Hill Country

The weather around here these days couldn’t get any better, in my opinion. It’s dream weather; front porch sitting, around town walking, window down driving weather. The park has had more walkers than usual because of it. Gotta love seeing everyone out and about enjoying this time of year. Of course, in typical fashion, my stating out loud that the weather is good will usher in a white-out blizzard, stifling heat wave and/or basic drought before this column goes to print. But I declare that, for now…this very second on Monday morning, the weather has been terrific in our town.

I did get a little taste of winter last week at my youngest kid’s first soccer game when the temperature dropped into whatever realm makes me miserable beyond recovery. I was not prepared, physically or mentally, to be bombarded on a random Monday night with 30 minutes of temperatures in the high 50s. I know what you’re thinking, “But, weird column lady, that’s not too cold. Just put on a jacket.” Well, that would require the forethought of jacket-bringing.

Valentine’s Day has passed and people are booking Spring Break condos before I ever get the hang of preparing for winter weather. I guess it’s some form of denial. It’s possibly related to whatever condition makes the junior high kids wear t-shirts in winter and the high school kids wear sweat shirts in the summer; some sort of weather dysmorphia.

Speaking of high schoolers, I was so pleased to see Chloe Clement writing for the Herald. My high school had a newspaper class and we published a small newspaper each nine-weeks. That was our class’s sole mission. We all loved newspaper class and are all still in touch with each other. I was the occasional cartoonist, restaurant reviewer and reported on girls’ sports.

You learn a lot by writing for a school newspaper.  Like don’t publish a bad restaurant review before fact-checking to see if a fellow student’s parents own said restaurant. I’ve published a few things I sort of regret over the years in writing for our newspaper but that bad review in high school is at the top of my self-cringe list. I said their grilled cheese sandwich was soggy. I could barely cook ramen at the time.

My youngest child really wants to write for a school newspaper but currently there’s not one. Cartoons, movie reviews, game reviews, social and opinion columns, recipes! I’m clearly partial to features. There’s been various incarnations of a school newspaper here over the years. One was fairly recent! So, we can ramp it up again at DES or high school, I bet. I’ll help!

All this to say, in a town with Betty, how could we not have a school newspaper? She’s the ultimate column-writing inspiration and an example of dedication that is so rare. \Not to mention having a woman’s voice on the front page of the paper each week is cool, too. Her column title is a triumph of effective simplicity as is the content.  She’s the reason I started my column and I admire her very much. I still remember when she wrote about killing the lizard with a family Bible by standing on it, with the lizard trapped underneath. Or the time she ran over the armadillo while delivering newspapers and declared it “crunchy.”

Get well, Betty! We are all wishing you a good week!