Around the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008, I was working two days a week at a Tiny Bidness owned by a friend of mine, Dave the Computer Genius. I had known Dave off and on since 2002, ever since I had looked for a local computer tech to tell me what was wrong with my very first computer. I think that I found Dave through some on-line search, possibly through some local variant of Craig’s list. Anyway, he pronounced my computer well and truly dead, and sold me a rehabbed unit which even if rehabbed was still a better and more up-to-date one than the defunct unit, which I had gotten ten good years out of since buying it at the Yongsan PX. So, I referred Dave to my then-employer, the consultancy dealing in intellectual property (read – did marketing packages and a provisional patent for people who had invented a gadget), and later on he referred me to one of his clients, the ranch realtor, when I was job-hunting.

Dave did computer installation, training, and trouble-shooting – rather like a one-man Geek Squad – and having a nice collection of regular clients, he did pretty well at it. He talked once or twice of one of them, another Tiny Bidness – a little local publisher owned by Alice G. whom he insisted I would get on with like a house on fire. He promised that one of those days he would take me along when he went to her home/office to work on her computer system, and introduce us. He always thought that we should get together, since he thought we both had a lot in common. And so we did, eventually – although that wasn’t until six months after Dave died of a sudden heart attack.

So, Alice and I went into partnership. Her little company was basically a one-person shop, after the death of her husband – coincidentally about two weeks before Dave’s death. I re-did her website, and re-did it again, when the cost of the specialized software to maintain it got to be too much. I learned her system for estimating costs, took client meetings – and she had been doing business so long in San Antonio that the company has a lot of name recognition locally among those with the wherewithal to publish a book privately. I did editing and sometimes transcriptions when the client had only a paper manuscript and not a word-processing file. I learned how to do formatting – that is, book interior design – and a couple of years ago I talked Alice into establishing a publish-on-demand imprint. We had lost a good number of otherwise promising clients, you see; Alice preferred using a local lithographic printing enterprise, which is only a bargain if you want to print more than a couple of hundred copies at a whack, whereas a POD imprint which also fed into a national distributor would let us be more competitive – and put our client’s books on Amazon. The days of clients who could afford to pay $5,000 to $15,000 and up to publish their book was coming to an end, I would argue, and we were in competition with Createspace and Booklocker and Booksurge and a hundred other POD houses. She would point out that there were years when she only did two books a year, and I would say that we wouldn’t even have that many at the rate we were going.

So, we set up the POD imprint – and of our five clients last year, four of them were POD. I handled them all anyway. We re-did all of my own books that had been published already – and the sales of the printed versions came trickling back to the imprint’s book account. Alice was sidelined more and more with health problems, which have come to a head in the last few months.

The bottom line is that I am going to buy her out, for pretty much the cost of her lawyer doing all the paperwork to transfer the business to me. It’s a good thing that the land sold when it did – as I can just about afford to do this. It’s a nice little business, with all the necessary connections to freelance service providers. There are clients with reoccurring orders for reprints, and potential customers who just prefer to be able to sit down and meet face to face with a real person. Together with my pension, with the income from my own writing – there’ll be enough. I’ll never look to grow it to the point of hiring employees, though. Training up Blondie as my junior partner, as Alice trained me – well, that’s where my work future lies, and with luck it will provide for us both.

11. January 2014 · Comments Off on An Eloquent Comment · Categories: Ain't That America?

I saw this on the comment thread for this article – and it was so good, I simply have to repost. Of my four grandparents, one only was American-born. The others were hopeful immigrants.

For me, the “old country” is West Virginia. I wasn’t born there and never lived there, but my father was, though he lived most of his life as an Air Force brat away from it, and my paternal grandparents, both born there, lived their working lives away, too, only going back after they retired. Yet I own land there that I inherited, an old farm far up in the mountains that’s been in my family for generations, and I feel a deep and abiding affection for the homeland of my people.

The happiest summer of my life as a child was spent on my grandparent’s farm, where I walked paths and drank from springs that generation upon generation of my folk walked and drank from. I played with dogs that had never known a leash, learned marksmanship by shooting the head off Prince Albert with a .22, picked berries and was taught how to make them into pies and cobblers, jams and preserves.

While the West Virginia side of my family has Scotch-Irish blood, it also has plenty of German Dunkard and Hessian, Dutch and French Huguenot blood as well, and maybe a little bit of Delaware Indian.

The implication of the article that all Appalachian peoples are Scotch-Irish feeds into the old canard that they are incestuous retards; I’ve had Jews–who as a people are so inbred they have genetic diseases–mock me as an inbred yokel when they learn my people come from West Virginia. It gets tiresome, especially when I am really the product of hybrid vigor.

I’ve sat in the parlors of great aunts while a coal fire sizzled in a pot-bellied stove and listened to them tell me in their soft drawl, putting “h”s and “r”s in odd places, who married who and from what county they came from for generations back, and heard references to incidents that occurred in the year of the bloody sevens (1777). I’ve been led to a spot where a giant American chestnut tree stood for hundreds of years, only dying of blight in the 1930s. That tree, so they told me, bore the marks of the bullet fired by a Shawnee Indian in the pay of the British that killed one of my direct ancestors during the Revolutionary War.

But I’ve been put down by sophisticated, worldy-wise urban people who have no clue where their people came from–they don’t even really have “people” and don’t understand the concept. For that matter, they don’t even have a native land, a native soil fought for by their own blood that is theirs forever. In my mind, they are the true neo-peasants–landless, ancesterless, cultureless, helpless metrohumans–while I come from a long line of independent, arms-bearing freeholders.

I understand the prickly defensiveness of many commenters to this article: it seems just another hit piece on the dumb hillbilly corn pones. Why, even the white trash Okies had enough sense to get out–and never mind that most of those Okies were originally part of the Appalachian diaspora.

People have been leaving Appalachia for generations. But of course there will always be some who don’t emigrate. Does that mean they are worthless human debris?

There’s an old American expression–“There are two kinds of Europeans: The smart ones, and those who stayed behind.” It never fails to get a rise out of all that dumb, stay-behind Euro-trash. Is it true? If it’s not, then why should we accept that the Appalachian people who “stayed behind” are losers and failures?

Yes, Appalachia has lots of problems. But so does rural California, where I live. We need infrastructure here–especially roads and bridges but also high-speed internet and air service–and jobs and good schools. Will we get them? I doubt it. The only things we produce that the wider nation has any use for are soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. Lots of those.

Many of the local people are of old settler stock, their ancestors trekking the Oregon Trail or rounding the Horn in clipper ships in the 1840s and ’50s. Ranches and farms typically have been in the same families for four or five generations, at least. Nobody wants to leave. Nobody wants to live in cities or suburbs. They hate the commercial pop culture that corrupts their children. They dislike the lifestyle attitudes of the NPR radio stations that blanket the airwaves (five FM and three AM stations where I live, all broadcasting the same thing). They have been exploited and abandoned by amoral timber and mining companies, and by turns pandered to and oppressed by federal, state and local governments.

Somebody ought to write about their fortitude and stoicism, their relentless “next year will be better” optimism, their abiding religious faith. But no one does. When someone does write about the area, it is pretty much like this piece. Interview people in beer joints and welfare offices, find a stoner or two, hear tales of meth heads, find a back-to-the land old hippie, and that’s about it.
What else is new?

20 â–³ â–½

09. January 2014 · Comments Off on Is the Preference Cascade in Sight? · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Health and Wellness, Politics, Rant, Veteran's Affairs

All during late November and December of last year, I began seeing internet discussions of the looming disaster that is Obamacare – and yes, I will hang that name on the so-called Affordable Care Act, also known as the un-Affordable Care Act. The man behind the desk in the Oval Office pursued this as his singular achievement; his legislative allies rammed it through over protest, and his media allies have viciously abused those who advised caution. So it is only fitting and fair that his name get attached to it at every opportunity, especially if it brings down his whole political machine in a spectacular fashion, rather like a slow-motion Hindenberg collapsing.

Just before the disastrous roll-out of the Obamacare sign-up websites, I began note, among all the chaff, some sober speculations here and there; commenters speculating that once people began having to write substantial checks for healthcare insurance, out of their own pocket – that’s when the beautiful theory of quality healthcare insurance for all would run into the jagged rocks of reality. Exactly those people who had bought into it as a lovely idea, because it was fair and all – they would be disillusioned in large numbers.

Which is what we see coming to pass; first in blog discussion threads, then the major media organizations begin dipping a cautious toe into reporting the actual impact of Obamacare on real people, I discussed it privately with certain friends who share somewhat of the same beliefs, and just this week, I overheard a vociferous discussion in a public place, among people who were strangers to me. My daughter and I were in a retail store, a defiantly old-fashioned five and dime – and up at the front, the three cashiers were discussing their insurance options under Obamacare. They were all three at a guess, about ten or fifteen years older than me, and the town where this establishment is located is a pretty well-to-do place. No, the three ladies were baffled, upset and venting freely – being of the age when chronic health problems begin to bite.

Increasingly, the internet ‘chatter’ is speculation that the disastrous roll-out of the Obamacare website, the paltry numbers who have actually been able to sign up for health care insurance through it, and the wide-spread unhappiness with it as evidenced by the overheard discussion, all have another purpose. Yes, the Obama administration had a cunning plan all along – and all this was intended to pave the way to so-called ‘single-payer’ once those pesky private health insurance providers are sidelined. Never mind that this has and will continue to cause disruption of every sort; from employers cutting back on hiring and the number of employee hours worked, to people with serious health issues who will be affected, and those who had health insurance but don’t any more. People will suffer and some – very likely some will die because of it – but apparently the ends justify the means, if the end is a noble goal such as a national health service like Canada, or England.

Which is apparently what all the civilized nations have, as a commenter on Open Salon had it, some months ago; one nationalized health care service coming up, for which everyone pays in taxes – or at least, those of us who do pay taxes pay for it – and everyone receives what they need in health care services. Just like … the Veterans Administration medical care, or military medical care, or the Bureau of Indian Affairs medical care, only spread nation wide and to all citizens. Yum, yum; the appetizing prospect of having your doctor not work for you, with your best interests and health at heart as a primary goal because if you are unhappy with the result, you will go elsewhere seeking a better result. Instead your medical care provider is working for an impenetrable, unanswerable bureaucracy, a bureaucracy which – no matter what it’s failing might be in your particular instance, is somehow never found at fault in a meaningful way, especially of you or one of your loved ones suffers or dies from that bureaucratic failing. And the worst insult of all is knowing that those elected officials who are preparing this particular s**t sandwich for us, have and will exempt themselves from ever having to take a bite of it.
Interesting times. Discuss.

(Crossposted at www.chicagoboyz.net)

08. January 2014 · Comments Off on We Saw the Fast Armadillo! · Categories: Ain't That America?, Critters, Local · Tags: , ,

Yes, we did indeedy – the elusive fast armadillo of Uptown Luckenbach, Texas! you see, there really is a place in the Hill Country called Luckenbach, it’s just not a name in a country-western song.

Welcome to Updown Luckenbach

It’s a feed mill, actually – just up the road from the loop which leads into downtown Luckenbach, home of the old post office/general store/concert venue. But in the same unpaved driveway there is a small souvenir store, run by a guy named Monroe, who advertises his own home-made custom art. If he is not there, the store runs on a self-serve, honor basis. See what you like, drop the money for it in an old butter-churn crock, or in a lockbox outside.

And many of Monroe’s roadside signs advertise asking about the fast armadillo.

What is the fast armadillo, you may ask? This.

Fast Armadillo

Yes, he does a free-hand sketch of an armadillo, etched with a Dremel tool, on a glass bottle (scrounged from local dumpsters or by donations, I guess), adds an ornamental squiggle, the date, and ‘Luckenbach, Texas.’ He does this – when he is there at the shop – for tips. Apparently many curious travelers have stopped, looking for the fast armadillo, but it’s a matter of luck, catching Monroe in the shop at the right time.

Fast Armadillo 1

He did two bottles for us – one is for Mom, so he did an especially large fast armadillo, and put her name on it. We tipped, and Blondie folded him an origami crane out of a piece of lined notebook paper, but it still took her twice the time that he took, doing the bottles.

Yep, that is one fast armadillo.

Ah, the New Year is upon us, now that we have successfully negotiated the month-long holiday hurdles – and no, I am doing my best not to ask myself what fresh hells await, since I am barely done with the rich banquet served up to us at year-end.

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh, and laugh, and laugh at the spectacle of a boat-full of global-warmenist tourists venturing on an Antarctic expedition to prove that the polar ice is melting faster than the Wicked Witch when Dorothy emptied a bucket of water onto her … being caught in the ice … and having to be rescued by ice-breaking ships. The topper is that this is actually the summer season at the bottom of the world, and the darned stuff is supposed to be melting seasonally anyway. But apparently not, and the gales of laughter at this bit of misfortune are not quite strong enough to dislodge the ship. Was Al Gore anywhere around? The unseasonably horrible weather hitting all of the United States but a tiny band along the west coast argues the presence of He Whose Chakras Need to be Raised, or at least smacked with a bucket of cold water.

Ah, the fortunes of the ruling dynasty in North Korea have taken a positively surreal turn into I, Claudius territory, with the long-time advisor and uncle (with a handful of Uncle’s top aides) of Pudgy-Boy Kim executed by being served up naked to a pack of starving dogs – and the ruling echelons made to watch the proceedings. To encourage the others, I guess. This was reported via Chinese news media, which makes me wonder how tired the Chinese are getting of the antics of Pudgy-Boy and all the other Kims. Given that dog-meat is a traditional Korean delicacy, and in North Korea eating it is likely a matter of survival, perhaps the dogs considered this arrangement a fair turn-about. No wonder Dennis Rodman appears to be getting fond of North Korea; height and color aside, he blends right in with the general freakishness.

And speaking of a parade of … well, not freaks exactly, more a case of being freakishly out of touch, I give you MSNBC, or as I have begun to call it, PMSNBC – now in a dead heat with Time Magazine as they race to the bottom. Well, both of these media entities were once respected, popular and purveyors of the news. Now I suppose it is commentary and opinion all the way, and very strident and in-your-face opinion, too. The insults are just the extra, although I am certain Melissa Harris-Perry got an earful over that notorious segment poking mean-girl fun at Mitt Romney’s adopted grandson. Being that she was a child of color – or anyway, half-color – born to a white Mormon mother, one would have thought Ms. Harris-Perry would have been a little more circumspect. I can hope that perhaps her own mother put her straight, about how painful it would be for mother and child alike to hear sniggering cracks about how one of these things is not like the other, and one of those things does not belong.

And finally, Obamacare, sweet Obamacare, the unAffordable Care Act, now in the act of a slo-mo clash and burn even more spectacular than that of the Hindenberg. Yes, thank you, I’ll have my serving of schadenfreude in chocolate flavor, with a spritz of whipped cream, toasted almonds and a cherry on top. Harsh? I’ll save my sympathies for those people now caught within the deadly toils of trying to work out some kind of healthcare coverage for themselves and their families who did not vote Dem in the last two elections. For those who did, and are now unpleasantly confronted with the results – sorry, we warned you, over and over, and all we got for that was abuse and ridicule. Sometimes enlightenment is only achieved through pain. I haven’t ventured into Open Salon lately to see how enlightenment is progressing these days – I’m not a sadist that way. I’ll just settle for my tasty cup of schadenfreude.

Hang tight – it’s gonna be an interesting ride through 2014.

20. December 2013 · Comments Off on Here We Go Again … · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, Good God, Media Matters Not · Tags: ,

… or, haven’t I been to this rodeo before? Why, yes I have, and not all that long ago, either. First I called to mind was poor artless Paula Deen, celebrity cook-book author, metaphorically burned at stake in the marketplace of public opinion. But the Great Duck Dynasty Imbroglio of 2013 reminds me very much more of the Great Chick-Fil-A Ruckus of 2012, wherein some fairly mild published remarks by the CEO of the company sent the usual right-thinking suspects into a frenzy of shrieking like demented howler monkeys. Boycott, shun, divest and/or fire was the general ukase – for they are hateful hating bigots who shouldn’t be tolerated by truly tolerant people … and then the funniest thing happened. People went out and deliberately bought lunch, dinner and breakfast at their local Chick-fil-A outlet, to the utter chagrin of the usual right-thinking suspects. Chick-Fil-A nationwide had the best darned week they ever had, as far as sales went, and lines of hungry customers stretching for blocks.
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18. December 2013 · Comments Off on Cookies for Santa · Categories: Ain't That America?

Cookies for Santa.BMP

… and milk, too. Served in a tea pot, of course.

08. December 2013 · Comments Off on Ice Cold in Goliad · Categories: Ain't That America?, Literary Good Stuff, Veteran's Affairs

Santa Onna Longhorn #1
That’s pretty much what it turned out to be over Friday evening in South Texas. When my daughter returned from briskly walking the dogs before dawn Saturday morning, she told me that the grass crackled underfoot. We set out for Goliad just after sunrise, expecting to spend a chilly day selling books in the open-air. Well, the pavilions set up around the edge of Courthouse Square in Goliad were all essentially in the open-air too. We took along our heaviest coats, extra blankets, bundled Nemo in a doggy overcoat, and I made a vain search for my gloves.
Courthouse Square
To our good fortune and relief, Estelle Zermeno, who has set up Miss Ruby’s Author Corral ever since I’ve been coming to Goliad for the Christmas event, had located an last-minute indoor venue for us – the premises of a closed restaurant, right on the square; a restored historic building with a bathroom, parking around in back and heat. Alas, that was about the last good bit of news about the day. Two scheduled authors had called off appearing, due to the cold and potentially dangerous drive, so it was down to four authors and a handful of friends.
Random Streetcorner
We had shelter at least, but the other vendors were out in the miserable cold – and to add to the misery, there were very few people come out to shop or cheer for Santa. On the good side of that, I got a very good picture of Santa-onna-longhorn, and his military escort, but there seemed to be only about two dozen children and their parents, where ordinarily there would have been hundreds. No posse of cowboys escorting Santa, hardly anyone with a Christmas-dressed dog for the afternoon dog costume contest. I believe I only had four or five potential customers come and look at my books all day.
Garlanded Cow and Urns
We packed it up by 1:30, when a light drizzle began falling, and it was so cold that we were afraid it would turn to ice, somewhere along the road back to San Antonio. I am certain that if we had been outside as well, we wouldn’t have stood it for even that long. There were just no customers at all; this marks the very first time that I came away from an event like this without having made a single sale – and I don’t think I was the only one, not by a long shot.

Well, it’s a darned good thing this woman is a well-paid CEO, because she sure doesn’t have any skills for living in poverty, no good recipes for tasty, nourishing food, and seems to be innocent of any knowledge of coupon clipping, shopping the ‘reduced for quick sale’ case or the fact that dried beans and rice in bulk are always cheaper than the canned version. And blowing a good sixth of the weekly budget on prepared gourmet pasta sauce … spare me the tales of woe concerning your one week on a tight budget – I can tell you how I lived for a year in the early 1980s on a budget of 25$ every two weeks, plus another 10$ for sundries like detergent and diapers for my toddler daughter. (Advantage being that on weekdays, she had breakfast and lunch at the child care center.) Eggs, cheese, dried pastas, home-made sauces and casseroles, home-made applesauce from a box of apples from the farmer’s market, yoghurt brewed up in the yoghurt maker, and no meat protein that cost more than a dollar a pound. Yes, I shopped with a calculator in my hand, every payday, and usually finished out the day or so before payday with small change in my purse and a dollar or so in the bank account. Other enlisted military members at the time did pretty much the same and likely still do.

How on earth Ms. Moulton even got the notion that a single person or a family on food stamps must get along on that amount is a bit of a puzzle, for it seems that it is merely the amount which has been subtracted per month for a family of four. If the well-off want to see how the other half eats and budgets I would suggest an amount more in line with what a person on food stamps actually will be receiving … and then perhaps a quick consult with those of us who have actually had to pinch our food pennies for realsies until a booger came out of Lincoln’s nose.

36$ a week amounts to $144 monthly for a single person, $288 for a couple – and a whole $576 for the much-vaunted family of four. I could make that budget easily (and have), providing three good meals a day, and no one feeling hungry or tired of lentil stew. Yes, it means no prepared foods, lots of home baking, and getting certain items in case lots or in bulk – and giving a miss to places like Whole Foods. Looking at the comments attached to the linked article, I would guess that Ms Moulton is getting well-schooled along those lines.
Any tales of heroic food budgeting are welcome to be shared in comments

03. December 2013 · Comments Off on Miles Per Gallon · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry

Miles Per Gallon on Main Street

Dickens on Main, Boerne, Texas – December 2013

01. December 2013 · Comments Off on T-Day Wrap-up · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic

Tuxedo Cat With Tablescape of Pumpkins

Here we go, the weekend after the day after Thanksgiving, which has become part of what I call creeping holidayitus, in that once it was just Thanksgiving day itself which was the holiday, and then the day afterwards slowly became a part of it, too… and then the holidayitus began creeping in from the other end of the week, so basically kiss off any serious business being done for the last week in November unless you work in retail … or maybe law enforcement crowd control.

Blondie and I had our Thanksgiving Day dinner at home this year, and carefully calculated what we would have so as to minimize the quantity of leftovers. I mean, we really don’t like baked sweet potatoes all that much, and stuffing gets progressively more disgusting every day after T-day that it sets in the refrigerator, and so does leftover mashed potatoes. So – baked 3-pound turkey breast on a bed of carrots and turnips, a single cooked ham slice, oven-roasted Brussels sprouts with red onion and kielbasa, and cheddar biscuits, with the usual corn relish and cranberry chutney. For leftovers the night night I made mashed potatoes and a small quantity of gravy from the reserved drippings … all much, much more appealing. And the cheddar biscuits made a divine breakfast paired with sausage. We toasted to all that we had to be thankful for this year, and hope that by next year we will have cause to be just as thankful.

Best of all, our family shopping obligations were wrapped up by 9AM, courtesy of various websites, especially Fischer and Wieser’s – where they were offering a 50% discount for about six hours on everything on the website. Mom is getting a gift basket of their delicious sauces and condiments. Look, I did retail sales in a mall, the first year that I was retired and had a job on the sales floor of a high-end department store, and after that experience wild horses wouldn’t drag me out on Black Friday to a mall, or to any other big-box retail venue in the wee hours of AM. No, getting into a knock-down drag-out fight over some cheap electronics or whatever from China is not Sgt. Mom’s cup of tea.

Besides, I usually have already picked up sufficient inexpensive or marked down gifts during the year and stashed them in the gift closet… this is what we have done for our Red Hat Ladies group – a tea pot and a cookie jar, filled with some appropriate edible goodies, and there we are. This year it’s cookies for the neighbors that we know, as a change from the flavored oils and vinegars, and home made jam.
Next week – Goliad, with Christmas on the Square, which I hope will be as popular a shopping venue as the Christmas market in New Braunfels was last weekend. In a way, I am still doing retail … just not the usual way.

25. November 2013 · Comments Off on It’s That Time of Year Again · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Literary Good Stuff

Dog as GrinchYes, it is that time of year again – and for a wonder, the weather has finally decided to cooperate. One day we were running the AC because the temperature was in the 80s … and then the next morning, a chilly wind was blowing through the neighborhood – and we turned around on the doorstep to put on coats before we walked the doggies … because we had not expected it to be so suddenly cold!
So we were in the mood for Weihnachtsmarkt at the New Braunfels Civic center, and happy, happy, joy, joyful that it was an indoors venue! I don’t think we could have endured outdoors, as we did two weeks ago in Boerne, where it was cool and rainy, not ice-cold and windy. The author book tables are set up in the tall main hallway of the Civic Center, which runs from the front to the back of the building. There are three entrances from the front foyer and the hall into the rooms fitted out as for the market – and Santa is set up in the rear foyer. I am pretty certain it must be a tradition in New Braunfels to come and see Santa at Weihnachtsmarkt. Anyway, this is the third year they have had the author tables, and it’s just a short skip from home, it’s indoors, and most importantly, it draws people with money and the urge to shop, bit-time. I have lots of readers and fans in that area, too. And did I mention that it was indoors?

My daughter says, though – that if I write any more books, I will have to get another table, or at least a larger one. There’s only room for the seven, hardly any space for the various table-top attention-getting items or the little dish of candy that we like to put out … and it turned out that we had eaten all the dark chocolate and peanut-butter M&Ms anyway. This was supposed to be the official-official roll-out for The Quivera Trail – as I just knew that everyone who had read and loved the Trilogy would want to know what happened next!
All worked out as I had forseen – and we had much better results than at the Boerne Market; we came with three tubs and two boxes packed full of books, and brought home only two tubs. This recovered the table fee and the cost of the books themselves. One amusing sidelight was that on Friday afternoon, I realized that the author at the table next to us had a familiar name – and that I had used one of his books about the early history of Austin in researching Deep in the Heart – and that a good few of the incidents he included in his book I worked into mine. I even gave a credit in the notes at the back of Deep in the Heart. Jeffrey Kerr – The Republic of Austin. This is not quite the first time this has happened to me; that was at the West Texas Book and Music Festival in Abilene a couple of years ago, when Scott Zesch was one of the headline guest speakers. I had read The Captured, and was moved to include a story-line in the Trilogy about the tragedy of a white child taken captive by the Comanche and returned – too late – as a young man, never able to re-assimilate to life outside the People again.

The gratifying thing is that the other vendors that my daughter talked to all reported having goodly sales – which is a relief after lackluster sales in Boerne. With this, we have hope that the economy will revive here, at least a little for Christmas. My daughter is already making lists for our own Christmas gift-giving, although some of that will involve going through the ‘gift closet’ to see what there is, and who it would be suitable for. In between the next Christmas Market – at Goliad’s Christmas on the Square, we have Thanksgiving to consider… a roast turkey breast and at least some of the traditional fixings. All good wishes to you – and thanks to everyone who bought books from me, or who will buy them this holiday season!

24. November 2013 · Comments Off on The Adventures of Captain McNelly · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Old West, Working In A Salt Mine...

(I spent Friday and Saturday at a book event – the Christmas Market, or Weihnachtsmarkt, at the conference center in New Braunfels, for the launch of The Quivera Trail. So – barely time to post this thrilling frontier adventure until now. The details and the quotes are taken from Walter Prescott Webb’s history of the Rangers, which is so powerfully testosterone-laden that I have to keep it sectioned between a couple of … milder-themed books which have a sedating effect.)

After the debacle of the Civil War, the Texas Rangers barely existed as an entity – either in Indian-fighting, or law-enforcing. The Federal government would not countenance the organization of armed bodies of volunteers for any purpose. Combating Indians or cross-border bandits was the business of the regular Army; interested semi-amateurs need not apply. But a Reconstruction-Republican governor, E. J. Davis, did institute a state police force in 1870, the existence of which was lauded as necessary for the preservation of law and order – such as it was. The state police under Davis was relatively short-lived and unadorned by laurels during its brief term, being dissolved at the end of his administration – but one of their officers had such a sterling reputation that when the Texas Rangers were formally reorganized, he was charged with heading one of the two divisions. One was the Frontier Battalion, dedicated to the Ranger’s traditional mission of fighting hostile Indians. The other – the Special Force – was charged with generally upholding law and order, shortly to become the Ranger’s modern raison d’être. Leander Harvey McNelly served for only a brief time in the interim of the change from Indian fighting to upholding law and order – but his leadership inspired many of those Rangers who took note of his personal example to heart.
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19. November 2013 · Comments Off on The End of Camelot · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Memoir · Tags: , ,

So – coming up on another one of those Very Significant Anniversaries, I see – being reminded by the perfect flood of stories reflecting back on Jack and Jackie and that fateful swing through Texas in 1963. My – fifty years, a whole half-century … yes, it’s time again to go back to those heartbreaking days of yesteryear and recall the blighted promise, the towering intellectual and romantic splendor of the Kennedy White House, the space race to the moon, Jackie’s unerring sense of style and taste … also little things like Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, eyeball to eyeball with the Soviets, immanent thermonuclear war, speedball injections from Dr. Feelgood, and the Kennedy men porking anything female who was unwary enough to stand still for a moment. Why, yes – I was never really a Kennedy fan, per se. Nor were my family, since Mom and Dad were your basic steady Eisenhower Republicans, and maintained a faint and Puritan distrust of anything smacking of glamor, or media-generated BS. Which they were correct in, as it eventually emerged in small discrete dribbles and decades later, that practically everything about the Kennedys was fake, except for Jackie’s taste in fashion and interior decoration.

I didn’t know anything about all that – at the time. I had just started at a new school since Mom and Dad had just moved during the summer from the White Cottage to Redwood House; Miss Gibson’s class, at Sunland Elementary School – a slightly larger school than Vinedale Elementary, about half a mile up La Tuna Canyon Road from the White Cottage. There were some friends which I missed seeing every day, but I was settling in OK. We were all looking forward to Thanksgiving, and the leaves on the big old sycamore trees around the pink classroom bungalows were shedding their leaves. I liked Miss Gibson – she had hit on the notion of reading aloud to us for about half an hour after lunchtime, every afternoon; there had been a long book about the life and adventures of an otter, an Agatha Christie country-house murder mystery which had us enthralled for weeks; and if memory serves, even a few stories from The Illustrated Man. One of the other treats for her class was a radio series of dramatized biographies; about half an hour long, I think, and broadcast in late morning, after recess. That program was supposed to be broadcast, that November day; Miss Gibson dismissed us all to recess, and went to turn on the radio and turn it to the correct station in advance. Another girl and I stayed behind; some question that we had to ask of her, as she fiddled with the radio. But the first thing that we heard was a news bulletin; the President had been shot, was dead. I think the announcer repeated the announcement at least once, but we didn’t need any more confirmation, because Miss Gibson began crying. This was huge news, of course; the only other presidents being assassinated that we knew of, had all been a long time ago. We ran to tell our classmates; I suppose there would have been some official announcement later, but I can’t recall it. Certainly by the time we were dismissed at the end of the day, everyone knew. This was long before Mom and Dad had a television, but there was non-stop coverage on the radio. I rather think we listened to as much of the funeral as we could bear; my friends who did have TV said there was nothing on but coverage of it all. For a long while, we had a copy of that Life Magazine issue with all the classic pictures; arriving at Love Field, the Connellys and the Kennedys smiling from the open limo, of Oswald grimacing in pain as Jack Ruby shot him, Jackie in her blood-stained suit standing as LBJ was sworn in on board AF-1 on the way back to Washington, veiled in black with the two children in pale blue coats on either side … I might still have that issue, somewhere in a box in the garage.

They’re just about all gone now – the Kennedys. Robert was assassinated five years later, and the rest of them fell away, one by one. Only Caroline survives, and the luster of Camelot has pretty well faded. Glamor always does – in the archaic sense of something wrought by magic and illusion to disguise something otherwise rather tawdry. But while that glamor worked, they looked good, the whole clan of them; handsome, fashionable, intelligent and able – the good PR on them was impeccable. They had the best press that money could buy; just as the Obamas would be treated like precious pearls, lightly buffed with a soft lint-free cloth and displayed on a velvet backdrop, so were the Kennedys.

And just as with the Obamas in 2008 and 2009, I would swear that the mainstream media and the intellectual establishment then were just as deeply in love. How heartbroken they were over the assassination, the loss of their precious, their Golden One. Really, I believe that at least some of the resulting vicious treatment of LBJ throughout the rest of the 1960s must have stemmed from a feeling of pique – that that ill-spoken, uncouth Texas pol would dare follow in the footsteps of their idol. To be fair, LBJ richly deserved much critical comment which came his way, especially when it came to foreign policy.

15. November 2013 · Comments Off on Letters From a Lady · Categories: Ain't That America?, History, Local, Old West

(Since The Quivera Trail is launching next weekend – at New Braunfels’ Weihnachtsmarkt, no less – I have begun research for the next historical adventure, that picaresque California Gold Rush adventure which I have always wanted to write. This research takes the form of reading every darned history and contemporary account that I have on my shelves, or can get my hands on. One of these books is The Shirley Letters from the California Mines 1851-1852, by Louise Amelia Knapp Smith ‘Dame Shirley’ Clappe.)
Cover - Shirley Letters

Louise Amelia – better known by her pen-name, Dame Shirley – was an irreproachably Victorian lady, possessing a lively intellect and observant eye, which the education typically given to girls at that time did nothing to impair. Conventional expectations for upper-class women of her day seem hardly to have made a dent in her either. She was born around 1819 in Elizabeth New Jersey and orphaned by the deaths of both parents before out of her teens. She had a talent for writing, encouraged by an unexpected mentor – Alexander H. Everett, then famed in a mild way as a diplomat, writer and public speaker. He was twice her age, and seems to have fallen at least a little but in love with her. She did not see him as a suitor, but they remained friends and devoted correspondents. Eventually she was courted by and consented to marry a young doctor, Fayette Clappe – who even before the ink was dry on the registry, caught the gold fever. Fayette and Louise Amelia were off on the months-long voyage around the Horn to fabled California. The gold rush was almost overwhelmingly a male enterprise – wives and sweethearts usually remained waiting at home, but not the indomitable Louise, who confessed in one of her letters to her sister Molly, “I fancy that nature intended me for an Arab or some other nomadic barbarian, and by mistake my soul got packed up in a Christianized set of bones and muscles.”
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15. November 2013 · Comments Off on A Sailor’s Last Wish · Categories: Ain't That America?, Air Navy

Go here and read this. Take as many Kleenexes as you need.

14. November 2013 · Comments Off on Well, I Can Dream · Categories: Ain't That America?, The Funny

A new Downfall parody – Hitler criticizes the Obamacare campaign … with excerpts from Obama speeches…

I swear, now there will be another line to that joke about the Big Lies: The check is in the mail, If you get pregnant I’ll marry you, and If you like your plan, like your doctor, you’ll be able to keep your plan, keep your doctor.

Travels of Jaimie McPheetersIt was said to me so long ago that I really can’t remember who or when they said it – that being a writer is like drawing words from a cistern; you have to keep replenishing the store in the cistern by reading – and reading even more than you write. Was it Mr. Terranova, the whirlwind 6th grade teacher, or maybe the elderly gentleman who came to speak to a school assembly at Vineland Elementary when I was in about the 2nd or 3rd grade? He was blind, with a seeing-eye dog named Rosie whom he let off duty long enough for her to run down the center aisle in the auditorium for a good petting. Our teachers told us that he was an Enormously Famous Published Author – for some reason I thought for years that he was William Prescott, the author of The Conquest of Mexico and the Conquest of Peru, never mind that William Prescott would have been dead for a little over a hundred years by then. Yes – Mr. Terranova had us read excerpts of The Conquest of Mexico and Peru, which should give an idea of how eccentric and bloody brilliant he was as a teacher. The Enormously Famous Published Author with the seeing-eye dog named Rosie did give us one bit of authorly good advice, using ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’ as his example; telling us to show them going up the hill, describe the hill, and why Jack and Jill did so, and what they saw and felt. Show, not tell, in other words. But enough of my early influences in writing, such as they were.

I have to limit myself when working on a book project; nothing by other fiction-scribblers working in the same area or time-period. This is because there is a danger for me of inadvertently taking an idea for a character, or an incident or accident of plot from someone else’s visualization, so at this time, all fictional accounts of Gold Rush-era California or the various trails and journeys towards the Ophir of the far west are strictly off the table. I have this totally bird-witted habit of seizing on certain things as I read about them, as if they were bright and shiny objects, and thinking, “Ah-ha! This has to be in The Book!” Other things just grab at me, and I come back to them again and again. In Adelsverein – to give just two small examples – it was the concept of the children, taken by Comanche Indians, who were returned, but never returned in spirit, and the massacre of the Texians at Goliad.

So, now I am faced with doing the episodic and picaresque Gold Rush adventure that I have always wanted to write. I grew up with this, because it was the event that I think made California what it was, for better or worse – and in the brief blink of an eye, as far as time goes. It was a sleepy agrarian backwater with a wonderful climate and spectacular scenery, a paradise to those who lived there at that time, a lost Eden to which they looked back on later with considerable nostalgia. And in the space of two or three years – the whole world piled in. The sleepy port of Yerba Buena became the muddy, lawless, brawling town of San Francisco, from hundreds of residents to thousands in mere months. The empty bay was suddenly forested with the masts of hundreds of abandoned ships. The properties of entrepreneur John Sutter were swamped with squatters, rogues and gold-seekers, the pristine rivers and streams in the foothills all alive with more men, looking for gold. Gold from the mines of California – and from just over the border in Nevada – kept the Union from going under entirely, so say some … and I have always wanted to write about it.

The next book, (after the bagatelle of Jim Reade and Toby Shaw, in the days of the Republic of Texas) will follow the adventures of Fredi Steinmetz, the younger brother of Magda Steinmetz-Becker, from the Trilogy. I’ve noted in other books that he went out to California as a cattle drover in the 1850s … and he returned, thinking not very much of the place, for a variety of reasons.

So, that’s why I am reading, and not writing and posting quite so much. I know the main character, one or two of the secondaries, and the rest will suggest themselves in time. The overall and relatively episodic plot will come out of what I am reading now; Maryat’s Mountains and Molehills, Dame Shirley Clappe’s Letters, Captain Gunnison’s history of the Mormons in Salt Lake City, Randolph Marcy’s 1859 advice to transcontinental travelers, William Manly’s account of his journey through Death Valley … and at least a score or more of others as they take my butterfly interest. Some of them are on my own bookshelves, some as eBooks or PDFs stashed away in my computer file … but shusssh … I am reading now.

Did you know that William Tecumseh Sherman and Edwin Booth were in California at the very time of the window for Fredi Steinmetz’ adventures there?

12. November 2013 · Comments Off on Books, Origami and Chocolate · Categories: Ain't That America?, Geekery, Home Front, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine...

Our Booth  After Rearrangement
That is what our booth at the Boerne Market Days contained this last weekend – the first time that we have done Boerne Market Days as a vendor and not as a strolling shopper. Saturday morning was rainy in San Antonio, and the skies were overcast all day. None of the vendors minded not having any sunshine – as long as it didn’t rain! We had a nicely-placed booth space, about midway between the bandstand at one end, and the food-trucks parked at the other. By the way, the gorditas are fab. Sometimes they make the chicken gordita with cut-up chicken chunks, instead of ground chicken meat – but still tasty, anyway. Another good thing – one of the big trash cans was right in front of us, so no need to set aside a bag for our own trash. And it was a landmark for anyone looking for us.

My daughter and I have done a lot of book events, some of them in conjunction with a craft fair, like Goliad’s Christmas on the Square, so we pretty much know the drill; bring tablecloths, plenty of stock (packed in plastic tubs with lids) plenty of change, receipt books, lots of flyers, postcards and business cards, and something to ornament the table with … and chocolate candy. Most everyone likes chocolate, although one of the most relentless book marketer I know has a cookbook with recipes incorporating lemons – she makes lemon cookies or cake, and gives away samples.

This time, we had two more improvements to our retail efforts; a folding dolly hand-truck, which can carry one of the heaviest tubs and one of the lighter ones at a time, and folds up very compactly… no, it isn’t industrial-strength, but better than schlepping the heaviest tubs of books by hand for half a block or more. $20 bucks at Sam’s Club, which might very well be the best and most useful $20 ever spent there, over the long haul. The other was a little attachment for my daughter’s cellphone, which allows us to process credit card payments to her Tiny Bidness Paypal account. We couldn’t process credit/debit accounts before, which has sometimes been a bit of a bind since … well, not too terribly many people carry around checkbooks any more, or cash, either – and going to an ATM and getting cash for a sale is sometimes a bit of an inconvenience for people.

If we keep this up – this making an appearance on the regular market circuit – there are certain things that we will just have to get, in addition to the storage tubs and the hand-truck. We rented the pop-up tent, two folding tables and a chair from the Boerne Market Days management, but eventually we will have to get our own 10 X 10 pop-up; most of the other regular vendors had them, in varying degrees of quality, with zip-up sidewalls for additional privacy, security and shelter from the elements. We will also probably invest in a pair of banners, either to clip to the front of the pop-up or to the front of the table, advertising our various enterprises.
We made back and a bit more the amount that we paid for the space, and rental of the conveniences – but not very much more. We talked to many other vendors, who were similarly disappointed. Either it’s just not close enough to Christmas to loosen the purse strings – or that everyone is looking at the current economic situation with a very tight hold on the pocket-book.

Even so, this last weekend was a learning experience – and one of them was that Boerne Market Days is very animal friendly. A lot of shoppers had dogs on leashes, and one iconoclast among the vendors eve had a pair of infant goats on display. They were such cute babies – but I am told that when they are fully-grown, they can be evil in the extreme.

07. November 2013 · Comments Off on In the Light of This Development … · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Drug Prohibition, Fun and Games, General Nonsense, Stupidity

Covered here, at length, I am certain that New Mexico, or at the very least, the Hidalgo County PD needs a new motto.

How about “New Mexico – Come for the enchantment, stay for the thorough cavity searches”?

Or “Hidalgo County Police Department – The Keyster Kops!”

Or “Hidalgo County Police Department – Let Us Take You Up the Khyber Pass

Or “Hidalgo County Police Department – Illegal Anal Probs R Us!”

Seriously, if ever there was an occasion which calls for prolonged and vicious mockery, this would be it. Don’t these people have enough real and obvious criminals to deal with?

November already? I swear, where does the time go. At least we can turn off the AC – finally! – and open the windows. Although that does heighten our appreciation of our next door neighbor’s relations with his two basset hounds; one male who is alert and ready to give voice at any provocation, and one female who is quiet and sedate, and very likely pregnant. Well, when you have two young unfixed dogs of the opposite sex this kind of thing is gonna happen sooner or later. He has also not been able to housebreak them with any degree of reliability (although we have tried to tell him about crates) so they spend a large part of their day outside. This does mean that anyone who comes close to the front of either of our houses gets barked at, which does have some benefit. He has offered us one of the puppies, though.

We will have a booth at the Boerne Market Days this weekend; half with my books and half with Blondie’s origami art. This is her big roll-out for Paper Blossom Productions. She has been working away at various pieces for the last couple of months, and only this weekend got around to inventorying and packaging up a number of pieces … like $300 dollars worth of earrings featuring beads and miniscule origami cranes. I will have three plastic tubs of books – as this month is the roll-out for The Quivera Trail. Later on in the week we will turn from organizing inventory to organizing the display of it; stands, hooks, baskets and s-hooks and hangers, as well as table cloths to cover the tables with. The weather is predicted to be mild – neither too hot or too cold, which is a good thing. The Market Day is traditionally held on Town Square, under the shade of a massive stand of pecan trees, but we have to be there for two days, from 10 AM to 5. Having a broiling hot day, or a freezing cold and /or rainy one will be … uncomfortable, to say the least. This is the time of the year when I do most of the face-to-face book-selling – so, apologies in advance if the blogging is brief and to the point.

The land sale meant that there is a cushion of sorts to fall back on – and I was able to clear away one ongoing debt entirely, although having to have the transmission in Blondie’s Montero rebuilt entirely has delayed plans for replacing the windows in the house. Ah, well. On the bright side, she went through a lot of trouble early this year to procure health insurance for herself, believing our President’s assurances that if you had a plan you could keep it. So she went with an $87 a month plan from Humana – which she could afford without much stress on the budget. Call it The ACA-compliant plan offered by Humana as option B this last month cost $230. For now, she is sticking with option A, in the fond hopes that the whole unAffordable Healthcare Act will implode as terminally and as messily as the planetary monster transported through the digital conveyer on Galaxy Quest.
Spent part of the weekend setting up two crocks of homemade sauerkraut; yeah, we’ve gotten a taste for the stuff, and it couldn’t be easier and cheaper to do. Cabbage, 4 heads, finely shredded, and a scant cup of pickling salt. Pack tightly into a clean glass jar, ad a little brine to the top if the cabbage hasn’t exuded enough moisture to cover – and let ferment for three to six weeks. Then heat to a simmer, pack into hot canning jars, seal and process in boiling water. We’ve just eaten the last of the jars that I processed last summer. Oh, and the last of the mixed vegetable pickles as well, so here goes some time and fresh carrots, cauliflower, pearl onions and sliced cucumber the weekend after next to stock us up. We’re doing OK on jams and preserves, though – and still have some jars of pickled okra. And that’s our plans for the immediate future.

03. November 2013 · Comments Off on All Righty, Then · Categories: Ain't That America?, Literary Good Stuff, Local

Since the Amazon Author Page function which supposedly allows one to post a schedule of events doesn’t seem to be functioning in any useful way, here I go, posting the my schedule the old-fashioned way, as a blogpost:
November 9th and 10th from 10-5 both days – at Boerne’s Market Days, which are held on the town square, just off Main Street in Boerne. Look for the four rows of white pavilions, set on the grass among the pecan trees lining the square. My daughter and I are sharing a booth; I’ll have books, my daughter her original origami art. Very likely there will be live music in the bandstand for most of the days, and if the people who have the mobile kitchen serving gorditas – check them out. Their gorditas are awesome, and almost big enough for two people to share.
Mistress of the PuffyTacoShells

November 22nd and 23rd from 10 to 5 on Friday, and 10 to 6 on Saturday – I’ll have a table in the Hall of Authors at Weihnachtsmarkt in the New Braunfels Civic Center, which is located at 380 South Seguin, in New Braunfels. The whole Christmas Market is to benefit the Sophienburg Museum and Archives. There will be several huge rooms full of vendors, selling all kinds of neat and crafty things – and there will be a good assortment of local authors with their books. What makes a better gift than a book, I always say. Which reminds me – my 10-year old niece wants one of my books for her Christmas present from me; To Truckee’s Trail is the most appropriate for that age, so she will have it with my best wishes and personal message for her. My brother says she loves historical fiction…
Christmas Onna Longhorn
Saturday, December 7th from 9 to 4 (or so) At Christmas On the Square in Goliad. They usually set up Miss Ruby’s Author Corral in a little area next to the Chamber of Commerce, on Courthouse Square in beautiful downtown Goliad. Santa arrives mounted on a long-horn, and there is music and revelry, food and crafts for sale and a dog costume contest.
I will have a good stock of books, including the latest – The Quivera Trail – and if we run out, I will have order forms. This year, we have obtained one of those little attachments for Blondie’s cellphone which allows us to process credit/debit cards, so the 21st century has caught up to us at last.

Dog as Mrs. Santa

30. October 2013 · Comments Off on Say Hi to the Whig Party, Guys · Categories: Ain't That America?, Politics, Tea Time

So, the main-line establishment GOP – apparently seeing the writing on the wall and determined to make themselves even more irrelevant – is now going to go all-out against Tea Party sympathetic candidates in the next elections. They have seen the enemy and they is us … that is, us small-government, strictly-Constitutionalist, fiscally-responsible, and free-market advocates, who were the means of ensuring certain outcomes in hotly contested races, and that Mitt Romney even had a ghost of a chance in the last round. Nope, obviously those partisans who feel that our government should be guided by strict adherence to the Constitution, not spend more than it takes in, and not be rick-rolled by crony capitalists and the lobbyists who do their bidding, are – to put it frankly – dangerous radicals who must be excised from the GOP organization.
Because, you know, it is so much better to be a meek and polite little opposition party occasionally allowed to dip a snout into the trough. And insisting on a degree of fiscal responsibility, adherence to the Constitution, and truly free markets is apparently is just too dogmatic, too radical, and un-collegial within the rarified inside-the-beltway establishment GOP.

Seriously, this is an amusing development and not entirely unforeseen. When we first started up a local Tea Party and realized how many people out there shared a certain degree of exasperation with the establishment GOP, as well as the devotion to fiscal responsibility, fidelity to the Constitution, etc., we vigorously rejected also any input from any establishment GOP politician, organization or consultant, although this was not for want of trying on their part. We had our belly-full of listening to those guys, now it was their turn to listen to us, although the Establishment GOP remained touchingly hopeful that all that Tea Party energy, enthusiasm and contributions had created for them a brand new pony, saddled and bridled and ready for them to ride. No, as I remember telling some drone from the national GOP HQ who called me once to touch me up for a donation; I certainly would not, I told her. I would make donations to individual candidates who campaigned on a platform of fiscal responsibility, etc.

We also rejected any notion of encouraging Tea Party sympathizers to form a third party, although there had always been a strong Libertarian component in the organization whose interests lay in that direction. Nope, we agreed, that way was counter-productive in the extreme. Better to take over one of the existing parties, working from the precinct up, from local to state to national. And we knew it would be a long and arduous process. I think most of us were inclined towards the Republican Party; anyway, we agreed that it would be an easier mark and generally a slightly less ill-fit for our principles. We did acknowledge to ourselves that there would be plenty of candidates who would cheerfully mouth the right words, take our contributions and our votes, and swan right off to Washington, where they would be absorbed into the squishy establishment. In that case, we would just have to vote them out and elect someone who meant what they said and said what they meant.

So, I have to be at least a little amused at the Establishment RINOs trying to stay ahead of the curve; the curve that is slowly turning against them, like dinosaurs ignoring the nimble, fast-moving and motivated proto-mammals running around between their feet. Rove, Boehner, McCain – all the rest of them seem to be going through the motions, protesting against the darkness falling. In trying to neutralize those committed Tea Party Republicans, they likely will ensure their own extinction; the passion, the energy, the involvement and the money are on the Tea Party side. All the establishment GOP has is habit and money. YMMV, of course.

27. October 2013 · Comments Off on Getting Out of the House · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Literary Good Stuff, Veteran's Affairs

This was something we actually managed to do for a whole 24 hours straight, more or less, although I swear – next time that we do it, the two small doggies are going straight the Rob Cary Pet Resort for the duration. I had an invitation to do another book club meeting in Fredericksburg – this one extended by Karen V. whose old Houston book club had read the Trilogy and come to Fredericksburg for the fun, the gemutlichkeit, and the wiener schnitzel. Karen had us and all of her visiting friends parceled out among hers and other guest-houses, and a nice conference room at the school district offices for the meeting itself – and a nice sized audience, as well. Blondie and I lugged in two heavy tubs of books, and the little Paypal credit-card processing gadget which attaches to her cellphone, so that we could take payments in all forms …

And then I answered questions for nearly and hour and forty minutes – the books and how I came to write them, if I had found out anything about certain specific people and organizations, why the Adelsverein fell flat on their collective princely faces … all that and more. Which is strangely exhausting to do, standing in front of an audience and keeping engaged; I had to pull up a chair and sit down for the last twenty minutes or so … since I have finally managed to put on the jazzy vintage and unworn Ariat boots that I bought at my daughter’s very favorite charity gift shop a couple of months ago. (I had to have her help in pulling them off, at the end of the evening, though.) Afterwards – sell a few books with Blondie’s neat little gadget which lets us run credit and debit cards attached to her cellphone. She processed the sales, I signed the books and talked some more … and then it was off to Friedhelm’s Bavarian Inn Restaurant which seems to specialize in wiener-schnitzel in a great many forms and additions, include one which Blondie ordered – a cheese schnitzel, thinking that it would be breaded and fried cheese, but was actually the usual pork cutlet, pounded, breaded and fried – but with a generous topping of melted cheese.

Altogether a lovely, sparking evening with Karen and her friends – all ladies of a certain age, some of them her former co-workers in the school district in Houston, some of whom had traveled far, but none being military veterans. I enjoyed it so much – really, I ought to get out more. But we called it a night and headed back to her house and the little guest-house about nine o’clock. Time was when we first began coming to Fredericksburg, the entire town rolled up the sidewalks at 5 PM sharp, save for a handful of restaurants. Now there are a good few more restaurants open, Main Street is lively and lit, with people still walking up and down – but all the strictly retail establishments still fold up relatively early in the evening. There was a movie theater, Karen told us – she being used to a livelier evening scene in Houston – but the local scandal is that the owner or manager skipped with his inamorata and all the takings, so the theater is closed and under renovation to be a kind of local small-scale Alamo Drafthouse, with dinner, drinks and a movie all at once … which has the virtue of efficiency, always one of those Germanic things. We all gathered in the morning at Karen’s for a Sunday morning breakfast and another one of those sparkling good times. Yes, I really ought to get out more. And to get her recipe for cinnamon bread strata with bourbon sauce …

Back home, to a houseful of rather worried but relieved animals, and a dinner of sliced brisket from the Riverside Meat Market in Boerne. We have another weekend to work on stuff – and then we will be tied up for two days running at the Boerne Market Days, where Blondie will launch her Paper Blossom Productions origami art, and I will have a table of my books … and, curiously enough, a bag of doll costumes left over from doing a Christmas Bazaar at the Zaragoza O’club a good few years ago. I guess I can say that the doll costumes are even more vintage as my boots. And that was my weekend …

23. October 2013 · Comments Off on Adventures in the ‘Hood · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Home Front, World

I guess that it must be proof of sorts that we live in a pretty OK residential area … and also that Blondie and I are snoopy and stand on our rights and obligations as citizens, in that we have had cause to call the San Antonio Police Department twice in three days, and both times officers of the gendarmerie appeared within about twenty minutes or half an hour of the time we called. Yes, we are those neighbors … well, not the kind of ‘those neighbors’ who unite the other neighbors in disbelieving horror, but the other kind of ‘those neighbors’ – the ones who know other neighbors casually to speak to, who note and recognize things which are curious and out of normal order, and are not afraid to speak up and tell someone in ostensible authority. Like whoever is on the other end of the non-urgent telephone number.

This is what good neighborhoods are made of – not gates, security fences with combinations, private patrols, and not middle-class values and paychecks. It is also a relatively fragile construct, because once the forces of darkness and unrestrained disruption/criminality take over, it is damn hard to get control back. The people who live in a place must have an element of effective control over it through the soft power of social control – backed up by civil law, otherwise it’s a straight shot to gangbangers shooting up at random, kids sleeping in bathtubs or on the floor, and 24-hour mercantile establishments with their cashiers behind bullet-proof glass bastions and metal shutters over the windows.

I don’t want to live in a neighborhood like that – probably neither did George Zimmerman – and so this why Blondie and I take our phones with us when we run in the wee hours of the morning, and walk the doggies in the slightly-less-wee-hours. Mess with our neighborhood – we will dial 311 and explain the mess to the obliging dispatcher. Maybe this explains the difference between red and blue states at the working-class level. Here in the last redoubt of red-land, we still believe that we can hold fast; we can keep our neighborhood a place where you can walk the dog, let the kiddies play in the front yard, put garden ornaments of nominal value in the front yard and have faith they will remain there – and go running and dog-walking at all hours with a feeling of relative security. It’s just how we roll.
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18. October 2013 · Comments Off on Accidental on Purpose · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Fun and Games, Politics, Tea Time, Technology

You know, I have never been one given to donning a tinfoil hat when it comes to pop-paranoid theories about this and that. I firmly believe that JFK was murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald (a well-known commie-symp acting alone), that the Bilderbergers are nothing much more than a fantastically wealthy international social group (a kind of Chamber of Commerce on steroids) and that there aren’t any mysterious black helicopters flying from sooper-secrit bases in the American West – after all, the damn things have to come down sometime, be refueled, crewed and maintained somewhere, and as wide-open and thinly-populated as parts of the west are – a quasi-military base with an active flying mission cannot help but attract notice of the locals. Yes, I love to puncture conventional wisdom; it’s one of my hobbies. And yes, oh 9/11 Truthers … steel does indeed melt.

However, increasingly of late and upon considering the current administration, I do find myself looking speculatively at the roll of Reynolds-Wrap in the kitchen drawer. Gun-running to Mexican narco-traffickers, spilling confidential information on political opponents, the IRS coming down like a ton of bricks on Tea Party groups, the Park Service on members of the park-visiting public, the NSA listening to everyone, and whatever shenanigans was going on with regard to our consulate in Benghazi a little over a year ago … one cannot go wrong underestimating the veniality, or at very least, the competence of the Obama administration.
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16. October 2013 · Comments Off on Dakota Die-Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Working In A Salt Mine...

A Facebook friend posted a link to this story – which has apparently just barely made a dent outside the local area.

Last weekend western South Dakota and parts of the surrounding states got their butts handed to them by Mother Nature. A blizzard isn’t unusual in South Dakota, the cattle are tough they can handle some snow. They have for hundreds of years.

Unlike on our dairy farm, beef cattle don’t live in climate controlled barns. Beef cows and calves spend the majority of their lives out on pasture. They graze the grass in the spring, summer and fall and eat baled hay in the winter.

In winter these cows and calves grow fuzzy jackets that keep them warm and protect them from the snow and cold.

The cows and calves live in special pastures in the winter. These pastures are smaller and closer to the ranch, they have windbreaks for the cows to hide behind. They have worked for cows for hundred of years.

So what’s the big deal about this blizzard?

It’s not really winter yet.

The rest is here.

(Crossposted at Chicagoboyz, and at www.celiahayes.com)