Ok then, it looks like absolutely, positively every middle-school snark that can be made about Congressman Anthony Wiener’s unfortunately risible last name has been made. Every blogger, commentator and internet wit has gotten in touch with our inner sixth-grader  . . .  it kind of mak/… 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 »

(Gate, at Chateau-Thierry American Cemetary, 1985)

 The Order that Started It All

Headquarters, Grand Army of the Republic

General Orders No.11, Washington, D.C., May 5, 1868

The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the… Read full post »

Well, following upon da Blogfadda’s tireless coverage of the various implications of the currently about-to-implode higher education bubble, I suppose that I might weigh in on the various merits/demerits of the so-called bubble, and the efficacy of even bothering to attend an institution of so-/… Read full post »

(Deep in the Heart will continue the story begun in Daughter of Texas. During the tumultuous years of the Repiblic of Texas, the widowed Margaret Becker Vining is trying to raise her four sons by keeping a boarding house in frontier Austin, the now-and-again capitol of the Republic. Deep in the… Read full post »

  

It was always hoped, among the rebellious Anglo settlers in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas that a successful bid for independence from the increasingly authoritarian and centralist government of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna would be followed promptly by annexation by… Read full post »

Comment would be superfluous... 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 »

Right, then – I was dragged away temporarily from the computer and the mad gallop of the writer’s life waltz by my daughter  . . .  because it was Mothers’ Day. No, not for a brunch or something on Sunday; our Mothers’ Day was actually in support of Mothers&rs… Read full post »

The English visitor, a lawyer and pamphleteer named Nicholas Doran Maillard landed up in Texas early in 1840, when the Republic of Texas had just achieved fo… Read full post »

            “Of course, I’d been hearing about him for years,” Maculhaney remarked, her voice abstracted and her eyes moving restlessly over the crowd. She had moved one earphone back so she could talk to me, keeping the other c… Read full post »

Like a great many locations of note to the tumultuous years of the Republic of Texas, the site of the battle of Salado Creek does today look much like it did in 1842  . . .  however, it is not so much changed that it is hard to picture in/… Read full post »

(from one of those circulating e-mails, which now and again are actually funny. How would various authors and personalities answer the question - Why did the chicken cross the road.)

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.

The Godfather: I didn't want its mother… Read full post »

We found a large blackberry patch, when we walked the Salado Creekway Trail last weekend, and on Sunday we went back to pick some ourselves. They were thick, under the leaves, almost invisible at first, but I could have picked several times the quantity that I did and not move… Read full post »

(For Fiction Friday, and because  the Civil War began, 150 years ago this month;  a short story of mine, about the Civil War in the Texas Hill Country – a story about the dreaded Hangerbande, the Hanging Band, and two children … although after this day, perhaps neither of… 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 »

Having two large empty pickle jars, a bunch of Easter candy, some plastic eggs, and other assorted materials, my daughter came up with this ... she was inspired by sampling some pickled quail eggs at a local farmer's market a couple of weeks ago. The eggs tasted sort of like… Read full post »

The 175 anniversary of the war for Texas independence is being observed this year, I've been to commemorative events at the Alamo, and at Presidio La Bahia . With the price of a gallon of gas already reaching towards $3.50, we had to give miss on traveling to Houston to the… Read full post »

The very middle of the city is threaded with creeks - Salado and Leon - and the San Antonio River. Over the last few years, a the city has added paved green-way extensions  connecting various parks. I think eventually the plan is to have a network that would make it possi… Read full post »