My husband and I just spent a few days in New Orleans. The City is special for us because we first met there, later honeymooned there, and have returned many, many times over the years to celebrate our wedding anniversary in July. Yes, we usually… Read More
If you’re a fan of night-time television dramas, you might recall a series on ABC named Revenge. Vaguely inspired by a famous nineteenth-century novel by Alexander Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo ,1844), the series premiered in 2011 and ran successfully for four seasons. As… Read More
In Texas, especially in the summer, it’s all about beer and tequila. Decades of commercial advertising featuring rugged cowboys or wealthy patróns, along with memories (both real and imagined) of throwing back tequila shots with beer chasers in Border-town bars have enshrined both beverages… Read More
…and the livin’ is easy. So goes the song, and so goes life here in South Texas. June has come, but so far, the extreme heat has been delayed and drought has been mitigated. Instead, we’ve developed a rather sultry, somewhat tropical climate — exactly… Read More
[The photo above is of Tlaloc, the god of rain and earthly fertility; it is from the Mexica/Aztec period (1325-1327 AD) in the Museo de National de Antropología.] We just returned from a week in Mexico City, and what a week it was!… Read More
Unruly weather notwithstanding, spring has finally sprung: flowers are blooming and Mother’s Day is upon us, graduations have already begun in some areas of the country, the Memorial Day summer send-off is not far away, and travel prediction numbers are approaching pre-2019 levels. June may… Read More
It’s that time of year again in San Antonio: Fiesta! The City stops — at least the downtown traffic does — to clear the way for ten days of parades, food, flowers, special events and celebrations all the way down Broadway and along the famed… Read More
Spring begins today, or so they say, but you couldn’t prove that by me. Supposedly, the vernal or spring equinox is one of two days in the year on which the sun is directly above the equator. That means the hours of day and night… Read More
Anyone who writes or crafts speeches or otherwise wrestles with words knows that all synonyms are not created equal. Dip into almost any thesaurus and you will find numerous entries for words that mean the same, or nearly the same, as the one you are… Read More
We are getting ready to go away — away, away — really away, overseas and into another hemisphere. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while might remember that in 2020 we were about to embark on a trip to Australia… Read More
the narrative thread 