Ladybird's Legacy

Thursday and Friday I was in Austin for a meeting of the statewide heritage trails program. We were lucky enough to meet at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center on the outskirts of the city, which was as lovely as you might envision it to be.

Thursday the Gregg's Mistflower was alight with Queen butterflies.

Here's a link to the center: http://www.wildflower.org/

Highest Point in Texas

I was there yesterday!

Leaving no stone unturned

I'm constantly looking for new (and free) ways to get exposure for our region.

You've seen our Daily Photo blog? Here's the link: http://www.texasmountaintrail.blogspot.com/

Today I signed up as a CNN.com iReporter, a free venue to submit images and stories to CNN. The chances of something getting picked up are slim, but it is worth a shot, right?

I did this after learning that they were looking for fall foliage photos, and our Guadalupe Mountains National Park is the only place in Texas with true fall color. Here's my profile page, and the photos I've submitted so far: http://www.ireport.com/people/Trailgirl?view=documents&viewingAsOthers=true (And yes, you might have recognized this older photo of me, taken in my first months on the job. It just seemed to fit the page.)

One of the photos was up less than an hour when it got the following comment: "thanks for the pics. As a 5th gen Texan, translocated in Montreal, it warmed my heart to see a bit of home. Love those hills, spent lots of time out in the big open, and its true beauty is amazing. Merci"

Anyway, please go visit the page, and click on each photo for a closer view. THANKS.

Oh yeah, and there's our new YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TMTrail

I am testing Spira Footwear's first line of hiking shoes--and the featured video was my "thank you" card to the company about the inaugural hike. More on that later.....

Last week was for the Grandmas

No doubt the saddest part of last week's historic and emotional election was the fact that Barack Obama's grandmother did not live to see the results.

It had me remembering my own grandmother in Port Orange, who went to bed eight years ago thrilled that Florida had been the state to elect Al Gore our President. Waking up to the reality of exactly the opposite was hard for her to take.

She didn't live to see these election results, but she would have liked Barack Obama. And maybe even more important to her, she would have liked Michelle, too.

I was just 10--though it is still so fresh in my mind--when she said, "If we could only elect our President by voting for the First Lady, I would vote for Muriel Humphrey every time." Without question, she would have voted for Michelle Obama's grace, ease and smarts over Cindy McCain's pinched perfection. There would not have been kind words for Sarah Palin's rightwing bumbling ignorance, either.

Grandma, who was born in 1910, would also get emotional remembering her own childhood. She'd speak with anger and tears with the memory of being disciplined because she'd wanted to befriend a little black girl.

But it was a memory of another mother--who never lived to be a grandmother--that brought me to tears on election night. A CNN commentator spoke of the unifying force of this new president, that this win was for all of us, especially for the memory of Viola Liuzzo. Liuzzo was the inspiration of much of my civil rights artwork, and her story speaks to the idea that change belongs to us all.

And then I found this link, about Liuzzo and her friend Sarah Evans, neither of whom lived to see a black president, but who had a part in making it happen.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2005/04/12/nissen.sarah.and.viola.affl?iref=videosearch

Casting my vote

I likely had a different voting experience than all of you reading this blog:

First, at 9:30 this morning, there was no line. Four cars were in the parking lot of the polling place--mine and those belonging to the three voting officials. I was the 19th person to vote in my precinct, probably a heavy turnout for Van Horn especially considering there were only four of us attending the caucus earlier this year. (We were split 2 for Obama and 2 for Clinton until an elderly woman for Clinton acquiesced.)

Second, I was the only one in the building speaking English--all election business was being conducted in Spanish this morning--a common phenomena I'm learning to take in stride.

Unexpected sight

I saw old Bert getting into his truck a few minutes ago. Like many men here who've cowboyed, his gait is crippled and he walks hunched over and to one side, and always, always wears his cowboy hat.

And it was on the back of that hat where I saw a most unexpected thing. Long known to me one of those dear old men (well into his 80s, I'd imagine) with solidly conservative views (as evidenced by the American Legion stickers and other signs of rightwing allegiances) , it was still unexpected to see Bert climb into his truck with a pink Breast Cancer ribbon on the back of his hat.

Photos from El Paso's Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead

click on the photos for a closer view.

One of my favorite spots

I went back to my hometown last month to celebrate my dad's 75th birthday and stopped by a place filled with good memories. Near the center of downtown is the site of the old public library. Long ago razed, the city expanded the adjacent park to a full quarter block. The 1911 fountain, sculpted by Lorenzo Taft is still there, adorned by a small garden.

As a girl, I'd go with my mom to work on some Saturdays, and hang out in the library. As a staff member's daughter, I had the privilege of exploring the musty stacks, taking naps in the employee's lounge, and poking through the piles of a old newspapers waiting to be microfilmed. I was a roaming explorer, and when I found something that captured my imagination, such as newspapers from the civil war or 1920's comic strips, I'd spend hours just reading at times cross-legged on the library's old linoleum floors. It was here I first found WPA travel guides, their soft pages giving me a view of this country in the 30s, and a solid foundation for the work I'm doing today. You might say I spent my formative years with my head inside a microfilm machine, and loved every minute of it.

At lunchtime I'd walk down to the Woolworth lunch counter and have a tuna salad sandwich (this was before the allergy hit) and an orange pop. This made me feel incredibly independent. I'd dawdle on the way back to the library...all of two blocks....and soak up the sun outside the fountain before heading back to the soothing darkness of the stacks.

It was touching to see the nymphs and wolves and bears on the fountain were still in such great shape. I miss the old library of course, but I'm glad the spot is still giving the city so much grace and beauty.