Cornyn: National Day of the Cowboy: Remembering the cowboys behind Lonesome Dove saga
Sen. John Cornyn
Special to the E-T
Keep your saddle oiled and your gun greased because the “National Day of the Cowboy” – the fourth Saturday in July – is finally here. This day celebrates the lasting legacies of the cowboys that pioneered the American West as they worked cattle, beginning after the Civil War in the heart of Texas.
If you’ve read or watched Lonesome Dove then you know the intrepid tale of the two retired Texas Rangers, Augustus Gus McCrae and W.F. Woodrow Call, who traveled from the Rio Grande in Texas to Montana in the 1870s driving a herd of stolen Texas Longhorns. These two men are the epitome of this holiday and helped define the American cowboy experience. Their story is widely regarded as one of the most realistic portrayals of the Wild West.
Cornyn: National Day of the Cowboy: Remembering the cowboys behind the Lonesome Dove saga lubbockonline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lubbockonline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Nanfu Wang directed and produced the award-winning documentary
Hooligan Sparrow. She was born in 1985 in a village outside Fengcheng city, Jiangxi province, roughly halfway between Hong Kong and Shanghai in southeast China. Her mother and father were farmers who earned extra money as substitute teachers. Busy caring for other farmers’ children, “They didn’t have time to take care of me,” said Wang during a recent interview in New York, where she has lived since 2012.
The highest level of education available in her village was elementary school, which she started at age four. “When I was nine years old, my father sent me to boarding school 60 miles away in the city,” said Wang. When she was 11 years old, her father died and the family couldn’t afford to keep her in school. Her mother encouraged her to learn a trade to support her eight-year-old brother. “My family wanted him to have an education, college, in the future,” said Wang. But she took heart from her late