(This is Part Two of a ramble through my photo album - pictures that I took with a cheap little Kodak during my first military assignment overseas. This was thirty years ago, and just about everything about the Air Force, and Misawa AB has changed since then...Part One is here.)

 … Read full post »

 

This is the Riverwalk, that everybody knows -- after the Alamo, San Antonio's biggest tourist attraction. It's downtown, lively, colorful and crowded most hours of the afternoon and evening. But there is a part of the Riverwalk that my daughter and I walked last week - the new northern… Read full post »

 

Town: Bode Feed in Harper

 

Country: Distant mesa, Concho County

 

City: San Antonio city-scape from tower at Botanical Gardens

 

Town: Boerne by the riverside

 

City: Corpus Christi sea-front at sunset

 

Country: Longhorn catt… Read full post »

 

Pip, JP and I, in Grannie Jessie's front yard in Pasadena in our Easter best, sometime in the early 1960s - the station wagon visible at the end of the driveway is the trusty  jade-green '52 Plymouth station wagon that my parents drove for nearly 30 years

Grannie Jessie, who… Read full post »

Another weekend in March means book-stuff for me - and this time, being the guest of a writer friend whose book is about the sad fate of James Fannin, and the Texian garrison at the Goliad. His book is here, my review on Blogger News Network is here, my original account… Read full post »

You're in… Read full post »

 

(Both the chiminea and the chaise came from the curb ... sigh - this picture is from two summers ago. The garden looks much bleaker, today.)

Yeah, I know - embarrassing to admit: we're scroungers and scavengers. We're not quite up there with the junkers in pick-up… Read full post »

I brought the camera - natch - when I went out to California for three weeks. Didn't often go much farther than my parent's house ... but never mind, there were pictures everywhere I looked.

Sunrise on the first morning I was there - from the east verandah. We… Read full post »

(A reprise Thanksgiving post, with extra links and a picture of some of my fellow barracks rats, from November 1978)

 

Yes, we dressed up for Thanksgiving that year: kid on the left is Joey, whom we called the Italian Stallion, girl in green dress fell in love with another… Read full post »

The Daughter Unit is, as I have mentioned before, the absolute queen of yard sales, thrift stores and estate sales. She views each possible venue as a rich hunting ground – and regularly emerges triumphantly flaunting a high-quality and originally expensive item bought for a relative… Read full post »

The Riverwalk - the pride of San Antonio. Which originally started as a flood-control measure. Talk about making making lemonade when all you have are lemons.

Riding high, at Halloween trick-or-treating in La Villita - the 'little village' - once a small settlement just under the… Read full post »

 

Paper mache Dia de los Muertos figures at La Villita, San Antonio

In the Orthodox and Catholic church, November 1st and 2nd is traditionally noted as All Saints’ Day, and all Souls Day – days to specifically honor and celebrate those saints and martyrs, and then to… Read full post »

 Hot air meets the balloon envelope - but this isn't the first step...

So, who would have thought it – we drove to Abilene two weekends ago for the West Texas Book and Music Festival, and found – when the books were packed up and the music… Read full post »

(My very own author table - the Daughter Unit collected the flowers, tablecloths, baskets and antique stuff to ornament it. And always offer them chocolate. Gets them every time...)

I suppose a lot of midnight oil is being burned, in various European and American newspaper editorial offices, at the UN and other various transnational entities, the various offices of CAIR, and departments of Middle East Studies at universities everywhere, as the denizens thereof are trying to figu… Read full post »

Dearly beloved daughter dragged me to an estate sale in the next neighborhood over – eh, we saw the signs, as we were coming back from Wally-word, to pick up a bag of dog kibble and some milk. It had already been going on for two days, according to the/…

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  ... Then it’s time to make dandelion wine. When my Granny Jessie passed on, in the early 1990’s, one of the things that came to me was a little square wooden box full of recipe cards, although to be frank and fair, Granny Jessie probably did not use/… Read full post »

Working on the next book, too drained to pound out the requisite 500-800 words, where a simple picture will do. Herewith, a look at stuff by the side of the road in Texas. Strictly scenic and or/alive, which means that - Sorry, you'll have to go someplace else for the titzup… Read full post »

 

Believe it or not, there are some food items that my family has a taste for, which just aren’t carried at the local HEB, Texas's regional grocery chain par excellance. Bit of a shock to find that out, I know, since the HEB stores present an unimaginable range of… Read full post »

 

 

A good few years ago, I used to work in a building across the street from a large and upscale San Antonio mall. I'd often spend my lunch hour there, stretching my legs by… Read full post »

1. Bring a gun. Preferably two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns.
2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.
3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.
4. Move away from your attacker. Distance… Read full post »

 (Another essay from a couple of years ago, when I was still trying to get my second venture into historical fiction published the traditional way.)

 Or this one would, if it weren't a weekday. Besides the slow corrosive frustration of dealing with the various submissions processes of the b… Read full post »

Yes, I have a lot of cookbooks, probably more than any person not actually in the restaurant-chef business perhaps ought to have.

( William teases me unmercifully about this: on a day trip to Fredericksburg, trying to get me inside one of the shops on Main Street full of dubious Texas-themed tschochke… Read full post »

It is a truism that travel broadens the mind, and brings the adventurous traveler in contact with many, many things— some of them elevated and educational and some of them mundane - and one of the mundane adventures is the exposure to the many, many different ways that human waste can… Read full post »