Category: Staff Columns

HEATHER HOPES: 86’ing the Onions

By HEATHER CATHLEEN COX Staff Writer reporter@portisabelsouthpadre.com When asked by my high school career counselor what I wanted to do with my life, I said, “I want to leave the Valley.” What I really meant was I wanted to be free. Free from the constraints of academia, of my parents, of religion, of all the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/07/18/heather-hopes-86ing-the-onions/

CONSIDER THIS: Rio Hondo’s Media Blackout

By MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ Managing Editor editor@sbnewspaper.com If Rio Hondo should ever escape the dark cloud of controversy that has long been cast over the sleepy community, it’ll happen because its leaders embraced challenges rather than running from them. Take, for instance, Rio Hondo City Administrator Ben Medina, who expressed anger Friday when San Benito News …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/07/11/consider-this-rio-hondos-media-blackout/

HEATHER HOPES: Do We Need All the Answers?

By HEATHER CATHLEEN COX Staff Writer reporter@sbnewspaper.com If we listen to society, no matter how successful someone becomes, a person can do no right. From the restaurants we visit to the way we dress, absolutely everything we do is subject to someone’s scrutiny. But those who scrutinize us from their soapboxes of self-admonition are rarely …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/07/11/heather-hopes-do-we-need-all-the-answers/

CONSIDER THIS: The Struggle Continues

By MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ Managing Editor editor@sbnewspaper.com I know there’s plenty about myself that’s unattractive – I snore in my sleep, I eat at double the speed as ordinary humans and I’m clearly overweight. To my friends, I jokingly refer to myself as “The Obeast” in a rather pathetic attempt at self-deprecating humor. I suppose my …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/07/03/consider-this-the-struggle-continues/

HEATHER HOPES: A Successful Life is Lived Moment by Moment

By HEATHER CATHLEEN COX Staff Writer reporter@sbnewspaper.com We definitely need to establish a plan for our lives if we want to be successful. There’s a well-known ideology that states if a person does the same thing repeatedly, they will get the same results. So, in order to obtain something different, a person must do something …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/07/03/heather-hopes-a-successful-life-is-lived-moment-by-moment/

CONSIDER THIS: Miller Jordan’s time has come

By MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ Managing Editor editor@sbnewspaper.com It’s been nearly a year since I issued a challenge to the San Benito CISD Board of Trustees, then-Interim Superintendent Alfonso Obregón and Miller Jordan Middle School Principal Mary Alice Leal to turn the oft-troubled campus around. Plaguing Miller Jordan at that time was yet another principal reassignment, the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/06/27/miller-jordans-time-has-come/

CONSIDER THIS: The Good, the Good and the Good

By MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ Managing Editor editor@sbnewspaper.com Twenty-one years is a long time to be in pain, and yet Janet Mata has lived it as a badge of honor. Afflicted with a muscular dystrophy disease called dermatomyositis (DM), the 21-year-old San Benito resident is no stranger to pain and discomfort. Consider that her muscles have deteriorated …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/06/20/consider-this-the-good-the-good-and-the-good/

CONSIDER THIS: Veteran Affairs of the Heart

By MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ Managing Editor editor@sbnewspaper.com Should a time come when we’ll be judged for how we treated our veterans, make no mistake that history will not be kind to this current generation. Consider the federal audit that revealed the VA Texas Valley Coastal Bend Health Care System in Harlingen produced the worst wait times …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/06/13/consider-this-veteran-affairs-of-the-heart/

CONSIDER THIS: The Lost and Found

By MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ Managing Editor editor@sbnewspaper.com Eighteen-year-old Liliana Polanco lost her class ring earlier this year; it was a dainty piece of jewelry that usually adorned her left ring finger, where she planned for it to remain as a keepsake that would serve to remind her of life at San Benito High School. The SBHS …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/06/06/consider-this-the-lost-and-found/

CONSIDER THIS: Homeless, Heartless and Humane

By MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ Managing Editor editor@sbnewspaper.com It’s amazing what we’ve become accustomed to tolerating – atrocities committed against children, public corruption that has infiltrated nearly every aspect of law and government, paralyzing prejudice the likes of which has quietly oppressed the inflicted as well as the inflictor, and the suffocating apathy that allowed it all …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.sbnewspaper.com/2014/05/31/consider-this-homeless-heartless-and-humane/