For most people, Fort Worth, Texas doesn’t conjure up a picture of devoted art patrons who support not just one, but three world-class art museums. Billy Bob’s honky-tonk, yes; Championship rodeo, yes. But art? Actually, yes times three. The Amon Carter Museum of American Art at least has a western theme, so this excellent –…
Month: August 2013
1st Scene of Story
It was 4 pm on a mild afternoon in May of 1930 and the small Texas town of Sherman had gone from drowsy to wild with rage in only a few hours. A colored man had reportedly raped a farmer’s wife and there was talk that he had mutilated her, as well, and that she…
A Story Beginning about the Sherman Riot of 1930
I have been working with a student on the phone for four hours, helping him with two essays for history at UCLA. It is now midnight. I can’t say that I will write for 20 minutes today. Instead, I will simply say that I have been writing all evening and I am pretty much pooped….
Does Media Make Us Happy?
I recently saw an article that said that Facebook causes people to feel less content because they tend to compare their lives to others. Along that same vein, I was helping a student tonight work on a paper based on a book whose premise is that Americans have shifted from family-centered to society-centered primarily through…
Web Problems and Miley Cyrus
I believe my blog posts have not been showing up for the past week on Facebook. I switched blog designs on WordPress and I suspect that this is the culprit. I did write my blogs on almost all the past 7 days, and they can be accessed at lenleatherwood.wordpress.com. I contemplated reposting them on Facebook,…
Reflections on the Passing of A Friend
Ingrid, my friend of over 30 years, has died. A friend I knew very well a long time ago, but with whom I had been out of touch until January of this year when we reconnected via Facebook. In June I discovered that she was ill, and only three days ago I learned that she…
Dust to Dust
Today we attended the “green” funeral of an old and dear friend of ours, Ingrid Wendt, near San Marcos, Texas. We have known Ingrid and her husband, Klaus, for 30 years, but have not seen them for at least 20. The look on Klaus’s face when we arrived was worth getting up at 3:30 am…
Cross-Country Driving
We are on the last 2 hours of our 24 hour drive from LA, CA to Sherman, TX. It is 11:56 pm, so we’re looking at a 2 am arrival. We stopped outside of Wichita Falls at a rest stop and slept for 30 minutes. That was about an hour ago. I have driven much…
Driving through the Night
We are in the middle of the Mojave on our way to Texas. It is 9:14 pm and we can see impressive lightning displays to both the north and the south, but, so far, have only had a few sprinkles of rain. The lights of Blythe, CA are off in distance and the road is…
Celebrating Ian’s New American Citizenship
Today, our friend and priest, Ian Elliott Davies, Welsh by birth, became an American citizen. He has been in the United States for eleven years, serving as the priest at St. Thomas the Apostle, Hollywood, and his road to citizenship has taken all of that time. Today when we picked him to go downtown to…
20 Minutes a Day 