An Editorial of Birth

Astrologists might be happy. The founding of this online newspaper is 2-12-2014.

I have undertaken this Fourth Estate business because I consider it a unique opportunity to serve my fellow citizens and to satisfy the juices in me. I pledge my all.

The paper will carry some news of the Terlingua community, though the present Terlingua Moon is a satisfactory outlet for most posts. My devotion will be to features on people and places throughout Texas, but especially in the Big Bend. And I will heavily invest in columns catering to the thirsty appetites of Terlingua readers.

Nor has the arts been adequately covered. We will correct that.

Nor has the oil and gas industry been truthfully covered. We will correct that.

The depth of our coverage will expand as we grow. Where we have an inkling of truth or a light hearted moment, we will write The Coffee Cup, a revival of a social column which first appeared in our college days.

Right now, plan for this newspaper "to hit the streets" on Wednesdays.

Happy Wednesdays to you all.

Desert Bike Fest of Universal Appeal Under Way Tomorrow

An event of universal appeal gets under way in the desert Thursday. It's the Fourth Annual Chihuahuan Desert Bike Fest, running through Saturday.

But let a veteran bike enthusist, Alex Bowling, from Canada and Colorado, describe it for you:

"The event is a homecoming, where friends old and new come together doing what we love--mountain-biking some of the finest trails in all the Southwest.

"It's not a race. It's an event, it's a spectacle, it's a laid back affair full of smiles and single track."

He says the trails offer something for everyone--smooth, fast, easy-rolling desert to tough, grinding, technical canyon routes that really do take you "way out there."

Returning long-time local sponsors include Starlight Theatre, Big Bend Telephone, and West Texas National Bank. Further afield are Bicycle Sport Shop of Austin, Bike Barn of Houston, and Richardson Bike Mart of Richardson.

The event benefits the Big Bend Trails Alliance.

Rides will take place in Big Bend National Park, the Lajitas Trail System, and Big Bend Ranch State Park. For more information on the festival, the Internet site is www.desertsportstx.com

"There really is nothing like it," Bowling said, "an annual reunion of friends, family, and fat tires." 

Diesel Is Featured Artist

Terlingua artist Mary Paloma Diesel is the featured artist this month at the Gallery on the Square on Holland Avenue in Alpine. Visit with Mary at a reception on Friday from 5 to 7 p.m.

Bring your valentine for refreshments and view the art of all the gallery members. Sign up for a chance to win a giclee print of Mary's work.

You can see her work online as well. Visit her website at http://marypaloma.com/

Journey to the Edge of Texas

(Editor's Note: This is the introduction to a book written by me circa 2000. This is the first printing. A chapter will appear each week.)

Mental illness derailed my train of thought a dozen times as I contemplated and worked on this book. I began writing it twenty years ago as a journal, but it was relegated to a side track as my psychotic explosions intensified. I often lost reality for three months at a time. Then a miracle drug, Risperdal, came my way and I improved--significantly. The journal got back on track.

This narrative tells of my odyssey through the wonders and beauties of Texas, a journey of heart, but the book also follows a parallel rail, a journey into the center of the brain. Try as I might, I cannot ignore my brain. At first I mostly wanted to offer something steeped in nature, outdoor recreation, and history. The collected wisdom of the caretakers of our landmarks have found its place in this work, too. But the dark moods that interrupted my efforts to create a fireside "chat "--they thunder to be heard as well. Having repelled them leads me to also tell the story of a scientific achievement that offers a beacon of hope to fellow sufferers.

I enrolled in a Continuing Studies course on memoirs at Rice University with the objective of breathing new life into this writing project. One of the first things the instructor asked us to do was to describe our intended reader. In retrospect, I must face the fact that I have done what I didn't want to do. I have written with the most appeal for those with mental illness. At the outset, and fooling myself all along, I considered the subject too depressing and figured that enough volumes have recorded all-too-many psychotic episodes.

I do brush over my episodes. I believe the interested will benefit primarily from the views of doctors at a federal health discrimination trial. A national authority on manic depression focused on the illness in expert testimony. A benevolent doctor of the plaintiff was apparently too close to the case. And the expert witness for the defense, with hindsight, was the one who best summed up the implications of my fifteen extreme bouts with psychosis.

The ill can also take comfort in knowing of an East Texas state hospital that is more like a wooded college campus than a stereotypical "nut" house. Its treatment, take heart, is on the cutting edge.

Given that I suffered in part from a trauma created in the workplace, I had the opportunity to claim disability. I was also blessed with a doctor who stepped in to keep me off the streets where many with my acute condition languish.

I think many who go in and out of mental hospitals as I have will celebrate that I and they can now find freedom in the discovery of new medication. It allows many to live outside hospitals for long stretches. The advancement is not a panacea, however. The best of the drugs can cause neurological side effects such as tremors and Parkinson's disease.

But this book is not altogether for, or about, the afflicted. Many readers, I hope, will go with me beyond the darkness to share in an exaltation of our landscape, thrill to the awareness in our nature of flora and fauna that overcomes an evil wind, and who may even enjoy observing my-all-too-human weaknesses as I literally lose a woman friend on a mountain trail.

I have also sandwiched in other aspects of my being, such as touching on marriage (why I didn't) and death (its coming to the fore in more frequent funerals). I have not taken much note of things before age forty (about the time of the confluence of manic depression and the odyssey). My writing instructor, however, gave the class an assignment to relate our earliest childhood memory. And I oblige.

I must forewarn you that my college English professor gave me the same assignment. When I was through and he passed back the paper, he said I couldn't have remembered what I wrote. In truth, I might have been remembering from pictures, and I don't know for sure.

I was four, and we were living in an orange frame apartment over a store that sold lumber and hardware. This was in McCamey, Texas, out in the Permian Basin President George W. Bush is so proud to include in his childhood history. My one sure recollection is a sandstorm that billowed into our residence. I remember the thickness of the air. I don't know how he--or we--survived.

Stairs led from the front door, trimmed in white, to the ground, and off to the side was a tin roof, over the lumber yard. We had a pet, a white and black fox terrier, which my paternal grandfather had given me, and we named her Lady.

She had one trick. She may have had others, but that I don't remember.

When there were passersby, she would jump from the stairs onto the tin roof and then run to the edge--it had a pitch--hang her head over, and bark. She was genuinely on the edge.

My thoughts of those days, though, are fleeting. I have found inspiration to finish the writing task before me in the award-winning autobiography of Christopher Nolan. A quaedriplegic, he wrote Under the Eye of the Clock by having someone hold his head while he tapped at a typewriter with a stick attached to his forehead.

My family has helped me. My parents' final Christmas gift, when I was down and they were going down, was a computer that would allow me to work at home. My mother never accepted my disability as permanent. "What a waste," she said, pausing before adding "of money."

What of the old word processor I had started the journal on? A friend suggested I "bronze it like baby shoes." 

The Coffee Cup: Pam Priddy on the Olympics

By Carlton Leatherwood

With the start of the Winter Olympics, I sat down with Pam Priddy, teacher of world geography in Terlingua School. It was apropos because the Olympics are being held at Sochi, Russia, right on the Black Sea.

"It's the first time they have had the Winter Olympics in a subtropical climate," Priddy began our discussion. "But it's near Mt. Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe, so even though it is considered a subtropical climate, supposedly they have the snow and the elements they need not far away."

Mt. Elbrus is in the Caucasus Mountains in the Kabardin-Balkar Republic.

Sochi is a port city of 224,000 population, the latest figure I have available.

"I heard on the news that they were storing snow in case they did not get enough," Priddy said. "I don't know how you store snow, though--I guess moving it to higher elevation."

Mt. Elbrus is 18,481 feet elevation. Supposedly skiing would be at lower elevations due to the thinner air at that high an elevation.

But all the events in the Winter Olympics don't require snow? I asked.

"Right, the ones in the city itself, like ice skating, don't," the teacher responded. "They have built a huge arena and stadium for those events. They've been working on this for seven years.

"It should be interesting, too, because a lot of countries are making political statements about human rights in Russia," Priddy continued.

Cupette: I got away from coffee today with my early morning rise. Had the drink Ovaltine, which goes back to my youth and the label claims is rich chocolate and a good source of a variety of vitamins and minerals from A to E and iron to zinc.   

Carlton Leatherwood's Texas: Andrew Funderburg, a feel good young man

There's a kid in Alpine who got a sophisticated degree from Sul Ross and doesn't give a flip about it. He'd rather flip hamburgers. And I think he is on the right track.

The name of this young man just out of schooling is Andrew Funderburg. I caught up with him on the graveyard shift at Penny's Diner.

He has lived in Alpine five years and graduated from college last December with a major in kinesiology and a minor in history. Kinesiology is the study of the principles of mechanics and anatomy in relation to human movement.

"I started working at Penny's almost a year and a half ago," Funderburg said. "I'm a cook and a waiter, and also a washing dishes person. I do like my job.

"When I started working here, I found that I like cooking. I had cooked for myself but never for a bunch of people like I do now. I really do enjoy it. I wish I had gone to culinary arts school instead of going to college."

I said, "Well, you can still do that."

He answered, "I could. It's just expensive. I would look into the Austin-San Antonio area. It's like $90,000. I'm already in debt for school, around $50,000."

For four years at Sul Ross?

"I lived on campus for two years, and when you live on campus, it is very expensive," Funderburg said. "And I racked up like $30,000 in debt living on campus. Even though I had scholarships."

And it is for a degree that you cannot or don't want to use?

"Well, at the moment I don't want to use it. I wanted to be a teacher, and it would be for teaching math," he explained. "But I just decided that I didn't want to be a teacher at the moment."

What is unattractive about teaching?

"The hidden politics," he said. "You no longer teach, and there's other things going on. You're never really in charge of your own classroom. There's always rules and regulation. You don't teach to teach your field. You teach for a test."

What do you like to cook? Hamburgers?

"I like to do burgers. I also like cooking pork chops, pretty much all the meats," the kid who grew up in Houston said. "What I've really grown to like is cooking breakfast. I wasn't as good at it when I started. Of course, I knew how to cook meat. I've always grilled."

"You do breakfast well now," I put in. "Well, thank you," he said.

Do you make enough to pay something on the loan?

"I do. I make enough as a teacher would make."

How are your hours?

"I work from 40 to 50 hours per week. I make enough so I can pay my bills and still have money left over," he elaborated.

You were telling me that you might invest in a small restaurant, Wings. Is it a chicken restaurant?

"Yes, it is. It's across from the Railroad Blues."

Alpine doesn't have a good chicken restaurant. Stripes, they do some chicken.

"I think I want to own a business before I go to teaching," Funderburg said. "I want to see what the other world is like, I guess you would say."

Are other students like you not going into teaching?

"Teaching doesn't have jobs right now," he enlightened me.

Teaching students are either out on the street or living with their parents?

"What do you mean living with their parents?

"Well, they have to move back in with them because they can't afford to live on their own," I explained.

"Yes, that's true. I have been lucky. I have not had to live with my parents."

"I know they appreciate that," I said.

"Well, I don't know if my mom appreciates that," he chuckled. "She's always asking me to come back home. They live in Kerrville.

"I lived there about five years of my life. I don't know if you have ever been to Hunt, Texas (up the Guadalupe River, I injected). It's near the headwaters and springs. They have a lot of camps out there."

Did you attend one of the camps? "I've been to the camps, but I did not attend them.

"When we were in Houston, we moved every other year," he said. "Yes, I moved around the city of Houston."

Which was your favorite area?

"The Cypress area. But when I go back to visit, it's not the same town that I lived in. (The traffic?) Oh, yes, it looks just like Houston now. I was in Houston for about 12 years. I prefer Kerrville.

"When I was younger I did not prefer it. 'This sucks. There's nothing to do. Everything closes at 5.' It hasn't changed much, but I like the small town environment. That's why I picked Sul Ross."

Did you take advantage of city life in Houston, the culture?

"We visited Galveston," Funderburg said. "The Moody Gardens was one of the attractions. It's very spectacular. I'd like to go back."

Did you see the penquins?

"Yes I did. That's one of the most exciting aquariums I've ever been to."

Did you play on the beach?

"We went down to the beach almost every weekend. I've been on the surfboard a couple of times, but wiped out pretty bad.

"The water is something I like. I don't know if I could live on the beach any more, but I would like part of my life to be on the beach."

Was the beach contaminated with seaweed when you were there?

"Yes, the entire coastline would be covered with seaweed, man of wars, and jellyfish."

How about oil?

"There was a black slime that it was called when I was younger. But then I got to visit Corpus Christi and Padre Island and Matagorda Island, and it's a lot prettier water compared to Galveston."

Up in Galveston they have a lot of pollution from the oil rigs and the ships. So if they had stricter environmental laws, they wouldn't have that sludge.

"But what I've heard the last decade they've done a lot of cleaning up in Galveston," the young man with an optimistic approach to life concluded.
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