October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and this year The Clifton Record is planning to put out a special publication to celebrate those who have overcome breast cancer, stand with those who are still battling, honor those who have stood by the side of their loved ones, and of course remember those who lost the fight.

Seventeen Southeast Texas counties have been declared disaster areas after Hurricane Nicholas came ashore, dumping more than a foot of rain and cutting off power to a half-million customers in Texas, according to poweroutage.us. That number had been reduced to about 4,200 as of Sunday.

How many of you are saying that you can’t believe it’s already the middle of September? Despite my love/hate relationship with Facebook and Google--- mostly hate lately--- I do sometimes appreciate the pictures that pop up on my phone or computer showing me what happened a year ago. Or five years ago. Or ten or whenever. About a week ago we noticed that the annual fall hummingbird migration must surely be in full force. We’ve had to refill our five nectar feeders every two days for the last couple of weeks. Zack even did it while I was away. Sure enough, a year-old video popped up on Zack’s phone showing about a dozen hummers at our backyard feeders. Who can count hummingbirds, as fast as they move? I know this wasn’t from Facebook, because Zack got himself banned from that some time ago. Let me point out that this was part of a very scientific experiment to see exactly how terrible he had to be to get kicked off. It took several weeks, but now I think he’s permanently gone. He never liked it anyway.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and this year The Clifton Record is planning to put out a special publication to celebrate those who have overcome breast cancer, stand with those who are still battling, honor those who have stood by the side of their loved ones, and of course remember those who lost the fight.

Gov. Greg Abbott has called a third special legislative session to deal with redistricting, to decide how to spend billions of dollars in pandemic funding from the federal government and to determine to whether state or local governments can mandate COVID-19 vaccines, as well as some pet issues of the governor that failed to pass recent sessions.

I finally visited my kids. I’d seen my daughter and family four months ago after we were all vaccinated. My son couldn’t join us because his girlfriend came down with COVID--- what are the odds? And he’d only just completed his immunizations. We couldn’t take a chance on infecting my little granddaughters/ his nieces. So it had been a year and a half since I’d seen Josh. Such long periods of absence are unacceptable.

Everyone who remembers that day has a story to share about where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news about the devastation at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I myself was a freshman at Clifton High School in my integrated physics and chemistry class.

More than 600 new laws signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott went into effect Sept. 1. The new state laws — including one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, the right to carry handguns both concealed and openly without a license, changes to election law and a bill allowing restaurants to sell alcohol to go — were passed during the regular session of the legislature, which ended May 31. The House and Senate adjourned their second special session Thursday night.

Big and Mediumfoot have given us four little-foots and they are scampering all over the pasture on 219. They are as cute as possible and as I have no knowledge of their names, I will call them Right, Left, Bare and Nimble.

Sometimes I leave chores behind--- although I’ll pay for that later--- and head into town for supplies, errands and groceries--- making several stops. Online banking’s almost eradicated the need to visit a bank. If I mail or return something, there are the Post Office, UPS or Amazon drop boxes. Amazon? Yep! I learned last week that Amazon has this fancy, new package locker at the south end of town, beside the Texaco station. Amazon will tell you it’s at the Chevron station, but that’s wrong. At least they give you the correct/Texaco address.