Opinion

We’re in it now — the dog days of summer.

It’s that time of year when we avoid the outdoors for fear of death. It’s the time when it takes a while to cool off after spending any amount of time outside after 10 a.m.

Why is it called the dog days of summer?

According to National Geographic, the dog days refer to the dog star, Sirius, and its position in the heavens.

To the Greeks and Romans, the “dog days” occurred when Sirius appeared to rise just before the sun in late July.

A few friends from 50 years ago still remember our wedding day--August 12, 1966. The occasion is a conversation starter when we gather.

Brenda and I smile, our memories quickly rekindled by unlikely occurrences at the ceremony.

Friends and kin remember it for obvious reasons. It rained hard in Alpine, TX, that day. Gullies gushed through the arid land, where ranchers joke about occasional six-inch rains--when drops land six inches apart. During the storm, lightning danced across the sky, one bolt striking First Methodist Church….

Oil and natural gas became a part of the Republican convention in Cleveland when Oklahoma oilman Harold Hamm told delegates that Donald Trump wants to make the U.S. energy independent.

It has been rumored that Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources in Oklahoma City, will be appointed to Secretary of Energy if Trump is elected. 

Following the sacred deer, the first people emerge from the serpent-filled underwater world in the west. Lighting their way with torches, they walk east toward what they came to call Dawn Mountain. Once they reach the high ground, the deer that willingly led them from the abyss beneficently sacrifices itself. 

When the deer falls, its carcass suddenly blooms with peyote buttons. The vision-producing plant even grows from the tips of the deer’s antlers. Eating the deer, the people become gods, and the world begins.

Nothing short of Uncle Mort’s enrollment in a ballerina class would have equaled the shocking “PS” on last year’s Christmas card.

My mother was the ultimate list maker. On Saturday mornings, with her extra cup of coffee and a stenographer’s pad (spiral at the top), she made THE LIST. We all were all to keep working until it was done. It wasn’t a big list, but it did get the work done quickly so the afternoon could be spent doing what we wanted: watching television, reading, doing homework, or ironing.

My mother was the ultimate list maker. On Saturday mornings, with her extra cup of coffee and a stenographer’s pad (spiral at the top), she made THE LIST. We all were all to keep working until it was done. It wasn’t a big list, but it did get the work done quickly so the afternoon could be spent doing what we wanted: watching television, reading, doing homework, or ironing.

While economic conditions in the domestic oil and gas industry have improved since February, many executives have decided to move cautiously into the last half of 2016.

Crude oil prices have increased from $27 in February to almost $50 today and natural gas is up from $2 per thousand cubic feet (mcf) to roughly $2.75 on the NYMEX for 30-day delivery.

It reads like fiction, but it’s presented as “a true story of Texas vengeance.” 

Real or imagined, the tale’s illustrative of life -- and violent death -- during Reconstruction, a period of continuing incivility following the decidedly uncivil Civil War. The story, according to a 1952 telling by writer Ross Phares, was handed down by old-timers in Bastrop County. It involved two men -- John Long and Gabriel Morrow.

There are two places in our town to do Water Aerobics. One is free, but it’s done outside in the sun at the city pool. The other costs, but is done inside the Wellness center at the hospital. I have to take medicine which causes problems when I get too much sun, so I’m relegated to the shady, fee-based exercise.

Both of these programs are great exercise, especially for those elderly among us who can’t do the weight-bearing exercises like Zumba. People who do Zumba will someday wish they’d been a little nicer to their knees.