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Heading for paradise

ATHENS, Greece — I am preparing to do something I had not done in three previous trips to this wonderful spot in southeastern Europe.

I will spend several nights basking under the Mediterranean sunshine on an island in the middle of the Aegean Sea.

My cousin, her son and I are boarding a ferry soon for Naxos, the largest island of the Cyclades group of islands. Naxos sits about 4 hours away from Pireaus, the chief port of Greece.

Is this a big deal? Well … not really. Except that it’s new to me. Which I suppose makes it a brief blog topic.

I am told Naxos is well-equipped with broadband internet capability, which I hope means I’ll be able to watch Kamala Harris dismantle Donald Trump on the debate stage in a couple of days.

I’ll also continue to post blog items.

I will spend the bulk of my time on Naxos doing … absolutely nothing!

Hey, I am on vacation!

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Vacation challenge awaits

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ATHENS, Greece — Very soon, I will be boarding a ferry for a four-hour boat ride to Naxos in the middle of the Aegean Sea.

That is where I might encounter the first challenge of the vacation I am enjoying. I hope it is the only challenge I will face!

How will I be able to watch the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump?

Will there be streaming services available on the island? Will I be able to watch it live? Will I have to rely on YouTube or other media outlets to deliver tbe “news” online?

I do know this: I want it to be a game-changer. I want VP Harris to smash the former TV host to smithereens.

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Opportunity knocks

My life as a relatively newly single man has presented plenty of opportunities for me to consider … and they mainly deal with ways to consider spending some of ample idle time.

I lost my wife, Kathy Anne, to glioblastoma about 18 months ago and my journey has finally found plenty of light at the end of a dark passage through grief and pain.

I attended a regular meeting today of the Farmersville Rotary Club, of which I have been a member for a few years. The program today came from Nichole Perez, community outreach director for Meals on Wheels of Collin County.

Almost immediately upon learning of her program, the ol’ light bulb began flashing in my noggin. Meals on Wheels needs drivers to deliver meals to shut-in residents, old folks who cannot get out of the house, and others who for various reasons are unable to do some essential things.

I volunteered today to deliver meals to these folks. I intend to concentrate those efforts in the Princeton area, where I live.

Perez talked about Meals on Wheels need to do a background check on drivers. Upon clearing the background check, I will be good to do … with a bit of training to tell me how to handle the food and related issues.

My calendar already is beginning to fill up. I have the Rotary Club meeting schedule each week. I meet with a lay minister at a church to which I belong; he counsels me on the path I am taking since losing my beloved Kathy Anne. An assistant pastor at our church has formed a group of mostly older men who have lost their wives; it’s called a “Widowers’ Club,” but I don’t like referring to myself as a widower, as the term only reminds me of what is so painfully obvious. I recently joined the Princeton chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which meets monthly to plan its involvement in other community events.

This new gig does enable me to embark on another path in my life’s journey. I’ve never done this kind of volunteer work, so it’s going to be a major kick in the buttock to try this new thing. Perez said each delivery date can be done in “about an hour.”

But she said that depends on how much drivers chat with the clients they serve. Hmmm. I do tend to be a chatterbox when I meet strangers.

Therein lies another challenge that awaits me.

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Don’t demean your foes

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Hillary Clinton committed a potentially fatal mistake during her 2016 race for president against Donald J. Trump.

She referred to the MAGA cultists as “deplorables,” a description that energized the Trump voter base down the home stretch of a highly competitive contest.

My hone boy, Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times, says it would be a terrible mistake to denigrate the 2024 version of the mob hangs on Trump’s every word.

Do not sell them short, Kristoff writes.

Good advice, Nick. The question always becomes, “Will the voting public buy into it? And will the Kamala Harris campaign staff treat the Trumpkins with the respect they deserve? Indeed, they deserve a lot.

Kristoff hails from the Yamhill Valley of Oregon, not far from my hometown of Portland. He writes for the New York Times these days and has earned his spurs for many years writing for the Old Gray Lady.

My fond hope is that Harris won’t commit the egregious rhetorical error that Clinton committed.

Kristoff writes: By all means denounce Trump, but don’t stereotype and belittle the nearly half of Americans who have sided with him.

Hillary Clinton learned that lesson the hard way. Kamala Harris no doubt is paying serious attention.

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Patience runs thin

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Patience is a virtue people tell me I possess and I am grateful for the kind words and, of course, for the quality they say I have.

I have to tell you, though, that some followers of this blog surely do test whatever patience I deploy.

One guy offers a good example. He is a critic of High Plains Blogger. He wails on me whenever I have something negative to say about Donald Trump or something positive I have to offer about Kamala Harris; my earlier support for Joe Biden also drew barbs.

FYI, this individual keeps insisting he isn’t a Trump cultist.

But … he is!

Sometimes this guy offers commentary that the Word Press platform approves automatically as a blog response. Others require me to approve them individually … which I generally do. I say “generally,” because I am beginning to axe some commentary that either is repetitive, or is patently false or provides criticism I might deem to be defamatory. Defaming someone exposes a lot of folks to litigation and as I have told critics over the years who insist that I publish such material: I don’t care if you get sued, but I damn sure care if I get sued. 

My blog also contains non-political material as well. I comment on goings-on in the community I call home and also speak to what I call “slice of life” matters of a more personal nature, Does my critic bother to respond to any of those commentaries? Hah! Which leads me to believe he is “trolling” me.

My patience has its limits. This guy — and some others as well — are testing it mightily. I shall remain strong.

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Where must city manager live?

It’s pretty cool to have sources who tell you things that you can check out with a simple internet search … such as what happened this very day.

A snitch told me that the Princeton city manager is not required to live in the city where he or she administers public policy. My eyes widened — or so I was told by another person in the room.

I blurted out “What? The city’s top administrator isn’t required per the city charter to live in Princeton, Texas?” My friend/snitch said, “That’s right.”

Wow! I couldn’t stop thinking about that jewel of information as we talked about other matters. So, what did I do when I got back to Princeton, where I live? I looked up the Princeton City Charter on the city’s website. I scoured through it and found the chapter and verses related to the city manager.

Section 5.04 states: It shall be the duty of the City Manager to submit an annual budget not later than thirty (30) days prior to the end of the current fiscal year to the City Council for its review, consideration and revision. 

You know what that means, right? It means the city manager must recommend how much of our tax money we must pay to fund the annual budget. Yet the manager isn’t required to share our pain as we are forced to pay it.

The current city manager is a young man named Mike Mashburn, who came to Princeton from Farmers Branch. The City Council hired him immediately after meeting him for the first time just this year. It then gave him a five-figure pay increase in base salary just a few weeks after hiring a fellow who hadn’t done anything yet.

And yet, nowhere in the City Charter, which Princeton voters endorsed just this past year, does it stipulate any residency requirements for the city manager.

I long have believed that cities should require chief administrators to live in the communities they serve., Those administrators, such as city managers, also should require their top deputies and other key departments heads — whom they hire — to do the same.

Police chiefs, fire chiefs, financial officers — and the city manager — should bear the burden that city councils demand of those of us who pay the bills. Hey … fair is fair!

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Looking ahead to key meeting

Every so often, events align in such a way that enable to get a first-hand look at what a governing authority intends to do about an issue I am discussing on this blog.

Monday night, the Princeton City Council is convening to discuss the fate of a hideous eyesore that occupies a parcel next to Wal-Mart along US Highway 380. It’s that apartment complex that has gone seriously to seed over the past many months.

The city has declared that it suffers from several code violations. It’s unsafe. It is in fact rotting before our eyes.

A contractor started work on the massive luxury apartment complex. Then he got into a beef with the developer and walked away.

The city council, acting as a housing standards authority, must decide what to do about. For me, the session occurs at 5 p.m. Monday and I am going to be there as a Princeton resident/blogger.

The Princeton Herald will assign a reporter to cover it. Me? I get to watch it unfold in real time.

The city, I suppose, could decide Monday on the fate of the project. It could take it all under advisement and reconvene later for a decision. The decision might be to knock it down. Or … they could decide the site is worth rehabilitating.

I’ve stated already I believe the project needs to vanish. It’s not my call. It belongs to the city. I’m just an interested observer with a lot to say on what the city council decides.

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Harris needs to keep climbing

Kamala Harris, to state the obvious, has a huge mountain to climb as she campaigns for the presidency of the United States.

It is easy to fall into a public relations trap being laid by those who are enamored of the huge push the vice president has received since President Biden handed her the frontrunner’s torch the other day. Biden surrendered his re-election campaign, endorsed Harris to succeed him as the Democratic nominee and as POTUS. Thousands of other endorsements have poured in, giving Democrats a gigantic emotional boost as Harris prepares to accept her party nomination.

The mountain she must climb rests in the person of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. Trump continues to cling to a razor-thin polling lead, despite all the missteps, gaffes, the lies, the disjointed campaign blunders … you name, Trump has done it.

Yet — for the life of me — he remains strong politically. I am holding out the greatest hope I can muster that Trump will not hold up under the intense scrutiny that awaits him.

Let’s remember a key point. Trump and his MAGA cultists were fond of reminding us that Joe Biden, at 81 years of age, would be the oldest party nominee ever. Biden didn’t get that far. “The oldest ever nominee” tag now falls on Trump, who’s 78 years old and is showing every one of those years each time he takes the stump and flies off the rails with his nonsense.

I will encourage the vice president to never surrender as she continues to carry her message forward. She has energized millions of Americans just by agreeing to carry the Democrats’ banner into the next great political battle.

I happen to be just one newly engaged American patriot who wants to see her make history once more. All she has to do is win this election.

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Politics on hold … for now

Let there be no mistake that I likely will bristle, gnash my teeth, mutter a bad word or three as Republicans seek to make political hay over the event that unfolded shockingly in Butler, Pa.

But out of respect for the political process that is underway and the noble goal of choosing a presidential nominee, I will do all of that quietly.

I won’t take my frustrations out with posts on High Plains Blogger. I am going to declare a very brief moratorium on assassination-attempt political commentary. I won’t predict when it will resume. I merely want the FBI, Secret Service, Justice Department, Homeland Security Department and local police to complete their investigation into what happened over the weekend.

I am quite certain that Trump and his family as well as his cadre of cultists will test my good will with their statements about the political ramifications of those events.

I will add only this, which is my complete endorsement of the way the Secret Service acted in killing the shooter. Sharpshooters arrayed around Trump’s podium drew a bead immediately on the gunman and wasted him, These men and women are the best at what they do and in that instant, they reacted the only way that made sense, given the chaos of the moment.

I will await the right moment to shuck the gloves with regard to Donald J. Trump. Don’t ask when that moment will arrive. I’ll just have to tell you that I’ll know when it does.

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Watergate rears its head

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The specter of Watergate is beginning to make its presence felt in President Biden’s fight to retain his status as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president.

His staff is meeting with prominent Democrats in the House and Senate, all of whom are expressing concern about Biden’s chances of winning re-election against Donald J. Trump, They want him to relinquish the nomination and hand it to a stronger candidate who can defeat Trump in the fall election.

The president, bedeviled by his shocking debate performance the other night, is standing firm. “I am not going anywhere!” he has bellowed.

OK, got it, Mr. President.

In the summer of 1974, the House was getting ready to impeach President Nixon over his role in covering up the Watergate scandal. A group of Republican senators — led by Barry Goldwater of Arizona and Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania — went to the White House to tell Nixon the following: The House is going to impeach you and the Senate is going to convict you. You should resign now.

Nixon took his friends’ advice and quit the presidency.

Do you see the symmetry between then and now?

It falls on the president to make his decision on what to do. It’s just feeling a bit to me as if a Watergate-era outcome might be in store.