What One Writer's Wrought

The 25th annual Texas Book Festival took place this past weekend, and I overheard an attendee say that the best thing George Bush Jr. ever did was to marry Laura, who founded the TBF in 1995*. The first festival flowered the following year. It was a glorious day, fine weather to be outside, either casually strolling or purposefully striding inside, on the grounds of, or within a couple blocks from the state Capitol building. You may not have heard that the Texans of the 1850s modeled their building after the one in DC and, being Texans, they had to have it be just a little bit bigger (about 14'7" taller), and it sure is a handsome structure. Especially for a first-timer like myself, one of the best things about volunteering at the TBF was getting to meet authors you may have never heard of, and so to gain a bigger glimpse of the world than perhaps you'd had in a while. It was both a pleasure and a real honor to get to meet three different groups of authors, accomp...

Fifty-two years ago yesterday, on Oct. 9, 1967, at the age of 39, Ernesto "Che" Guevara was assassinated in the village of La Higuera, Bolivia, with assistance from the CIA, who for years had been looking to kill the charismatic revolutionary. Loved by millions around the world, partly for his commitment to improving the lives of the downtrodden, Che had completed medical school in his native Argentina, and probably would’ve gone on to lead the comfortable life of a doctor if it hadn’t been for a motorcycle trip he made in 1952 with a classmate around S. America (memorialized in the 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries , starring the Mexican hottie Gael Garcia-Bernal ). The nine-month trip opened his eyes for the first time to the depth of misery suffered by so many, and resulted in his decision to give up all that his parents had hoped for him, and work instead to foment world-wide, anti-capitalist revolution. He had met Fidel Castro in Mexico in 1953, and in November of 1...

Near the end of an unusually long day, about six, seven years ago, I was struck by the number of encounters I'd had with a variety of animals. And then I was struck in turn by what a gift it was, this place I'd found, where something as simple as a multiplicity of meetings with mammals could just happen like the way I'm about to tell you it did. --- I was living back then in a pretty rural area of northern California. (You could stick a comma in there and just as easily say it was a "pretty, rural" place, too.) It was so rural, there weren't but one more county north before you found yourself on Oregon's doorstep. So this was really northern California, not north Cali like City by the Bay north. Folks call San Francisco "northern" Cali just because the other two big cities in the Golden State, LA and San Diego, are hours and hours away to the south. But going north along the coast after SF, first it's Marin, then Sonoma (with Napa due e...

Two days ago, I returned from three weeks in California, where I'd lived for about fifteen years. Today I wrote a letter to the editor of The Independent (a weekly newspaper published in s. Humboldt county), who has just emailed to say that he will publish it in their next edition. Here it is. --- This past June, I wrapped up nearly 15 years of life in Humboldt and Mendocino counties - including 11 years as a DJ at Redwood Community Radio - before moving to Austin. I returned in mid-September for a farewell shindig, and to celebrate my 60th (as well as KMUD news-anchor Lauren Schmitt's 27th) birthday, on Sep. 17. After extended visits with friends here and there, I finally arrived safely back in Austin yesterday afternoon. I wanted to thank and acknowledge the generosity of my old friend and former colleague from KMUD's Board of Directors, Siena Klein, who weeks before had offered her home in Miranda for this party. The foul weather that had been forecast ...