I was on my own the weekend before Thanksgiving, as my Beautiful Mystery Companion paid a visit to daughter Abbie in Denton. I was entrusted with critter care and used the time to tackle some outdoor tasks. The weather was almost fall-like, though as I dug a large hole it was time to quickly shed my hoodie. Sweating in November is just part of living Behind the Pine Curtain.
The hole, dug in soil made soft thanks to the constant invasion of moles burrowing beneath its surface, was dug to plant a tree purchased once I left work at the library at noon Friday. Autumn is a fine time to plant trees...
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Twenty years ago, the Boston Red Sox were on the cusp of elimination from the playoffs once again by the New York Yankees. The Yankees had won the previous season’s American League Championship Series in seven games – another heartbreaker for my beloved Red Sox. And it looked like another season of frustration was about to end ignominiously as the Red Sox trailed the Yankees three-games-to-none in the American League Championship Series in October 2004. I watched Game Four while staying at the Holiday Inn Town Lake in Austin, holding little hope and a glass of wine. No team in Major League...
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I set off into the woods astride Little Red, our tractor, a few weeks ago. Nearly two months of no rain made it possible to bushhog around the fence lines at the back of Three Geese Farm without fear of getting stuck in the mud. It is largely bottomland acreage there, a chunk of it in a 100-year flood plain.
The weeds were above my head, making mowing rather exciting. I had no idea what I was about to run over and often hopped off the tractor to visually check before forging ahead. I have a healthy fear of getting stuck out in the Back 40 and having to sell a kidney to pay someone to tow Little...
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HEART MOUNTAIN, WYOMING — On Feb. 19, 1942, a little more than two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor launched America’s entry into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. That order resulted in nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry — most of them American citizens — being removed from their homes and sent to 10 concentration camps They euphemistically called them relocation centers. One of those camps was built in the Wyoming desert, 12 miles north of Cody in the shadow of craggy Heart Mountain. At an elevation of 8,123 feet, Heart...
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