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
A professional restaurant chef won’t even begin to cook until everything is gathered and organized, basic ingredients are chopped, juiced, crushed and otherwise prepared, and everything is set up at the work station. It’s part of the prep for service and it’s called… Read More
When I was teaching in public school in Connecticut years ago, snow days, called when the dreary days of winter delivered more of the fluffy (or not so fluffy) white stuff to the area than had been anticipated, offered a… Read More
I’ve been to Las Vegas often, but not for a while, so when I flew into McCarran International Airport last week to meet up with friends, I was first struck by the sprawl on the ground below, and then by the sprawl of… Read More
I have several friends who regularly forward those “Do you remember when…” e-mails full of words and phrases and items of daily life that are no longer used, or even recognized, such as rotary phones, manual typewriters, Palmer cursive writing, ruffled petticoats, and so on.… Read More
I was never a big fan of the Bushes, though I did meet Barbara Bush at a luncheon when I was named a White House Distinguished Teacher back in 1990, so I was sort of partial to her and her particular devotion to literacy and… Read More
Inspiration; where does it come from? And what do you do with it when you have it? I, being a writer, write it down: endless notes, ideas, configurations, interpretations, quotations. I have always been an inveterate note-taker, so this is my default mode.… Read More
New Orleans is jazz. More precisely, New Orleans is improvisational jazz: a city built on the familiar strains of complex cultural chords — French, African, Creole, Spanish — with ever-expanding riffs and variations on one enduring melody. With its “blended family” of history,… Read More
San Antonio is celebrating its 300th anniversary this year. April 6 will mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of HemisFair ’68, a world’s fair organized to celebrate San Antonio’s 250th anniversary, but also, not incidentally, to accomplish urban renewal downtown, to revitalize the Riverwalk… Read More
the narrative thread 