El Pasoan of the Year nominations

It gives the community the opportunity to honor the contributions of exceptional leaders. And our hope is that by highlighting their accomplishments, we might spur others to great acts.

You can read more about past honorees online at ElPasoInc.com/news/el_pasoan_of_year.

We would love your recommendations. What person or group do you think has done the most to improve the quality of life in El Paso in 2025? Tell me about them and their contributions at rsgray@elpasoinc.com.

We will announce this year’s finalists in the Nov. 30 issue. The El Pasoan of the Year will be revealed in the Dec. 28 issue, and El Paso Inc. will host a luncheon in their honor early next year. Stay tuned.

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Here’s something low stakes to discuss around the Thanksgiving dinner table that will keep the conversation flowing but isn’t political and shouldn’t end in tears. Is the pumpkin a vegetable or fruit?

The short answer: Yes.

Just in time for squash season, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service vegetable specialist Joe Masabni has the answer from a scientific perspective. Technically, it is a fruit – along with cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, zucchini and okra.

“The fruit and vegetable debate is a fun one that hangs on the technical, scientific view of these plants that we consume,” Masabni said. 

Anything that starts from a flower is classified botanically as a fruit.

Got it.

But, Masabni concedes, people typically consider something as either a fruit or a vegetable based on how they eat it.

From a culinary perspective – as we view them in the grocery store or on the menu – vegetables are typically the savory parts of plants that we eat. Fruits are the sweet parts.

“The pumpkin is a tricky one, though,” Masabni said, “because some people make soups or stews from pumpkins, which is a meal, while others make pies, which is a dessert. So that can lead to confusion.”

So the next time a know-it-all informs you that “a tomato is actually a fruit,” you can tell them that’s technically true, but not entirely.

Up next: Do potatoes and corn count as vegetables or are they starches?

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Finally, I’ll share a short story passed along to me last week about an enterprising spider. As a newspaperman and introvert, I can’t help but love it.

One day during his tenure as the editor of a small Missouri newspaper, Mark Twain received a letter from a reader who had found a spider in his paper. He wondered whether this portended good or bad luck.

“Finding a spider in your paper,” Twain replied, “is neither good luck nor bad. The spider was merely looking over our paper to see which merchant was not advertising so that he could go to that store, spin his web across the door, and lead a life of undisturbed peace ever afterward.”