Cheese dumplings are a family recipe, passed down at least since Grandma Clark, (my great-grandmother). I have never seen anything remotely like them in restaurants; I think they are a German dish. 

Cheese dumplings are a delicacy. (As a general rule, delicacies are mostly… Read full post »

Check out this guy. That's Matt Berninger, frontman and chief crooner for the indie band The National. I love this band, its lyrics steeped in cynicism and sometimes seedy sexuality. I sang in several choirs, but I was never in a band. But if I were a… Read full post »

I was gone a lot in October. I spent only one weekend at home. Among other places, I went to Chicago to visit my wife, who was on a work assignment. I went "home" to Longview, behind the Pine Curtain. We drove to Corpus Christi and Padre Island to visit my… Read full post »

  My dad, Elbert Ernest Banks, was a salesman. Selling was the only work he ever did. Yes, as a young man he was a volunteer fireman. And when he was in the Navy, during World War II, he was a firefighter there,… Read full post »

You will have to do some reading to get all the way to the bottom, and I'd about just as soon you didn't. But I promised. ( I probably won't leave this post up very long, though. ) Please feel free to skip straight to the bottom and just read the… Read full post »

So, I'm still trying to catch up with all of the Olympic Judo. There are seven weight classes, and I've resolved to watch it all. Today, watching the "half-heavyweight" division, as two players bowed onto the mat, I said to myself, "why is that woman fighting with that man?".

It was… Read full post »