by Phil Houseal | Dec 10, 2025 | All Articles, Education, History, Philosophy
Dec 10, 2025–I was attending a political rally when a high school basketball game broke out. Not really, but the two are connected. As a lifelong fan of roundball, I occasionally drop in on a random high school game just to enjoy the level of play and skills of the...
by Phil Houseal | Dec 3, 2025 | All Articles, Philosophy
Dec 3, 2025–What would you do if you didn’t have to do anything? Lately I seem to know a lot of people who have reached that point in life when they no longer need to work for a living. Circumstances vary: they may have sold a business, they may have come into an...
by Phil Houseal | Nov 26, 2025 | All Articles, Events, History, Philosophy
Nov 26, 2025–One of our favorite family excursions while raising our combined DNA was attending the Texas Folklife Festival. Held every summer on the grounds of the Institute of Texan Cultures in downtown San Antonio, the event gave us three days of wallowing in the...
by Phil Houseal | Nov 19, 2025 | All Articles, Events, History, Philosophy
Nov 19, 2025–Just got word that one of our family reunions has been discontinued due to lack of interest. I am trying to decide how that makes me feel. Family reunions were an essential part of growing up. A reunion served as a benchmark that brought home the far...
by Phil Houseal | Nov 12, 2025 | All Articles, Education, Events, History, People of the Hill Country, Venue
In 2019, Lee Ann Whatley set off on a scavenger hunt to track down all the original paintings done by her grandfather, Lee Ethel. Like every good treasure hunter, she uncovered more than she originally sought. Lee Ethel was a successful graphic designer in Dallas for...
by Phil Houseal | Nov 5, 2025 | All Articles, History, Music, Philosophy
Nov 05, 2025–We recently returned from a cross-country car trip to an undisclosed location for an undisclosed family event. Prepping for this excursion caused me great anxiety. For someone who never deviated from his weekly routine for, oh, two decades, driving...
by Phil Houseal | Oct 29, 2025 | All Articles, History, Music, Philosophy, Venue
Oct 29, 2025–Recently I had to embark on something I haven’t done, nor had the desire to do, for three decades: Travel. More specifically, I had to undertake a cross-country car trip. In my youth, traveling coast to coast and border to border was in my blood. In fact,...
by Phil Houseal | Oct 22, 2025 | All Articles, Education, History, Philosophy
Oct 22, 2025–What single-purpose tools facilitate your daily living? That is, what is a tool that does only one thing, but does it extremely well. So well, that you couldn’t function without it. You probably don’t even notice them. But here are some examples I came up...
by Phil Houseal | Oct 15, 2025 | All Articles, Philosophy
Oct 15, 2025–After spending an hour on the phone with an unnamed governmental agency, I came to a conclusion: bureaucracy’s only purpose is to preserve itself. Our task this day was to let a certain state agency know that our retail business had closed years ago and...
by Phil Houseal | Oct 8, 2025 | All Articles, Education, History, Philosophy
Oct 8, 2025–“The productivity of any office is inversely proportional to the number of hand-lettered signs on the walls.” I once was hired to lead a public education program. The first thing I noticed upon entering the building was the number of signs. There was a...
