THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER

Finally…. After forty-one years of President Nixon’s War On Drugs, a group of mothers has organized—just as women did to help end Prohibition. Their children have been imprisoned (or legally murdered) for nonviolent drug offenses and these California women want the political, social and law enforcement madness to finally stop. MomsUnited: To End The War [...]

I didn’t take this shot. I wouldn’t. Mr. Boy did, soon after receiving a camera as a gift. He went pretty wild, snapping pictures of all kinds of things adults are so used to seeing that they hardly notice. Like this one on a plane going to visit family. Heh.

Was tuning up my violin this morning, partly because I enjoy playing in the morning and partly because it helps get Mr. B. out of bed and on the way to school. Then I launched into the strains of the new Scottish ballad I’m learning How’d you like waking up to “My Love Is Like [...]

“The food pyramid that was released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1992 quickly became a recognizable nutrition symbol for Americans. However, during the same period of the 1990s, Americans gained more and more weight. Is the food pyramid to blame?” How could it not be, since it advises eating copious amounts of [...]

Mrs. Charm is the television consumer at the rancho. Unless you count Mr. Boy’s periodic consumption of Sponge Bob. Her fave Roku show these days is Mad Men, a soaper return to the early 1960s urban advertising game, with lots of skinny ties, incessant smoking and martini lunches. Also the girdled wives and girlfriends, which [...]

Driving Mr. B. to his scout meeting last night, I was startled when he suddenly said “Wow!” and pointed at the sky. It was just after dusk and the sky was still bright enough to illuminate a dense crosshatching of airliner contrails (condensed water vapor) overhead—east, west, north and south. ’Twas a busy evening up there, apparently.

Whew. A few more days of winter break and… Well, nevermind. Mr. B. goes back to school today, in about twenty minutes in fact. Nor will he be around much this weekend, either. It’s the Lumberjack campout starting tomorrow evening, where the boy scouts spend the weekend cutting down trees and building shelters on some [...]

First of several American war in Vietnam photos I’ll be running here. This is my old headquarters unit from RF-PF advisory days in 1969. Guy on left is my RTO holding my M-79 while I take the pix. Next to him is Mr. B.’s future godfather in his younger days. I hope the rest of [...]

Our several long days of soaking rain, which ended Monday, have been really welcome here at the parched rancho. According to our amateur rain gauge we’ve collected a little more than two inches since the steady showers began at the end of last week. Now Mr. B. has something extra to look forward to on his Boy [...]

I happily ended November with six more ebook sales for Alamo and Knoxville—including twice as many of the latter. Which brings that one to a total of 91 since its first month in April, 2010—finally edging in on breaking even for the cost of ebook formatting. Hardly bestseller material here, these single-digit sales months. Haven’t [...]