Lou went to Sunday School and church today! This was her first visit since her emergency surgery May 6. I think everyone in the church gave her a hug and big welcome. She contributed to the SS discussion. The lesson quoted Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and she is an expert on Twain. We ate at the Mexico City restaurant and she napped some with me after reading the FWST Sunday paper. I think she got a little depressed by the front page story about meth addicts. She gains more strength each day and is looking for some hair regrowth.

Yesterday, October 26, Lou made more literary history by giving her first review of her latest book from Texas Tech Press, JANE RUSHING: West Texas Author and Her Work. The review was given to the Ex Libris Book Club at the Fort Worth Women's Club. I haven't read Betty Weisepape's book about women's clubs, but I will bet this is one of the oldest clubs in Texas. The book club has limited membership and they are very responsive. Lou had several reassure her that after their chemo treatments that the hair will grow back and they liked the hat she wore for her talk. Most had never heard of Jane Rushing and appreciated learning about her.

While Lou was speaking I took the opportunity to go to the North Hills hospital to visit our long time friend, Mark Kite, who is recovering from a couple of strokes. He is regaining the use of his right side, has stood up, and will be moved to a rehab facility today. His speech is still a little slurred and his daughter, Missy, said he switches from English to French. She asked him a question and he answered "oui" while I was there. His wife, Madge, regaled me with her descriptions of her plans for Halloween. She always overdecorates the house and yard and hands out such fine treats that her house is one of the most visited in FW. She said last year she had 272 visitors versus 165 the year before. She is planning for over 270 this year. She has friends that come and help her that night. She is 89 and something else!

The comments are working now. Check Monday's post and you will see the comments show several. Click on comments and read them and add yours if you wish. You will see that Judy Alter included her photo, so there are a lot of things you can do with your comments.

Lou is gaining more strength every day. This morning she walked past the front gate and down 2228 for a ways to meet me. This afternoon about 5 it started a light rain. We may not get to walk tomorrow morning but we need the rain.

Maybe I have found the problem with comments. When you want to comment, click on the blue comment word at the bottom of the post. That will give you a screen to post your comment and publish it. If you click on the envelope it sends an email to me and doesn't get published.

Many of you have found this blog and are learning about blogs. Some have tried unsuccessfully to comment. I checked my settings and I permit anyone to comment so I haven't solved the problem. Keep trying and I will keep working on this end. I am new to blogging and am not much of a techie, even if I am a rocket scientist by profession.

Lou said to remind you these are my comments and not hers. She doesn't want to offend her liberal friends and I don't wish to either, but blogs let you state your opinion about the world and I am a religious fundamentalist and an admirer of the President based on my study of his character.

God is good. Our prayers are being answered. Lou is gaining strength every day. She seriously considered going to church with me this morning, but I discouraged the idea because of the cold weather. The church is very cold and heated with a few propane heaters that take a while to warm up. She isn't sure her immune system is fully recovered, but she is walking further everyday. Saturday she walked to the front gate again and didn't have to rest at her chair at the end of the path. She is preparing for a talk to the Ex Libris Book Club at the Fort Worth Women's Club Thursday noon.

I would ask you to pray for our friend, Mark Kite, (our son Mark's namesake) who is in intensive care in North Hills Hospital in North Richland Hills due to a couple of strokes last Thursday afternoon. He is gaining some strength today and slept well last night. His wife, Madge, is a retired nurse and takes good care of him. His children are like ours and also take care of them both.

Lou is bouncing back and her energy level is increasing every day. Yesterday when I was coming back from my 2 mile walk she had come through the front gate and was coming down the highway. She is looking forward to walking the 2 miles again. This morning she got almost to the front gate before I got back.

The latest big event in her life was a box delivered by Fedex that had copies of her book published by Texas Tech Press. JANE GILMORE RUSHING: A West Texas Writer and Her Work is now available for sale at your favorite book store. Lou worked on this book for years and was pleased with the photos and cut lines that Judith Keeling, her editor from TTPress obtained for the book. It is priced at $29.95 for the hard cover, but it has photographs.

The book is dedicated to Ken Davis, Sylvia Grider and Phyllis Bridges and acknowledges Cherry Shults for helping her get books from interlibrary loan. Today I took a copy to the Cross Plains Library for the Texas collection.

First things first. If you are reading this blog, send me an email. I have checked with several and found noone who is looking at it.

Lou is doing better and better. Yesterday she felt good enough to visit with Johnny Boggs, who was here for our Meet the Authors program. She went with us to dinner and to hear Johnny speak. She was worn out and asked Jane Bonner to host Johnny at her B&B for the night, which she graciously did.

This morning she walked almost to the gate before I got back from my 2 miles. And then we went to her hair dresser to have two wigs styled. She wore one home and it looked great. A little more blond than her hair was before the chemo.

On books, I am reading O'Reilly's CULTURE WAR. It reads like he talks and he has a good point in the book. My take on Bush is quite different from some of my friends, because I read about his faith and the book A MATTER OF CHARACTER that compared his character with previous presidents written by an investigative reporter who had no previous committment to Bush. It shaped a lot of my thinking and as far as I know was not a best seller. I never understand why everyone doesn't think like I do. That has puzzled me for years.

Yesterday was a great day because the weather forecasters were wrong. We drove to Midland to attend the Fall Gathering sponsored by the Haley Museum to see Bob Green receive the Foy Proctor award given to great ranchers. This was the sixth year of these awards. We got involved about 5 years ago when Lou was invited to be on the program as a story teller. The program has story telling from 3 to 6:30 a chuck wagon bbq meal and then the presentation of the awards. This year the story tellers were all old ranchers, including Bob Green, with great stories. I was impressed by Bob telling about his family meeting Will Rogers in Breckenridge who invited them to visit him in California. At a doctor's recommendation his father took a vacation with his family to CA. After a couple of weeks on the beach they drove up to Will Rogers place. The gate was locked but his father told the kids to walk along the fence looking under rocks until they found a key. They did, went in and were looking at the horses in the barn when Will came in. He invited them to a polo game he was playing in the next day.

I had feared the rain and cold weather would prevent Lou from participating, but we drove through a little drizzle on the way out. It didn't rain all doing the gathering and only rained a little during the night. Lou was in good spirits and enjoyed visiting with the Brown family as well as a new family we met at our table. Jean Lee runs the HAT ranch between Alamogordo and El Paso. Her son, his wife and a son and daughter were there to celebrate 3 New Mexico rancher neighbors who were receiving awards. They have never visited Abilene. We were invited to visit them in NM. She drives 70 miles to get postal mail so we had a conversation about email. She appreciates that and I suggested she get a satellite highspeed connection.

For the book part of this blog, I might mention that Bob Green was one of our CP Meet the Authors with his book OKINAWA ODYSSEY, the story of his service in WWII as a tank commander for the entire battle of Okinawa. It was a riveting book for me and a good remembrance of the savagery of the Japanese. We are looking forward to Johnny Boggs coming in Tuesday for Meet the Authors.

When we got home we found that the promised 2 to 4 inches of rain at this point has been zero. We are still praying for rain and hoping more will fall.

Today was a Red (Pink) letter day for Lou. She spoke to the Pink Bag luncheon at TCU in Fort Worth to a group of mostly women who are working against cancer. She reviewed the book that she edited with two others WRITING ON THE WIND: STORIES BY WEST TEXAS WOMEN. The format was unusual for her. Instead of her usual review, she answered questions about the book. It was well received and most of the women bought a copy for her to sign.

She started the morning by walking to the creek to meet me coming back from my 2 miles. She was puffing some but doing much better than Monday. We skipped Tuesday because it still looked like rain. We got .75" during the early morning hours before we got up.

After the luncheon we went to Borders to spend the gift cards from our son's family. I bought O'Reilly's CULTURE WARRIOR and a big book labeled CONAN to give to the Cross Plains Library. Lou bought a book by a woman author and I don't know the title. We then drove by our son's house in Weatherford where he was still fighting a flu bug. Lou didn't get out of the car and stayed well clear of him. He is getting better and working from home using his laptop. He has been out two days.

Speaking of being out, our TV has been gone since Sunday when we tried to watch the game and the receiver box failed. UPS delivered a replacement today and I will install it tomorrow. We haven't missed it. We listen to the news on the radio some and have talked about not turning TV back on until after the election in November. We have done quite a bit of reading. I had magazines stacked by my chair for weeks. Got them whittled down. Now back to some books.

Today Lou says she feels more energetic. This morning when I came back from my walk, I met her almost at the creek. Her goal is to walk to the front gate again this week. Hopefully tomorrow we won't be able to walk because it will be raining. It has been cloudy today but on the weather radar on the web it looks like it is moving NE and will miss us for a while. Maybe it will come in later tonight.

Wednesday, Lou will be speaking at the Pink Bag book study luncheon at the request of Judy Alter at TCU Press. They even invited the chauffer to eat with them. Saturday we are planning to go to Midland to the Haley Museum Fall Gathering where they honor ourstanding ranchers. Bob Green from Albany, who we met through having him speak to the Cross Plains Library Meet the Authors project about his book OKINAWA ODYSSEY, will be one of the honorees and we wanted to support his induction.

So as you can see Lou is starting to feel better and hopefully won't wear herself out or pick up a bug while her immune system is still recovering.

Charles

Yesterday, October 3, Lou had her blood work and two CT Scans done at Hendrick Hospital in Abilene. It was a tough day because she couldn't drink anything but clear fluids. She finished about 2 and celebrated by a big meal at Red Lobster. We did some shopping at HEB and came home. Today she is still lacking energy, but doesn't hurt as much as she has been.

I read a book waiting for her yesterday. Finished HANNAH AND THE HORSEMAN by Johnny Boggs, who will be our author at the CP Public Library Meet the Author event Oct. 17. I read his book THE BIG FIFTY, a history of a Sharp's buffalo hunting rifle in a novel about buffalo hunting on the Llano Estacado that started with a Kansas boy being attacked with his father by Comanches. The boy was captured and lived with the Indians for a couple of years. He escapes and joins a buffalo hunting crew. The history covers the Adobe Walls fight and ends down at Fort Griffin, so I knew the terrain. It was a great story. HANNAH is set at Fort Davis and I need to find out where some of the passes are. Limpia creek I am familiar with. It ends with a horse race on a six mile track that starts and ends in Fort Davis. The protagonist is an educated son of a Greek fisherman who reads Homer in the Greek while he is breaking mustangs to sell to the army at Ft. Davis. His adventures require him to steal his horses back from Apaches and from white rustlers all while he is befriending Hannah who runs an orphanage that the bad guys are trying to repossess. As far as I could tell, Petros didn't get any sleep for two weeks in the story.

Another book that I thought was great and posted my review in Amazon.com is THE LONG JOURNEY HOME by Don Coldsmith. My review said it should be made into a great movie. It is a great historical novel centered on the career of Jim Thorpe, the legendary Indian athlete from Prague, OK where I lived for 3 years. It should be a movie because it covers a young Lakota Indian who tries to move into the white man's world and whose adventures takes him to the Olympics in Sweden to coach Thorpe and later to visit the Olymics in Germany when Hitler ignored Jesse Owens, the black star. The Indian was given the American name John Buffalo, tries unsuccessfully to break into the coaching business after a too successful football career at Carlisle, joins the Army in WWI, catches flu and falls in love with his Army nurse, finally joins the 101 Ranch Western Show and travels all over the world with that operation. It would make a great movie. Has an interesting love story throughout. I loaned it to our local cowboy, Tim Byerly, and he appreciated the horse stories. The characters include Pickett the black cowboy who bulldogged steers by biting their lip, meetings with famous coaches including Naismith, who invented basketball, stories of legendary football games and a whole lot more.

I named Chuck Etheridge's book incorrectly. It is BORDER CANTO TRILOGY: BOOK ONE. My daughter borrowed it for her husband, Keith, to read. I still think it is a great novel.

Charles