I heard Molly Ivins had passed away this morning. I don’t have any specific quotes to make from her work, and I can’t really even recall her positions on anything, or whether I agreed with her most of the time. It just was one of those things that sparked a memory in me when I heard it.

When I was a kid growing up I loved to read through the newspaper (yeah, I know, I’m a geek). It was the ’80s substitute for what would eventually be my RSS news feed fetish. Especially the big Sunday paper. The electronics stores had big colorful ads for cool gadgets, the comics were fun to read, and there were articles about all sorts of current events.

Still, most articles would go on and on and get boring. And most of the more interesting opinionated editorial pieces I either strongly disagreed with (I had strong political views from a young age, just ask my family!), or they came off as annoying no matter their slant. But there was often a column, I think on the left hand side of the front page of some section that I would read. The tone was light, the vocabulary very accessible, and the topic interesting. I think I recall sometimes agreeing and sometimes not, but I always found the articles interesting, humorous, informational and not outrageously slanted. I have no idea if I went back today whether I’d have the same impression, or I’d think something like “what wacko wrote this?”. Still, the picture and name above those articles was always the same and was stuck back there somewhere in my psyche.
The author of those articles was Molly Ivins.  Molly, where ever you are, keep typing away. In my head there will always be a spot for your thoughts on the pages of the Fort Worth Star Telegram.