Tag Archives: Kathy Anne

local news

New journey begins

High Plains Blogger came into being as a political platform for yours truly, but I decided a while ago to branch it out to include what I call “slice of life” matters.

I have chronicled my grief journey on this blog and it has given me great comfort in the time since I lost my dear wife, Kathy Anne, to brain cancer.

I am proud to announce that this blog is going to accompany me on another journey. It’s a weight-loss trek called MOVE!, and it is run by the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

Not long ago I rolled out from a fitful sleepless night feeling crabby, out of sorts, and I had pain in several parts of my overfed body. I hadn’t stepped on a scale in some time fearing what I might learn. That morning, I did … and I was bowled over by the number that flashed at my feet. That number told me I gained more than 40 pounds since the passing of my bride. I had smothered myself in comfort food.

I have tried dieting on my own. I have tried exercise routines on my own. They did nothing for me. What did I do next? I reached out to my VA doc and told of this struggle. What did she do? She arranged for me to visit a nutritionist at the Rayburn VA Medical Center in Bonham. where my doc works.

I visited with the nutritionist and told her the following: I am old fat man, I am grumpy a lot of the time, I don’t want to look at myself in the mirror, I am in constant pain, my vanity is taking a serious hit because of the way I look. I am reaching out for professional help!

The nutritionist delivered to me a detailed program titled MOVE! She told me veterans have enjoyed considerable success in peeling off the pounds. There appears to be a serious caveat: You gotta follow it to the letter! No cheating allowed! I must set goals, establish a firm eating pattern, exercise regularly, the whole nine yards, man!

OK. Deal. I’m all in.

I will not bore you to sleep with all the nitty gritty of what awaits this tired old man. I just want to share with you a life-changing decision I have made … and one that I intend to follow to its successful conclusion.

local news

Back to the villa … and then home!

MIKRI VIGLA, Greece — Well, gang, I am on my own in one of the most gorgeous places I ever have seen.

My cousin and her son have departed for another Greek island paradise, in Santorini. I am here on Naxos for another day before I started my trek back to North Texas.

My drive back from Naxos port took me along a stretch of road we hadn’t yet seen. My GPS wasn’t working because my “smart phone” was disconnected from the Internet. So, I followed my instincts traveled south, keeping the blue Aegean Sea water on my right.

Not long into my drive back to the villa, I thought: What difference does any of this make if I get back sooner rather than later? I have all day to make the drive.

I was in no hurry.

Tomorrow morning will be different. I have Internet here. I can map my route to the port and then follow the directions “the voice” lays out for me. But again, my instinct tells me to keep the ocean on my left going the other way. I’ll have a ferry to catch and then a cab ride to the hotel where I will spend the night near the Athens airport … before heading to the house.

This clearly has been the most relaxing vacation I’ve ever taken … in my entire life. 

I’ve had a moment or two of sadness realizing my bride isn’t here to share it with me. However, I have completed my journey from darkness to light and I am carrying Kathy Anne in my heart.

Now it’s back to the real world. My tanned, rested and ready self is up to the challenge.

local news, media news

Retirement teaches new lesson

Believe it or not, I am learning something in my retirement years … I am learning how to travel as a tourist, someone with no job-related pressure to keep me moving, on my toes and alert to issues around me.

During my nearly 37 years as a print journalist, I was able to travel to roughly two dozen countries. I recently compiled a list of the places I saw when I was a working stiff and I noticed that the vast majority of them either were related to my work or through my involvement with Rotary International.

My RI exposure took me to Denmark and Sweden in 2006 to attend an RI convention. In 2009, I had the high honor of leading an RI Group Study Exchange team through Israel. They all were busy and I had to be sharp damn near every day.

I was able to travel to Vietnam, Thailand, India, Cambodia and Mexico City on National Conference of Editorial Writers missions. Taiwan’s Government Info Office invited me five times to visit that country from 1989 to 2010.

Greece’s media office invited me three times to visit that country to look at its preparation for the 2004 Summer Olympics.

The best news of all of this is that my bride, Kathy Anne, was able to accompany me on many of these excursions. That didn’t reduce the obligations I had to maintain my media savvy.

This year I will have taken two trips to Europe. I went to Germany this past spring to visit dear friends in Nuremberg. I am about to leave for Greece for my fourth trip there; the Greece journey will be vastly different from my previous three trips to that spectacular nation.

The major difference? My wife is gone. I lost her to cancer in February 2023. The other difference is that I will be free to relax during my entire time in the land of my ancestors’ birth.

I’ll be able to relax! No pressure. No deadlines to keep. No stories I am required to write.

To be sure, I will be blogging daily from Greece, just as I did from Germany. I am learning, though, that this world of travel just to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of an exotic land is a welcoming place.

International news

‘Old country’ beckons

In about three weeks, I am going to drive to a parking lot near Dallas-Fort Worth airport, park my truck and then get ready to board an airplane for a lengthy flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

I will land eventually at Eleftherios Venizelos airport in Athens and will begin 10 days of total relaxation in my ancestral homeland. I will stay in a bed and breakfast place near the Acropolis. Then I get on the metro train bound for the port city of Pireaus, where I will board a ferry for a five-hour ride across the Aegean Sea to Noxos, an island resort.

I will meet my cousin and her grown son in Greece, and we will bask in the late-summer Mediterranean heat.

I also will carry with me the memory of someone who once told me that of all the 20 or so countries she had seen, Greece is the only place that she could “visit over and over and over again.”

My beloved bride Kathy Anne traveled to Greece twice with me, in 2000 and 2001; I made a third trip there in 2003, but traveled by myself. All three of those earlier visits were media trips, at the invitation of the Greek press ministry. This fourth visit will be strictly to relax and to do damn near nothing during my entire stay in the country.

I will have plenty of down time, plenty of time to be alone with my thoughts., And you are entitled to bet every penny in the piggy bank that those thoughts likely will involve my bride, who I lost to cancer in February 2023.

I am happy to report, though, that my thoughts won’t bring heaviness to my heart. They will bring back memories of the glorious time my bride and I spent together looking at the antiquities, enjoying the food and pinching ourselves at the thought that we were able to see these sites together.

Do I miss her? Of course I do! I am resolute, though, in pursuing my life as she wanted me to do. “Life is for the living,” Kathy Anne told me. Take this to the bank: I can think of nowhere else I would rather be than the middle of Aegean Sea.

media news

Found: a title for memoir

Some of you know already that I am working on a memoir that I intend to give to my immediate family.

I have some good news. First, I am making good progress on it. Most of it is drafted. I still have some more entries to include in the finished product.

Second, I have come up with a working title for it. I am calling it “My Life in Print.” Snappy, eh?

This memoir intends to chronicle all the people I met and some of the occasionally harrowing, but always zany, experiences I had during my nearly 37 years as a print journalist.

It started in Oregon, the state of my birth and where I lived for the first 34 years of my life. I took a couple of years away from home to serve my country in the Army, went to war for a time, came home and re-enrolled in college. Dad asked me what I wanted to study. I told him I didn’t know. He suggested journalism. Why? Because he said the letters I wrote from Vietnam were so “descriptive” that he thought I had a talent I needed to develop in college.

OK, so I enrolled in some journalism courses … and fell in love with the study and the craft.

My beloved late wife, Kathy Anne, proposed the idea of a memoir shortly after I left my craft behind in August 2012. So, I am writing it for her and for my sons, my daughter-in-law, my granddaughter, my sisters and anyone else who might want to know how I spent my days — and many nights too! — for more than three decades.

It is “My Life in Print.”

Now, I have to get busy.

local news

Now I’m a joiner

My life since its worst day came and went has taken a few odd turns and detours along the way. Today, it took another one of those turns I didn’t think it would take.

I joined a veterans group in Princeton, where I have lived for the past five years.

My life’s worst day occurred the day I lost my bride, Kathy Anne, to cancer. I more or less had pledged many years ago that I wouldn’t join a veterans group. Then she was gone and I found myself with lots of time alone on my hands. So … I joined the Bois d’Arc Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in my new hometown.

I am told that the post has a fairly robust membership comprising a lot of younger vets who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The post commander told me he needs a “few more old farts” like me to liven the meetings up. Good deal. I’m all aboard.

We’re going to meet once a month., For the time being the post meets at a Princeton Fire Department station not far from my house. The commander said that during the COVID pandemic, “We went broke and had to sell our building.” So, the Princeton FD stepped up and offered the vets a meeting place for us to gather and swap lies about our time serving the country.

This marks perhaps a new venture for me. My life has been restored to a semblance of normal. My grief has subsided sufficiently to where I am able to function properly.

I won’t have many war stories to tell, given that my time in a war zone was so boring and uneventful. I’ll just enjoy taking in what others have experienced …. and I might be able to share a bit of wisdom I have learned on my life’s journey.

local news

My journey is complete

Drum roll, please, for I am about to make an announcement.

The journey through darkness I have written about extensively on this blog since I lost my lovely bride, Kathy Anne, to cancer has for all intents reached its end.

So much has happened to my family and me since the worst day of our lives came crashing down on us. We lost the pillar of our family to glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. She lost her valiant battle and left her family and friends in a profound state of grief.

I commenced my return back from the darkness by writing about that journey on High Plains Blogger. You know what? It helped me beyond measure. I found it within myself to share my grief with the whole world. The process filled me with hope that I could get through this period.

And I have done so!

I have told you about how I searched for light at the end of this journey. I am happy to report that the light on this day is far brighter than I ever imagined it would be immediately after Feb. 3, 2023 … which I have labeled as the worst day of my life.

Every one of those who comprise my worldwide network of friends and acquaintances have said the same thing: The pain never will go away. It will return without warning. You, though, will learn to manage it. You know what? They all were right! Here is a compilation of the entries I posted on High Plains Blogger.

Kathy Anne | Search Results | High Plains Blogger

I have learned that the overarching lesson in dealing with grief is to not let it consume me. It hasn’t. I am moving on with my life. Yes, I have some aspects of that new life to work on … but I can do so with a clear head and a heart that is not nearly as damaged as I reported earlier on this blog.

As one of my sons informed me, “If you can get something positive accomplished in spite of your grief, then you’re doing OK,”

There you have it … but I am happy to declare myself to be far better than OK. Kathy Anne would insist on it.

local news

Blog nears milestone

Time for a little bragging, if that’s all right with you. If you object, too bad. I am going to boast … just a little.

High Plains Blogger will surpass in just two days a significant milestone. I am proud to announce it will mark 1,000 consecutive days in which I have posted something on the blog.

I know better than to brag about the quality of the posts. I’ve enjoyed many of them. I haven’t liked so much many others. As for whether all my posts have been welcomed, that depends on those who read them. The political posts have their friends and their foes. The friends generally are quiet; the foes pull the long knives out of their scabbards.

My blog took a dramatic turn in the past year. I have used this forum as a form of therapy for my broken heart. My dear bride, Kathy Anne, lost a fight with cancer and I have told you the story of the journey I undertook to emerge from the darkness. My chronicling of that journey has been well-received, and it has helped me find the light, which today shines brightly.

I will soldier on. Why do this? Well, it’s what I do.

For those who have stayed with me for all this time, I offer a humble and heartfelt thank you.

High Plains Blogger means a lot to me. I hope you get something from it as well.

local news

Getting used to the traffic madness

Five years ago, my bride and I took a bit of a leap of faith, moving from our quiet neighborhood up yonder in Amarillo to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

Our reason was as straightforward as it gets. We wanted to be near our granddaughter. We also knew that the move would present some challenges for us, given that we had were deeply embedded in the Texas Panhandle, our neighborhood and the home we watched being built from scratch beginning in October 1996.

One of the main challenges would be traffic. We knew about the legendary D/FW traffic woes. The place is covered in freeway asphalt. You pay tolls to ride on some of them. We have plenty of “interstate highways,” starting with I-35 E and W, I-20, I-30 and various loops around both Dallas and Fort Worth.

I have figured out, though, what appears to be a formula for getting from place to place. As they say about a lot of aspects of life: Timing is everything.

I have learned to time my excursions according to normal traffic patterns. I am acutely aware that factors can change the flow of traffic in an instant. Accidents, construction, special events that draw more motorists onto our rights-of-way all have this way of disrupting the flow.

I stay the dickens off the highways during rush hours. I have found that Sunday, naturally, is the best day to travel.

You know, of course, that my wife, Kathy Anne, has passed away. I have become friends in recent months with someone with whom I like to spend time. She lives in a Fort Worth suburb. It’s a bit of a drive from Collin County … but far from overly daunting.

It’s all in the timing, man. We select our visitation based partly on what we believe will enable relatively hassle-free travel.

It’s just one of those aspects of living in a metro area comprising about 8 million human beings, many of whom compete for space on our public roads and highways.

I have told you about my adaptability. So … there you go!

local news

Is Bigfoot here? Somewhere?

BROKEN BOW, Okla. — My sons and I arrived in this corner of the Sooner State and found a sign that I personally found to be quite unbelievable.

It informs us of the presence of Bigfoot. Yeah, that Bigfoot! The one featured in all those blurry pictures that no one seems to be able to capture with crystal clarity.

We’re here for a “guys getaway.” We’ve had a tough year and some months, and we started talking several months ago about getting away for a brief spell just to spend some time together and to, um, collect our thoughts and emotions in the wake of their mother’s sudden and shocking passing from cancer.

Bigfoot is nearby, or so the signage seems to suggest.

Why is that unbelievable to these eyes. Because I grew up in the real home of Bigfoot, where he really and truly would exist … were he not just a figure of someone’s bizarre imagination.

I was raised in the Pacific Northwest, where Bigfoot sightings have been reported since The Flood. Do you recall the jetliner hijacking in 1971 when D.B. Cooper made off with a couple hundred grand in cash? The flight originated in Portland; Cooper bailed out and has never been seen again.

My theory? He ran into Bigfoot somewhere north of the Columbia River and, well … you know how it might’ve turned out.

So, we’ll spend a couple of nights here in the southeast Oklahoma forest, hike a few trails, enjoy some fine dining, relax in a hot tub and enjoy some fellowship with each other.

Do I expect to see Bigfoot amble out of the woods? Not a chance … but I’ll keep my doubt of his existence here more or less to myself.