Opinions

An old cowboy friend, Tommy Vaughn, once explained that colts and kids had to be taught to work, it didn't come naturally. I remember my brother's high school football coach's winning strategy. Under his coaching, we often won (11, or second 16) the state championship at the top 5A level in Arizona. With temperatures in the 114-degree range at the beginning of fall practice, the Arizona desert was not an easy place to coach football.

On Sep. 4, 1881, Isaac "Ike" Stockton turned in a member of his own gang for the murder of a Colorado lawman and collected a sizeable reward for the back-stabbing betrayal. Born too late to fight in the War Between the States, the Stockton boys grew up on a ranch in north Texas. Ike had a head on his shoulders, which made him even more dangerous than younger brother Port, the trigger-happy type who never tired of killing.

People are enchanted by low light. It seems romantic, exotic, mysterious. It's also cheap. I've been reading a book, "The End of Night" by Paul Bogard. One of his most profound ideas is that people often say dark skies only benefit astronomers, but that is like saying the Grand Canyon only benefits geologists. He says kids are growing up who have never seen the Big Dipper or even the moon because cities are so garishly lit. He says light pollution is expensive and wasteful, harming our birds, our mental and physical health, our sleep, and our ability to think.

David S. Terry, a Texas expatriate with a red-hot temper, ran into a Supreme Court justice on Aug. 14, 1889 and gave his mortal enemy a piece of his mind and the back of his hand. The younger brother of Benjamin F. Terry, famous founder of Terry's Texas Rangers, went West after seeing action in the Mexican War. But the pick-and-shovel routine in the California gold field was not for the gifted attorney, and he turned to practicing law.