I have been dreaming about my parents lately. My dad passed away 10 years ago, and my mom followed two years later. No matter the age, like all sons and daughters who had loving parents, I miss them. So the dreams
are pleasant reminders of my parents, though like most dreams, they rarely make much sense.
For example, the other night I dreamed I was standing with my parents in my dad’s studio — a carport converted not long after we moved to South Twelfth Street in 1968. My dad handed me a 12-gauge shotgun and said he wasbequeathing it to me. My mom watched while holding Rosie, one of our dogs...
Read more...
The vernal equinox arrived at 5:58 p.m. on Wednesday, marking the official arrival of spring. With it came the third and final supermoon of the year, all of which appeared in the first three months of 2019. The worm moon — named because the ground begin
s to warm and earthworms rise — wasn’t as spectacular as January’s blood moon, which was accompanied by a lunar eclipse and made for quite a sight. I went out nevertheless after completing my shift at the university library and shot some photos before heading home.
An equinox means the sun is shining directly above the equator,...
Read more...
The woman who became internationally known as Wendy Reves started out as Wyn-Nellie Russell, a native of Marshall, Texas. Born in 1916, she fled there at 17. She later claimed she saw a black man tarred and feathered there by the Ku Klux Klan as a child and apparently never returned to Marshall. An early marriage failed but got her out of East Texas in the early 1930s.
She was a slender, long-legged beauty who became a top model for the Powers Agency after moving to New York and renaming herself Wendy. Photos of her soon appeared in Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Not long after her modeling career...
Read more...
DENTON – On the same day, we saw:
A reining horse that could slam on the brakes from a gallop and slide through the dirt of the largest indoor horse arena in America, then put it into reverse and rapidly turn circles that made me dizzy just to watch.
A horse clomping along on a giant treadmill as a trainer loosely held the reins.
Sydney the kangaroo, who wore a diaper and hopped about inside a prime steakhouse, which is a feature of another horse farm.
JoJo the camel, who is fond of licking folks’ ears and hangs out in a pen with a cuddly lamb and a stinky goat.
Mounted cowboys...
Read more...
EL DORADO, ARKANSAS — From East Texas, one has to work at getting to this town of 18,000 just north of the Louisiana border. This is especially true if trying to avoid the long-running construction project on Interstate 20 at the Texas-Louisiana border. As we headed east into Shreveport, traffic was backed up for miles on the westbound side, while we moved sluggishly past the now-closed Louisiana Welcome Center. Soon we left the familiar confines of this aged interstate and headed north, relying solely on the Maps app on the phone.
I weaned myself off paper maps a dozen years ago after getting...
Read more...
