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Toward the End: Readings, Writings, Football
Missing BFF Bucky Buck and His Mama Bonnie Lee
Bucky Buck and His Mother Bonnie Lee Thaxton, Together in Prayerful Contemplation May can be an unkind month, one when the tiny flowers that dot Oklahoma’s prairies die too soon. Osage writer John Joseph Mathews once suggested that their fallen petals looked as if the...
Hollywood Can Weave Its Gold Through Small Towns
Osage Nation Museum Photo Once, in 1920s, members of the Osage Nation rode high . . . and then they began being killed Common threads beyond mere proximity bind Pawhuska and other Osage County communities with Nowata, another small-town governmental heart of an...
Pumpkin Heads No More . . . Browns NFL’s Smartest?
Gregory Shamus/Getty Images via Washington Post When reacting to the Cleveland Browns, Northeast Ohioans can exhibit schizophrenia. They can react with antagonistic concern and deep doubt. Mostly, though, people attempt to behave and respond in an intelligently and...
Heart of a Small Town Is Much More Than Main Streets
Woodstock, Vermont, has quintessential charm and so very, very much more Ken Wiedemann/Getty Images Ree Drummond’s website, The Pioneer Woman, recently showcased “30 Nostalgic Photos of Main Street In Towns Across America.” Mainly, the scenes feature smaller towns not...
NFL Draft No Longer Feels Like Browns’ Super Bowl
Cleveland’s annual equivalent of the Super Bowl—the NFL Crapshoot, uh, Draft—has been replaced this year by something unheard of in Northeast Ohio since the Browns reincarnation in 1999. It is the notion that appearing in Super Bowl 56 isn’t a pipedream. This, of...
Football Researchers Live in the Past and Do It Proud
Professional Football Researchers Association Hall of Very Good Logo William Faulkner, genius of a Southern writer, knew of what he wrote when he noted: “The past is not dead. It’s not even past.” For two books and more than 10 years, I have found myself not simply...
First-Grade Love Can Become a Forever Memory
The New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow ruminated this week about finding himself “fully entrenched in the second phase of adulthood.” He is 50 years old, divorced, the father of three. His three children have graduated from college, the oldest now in medical...
NFL Players Learn to Say ‘No’; Does It Hurt the Browns?
Logo Courtesy NFL Players Association Want to guess the premise on which the National Football League Players Association and a growing number of teams for whom they play—especially the Cleveland Browns—can base their decision not to show up for the league’s offseason...
Clowney-ing Around or in Relentless Pursuit of Great?
Cleveland Browns/Matt Starkey The Cleveland Browns signing of Jadeveon Clowney offers an opportunity not only to assess the potential value of the No. 1 choice from the 2014 NFL Draft choice but also to admire the team’s ability to raise expectations while...
Rings for High School Champions—Earned not Given
Photo Courtesy of Missy Buck Gillman The first thought that may surface when bright lights glint off the golden ring and its glistening baubles might be: Too much, too soon. Deeper examination, however, of what’s at play here could alter that thought. Just as gaudy...