In the spring of 1942, landscape photographer Ansel Adams stood on the roof of his Pontiac with its wood-paneled doors, peering into his 8x10 view camera, mounted on a tripod with its lens aimed at the craggy peaks of Wyoming’s Grand Tetons. The Snake River formed an S-curve below. In his photograph, the peaks were nearly covered in snow above the timberline, as they were when we briefly visited in mid-October.
I stood next to an outdoor display of his photographs at the site where Ansel made his famous image of the Tetons and Snake River. Of course, I attempted to create my own highly inferior...
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CODY, WYOMING – We booked Room #12 at the Irma Hotel, built in 1902 by William Frederick Cody for $80,000 – about $3 million today. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, called it “just the sweetest hotel that ever was.”
A wooden sign on the door of #12 proclaims we are indeed staying in The Buffalo Bill. Col. Cody, as he was usually called, maintained two suites and an office at the Irma. We are staying in one of those suites, which is about the size of a small one-bedroom apartment. It has a spacious living room with a soft leather couch and a nice view of Cody (the town) from the suite’s...
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As most of you know, I made my living as a community newspaper publisher for more than three decades, starting in 1982 in San Augustine, down in Deep East Texas. I had just turned 27. Running The Rambler for five years (I ended up buying it) provided a valuable hands-on education. One of my teachers was Ambassador Edward A. Clark, a San Augustine native who became a prominent Austin attorney and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “key man in Texas,” as biographer Robert Caro termed him. Clark was rewarded with an ambassadorship to Australia when Johnson ascended to the presidency after John F. Kennedy’s...
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Roughly 25 years ago, I came into possession of a cache of black walnut, thanks to a sharp-eyed reader who took note of a column announcing that I had taken up building furniture as the latest hobby. Golf no longer held its allure, though I lived on a golf course. I realized, after a decade of playing or practicing several times a week, that I was unlikely to get any better at that accursed game.
My handicap was a highly dubious 12, meaning on average I shot in the mid-80s, with help from foot wedges and a nimble scorecard pencil. I possessed no natural talent and was spending about 20 hours...
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I woke Saturday morning ready to seize the day, a mental list of what I planned to do at top of mind. My Beautiful Mystery Companion was still in Denton helping daughter Abbie and fiancé Brady get settled into their new home. I was also there for a few days, lugging boxes and bins down a couple flights of stairs as they transition from an apartment to an actual house in a neat neighborhood called Idiot’s Hill.
I did not notice a hill or any idiots in particular while there, but both might become more obvious on subsequent visits. Best I can tell from online sleuthing, Idiot’s Hill got its name...
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