Electrical Building for the 1893 Columbian Exposition or the Chicago worlds fair It is 1888 and the engaging book, The Last Days of...

Counting down until Thanksgiving, one of the many things to love in Texas is the anticipation of tamale dressing. I had never even heard...

Harry Clarke’s, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Edgar Allan Poe, 1919 I find myself seeing imaginary crows out of the corner of my...

Every morning before daylight in my dimly lit study I stare into the eyes of a pensive raccoon. More exquisite in detail than any raccoon...

Ruins of the commanding officers quarters at Fort McKavett Ghosts of a bygone era stand pale white on the Texas plain; buildings that...

Architecture Photography by Martirene Alcantara Rome was born a city of bricks.  Before Augustus would leave her draped in marble, the...

The Reservoir at Villa Falconieri, Frascati, Maxfield Parrish “The prolongation of the house”, was how the avid gardener and writer Edith...

Images of the recent devastation of Amatrice, the Northern Lazio hill town in central Italy that was damaged by a strong earthquake,...

I am captivated by gin. My lifelong love of old movies suggested the notion that a gin martini was sophistication in a glass. I love the...

If there’s to be a discussion on hand-made beauty, one cannot ignore the automobile. At last week’s Pebble Beach Concours...

The idea of home has always been centered around the Hearth–it is where we nurtured our soul and our body. After World War II we began to...

Carl Jung, detail from The Red Book The box is bigger than I had imagined and I hurry to open it knowing it is the book I have been...

This was Thomas Jefferson’s declaration to John Adams in June of 1815 as the last cart, ten in all, left Monticello for Washington D.C....

Dragons of Chang Ch’ien, Tom Lovell, 1934 The dog days of summer. The heat fills your lungs and seems to choke you. The plants are dying,...

The Sandia Mountains and the Rio Grande The air has that particular taste to it, high and dry, hung with dust and humming...

The fog hung heavy like a damp blanket over the islands, smothering the harbor in an eerie silence. Slowly, faintly, a rhythmic chant...

Vast infinite stillness overcomes you in far west Texas. Earth opens up to the sky exposing deep cuts and gashes and the very space...

Barbecues, fireworks, blankets on the ground, I stare at the sky thinking about how I have celebrated on the 4th of July and am flooded...

Gilbert Stanley Underwood presenting his design for Ahwahnee Hotel around 1926 “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state...

Strolling the beach in Port Aransas, Texas in the spring and summer you can’t help but to encounter the most amazing and dangerous...