Opinion

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The turkey has been decimated, we’ve stuffed ourselves with stuffing, we’re pie-eyed from pumpkin pie, and Dallas, once again, surprised nobody by losing to the Raiders, albeit it was in overtime.

Now it’s time to move on to the next phase of the holidays, which of course means parades.

There are groups of people in every town, especially in our neck of the woods, whose mission is to make things as festive and home-town proud as possible. Here in the wilds of San Jac, the Shepherd and Coldspring chambers will be doing just that over the next two weeks.

First up, Shepherd, which will present a day of fun and festivities, capped off by a parade of lights. Then, Coldspring will have the Square of vendors, events, to be capped off by a parade of lights.

Aside from the obvious, which is the celebration of Christmas and the birth of Jesus, these celebrations remind us, especially in these times when it’s all COVID all the time, that we are a community, and we are our best selves when we do things together.

•Filing for candidacy for state, district or county offices opened on Nov. 13, and will end Dec. 13, or in 11 days.

There are gobs of things that go into qualifying for a seat on a panel, but for me, the biggest question and qualification there is happens to be internal: Are you happy?

I realize that question is kind of vague, but it can be fleshed out in many different ways. When it comes to elections, it could mean with the county’s direction, or the state’s finances, or education, or roads, or insert your own concern here. 

I’ve mentioned before that there is really only one correct way to make changes in the status quo, and that is through elections. First and foremost, is throwing yourself out there. It’s one thing to complain about those ruts in the roads that the county never seems able to fix; it’s another to actually get out and fix them. Which would get the fastest results, do you think?

If holding office is not your thing, that’s fine. The other side of that coin is voting, which in and of itself is fine, but if you are passionate about change, and find a candidate that fills the bill, become a volunteer.

The more apathetic the voting public becomes, the freer the power that be are to usurp liberty. So become the solution you want to see.

•The return of the Christmas season also means the return of Christmas entertainment. 

My personal favorite for top Christmas carol ever is “O Holy Night.” There’s not a definitive version I feel is tops; it’s one that encapsulates the reason for the season best. 

I also feel deeply and passionately that those songs by Wham! and Mariah Carey must never be played. They’re so lifeless — insipid screeds of whining about me me me and forgetting what this time of year means.

On the television front, nothing can compare to “Rudolph” in its glorious stop-motion color, and the animated version of the Grinch, with the inimitable Thurl Ravencroft singing the theme song. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is another fave. The reason I believe is simple: the themes of these are timeless — brotherhood, family, love, sharing.

My ultimate go-to movie is “The Bishop’s Wife,” with David Niven and Cary Grant, followed by “The Bells of St. Mary’s” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I can live without “A Christmas Story” for two reasons: that 24-hour marathon every year, and that the villain of the piece has the same last name as me. I heartily recommend watching these. You’ll catch yourselves smiling. I promise.

Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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By Jim Powers

Have you known anyone who suffered from major depression? Not just feeling blue, or depressed for a while because of a life event. Instead, there is a deep, persistent sense of hopelessness that you can’t find your way back from?

For the severely depressed person, the voice that never stops talking in their head keeps telling them that the world around them is falling apart. That everything has permanently changed for the worse, that things can never get better. The people close to them keep telling them that, outside their own head, everything is fine, nothing has changed. But they know better. That voice that is with them 24 hours a day says so. And, it never stops talking.

Many people get through that kind of depression with the intervention of medication, or therapy and time. And on the other side they realize something many of us never learn. That those thoughts that run through their heads were lying to them. That the anger and fear and frustration they experienced when they were so depressed was the result of those lies.

Why are so many people so angry these days? Whether politically, or socially, or economically, or over religion or race, rage seems to consume a lot of people. Increasingly they are accepting and even encouraging violence as an appropriate response to their anger.

The sad truth is that, like the voice in the head of someone suffering from major depression, the voices we are listening to are lying to us. It doesn’t matter what side of the now unbreachable political divide they come from. It doesn’t even matter what their motives are (that’s another issue entirely, and just as existential as their lies). It only matters that they are lying, and that we are accepting those lies uncritically, even when we know that they are lying for their own advantage.

For most of our history as a country, we held truth as the highest ideal (even while often falling short). We rejected friends or spouses who lied to us, we rejected politicians who got caught lying. We questioned not only the claims of others, but their motives for making those claims. Due diligence it is called. What happened to that? What changed?

Before 24-hour cable news, when we got our news from outside our community on the one hour 6 p.m. national news, our “community” was measured in square miles.  Over the last 20 years, with the advent of smart phones and social media, our “community” is now the world. We spend many hours a day interacting with these devices, constantly connected to a billion of our closest friends. The voice in our head is now directly connected to the voices in our hands. And our slowly evolved brains seem to no longer know the difference.

So, about that voice in your head. 

Anyone on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, or any of the other many social media outlets, can now be an “expert.” They can be a complete crackpot, a serial killer, a sexual predator, a terrorist, or just a politician lying in their own interest, and pretend to be someone with just your interest at heart. And they can spread those lies to millions of people almost instantly. And before you can evaluate those lies, they can spread a thousand more. 

Because social media companies, in their own interest, have implemented algorithms that silo every experience you have on their platform to agree with your own presuppositions, they have effectively taken away your freedom. They are not going to serve you information you don’t agree with. Why would you want to read or watch that? The most important thing to the company is clicks, not truth. And you are more likely to click on something you agree with than something you do not.

We are angry because making us angry, and keeping us angry, is profitable for social media companies, and an effective way for politicians to pull to them increasingly corrupt power. Forget political parties, lies are corrosive to our society wherever they originate. We are increasingly awash in a tsunami of lies from those voices in our hands and heads.

There are really only a couple of solutions to the problem. We can either question everything we are told and spend the time to look beyond our own bias for the truth; or, we can turn off the voices bombarding us with propaganda. Social media and political lies are destroying our society and may very well have already destroyed our Democratic Republic. This isn’t an accident. That device you hold in your hand is the 21st century’s greatest threat to our continued existence as a free people.

The people lying to you hate democracy and, whether they are republican, democrat, libertarian or just contrarian, they do not care if they destroy this country in pursuit of their goals.

“We live in a house of mirrors and think we are looking out windows.” Frederick Salomon Perls

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Federal officials should pause move to reclassify communities

Kelty Garbee, PhdBy Kelty Garbee, Ph.D.

How do you know if you live in the city or the country? For some, any place without a Whole Foods is rural. For others, a stoplight is a harbinger of urban sprawl.

The federal government has more than ten definitions of what is and isn’t rural. One of these, however, may be changing. And it could have big implications for our counties in Texas.

The federal Office of Management and Budget defines areas as urban if they contain a community of at least 50,000 people, known as a metropolitan statistical area. In January, OMB proposed to change the minimum population threshold for MSAs from 50,000 to 100,000. This new definition would move 251 counties nationwide — and 14 in Texas — out of the metropolitan category.

With the flick of a computer key, nearly 820,000 Texans in cities such as San Angelo, Longview, Wichita Falls and Victoria would be recategorized. In the popular vernacular, they would switch from urban to rural. I have visited a lot of rural Texas and can tell you: None of those cities are rural. Each has a Target, at least one Starbucks, and other non-rural characteristics.

But does it really matter how a federal agency categorizes a place? The trouble is that this definition is used by federal agencies to distribute funds. Even though OMB insists that agencies not use the definitions to make grants, money for highways, housing and community block grants are all issued based in part on OMB’s definition of metropolitan. We don’t know exactly how many federal agencies use OMB’s definitions to allocate funds, but a few examples include the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Housing and Finance Agency and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, so it’s clear there will be broader implications.

Texas Rural Funders is a funder collaborative focused on bringing attention and resources to rural Texas. We are deeply immersed in rural Texas and the issues impacting rural Texans, their businesses, their families and communities. We’re a welcoming bunch, but we want Texas communities to know the potentially far-reaching impact of this seemingly innocuous move.

OMB’s new definition has been in the works for years. The current metropolitan definition was devised after the 1950 Census. The nation’s population has doubled since then, so OMB reasoned the minimum population size for a metro area should double, too, from 50,000 to 100,000.

No one knows what it will mean to all the federal programs using this definition. It appears that OMB made its recommendation for statistical reasons. However, there will likely be real-world consequences. It could alter federal reimbursements for health care costs in already underserved communities. It could mean fewer mortgages in rural areas, which are identified as underserved by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and less public transportation.

According to the Brookings Institution, the current non-metropolitan county has an average of 23,240 people. The proposed reclassification means that non-metropolitan areas would have an average of 75,533 people. Towns of those average sizes are different in most every way.

In Texas, the 14 counties that would be re-classified are 3.6 times larger than the counties currently in the rural category. And the new definition of non-metropolitan areas would encompass communities ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 people. However, despite the differences across such a large range, they would be considered the same when applying for federal grant money from some government programs. There will likely be unintended consequences for communities, both small and large, on either end of the newly defined category.

There is a simple fix to this issue. OMB should postpone any action on its proposal. It should convene stakeholders, rural experts and local leaders to examine the consequences of such a change. Let’s find out what effect this new definition of rural would have on 170 Texas counties before it is made official.

Dr. Garbee is executive director of Texas Rural Funders, a philanthropic coalition that works with rural communities to develop and implement solutions to their unique needs.

 Texas Rural Funders is a coalition of funding organizations that believe the future of Texas depends on strong, successful rural communities. We are dedicated to working with rural communities to develop and implement solutions to their unique challenges. Learn more and find online tools and resources for rural Texas communities at texasruralfunders.org.

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Many of the people I know, and quite a few that I don’t, aver that their favorite holiday is Thanksgiving.

There is a lot to be said about it, when families come together and celebrate the things that make like great. There’s also not a lot of pre-Thanksgiving falderol to clog up the airwaves.

Aside from maybe some extra turkeys in the food aisles, you don’t see tons of Thanksgiving-related merchandise clogging up department store aisles, either.

I’ll admit that I’m one of those guys, one that enjoys Thanksgiving more than other holidays (Please don’t tell my wife. She will punish me by buying more Christmas decorations and making me put them up.)

My favorite part is family, hanging out with my loved ones enjoying good food and terrible football (I’m a long-suffering Cowboys fan. Thanksgiving is always a time for mixed emotions.) The naps are pretty legit, too (I’m just sayin’).

Don’t get me wrong, here. Christmas is amazing, what with the birth of Christ and the music and celebration. Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Mannheim Steamroller has completely energized my enjoyment of Christmas music, and the old Rankin Bass television specials, the stop-motion animation of Rudolph and the Heat Miser and the Bumble — all those wonderful memories.

The issue for me is the forced feeling I get participating in the Christmas holiday. The relentless buybuybuy on the airwaves, the putting out of Christmas items in September all combine to create a feeling of capitulation to the season, instead of trying to embrace it for what it is.

Seriously, the fistfights on Black Friday alone should clue us all into the idea that Christmas is less of the holiday than it once was.

Thanksgiving, though, still remains the same, so in that vein, let’s all remember what there is to be thankful for.

I’m thankful, so very thankful, that there is a just and loving God in Heaven.

I’m extremely thankful that my children, both teenagers, actually want to spend time with me, and not, as is kinda normal, want to fight. Another bonus: they tend to like a lot of my music (they still cheat at slug bug, though).

I’m over the moon about my wife. There’s nothing like the feeling of coming home to someone who loves you.

I have a really cool family — brothers, cousins, dad, nieces — that are a comfort, even though I’m elsewhere.

I am thankful that I had the opportunity over the last year to pepper you with my screeds, and that most of you appreciate my point of view. I’m also thankful that, for the time being, that I live in a country that has enough freedom left to allow me to write and voice my opinion.

I’m thankful for working in a county like this in East Texas, a really blessed state, where despite what the folks on TV will tell you, we’re a welcoming state.

More than most, I’m thankful for this time of year because at least for a few months, the thermostat is at a respectable level.

Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..