I finally got a snow day.
About this time last year I wrote about wanting to get a snow day like most everybody else. It never happened, although twice classes were delayed a few hours at Kilgore College, where I was teaching journalism at the time. Both my daughter and Beautiful Mystery Companion got snow days, which made me a bit envious.
When the first round of ice and snow hit town Monday, I had brought a suitcase and change of clothes with me, figuring the roads might be too treacherous to make the 55-mile drive home in the dark. They were, so I spent the night in a motel and was at work...
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CHIHUAHUA CITY, MEXICO — When I told folks I was going to spend a week in Mexico and Big Bend working on a magazine story, a few acted as if I had signed my death warrant. “Are you going to have any security?” one friend asked. No, we didn’t, though there was certainly safety in numbers with five of us working together — including a scientist who lives and works in the city. My brother Scott had the wisest perspective, noting that many millions of people live in Mexico, and the vast majority get through the day just fine. I liked my odds.
I was the first to arrive at the airport in this...
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The finish line of the finest adventure on which I have embarked in many years beckoned, at most 300 feet away. A group of us were descending a peak known locally as Big Hill just off the highway in Big Bend Ranch State Park. The peak overlooks the Rio Grande. On this final day of a seven-day voyage from Chihuahua City, Mexico to the Big Bend area, we got up at 4 a.m. to catch sunrise. It was worth the lost sleep. We arrived in the dark to give the two photographers time to set up their spectacular array of equipment. I was the writer on this trip so I took a short nap in the Suburban as they set up, one eye occasionally...
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From the New York Times: The blue and gold braided beard on the burial mask of famed pharaoh Tutankhamun was hastily glued back on with epoxy, damaging the relic after it was knocked during cleaning, conservators at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo have said.
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I didn’t do it. I have an airtight alibi.
Epoxy? Really? I would have used Gorilla Glue. Epoxy is a pain because you have to mix the two parts together. Invariably I get some on my fingers and then spend the next week peeling dried glue from my skin. Gorilla Glue definitely can be tricky, because it expands as it dries and tends...
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