The lighthouse: a symbol of hope, a sign of safety, an icon of our seafaring past. By most estimates, there are approximately 700 lighthouses in America of which roughly 75 percent are still operational. Except for the very first lighthouse, the Boston Light… Read More
Halloween is commonly considered a time when the barrier between the physical and the supernatural worlds is especially fluid. The late fall holiday has its origins in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when the dead were thought to freely roam the earth. People… Read More
For most people, the sounds of fall are rustling leaves, a whispering wind, or maybe the mournful whistle of a distant train. For me as a girl growing up, the unmistakable sounds of fall were the cheering crowds, the drumming bands, and the exuberant… Read More
The harvest moon has been glowing beautifully in the evenings here in the last official week of fall. It’s still hot outside, of course, but the days have taken on a fallish flavor, slightly cooler, slightly duskier, slightly less intense. The mood has prompted… Read More
Ah, September at last. It’s been a long year, and a long hot summer, so the arrival of September brings relief, at least to the spirit if not yet to the body. With my biological clock having long ago been set to the circadian rhythms… Read More
I was last in Rockport, Texas, in August of 2017, about a week before Hurricane Harvey hit. My Mother and I often went down from Victoria “to the Bay,” as we called it, sometimes staying at the Lighthouse Inn for a couple days… Read More
Next week marks the 50th anniversary of a major event in American history: the Apollo 11 moon landing. On July 20, 1969, at precisely 4:18 p.m. EDT, Neil Armstrong fulfilled the promise of a new generation by becoming the first man to set… Read More
Bexar BiblioTech is the first and only all-digital public library in the United States. It is here in San Antonio, in the 7th largest city in the Country with the largest Hispanice majority population (64 percent) and the second highest poverty rate (after… Read More
There was a time when my phone rang almost constantly while I was at home, and my answering machine filled up with call-backs when I wasn’t — and I KNEW all these people and wanted to talk to most of them. I liked… Read More
Most Americans know that Memorial Day honors the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. What people might not realize, however, is that Memorial Day had its beginnings right after the Civil War. By 1866, many towns and cities… Read More
the narrative thread 