Opinion
Reporting from the scene
Leslie Gibson - Reporting from the Scene
Dear Dad,
Since you can’t hear, I’d like to write you a letter in the newspaper which you so faithfully read every week, and on which I most welcome your comments.
I understand your pleasure in reading “Legally Speaking.” It truly is legalese at its finest.
But Dad, I really appreciate that you, who have never taken an interest in politics at any level, take the time to pour over the articles on Rockwall, Fate, Heath and McLendon-Chisholm.
It is a tribute to these city leaders that you, having spent a lifetime in engineering and mechanics, are now looking at a subject which you have never taken an interest in: politics.
The son of a thresher mechanic in the Wheat Belt of the nation, you’ve taken that innate inherited skill and ability into the Navy, and then into engineering work for cooling and heating systems for buildings and schools throughout Dallas, and fixing everything at home from air conditioning to Volkswagens. Your head, basically, has always been making numbers real in building projects. Now, you look at, throughout the Rockwall County Herald-Banner, the background environment in which construction takes place.
When the council members in the City of Heath plan a town center and what kind of businesses they want to see in their town, when the City of Fate gets its first elementary school in decades, when Rockwall sees the development of a major hotel and retail destination sight for the state and nation, when McLendon-Chisholm finds itself at the edge of massive housing construction, and the City of Royse City sees new brick homes on 33-foot-wide streets laid out for young families, I see a new perspective on the surroundings of our new family starting out in 1957.
Like Royse City and Fate especially, our little neighborhood of new brick houses and sidewalks contained lot after lot of brick homes. We saw the pink buttercups growing profusely in clumps, and heard in the evening the sound of frogs and cicadas, since around us fields still grew wild or in cultivation.
And then I hear again the sounds of your shopsmith in the garage, as well as other sounds of sawing and mowing and projects up and down the street.
Another advantage to a newly laid-out neighborhood surrounded by open space: bicycling. I hear again that unique click of that three-speed bicycle you rode as you led a trio of children on little bicycles all around our neighborhood and the rest of Irving.
Thank you so much for giving me that still wonderful bicycle — that Raleigh — a serene ride still, and from that height I still see mimosa trees and mowed yards and children playing in a 1950s neighborhood, no matter where I ride.
Now, you walk and still ride your bicycle through what has become a tightly developed network of neighborhoods and thoroughfares, full of traffic and grown trees and remodeled houses and convenience stores and strip centers.
And it makes me feel good to know you read now what these folks in these towns out here are doing to plant their cities and towns, a process of which your engineering work was one of the details in the last half of the last century.
It is a privilege to be in the audience at the meetings, and to speak with them before and after.
Rockwall County and western Hunt County are growing so much that we have had one town contemplate disbanding (which they didn’t) because the revenue can’t keep pace with the growth unless the town levies a property tax, and we have had a town contemplate incorporating (which they did), because they felt county growth was threatening their property values, so they chose to protect them by establishing city limits.
Councilmen, and commissioners and city staff, in regular public meetings and workshops, work with developers to establish street widths, water and sewer provision, lighting, open space and a myriad of other details to create an environment which protects the health, safety and welfare of the future citizens.
The concept is broad, so the details of how to do that sometimes create divisions, but I have yet to see a city or county body not maintain civility and not regroup after a tense moment.
I know too, that government at all levels gets a bad rap.
But what I have learned is that what seems like a vast majority of the people involved are just people like those anywhere, who have chosen to become involved in the mechanism which makes society operate. For better or worse, our government at the local level is our way of maintaining an environment for the community in this nation.
It is a privilege to have this bird’s eye view of this process.
I hope, Dad, that you and any other readers of these pages, recognize that all of this work is indeed a ceaseless labor to keep us able to move about and work and attend school and activities safely; that regardless of the success or lack of success in various details, it is still the organism we have and must accommodate and support.
I have Don Lorenz to thank for this privilege. From my childhood he has encouraged me to write and still does. He still expresses his enthusiasm for the reporting, even for a subject which has been foreign to him.
Dad, thank you for making this opportunity possible, by your providing for me and our family throughout my life, and for your optimistic and encouraging nature.
Being your daughter is a privilege, one for which I can never thank you enough.
Thank you.
Leslie Gibson is a reporter for the Herald-Banner.
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The day my soaking turned to gushing
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‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you’
When I look at some of the lawsuits being filed nowadays, I see certain elements of a Wild West mentality: claim anything you want, regardless of how ridiculous or unsupportable it sounds. Maybe you’ll get poured out on the sidewalk by a no-nonsense judge or a jury with its collective head screwed on straight, but just maybe your common sense-defying allegations will be warmly received and you’ll get the legal system’s equivalent of a golden ticket.
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I remember my first game as a high school football player like it happened just 48 years ago.
That’s using a roundabout journalistic maneuver to tell you that I have no memory of that game because it occurred such a long, long time ago. -
‘It’s summertime, and the litigating is good’
A judge friend of mine swears that the strangest lawsuits in his court always seem to happen in the summertime. I don’t know how much empirical evidence there is to back up this theory, but it does sometime seem like an upsurge in the “legally weird” takes place during the warmer months.
Just within the last few weeks, for example, we’ve witnessed an epidemic of bizarre bank robberies and attempted robberies. Around the country, bank robbers have conducted heists while wearing everything from Darth Vader masks to clown suits. Other stick-up artists have tried to obscure their appearance using everything from a bouquet of flowers to a set of Spanxx (the girdle-like ladies’ undergarment). -
Message to the U.S. House leadership: Create jobs and cut spending
As Congress adjourns for the August District Work Period, many challenges remain to restore fiscal health to the economy. Struggling families worry about job security, cost of living expenses, higher taxes, rising health care costs and increasing costs of education. Small businesses brace for higher costs in health care mandates, higher taxes, and other regulatory burdens. Those who have lost their job find that securing another one in this time of record-high unemployment can be daunting.
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I don’t know, I need help, I was wrong
This space is filled every week with what I call my recreational writing.
I write about what I want to write about and most of the time it’s fun.
And I try to make it light. -
Stolen valor and stolen justice
I’ve previously written about the Stolen Valor Act, a federal law passed in 2006 that makes it a crime for individuals to falsely claim that they had been awarded military decorations and medals.
The act carries a punishment ranging from fines to up to a year in prison. -
I have found my new name: ’Biggest Loser’
If I had my own television show, I could call it, “Biggest Loser.”
In this case, the name would not apply to weight lost. Instead, it would refer to stuff lost.
I am convinced that I am the champion loser of stuff. -
Scents and Sensibility: ‘When evidence doesn’t pass the smell test’ (Part IV)
“Forensic evidence is often offered in criminal prosecutions and civil litigation to support conclusions about individualization — in other words, to ‘match’ a piece of evidence to a particular person, weapon, or other source. But with the exception of nuclear DNA analysis, no forensic method has been rigorously shown able to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source.”
— from “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward,” February 18, 2009, a Congressionally-mandated report from the National Research Council of the National Research Academies -
Now we get to blow stuff up too!!!
You will remember that a few weeks ago I wrote to you all about the upcoming outdoor concert that was being planned by MusicFest (which I have joined, just so I’m being straightforward and all).
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The day my soaking turned to gushing
