LITERARY COMMENT
I finished Elmer Kelton's HARD TRAIL TO FOLLOW that I think is his latest book in the Texas Rangers series. In this book Andy Pickard leaves the plow where he is working for his bride to be and rejoins to Rangers to find the man who killed Sheriff Tom Blessing. It is a great story that goes right by my house as Andy and an Indian tracker follow the bank robber that escaped from the East Texas sheriff's jail and headed toward the Clear Fork of the Brazos. The story ends in Fort Griffin with an O. Henry ending that is a typical Kelton story leaving you with a good feeling. In the last few paragraphs he compresses about 3 chapters that could have been written. I am looking forward to more Andy stories as he ends up being transferred to Kerrville and his fiancee agrees to marry him and go along. So there are more possible stories out there from Elmer.

Lou is doing a lot better this week. This morning she walked with me to the front gate and felt better and stronger. Her hair is now beginning to get longer and she is feeling better about getting her strength back. She worked on her computer writing a couple of letters that I printed for her. Tomorrow she will get back to writing more on her memoirs.

ANOTHER SPECIAL LITERARY NIGHT

Last night we had a special treat when James Olson, the author of Fair Play, spoke to the CP Public Library Meet the Author event. We are always wary that no one will come and when we were driving up at 6:30 I commented that this subject might attract some odd people. As we got to the parking lot, two motorcycles were being parked. One had a man and his wife, the other a grizzled older man with a POW/MIA hat on. Turns out they are from Eastland. The man and his wife had a son graduate from A&M with an Aero degree and after 3 times of trying finally got in Olson's course where the man had visited the class one time. The other man was a Marine veteran.

Olson is a retired CIA operative after 30 years of covert activity with his petite wife, who was also a CIA operative. He is now a prof at the George Bush center and teaches courses in foreign intelligence. He charms his students and the an audience. He told us how he was recruited by the CIA after a short time in the Navy after his bachelor's degree in Economics and Math when he went back for a law degree. He planned to practice law in a small Iowa town but took the offer to serve his country as a covert operative. The training is much like a special services officer even to parachuting out of planes to be dropped behind enemy lines. They learn to become proficient in several languages. He mastered French, German, Russian and Spanish. His first assignment was in Paris. He also served in Mexico, Vienna and Russia.

He detailed one operation that has been declassified. In Russia he was working at the embassy when the CIA got a note from a KBG agent who wanted to meet someone at a statue at 10 p.m. Olson was chosen because of his command of the language. He left in the morning with his wife and 3 children in his car. He knew the there were 12 KBG agents trailing him. He started toward the embassy when he suddenly whipped down some side streets and finally lost the tail, he bailed out of the car into a bush and his wife drove on to the embassy. He then put on a new plastic face, blue coveralls to look like a Russian worker and walked around until the meeting time. They were afraid of a set-up and being ambushed. He wore a wire and a scanner that scanned the KBG radio to know that they were still looking for him. He found the agent who said he hated communism and wanted himself and his family taken out. That was another story that hasn't been declassified.

The agent gave him a shoebox with 200 rolls of film that he had taken of secrets for two years. Olson knew he couldn't take it back to his house, so he stashed it in a secret place under a broken stair and covered with rocks and dirt. He went back to western clothes and when he got about 10 blocks from his house the KBG caught him and beat the stuffing out of him. Broke his jaw, knocked out teeth, etc. Later another operative recovered the loot and it was a major breakthrough in the cold war with Russia. It was a story straight out of a Clancy novel.

He told how they were uncovered in Vienna by Iranian terrorists and received a letter threatening him, his wife and children by name. He said that later the terrorists were taken out, but he was moved out of Vienna.

Margaret Waring came over from Comanche. Lavonne Childress said that she and her husband, Bob, who is on the Library board, heard Olson at a pecan growers convention. His book looks at the problems with the ethics of covert operations. I thought he would discuss that but he told stories about his career. We had a good crowd even with the school having a BB game between students and faculty.

Lou is feeling better. She walked to the front gate this morning and her hair is beginning to show some growth. The Tamoxifen is causing some side effects, but she is putting up with it. She is working on the MS of her memoir. She lost a paragraph that she wrote when I tried to help move her files around and deleted some.

LITERARY WEEKEND
The Texas Institute of Letters held their annual meeting in Dallas at the Hilton Park Cities Hotel. We missed the Friday reception that was held at the Harlan Crow private library in his estate where all the liberal writers were exposed to a conservative exhibition. We elected to miss that event and drove in Saturday so that Lou could attend the council meeting as a retiring member.

As we checked in Saturday morning Alice Specht, Hardin-Simmons University librarian grabbed me and asked if I knew a pretty little girl sitting in a chair in the lobby. I said I didn't and she informed me that her daughter, Mary Helen Specht is the current Dobie Paisano scholar in residence at TIL's Paisano ranch near Austin. While Lou was in her meeting, I spent $10 to log into the DSL line in the hotel room and check my email. I went to Judy Alter's blog and she has a link to Dallas books at: http://books.beloblog.com/ and on that blog there was the story of the reception at the Crow museum and in the article the writer quoted Mary Specht. I told her about it and she got to see the story. The sad thing is that the Dallas Morning News does not have a book page and did not print the story. That is sad.

After the council meeting Lou came to the room at 2 and rested her back on the bed for a few minutes then at 3 we went to the traditional session where new inductees read from their work. We really enjoyed that session. I got a column idea from Lynn Hoggard who sat next to me and told about getting a wrist watch stopwatch with a GPS capability that keeps track of where she is and has been. She downloads her trip in the computer and it displays a map with her trip and calculates her times and calorie use.

The new members who read started with T. Lindsay Baker, who is curator of the museum at Thurber run be Tarleton where he is on the faculty. He is a historian and has books on historical sites. He read from his book that he coauthored with an archeologist about Adobe Walls. The excerpt that he read quoted from a record of a conversation with Quanah Parker that was given in English, Comanche and sign language. He told about the Indian leaders sending 7 scouts out to inspect the Walls and their report resulting in the leader saying that they would kill white men the next day. I wanted to ask him if he had read Mike Blakely's latest book that has the fight at Adobe Walls in one chapter. It was written from the viewpoint of the Indians and the buffalo hunters inside.

The next inductee who read was Scott Blackwood, a former Paisano scholar who is from Austin. His story is from a coming novel that is set in Austin. His character was an auto thief with a legitimate Allstate Insurance business but makes his big money stealing requested cars that were sold in Mexico. In his story he was driving a stolen vehicle and in the last sentence he strikes a woman walking along the road leaving us wanting to know what happened next. He is a great writer that Lou talked to at length at the dinner that night when he sat next to her. Although from Austin his wife is from Clarendon so he knows a little about West Texas.

The next writer, Emily Fox Gordon, writes comic novels about academia. Both she and her husband come from New England but have been at Rice for 18 years. Her husband is a Psychology prof who has been a department head. The characters in her novel have a lot of herself and her husband. The excerpt that she read told about a department head having his long time truly dependable secretary being moved to the Dean's office and the new secretary a flake who decorated her area completely with fairies. She collapes into a fit of depression that requires him to counsel her in his office and is a hilarious story that resonates with all of us former academics.

Noel Parsons was introduced but declined to read from his most famous rejection letters as director of the Texas Tech Press.

The last writer who read from his work was Steve Wilson from San Marcos. He is a poet and read I think six short poems that he had written. I don't appreciate great literature and my only thoughts about his presentation was to remember when personal computers first appeared someone wrote a software program that put random phrases together in what appeared to be an academic paper that almost made sense. His poetry struck me in that fashion. I apologize to all of you poets. Now I do like Jan Seale's poetry. It makes sense.

That night Lou put on her nice looking light blue suit that she wore to Ashley's wedding. She wore a turban with a blue scarf around it and really looked good. She sat most of the reception time and took her pillow to use in her chair at the dinner. I sat next to Ron Rozelle from Lake Jackson who writes a column for the online paper THEFACTS.COM. His last column April 20 is about watching HBO about John Adams based on the novel by David McCollough. Ron told me about his problem with a New York agent not being able to market his book on Dean Smith who was a cowboy and stunt man for John Wayne. The agent said Wayne was of no interest to the public. Typical NY thinking about the west and shows why western novels and stories have disappeared from the book store shelves. Bob Cochran was next to him and is also going off the TIL council this year. Kip Stratton and Tom Dodge were also at the table but I didn't get to talk to them.

I can't give a complete listing of the TIL award winners but there were some interesting ones that I was interested in. Rick Bass, from Montana, won two awards. He couldn't come to the meeting because his daughter was running in a race in Montana. He won the O. Henry award for a story The Lives of the Browns that documented the story of a famous country music family that were best known in their time of Johnny Cash, The Beatles, etc. and are now lost to history, but still are alive and well in Arkansas. He won the best short story award for The Elephant in Tin House ( I think) that will be published as a novel called The Elephant. It is a story about an errant elephant from a circus in west texas ranch country.

The Best Newspaper Story went to Todd Benjamin for a story where he documented an Islamic illegal alien buying his way into the US.

The best book of fiction went to John McLaughlin. The best non-fiction book went to the former Ambassador to Burundi and his wife for their book about that country that is the poorest country in the world and they saw enormous tragically killing while they were there, but the people had a spirit and hospitality that overcame the horror.

The best book design award went to a book about the photos of Stanley Marcus of Neiman-Marcus fame. His daughter and granddaughter, who is a photographer, wrote the book.

The top award, the Lon Tinkle award went to David Weber, who couldn't be at the meeting because he is a visiting professor at Yale and is battling cancer.

We ended a great weekend by sleeping late, eating the breakfast buffet at the hotel that cost more than a tank of gas. We then drove to our Son's home to look at the hail damage. The metal parts all had dents as did his pickup that he couldn't get in his four car garage that has his two new cars, and two classic cars being remodeled. We then ate lunch with them at BooRays New Orleans restaurant and loved the food. I had Jambalaya and Lou had catfish that she loved and we have meals for tomorrow. We got home in time to get a little nap. Lou said that it has been a great weekend. Her back is still hurting some but she is feeling better.

SWALLOWS ARE BACK
I didn't realize that I hadn't posted recently, but that is good news. Lou is doing better and has been walking every morning. The last two mornings she has reached the Halsell house driveway. Still hasn't walked all the way to look at the spring. This morning a couple of swallows at the Halsell House flew around us to show that they are back. We don't have any up at our house this year.

It has been a good week. Started with the weekend when our daughter came to visit and fix some good food that we have been eating for a couple of days. The week has been full. Monday I had a Library board meeting, deposited the church offering as I am temporary treasurer, bought groceries and forgot some. That afternoon I worked on trying to update my bookkeeping for the church. Lou was worrying about getting her ethics form in and her constant back pain depresses her at times. Tuesday I worked on the church books, went to Cross Plains to get a haircut and go to Kiwanis. I also had scheduled a meeting with the pastor on the bookkeeping. She picked me up after Kiwanis when I left my pickup at the body shop to get the left rear light installed. So the day worked out fairly well. That night I worked a little on Lou's ethics forms unsuccessfully and spent a couple of hours posting up the church books through March for the meeting Wednesday. Wednesday morning I got back on the ethics committee website and found that the form has everything I put in last year in memory, so I got it completed in an hour or so. I prepared church checks that had come in the mail for deposit, took Lou to the bank where we got the ethics forms notarized, in the mail, deposited the church checks, ate lunch at Staghorn where every window had a large Help Wanted sign. We had enough to take some home for the next day.

After my nap I was able to finish the reports that I needed for my meetings that night, emailed them to the pastor who reproduced copies for the meetings and found that everything gets done if you don't worry about it.

This afternoon when we watch TV at 5:30 a storm came through. We got 0.3" rain, some small hail, and the power went off for a few seconds which makes the satellite box reboot. Then the storm got heavy enough to block the satellite for the local stations but not the distant ones. About 6:30 our son, Mark, called from Weatherford to say that they were looking for a safe room in the house because of a tornado coming their way. An hour later he called to say the tornado went south of them but they got golf ball size hail and it clogged his drains that he just built to drain his back yard.

We are getting ready for Texas Institure of Letters annual meeting this weekend. We will skip Friday, but go to Dallas Saturday for the meetings and big awards banquet that night. We wanted to welcome Noel Parsons who has just been elected to membership and see all of Lou's old friends. We will come home Sunday. I will let someone else teach SS class about Daniel in the Lion's den.

CELEBRATE!! CA125 IS 6

And that is a good number for 2 months after the last chemo. Due to your prayers, the chemo and the six grams of ginger, something is working. I will be very interested in seeing how the number does at the next check in two months. As you know CA 125 is a measure of the cancer cells and should be below 20 but they would like for it to be zero. I believe this is the lowest reading that Lou has had.

LOU IS INTERVIEWED
This afternoon Lou was interviewed by Hanaba Welch, a free-lance writer who publishes in the Abilene Reporter-News and Wichita Falls and Vernon newspapers. This was all arranged by a most generous Bill Neal when Welch came to interview him on winning the Rupert Richardson award. He insisted that she include Lou in the article and drove her out to Halsell Hill. She spent a couple of hours talking and photographing the two. She had an interesting use of duct tape on her foot and has a column on that subject at www.timesrecordnews.com. She has a web site at:
http://web.mac.com/hanaba.

We are waiting for the CA125 test results tomorrow and I will report then.

CANCER UPDATE
Today was the followup visit with Dr. Hancock, Lou's oncologist. He said her blood work was all normal for the tests that they can get immediately. The CA125 will be available Friday. In order to keep the number down, he prescribed a maintenance prescription. Mary Kathryn asked what he would do if the CA125 jumped up like last time and he said he wouldn't hesitate to put her back on chemo because she reacts favorably to that protocol. He told her that her hair would grow back. She told about her pains that are mostly back pains, but he was interested in the occasional abdominal pain that she reported. She asked about the possibility of metatisizing to her lungs or other organs. He said it was not likely - that her problem was with abdominal growths. I think that was why he was so interested in belly pain. She told him that she doesn't like to take prescription pain pills because she doesn't want to get hooked on them. He said that she doesn't have that problem. She needs to take pain pills when she has pain. If she takes them when she doesn't have pain, then she is addicted. I have been encouraging her to take pills when she has pain, and she is trying. She took some Tylenol this morning and said she will take aspirin tonight. I hope she can control the pain because yesterday she took no pain pills and was depressed at the end of the day. Today she hurt but made the trip in a good mood.

After the appointment (the next one is scheduled for two months) we went to Barnes and Noble where Lou sat and drank Starbucks coffee. MK bought a quilting magazine and I bought two religious books. One was a book of C. S. Lewis letters expressing his theology. I wanted to buy a new novel about Tesla by a woman writer that I read in the Times Book Review, but couldn't remember the name of the book or author. Now I will have to go back and look it up. Now when I am going to find time to read any of these books is another problem.

We were able to meet Mark for lunch at noon at Schezhaun's (Sp?) off Camp Bowie. Lou enjoyed her meal and we both brought enough home for tomorrow's lunch. We expected bad weather but as of this night it has all gone north of us in hop, skip and jump storms, some packing tornados. Tonight is expected to bring another round. We need the rain but not the damaging storms. Today we had sprinkles on us going and coming.

After we got home I installed a wireless mouse to Lou's laptop that Mark gave her that will let her hopefully operate without moving the pointer around on the screen. I disabled the touchpad and buttons. We will see if that makes it more useful to her. Mark was going to install it, but we came home to skip the predicted thunderstorms.

GRANDMOTHERS OF THE WESTERN FRONTIER
That is the name of Lou's latest publication. We got the Roundup yesterday and her article by that name was in the magazine. It is the official publication of the Western Writers of America. Last year she won the Stirrup award for an article in the magazine, but she doesn't expect this to win anything.

Today we got an email from Bob Compton reporting on Kent Biffle's hospital stay for a brain problem. He is some better. We also got news that Rev. Wallace Bennett is having heart surgery, so keep them in your prayers.

LOU'S CITATION BY DR. KEN DAVIS
I have still not processed my photo cards of the last two meetings, but I wanted to post the comments that Dr. Davis made when Lou received her Fellow plaque from the Texas Folklore Society.

Lou Halsell Rodenberger: Fellow of the Texas Folklore Society

I am honored to speak to Lou Halsell Rodenberger and this distinguished gathering of Paisanos. The Texas Folklore Society is at its best when it recognizes one of its own.

Lou Rodenberger earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science from Texas Woman’s University in 1947; then some 20 years later she earned an M. A. in English from Texas A&M University and in 1975 she earned the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English. She is professor of English Emeritus at McMurry University where she was twice named Outstanding Professor. The title of her dissertation reveals much about her life long interest in the lore of the folk. Here is that title: “Caroline Gordon, Teller of Tales; Influence of Folk Narrative on Characterization and Structure of Her Work.”

Lou has excelled in many areas. The words wife, mother, friend, journalist, author, editor, speaker, teacher, leader, and enabler all apply to her. I will focus on only two of the many qualities she possesses: Leadership and scholarship. Because we all know so well that she is a great wife, mother, and grandmother, there is no need for comment on these outstanding traits. The presence of so many members of her family attests to those roles.

As a leader she has been president of The Texas Folklore Society and the West Texas Historical Association. She is a Regent for the Texas Woman’s University. She is on boards of the Texas Institute of Letters and of Western Writers of America. She was secretary of the Texas Woman’s University Foundation Board. She has received numerous honors. She is a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association and is an Honorary Life Member of the West Texas Historical Association. She is a distinguished Alumna of Texas Woman’s University. She has spoken at the White House Conference on Writing. And there are numerous other honors.

As scholar, she has read many papers at TFS meetings and at other scholarly and professional meetings. She published writings are far too many to mention here, but I will note that she co-edited with Sylvia Grider two anthologies: Let’s Hear It: Stories by Texas Women (TAMU Press) and Texas Women Writers: A Tradition of Their Own (TAMU Press). She also edited 31 by Lawrence Clayton (McWhinney Press) and Her Work: Stories by Texas Women (Shearer Publishing). She authored two genuinely significant studies of Texas novelist Jane Gilmore Rushing. One is titled simply Jane Gilmore Rushing (Boise State University Western Writers Series) and she wrote an acclaimed critical biography also titled Jane Gilmore Rushing, published by TTU Press. She is first editor for Writing on the Wind, an anthology of West Texas writers published by the TTU Press. She has done numerous consultancies, reviewed books for scholarly presses, and served on countless boards and committees. And she is valued as friend, advisor, and encourager.

Recognizing genuinely superior achievements is an ancient folk tradition. Tonight in presenting Lou Halsell Rodenberger this plaque commemorating her being named Fellow of the Texas Folklore Society, we continue the great tradition. And in so doing we honor the long history of the Society and its loyal and talented members.

March 21, 2008

MY SPOUSE IS A FELLOW-AGAIN!!
Lou now has her third Fellow plaque to put on her wall. Last month she recieved the Fellow citation that she had been awarded by the Texas Folklore Society and today the West Texas Historical Association who awarded their first ever Fellow awards. They presented three with Lou now a Fellow of that organization. Their web site is: http://swco.ttu.edu/westtexas/. I don't know when they will post this event.

Lou also was a runner-up for the Rupert Richardson award for the best book on West Texas history. Her biography of Jane Gilmore Rushing and a book by Patrick Dearen: "Saddling Up Anyway: the Dangerous Lives of Old-Time Cowboys" were runners-up to the winner Bill Neal with his book on Getting away with Murder on the Texas Frontier.

Lou also gave a paper on how Jane Rushing used West Texas history in her novels. She got many compliments on the paper. She also handled the events better than I thought she would be able to. She used a prescription pain pill for the 6 hour drive to Canyon and that helped a lot. She was able to walk to the meetings and visit with all of her friends by sitting down as often as possible. And she made the trip back feeling fairly well. Her cold has her coughing a lot, but it is getting better. Mine is about completely gone. Our drive back was with a mean cross wind out of the SW but less dust than I had expected. The plowed fields were being irrigated and the only bad dust we saw was blowing down a dirt road. Most of the land was pasture land, although there are a lot of cotton farms along the way. We left Canyon at 2:38 and got home at 7:20. We only stopped one time for gas in Lubbock.

All in all it was a great 3 day meeting for Lou. The Holiday Express where we stayed had biscuits and sausage gravy yesterday and biscuits, sausage and a cheese omelet this morning. Lou ate her raisin bran and skimmed milk, so we were both happy. And the cost was less than $100 a night.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN
We are in Canyon, TX for the annual West Texas Historical Society where Lou will read a paper this afternoon. We drove up yesterday, leaving home at 10. We got to Post a little after noon and ate at George's restaurant that had very good food. I filled up with gas and we took Highway 207 north. It goes straight north thru Ralls and Floydada and through towns we didn't know about like Caprock, Emma (a ghost town) South Plains. I was surprised at all of the cotton farms in that rough area East of the Caprock. I had expected to see only ranches, which were plentiful. We drove north to Silverton where we turned west to Tulia and back on I-27 thru Happy to Canyon. There was a huge wildfire a few miles SW of Tulia. The wind was high the whole way. We could see clouds way back in the SE, but don't think we got any rain at home at least looking at the cumulative rainfall map on the net.

Lou took a prescription pain pill before we left and handled the trip with little pain. She has a cold and is coughing and blowing a lot, but it doesn't seem to be getting worse. I had one for 3 days that has only lingered a little as congestion. She is getting a little better as the chemo leaves her body. The other day she said she even got up from the couch without back pain, but that was an isolated experience. Hopefully if another disk doesn't collapse she will continue to get better.

It was 84 degrees when we got here but this morning it is in the 40s and will get to a high of 65, so the cold front moved thru. Our sessions don't start until this afternoon. Last night they had an early bird reception and dinner and we got to see a lot of old friends. Preston and Harriett Lewis were there and we haven't seen them for years. Preston has quit writing what I thought were some of the best westerne I have read. He tells the story that everytime he published a western the company went out of business so each book was published by a different publisher. He handles publicity for Angelo State University and completed a Master's in History. The last I heard he had a 3 book contract to write children's books. I think about western historical persons.

Lou's paper is how Jane Rushing used West Texas history in her novels. I think, I haven't read her paper. She says this is the last paper she plans to write. She is working on her memoir, at least in her head. She plans to submit chapters soon to Judith Keeling at TT Press.

I got an email yesterday from a reader of my Livestock Weekly column asking for more information on the company that is having remote farmers launch balloons with wi-fi internet stations to cover remote rural locations. The reader was a woman in a remote NM location who wanted to help launch balloons. I had read about it in my Wall Street Journal and fortunately when I googled I found the article online and sent it to her. I wonder how many newspaper columnists who list their email address get any replies. I have always listed my address asking for response and get almost no replies. No more than four or five a year.