If you remember Eugene O’neill’s American tragedy, The Iceman Cometh, you might have been in a high school drama class in the 1960s in West Columbia, Texas, with a teacher who believed O’neill’s work was brilliant. O’neill in her opinion belonged in the same conversation with Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, and Thornton Wilder. Mrs. Juanita Roberts had fiery red hair cut in a pixie and always let her class chat quietly for a few minutes before the bell rang to end class so that she could race to the teachers’ lounge for a smoke. Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end.
Today the state of South Carolina where Pretty and I live has been deemed by the governor to be in the grips of another Iceman who is controlled by Mother Nature and promises to create a nightmare for the entire state. The governor has declared a state of emergency throughout the weekend. Wintry mix, freezing rain, and snow will be the culprits, but the largest blow in the forecast is the ice that will cover everything when the rainfall freezes in places predicted by American meteorologists in whatever model they use to foretell Mother Nature’s fancies.
calm before the storm – looking across the street at naked trees
Pretty made the blue bottle tree in our front yard
our big oak tree in the back yard before the Iceman Cometh
Mother Nature will have her final timing for the Iceman and/or the Weather Person; but for now we cross our fingers that everyone will be safe and that any birthday parties planned for Saturday morning can be continued as scheduled.
The young man in the center of this 1969 family picture was James Paul Boring born November 6, 1953, died December 22, 2025. The picture spoke to the love that surrounded James from his two older sisters, two younger brothers, father and mother – a love that followed him throughout his journey from birth in the town of Navasota, Texas, to his passing. He was survived by his four siblings and predeceased by his parents, Charles J. and Mildred P. Boring. Charlie and my mother were brother and sister. James’s mother, Mildred, and my mother were good friends in addition to being sisters-in-law.
Our grandmother Bernice Louise Schlinke Boring with James and his two older sisters, Nancy and Charlotte, in August, 1956
Thanksgiving, 2025, James (second from left)
Sisters Charlotte and Nancy, brothers Martin and Dennis, niece Alison
James and his family formed an important part of my childhood in Richards, twenty miles from their home in Navasota. We celebrated holidays together as extended families did in those mid-twentieth century years. Gradually, as we left the teenage years, we saw less and less of each other’s aunts, uncles, and cousins. The passing of our grandmother in 1972 removed the cornerstone that had kept us together as families. Marriages, new births, college educations, careers became the focus for us. Sadly, I lost touch with my family when I chose to leave Texas and relocate a thousand miles away from home.
I had a second chance with James and his brothers when my mother was very ill with dementia from 2010 until her death in 2012. James, Martin, and Dennis still lived in Navasota; Pretty and I bought a home near them in Montgomery from 2010-2014. Our lives had become more complicated as adults, of course, but remembering good times as children made the laughs easy to come by when James and I were making plum jelly in our kitchen on Worsham Street, the music from his guitar sweeter than the homemade plum jelly when he played on our front porch in the summertime, and the domino games the most competitive ever in the cold Texas winters.
Rest in peace, James. I will miss you.
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On January 02, 2026, Reginald Lynn Boring died at his home in Cordova, Tennessee, at the age of 82. Like his second cousin James Paul, he was the oldest son of five children with two sisters and two brothers.
Reggie, standing, top right
survived by sisters Nita (standing) and Diane,
brothers Wayne and Howie (not pictured)
predeceased by father C.H. Boring and mother Gertrude Dostal
Visits with Reggie and his family were sporadic when we were growing up since the distance from Grimes County to Ft. Bend County where they lived wasn’t an easy drive in the 1950s, but we had fun whenever we got together. I loved my Rosenberg cousins.
Our visits as adults were even more sporadic because neither Reggie nor Nita nor I stayed inside the Texas borders at the same time as we got older. In 2008, however, Nita, Reggie and I reconnected to plan a Boring family reunion in Austin. My, oh my, what fun did we have! Time hadn’t stood still, but it definitely froze that day while we rediscovered our roots.
Reggie regaled us with stories – he even made Sonny smile!
(note name tags we all had to wear since we didn’t look quite the sameas we had when we were childrenplus a few new ones)
Reggie Boring
(May 04, 1943 – January 02, 2026)
Rest in peace, Reggie. I will miss you.
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Mildred (Charlie’s wife), C.H. Boring, and Charlie Boring
The sun was a gigantic circle of intense bright light as I walked on Old Plantersville Road tonight and the colors in the sky surrounding it took my breath away. They were all that – and then some. No camera this evening. Just me and the Texas sunset. It’s as close as I came to a spiritual moment and not surprising that the words of a hymn I sang over and over again during my Southern Baptist days played in my head while I walked.
Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh.
Shadows of the evening steal across the sky.
Jesus, give the weary calm and sweet repose;
With thy tenderest blessing may mine eyelids close.
—-Sabine Baring-Gould, published 1865
A few raindrops fell on me as I turned toward home from the railroad track which was my usual turnaround spot. I didn’t even care. The colors changed quickly in the sky as the sun went down behind the trees across the pasture. I slowed my pace to catch as many of them as I could, and the rain stopped for me so I wouldn’t have to hurry.
The day was over, and shadows of the evening stole across the sky right in front of me. Jesus, give the weary calm and sweet repose. My Random House Dictionary defined repose as, among other things, a dignified calmness…composure. Yes, give the weary a sweet repose. Let all who work hard and all who are tired of fighting the same battles or any whose pain leaves them exhausted – give them a sweet repose at the end of this day.
And may our eyelids close.
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In September, 2013, when I first published this piece, I called myself a “bi-stateual” because Pretty and I had bought a place in Texas on Worsham Street which was a block off Old Plantersville Road, a favorite walking place for me when I liked to ponder the vicissitudes of life, as my daddy used to say.
Today, thirteen years later, I was reminded of a truth I think my daddy would have liked:
We are all just walking each other home.
Some of us just have four legs, and a little less time to do it.
(Pawprints of my heart)
When the noises of the universe trample the joys within us, let’s remember we are all just walking each other home. What can we do to make the journey joyful for ourselves and for someone else today?
Ollie, me, Red, Pretty, Chelsea, Drew, Annie in 2009
Ollie, Red, Chelsea and Annie walked each other home ahead of us
January is our granddaughter Molly’s birthday month – she’ll be four years old on the 26th., but if you ask her when she’ll be four, she often says “on my birthday” with a withering look designed to stop any follow up questions. Molly is her own person, the second child in birth order.
During the winter school holidays recently, Nana overheard Molly talking with a little girl and boy she had been playing with on a neighborhood playground. It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon in South Carolina – a day that makes you want to forgive almost anything in the state. Almost anything.
The play time had paused while the three children appeared to be in deep conversation. Molly was clearly upset when her older sister Ella joined the small group.
“I asked Mia to marry me,” Molly blurted. “She told me no because girls can’t marry girls.” She was almost in tears when she looked at Mia who nodded as Daniel chimed in.
“That’s right,” Daniel said in a louder voice. “Girls marry boys. They don’t marry other girls.”
“My Nana did,” Ella told the threesome with the authority of a taller six-year-old child whose wisdom was not to be disputed.
Mia and Daniel stared at Ella while Molly’s expression brightened. Then the little group dispersed and ran off to play on the slides together. Molly knew she was right because her big sister Ella said so.
One of my personal sheroes, Attorney Joyce Vance, speaks truth to power today in her piece in CivilDiscourse on substack.com. regarding the events that took place at the Capitol of the United States five years ago today. Lest we forget…here are excerpts from her essay.
Donald Trump is the President no one has ever said “no” to in a big way. Not Congress, not the Court, and certainly not the people around him in the executive branch. It didn’t happen even after January 6, 2021, which seems to have greenlit the fact-averse, law-free, and profoundly antidemocratic behavior that has come to characterize his second term in office…
Now, with the fifth anniversary of January 6 upon us, we live in a world where the president has pardoned the “patriots” convicted for planning an insurrection and storming the Capitol. Trump has made sure that no one faces accountability for January 6, least of all himself. He has nothing but praise for the people who overran the Capitol—they’re the good guys, the heroes. His people.
On the very first day of his second term, Trump granted pardons to some of the most dangerous among them, convicted felons like Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, beginning with these words: “This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.” In all, more than 1,500 people received pardons or commutations on Trump’s first day in office…
…there was no moment where Donald Trump was forced to face the truth of what he had done to the country. He has never publicly apologized or even acknowledged he was wrong. There was no moment like the surrender at Appomattox or the withholding of restoration of citizenship for a time for Trump, as there was for leaders following the Civil War.
That’s no way to fix a democracy and keep it whole.
So, we will go through this same painful exercise every year on the anniversary of January 6, remembering and reciting the facts, until we get it right. The people who mobbed Congress are not praiseworthy people, heroic victims who fought a last stand for a lost cause. Trump is not the leader of a legitimate American political movement. We must keep on saying it. We have to refuse to let Trump’s narrative prevail. In the time of Trump, be a warrior for the truth…Take people out to lunch and talk about it. Refuse to sit on the sidelines.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
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I vividly remember the attack on our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, because I watched it in real time – a reality show orchestrated and directed by Trump, with a worldwide viewing audience. Ratings out the roof of scenes never imagined in the minds of most American citizens. And yet, we are asked to suspend belief, forget what we saw and heard, forgive the person responsible even though that person never once asked us to forgive him.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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