I started building furniture as a hobby in 1998, concentrating on Mission-style pieces, first popularized by Gustav Stickley in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The name came from furniture he saw in Spanish California missions and emulated in his work — simple, clean lines in contrast to the overly ornate (in my view) furniture of the Victorian era. Stickley later popularized Craftsman furniture, which is considered more carefully proportioned. Both styles still hold broad appeal. Mission style is considered a subset of Craftsman furniture.
As with most hobbies, I went whole-hog for a few years,...
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FORT WORTH STOCK YARDS – On an unseasonably warm Sunday morning after Christmas, my Beautiful Mystery Companion and I stood on East Exchange Avenue along with a few thousand other folks crowded along opposing sidewalks. (“Unseasonably warm” is quickly becoming an oxymoron in this age of climate change.) We managed to secure a spot behind the rope stretched along the street by two world-weary guys who clearly have been doing this for a long time.
“Get behind the rope, please. No sitting on the curb. You must remain standing,” they intoned, over and over.
We were here...
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A new year has arrived, meaning it is time for me to look back on what books struck my fancy in 2025. I will provide some recommendations for anyone interested. But first, some personal statistics:
I read 42 books totaling 16,731 pages last year, according to the Goodreads app I used to keep track. The longest was Ron Chernow’s biography, Mark Twain, which weighed in at 1,196 pages. Actually, though I have the physical book, a 70th birthday present from my Beautiful Mystery Companion, I finished it on my Kindle Paperwhite, which was another birthday present. (I am treated well in these parts.)...
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