For the 175th anniversary of Texas' independence, I decided to walk myself, day by day, through the events of the Alamo siege and battle in quick bursts on Twitter, a medium uniquely suited for short, timely updates. Sometimes I was even able to tweet an event at the time of day it actually happened, which... Continue Reading →
Bono and Ali are the sweetest thing
Somehow, though I've loved U2 for decades, I've only just learned that U2's song "The Sweetest Thing" (lyrics here) was written by Bono as an apology to his wife, Ali, for missing her birthday back when the band was in recording sessions for "The Joshua Tree" (first album I ever bought on CD). Originally the... Continue Reading →
The youngest photo ever seen of Mark Twain
The earliest known photo of Mark Twain shows the young printer's apprentice Samuel Clemens, right around his 15th birthday, holding printer's letters that spell his name, "SAM."
Pub signs: a virtual crawl through Oxfordshire
Web-surfing recently brought me to a trove of scholarly reviews of Oxfordshire pubs. Its index page alone is great for the lovely names it catalogues: the Penny Black, the Coach and Horses, the Five Bells, the Rose and Crown, the Lamb and Flag, the Jolly Postboys, the Catherine Wheel. (I'm quite the fan of pub... Continue Reading →
Dear Cafepress: Jump off a cliff
I would love, somehow, to inform the two nice folks who just bought T-shirts from Cafepress carrying my design of the De Zavala flag that they paid Cafepress, respectively, TEN and THIRTEEN dollars more than if they had bought it from me. PLUS I got $6.30 in profit as opposed to $10 if they'd bought... Continue Reading →
What’s a British goddess like you doing on a Texas flag?
Compared to the stars, blocks of color and occasional cannon of other early Texas flags, the San Jacinto flag is a complex mass of symbolism. Here's a reproduction (which I have kinda brightened up) of the image at the center of the actual, refurbished flag, from Robert Maberry's 2001 book "Texas Flags": It's clear that... Continue Reading →
Behind the scenes of “All Creatures” TV series
I'm a big James Herriot fan, and thanks to the JamesHerriot.org Twitter feed, I recently learned that there's a BBC 4 documentary -- a good one, with modern-day interviews with all the actors plus lots of behind-the-scenes footage -- available on YouTube about the making of the "All Creatures Great and Small" TV series. It's... Continue Reading →
Magical thinking: Hallway becomes library
If I ever get to design a house for myself, or just remodel a hallway, I'm totally doing this: Brilliant use of space in this very wide hall gave the owners their own mini-library. It even has a sliding-ladder contraption, a thing I have coveted for years, as I am teensy. Big bookcases can really... Continue Reading →
Shakespeare’s love-in-idleness: A blackberry ice-cream viola
Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, And maidens call it Love-in-idleness. -- A Midsummer Night's Dream This is the lovely Viola cornuta, a modern cousin of the deep purple violet Shakespeare knew and used in his play --... Continue Reading →
Holy Chihuly*, somebody found what CQ means
I've been a copy editor for more than 15 years, and in all that time, none of my coworkers nor anybody I've asked has been able to say where we get the dorky abbreviation CQ, which we use every day. These are copy editors, mind you. People who will cheerfully spend half an hour tracking down... Continue Reading →
sue's news 