Category: Written Word

Postcard from Mexico City: Shimmering with colorful experiences

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So quick and inexpensive to reach Mexico City by air. Don’t know why we waited so long to return. Tossing out a few final shots from our stay.

And now, an excuse for the next leap around the globe:

The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes…. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we’re not careful, pretty soon we’re gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack….

I try to force my eye to slow down. A good journal entry – like a good song, or sketch, or photograph – ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.

Leave home, leave, the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience – buying breakfast, eating vegetables, even saying hello – become new all over again.

Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome

My posts are never as elevated as Doerr’s journals, but there are an unlimited number of pots of gold waiting to be discovered around the globe. Mining springtime in Rome now.

Kicking off the year with biannual list of your favorite posts

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The topics of posts you have been reading most over the last six months are wide-ranging. Concerns about the Alamo and Alamo Plaza tend to be remain your high priority, and the primary battle between Jerry Patterson and George P. Bush for Land Commissioner will keep these issues on the front page. I love it that you continue to help me promote Helen Madarasz as a ghost actively haunting Brackenridge Park.

The interest in our favorite restaurant in Budapest might arise not as much from regular followers as from Fricska’s loyal fans on facebook. San Antonio’s current Tricentennial Celebration seemed to send more people in search of “The San Antonio Song” written in 1907 by Williams and Alstyne. Thanks for your interest in my quest for a mini-Kate, and it makes me happy some of you heading to Guanajuato were aided by our restaurant suggestions.

So here’s your top 12, with the numbers in parentheses representing the rankings from six months ago:

  1. Dear Mayor and City Council: Please don’t surrender Alamo Plaza, 2017 (1)
  2. The Madarasz Murder Mystery: Might Helen Haunt Brackenridge Park?, 2012 (2)
  3. Postcard from Budapest, Hungary: Currently suffering from case of miss-you-Fricska blues, 2017

    Fricska Gastropub in Budapest
  4. Please put this song on Tony’s pony and make it ride away, 2010 (11)

    Chorus of “The San Antonio Song” written by the Tin Pan Alley pioneer team of Harry Williams and Egbert Van Alstyne in 1907: “San An-to ni An-to-ni-o. She hopped up on a pony and ran away with Tony.”
  5. Brackenridge Park: ‘Is it still a postcard place?,’ 2017 (4)
  6. What’s up top counts, 2017 (3)
  7. Thanks to the Mister on his day for persistence in obtaining my Mother’s Day present, 2017 (8)

    3-D representations of Kate
  8. Postcard from Guanajuato, Mexico: Wishing these dining spots were not 600 miles away, 2016 (6)
  9. Postcards from San Antonio a Century Ago, 2016 (5)

    San Antonio’s love affair with fresh corn tortillas is nothing new.
  10. How would you feel about the Alamo with a crewcut?, 2011 (7)
  11. Postcard from Campeche, Mexico: Sittin’ on Campeche Bay, 2017 (12)
  12. Postcard from Bergamo, Italy: Bidding Italy ciao, for now, 2017

    Bergamo, Italy

And the best part of number 12 on your list is that our bidding ciao to Italy “for now” appears accurate. Will be taking you there through pictures later in 2018. For now, though, delivery of postcards from the fall trip to Mexico City was delayed by the holidays. They will be dribbled out over the next month.

Thanks for dropping by periodically. Always welcome your feedback.

As eagerly anticipated as the Academy Awards. Not.

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Thanks so much, John Branch, http://comicskingdom.com/john-branch

Okay, the biannual roundup of what posts you read most during the past year is not exciting, but it always interests me.

As usual, he Alamo floats up near the top. While lots of you read my “Dear Mayor” post, it seemed to have little impact at City Hall despite its direct delivery to the inboxes of the 11. I actually was writing about the Alamo some yesterday, slipping Alamo politics into the historic fiction manuscript on which I am focusing. The passionate stands and debates about the Alamo and its plaza a century ago differ little from those of today.

You hold the King William neighborhood and Brackenridge Park dear as well. And am hoping some of our recent travels help serve as inspiration or guides for yours.

The numbers in parentheses represent the rankings from six months ago:

  1. Dear Mayor and City Council: Please don’t surrender Alamo Plaza, 2017
  2. The Madarasz Murder Mystery: Might Helen Haunt Brackenridge Park?, 2012 (2)
  3. What’s up top counts, 2017
  4. Brackenridge Park: ‘Is it still a postcard place?,’ 2017
  5. Postcards from San Antonio a Century Ago, 2016 (3)
  6. Postcard from Guanajuato, Mexico: Wishing these dining spots were not 600 miles away, 2016 (12)
  7. How would you feel about the Alamo with a crewcut?, 2011 (6)
  8. Thanks to the Mister on his day for persistence in obtaining my Mother’s Day present, 2017
  9. Introducing Otto Koehler through a Prohibition politics caper of yesteryear, 2016 (11)
  10. Postcard from Bologna, Italy: Volunteering to eat at E’Cucina Leopardi everyday, 2016
  11. Please put this song on Tony’s pony and make it ride away, 2010 (4)
  12. Postcard from Campeche, Mexico: Sittin’ on Campeche Bay, 2017

Thanks for dropping by periodically. Love hearing your feedback.