wrenching in more ways than one. Children should be loved, and cherished, and face the best things the world has to offer, and should not have to face such horrors as a homicidal rampage. This one hits much too close for comfort as well. As terrible as it is, leaping to conclusions…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com This column isn’t specifically about abortion. But I’m going to frame it with an example from the current abortion debate. If you believe that human life begins at conception, and that a fertilized egg is a person, then you are right to believe that abortion is murder. If abortion is murder, then anyone directly involved with an abortion is guilty of…

Strolling through a shopping mall one December years ago, joyfully preparing for our daughter’s first Christmas, I stopped at one of those kiosks in the middle where they personalize Christmas ornaments. I selected one that said baby’s first Christmas and had her name and the year painted on it. Then I selected another ornament, this one with all three of our names painted on it along with the…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com To D_ Dead by Her Own Hand My dear, I wonder if before the endYou ever thought about a children’s game—I’m sure you must have played it too—in whichYou ran along a narrow garden wallPretending it to be a mountain ledgeSo steep a snowy darkness fell awayOn either side to deeps invisible;And when you felt your balance being lostYou jumped because you feared…

By Tony Farkastony@polkcountypublishing.com Like many of you, I’m a parent, and I’ve been through the trials and tribulations of all parents, that being feeding time. Feeding time is whenever a baby squalls that certain way and you know it’s time, regardless of whatever the clock says. With us, and also like many others, the babies could not be breastfed, so formula was the way to go. We…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com Here we are again. A bullied kid turns into an angry teen who buys a couple of guns on his 18th birthday and takes out his frustration on children in an elementary school. And with a mid-term election fast approaching, politician’s outrage is raising to a fever pitch. The events are awful. Shouldn’t have happened. Heartbreaking. Of course, the senseless…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com "To the members of the survivor community, we are grieved by the findings of this investigation. We are committed to doing all we can to prevent future instances of sexual abuse in churches, to improve our response and our care, to remove reporting roadblocks." The quote above is part of a statement released by the Southern Baptist Convention following a…

Last month, I was proud to co-host the Lone Star Legislative Summit in Nacogdoches with Rep. Travis Clardy in conjunction with the Nacogdoches Chamber of Commerce. We hosted a number of attendees from across the state including Speaker Dade Phelan and panels on immigration and border security, education, infrastructure, energy, health care, and social media and freedom of speech. It was a…

By Tony Farkastony@polkcountypublishing.com The latest executive order to come out of Washington, D.C., is to me the head-scratcher of all time. Recently, the Biden Administration (I say that because I’m not sure we have a true leader) has killed all applications for oil and gas leases in the Cook Inlet in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. The reasons given were that in Alaska, there didn’t seem to…

I was feeling a bit under the weather this past week, so I ended up spending time at home in front of the television. The thing that really mesmerized me was the Johnny Depp trial on Court TV. I never watch Court TV. I’m pretty sure most lawyers avoid that channel because why would we want to spend our leisure hours staring at melodramatic, preening attorneys from Michigan or La Jolla when we can…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com While prose is my preferred form of written expression, I’ve also dabbled over the years in poetry. Once we develop an obsession with words, writers are always looking for new ways to play with words, it seems. I write in a form of poetry called unrhymed verse. Many poets insist that unrhymed verse is not poetry at all and look down their noses at those…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com A long time ago (1991-1995), in a Texas far, far away from what it is now, there was a Governor named Ann Richards. She holds the distinction of being the last woman governor, and the last Democrat governor, of the state. You’ll also not be surprised that she often did not tell the truth. Richards, a teacher by profession, represented herself as a strong…

Special to the News-Standard WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, Texas 8, sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee urging the adoption of smart safeguards to protect U.S. taxpayers from footing the bill of faulty high speed rail projects. Specifically, the letter requests the inclusion of strong guardrails to the Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing loan program in the…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com Every time I advocate a pro-choice position on abortion, I inevitably get branded an atheist by someone who has confused politics with religion. Usually the person “explains” to me that abortion is wrong because God (pick your flavor of God) breathes the breath of life into the fertilized egg at conception, and the zygote becomes a living soul. And every…

By Tony Farkastony@polkcountypublishing.com John Roberts and the Supremes are going to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the lesser-known Planned Parenthood v. Casey, according to a draft opinion leaked last week from the U.S. Supreme Court. In and of itself, the leak is a pretty egregious flouting of federal law, and should be investigated and prosecuted, surely. More important, though, is that it…

by Jim Powersjim@polkcountypublishing.com I rarely drink alcohol, not because I’m opposed to folks drinking alcohol, but because I don’t like the taste of alcoholic drinks. If you want to ruin good grape juice, ferment it. As a result of that dislike of alcohol, you will rarely find me hanging out in bars…unless there’s a good live band. And, coincidentally, one of my top 10 favorite songs is…

by State Representative Trent Ashby After a welcome reprieve from the Capital City, this past week I made my way down to Austin to begin laying the groundwork for the next legislative session by attending my first interim committee hearing. While there have been a number of House committee hearings over the last week or two, I thought it would be appropriate to feature a committee on which I…