I’ve got a new home, both literal and figurative, for the next month. I’ll be living in Stephenville, Texas, from which I’ll host a blog called Stephenville Dreams.

The first entry on the blog, which is already underway, explains the genesis of this new adventure, but I’ll give you a short recap here: An old journalism pal of mine who’s since become a public relations whiz recruited me a couple of months ago to join a project on behalf of a Richmond manufacturer of pillows (among other things). Using the slogan “Sleep Better, Dream Bigger” as a starting point, my pal wanted me to set up shop in a small, prototypically American town and determine how people maintain their dreams for the future in tough times. Stephenville is that town.

There’s another story behind this project. This assignment in Stephenville will be (I hope) only my first effort at privately funded journalism. Yes, I know most journalism is “privately funded,” in that government money generally isn’t involved in news gathering. But what I mean is that it’s rare for a corporation that’s not in the news business to finance a long-term reporting project — which is exactly what my trip to Stephenville happens to be. My only instructions have been: (1) Travel to Stephenville; (2) find interesting things to write about; and (3) then write about them. Not only is Carpenter Co., the financier behind this project, not dictating the content of the site, I haven’t yet even met anyone from the company.

Needless to say, the thousands of newspaper reporters and editors who’ve lost their jobs in the past year hope that Carpenter’s experiment in journalism is the start of a trend.

Please check in and read about Stephenville, which I’ve already visited and found charming. You can go to www.sleepbetter.org (which has lots of cool stuff) and click on “Stephenville Dreams,” or you can get to the blog directly by clicking here.

And here’s a little bait on the hook: There’s a surprise guest in store.

A pair of worthy voices today: To begin I’ll offer this essay in the New York Times from law professor Stanley Fish, who counts Duke University among his academic postings. Fish is a fellow with whom I hardly ever agree, but like anyone with a truly supple mind he’s capable of surprising readers (or annoying them; see below). In this case he rises to the defense of both Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford, two high-profile Republican who’ve endured much bad press lately. Fish argues that their explanations for recent events can, and should, be taken at face value — essentially, that their cigars are just cigars, and that it’s a mistake to plumb for deeper meaning. Be sure to read the comments, though. Lots of Times readers seem to want their attitudes certified, not challenged.

Also in the Times was this piece from David Brooks, who articulates a point I’d been pondering for a while. It’s fine to disagree with the course set by President Obama (and God knows I have endless quibbles with what he’s doing), but it’s nice to see someone bring dignity to the job. When it comes to dignified comportment, Clinton was a disaster, of course, and Bush wasn’t much of an improvement. I give Obama credit for, as Brooks says, conducting himself in a way that “may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation.”

I read about this video while thumbing through Sports Illustrated at the gym recently. A college softball player hits a home run (her first) in a tournament elimination game, but hurts her leg while running the bases. Two players from the other team decide to carry her around the base path, carefully lowering the injured girl so she can touch each base with her foot. And they did so knowing it would end their season. It’s true that how you play the game matters most.

The first time I saw the word “coup” in a headline regarding Honduras and the recent arrest/exile of its president, I took it at face value. The initial, sketchy reports of the event made it seem that the legitimately elected president, Mel Zelaya had been forced from office by the military because he pushed for a change in the Honduran constitution to allow him a second term. If that’s not a coup, what is?

But then I read this, by a writer for the Wall Street Journal:

That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite [of the constitution], the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress.

But Mr. Zelaya declared the vote on his own and had [Hugo] Chávez ship him the necessary ballots from Venezuela. The Supreme Court ruled his referendum unconstitutional, and it instructed the military not to carry out the logistics of the vote as it normally would do.

The top military commander, Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, told the president that he would have to comply. Mr. Zelaya promptly fired him. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated. Mr. Zelaya refused.

Calculating that some critical mass of Hondurans would take his side, the president decided he would run the referendum himself. So on Thursday he led a mob that broke into the military installation where the ballots from Venezuela were being stored and then had his supporters distribute them in defiance of the Supreme Court’s order.

The attorney general had already made clear that the referendum was illegal, and he further announced that he would prosecute anyone involved in carrying it out. Yesterday, Mr. Zelaya was arrested by the military and is now in exile in Costa Rica.

Perhaps you’re inclined to dismiss any account from someone employed by the famously right-wing Journal editorial page. If so, here’s a similar observation from Gwynne Dyer, a London journalist who can’t be accused of being reflexively conservative. (One of his books, for instance, begins this way: “It is not enough that the United States lose in Iraq. It must be seen to lose by the American public … “)

Alas, the president of Honduras does not have the right to organize a referendum all by himself, and the country’s Supreme Court ordered him to stop. Congress also condemned the maneuver, but Zelaya plowed ahead regardless. When the army, obedient to the Supreme Court’s orders, refused to help Zelaya run the referendum, he fired the army’s commanding general and got his own party activists to distribute the ballot boxes.

At that point, Congress voted to remove Zelaya because of his “repeated violations of the constitution and the law and disregard of orders and judgments of the institutions,” and the Supreme Court ordered the army to intervene and arrest the president.

All this certainly gives a different flavor to the “coup.” Any reasonable person might conclude that the Honduran president himself, by seeking to sidestep his country’s constitution, Congress and Supreme Court, had attempted a coup. Still, two days ago the New York Times persisted in calling the army’s action a coup, with the only mention of the precipitating events summarized this way:

Mr. Zelaya’s ouster was driven at least in part by fears that a referendum he was planning to amend the Constitution was really a backhanded attempt to extend his stay in power.

If being driven from office for subverting the constitution and ignoring the law is a “coup,” then by the standards of the New York Times, Richard Nixon is a martyr.