Biannual Roundup: What you’re looking at gets a makeover

Street art encountered in Malaga, Spain

Only a decade or so old, but WordPress kept dropping hints that my blog format was outdated and becoming obsolete. The time was approaching that it would no longer function on the platform.

So here it is: the first post with a new look in a format I am trying to master. I promise not to include any of the curse words that my slip out of my mouth as I try to make heads and tails of it.

It happens to be that time of the year, halfway through, for that exciting list of what posts you have clicked on most during the past 12 months. My book has not dropped off the list yet, and I am grateful for that and that you continue to let the blog play boulevardier even though the writer actually is in a state of corona-hibernation.

So here it goes, with the number in parentheses representing rankings from six months ago:

1. Postcard from the Coker Settlement: Following long gestation, book finally due to arrive, 2019 (1)
2. The Madarasz murder mystery: Might Helen haunt Brackenridge Park?, 2012 (5)
3. Please put this song on Tony’s pony and make it ride away, 2010 (6)
4. Postcard from Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy: History with a horse hanging overhead, 2019, (4)
5. Postcard from Mexico City: The Lord of Poison and potent relics, 2017 (8)
6. Linking faces to the Howard headstones: Cricket and tea in the Texas Hill Country, 2020
7. Postcard from Malaga, Spain: Unauthorized exhibit of Banksy’s protest art, 2019
8. Postcard from Malaga, Spain: Street Art, Part I, 2019 (11)
9. Postcard from Naples, Italy: Skulls of lost souls up for adoption, 2019
10. Postcard from Naples, Italy: A month there. No regrets. 2020
11. Postcard from Naples, Italy: Final reflections, 2020
12. Postcard from Lecce, Italy: Sampling seafood and pasta served Apulia-style, 2020

What’s strange about this list is what’s missing for the first time in years – any reference at all to Alamo Plaza. The “reimagineers” in charge of the Alamo, its plaza and the future of the historic buildings lining the west side of the plaza are holding their hand close to the vest. My Alamo rants have dropped way down on your list and my thoughts, but I am cheating and adding a link to one to remind us all to pay attention to whatever might happen behind ugly new protest-prevention barriers while we are hunkered down at home – How’s the GLO managing Alamo Plaza?

Thanks for dropping by, and please feel free to comment any time.