Tag: houston

Six Things

  1. The last time I went to the post office, I had a package from Rob, also known as The Smiling Bagel. I call him St. Louis’s goodwill ambassador, because his blog always makes me want to visit that city. He sent me some bottle caps for my ongoing art series. I haven’t painted in a while. Maybe this is the nudge I needed. It wasn’t until I photographed the bottle caps and uploaded the picture that I became aware of….
  2. A tiny wrapped package of pressed pennies from the St. Louis Zoo featuring a train, a hippo, a peacock, and a butterfly. See what I mean about how he promotes his home city? He remembered that I like to collect pressed pennies from tourist attractions, and now I have four new ones. Thank you so much, Rob–for the bottle caps and the pressed pennies!
  3. In going through some old pictures, I found this photo of my mother’s desk. I think Laura and Jess got that desk. The four paintings on the top are four of my One Word Art paintings that she once picked out for either her birthday or Christmas. They were the four that spoke to her, she said. Rather than reclaiming them, I believe I sent them with a box of stuff to Daniel. I’d forgotten them until I saw this photo. I believe they are, left to right, “Trust,” “Surrender,” “Plant,” and “Learn.”
  4. I’m reading Karl Soehnlein’s novel Robin and Ruby.
    I wanted to photograph one of Barnaby’s bigger-than-your-head salads to show you how enormous it is. I usually get a dinner, the next day’s lunch, and maybe a third small salad out of one of these. The salad is excellent, but their ranch dressing is THE BEST. It’s great for dipping fries in, too.
  5. When Jim was here, one afternoon we went to the Menil Collection and the Cy Twombly Gallery. I have to go back to the Menil soon. The next day, we hit up the Museum of Fine Arts, the Lawndale Art Center, and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. The last is where Jim got me into trouble when he posed for me–it was like the dozenth photo I’d taken, but only when Jim got all goofy were we told, “You can’t take photos of the art here!” Oops. I’d like to say I feel remorse, but I don’t (and I didn’t use a flash). I do recommend that particular exhibit: INTERSTITIAL SPACES: JULIA BARELLO & BEVERLY PENN. It’s there until September 1.
  6. I finally persuaded myself to download Instagram to my iPhone. That’s my first photo: Pixie and Penny all bored, watching out the window for something exciting like a squirrel to appear. I don’t know how much I’ll use Instagram–I have two other photo apps on my phone that I never use. I need to feel the heft of a camera in my hands. But at least now I can look at other people’s Instagram galleries, and some of their pictures are beautiful and creative.

I was not compensated by any businesses, artists, or products mentioned in this post other than sales of my own art work.

Legacy Writing 365:225

August 12 is the birthday of Mark G. Harris, who not only did the first Runway Monday with Tim and me, but was also a contributor to Fool For Love and once endured a hurricane and its aftermath with the residents and dogs of The Compound and RubinSmo Manor.

We venture out to see the damage, and Lindsey bites Mark for practice in case it’s the Zombie Apocalypse.

Monday is the birthday of Lynne’s late sister, our friend Liz. It’s always really hard for me to call her that, because when she was young, she got the nickname “Toota.” That and “Toota Bob” are all I ever called her, even when everyone else started calling her Liz.

I like dipping into Lynne’s old family photos because they remind me that even though our childhoods were in two different worlds and many miles apart, certain iconic scenes are repeated. Tom’s family photos are the same. Here are a few featuring my big-sister-by-choice.


Liz, Lynne, and their older siblings Amanda and Chap. Good looking kids!

I love this photo because I, too, had an older sister who wanted to be a cowboy and got a holster and guns one Christmas, like Liz who’s shooting the photographer. It looks like Lynne might be the one telling her who to shoot–always so bossy! Then in the middle is pretty Amanda, who’s reached that part of the teen years when you realize there might be memories you want to hold on to. I, too, had a scrapbook, but it was a hobby that had all but died by my adolescence (historians place the blame on photo albums) until it exploded into an industry again in the 1990s, this time for adult hobbyists. It’s still going strong.


All grown up now, and Liz looks distressed that I’m flinging myself at this dolphin at Six Flags.


Here, Jess is (barely) being held by his great-aunt Lil at the bar in Lynne’s parents’ kitchen with me, Liz, and Craig. I can’t remember having all that hair.


Aunt Toota with Jess. She endured a lot of health problems and was one of the most stoic people I ever knew. But feeling bad could make her moody and sometimes caused her to keep strangers and even people she loved at arm’s length. However, kids were always drawn to her because she had a way of making you feel safe, like everything was going to be okay. I know this because I was one of the first kids whose silly butt she had to haul all over the place and look out for. I miss her, and I know her family misses her, too.

Legacy Writing 365:217

Tom and I were just trying to remember our introduction to Barnaby’s cafe. I doubt either of us ate there before we moved into Montrose, because I don’t remember going there with Steve R/ Jeff/John/Tim R. So our most likely first time there was 1997. I know we were already regulars by the time I met Rhonda online late that year, because it was one of those things we bonded over in our chat room. Just about all the locals love Barnaby’s. I’m betting it was James who took me there first. In those days, there was only one location, the original on Fairview. Next door in the same building is Baby Barnaby’s which absolutely can’t be beat if you wake up early enough to have breakfast there. James, Steve V, and I used to go there frequently.

In time, the River Oaks Barnaby’s opened, then the one on West Gray. There’s another in Houston, but it’s outside the ‘hood, so I’ve never been there. Barnaby’s is our go-to place for takeout for us and visiting family and friends, and it’s also the place I go with my suburban friends and out-of-town guests. Which location we choose depends on how many of us there are, time of day, etc., because the restaurants’ sizes vary. But one thing has always been true. Whether I’ve been there with straight friends or gay, male or female, off-beat or buttoned-down, with or without kids, we’ve always been treated with the same courtesy. I like keeping my dollars local, and I like knowing my friends will be respected not only as patrons but as people.

Jim treated Tom and me to lunch there on Wednesday. Tim wasn’t able to go, because he was battling a virus and allergies off and on during the week–and really, with the amount of intolerant and hurtful comments he had to see online last week, I think chicken was the last thing he wanted. Jim, on the other hand, had a grilled chicken sandwich because he knew it came without sides of indifference or malice (neither of those is as tasty as Barnaby’s fries!).

This should make Puterbaugh feel a little nostalgic.

Legacy Writing 365:214

The first time all four of the Timothy James Beck writers met as a group in the same place was in Houston in the spring of 2001. Tim actually visited for a month during that time, and Timmy and Jim came for a week of it. Besides getting to sign books at Crossroads (now closed) and visiting our friend Steve V at Detering Books (now closed), we got a ton of work done. Restaurants visited included Baba Yega and Niko Nikos (both still open! It’s shocking.). (ETA in 2022: Baba Yega now closed.) We also got professional publicity shots taken (my hair was crap), and did our own photo sessions in several local spots.

One of these included the Bloch Cancer Survivors Plaza. This is one of those polarizing public art installations. Some people find it inspiring and uplifting, others think it’s just bad art. No judgment here. All I can say is that it brought out the whimsical side of the guys that day.

On Jim’s visit this year, we went to visit that other polarizing public art source, David Adickes’ Sculpturworx.


Standing next to President Obama, Jim makes the “Bill Clinton thumbs up sign.”


Tim, Jim, and Tom overlooked by President Clinton.

Legacy Writing 365:212

Our friend and writing partner Jim is visiting The Compound. Each year when he comes, we make an agenda (this is his request because otherwise he knows we’d never leave the house), and on the agenda is “The List,” which is an ongoing list of movies we’ll all watch together one day (if not this visit, a future one). And of course, he knows he’ll get to catch up on the latest Twilight franchise release–so far, that hasn’t kept him away.

Monday I had a big pot of homemade beef and vegetable soup simmering most of the day (someone at The Compound is a little under the weather, and soup is good food, even when it’s hot outside*). After Jim arrived, we sat down to soup and the fixings for sandwiches. I gave Jim a special plate for his sandwich.

After we finished eating, he noticed that the knife he’d used to cut his sandwich had sliced between Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. IT’S A SIGN!

The first time Jim came to Houston, in December of 1998, I assured him he could pack for mild weather, that it’s almost never cold in Houston through the Christmas season. Jim doesn’t like cold weather, so this suited him just fine. Of course, it was freaking freezing that year, and he’s never believed anything I’ve said about Houston weather since.

No problem keeping warm this visit–we’re giving him plenty of heat and humidity.

Here’s a shot of Jim with Sweet Li’l Amy Sue outside Baba Yega restaurant on that first visit. I’d say something about how adorable they are, but I’m distracted by Jet behind them. My car was only an eight-month-old then.

*Kudos to anyone who gets the “when it’s hot outside” reference after all these years.

If I could turn back time

It’s a good thing these stories I’m editing are so enjoyable to read, since…


The other night I went to Murder By The Book because the wonderful Carolyn Haines was signing her new mystery, Bonefire of the Vanities. I’m behind in the series, so I now have two Sarah Booth Delaney mysteries beckoning me from my TBR pile. I’m using them as my carrot: When I get caught up with the editing, I can start reading Bones of a Feather.


In my last post, I mentioned how my aunt and uncle were great storytellers who I wanted somehow to weave into my fiction one day. But honestly, I feel like if I could just follow Carolyn Haines around and listen to her tell stories, that would be as humorous and inspiring. If you ever get a chance to meet her, take it.

One of the things she talked about was how it took her so long to give her character Sarah Booth a cell phone. When she started the series, Carolyn didn’t have a cell phone herself, but as the years progressed (well, in book publishing years; only about a year and a half has passed in Sarah Booth’s life, I think), it became implausible not to introduce a little technology. It reminded me of a time Greg and I were talking about an old Mary Stewart novel, and I said a coincidental plot point couldn’t happen in modern times because of technology. But Greg pointed out that the characters could have stumbled over an Internet news story and acquired the same information.

Still, I have a real longing to strip away technology from a novel I want to write. Sometimes characters don’t need to be able to access Wikipedia and Google. They need to think their way out of bad situations–or NOT–without rescue available at the touch of a button. There are only so many times a person can lose a cell phone or forget to charge it…or the Internet can be down… It’s a writer’s delight to put a character in awkward or perilous circumstances and watch as they use their wits and nerve to save themselves. It’s just not the same if OnStar and Siri and Travelocity do all the work.

Although I suppose technology-rich bestsellers prove me wrong daily, I’m still pretty glad Scout Finch couldn’t point a security camera at the oak tree; Juliet didn’t have face recognition software; and Miss Marple never hid a smart phone in her knitting bag. Though I can’t help but wonder what her ring tone might be.

Legacy Writing 365:172

This is our third Houston home: this time, we rented an actual three-bedroom house with enough space for us to breathe. Oddly, a few months ago when I went into the Northwest suburb where it’s located, I almost never found it. Everything has changed. Old access roads no longer exist, and new roads look so different. Even when I found the house, it didn’t look right. For one thing, that iron gate wasn’t on it when we lived there. Tom agreed that the house looks different from how he remembered it. I know the landscaping has totally changed.

The house is larger than it looks from the front, and it had a good-sized backyard that the dachshunds loved. For the first time they could be outside unleashed and run as much as they liked. There was an uncovered patio, and sometimes I set my little Mac out there and wrote.

Some things I remember about living there:

  • We didn’t have enough furniture to fill it, so we bought a twin bedroom set with a dresser and an additional dresser/hutch for the guest room. We bought a daybed for the other bedroom. My mother moved in with us for a year or so. Though she put most of her stuff in storage, we used her living room and dining room furniture. The only stuff left from all that are the twin beds and the dressers that went with those, which are now in Lila’s room in Lynne’s house at Green Acres. I do wish I still had the daybed. Lynne made a lot of furnishings for the daybed with some Ralph Lauren sheets that I loved. I still have those. We put the pillows on the window seat in our current dining room and she turned the daybed’s dust ruffle into a dining room curtain for us.
  • Either we took some of the roaches with us from the dreadful apartment or there were some already there, because we had to do battle with them the entire time we lived in the house.
  • Before Steve R died, he made arrangements for where his cats should go. That didn’t happen as it was planned, so the cats ended up living in the daybed room with a gate up so they could get out if they wanted to, but the dogs couldn’t get in to bother them. Dachshunds are burrowers, so at night they’d get under the covers with Tom and me, and the cats would wander the house, even coming into our bedroom to say hello, and the dogs never knew it.
  • Someone used a crowbar to try to break into my car, doing a ton of damage to the door. When the crowbar didn’t work, they broke one of the windows. The grand total of what they took: a pack of cigarettes. That was a pricey pack of cigarettes for my insurance company and me. They snubbed my cassettes–obviously didn’t share my taste in music. And they took all my photos and files that were being used to create a booklet for Steve’s memorial service, plus whatever was in the glove box, and spread them all over the driveway. Nothing was damaged other than the car.
  • That house was the first place large enough that we could do any real entertaining. It’s where we lived the first time our friend Amy visited us. When the dogs ran in from the back yard, Pete charged her and she jumped ON the dining room table, I think bypassing the chair completely, so he couldn’t bite her. Later, they became best friends.
  • We were living in that house when Cousin Rachel called to tell us that her mother, Aunt Drexel, had died. I vividly remember standing in the kitchen, talking to Rachel on the phone, and feeling so sad and far away. I really loved Aunt Drexel.
  • One time my mother was going to chop up a leftover pork roast in the food processor to make barbecue from it. She forgot to put the lid on, and pork went everywhere. From then on, whenever they heard the food processor, Pete and Stevie ran into the kitchen with high hopes.
  • We kept getting onto Stevie for turning the trash over. Then one night after we left to go somewhere, Tom ran back inside for something and caught Pete IN THE ACT. We’d been blaming the wrong dog.