by Phil Houseal | Jan 12, 2022 | History, Philosophy
Jan 12, 2022–While coming up with a topic for this week’s column, I became discouraged. Here’s why: No one bothers to read anymore. We are all tik-tokked and insta-ed to within an inch of our attention span. A few weeks ago I wrote what I thought was a brilliant...
by Phil Houseal | Dec 22, 2021 | All Articles, History, Philosophy
Dec 22, 2021–A group of us fuddie-duddies (people born in one of the previous centuries) were discussing the appeal and purpose of tattoos and piercings. Why, we asked rhetorically, do humanoids feel the need to ink their limbs and force metal objects through septa,...
by Phil Houseal | Nov 29, 2021 | All Articles, Events, History, Music
Dec 1, 2021–I’ve mentioned before my obsession with 1940s radio entertainment. Every night I fall to sleep listening to Edgar Bergen, Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, and The Big Show (Tallulah Bankhead was waaaaaay ahead of her time). Every program featured a musical...
by Phil Houseal | Oct 6, 2021 | All Articles, History, Philosophy
Oct 6, 2021–A generation ago, we kept chickens in cages and let kids “free range.” Today they’ve swapped places. Kids today are over managed. A lot of it revolves around school. Starting in Kindergarten, you got on the bus while it was still dark. You rode the bus for...
by Phil Houseal | Sep 29, 2021 | All Articles, Food, History, Philosophy
Sept 29, 2021–In the panoply of sentient life on earth, it wasn’t that long ago that we didn’t have candy bars. Or ice cream. Or sodas or pop-tarts. Breakfast cereals. Hamburgers. French fries. Coffee didn’t come to Europe until the 1500s. That means even...
by Phil Houseal | Sep 3, 2021 | All Articles, Food, History, People of the Hill Country, Philosophy
9/8/2021–As I grow in wisdom, one thing I understand better is my Grandpa’s fascination with Archway Cookies. Archway Homestyle Cookies were a Midwest grocery store staple in the 1980s. These cookies stood out from the sleeves of hard, cookie-cutter type cookies then...
