I am sitting in the Margaret Estes Library on LeTourneau University’s campus on a Thursday morning. This is where I hibernate every other Thursday when the housekeeper comes in to clean house. Yasmin is an amazing housekeeper, and all humans and animals vacate the premises while she performs her magic. Sam and Rosie are dropped at the Canine Beauty Shop to be bathed. Tater and Tot, the now-grown cats, spend the day outside. My Beautiful Mystery Companion and daughter Abbie are also on campus, mom teaching, daughter learning.
The library’s namesake, Margaret Estes, became publisher of the Longview...
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For our annual Christmas lunch, I assured my Beautiful Mystery Companion that daughter Mere, in for a visit, and I would handle the bulk of the cooking duties and give her a break. I bought smoked turkey and pulled pork from the brewpub/restaurant that Mere and her husband, Matt, own in Houston. She went to Hebert’s in Houston (still mourning that the local store closed) and brought several tubs of jalapeño crawfish dressing. My BMC bought a ham, and would cook green beans, while I would handle the mashed potatoes. Mere would make the salad.
My BMC prepared the ham the day before to lessen...
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I’ve been playing possum… with a possum.
We feed our two cats in the shop, which is an attached one-car garage. Our den used to be the other half of the garage, so it is easy to let them out there and open the door to the outside so once fed they can do their business. If we feed them inside, Rosie the Smart Dog will figure out a way to steal their food. Rosie lives to eat. She eagerly sits as we eat, waiting for crumbs to hit the floor. The cat food will disappear before Tater and Tot have had a chance to swallow a few kibbles, if Rosie has her way.
Cats and dogs eat differently. Dogs,...
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So this is Christmas, and what have you done
Another year over, a new one just begun...
— John Lennon
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As it has since I sped well past the half-century mark and now avidly read AARP magazine, looking for senior citizen discounts, Christmas sneaked up on me. I have ignored the Christmas motif dominating most stores since before Halloween. The reality that the holiday was indeed upon us came as I made the annual trip in the old truck with its long bed to the storage unit. I filled the bed with bins and boxes of Christmas decorations, collected by my Beautiful Mystery Companion...
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AUSTIN — I have been waiting for this occasion for several months. One day in the spring, I was walking the Lady Bird Lake trail, on the part bordering Caesar Chavez Street across from the old Seaholm power plant, which has been reconstituted into restaurants and retail. It is now surrounded by high-rise condos. Across the street from the old building that once housed part of the plant — which retained its cool art deco signage: City of Austin Power Plant — a new contemporary building was going up. At the corner, though the building was not complete, was a sign consisting of seven metal letters...
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My Beautiful Mystery Companion gave me a handsome Gentlemen’s Hardware logbook for my birthday a few months ago. It is 51/2 by 81/2 inches, wrapped with a cloth strap and Velcro to secure it. The strap has a pencil holder, and the logbook has a ribbon to mark what page you last wrote upon. My original plan was to leave it in the glove compartment for taking notes while on the road, but it is too large for that. So I have begun using the logbook to make lists of things to do, or recording what occurs at meetings, or while on conference calls. It is old school, but I like its heft, the sturdy covers...
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The media is under serious attack these days, with cries of “fake news” flying whenever a story is printed with which someone prominent does not agree. It has been a pretty effective tactic since there actually is a lot of fake news out there. The local newspaper on Sunday publishes a wrap-up of the most prominent fake news stories that circulated in the prior week. At least so far, nobody is being threatened with fines and even jail for reporting the news. I think the present occupant of the Oval Office would bring back the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, th
ough I doubt he actually...
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For several years, a small black-and-white photograph has been propped on the easel on my desk. Henry B. Fox is seated in front of his manual typewriter in the converted smokehouse that served as his office. Nearly six years ago, I decided to write a biography of Fox, the Circleville Philosopher. He published a humor column in country newspapers for a half-century and wrote three novels as well.
At long last, I am finished with this phase of the project. Work and life kept getting in the way, but the book — 85,000 words, including a chunk of Fox’s best work at the end — is complete, edited...
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We have a small patch of yard in front — about 20 feet by 30 feet — surrounded by mature azaleas and towering trees. The patch was scraggly grass and moss when we bought the house 5 ½ years ago. Over the years it deteriorated into largely dirt. Moles invaded, turning the soil spongy. So I buttonholed a landscape architect working next door and asked his advice on what would work best. “Plant San Augustine,” he said. “It will last at least a few years.” Since we plan to put the house up for sale and downsize fairly soon, that sounded like a plan.
I hired two teenagers to scrape off the scrub...
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Four years ago, I sat in the outfield grandstand of Minute Maid Park and watched the Red Sox demolish a miserable Houston team that would go on to lose 111 games that season — its third-straight year of losing more than 100 games. The tickets were cheap, and there appeared to be more Red Sox fans around me than Astros backers. The “Lastros” were lustily booed by their “fans” that night and at many succeeding games. The Red Sox would go on to win their third World Series in nine years.
But the Houston front office had a plan to rebuild this team, and close followers of baseball noticed....
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