Twenty out of twenty

It's you, me, and the good stuff, one last time on a Thursday.

I have one small change to tell you about, and it came straight from you. It's just below, so don't skip past it.

After that: twenty brand new nurses who did something I still can't quite get over, and the best honey I have ever eaten. Grab your coffee. This one's a good one.

Starting next week, love, Beaumont is moving to Tuesday mornings.

Here's why. So many of you told me the same thing: you want to plan your whole week, not just the weekend. So I am bringing it to you earlier. A Tuesday morning puts the week's events and plans in your hands in time to actually fold them into your days, from that first cup of coffee straight through the weekend.

Same newsletter, same good stuff, just landing a couple days sooner. This is our last Thursday send. The next one arrives Tuesday, July 14. See you then.

Twenty new nurses, and not one of them missed

Every graduate of Lamar Institute of Technology's first nursing class, all 20 of them, passed the national RN licensing exam on the first attempt. All 20 have already been hired.

Here's why that stopped me. Nationally, only about 69 percent of first-time takers pass that exam. Twenty out of twenty is not luck, nor is it a rounding error. It is a brand new program in our city that got it right the first time. Somewhere in a Southeast Texas hospital tonight, one of those twenty is on shift, taking care of somebody's mother. That's the whole story.

Beaumont ISD launched a resident teacher program this week, and they're holding hiring events every Tuesday and Wednesday through July at the district administration building. You do not have to be certified to walk in. The program is built to train you while you teach, with support alongside you in the classroom.

Somebody reading this has thought about teaching. Maybe years ago, maybe last week, standing in a school hallway waiting to pick up a kid. And you talked yourself out of it because you didn't have the paper, or the money for the paper, or the year to go get it.

That's the whole reason this program exists. There are more than a hundred classrooms in this district waiting on a teacher, and every one of them belongs to somebody's kid. If the only thing between you and that room was a certificate, it’s gone now. Tuesday and Wednesday. Just show up.

Here's what's worth getting out for this week, Beaumont. I already did the digging, so you just have to show up.

🧘 Art in Motion: Yoga in the Gallery · Thu, Jul 9 · 10:30am · AMSET, 500 Main St · Free, registration required. An instructor-led yoga class right inside the museum galleries, surrounded by the art. Free, and about as calm as a Thursday morning gets. Register before you forget, and get there fifteen minutes early.

🎨 McFaddin-Ward House · World War I summer tour · Tue–Sat 9am–2:30pm, Sun 12–2:30pm · Visitor Center, 1906 Calder Ave · Free. A new guided tour built around what Beaumont looked like on the home front after 1917. Red Cross uniforms, wartime letters, the war gardens families planted right here. You have driven past this house a hundred times. Free, cool inside, ages 8 and up. Not everyone knows about this one. Now you do.

⚾ Beyond the Bases Baseball Camp · Sat, Jul 11 · 9am–1pm · 3390 Sarah St · Free A free camp for ages 8 to 16, run in partnership with Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church. Fundamentals on the field, and just as much time spent on confidence, teamwork, and character. Registration is open.

🎴 Pokémon Day · Sat, Jul 11 · 9am–4pm · Beaumont Children's Museum, 701 Main St (north entrance). Bring the cards. Seven hours of trading, battles, themed crafts, and the kind of happy chaos only a room full of kids can generate. Costumes welcome, which means somebody's Pikachu is going to be the highlight of your Saturday.

⚾ Beaumont Renegades vs. Kentucky Barrels · Sat, Jul 11 · 6 pm Doggett Ford Park There's nothing fancy about a night at the ballpark, and that's exactly why it works. Grab a seat, grab a hot dog, and let the kids run off some summer while you sit still for a couple of hours.

💛 The Date Night Plan · Saturday, July 11
I know what you're thinking. There is never anything to do here on a Saturday. Stick with me, because I have your whole evening planned and you don't have to lift a finger.

Start at Elsa's Greek Grill on Dowlen at six. Go early, on purpose. The gyros are the kind you want to take your time with, and nobody is rushing you out at six o'clock. Then point the car toward Gulf Avenue and the Beaumont Art League, where the doors open at seven for The Heat Is On, a free showcase of summer work by people who live right here. Beachscapes. Bold color. The particular pleasure of standing in a room full of neighbors who made something with their hands.

When the lights come up at nine, you're ten minutes from JW's Patio, open until eleven. Order the drink. Order the dessert too. Sit outside and let the evening go a little long.

That's dinner, art, and a nightcap, and you never drove more than fifteen minutes between any of it. That's the whole gift of a city this size. Everything good is already close.

🧶 Chunky Knit Blanket Workshop · Thu, Jul 9 · 6–9 pm · Painting with a Twist, 229 Dowlen Rd Ste 3B. Three hours, your hands, and a blanket you actually made. Pick your pattern and settle in. This is the kind of Thursday night that beats whatever was on the couch waiting for you.

Coming Up

📅 I Am Woman Experience 2026 · Fri–Sat, July 17–18 · Julie Rogers Theatre
Go put this on your calendar right now, before the week swallows it. I'll wait. Two days built for women, and tickets are open.

🗺️ Just Outside Beaumont

🙌 Girls' Haven Clay Shoot · Lumberton · Sat, Jul 11 · 7:30am–12pm · One In One Hundred Gun Club. Breakfast at 7:30, shooting at 9, lunch and awards by 11:30. A friendly morning of competition, and every bit of it goes to the girls at Girls' Haven. Worth the early alarm and the short drive.

Good people doing good work, and sometimes just up the road.

The best honey I have ever eaten came out of a gym bag.

Our sweet friend from Moore Honey Farm used to bring jars of it to exercise class. Her family's honey, from her family's bees, handed out like it was nothing. I'd carry mine home and pass it around my kitchen, and every single time, somebody would ask me where on earth I got it.

Turns out, if you have bought local honey in Beaumont, you have probably already had it.

Chris Moore started the farm in 1999 by buying a bankrupt bee operation, which tells you something about the kind of person he is. Today he runs it with his son Jake, a second-generation beekeeper, and together they keep around 2,500 colonies across more than forty locations between Houston and Beaumont. Real bees, in real fields, doing the pollinating that quietly holds up half of what we eat.

Here's the part I love. For years, plenty of outfits calling themselves beekeepers were buying cheap honey from out of state, sometimes out of the country, and putting "local" on the jar. In 2014, the Moores got tired of it and started bottling their own. By last year, every drop under their name came from their own hives. They will even tell you their honey granulates, which most companies would treat as a flaw. It isn't. It's the proof it was never processed. It's the receipt.

And this weekend, they're letting you come see it.

🍯 Moore Honey Farm Tour · Friday and Saturday, July 10 and 11 · 9767 Bevil Blvd, Kountze · $10, reservation required

You'll watch how beekeepers actually tend a colony, meet the people who do it, and see live honeybees working inside an observation hive. They'll show you how the honey comes out of the frame. Then they'll let you taste it.

Ten dollars, twenty-five minutes up the road, and your kids will talk about it for a week. Reserve your spot, because a farm tour is not a stadium.

New doors, big milestones, and the leaders growing our city.

The city handed the Key to the City to P.J. Locke III this week, at a ceremony in the council chambers. He grew up here and graduated from Beaumont Central. He now plays safety for the Dallas Cowboys.

Plenty of people leave here and never look back. He didn't. He runs a free youth football camp so kids in this city can learn the game from someone who once played on the same fields they do. The key is nice. The coming home is the part worth celebrating.

Community Exposed. This is the good stuff.

The Beaumont Public Library System is handing out free weekend food bags for kids in partnership with the Southeast Texas Food Bank. Four branches: Elmo Willard, the Main Library, R.C. Miller, and Theodore Johns. Milk, juice, cereal, fruit, and ready-to-eat meals. Pick one up during regular library hours, today through Saturday, while supplies last.

School lunch does a lot of quiet work in this town, and summer takes it away for three months. For some families here, Saturday and Sunday are the hard days. This closes that gap with no forms, no questions, and nobody watching. Just a bag, at a place families already go.

If you know a family who could use it, forward this. And if you're able, the Southeast Texas Food Bank is the one filling those bags. They can always use a hand.

This one only runs through Saturday, so don't sit on it.

This week, all three are in the West End. Same streets, same live oaks, three completely different lives.

🔑 THE CHARMER

1575 Driskill St · West End Neighborhood
3 beds · 1.5 baths · 1,411 sq ft · $220,000. A tidy brick ranch in the West End with a two-car garage and a front lawn that somebody clearly loves.

Click here to view

🏡 THE KEEPER

5020 Littlewood Dr · West End
4 beds · 5 baths · 4,656 sq ft · 0.39 acre lot. $485,000 Red brick and black shutters, sago palms flanking the walk, and a porte-cochère off the side. Inside: granite counters, double ovens, a spa, and a covered patio out back. Nearly 4,700 square feet on better than a third of an acre.

Click here to view

✨THE STUNNER

5035 Oakmont Dr · West End
5 beds · 6 baths · 4,677 sq ft. $1,100,000. Two brick stories with iron balconies, a brick-lined walkway, and a pool tucked behind an arched garden wall. Nearly 4,700 square feet. Go look at the pictures. You know you want to.

Click here to view

*Someday this section will belong to one real estate partner. Just one, because a section like this shouldn't have three names. I haven't picked who yet, and I'm in no hurry. *

Things you didn't ask for, from my toolbox to yours.

Summer scrambles everybody's schedule. You close early one Friday, you open late after the Fourth, and somewhere out there a person is standing at your door reading a sign, because Google told them you were open.

Here's the two-minute fix. Open your Google Business Profile, find Hours, and look for "Special hours." That's where you set holiday and one-off changes without touching your regular schedule. Set them now for the rest of the summer while you're thinking about it. When somebody searches your name at 6pm on a Saturday, they'll see the truth.

It costs you two minutes, and it saves somebody a wasted trip. That's a good trade.

Give it a try this week, then hit reply and tell me how it went.

Hot. Low nineties today, low nineties tomorrow, and more of the same through the weekend. You knew that before you opened this. It's July in Beaumont, and we don't need a chart to say so.

We read every word you send.

Last week I asked which came first, Beaumont becoming a town or Texas becoming a state. Most of you said Beaumont, and most of you were right.

Beaumont was chartered as a town on December 16, 1838. Texas didn't become a state until December 29, 1845. Which means for seven years, Beaumont was a town in a whole different country, the Republic of Texas. We were here before the state was.

This week, something easier:

Thank you for being here, and for telling me what you wanted. Next week's move to Tuesday is your idea, not mine. That's how this is supposed to work.

If one thing in this issue gets you out the door, make it the honey farm. Ten dollars and a Saturday morning, and you will never look at a jar the same way again.

And if you run something in this town you'd love more people to know about, hit reply. I read every one.

See you Tuesday, Beaumont.

Jenny Lee · Locally written. Community trusted.