Whoopee, biannual roundup: Favorite postcards from this blog

Posted on by postcardsfromsanantonio

Above: Remnants of the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture are found at its former home on South Lamar Boulevard.

Yes, I know. This blog is suffering a bit of an identity crisis. First, 2020 abruptly cut short my boulevardier ways, and then in early 2021 we pulled up stakes and moved up the road to Austin.

This blogger entertained herself throughout much of the pandemic by posting her entire novel – An Ostrich-Plumed Hat, and, Yes She Shot Him Dead – online, slowly unfolding it chapter by chapter. A few of my readers actually followed Hedda Burgemeister all the way through her 19teens trial for murder; although, I had been hoping for a little more feedback and filming rights have yet to be sold. Others have embraced posts about our new neighborhood as we started boulevardier-ing north and south off Lamar Bouldevard.

Huge chunks of metal flew through the air and landed blocks away from the site of the 1912 locomotive explosion at the Southern Pacific Railyard, an event that deeply affected characters in An Ostrich-Plumed Hat, and, Yes She Shot Him Dead. Photograph courtesy of Farrell Tucker of San Antonio Police Archive.
Charles Umlauf’s 1962 “Muses” grace the entrance of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden.

The following list represents the top most popular posts from the past year, minus individual book chapters. The numbers in parentheses are rankings from six months ago, when applicable.

  1. Introduction to a truthful novel and Chapter One, 2020 (1)
  2. Who was the ‘Barton’ of the springs?, 2021
  3. Zilker Park: Founded on a fortune made in ice, 2021
  4. Most precious part of Zilker Botanical Garden reflects the spirit of one man, 2021
  5. The lush landscape frostbitten, art commands centerstage at Umlauf Sculpture Garden, 2021
  6. Colorful remnants of SouthPop linger on South Lamar, 2021
  7. Sisters like two peas in a pod: Perhaps they shared a wedding dress as well, 2021
  8. Oakwood Cemetery: Gleaning snippets of history from headstones, 2021
  9. Walking among the dead seeking hints about our past, 2021
  10. The Madarasz murder mystery: Might Helen haunt Brackenridge Park, 2012 (2)
  11. Postcard from Portugal: Pilgrimage to the birthland of San Antonio’s patron saint, 2014
  12. Please put this song on Tony’s pony, and make it ride away. 2010 (3)
Sisters Agnes and Margaret Ann Autry, far right, were married in a double-wedding, possibly even sharing the same dress. Autry family photo courtesy of Virginia Heimer Ohlenbusch from Haunting the Graveyard: Unearthing the Story of the Coker Settlement.
An abundance of symbols adorn many of the headstones found in Austin’s historic Oakwood Cemetery.

Oh, dear. The past year’s most-read posts on this blog do seem to dwell a bit on ghosts and graveyards.

Time to take flight and travel. We have passports at the ready, and, before too long, we will resume pursuit of the flaneur lifestyle. Will report back well before summer’s end.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.