Optimism in a dangerous and uncertain time

As the sun set in a cloudless western sky, I sat on my back patio late this afternoon, smoked a cigar and watched a flock of ducks circle over the small pond that borders our neighborhood and a small pocket park that is but a short hike down the hill from Gunnels Manse.

The ducks, for reasons known only to them, winter each year in the pond, and early each evening they take wing before settling down for the night.

I counted 14 today. There may be more, but I’ve never bothered to take an exact count. The number isn’t really important. It’s their circuits around Pickering Park that bring each day in Trail Lake Estates to a calm and peaceful close. I have come to consider them part of the family.

Sometimes they travel in pairs, sometimes in groups of four or six. Then the entire flock will flap in large, swooping circuits that take them briefly out of sight. But they always reappear, as regular as the ticks on a clock.

 I watch them and feel the stresses of the day slowly, steadily dissolve.

It has been an especially good holiday for the Gunnels family. My kids surprised me yesterday and made brief appearances. I hadn’t expected to see them on Christmas Day, but they made a special effort to come by, probably at the gentle urging of my wife, who knows what a sentimental mush I am at heart.

I don’t know what the future holds for all of us. These are, after all, dangerous and uncertain times. But as I sat today and watched our ducks make their graceful evening transits overhead, I was filled with an optimism that everything is going to turn out all right.

Regional semi-final dogfight: Southlake Carroll 30, Arlington Martin 26

 

Quinn Ewers in action against the Warriors

He’s back!

(Information has been added to this account that wasn't available when it originally was posted.)

The secrecy surrounding the health and playing status of Quinn Ewers, the most coveted high school junior quarterback in the nation, was lifted yesterday when the youngster led the Southlake Carroll Dragons onto the field at Globe Life Park in Arlington.

Ewers had been out since Oct. 30 when he suffered a sports hernia injury during the Keller game. Only people within the program were aware that he underwent surgery to repair the damage. The nuclear launch codes were better known than his condition and the date at which he might return.

But return he did and what a homecoming. His performance last night against the potent Arlington Martin Warriors helped propel the Dragons into the Regional Final Round of the playoffs for the fourth straight year. It’s the eighth time in the last decade they have reached the fourth round, a fact supplied by The Dallas Morning News’ Joseph Hoyt in his excellent game story.

       Admittedly, Ewers exhibited a few flecks of rust and a certain fragility against the Warriors. After all, a 55 percent pass completion rate is a little low for the five-star phenom. And there was that awkward slide on one of the few attempts he made to run. That said, Ewers’ 20 of 36 for 251 yards and three touchdowns demonstrated he’s ready to pick up where he left off two months ago.

Pick your poison

And just in time, too. The Dragon 30-26 victory over the Warriors means they face the winner of today’s match between the Allen Eagles and the Euless Trinity Trojans. My money is on the Eagles in that one, but the Trojans are having a stellar year, so who knows? For Carroll, it’s pick your poison.

After all, nothing is easy in the fourth round. Although, frankly, it wasn’t exactly a snap to survive yesterday’s regional semi-finals yesterday.

Landon Samson evades a Warrior.

Ewers started hot last night, completing 6 of his first 8 passes. He threw a 26-yard TD pass to Landon Samson (10 catches for 169 yards, 2 TDs) and followed it later with a 8-yard toss to Brady Boyd (9-78, 1 TD), providing the Dragons a thin first-quarter cushion that would prove necessary.

Because despite Ewers’ heroics, the Dragons had their hands full with the Warriors, whose powerful running game, led by RB Javian Toviano (12 carries for 107 yards and 1 TD), damned near carried the day.

Last moment

The Carroll win wasn’t secure until the last 10 seconds of the game. That’s when Warrior quarterback Zach Mundell, facing a desperate 4^th and 7 at the Dragon 20, lofted a pass to a receiver at the goal line. At the last possible moment, Dragon defensive back Logan Anderson, a sophomore, slapped the ball away. The Carroll sideline erupted in pandemonium.

Penalties played a role in the Dragon victory. Martin saw several promising drives slowed and sometimes stopped altogether by the rain of yellow flags that cost the Warriors 168 hard-fought yards.

Truthfully, the refs could have thrown a lot more -- and probably should have. The Warriors, while immensely talented, showed a wild lack of discipline and no class in defeat. You can lay most of the blame for that at head coach Bob Wager's feet. 

The Martin teams he has sent against the Dragons in the past always have been mouthy and played dirty. Last night was no exception, particularly in the second half, when the Dragons choked off Warrior comeback efforts.

Late hits and post-play chatter don't win games, however. Not when you face a stubborn Dragon defense that stopped the Warriors when it mattered. It stepped up big in the decisive 2^nd half, when Martin directed immense pressure on Ewers and bottled up hard-charging Owen Allen, who was limited to only 70 rushing yards. Senior Parker Schnieders broke up a certain Warrior touchdown when he batted away a Mundell pass in the end zone.

Head coach Riley Dodge, who has guided his team into the quarterfinals every year since he was hired, praised his defensive squad.

“We started this season with 11 new starters from the year before that took us to the state quarterfinals,” Dodge told DMN’s Hoyt. “And now we’re back in the quarterfinals … They’ve gotten better each week, and I’m super proud of the way they responded at the end of the game.”

Punch for punch

The two teams traded punch for punch in the second half. After Martin senior Lenard Lemons returned a kickoff 102 yards for a touchdown, giving the Warriors a 26-20 lead, the Dragons responded immediately. One play later, Ewers threw a TD pass to Samson, the receiver’s second of the night.

Samson reaches for a TD pass.

The Dragons clung to that razor-thin 27-26 lead until kicker Joe McFadden booted a three-pointer, his 3^rd of the night, midway through the 4^th.

It's worth noting, now that Ewers is back, that Carroll enjoyed the luxury of waiting until their superstar quarterback healed. His backup, the worthy Hunter Holden, performed exceedingly well in his caretaker role. He kept the Southlake offense operating smoothly and has contributed greatly to Dragon success during this strange, COVID-impacted season.

As for Ewers, he’s back and eager for the road ahead. In a Tweet after the game, he said the crushing pressure Martin directed at him in the second half, which resulted in at least one roughing the passer call, only added “fuel to the fire, baby.”

He told The DMN: “Being back just feels amazing, and it feels so good to be back on this field with pads and a helmet and a football in my hand.”

On to the regional finals!

Christmas tree, O Christmas tree: Part 20, the last

No room at the top

I now come to the end of this sentimental and self-indulgent holiday reminiscence with a look at the tippy-top of The Beast.

I promised my wife when she finally surrendered to my entreaties to put up a Christmas tree that it would be a secular celebration of family, not a religious one. And I have kept that promise, mostly.

Thus, no star and no angel adorn the apex of our tree.

As you can plainly see, even without such a commitment, there’s simply no room for a tree-topper. The Beast barely clears the ceiling now, and that’s only because I did some lumberjacking on the top section during its first installation.

I began this sappy stroll down Gunnels memory lane with the observation that this would be the last year of The Beast. At the time, I believed its time had come to an end, a victim of my aging joints and diminished muscle mass.

Now I’m having second thoughts. I always have second thoughts. Marice accuses me, justifiably, of always over-thinking things. Why should the ultimate fate of The Beast be any different?

You see, we’ve come to some decisions at Gunnels Manse that could affect the future of our problematic Christmas tree. Last week, we contracted with master-of-all-trades Gary Cramer to build a shed in our backyard to house our myriad bins, boxes and bags of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations.

Such an out-building no longer will require me to risk life and fragile limb in ascending a 10-foot ladder to bring down our voluminous décor from the garage attic. It also may help me avoid a hernia from rearranging the southeast corner of said garage to retrieve The Beast from storage.

So a reprieve for The Beast may be in order. When I think about it, if we got rid of everything that is frustrating, time-consuming, difficult to manage and generally a pain in the ass, Marice would have kicked me to the curb long ago.

We may call it the Holiday Hut. Or perhaps the Beast’s Lair. That has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?

 At this, the end of my Christmas-tree tales, I’ve come to a new appreciation of our holiday centerpiece.

When I luxuriate in its cheerful, soul-soothing aura, I see a bundle of contradictions. It changes every year, never looking exactly the same. New ornaments are added, others get broken and sorrowfully are cast aside. And yet, it also never changes. It’s made up of the cherished touchstones of our family and of our past.

It offers comfort and a sense of grace to all who encounter its lights and brightly colored tokens. It comes and, when the holidays pass, it goes. Yet, it’s always there – at the right time, at the time we need it most.

I see in its branches a reflection of the inner struggle many of us confront daily – to remain vital and relevant, while also embracing the cord that connects where we’ve been to where we are to what awaits us in an uncertain future.

Later today, our children and their significant others will arrive, and we’ll open the presents that now rest, wrapped to the best of my limited ability, under the sturdy, stalwart Beast. It will be a time of family, a time of joy, a time to recognize with gratitude that we have weathered a most difficult period.

Alas, we won’t see Rachel and Ethan on Christmas Day – for the first time since they were born. The thought makes me melancholy, but things are as they should be. My children have responsibilities that now extend beyond the tight embrace of their parents.

To be sure, 2020 has been the most dreadful of years, the worst in my lifetime and one of the worst in our nation’s history. But the Gunnels and Richter families have much to be grateful for. We come from hardy stock, and we have fared better than many during this time of death and national strife.

Still, I struggle, as do many of you, with a deepening concern at the anger, hatred and distrust that dominate the daily headlines. I sometimes despair, but I am also comforted by an abiding faith that, in the words of Faulkner, we not only will endure, we will prevail.

Such is my wish for all of you. In the end, family and friends are all that stand between us and the abyss. During times of trouble and travail, they are our final bulwarks against disaster.

Thank you, most sincerely, for your patience and for your kind and generous response to these holiday posts. May peace, love and contentment surround you. Happy holidays! 

Christmas tree, O Christmas tree: Part 19

 One of the first

This is one of the first ornaments we purchased when we started putting up a Christmas tree many years ago.

It is part of a box of simple silver balls we got at Pier 1 or Target or some damned place I’ve long ago forgotten.

When they were new, I would distribute the bright and shiny balls evenly throughout the tree, positioning them so they would gleam in the reflected glow of the mini-lights that surrounded them. They always gave the tree an elegant, dignified look.

Over the years, we’ve lost several to accident and old age. The survivors, like this one, now look drab and shabby, their silver metallic paint worn off and tarnished. As newer and more elaborate decorations have been added to our collection, these stalwart reminders of Christmases past have moved farther and farther out of sight.

Today, they mostly populate the back branches of The Beast, no longer front and center but still performing a useful purpose in providing balance and perspective. Hmm, that’s an observation that (ahem) a recent retiree might want to consider.

Someday, I suppose I’ll have to get rid of them for good. But I’m not ready to give them up just yet. I’m a sentimental fool, and I associate these silver orbs with the days when my kids would ooh and aah when we finished decorating the tree and the glee with which they descended on it on Christmas morning to glory in Santa’s bounty.

In a way, I guess I identify our silver ornaments with the tale of “The Velveteen Rabbit.” It’s about a stuffed rabbit who becomes a young boy’s favorite toy and grows tattered and worn in the process. Eventually cast aside, it magically becomes real through the boy’s love and happily joins real rabbits in the forest.

It’s a lovely story, sad and sweet and spirit-boosting. Published in 1922, it was authored by Margery Williams and is considered one of the best children’s books ever written. Once upon a time, “The Velveteen Rabbit” was particularly popular at Christmas. After all, it is the story of a child’s toy.

These days, it’s considered too old-fashioned, too cloying, too mawkish. Too bad. I remember loving it and confess I shed a tear or two the first time I read it, although I hid that shameful fact from everyone.

Our silver ornaments are like the velveteen rabbit. They’ve been loved almost to the point of their own destruction. Inevitably, the day will come when I finally must consign them to the realm of our memories.

But that won’t be this year. And it probably won’t be next year, either. Even when that sad day arrives, I’ll still hang one or two as keepsakes and as reminders of those early family Christmases when they were new, shiny and bright.

Christmas tree, O Christmas tree: Part 18

 The moose and the buffalo of Wyoming

My wife and I have friends who own a second home in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

Actually, they’re more like Marice’s friends, but we come as a package deal so I’m included, whether they like it or not.

They’re great people, kind and generous, and we have a standing invitation to visit them when they’re escaping the Texas heat in the far north.

Marice has joined them in Wyoming several times in recent years, including side trips to Yellowstone National Park. She always brings me back a little gift to remind me of all the fun I missed, including these tree ornaments of a moose and a buffalo.

She loves Wyoming, with its clear, mountain air, glorious views and invigorating hiking trails. She always bugs me to tag along, but so far, I’ve resisted the temptation.

 For one thing, I’m a nervous flyer, even in pre-COVID times. I’m a lot like a friend of mine, who professes to believe that only his constant stream of prayers directed heavenward keep aloft the airliners in which he’s a passenger. Don’t try to engage in cabin conversations with this guy. He’s got more important things to do that idle chitchat.

For another thing, I’m afraid I’ll like Wyoming a little too much.

I’m a third-generation Texan, a proud descendant of hardy souls who fled other parts of the country to seek opportunity and a good tan in the state’s wide-open spaces.

Not until recent years have I contemplated a life outside the state. But Texas has broken my heart of late for reasons I won’t go into here. It’s the holiday season, after all.

When I worked for the Dallas Times Herald in the late 1970s, several senior editors came from Detroit. Whenever a son or daughter of Texas did something silly or stupid or dangerously deranged, they gleefully declared: “Now that’s a TEXAS story!” and immediately assigned a reporter to document it. Sometimes that reporter was me.

At the time, their enthusiasm for the weird and grotesque was only a minor irritation. I chalked it up to their Yankee prejudices and general lack of knowledge about the wonders of my home state.

But as I’ve gotten older, the toxic antics of our state leaders and the increasingly bellicose nature of human discourse in our state has made me think perhaps it’s time for a change.

I’ll never leave, of course. For financial, family and other reasons, I’m probably a Texas lifer.

Even if I decided to pull up my extensive Texas roots and high-tail it somewhere else, Wyoming probably wouldn’t be my first choice. It’s too much like Texas, only colder and with better scenery. Oh, yeah, and bears.

But Marice sings its praises with gusto so I’m pretty sure I’d like what I see – and add fuel to the fire of my disenchantment with home.

 In the past when Marice got the itch to head for the high country, I always used work as an excuse to stay home. Now that I’m retired, I’ll probably relent and let her drag me off to paradise.

When I do, I’ll be on the lookout for a buffalo like the one depicted in the lower ornament shown here. It’s not surprising that buffaloes are associated in the public mind with Wyoming. But the vast bison herds that roamed that state and the rest of the western plains – until they were hunted almost to extinction – ranged as far south as Texas.

At one point, there were only 300 bison left in America from the tens of millions that existed before folks in the east discovered buffalo hides made great winter coats.

That’s when legendary Texas cattleman Charlie Goodnight stepped in. Prompted by his wife Mary, he saved the buffalo from disappearing altogether by fiercely protecting the private herd he maintained on his Panhandle ranch. Bulls produced from the breeding program he began with that herd helped restock Yellowstone’s few survivors of the plains slaughter.

And that, folks, is a REAL Texas story.

Christmas tree, O Christmas tree: Part 17

 

A job for a storyteller

When I went to work at the UNT Health Science Center in 2013, my boss, the legendary Tim Doke, introduced me to the HSC president as his “storyteller.”

I was surprised at the title since I had been hired at what was essentially a public relations job. But I embraced it with considerable enthusiasm.

I had spent a long six-months looking for a job after being laid off at The Dallas Morning News before Doke plucked me out of the dustbin and put me in charge of publications at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where he was senior vice president of the communications, marketing and public affairs division.

I followed him when he grew tired of the hidebound bureaucracy of UT Southwestern and moved west to HSC in Fort Worth.

At HSC, Doke gave me a free hand in building a communication team that eschewed a traditional promotional approach and embraced the idea that storytelling was the best way to build HSC’s reputation and heighten its profile in a community that had no idea what it was or what it did.

When I hang these HSC ornaments on the Gunnels Christmas tree, they fill me anew with the sense of pride and accomplishment I felt during my years at HSC, where I learned a valuable lesson: Left unchallenged, the assumptions of a lifetime can be just plain wrong.

Like most journalists, I harbored an abiding distrust and disrespect for the PR profession. I loftily distained the work of company “flacks,” considering them at best incompetent and at worst paid liars.

Some were, of course. But not all. Given the opportunity to do the right thing, most PR types can be extremely helpful to harried journalists, particularly in this dismal time of newsroom layoffs and dwindling resources.

Perhaps I’m delusional, but I’d like to think I was one of the good ones.

This I know. With Doke’s unwavering support, I hired a group of former journalists committed to telling the HSC story – its dedicated faculty and staff, its remarkable students and the exemplary work they all were doing to improve community health, train the next generation of health providers and extend the frontiers of medical research.

Together, we completely transformed HSC’s main promotional publication – the moribund Solutions magazine – updating its design and filling it with well-written stories and exciting photographs.

We also launched an aggressive media relations effort that succeeded in convincing local, regional and even national news organizations to take note of the work being done on our campus.

We did it without vapid marketing slogans and the exaggerated institutional boilerplate that undermines credibility and effectiveness.

And we did it without sacrificing truth and accuracy. By telling and selling compelling stories, we convinced media professionals and the public at large to trust us. That’s no small thing.

I preached, at every opportunity, the doctrine of good PR: Never lie, never try to hide bad news (the truth wins out, always) and never fall back on the cowardly “no comment.”

“No comment,” I told my bosses repeatedly, “is interpreted by reporters – and the public – as ‘We did it.’”

For as long as it lasted, it was glorious.

Eventually, Doke moved on and other – less enlightened – executives took his place. When my department was handed over to a former political appointee of Trump’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I knew the end was nigh.

It came last July, in the middle of a pandemic-plagued summer, when I finally was handed my walking papers. One of my last acts was ushering into print the final issue of Solutions magazine, yet another victim of COVID budget cuts.

I’ve spent my entire career as a storyteller, both inside and outside journalism. I consider it a noble calling.

When I cleaned out my HSC office last summer, one of the final things I packed up was a framed quotation from the late Brian Doyle, who did the same job I did – only better – at the University of Portland.

“I am a storycatcher, charged with finding stories that matter, stories about who we are at our best, who we might still be, because without stories, we are only mammals with weapons.”

Christmas tree, O Christmas tree: Part 16

 

A journeyman journalist

Those of you who know how I left the newspaper business may think it strange that I hang Dallas Morning News ornaments on the Gunnels Christmas tree.

It’s really not that weird. When I’m in a magnanimous mood, which alas isn’t often, I thank my lucky stars that I got laid off by The News when I did.

At the time, of course, September 2011, I was devastated – angry, terrified and mournful all rolled up into one messy train wreck of emotions. I was 60 years old – with a mortgage, one kid in college and another one on the threshold – and suddenly I was booted to the curb by the profession I had wanted to be a part of since I was a teenager.

It was a bummer – big time.

As it turns out, I did get another job – just not in newspapers. I was smart enough to realize that was a losing proposition so I limited my job search to PR and was lucky enough – and that’s what it was, pure, unadulterated luck – to find one.

I worked for the state in higher education for eight years. As a result, my retirement is augmented by the Texas Retirement System pension I earned during that period.

I’m better off, financially at least, than I would have been if I had stayed in newspapers until the retirement bell rang. So the DMN suits who handed me my walking papers actually did me a favor. The bastards.

Emotionally, the sting still burns. While the terror and sadness have faded away, the anger is still very real and reveals itself in strange, unexpected ways. That said, I do experience a strong sense of satisfaction each month when my TRS check shows up.

That’s one reason why I hang these DMN Christmas ornaments every year. More importantly, however, they help remind me of who I really am. I look at them and understand anew that the way I view the world and how I relate to the people was shaped by the years I spend in newspaper newsrooms, including the 26 years I worked at the DMN.

The simple fact is that in my heart and soul, I’ll always be a newspaper man.

I spent almost four decades in the news business, almost all of it at Texas newspapers. I worked at metro papers in three of the state’s major metropolitan areas – Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin. I was lucky enough – there’s that word again – to be part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize.

I battled deadlines with some of the finest reporters and editors this country has produced, and I never missed a deadline. As a reporter, I once wrote a story that prevented a group of poor senior citizens in East Austin from losing their Meals on Wheels route. I covered tornadoes and homeless camps and jail breakouts and a thousand other events that touched people’s lives.

I was never a great reporter. I didn’t have the taste for blood and aggressive mindset that the really good ones have. I didn’t like long, complicated stories that required dozens of interviews and hours of pouring over documents. I preferred people features – quick-hit looks at the way people lived and loved and created.

I was a better editor. I prided myself on being a reporter’s advocate, someone who understood the challenges they faced and who was willing to push deadlines to the breaking point to give them every last second to hone and polish their stories. Sometimes, it cost me because, after all, the DMN was an editor’s newspaper.

But I don’t kid myself. When all was said and done, I was nothing more than a journeyman journalist – competent, dependable and versatile. I was no Ben Bradlee. No Seymour Hersh. No Bob Woodward.

What I will say – with some pride and humility – is that I always pulled my weight. That’s what a journeyman is expected to do. That’s what I was and that’s what I did.