Today, the Chinese have invaded our markets and taken over our stores. It is not, however, for the first time. I learned of the influence of goods from the Far East while I was working on my novel on 1770s New Spain. We’ve already discussed the magnificent palaces built in Mexico at the time. What […]
Why do people steal documents in order to add them to their private collections? Several years ago, I was doing research at the Archivo Municipal de Matamoros. The room is dungeon-like, deep in the bowels of Casa Mata, a 200 year-old fort. The chairs are hard wood, the table worn oak, polished from years […]
How beautiful to live one’s life so well as to be loved by an entire town. His name was Arturo Castillo. Born sometime near 1900 in the northern Mexican town of Reynosa, his family moved across the border to San Antonio and subsequently to California where Arturo, or Artie, as he was called in […]
J. Frank Dobie, the Texas Folklorist and author, said writers should walk the land they write about. Editors and agents and those who advise writers insist that we should write about what we know. If we’ve been there, we know the scents and sounds and feel of the space that surround our […]
Rule Number One – don’t. I just received the manuscript, no, I take that back, the English version of the published e-book of the biography of Bernardo de Gálvez. It was written (in Spanish) by my dear and beloved friend, the vice president of the Association of Bernardo de Gálvez in Malaga, Spain. With […]
Dear fellow writers, if you use Spanish, PLEASE have someone check your manuscript! I just saw a post on FB by my dear friend Aislinn, a talented and dedicated Spanish teacher. It was a cartoon of four panels. The teacher asks “Who are we?” Students respond “Students in Spanish class” Teacher asks “Como te […]
Keeping up with New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight and stay healthy is hard work. My 96 year-old mother called from Orlando last night to report that she is doing fine and still swimming her 21 laps every day. Her husband, Crazy Al, takes her to the YMCA pool in the morning at 6:30 and […]
How do we find information on our Hispanic families? I’m not a skilled Genealogist like Moises Garza – you might look him up at We are Cousins or Mimi Lozano out in California at Todos Somos Primos. But Gilbert Villareal asked if I would contribute some experiences as a researcher at the various archives in […]
The cooking for volunteers started small. The Folk Festival at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum in Huntsville, Texas has been going on for close to 20 years. It began during a period when the Texas legislature, in its infinite wisdom, decided to defund museums and let them sink or swim on their own. The community […]
“They” say you have to have web page if you are going to publish. Upon retiring and taking up writing novels instead of serious non-fiction, “everyone” said I had to have a web page. “The agents and publishers will look at it,” they said, “and decide if you are even […]