For Christmas last year, when she was 94, my Mother asked for a Barbie doll — not just any one, mind you, but an “Andy Warhol” Barbie® (above). Part of Mattel’s Collector series, this doll is the second (of three) produced in collaboration with the… Read More
They are ubiquitous. They are everywhere. Some might even call them clichéd. Doesn’t matter. Nothing says Christmas like the poinsettia, especially here in San Antonio where the history and origins of the plant called Cuetlaxochitl is so deeply rooted in Mexico and in… Read More
Hamilton, the critically successful musical that opened on Broadway in 2015 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2016, is based on the 2004 biography written by historian Ron Chernow. The play traces the rise of Alexander Hamilton, an orphaned immigrant from… Read More
“He who travels to get away from himself carries ruins to ruins.” Emerson Okay, I’ll admit it: I am inveterate traveler who needs to travel, needs a regular change of venue, needs to get away, from myself, from my worries, from the… Read More
It occurred to me last Monday during a quiet time, quite out of the blue and without any particular prompt, that my house phone had not rung once all weekend. Not once. A few texts had come in on the cell phone, but… Read More
By the end of August, I am more than ready for the summer to be over, especially here in South Texas and especially this summer. Everything is brown and dry and dead, the unrelenting heat is, well … still unrelenting (at over 100 degrees), and… Read More
I love deserts — which is a good thing, considering that where I live is rapidly becoming one. The world’s best deserts, the ones that haven’t been defiled and defaced by over-development and tourist debris, are stark, uncluttered, and magical. They speak to… Read More
