The Meaning of Hair in My Life

For years, I did not think hairdos very important.  My mother was always after me: “A little brushing would help,” she’d say.

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Turning 40 at a Tupperware Party

It is strange to be thirty-nine years old and afraid to attend a Tupperware party.

Texas Sesquicentennial

Texas Sesquicentennial

 

“Time to go, girls!” says Maria, the supervisory auditor, pushing back her chair, sticking out a leg, and checking her hose for runs.  “This is important government business!”

A Texas Ranching Adventure: Coping with Neighbors

“But who are you married to?” the older woman asked again.

“The German across the road,” I said for the third time.

She shook her head and frowned.

“He’s my husband,” I insisted.

She stared at me.  “But . . .”

She just couldn’t believe that I, a white woman, was married to a German.*

A Texas Ranching Adventure: 107˚ in the Shade

 

“Are you ready to search for the blue heron?” I asked my daughter.

Thekla narrowed her eyes and looked warily out the open garage door.

A Texas Ranching Adventure: Chicken Employees

Definition of chicken moat:  a double-fenced area surrounding a garden where chickens are allowed to roam and feed, thus creating a bug-free zone.

Driving through the dark on a Texas highway, I shone the flashlight at my book and read:
“Chickens can be decidedly stupid about finding their home after it’s been moved.

See How Small/Scott Blackwood

A Book Review:  See How Small/Scott Blackwood

Fiction winner 2016 Pen Center USA Literary Awards

Published by HarperCollins Fourth Estate

 

When I first heard that Scott Blackwood was going to write something based on the unsolved 1991 murders of a group of teenaged girls in Austin, Texas, I thought, oh no, leave it alone.  We’ve all had enough.  Because after that infamous crime, for years, we all saw those girls’ faces on a billboard and on TV, with a message offering a reward for information leading to the killers.  The victims’ faces are with me still.  I was once a teenager in that city.  I had friends who worked at ice cream shops as teenagers.  It could have been us.