*I have always loved datelines and stories from the road – “14,500 feet up in the High Andes above Cañar, Ecuador, South America” is always a much more promising starting point than “Staring at the brick wall above my incredibly messy desk…”* So: Dateline: APR 15… MEACHAM FIELD, Fort Worth …
For those of you who haven’t encountered Art Cars before, They look sort of like this, sometimes. Imagine if you will an automobile (ranging from fairly new to very old, very broken, and barely functional, about six or eight steps past “jalopy”) acquired by a human (ranging from barely able …
For several years I’ve been driving past this little sign just off Holcombe Boulevard… “Houston Maritime Museum –>” and, for several years, I’ve been making mental notes: Go Check This Out. But mental notes are of limited use when you’re in the habit of losing your mind every week or …
Well, not all of us. But the last several months have been fairly, well, unstable, depressing, and generally unpleasant, and as I don’t like inflicting that sort of nonsense on you guys, I’ve been just keeping my head down, mostly. But it turns out that a man can get really …
Rumors of our demise are somewhat overstated. But the next piece here has some learning and some more research to be done, so it’s taking longer than I thought. Learning comes slower these days; I think my brain’s getting full. Or stuck. Or something. Anyway, here’s a sneak preview. And …
When the Texian Army swarmed the Mexican camp at San Jacinto, the afternoon of April 21, 1836, they terrified the Mexican soldados with the battle cry, “Remember the Alamo! Remember La Bahia! Remember Goliad!” Few Texans (or USians, really) have ever forgotten the Alamo – there are books and novels …
(Or words to that effect, since I don’t speak Mandarin…) The actual translation is more or less “Best wishes and Congratulations. Have a prosperous and good year.” So we’ll go with that. I changed direction last week and took cameras to the Lunar New Year Festival at Viet Hoa Center …
It’s taken a wee bit longer to get to this than I’d planned. Life does that. I talked earlier about Las Pastorelas; now I’d like to go one step back from that and present a few things from Las Posadas. The reenactment of Las Posadas (Posada is Spanish for “inn” …
A little over a year ago, early in December of 2014, I read on a website that Mission Espiritu Santo in Goliad was hosting a Pastorela, a Shepherds’ Play, for Christmas, and knew that was my next trip. I’d learned about Pastorelas some time in the Long Ago, but never …
A few years ago the Texas Historical Commission started doing some research and documentary work on the old highways in Texas. Several of them still exist, it turns out, at least in bits and pieces and little sprinklings of history across the state. The Bankhead Highway, one of the first …