Sort of a belated Father’s Day tribute. Edward P. & Mary Lenora Stanley in a copy of a tintype photo taken about 1870. He was a circuit-riding Methodist minister and farmer who’d lost a leg in the May, 1864, Battle of the Wilderness as a private in the Minutemen of Attala, a company in the 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment—the founding regiment of the famous Barksdale’s Mississippi Brigade.
Comments Off on My great grandfather and great grandmother
Posted in Civil War, Genealogy, Rancho Roly Poly
Tagged 13th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, Edward P. Stanley, Mary Lenora Stanley, Minutemen of Attala
It was fun, indeed, but I haven’t worked that hard since I retired. Rehearsing a lengthy piece is work. The end-of-the-week concert was a breeze comparatively. And the workshop’s classes were a bit long, though the subjects were useful:
Intonation, expressive performance and bow variations, the bow being 90 percent of the fiddle as my teacher likes to say. The old joke goes: it’s not true the devil invented the fiddle but it is true that he invented the bow. And how.
Nevertheless I am going to try and get in the UTexas adult orchestra to continue this classical adventure a little longer. Only snag would be if I had to audition. I doubt I could get through that. Stay tuned, as the fiddlers say. Ha, ha.
UPDATE: The UTexas Strings Project “parent” orchestra runs an hour a week from September to May and doesn’t require an audition (or a child in the Strings Project), so I’m going to plan on it.
MORE: Meanwhile I signed up for a summer version of the above—five rehearsals and a performance—paid my $100 fee, got my 3 charts via PDF and am practicing them for the start on July 14.
Posted in Fiddle Stuff, Music, Rancho Roly Poly
I paraphrase. Of course the caller at the contra dances where our little pickup band plays every week likes to punctuate his palaver with the positive version of the headline. Not the negative as I am using it.
But, really, he’s beating a dead horse. A horse who suffocated from overcrowding long ago. Some of us locals on the West side of town call it Mopocalypse, as in the apocalyptic state of Mopac Boulevard, bumper-to-bumper traffic all day and most of the night.
Which is what you will face if you make the mistake of moving here. The good times done rolled and gone. Gone about ten years now. Completely out of sight in the last five. Unless you like loong commutes with uncertain arrival times. California drivers weaving in and out, etc. Beggers—refugees from the Democrat economy elsewhere—with their hands out on every street corner.
Getting the picture? It’s crowded enough without you. Just stay away. Please.
The worst thing about dealing with contractors is clearing the decks and planning to see them when they say they will arrive. Then, as in the case of Handy Man Connection’s fence guy, they call and put you off a day. Oh, but they’ll be there between 8:30 and 9 a.m. for sure.
Then, around the appointed time, they call again and say something has come up and the fence guy won’t be there, after all, until, oh, round about 3 p.m. As if none of this could have been foreseen. In fact it’s always like this so it must be foreseen by someone.
What can you do? In the Texas economy, it’s a seller’s market. And the damn privacy fence is falling down. So you wait. And just hope they don’t reschedule again.
UPDATE: They did. For tomorrow morning. Allegedly.
MORE: He finally showed up, worked through the weekend and did an excellent job. On to the next problem: the dying grass, which means the trees need pruning to let more sunlight in.
Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, The Economy
Tagged handyman connection, privacy fence, waiting for the contractor
Raining hard at the Rancho [Thursday night] and the radar at 2:30 a.m. suggests much more to come, if the Balcones Escarpment doesn’t break up the big yellow patch moving east as it sometimes does.
I’ve got the watch, as Mr. B. has school and Mrs. C. has work in the morning. The sandbags and towels are in place and I have a cup of sugar-free apple cider to keep me alert.
The situation already went pear-shaped out on Lake Travis not long ago, where the water has risen 25 feet in the past week as of tonight. This El Nino is a bitch.
UPDATE: The escarpment broke up most of the storms and by mid-morning Friday the sun was out for the first time in a while. More rain expected on Saturday, however, as El Nino continues strong.
MORE: By Sunday, the 31st, hardly any more rain had fallen and we were forecast to get a clear week ahead of us for the first time in 27 days.
Posted in Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather
Tagged KXAN, Lake Travis rising, Texas floods continue
“…rainfall at Austin Camp Mabry [National Weather Service’s official rain gauge in the city] through May 25th has totaled 16.72 inches, 13.11 inches above normal. This breaks the previous record May of 14.10 inches set in May 1895.”
—Meteorologist Bob Rose at the Lower Colorado River Authority.
Posted in Blogosphere, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather
Tagged Bob Rose, LCRA, Record-breaking May rain
We got our near-repeat of the 1981 Memorial Day flood. Haven’t seen any pictures of 1981’s many swept-away cars and pickups here (except the few in the pix at the top of this link), but North Lamar Boulevard looked like a river in one television shot. The usual culprit, Shoal Creek, was out of its banks at its southern end. It flooded the high school football field at House Park which became a pond for fire department Zodiacs.
The little resort town of Wimberley, southwest of Austin, got the worst of the flooding by far: 72 homes swept away by rising Cypress Creek and the Blanco River. Twelve Thirteen Nine Eight people, including small children, are still missing.
Rancho Roly Poly got off lucky, very lucky. The rancho, essentially, is at the bottom of a steep hill of houses and streets above us. So the rains of the past two weeks saturating the ground meant yesterday’s repeat of Saturday’s downpour, quickly turned into a downhill river of runoff. Mr. B. and I became the towel brigade, sopping up and pushing back water trying to invade the house.
Until I could get a diverting row of sand bags down in front of the glass doors to the family room. Our good French drain took most of the water around the south end of the rancho and into the street out front.
Mrs. Charm was away working the flood story at the daily, but gave good advice by phone. No rain on the radar this morning. Forecast calls for another storm this afternoon but then a possible end to the rains until the weekend.
UPDATE: If you want to help, my preferred charity is the Salvation Army. They don’t push religion and they have no high-paid administrators to consume your money. They just help by dispatching mobile feeding canteens to area shelters. You can donate online at http://www.salvationarmyaustin.org
MORE: WIMBERLEY, Texas (KXAN) — Search crews recovered the body Wednesday of a boy along the Blanco River in rural Hays County. The boy’s body was found near Water Park Road, but authorities have not yet identified the child.
Posted in Mr. Boy, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather
Tagged House Park, Texas flood in Austin, Wimberley
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 