06-20-26

Editorial by Michael Robinson

Top Image: Lewis Robinson

  Mentioning Mother’s Day is fast approaching is like someone saying, “jump” and many will answer, “How high?” Mention Father’s Day in the same vein, and you will get some snickers or sneers. In one’s early childhood, mothers take the role of nurturer. Fathers, on the other hand, are often seen as stoic or as “the heavy” in the household, enforcing rules and making sure the chores and homework gets done. Sadly, many fathers aren’t around the home at all because of a divorce or abandonment or an early passing.

  As an early teen, I struggled in school and at report card time was a time I dreaded. Dad expected A’s and B’s. I brought home C’s and a few D’s, Dad kept saying I had the ability to do much better. Back in the 70’s and early 80’s, learning disabilities like ADHD and Dyslexia were not considered. A kid falling short academically was chalked up to “Lazy Student Syndrome.”

  If there is a parent in the home with a severe mental illness that also adds a detrimental factor to a student’s success.

  Overbearing fathers who are too stern with their teenage sons can result in deep resentment.

  If I see a young adult in real life or in the movies that seems maladjusted, I sometimes think, “overbearing dad.”

 Strict dads that go too far are sadly commonplace in movies and real life. Movies like The Dead Poet’s Society, The Great Santini, and Ragamuffin are three movies that have messed-up dads in them. 

  A highlight of the week for me was riding with dad on a Friday night to pick up two large Pizzas from Pizza Inn or Ken’s Pizza. We’d get there and he’d pull out his wallet and pull out a “working man’s $20 bill” to cover the damages. 

   In my early teen years, my dad got so frustrated with me he told me I’d end up in prison because I wasn’t earning good grades in school: That really hurt me.I wasn’t a trouble maker. I just struggled in school.

  At 59, and thankfully never ended up in prison, yet those words left a deep scar in me. 

  My father grew up in a dysfunctional and troubling household. My dad bore deep psychological scars from his dad. My dad was imperfect and scarred to  

  Despite this, my dad, like other dads, worked hard and sacrificed to make sure we had a roof over our heads, clothing on our backs and food on the table. On many evenings, he put on a baseball glove and played catch with me in the front yard before dinner. 

  My father suffered with terrible migraine headaches so debilitating there were countless days he stayed in bed in a dark room. Because he worked in my Grandfather Burl (my grandfather on my mother’s side of the family) business, he was able to keep his job. 

  My dad spent time with me, but it sadly wasn’t always enough. Oftentimes, he was so damned tired from working even the few moments he could offer were a sacrifice. 

  Later when dad was in his 40’s when my grandfather’s business faltered, my dad looked for work. Despite possessing a brilliance for mathematics, engineering and structural design, my dad got looked over for jobs because of age discrimination and the fact he didn’t have a degree.  Things eventually worked out but that was a hard reality that dad faced. My dad was a working-class guy with no affluent family or country club connections to bail him out.

 In a way, my Dad stood as a buffer between us and the hardness of the world.

 Thankfully, in my adult years, my dad and I found common ground. We had thoughtful conversations about life, Star Trek TNG, politics and many other topics either in person, over the phone or via email. 

 At the end of our conversations, we felt like all the world’s problems were addressed only to see that by the next weekend, the problems remained. 

 In my dad’s late 60’s and early 70’s my dad got sick with colon cancer and pulmonary fibrosis. Over many months, my dad grew progressively weaker. It was hard to bear, My dad passed away in December 2014.

 I love my Dad and miss him dearly.    

 My dad left a scrap piece of paper with my name on it and things he wanted to do with me: Go to the old glass plant in my hometown of Fort Smith and go rock hounding were on the list. Sadly we didn’t get to do them in his living years.

 While Fathers Dad rings hollow for many, I don’t think any one day could truly honor good fathers. Dads are the glue that holds everything together and glue sadly doesn’t receive the recognition it deserves. 

  If your dad is still alive, take the time now to mend fences or make the effort to forgive dad for the mistakes he made as a father. He likely has or had it much harder than you realize. 

June 8, 2026

Guest Column by Jennifer Fry

Dad.  For some, the word may strike fear in the heart.  For me, it strikes the funny bone.

While my brothers and I were growing up, Dad’s favorite band was Trout Fishing in America.  If you Google the name, a mix comes up of angling advice and lyrics to nursery rhymes, re-imagined for the kid at heart.  Their song “The Window,” for example, features Little Miss Muppet and the spider who sat down beside her and “threw her out the window!”  And don’t forget Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, who who “put [his wife] in a pumpkin shell and threw her out the window!”  You get the idea.

I can remember the day Uncle Bill—near-spitting image of my dad, and even today, hard to tell apart from him at first glance—first introduced Trout Fishing to my family.  The year was 1991; my twin brother and I were seven years old.  The five of us were over at Uncle Bill and Aunt Liz’s house to let the kids play together, when all of a sudden Uncle Bill blurted out, “You gotta hear this new band, Jim!”

Soon, cassette-tape lyrics like “It’s mine!  I won’t share it!” whined into the room.  From then on, my dad was hooked.  He owns all the CD’s and more signed T-shirts than he can wear in a day.  He’s been to eight concerts, the last of which filled the room with all 81 eager listeners.  In their 60’s now, Mom and Dad might have been the youngest ones there, including the band members.

Formed in 1979, the two-member, Texas-based band is composed of acoustic-guitarist Ezra Idlet and upright-bassist Keith Grimwood.  Idlet stands tall at 6 feet 8 inches, while his band partner Grimwood only reaches 5 feet 5 on a good day—a difference of about 15 inches that only adds to the comedic element of their performance.  The pair depend heavily on word-of-mouth for their success.  As of 2020, they had released 25 albums and were nominated for four Grammy awards.

In the band members’ own words, it is “impossible to tell you what sort of music Trout plays.”  Their website lists inspiration from “rock and roll, blues, folk, country, bluegrass, funk, Latin, and reggea” to flavor their music.  In a word, it’s weird, which is all the more fitting for my dad.  Their music caters to children as well as adults.

Through the years, Trout Fishing’s lyrics have come in handy for me.  As a parent now, they seem all the more apropos.  If my child rubs his face with grimy fingers, my impulse is to belt out, “Don’t get it in your eye-o!”—a nod to a song they once wrote about pico de gallo.  Or, if two of my children are fighting over a toy, I might sing defiantly, “It’s mine!” and stomp my foot like a five-year-old.  Indeed, the apple falls not far from the tree.

I complained one day that my husband didn’t appreciate “Mine!” as a song.  My dad replied, “Your husband has never been a child.  And I have never grown up!”

Truer words have never been said.  I should have expected as much from my dad, knowing how my parents met.

In 1979, Jim had a roommate named Howard whose girlfriend Rita (affectionately called “Rita-babe” by my dad) had a best friend named Marie.  In the days when landlines put limits on telephone communication, Howard would call Rita from the shared apartment phone, sometimes while Jim was awake; Jim worked night shifts.  Ever the jokester, Jim wanted to make Rita-babe laugh, so he’d steal the receiver from Howard.  Unknown to Jim, sometimes Marie was over at Rita’s house and was privy to her end of the conversation.  Upon hearing Rita laugh, Marie wanted to laugh, too—so she stole the receiver from Rita.

What started out as Howard talking with Rita became Marie talking with Jim.  She married him two years later because he made her laugh.  Sadly, the very thing that drew her to him was a source of conflict throughout their marriage.  The conflict didn’t stop us kids from having fun with Dad, though.  Mom, we thought, was just a stick-in-the-mud.  As a wife myself now, I’ve come to see Mom in a more sympathetic light.

I remember sharing jokes with Dad that I had gleaned from the Reader’s Digest “Laughter, the Best Medicine” section.  Usually, he’d have read them already.  When the punchline didn’t come out right (it almost never did), he would say with an emphasis on each word, “Timing is everything.”

I did the same with the Peanuts comic strip from Dad’s collection of six volumes.  He would, of course, have already read those, too—many times over.  The set was the only thing he remembers ever asking from his dad.  It was a special set.  The jokes and comic strips, and later movie lines, became a sort of culture between us.  It was an echolalic habit—“movie-speak,” for those unfamiliar—that somehow encompassed life’s great variety.

We have all heard the adage, “God must have a sense of humor.”  If he does, I want it to be like my dad’s—off-beat, but not off-color; unexpected, but not out-of-character; child-like, but not childish.  And in the end, right as rain.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.  May I never grow up to be just like you.

Commentary by Michael Robinson -Uvalde Hesperian

Top Image generated by Grok AI

06-05-26

Several years ago, I helped organize a Laundry Love outreach event hosted by a local church with the cooperation of a locally owned laundromat.

Laundry Love is an outreach movement I learned about in the early 2000’s. The concept is simple and pretty straight forward. A group of individuals, charitable organizations or churches would get permission from a local laundromat to set up for several hours at a local laundromat and offer to pay for customers’ laundry. Back in the day, the whole effort would run several hundred dollars.

“Volunteers would set up a sign-up table and casually ask customers if they’d be willing to have us pay for their clothes washing and drying for free. The organization would estimate a budget of how many quarters an individual or family might need and then “feed” quarters into the machines.

  Our church even brought laundry detergent too and dryer sheets.

  Most people, upon realizing there were no strings attached would be delighted they would be the recipient of a delightful and unexpected surprise.

  Typically, after a fistful of quarters were dropped into the machines and the washing started, the interaction was over but not always.

   One man in his mid-20s said he was thankful for something good and unexpected to happen to him. He told his story about him and his wife moving to Uvalde after a big job loss. He and his wife were sleeping in a tent in his parents’ backyard. There was literally nowhere else they could stay.

  Economic hardship is no stranger to many who live in and around Uvalde.  

According to a Wikipedia article, in the U.S. Supreme Court Decision, City of Grants Pass vs. Johnson, it held, “that local government ordinances with civil and criminal penalties for camping on public land do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment of homeless people.[1]”

 “In America, we are now having to debate a very basic question: Do human beings have the fundamental right to exist in public spaces?

   Some elected officials governing towns with a high percentage of poor residents say “no.”

  Even in a community full of working-class families, some believe if you cannot afford traditional housing, you have no right to sleep in your vehicle or rest on public property — even if you have nowhere else to go.

  One lifestyle that grew in the early 2000s until recent years was van life or RV living. People from young adults in their 20s to the financially strapped retirees that found traditional housing unaffordable, chose to live in a vehicle out of necessity. The 2020 Academy Award winning movie: Nomadland showed the gritty realities of living in a camper or van. 

  Another emergent solution was the tiny-home movement. Tiny homes are like traditional homes but much smaller. Many municipalities existing zoning laws do not allow for tiny homes. Zoning laws in many American cities and towns are stuck on the 1950’s -1960’s “Leave it to Beaver” traditional single-family dwellings with a minimum total square footage requirement. These homes, sadly, have become way too expensive for more potential homebuyers than in decades past due to private equity firms buying up residential properties for investment yields.

  According to a New York Times Opinion Piece titled, The ‘New Redlining Is Deciding Who Lives in Your Neighborhood, says, “Economically discriminatory zoning policies — which say that you are not welcome in a community unless you can afford a single-family home, sometimes on a large plot of land — are not part of a distant, disgraceful past. In most cities, zoning laws prohibit the construction of relatively affordable homes — duplexes, triplexes, quads and larger multifamily units — on three-quarters of residential land.”

With legal options for shelter quickly vanishing, many have chosen to live in rented storage building units. While most if not all storage rental businesses strictly banning it happens anyway and throughout the nation, it’s an all-too-common cat and mouse game between those living in storage units and the facility owners trying to catch them.

Many affluent residents have the mindset that “we can’t have that here” referring to the annoyance of seeing lines of vans and RV’s parked overnight on public parking spaces along municipal roads.

 City governments can limit the amount of time a vehicle can park on a city street but making it suspicious and even illegal just to close one’s eyes while parked in a Kafka-Esque reality that should sober most people up.

Tone deafness to poverty is sadly not only common but local. During the midst of the 2022 Texas Winter Storm that left many Texans without power, one local publication framed its story as an opportunity to throw another log on the fire in the fireplace. I’m not making this up.

The choice remains: Are elected officials at all levels willing to address the hard economic realities facing poorer Americans, or will they just outlaw poverty?

04-19-26

Commentary by Michael Robinson

  If you’ve ever been to events such as small concerts, recitals, classes, presentations held at a church of civic venue, then you may be accustomed to seeing amenities offered to guests like bottles of water, tea, soda, coffee, cookies or punch offered after the event at a reception or at the beginning of the event as a welcome gesture. 

 Over the years, I’ve attended many events at a variety of venues from small churches to large conferences held in big cities like San Antonio or Dallas. The accommodations offered for attendees varies. What I have found as you may have also, is smaller venues tend to offer the best welcome accommodations opposed to larger, elegant churches or venues located in big cities. Similarly, budget to middle priced motels/hotel chains offer more free amenities and niceties than four-and-5-star hotels. Those elegant large churches to luxury level hotels tend to not have any complementary amenities.

Within about a seven-day period, I accompanied my wife to a Sunday afternoon recital of portions of Handel’s Messiah at a large prominent church in San Antonio. We purchased tickets to attend so it wasn’t free. While the singers and orchestra were performing, I started feeling sleepy and quietly exited the sanctuary to see if there was any coffee offered. When I looked around and then asked, “Hey, do you have any coffee?” The answer was “no”. There were no water bottles either although if one walked down a long hallway, one could find a water fountain.

  This isn’t the only church or event in San Antonio where no accommodations were offered to attendees.

  At another large denominational church in San Antonio, the staff was actually confrontational to me when I asked if they had any coffee or water where a concert was about to be held. What was even worse was my wife was preforming in the musical group.

  Both of these large churches probably operate on a 3+ million-dollar yearly budget.

  Contrast that to Uvalde’s El Progreso Memorial Library’s Music on Main concerts. The library always offers a generous table with a punch bowl, a variety of cookies and bottles of water after the event.

  Crossroads Community Church located by the Honey Bowl in Uvalde is holding a Grief Share, a grief recovery support group each Tuesday night at 7 PM. (Newcomer’s welcome)

  My wife and I attended last Tuesday night. Although this is a small Nazarene church and the support group is attended by about a dozen people, the church offered coffee, bottles of water and some cookies. 

   I have noticed that even at other events in Uvalde held by other organizations most if not all offer something to guests. Although Uvalde is a small town, the welcome mat is generally large.

  I was told that the reason nicer venues and four-five-star hotels don’t offer any welcome pleasantries is because just attending such prestigious venues and being “seen” is enough.

  Nice destination hotels do offer full breakfasts at a price and many offer valet parking and concierge services most if not all of these services are for a price and a handsome tip is expected.

  While I’m not attending these events for the free amenities, these small offerings do make the overall experience a more pleasant and warm experience.

 Motel 6 isn’t close to being in the same league as a five-star hotel, but I can always count them to leave the light on for me.

Related articles:

Which hotel has the best free breakfast? TPG ate 10 meals to find the winner

Commentary by Michael Robinson | Uvalde Hesperian
Image by Alex Schuler from Pixabay
02-26-26

Near the end of Tuesday night’s City of Uvalde City Council meeting, Mayor Hector R. Luevano announced that the City has been communicating with Amazon officials on the sale of 12.62 acres of land located in the industrial park near Garner Field for the online retail giant to build a new distribution center.
The news was announced after city officials reconvened into open session from its executive session. As city councilmen proceeded to return to their seats, officials were seen and heard laughing. Perhaps because the news that was about to break was good news.
That said, it may not be the city or the citizens of Uvalde that get the last laugh.
According to a New York Times article, Amazon has said internally, they’ll automate seventy-five percent of ops by twenty twenty-seven, cutting hundreds of thousands of warehouse gigs company-wide.
In a New York Times article published October 25th, 2025, it reads,
“Now, interviews and a cache of internal strategy documents viewed by The New York Times reveal that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift: replacing more than half a million jobs with robots.
Amazon’s U.S. work force has more than tripled since 2018 to almost 1.2 million. But Amazon’s automation team expects the company can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the United States it would otherwise need by 2027.”
Uvalde might get a boost—entry-level work, maybe seasonal spikes—but it’s not “thousands of jobs” like some big fulfillment centers. More like a pit stop that runs lean.
And dig deeper: warehouses mean truck traffic, diesel fumes, noise. The jobs are often part-time, high turnover, no benefits until you’re full-time. Not glamorous.
How much water will this new Amazon warehouse use? While this facility is not being called a data center, the AI, robots and digital components used at this center will likely be substantial and may draw heavily on Uvalde’s water supply.
What about the environmental impact? Remember the “clean”: solar energy farm located east of Uvalde that burned untold acres of brush emitting plumes of smoke into the air for the people of Uvalde to breathe?
The Uvalde Hesperian has reached out to Amazon’s public relations department via email with several detailed questions about automation and estimated jobs it will likely bring as well as other questions, and did get a general response, but nothing specific. (See previous article for that statement)
Amazon’s tight-lipped, so that’s your first red flag: expect maybe fifty to a hundred roles at best for a small delivery station—loading trucks, sorting, maybe some tech maintenance. But here’s the twist.
These locations are basically last-mile hubs: packages get dropped off, scanned, loaded onto vans. And Amazon’s already rolling out heavy automation—robots like these guys hauling bins, arms picking boxes, AI routing everything so fewer humans touch it.
Similar to a new neighbor moving next door, how will the situation be overall? I don’t think anyone knows at this point.

02-11-26

Top Image by omar sahel from Pixabay

Commentary by Michael Robinson | Uvalde Hesperian

  On Friday, February 13th, the Uvalde Area Chamber of Commerce will be hosting its 106 Annual Uvalde Area Chamber of Commerce Dinner and Awards Banquet at the Uvalde County Fairplex. Event Center.

  In an emailed invitation to Uvalde Hesperian, (a Uvalde Chamber of Commerce member) the message read, “This special evening is our opportunity to come together as a business community to celebrate achievements, recognize outstanding leaders, and reflect on another successful year in Uvalde.”  And each year, the Chamber selects a theme for the gala.  This year’s theme was announced as “A Night at the Disco”

When I read that, I said, “Wait, What?”

 As an early member of Generation-X being born in the mid 1960’s, my childhood and early teen years were spent in the 1970’s and I remember Disco with its bell-bottom slacks, polyester leisure suits with wide collars and ladies platform shoes. Tons of people wanted to learn “The Hustle.” Saturday Night Fever was big back in 1977 with John Travolta strutting to the Bee Gee’s hit, “Staying Alive” and dancing under a spotlight hitting a mirror ball hanging above the center of the dance floor.

  My working parents struggled along with everyone else with high gasoline prices. I remember my mom proverbially clutching her imaginary pearls when gasoline jumped to $59.9. In the late 70’s, gasoline shortages causing long lines at the pump and stagflation paired two economic killjoy buddies together: inflation and unemployment. 

  In 1979 a Revolution in Iran resulted in the capture of Americans who were held hostage for 444 days. The 70’s as a decade were gritty and dirty. It makes sense that Stayin’ Alive was a hit. Most were trying to do that! The 1970’s bright spots included amazing Major League Baseball with teams like the Cincinnati Reds and New York Yankee, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates, a team that rallied around a sister Sledge hit, “We are Family” and made it their World Series anthem.

The Swedish pop group Abba was amazing! So Was Olivia Newtown-John. Roller rinks were a blast when I wasn’t falling down.

  A Disco “groan” hit in the 1970’s was “YMCA” by the Village People.
  Then something amazing happened! Enough people came to their senses and realized, “Hey, Disco sucks.”

  On July 12th, 1979, Major League Baseball held a Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago which ended in a riot. According to Wikipedia it reads, “At the climax of the event, a crate filled with disco records was blown up on the field between games of the two-night doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. “

 Then Bob Seger released his hit single in 1979, “Ole-Time Rock and Roll” with some choice lyrics against Disco.

  As a Gen-X’er, Disco wasn’t my music. The Big 80’s were my era where MTV and some seriously good music played.  Now in my late 50’s, I have a few grey hairs, and many consider me old.

  If I had to guess, the theme, A Night at the Disco was probably picked to appeal to the last of the Baby Boomer hold outs. I don’t know. 

 What I can say is I’m giving a hard pass to this year’s Uvalde Area Chamber of Commerce Banquet. I do hope those that go have a great time and it turns out to be a success. But as for the Uvalde Hesperian, it will be designated as a “Disco Free Zone.”

by Michael Robinson | Uvalde Hesperian

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

01-01-26

If you are reading this, you made it to 2026: a new year!

It is customary for many at the beginning of each new year to think about positive changes one can make on this day forward. Like the cliche says, “This is the first day of the rest of your life.”

Today, I’m going to share my New Year’s Resolution, or better called a New Year’s anthem which is: the Pursuit of Peace.

Taking back the peace in your life by putting a solid end to rage fueled content that is dumped into water in each of our life’s aquarium’s which we swim in and draw oxygen from. Each day, there is someone or something that is waiting to red-glass you, dumping cortisol, the fight or flight stress hormone into your bloodstream, making it hard to sleep, relax, lose weight and enjoy living. It is dopamine’s evil brother. 

Aside from sex, there is a huge economy that is built on keeping you torqued off. Why? Because it gets your attention and gets you buying stuff. Social media is filled with rage bait content and YouTube has tons of channels that show videos of the proverbial Karen’s causing chaos. (Sorry to people actually named Karen)

  I confess that I have my own addiction to watching videos where people flip out and lose their cool.  If you’re going to get screwed over, get it on video isn’t bad advice but like Cookie Crisp Cereal, I don’t have to make it my steady diet of watching this type of content.

Did you know that the English language has over 200 words describing some form of anger? From being peeved to being full on enraged, English has some word for it. Why? Because society from the Government, Media, Music, to headline news to social media is filled with it. Imagine if sex related and anger filled content were removed from social media, it would be gutted, we’d all be left with cute cat videos which wouldn’t be a bad thing!

 So how does one live a more peaceful life? Start by actively studying peace and intentionally surround yourself with peaceful content and say no to rage bait content and music and media that is driven by anger. 

 For example, make it a practice to walk daily with the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.

“If you want to be peaceful. study peace,” Motivational speaker Jim Rohn said.

 Learn how to breathe. Take a big breath in and out. Fill your lungs with fresh oxygen each morning and throughout the day,

A major life truth I found is this: What you surround yourself with affects you.

  Deep clean your social media content: Start unsubscribing, unfollowing and unblocking from Facebook, Tik-Tok and Instagram channels that are built on rage and resentment. Stop sharing this content and start liking and subscribing to peaceful and uplifting content. Start following positive and encouraging content. Peace begins with you. Train your eyes to see the instigators, agitators and agent provocateurs in your life. Call them out and cut them out.

  As for news, stop subscribing from new sources that lead with the bleed, and follow new sources that offer objective and well thought out and balanced reporting. 

As for politics, stop letting the president, governor or some politician live in your head rent free.

Seek more dialogue and less debate. 

If you feel you need to act, do so calmly and deliberately without the emotional anger. Fight the good fight but be at peace doing so,

  As for the drama-mamas and anxiety filled people in your life. Set boundaries with people that push your buttons and draw you into their circuses of chaos and anger. Instead start changing your social circle and include more peaceful and loving people. 

  If you intentionally start doing these things, I have a sneaking suspicion your other goals will start becoming more attainable. You’ll find you’ll need less alcohol or comfort food.

Meet Mr. Glad in 2026

Life Changed when I met Mr. Glad by Dr, Gene Kim