ustxtxb_obs_1964_12_11_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

fine. But even with this help, Sarah works all the time. We thought when we shifted to the biweekly it would be easier, but somehow it is not. I have a little more time, but Sarah does not. She does not work by the hour, she works by the work to do, sometimes she is there evenings and Saturdays sometimes and sometimes Sundays, too. Willie and I have had to use all our influence with politicians to get laws passed to make her take vacations, and when she does, she’s not gone very long; the idea. of two weeks off the job appals her. She blames it on the work to do, and that is right, but the real blame is her sense of responsibility, she is responsible. That is a flat sort of thing to say, but you could know how deeply I mean it if you happened to be here by the typewriter just now. I would not trade Sarah Payne for ten graduates of Wellesley and Draughon’s Business School dressed in harmonized shades of pastel tights, or for ten little IBM computers all in a row, or for ten years, or for anything at all. I did want to talk to her about herself, but I really didn’t trick her into talking about herself by asking her about her freckles, I wouldn’t trick her; it occurred to me after I’d brought that up that it was personal, and she was talking about herself. “Well thank you,” she said, “freckles aren’t usually pretty.” “They are on you.” R.D. Deeper and Deeper Questions El Paso I am not qualified to give a full-dress progress report on the Observeran \\account that would try to be definitive about what this paper has been like during the past ten years and what it ought to be like in the future. Not only am I a relative newcomer to the Observer, I lack nearly all the credentials a person should have to make telling judgments about it: to my knowledge I have never spoken to a lobbyist; I doubt that I could put together two consecutive and meaningful sentences about the oil depletion allowance; I know there are congressional districts in Texas but I could not begin to tell you how many. I did not even vote in a national election until I voted for John Kennedy in 1960 when I was already 29 years old. This is pretty damning. Why, then, should a basically a-political and uneconomic animal as myself even be connected with the Observer? If I am not one to stay truly concerned over insurance rates or the tenure of judges, what business do I have associating myself with those who do? What is our point of contact? Well, the fact is that although the Observer has been mainly concerned with the political climate of Texas, it has tried hard to be more than a political almanac. It has attempted to confront as much of the reality of this state as possible. Thus from time to time it has provided the opportunity for persons like myself to offer our own version of that realitythe artistic reality, if you willand deal with people and places and situations which we think we know and which we feel are important. Because it has said Join us, Help us tell each other what we are like, we have had a chance to use our unpolitical voices to say how we think it is to be a human being in Texas. To me that is much of what the Observer is about: it is dedicated to the solving the problems of our regional society, yes, and those of our American society, yes, but it is dedicated to our human society most of all. The Observer has fought a conspict;\\ ous battle against the myth-makers who exaggerate, oversimplify, or gloss over the facts of what the people and their conditions are like in this state. It has tried to bury The Typical Texanthat Boyce House 1 Also, the Observer has always made a\\ point to take sidesand has always lined up with Humanity. It has tried to open the doors of the smoke-filled roomsrooms in which the fires of poverty or governmental -apathy or racial intolerance often blaze away unattended. It has, in effect, through the scrupulous honesty of its reporting and its passion for truth, tried to be the public conscience of our state. What will it try to be in the future? I’m not sure, but I think-it will not be quite so much the all-seeing Eye of Texas fiercely scanning the horizon for scoundrels. I have the feeling that even now it is measuring itself against the times, trying to find in them the sense of its own maturity and worth. I think it is trying to figure out how much its circle of concern should increase beyond the borders of the statenot just because a Texan will be president The Dallas Morning News did not let our tenth anniversary pass without its periddic editorial concession that we exist. From that paper’s editorial columns December 2, “They Hate Hate”: “The country has been hearing quite a bit of sermonizing during the past year or so about the hatefulness of hate. It has been made pretty plain that some hate hate, but hate haters even more. “From the liberal Texas Observer of Nov. 27, page 2: ‘Texans, we must resist the hate of Russia and of China, wherever we find this hate, and we find it among us.’ From page 14, same issue: ‘On the theory that their ribs crack easier when they are during the forthcoming years but because of the necessities of the age. Too, we have been passing through the kind of crisis that ordinarily would come only during wartime or a period of great economic stressthe crisis of a nation seriously confronting itself and its destiny. President Kennedy’s death shook people somewhere inside them in a way they could not anticipate and cannot forgetand I believe the Observer, both consciously and unconsciously, will keep reflecting the impact of that death because a John Kennedy, with his ability to take the broad view of men and nations, does not come often. I think that is part of the outlook for the future: the Observer asking itself deeper and deeper questions about the world we live in instead of limiting itself to reporting how life is going in the Southwest. I believe its sense of morality will compel it to take stands on issues facing the entire human community. The Observer is now, and always has been, unique and commanding, a pyramid resting not on its base but on its peak that peak being Ronnie Dugger. As Dugger goes the next ten years, so goes the Observer. If he is able to keep up the pace of being editor, reporter, and general prime mover, he is destined to leave Texas a durable and phenomenal monumenta kind of journalistic Balancing. Rock. down, let us deliver swift kicks into the prone forms of the Hons. Bruce Alger and Ed Foreman . . . The truth is, their defeat is not enough: I would like to think that on election day they got their pockets picked, and perhaps had flat tires while returning from the polls.’ “One wonders, in good humor, if the Observer would find hateful a gentle reminder that charity begins at home.” One wonders, also in good humor, if the Dallas News would find hateful a gentle reminder that humor registers in its context.Ed. December 11, 1964 Elroy Bode scarecrow in a ten-gallon hatand at th el same time resurrect the many brown-, black-, and white-skinned people who have been living here all along without benefit of silver spurs or oil wells or Cadillacs. It has tried to say that too many people have looked too often at this area through the convenient filters provided by chamber of commerce popularizers. The Dallas News, in Good Humor