my beloved beet

Willie

Happy Birthday to this fine fellow.

Julie Davis (Austin, TX)

Study - Hill Country in Summer

John Graves' Small Swift Birds

In recent decades it has become customary, and right, I guess, and easy enough with hindsight, to damn the ancestral frame of mind that ravaged the world so fully and so soon. What I myself seem to damn mainly though, is just not having seen it. Without any virtuous hindsight I would likely have helped in the ravaging…

But God! To have viewed it entire, the soul and guts of what we had and gone forever now, except in books and such poignant remnants as small swift birds that journey to and from the distant Argentine, and call at night in the sky.

Texas Harvest

It never seems like it in August, but there are upsides to gardening in a hot state.

Sun Gold cherry tomatoes

Hell Weed

Smilax (or bindweed or greenbrier, among many other names). It covers everything, and its roots reach down to hell. But, once a year for about a week, it puts out pretty purple flowers. So it’s got that going for it. Which is nice.

RIP, Duane Thomas, one of the greatest runners in Cowboys history. When an interviewer referred to the Superbowl as "the ultimate game," Thomas' never-to-be-forgotten response was, "If it's the ultimate, why are they playing it again next year?"

To no one's surprise, Willie Nelson wins Texas Monthly's "Celebrity Texans" bracket. And, in previous rounds, with very few exceptions, the Texan who should have advanced, did. A Final 4 of Willie, Nolan Ryan, Kelly Clarkson, and Matthew McConaughey is just about right.

Happy Easter!

Things I Really Like: an Ongoing List

• Birdsong
• Tottenham Hotspur Football Club
• Archie
  
• Tamales
• Black licorice
• Woodsmoke
• Good Table Talk (more often, actually, Bar Talk)
• a Ploughman's Lunch in a pub's garden
• a 5:1 Martini, with a dash of orange bitters and 3 olives
• Wind Chimes
• Telephone calls with my out-of-town kids
• Tacos with my in-town kid (and kid-in-law)
• Resident Taqueria
• Heat
• Daffodils
• Steel-cut oatmeal and a soft-boiled egg

This goes a long way to explain why it’s so much harder to live in Texas than it was 25 years ago: Why Is a Midland Billionaire Spending So Heavily to Support Ken Paxton?

"Texas natives are more likely to stick around their home state than people born in any other place in the U.S., according to a new analysis of Census data. ... Approximately 82% of people born in Texas still lived there in 2021 ..." [Texas Tribune, 30 Aug 2023.](https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/29/texas-native-born-stay/) No surprise there. Anecdotally, in 1976, seven of my high school classmates and I drove together to enroll at the same college in California. Seven out of eight of us returned to live in Texas after college or graduate school.