Little Teddy and the President's Funeral

Today is a Teddy Day, a day during which Nita babysits our six-month old grandson. This morning was not typical, as she and I and Teddy spent two hours in front of the TV watching the funeral service for President George H.W. Bush.  I found it to be a dignified and stirring service which made me proud to be an American and a Christian. I won’t dwell on the pageantry or the terrific tribute speeches except to say I was holding my breath for son George W to get through his talk without choking up. He almost made it, and I say hoorah for him for getting that far.  A eulogy to one's father or mother has to be the hardest talk any man can ever give. 

I also loved the Episcopal priest’s display of the little plaque that President Bush had given him. On it is engraved “Preach Jesus every day. Use words if you must.” Amen to that.

The part of the service that prompts me to write this blog post is that as expected grandson Teddy maintained his infantile behaviors throughout the service. He played during the talks sometimes babbling to himself, and he ignored the choirs and the hymns. He took a nap, then  slopped his way through some mashed carrots, drank a bottle of mama’s milk, and played on the floor. Until the near the end.

When the man soloist closed the service by singing the Lord’s Prayer, Teddy stopped messing around in his grandmother’s lap and simply sat still, staring with wide eyes at the TV from the opening “Our Lord Which Art In Heaven” until the closing “Amen.”  The soloist with the tremendous tenor voice didn’t hurry. Yet Teddy stayed with him all the way.  Teddy may only be 180 days old, but this morning the little guy already recognized and honored Jesus's prayer when he heard it. That made grandpa proud too.

So, Rest in Peace, President Bush, from our Grandson Teddy and the whole McBride household.

Four States That Are Not Geography

There no novel writer’s point to this post. Nope, this one is about ‘states,’ and not the geographical ones. This one is all about my sweetheart Nita, who as a young gal in a state of confusion, married me a long time ago. Our marriage has resulted in two sons who tricked two beautiful young women into marrying them, and now Nita and I are the grandparents of a bounty of young’uns.

Last week being Thanksgiving, #2 son and family stayed with us for most of the week. A loving family is a beautiful thing, but it is not restful when two become seven, or eleven when #1 son and his family join in. Chaos is the natural state of such times. But the week was a wonderful sort of chaos, what with the cooking, playing, and ongoing chatter. And the new swing out back didn’t hurt, and little Rory’s second birthday cake was a hit, too. As was the Saturday trip to our favorite Mexican Restaurant in Austin.

Then came Sunday morning when Nita headed to church before others were even up, to sing in Morning Glory, our church’s contemporary early service music group. After that service, she joined the robed choir for the traditional service. Then home to bid goodbye to #2 son and family. Then a much-deserved nap, then back to church for the annual ‘Hanging of the Greens’ and chili supper. Whew. Call Sunday a busy state at the end of a long, but special week.

Now it’s Tuesday, and I’m sitting across the living room from Nita while she holds our fifth grandchild, little Teddy. Nita shares babysitting duties with Teddy’s other granny while his mom is at work. Teddy caught the local ‘crud’ that is going around making life miserable for those so affected. Nothing fun about coughing, a snotty nose and a fever. He is normally a good little six-month old guy who squeals in happiness and entertains himself. But not with the crud. So, yesterday, Nita held Teddy for eleven hours, cooing to him, bathing him, and rocking him, and is immersed in the same routine today. A state of nurturing love that is the specialty of moms and grandma’s. Teddy may have the crud for a couple of days, but he is one lucky little guy.

So, my after-Thanksgiving prayer of thanks is for sweet Nita and all the other grandma’s in the world who live every day in a state of sharing their wealth of love and their seemingly boundless energy with the rest of us.

A Different Dragon Entirely

A friend sent me a blog post last week written by a novelist of middlin’ success. The blogger is a professor by day, so he doesn’t support himself as a novelist. His big question was ‘Why do we keep writing novels that so few people will read?’  This from a guy who is far higher on the ladder to novelist fame than me. He’s halfway up to the top rung of the ‘annointed ones,’ while I’m still looking at the bottom step.  He claims that over his career he has made enough in book royalties to buy three cars. Hmph.  I’ve made enough in royalties over six years to buy three tanks of gas. Well, maybe a little more, but you get it.

His big point was that writing is hard work. I love the quote, “Easy reading is hard writing.” Oh, so true.  I can’t really remember what the guy wrote as to why he keeps writing. Obviously, he must enjoy the process, challenging, frustrating, and mentally strenuous as it is. He must also feel some level of gratification with his published books and his status among his friends and in his professional circle as a novelist. I ditto all those reasons.

 

For me, writing goes beyond enjoyment. It’s a compulsion. I’ve been a chronicler of my life experiences since my brother and I started regularly exchanging hand-written letters back in the early ‘70’s.  I still keep records of all sorts of odd things, like all the vehicles I’ve ever owned—motorcycles,  cars, trucks, vans, and SUV’s, color and cost included.

When I was taking part in tabletop wargame tournaments, I recorded the details of every single game I played. (I wasn’t a very good tabletop general.) When I became a Civil War reenactor, I began an ongoing color-coded table of every reenactment I attended, weather included. And I wrote eighty articles about reenacting for the hobby’s national magazine, The Camp Chase Gazette.

I still write annual Christmas letters to enclose with the Christmas cards we mail. (Yes, we still buy cards and stamps).  And now, I blog and write novels that not very many people read.

Why?  Because I can’t stop myself. I’m addicted to words. Not so much the spoken word, but the written word.  I’m not real outgoing at social gatherings. In fact, I’m a classic wallflower who enjoys being on the edge of a group watching and listening to the others. That said, I’ve done my share of being a ‘sage on the stage’ during my career as a high school principal and teacher-trainer, so I know I can do such things, I just prefer not to. But leave me alone—with a legal pad in the ‘70’s, a typewriter in the ‘80’s and a laptop computer since the’90’s ‘—and  I start spewing words.

Isaac Asimov once was asked what he would do if he was told he had only eight minutes to live. His answer, “Write faster.”

 

So, there it is. I’ll write J you when I decide not to write anymore.

Meanwhile, here is my newest novel: A Different Dragon Entirely.  

I’d describe the book as historical fiction about the great Comanche Indian Raid of 1840 and the subsequent Battle of Plum Creek, except that one of the two main characters is a mutant giant flying horny toad dragon.  Honestly, it’s more of a girl-meets-dragon bromance.  The whole thing is just for fun, although I did stay true to the recorded first person accounts of the Indian raid and the battle. I borrowed the title and some characters from my novel about the Texas Rangers of 1855, A Different Country Entirely.

But the horny toad dragon is my Texas-esque creation, vaguely inspired by Naomi Novik’s series of novels about the wonderful dragon Temeraire during the Napoleonic wars.

   

The Kindle version is available on Amazon right now, and the paperback version will soon be, if not already. Those folks at Amazon are nothing if not efficient. Good thing, since they just about own the economy now.

Anyway, I hope you will take a look on Amazon, and maybe buy an ebook or a paperback. Just click on the cover image of the book over there to the right.

Buffy, Boudicca, Joan, and Mally

Tomorrow’s elections across our nation are important, so I hope you have already voted or will vote tomorrow. I early voted, and for the first time ever, I made a small donation to a Congressional candidate, one who is running for a House seat that does not even represent the town where I live. All to say this cycle of national elections does indeed matter. So vote, please. And in all cases, may the candidates prevail who keep to the high road of speaking to the issues with ideas and optimism, and not the candidates who build their campaigns on bashing their opponents and preaching fear instead of hope.

Now, onward into the past: Dragons. I’ve learned while websurfing in search of early Druid dragon images that dragons have been a universal element in our myths and literature through the ages and around the globe. The Chinese have been big on dragons for thousands of years. Then there’s Saint George of England famously slaying the dragon. There are Middle-Eastern dragons and Indian dragons. African dragons and South American dragons. 

And now, there is a native Texas dragon--Leine, the only flying, acid-blood spurting, giant horny toad that I’ve discovered. Leine is the dragon half of a girl-meets-dragon duet. 

Since my new novel—A Different Dragon Entirely—is not an inter-species romance, Leine’s gender is female. On the outside, she is covered in amber scales, has a wide, oval-shaped body, short legs, a stubby neck behind a ring of tall horns on her forehead, and sports batwings. Yet, behind her fearsome visage, on the inside, she is very much a human woman.

Mally, the girl half of the pair, is not modeled after Buffy the Vampire Slayer of TV fame, but she just came to mind. Young, lovable, smart, pretty, and full of grit when needed. Buffy and hopefully both Leine and Mally are all a bit campy, with wit and snark at times.

Mally is student of Latin, which happens to be Leine’s language, and she reads the classics. She admires the Celtic warrior-queen Boudicca and the French saint Joan of Arc. Both young women led armies of male warriors and have proved to be statue-worthy in the homelands. I think they are good role models for a pioneer girl who rides on the back of a horny toad dragon and confronts outlaws and Comanches. At least as good as Buffy whose fictional fame came from killing unkillable vampires.

The first proof of the paperback A Different Dragon Entirely is under review right now, and hopefully the paperback and the e-book will be available on Amazon by Thanksgiving. Stay tuned.

And did I already say: VOTE !

Frog Legs and Cave Paintings

As a teenager in the 1960’s I went frog-gigging just one night. If you are thinking You did what?, it’s a fair question. You see, I grew up in East Texas behind the Pine Curtain where fried catfish and fried bullfrog legs are both popular meats. Except for raw oysters just scraped out of their shell, there’s probably no uglier, nastier looking creature that mankind has learned to eat than an East Texas mudcat or bullfrog. Oddly, after you get past the wide mouths and skin that doesn’t have scales like normal fish or reptiles, both catfish and bullfrogs have tasty white meat that cooks up real nice.

Back to the sport of frog-gigging, two friends and I did it in a flat-bottom aluminum fishing boat during a dark summer night. One paddler sat in the back and eased the boat along near the lake’s bank. One spotter sat in the middle and ran the bright circle from a powerful flashlight along the weeds growing in the shallow water near the bank. In the seat of honor, the hunter perched himself upfront, wielding the frog-gig trident spear. Our trident was homemade in a metal-shop. The three points were barbed like big fish hooks and the spear was an old garden tool handle.

When the spotlight caught the sparkling eyes of a bullfrog, we eased up until the hunter could make a quick thrust, aiming between the two eyes. We took turns at the three positions and after a couple of hours had impaled nigh-on a dozen croakers, and missed as many more. Smart bullfrogs quickly disappeared underwater when we made noise or were too slow or off-target with the gig thrusting. But some frogs just stayed still like deer caught in the headlights of a truck and met their end. The dumb ones, I guess.

The only danger in our night of frog-gigging came from the chance that a pair of gleaming eyes in the dark water would belong to an aggressive water moccasin and not a passive bullfrog. I don’t remember if we actually saw any cottonmouths that night, but knowing they were around added some spice to our adventure.

Cleaning the frog legs was less fun, since the legs had to be amputated and skinned for cooking. It was also a little freaky since the legs would not stay still, even after being severed from the rest of the frog carcass. Honest. A last protest to meeting such an unnatural end.

Here’s the point, our East Texas bullfrog legs were big. As big or bigger than fried chicken wings—not drumsticks which are chicken legs, but the hinged wings. Our froglegs were so big that four of them, battered and deep-fried, made a big serving.

Fast-forward fifty years to my ordering frog legs as the main course at a country restaurant in France last week. Here’s a photo of my plate before I began munching my way through the little bitty things.

They were cooked up real nice, seasoned and tasty, with or without a garlic sauce. But they came from mini-frogs, way too small to be called bull frogs.

Since I’m talking about French cuisine and I mentioned raw oysters earlier, here’s a photo of French tartare—raw hamburger meat that my sister ordered at a different cafe. I snagged a bite from her plate and decided beef is best eaten at least somewhat cooked.

And since I’m an old Civil War reenactor, here’s a photo of my mock battle with a native Frenchman who took umbrage at our visiting his 18,000 year-old art museum in a cave. 

It is the last place in France where a limited number of tourists are permitted each day into the cold narrow cave to see the actual paintings just a few feet from your face. The life-size and colorful wall renderings of buffalo and horses were very darned beautiful and remarkable, It was worth taking on that skinny hairy guy to see them.

As for a book link, my visit to the French cave to see the prehistoric artwork has caused me to upscale the size of the cave painting of my giant flying horny toad dragon in my new manuscript. After all, we have to do everything bigger in Texas—frog legs and fictional cave art. J

Two Airborne Rescues by Women of Valor

I’m writing another novel about early Texas in the 1840’s. One of the characters is the child of a ‘mission Indian.’ The girl’s name is Scottish, Angelina Cromarty, because the character’s father was Scottish.

Yes, I’ve written a plot in which a priest from Scotland knocked up a Native American who lived in the village next to the Alamo Mission. This was in the 1700’s, before San Antonio grew up around the old mission, that turned into a fort, that turned into a US Army warehouse, which finally turned into Texas’ most famous iconic structure and tourist attraction.

I was brooding about whether creating a horny priest  was being fair to the situation back in the 1700’s, when the Catholic Church worked diligently to Christianize as many Native Americans in this part of of the world as they could. Then I saw an online image of this wonderful 1930’s mural. It is still on display on the wall of an old mission building near Goliad, Texas. Apparently, during Texas’ Centennial celebrations, at least one artist shared my less than pure suspicions. Take a look at the entire mural, then the segment of special interest with the padre and the bare young native woman, and see if you agree with me.

Today I watched a short political campaign video of a woman running for a seat in the US Congress. She's from Round Rock, a suburb just north of Austin, Texas. She is married, mother of three kids, has a big upper arm tattoo, and worked as an F-16 mechanic for five years before she went to Air Force flight school.

Next, she served five tours in Afghanistan as a helicopter pilot. She flew rescue missions to pick up wounded soldiers and fliers, until she herself was eventually shot down on a mission. She was rescued by another helicopter, and fired a weapon defensively from the door of that helicopter once she got on board. She was awarded a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross for her valor.  Pretty admirable military service record. Her name is Mary Jennings Heger.

I have a goofy writer’s connection to Mrs. Heger’s story. By coincidence, today, the very same morning I read about candidate Heger’s impressive actions as a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan, I am writing a similar scenario. Only the Heger inspired character in my Texas history dragon fantasy novel, is the giant flying female horny toad dragon herself.

Six hundred marauding Comanche warriors have burned down the town of Linnville, Texas on the Gulf of Mexico (that happened historically) and captured a few Anglo women during the raid. (also historically true).  My horny toad dragon and her two female human companions/riders are going to fly cover for the Texas militiamen in pursuit of the Comanches, and attempt to rescue the women in the confusion of the coming battle. (the historical Battle of Plum Creek.) The plan will go awry, but there will be brave and heroic women in the middle of the action, both of the human and dragon kind.

To be sure, writing a fantasy dragon-based historical fiction novel about early Texas has garnered glazed-over-eye reactions from some of my men friends. Granted, that most dragon fantasy books seem to be set in the middle ages or on alien worlds. But I love Texas. and I’ve always loved dragon tales, and I’m thoroughly enjoying writing this one.  No apologies here. Maybe no sales either, since Comanches and dragons are not usually paired together in the same tall tale.  We’ll see later this year when it’s a done deal.

Meanwhile, kudos to combat rescue pilot, and now, Congressional candidate Mary Jennings Heger. Good luck in November, Ma’am.

Barbells and Bluebonnets and Murder

Barbells and Bluebonnets.  To me that image sums up Texas as well as any pairing of objects iron-hard and nature pretty.  The photo was taken by my friend Carol Finsrud, who is a life-long track and field athlete, now over 60, and still winning medals at international events.  The framed picture hangs on the wall of the restroom in her husband’s gym, The Old Texas Barbell Co., in little Lockhart. 

Today’s a good day to mention Carol’s husband, Mike Graham, because as I type this post, Mike is undergoing heart triple-by-pass surgery. Mike’s a strong guy, as you might imagine, and I’m betting on a successful operation and a quick recovery. Nonetheless, I’ve been sending up prayers for Mike since I awoke today.

Now for the horror of the week. The most recent mayor of the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras has been a forty-year-old guy named Fernando Purón. He’s also a strong and brave guy who is running for a seat in the national congress. Yesterday, he gave a campaign speech blasting the Zeta drug cartel and promising to stand firm against them in congress, as he’d done as mayor of Piedras Negras. After his speech, Purón stood talking on the front steps, and an assassin walked up behind him and shot him in the back of the head, killing him.

Purón is the 112^th candidate or office-holder—almost all of municipalities—to be killed by the cartel terrorists’ assassins since last September. That’s right—112 assassinations in ten months is the current price for defying the Mexican drug cartels. Over 1,000 other candidates have stepped away from their campaigns, quitting in fear for their lives and their families’ lives. Talk about domestic terrorism.

The town of Piedras Negras also plays an important part in my last novel, A Different Country Entirely. In fact, the ‘alcalde’—the mayor—is a minor character, as he was during the historical unfolding of the Texas Rangers’ military incursion into Mexico in 1855. In the historical primary sources from 1855, the mayor is portrayed as a fat man who tried to protect his town in the presence of 150 heavily-armed Texas Rangers.

The Rangers had crossed the Rio Grande chasing after Apache raiders who regularly terrorized the Texas frontier and then escaped to their mountain strongholds in Mexico, where it was illegal for the US Army or the Texas Rangers to pursue them. My book is about the time the Rangers ignored the international border, defied international law, and went after the Apaches in Mexico anyway. The Rangers certainly did not assassinate the alcalde of Peidras Negras, but they did intentionally set fire to the town to cover their escape from Mexico after a battle with the Mexican army. You can read all about that episode in my novel.

My blog point is two-fold. First, history is harsh. Maybe border towns have an especially hard time, especially those towns that are gateways between two countries.

Secondly, the murderous drug cartels scare the poop out of me. It’s hard to imagine 112 assassinations of candidates and office-holders in neighboring Mexico in the past ten months. My hat is off to those brave candidates for public office who are still standing firm in the face of the physical threats and ongoing assassinations.

In my third McBee Civil War novel, Defiant Honor, the title references the Texans in the Confederate army who persevered until the end, and the regiments of blue-uniformed US Colored Troops who fought bravely against those iron-hard Texans during the last year of the war.

But that was 150 years ago. Right now, today, I do believe the Mexican men and women candidates for office are earning that title, and I salute them for their defiant honor.

Then and Now Road Trip

Nita and I are on a road trip to see the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona and the Grand Canyon. Just she and me. No kids, no grandkids, no parents, no siblings, no friends, not even a dog. It’s been a few years since we’ve done such a trip. As I drove and drove crossing the great Southwest Desert in three big-ass states, I kept making comparisons to Nita’s and my first long road trip made as newlyweds in 1972.

Then: Our car was an 8-year old Chevy pick-up truck with over 100,000 miles on it. No air-conditioning, no seatbelts. Crank-up windows, 4-on-the-floor standard transmission.  It drank oil by the quart and had a leaky radiator. The truck bed was covered with a plywood camper shell my dad and I made and was painted blue and green on the outside and yellow and orange on the inside. Home on the road.

Now: Our car is a 6-year old Japanese Nissan 4-door sedan with power everything and 84,000 miles on it. Still runs like new.

Then: We drove 50-60 mph on state highways marked as blue lines on big folding highway maps. We listened to local AM radio stations when we could get a signal. Otherwise, I guess we chatted a lot. After all, we were still getting to know each other.

Now: We drove 75-80 mph on Interstates using Nita’s cell phone map app. It talks to us giving directions, and warning of traffic jams. We listen to satellite radio, NPR podcasts stored on Nita’s phone, and custom-designed music CD’s Nita made at home. And we still talk, now about kids, grandkids, the woes of aging, and politics. I wish I could remember what we talked about back then.

Then: We parked overnight at little roadside parks and state parks, sleeping on a piece of foam padding in the camper under grandma’s homemade quilt for cover. For entertainment, I read a novel holding the paperback just-so as to catch enough light from the liquid-fuel Coleman lantern that had to be pumped up to burn and had a cloth wick that turned to ash, but magically never fell apart. After the light went out, we…well, we did what newlyweds do before we went to sleep. You know, if the truck be rockin’, don’t come knockin’.

Now: We stay at Holiday Inn Express hotels and bed-and-breakfast inns, sleeping on a new-age no-springs mattress in air-conditioning under synthetic sheets. For entertainment, I read a novel on my backlit Kindle and we watch NBA play-off games on TV. After the light goes out we…well, we sleep.

Last Holiday Inn Note: The only thing we did at Holiday Inns back then was steal ice to fill our Coleman ice chest. They put the ice machine on the first floor as a public service, right?

Then: We bought food at local grocery stores and ate sandwiches or cooked meals on a Coleman stove, also something that used liquid fuel and had to be pumped to work. We used the truck tailgate if no cement picnic table was handy. Sometimes we used the park-built fire grate or even a campfire.

Now: We spend a lot of money at restaurants.

Then: To see tourist sites, we parked and walked on sidewalks and hiked on trails. We took the commuter train-subway to downtown Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell.

Now: We take day-tours, this time in a pink jeep one day, and a van the next.

Then: Happy hour was a couple of cans of cheap beer quaffed outside leaning agianst the truck.

Now: Happy hour is a shared bottle of Chardonnay. (For my reenacting pards: That’s white wine.) Usually sipped outside in some garden or restaurant patio.

Then: I had an old 35mm SLR Canon camera and a hand-held light meter that I’d bought used for a college class, and it had no auto anything. Great camera, nonetheless. But we had to ration the number of times we pushed the button, because film was expensive and developing film was expensive.

Now: Our damned cell phones take great pics. Point and shoot, of course. And there’s no limit to the number of clicks we can afford. And getting the chosen just-right photo from the camera to this page appears to be beyond my technical abilities. So, imagine there's a picture right here of our nice B & B with a great scenic view.

Then: Practically everyone we knew was ‘poor,’ so the scrimping didn’t bother us. It was nice to be very young newly weds, seeing places for the first time--together, starting a box of ‘Phil & Nita’ memories.

Now: I freely confess it is nice to not to have to scrimp on every expenditure. We really like eating out and driving a car that hums along year after year. And we’re still adding layers to that box of Phil & Nita memories.

By the way, this very day is Nita’s 70^th birthday, and we’re going off-the-pavement pink-jeeping (as tourists in the back seat of an open jeep) this morning, hiking this afternoon, and out to a nice restaurant for dinner.

Meet Theodore James McBride

Here is the first portrait photo of my new four-hour-old new grandson, Theodore James McBride.

Handsome little rascal, ain’t he? Except he's got my extra chin and except for the fact he’s sideways, maybe still not sure if out of his mama’s nice safe womb is where he wants to live after nine months at a different address. Granted it can be a rough place out here, but before long he’ll be glad he’s in the glorious light of the world.

Of course, that's Teddy’s beautiful mama Maggie adoring him. 

His dad is our son Todd, and trust me, Maggie’s much more photogenic. But there’s something I can't pass up about a great big man holding his own tiny newborn child. Lots of unspoken promises being transmitted from father to son.

Teddy doesn’t know it yet, but his granddaddy will soon be making a trip to the Menger, the grand old hotel next door to the Alamo. Robert E Lee stayed there for a night or two in 1861, and the Menger is where in 1898 another Theodore, last name Roosevelt, parked himself in the hotel bar and recruited a bunch of Texas cowboys into his army cavalry outfit, which he called the Rough Riders.

They are still serving cold brews in the dark wood paneled bar, and I may just buy one for everybody in the place to celebrate the arrival of little Teddy McBride, my newest grandson. Back in the mid-1800’s, Mr. Menger brewed his own beer to serve in his hotel bar, but that recipe is long gone. So, in honor of Teddy’s April birth—the same month Texas won its hard-fought independence from Mexico, I’ll bypass my favorite brew—Negro Modelo—and make it a round of Lone Star.

Teddy is the fifth grandchild for Nita and me. We are sort of surprised by the count, since neither of our sons indicated they might actually marry some pretty girl until they were into their 30’s. To our delight, once they sweet-talked those two lovely ladies to the altar, they didn’t hesitate in regards to making us grandparents. Now I’m glad I was always too embarrassed to have ‘that’ talk with either of them. They appear to have figured things out just fine. And we have Eva, Violet, Jackson, Rory, and now Teddy to pamper and spoil.

Mind you, we don’t want to be the parents of any of them. Two decades of those high-energy, chaotic days were ample. We remember too often hearing those magic words from a young voice as we were either putting the boys to bed or going out the door to school—“Oh, by the way…”  If you don’t connect with that, you are not yet a parent, or you have had a brain fart about your own years of parenting.

Teddy’s older brother Jackson is at our house today while Maggie and Todd smother their new one with love and happy tears. Jackson may be a stinker after dark around bedtime when he sorts out that his world also changed in a big way at 5:52 this morning. But that’s OK. We’ll get him through this first night of brotherhood.

Sunflowers, Enchanted Rock, and High School Latin

Look at the size of those sunflowers.

Higher than my sweet wife’s head. Bigger around than a serving platter. Trouble is, the dazzling yellow field of giant flowers were growing in Germany, not Texas. But we have them, too. I’ve seen other dazzling fields of blooming sunflowers in the Rio Grande valley, within a few miles of the Mexican-US border. They are a cash crop for their oil, and the seeds are sold in little plastic sacks at gas station stores for nibbling.

Sunflowers apparently were ‘discovered’ in the 1500’s by early European explorers as crops grown by Native Americans living in the southwest. Archeologists date Native American use of sunflower seeds to 3,000 B.C. Folks, that’s Babylonian and Egyptian kingdom era, when Europe was still a howling wilderness.

The explorers ‘exported’ seeds and plants back to Europe where they became an agricultural success, but were ignored by the colonists in North America. It wasn’t until the 1800’s that seeds from Europe were brought back to the New World and joined the agricultural economy of European-Americans.

So what do huge sunflowers have to do with my novels?  Just this: My Texas horny-toad-dragon character needs an alternate food source if she is going to co-exist with the settlers of Central Texas in the 1840’s. She can’t just eat every settler’s cows and horses, and she hasn’t got the knack for noodling big catfish out of the rivers. I can’t say I’ll turn the dear dragon into a Vegan, oh no. But there’s a dragon-related place in this story for mammoth sunflowers. You’ll see.

I just wrote a segment in A Different Dragon Entirely  that takes place on and near Enchanted Rock in the Texas Hill Country. Here’s a photo of that remarkable huge hunk of stone  that is now a popular state park. For a sense of scale, those are full-grown oak trees around the base of the knob, not little shrubs. Crabapple Creek flows hidden under the trees. In real frontier history, a solitary Texas Ranger named Jack Hays held off an all-day Comanche attack from his hidey-hole on top of Enchanted Rock. He survived by virtue of having two Colt revolvers and lots of lead and powder.

Finally, I’m proud to show you my ‘bonafides’ for using Latin as the language telepathically linking the two main characters A Different Dragon Entirely—the dragon Leine and the teenager Mally Gunn. You see, I took two years of Latin in high school. I fared poor to middlin’ since I didn’t study much, but I got by, and I’m still glad I endured the gray-haired Mrs. Montgomery’s class for two years. But I was not a Latin scholar for sure.

In spite of my academic laziness as a high school Latin student, here’s photos of my just rediscovered third place medal won for a project at the Texas High School Student Junior Classical League convention in Waco, Texas in1966. I earned my way to the convention, not through scholarship, but by virtue of a homemade broomstick Roman Legion standard topped with a plaster-of-paris-filled rubber glove hand and a square red guidon with a big gold V sewn on it.

Anyway, those Latin root words I learned in high school Latin class still keep popping up all the time and remain helpful to me as a reader and a writer. As does the Google Translate software on the internet, I confess. After all, fifty years after my last Latin class, how else could I have translated, “Quod suus 'non cibum! Quod Marmor est meus equus!"  In English--“That’s not meat, that’s Marble, my horse!” which are Mally’s first words in Latin to the flying horny-toad dragon. Regardless of her protest, it wasn’t a good morning for Mally’s pretty appaloosa mare.

Thanks for tuning in today.

Wildflowers and Rebellion

March and April are the two months when Texans remember our war for independence from Mexico, 182 years ago. It is also the time of year when wildflowers bust out across Central Texas. So this blog post is a meshing of wildflowers and rebellion.

     The pretty color photo is of the monument built in 1936 (oddly, paid for with Federal dollars, not state or private funds) to commemorate the massacre of over 300 captive Texas militiamen at Goliad on Palm Sunday in 1836. The granite monument sits atop the charred bones of the Texas patriots in a mass grave.

The next image is also from 1936, the year of the Centennial celebration of Texas’s victory over Santa Anna’s army, which established Texas as an independent nation.  This photo is of course the Alamo in San Antonio during a renovation project, putting a new roof on the chapel.

This final photo is once more from 1936 Centennial and is the frame of the giant three-dimensional ‘Lone Star’ that sits atop the tall monument at San Jacinto, the site of Santa Anna’s unlikely defeat.

I like this one because my grandfather—Jackson Robert McBride, Jr.—worked for the pattern shop that designed the star and made it. When all the star skeleton’s fasteners on top of the completed tower did not fit exactly, Granddaddy McBride was the guy who climbed out on the scaffolding and the skeleton on top of the tower and fixed the fasteners. The San Jacinto Monument tower is as tall as the Washington Monument in DC. The star hasn’t fallen off after 82 years, surviving who knows how many hurricane-force winds, so I guess Granddaddy did a good job of it.

     All this relates to my new manuscript, A Different Dragon Entirely, by virtue of the 1840 setting for this Texas adventure with a fantasy twist, and that three of the main characters fought with General Sam Houston at San Jacinto—in my imagined world.

To everyone—Happy Easter. Christ Has Risen! He Has Risen Indeed! Rejoice!

My Stake in the Ground About Assault Rifles

To get right to the point:  It’s time for assault rifles to come off the shelves of America’s sporting goods store and gun shops. It’s time for America to leave military  style weapons to the military, and for the rest of us to get along with rifles developed for hunting four-legged mammals, not rifles specifically designed for waging war against other humans. If I haven’t yet lost you, here’s why I’m putting my personal stake in the ground on this issue.

Point 1: I support the 2^nd Amendment that protects my right to own firearms. And I do own several of them: a deer rifle, two shotguns, a 22 caliber plinker rifle, and several black powder weapons. Only the 22 is semi-automatic and I own two 8-round clips for it.  I got guns.

Point 2: I served as the principal of small town public high school for nine years. I was an assistant principal in a large urban public high school for five years. I was one of those for whom the mass murders at Columbine High School in 1999 was a deeply troubling event that we feared foretold a horrifying new aspect of school management—Dealing with a shooter loose in the building who is intent on murdering our children.

To be clear: When I am the principal of a school, all the students there are MY children, no less so than my sons and my precious grandchildren. In loco parentis—in the place of parents.

Point 3: If, God forbid, a crazed person is roaming the halls of MY school trying to run up a body count of MY students—my children, the very last weapon I want the murdering sonofabitch to use is a military-style automatic or semi-automatic rifle with high-velocity ammunition and large fast-change clips.

Why? Because the AR-AK styles are easy to aim, quick to reload after spewing out a 30-round clip in just seconds. The murdering school terrorists want to fire the most lead possible in the shortest amount of time to reach the highest possible body count.

To be sure, AR’s and AK’s are beautiful firearms, well designed to do their job of inflicting the most possible enemy casualties in the shortest amount of time. That's why they are the last weapon I want a mass-murderer to use.

Point 5: I want the school shooter to carry a 5-foot-tall muzzle-loading Civil War musket. Too long to aim quickly, and very slow to reload after just one shot. But that’s not likely, is it? No, the murdering sonofabitch is going to have a high-velocity, semi-auto or full-auto military-style rifle, like the last three back-to-back mass-murderers have used in the past six months, causing the deaths of over 100 innocents.

Point 6: No serious deer hunter in America uses those weapons. Hunters are marksmen who want a heavy stock and barrel, a steadying sling, and a good scope to fire a single well-placed bullet to take down their prey. Bird hunters do nicely with three shells before the prey flies out of range.

Point 7: Those serious about self-protection at home do not depend on  AR or AK style rifles. A shotgun or pistol is a better choice. The high-velocity rifle bullets zip through wall after wall, maybe even reaching into the house next door. In a car or truck, a rifle is too long to manipulate quickly for defense. 

I know the arguments for open access to AR and AK style rifles. My head is not in the sand on this deal. Still and all, after considering all the arguments for anyone legally owning an AR/AK style rifle, I simply do not see a credible reason for that ownership. There are better hunting alternatives, there are better self-defense alternatives, there are better target shooting alternatives.

Point 8: The AR/AK is not the firearm of choice for any civilian purpose except mass murders. Unless maybe you choose to live in a mountain-top bunker and expect to repel a large number of home invaders launching a banzai charge.

Point 9: We cannot prevent mass murderers from committing their violent acts of terrorism. But we can and should take away their most preferred murder tool, a weapon which serves no valid civilian purpose other than committing mass murders. If we cannot prevent the mass murders, we can at least lower the body count. It ain’t rocket science to figure that one out.

Point 10: Sporting goods stores do not sell machine guns or rocket propelled grenade launchers. It’s time to add assault rifles to that list.