JUNE 2015
Welcome to Boerne
Scan Code With Your Smart Phone
Bluebonnet Realty HOMES FOR SALE
1.) FOR SALE - UNDER CONTRACT! TAPATIO SPRINGS TOWNHOME
2.) FOR SALE - $267,000 - 2 bed, 2 bath charmer in Ranger Creek. Beautiful yard, covered porch, bonus room, garden area, water catchment system, and much much more!
3.) FOR SALE - $425,000 - 4 bedroom, 2.5 baths, approx. 3095 s.f. of living area on 3.65 acres new on the market! Great Views!
PROPERTIES FOR LEASE
4.) FOR LEASE - $2100 - Garden home on golf course in Fair Oaks Ranch. 2 bed, 2 ba approx. 2245 s.f; with 2 car garage
5.) FOR LEASE - $1595 - 4 bed, 2 ba in Boerne Heights. Available now.
6.) FOR LEASE - $1800 - 3 bed, 2 ba near downtown with extra storage.
7.) FOR LEASE - $1400 - 1 bed, 1 ba cottage with amazing views!!! About 3 miles out of Comfort
8.) FOR LEASE - $1300 - 3 bed, 2 ba mobile on 1/2 ac in Walnut Hills. Approx.1850 s.f. of living area
9.) FOR LEASE - $1700 - 3 bed, 2 ba approx. 1674 s.f. of living area on 1 acre lot, fenced. Near High School.
MORE HOMES AVAILABLE. CALL FOR LISTINGS.
830-816-2288 • www.boernetexashomes.com
FATHERS. SONS. WE ARE ALL GENT.
Dr. Ben Stahl, MD and his son Charlie Owner, Boerne Family Medicine
styling for the discerning gentleman™
$10 OFF YOUR FIRST EXPERIENCE
GENT gift cards make the perfect Father’s Day gift. Stop by or purchase one online for the gentlemen in your life. Available in any denomination.
930 E. BLANCO, BOERNE TX
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830.443.4500
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w w w. c o m p l e t e g e n t . c o m
JUNE
Explore what's inside this issue!
10 From the Publisher 12 Calendar 14 MUSIC
24 WINE
32 Spiritual
26 Art
36 Life
Mark Twain had it right about dads An interview with cliff Cavin
TROUBADOUR
16 The art of
Publisher Benjamin D. Schooley ben@hillcountryexplore.com
Baggage
Operations Manager Kristine Duran kristine@smvtexas.vom
WHEALTHY
Physical and financial health. How “whealthy” are you?
Yoga
Hill Country yoga with Rachel Villanueva
Creative Director Benjamin N. Weber ben.weber@smvtexas.com Assistant Creative Director Kayla Davisson kayla@smvtexas.com ADVERTISING SALES 210-507-5250 sales@hillcountryexplore.com
42 OLD TIMER
Hail Emperor Old Timer!!
When Old Timer is elected Emperor, things are going to change... for the better.
28 Father’s Day
EXPLORE magazine is published by Schooley Media Ventures in Boerne, TX. EXPLORE Magazine and Schooley Media Ventures are not responsible for any inaccuracies, erroneous information, or typographical errors contained in this publication submitted by advertisers. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions of EXPLORE and/or Schooley Media Ventures. Copyright 2015 Schooley Media Ventures, 930 E. Blanco, Ste. 200, Boerne, TX 78006
Some cool gifts for cool dads.
20 History boerne in the beginning
How our fair city came to be.
Contributing Writers
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Marjorie Hagy History
Rene Villanueva Music
Kendall D. Aaron Spiritual
Old Timer Just Old Timer
Paul Wilson Life & Living
MARJORIE is a bibliophile, a history nut and an insomniac, among several other conditions, both diagnosed and otherwise. When she's not working tirelessly to avoid getting a real job, she nurses an obsession with her grandson and is involved in passing legislation restricting the wearing of socks with sandals. She is an aspiring pet hoarder who enjoys vicious games of Scrabble, reading Agatha Christie, and sitting around doing nothing while claiming to be thinking deeply. Marjorie has five grown children, a poodle to whom she is inordinately devoted in spite of his breath, and holds an Explore record for never having submitted an article on time. She's been writing for us for five years now.
Rene Villanueva is the lead singer/bass player for the band Hacienda. Having toured worldwide, hacienda has also been featured on several late night shows, including Late Show with David Letterman. Rene and his wife Rachel live in Boerne, TX and just welcomed thier first child.
I’m just a normal guy. I’m not a theology student, I don’t preach in church, and I’ve never written a book. I’m just a normal guy that thinks, and feels, and is on a never-ending journey attempting to be the best person I can be. I fail frequently at this quest, yet each day, the quest continues. I’ve lived in Boerne since the late ‘80s, I’ve got a most beautiful wife, three wonderful children, and just really, really love God. Thanks for going on my spiritual journey with me.
The Old Timer tells us he's been a resident of Boerne since about 1965. He enjoys telling people what he doesn't like. When not bust'n punks he can be found feeding the ducks just off Main St. or wandering aimlessly in the newly expanded HEB. Despite his rough and sometimes brash persona, Old Timer is really a wise and thoughtful individual. If you can sort through the BS.
An insatiable curiosity for life and an incurable fascination with human behavior has forged in Paul Wilson a keen interest in helping people think about wise living. As a Life Coach, Paul offers professional mentoring to clients seeking greater personal fulfillment in their life. He currently serves as the Lead Pastor of Cibolo Creek Community Church in Fair Oaks Ranch, a faith community he began in 1996 to serve people who didn’t really like church. As artistowner of The Paul Wilson Studio, he also creates bronze sculptures for private and corporate collections. Paul and his wife, Charlotte, who make their home in Fair Oaks Ranch, are the proud parents of two teenage sons. If you’re interested in receiving daily thought-provoking insights about life and living, follow Paul on Twitter at @paulwilsonTX or Facebook at facebook.com/ paulwilsonTX.
EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
From the Publisher Dearest EXPLORE reader, Sometimes I wish that I knew the words that would make you cry. Or think. Or laugh loudly. Or dream. I wish that I was skilled enough with my ability to express myself that you would be moved to some emotion, ANY emotion, when reading these words. But I’m not. No matter how hard I try, I invariably walk away from these letters thinking that I didn’t get it just quite right. I wasn’t able to unpack my thought properly, or deep enough, or straight-forward enough for you, dear reader, to truly grasp what I’m trying to say. I’m just a guy sitting at a keyboard trying my darndest to string together enough letters to somehow feel like I had an impact, and most times, I feel like I miss the mark. So maybe I’ll just hang it up. I’ll slam this laptop shut, curse loudly (and with much conviction) and walk away to find a new vocation. Maybe I’ll just pursue my dream job: full-time lawn boy. I have often said that no man is more brilliant than when he is mowing the yard. There we are, wearing whatever we want. We are handling a small combusted engine, nobody can talk to us over the noise, we are outside in the fresh air, and we are left to our own thoughts. This is a man’s dream situation. For me, it’s the part about being left to my own thoughts. I can unpack any topic mentally while mowing with a speed and depth that would make Einstein blush. That’s not to say I’m “smart”. Oh, heavens no. However, with a bit of solitude and some spinning mower blades, I can at least carve out some time to really THINK. I don’t want to cut lawns because I think that it will make me rich, as I know that’s not the case. But I also know that I wouldn’t have to stare at this damned keyboard and try to type out whatever topic I’m wrestling with. I wouldn’t have to juggle ringing phones and beeping devices while simultaneously trying to journey through a thought. I wouldn’t have to try so damned hard to find…quiet. You might think I’m kidding about my dream job, and you would be wrong. I tend to be a little on the “doom and gloom” side of things, and I frequently ponder the possibility that all of the advertisers who support EXPLORE will vacate, people will stop reading, and I’ll go belly-up. The joys of self-employment, I suppose. However, when I do this little mental exercise, lawn mowing is what keeps me sane. I remind myself that, armed with a weed-eater, a mower, and a jug of gasoline, I could probably eke out a living. I could mow some magical number of yards each day that would be enough to keep a roof over my family and food on the table. I would fry in the August heat, and starve during the winter, but I could be out there doing something I really, really enjoy while simultaneously being able to work through all my inner demons. Oh, and I could solve all the world’s problems each day, as I calmly walk behind my trusty Toro. I suppose that the real issue I should be struggling with is that of THANKFULNESS. While I bitch about my ability to write, I’m still being paid to write. If I was mowing lawns, I would be yearning to write about the great topics I was unpacking. If it wasn’t mowing, I would wish I was fishing. If not fishing, I would want to be on a road trip. I will continually want something different than what I have, and that’s too bad. I guess we’re all guilty of this. My brethren that are out there right now looking across a desk that is a foot high with forms and papers are dreaming of walking on the beach. When they make it to the beach, they think about those forms and papers on their desk. Round and round we go. Where are you happiest? Where can you imagine that you are able to best unpack your thoughts and emotions? What is your dream job? And if you were actually doing your “dream”, would you be thinking about the other things that you “need” to be doing? I don’t know the answers to any of those questions – I have writing to do. Welcome to June. Summer is finally upon us. May you strike out with passion, find that which makes your heart soar, and EXPLORE until you find your way home. Smiling,
ben@hillcountryexplore.com
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EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
We change your oil, not your schedule
Life is so busy. And yet you want more time for your family, your friends, time for you. We get that at Oil Concierge, that’s why we’re here! Let us know when you’re home, or at the office. We’ll come to you on your schedule. All we need is the year, make and model of your vehicle and the address.
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June 2015
830-249-0300
www.hillcountryexplore.com
11
JUNE
Get out and enjoy the great Texas Hill Country! The most comprehensive events calendar. Send submissions to info@hillcountryexplore.com
June 2 BANDERA Cowboy Capital Opry
June 9 BOERNE Abendkonzerte
June 5 FREDERICKSBURG First Friday Art Walk
June 13 SAN MARCOS Salsa Fest
Features Grand Old Opry-style entertainment hosted by Gerry and Harriet Payne. Silver Sage Community Center, 803 Buck Creek. www.silversagecorral.org
Tour fine art galleries offering special exhibits, demonstrations, refreshments and extended viewing hours the first Friday of every month. Various locations. www.ffawf.com
June 5 KERRVILLE First Friday Wine Share
Meet new people and try new wines at this fun and friendly event at a different location each month. Bring one bottle of wine per two people and your own wine glass. Begins at 6 p.m. www.storkcountry.com
June 5-6 JUNCTION Twist Off Rodeo and Dance
Enjoy rodeo action and dancing from 9 p.m.–1 a.m. Hill Country Fairgrounds. www.junctiontexas.com
June 6 BANDERA Market Days
Features local arts and crafts. Courthouse Lawn, 500 Main St. www.banderatexasbusiness.com/market-days
June 6 BOERNE Moondance Concert
Enjoy music under the oaks and stars. Cibolo Nature Center, 140 City Park Road. www.cibolo.org
June 6 FREDERICKSBURG Masonic Open Car Show
Features classic cars, live music and food. Marktplatz, 100 W. Main St. www.fredericksburgmasons. com
June 6-7 KERRVILLE Kerrville Chalk Festival
Stroll around art in progress while enjoying food and live music as artists transform the sidewalks of the downtown plaza into works of fine art. Downtown. www.kerrvillechalk. org
June 6, 13, 20, 27 BANDERA Flying L Ranch Chuck Wagon Dinner
Includes barbecue, wagon rides, roping lessons, hat and pistol branding, archery, old-fashioned photos, a cowboy stage show, gunslingers, line dancing and other entertainment. Hours are 5:30–7:30 p.m.
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Enjoy traditional German music and tales from Boerne’s historic past from the Boerne Village Band. Main Plaza, 100 N. Main. www.boerne-tx.gov/parks
Chefs and amateurs alike compete for coveted handmade trophies and bragging rights for making the best salsa. Categories include Best Traditional, Best Non-Traditional, Blow Your Face Off!, Best Presentation and Most Unique. Queso entries get a chance at the Cheesehead Trophy. Also enjoy live music and family activities. Eye Of The Dog Art Center, 405 Valley View West Road. www.eyeof thedog.com/event/salsa-festival/
June 13-14 BOERNE Market Days
Hundreds of festive booths display everything from collectibles and nostalgia to modern innovations. Also enjoy food and live entertainment. Main Plaza, 100 N. Main. www.boernemarketdays.com
June 13 BOERNE Second Saturday Art and Wine
Enjoy complimentary beverages and hors d’oeuvres with fantastic art in local galleries. Various locations. www.boerne-tx.gov/parks
June 14 JOHNSON CITY Art, Wine and Live Music
TASTE Wine+Art, 213 N. Nugent St. www.tastewineart.com
June 18 GRUENE Come and Taste It
A featured winemaker showcases three of their newest released, top-selling or hard-to-find wines, alongside a craft brew hand-picked by The Grapevine staff. Also enjoy live music and giveaways. Grapevine Texas Wine Bar, 1612 Hunter Road. www.grapevineingruene.com
June 19-21 BOERNE Boerne Berges Fest
This family friendly German heritage festival takes over Main Street on Father’s Day weekend. Includes live music, a parade, dachshund races and carnival rides. Downtown Boerne. www.bergesfest.com
June 19-21 FREDERICKSBURG Fredericksburg Trade Days
Shop with more than 350 vendors in six barns, acres of antiques, a biergarten, live music and more. Seven miles east of town off U.S. 290. www.fbgtradedays.com
June 19-21 MARBLE FALLS Marble Falls Soapbox Classic
This adult soapbox derby competition includes a parade, show and shine, racing all weekend, live music, food, a derby hat contest and a Saturday night street dance. Downtown, Third and Main streets. www.adultsoapboxderby.com
June 20 DRIPPING SPRINGS Tomato Roundup
Annual festival includes games, food, music, children’s activities and ripe tomatoes. Founders Park. www.city ofdrippingsprings.com
June 20-21 GRUENE Old Gruene Market Days
Nearly 100 vendors offer uniquely crafted items and packaged Texas foods. Hours are 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Gruene Historic District, 1724 Hunter Road. www.gruene marketdays.com
June 23 BOERNE Abendkonzerte
Enjoy traditional German music and tales from Boerne’s historic past from the Boerne Village Band. Main Plaza, 100 N. Main. www.boerne-tx.gov/parks
June 27 DRIPPING SPRINGS Brent Thurman Memorial Bull Riding
Includes rodeo events, PBR bull riding, junior bull riding, a golf tournament and dance. Dripping Springs Ranch Park. www.brentthurman.com
June 27 JOHNSON CITY Art Walk in Johnson City
Hours are 4–8 p.m. on the last Saturday of each month. Various locations on Main and Nugent streets. www.lbjcountry.com
June 27 KERRVILLE Kerr County Market Days
Old-fashioned market on the square features handmade crafts, artwork and homegrown plants and produce. Hours are 9 a.m.–4 p.m. Kerr County Courthouse, 700 Main St. www.kerrmarketdays.org
June 27-28 JOHNSON CITY Johnson City Market Days
Hours are 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.– 4 p.m. Sunday. Memorial Park, Main Street at Avenue G. www.lbjcountry.com
June 28 BOERNE Boerne Concert Band
The Boerne Concert Band presents a patriotic concert. Bring a lawnchair. Main Plaza, 100 N. Main. www.boerne-tx.gov/parks
EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
By Rene Villanueva
14
EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
“Where is this going?” My words hung unanswered in the dark of the van. The road felt endless that night. The last few miles to the club was a beat up gravel track down a red brick alley, getting narrower and narrower. “...beep....beep…” Our GPS was freaking out, endlessly beeping and saying “...reconnecting.” Abe drove focused on the narrow beams coming from our headlights as we inched past a set of dumpsters and bounced into a pothole with a full thud. The stacked cases in the back of the van rattled and slid before resettling. “It was supposed to be a mile and a half. Should be... somewhere... here?” Jaime said from the passenger seat, “maybe?” “...reconnecting...” “Looks like it’s just warehouses out here... I don’t even know if we’re close,” I said mostly to myself. The rain was soft. It didn’t even feel like it was falling, but the air was incredibly wet and the heat from hours of sitting inside the van had fogged the windows. “There are no signs... no names... ughh... this street sucks,” Abe pulled to a hard stop under a lone streetlight, beside a chain-link fence that poorly guarded half of a parking lot. “...beep... reconnecting...” “Annnd we’re lost,” Jaime laughed, while Abe fought to get the GPS back. There was a long silence as Abe restarted the GPS again. I thought about grabbing a book, but my eyes were exhausted from staring out the road and the words wouldn’t sit still. ‘Where is this going?’ I thought again, but this time just in my head. Click...Click... Someone tapped softly on Abe’s window. Almost out of instinct Abe re-locked the doors before lowering it a crack. “Looking for something?” a woman asked from the side of the van. I tried looking out my back window at her but couldn’t see anything. Abe told her we were a band. “Club’s down there,” she pointed into the fence, “Other side of the lot. Black door.” Abe thanked her then turned to Jaime, “it’s gonna be a weird one,” he said as the tires sloshed through the dirt and a small shaded figure with a flashlight stood by my window as we drove past her. “…reconnecting…” The club was a warehouse cut into four uneven rooms. If I walked in from the front door and stood in the middle of it, 2 o’clock would be the largest room and the stage with a narrow hallway that went towards the green room and the bathrooms. At 10 was a small sheet metal bar pushed against a wall, only selling beer bottles and well drinks. A handwritten, neon sign flashed in the corner advertising a PBR and an unnamed shot for 2 dollars, was probably the brightest thing in the building. Between 7 and 8 was a small area for a pool table, an old cigarette machine, a wall rack with most of the cues missing, and one of those big 20 something inch bulky TVs for sports. At 4 was the smallest room with a couple couches for people who were drinking and didn’t want to watch the show. And even though it was only a mid-sized place it was too big for the night. When I get to a new club, I try hard to read the room. The decorations. The lights. The stage. The equipment. The posters on the walls. How clean the bathrooms are. How sticky the bar tops and tables are. The feeling in the air. It’s hard to judge an empty room and I’ve been wrong before, but I walked in and felt Abe was right. This was gonna be a weird one. I stood backstage looking out at a mostly empty room thinking again, ‘Where is this going?’ Two guys were at the pool table playing their second game, drinking their fourth round. Three college-aged girls sat at the bar waiting for drinks. The sound guy was talking to a couple of regulars, and I know he really didn’t care about us or the night having rushed through sound check while muttering things like, ‘doesn’t matter anyway.’ The bartender checked his phone with a look on his face like he just realized this wasn’t the night he was hoping for. The first two bands were outside smoking on the patio together with a couple of their friends. And then I saw the stage set up with our gear. Unlit. My bass on its stand, ready to play. And it didn’t care. It didn’t worry. Just a machine ready to work. Ready to groove.
June 2015
I think those are the moments that can define a working musician. Separating the ones whowant to play and the ones who just want attention. I’m not saying it’s good to play those shows, or you have to play one as some sort of rite of passage, or that you should be happy to walk out to sparse clapping. What I mean is that if you are in a band, you will probably have bad nights, a lot of them. It’s part of being in a band, and when it happens, all that matters is how you handle it. “Time to go,” Abe said grabbing four waters from our ice chest. Slowly, into the dark silence, we walked out. No one moved yet. I kept looking down at my shoes. Not embarrassed, just focusing on the job, and going through my checklist: Bass in tune, amp on, flip a pick between my fingers (if I think about the pick too much, it starts to feel wrong in my hand. There’s a way the point turns into my palm, cause I use a short edge, that the pick feels like it disappears and becomes part of me. And I can play anything I need to, and I never think about it again). The bartender yelled to the sound guy, “Ryan! TIME!” His voice cutting through the room and grabbing everyone’s attention. With a disappointed nod, the sound guy finished his drink and headed to his console. The girls moved closer to the stage. The guys still finishing their game, looked up for a moment at the stage, then kept playing. Finally the sound guy gave a thumbs up. Jaime tapped his heel, and I could hear the high-hat whispering the beat. Where is this going? We were three songs in and I was already sweating from dancing around, singing, and the bright red stage lamps. Where is this going? This set. This tour. This cycle. This music. The next string of shows. Questions that could fill an empty room or crowd a sold out arena, bounced in my head. An industry seemingly collapsing on all sides. People groaning about how bad music is today. Or how good it was before I was born. How people don’t care about live music. None of which I believe by the way, cause music isn’t about any of those things for me. And if it ever was, the purpose of writing, the purpose of playing would be lost. I keep writing to make better songs. I play cause it heals me. I sing to save myself from suffocating. I dance when it moves me. It should be an honest reaction. In this small of a show, there’s no pretension. No reason for the girls to dance. No reason for the sound guy to clap after a song ends. No reason for the bartender to send a round of beers to the stage. No reason for the game on the pool table to be left unfinished. All that happened honestly. From people being moved. And I look out to the empty room, to watch them watching me. Not because I need the attention, though attention is nice, but because I am amazed to reach anyone here. In the middle of nowhere. When everything should have gone wrong. Where is this going? Sometimes I find that question in my head. Usually on nights like this. When I’m loading out. When the 8 people who saw the show come together at the merch table for a drink. When I am re-stacking the gear into the back of the van, and my shirt is soaking wet from sweat, and the humidity makes me feel disgusting. Where is this going? I didn’t start for attention. I didn’t start so anyone would like me. So I don’t let it bother me. Not when there’s 2 people, not when there’s 2 million. I haven’t gotten nervous yet, knock on wood. Reminding myself why. Asking. It helps me keep my way, as long as I keep asking.
www.hillcountryexplore.com
15
THE ART OF
16
EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
BY KRISTINE DURAN
The popular practice of yoga has been at a steady incline since the 1970s, but in the last five years we have seen it grow into a $27 billion industry. Yoga is no longer associated with the stereotypical crunchy granola types. Practitioners range from stay-at-home moms to CEO’s who are looking for anything from stress relief to therapeutic practice or a spiritual form of physical fitness. Instructor Rachel Villanueva is showing the Hill Country how to do all three with the least amount of intimidation at her cozy yoga nook, The Yoga House. “Yoga is one of the things that helps me keep things in perspective. It helps me manage my stress and my life. I feel like I’m a better parent, I’m a better wife, I’m a better friend, I’m a better person.” Rachel reluctantly began practicing yoga with her mother when she was 15 years old. After a while, she began to enjoy the benefits and once she was old enough to drive, her mother gifted her with a pass to practice on her own. “But after I became an adult, it was really easy to say, ‘I want to spend my money on clothes, not yoga.’ So I went through that phase.” Her personal practice fell to the wayside once she started college. After graduating with a degree in psychology, Rachel began working at the United Way on a call line for non-profit services. “During that time, there was no money anywhere and all of those non-profits were dry. Instead of telling them the truth, we’d have to give them empty referrals. So I had to give out numbers that I knew were not going to work and that was really hard.” She endured many angry call backs where she was called awful names, leaving her stressed and upset about her job. “I’d look around at my coworkers and they’d be really good on the phone, but when their family would call, they would just bite their heads off. Their relationships were not good and they didn’t feel good because they didn’t have a place to put those emotions. I didn’t want to feel that way.” In the midst of her stress, she remembered something her mother used to say: “If you’re going on a date, where comfortable shoes. No matter how nice they look, if they hurt your feet, you’re going to be grumpy.” Rachel says, “Sometimes people don’t realize that the way they feel translates to how you act. A lot of times, it just takes like 20 minutes of moving and breathing and I feel like myself again; happy, good and comfortable.” So she began practicing yoga again. Soon after, Rachel left her job to begin working in retail at Lululemon, a high-end yoga-focused retailer. She quickly realized that this is the community she loved and wanted to pursue a career in, so she began teacher training and became certified. She was teaching at studios and out of clients’ homes, but her real goal was to open up her own space where clients could receive quality with paying an arm and a leg. “I wanted to take yoga classes other than where I taught and it was getting really expensive. Sometimes you go and it’s $15-$20 a class. Sometimes you think, I could eat with that money or go to a movie. A lot of gyms have yoga and it’s cheaper, but it’s not the same. The fluorescent lights are on and people are on their cell phone and it’s hard to connect and go to a quiet place when you’re surrounded by a bunch of distractions.” After Rachel gave birth to her son, her motivation only grew. She shared her idea with her parents who enthusiastically volunteered part of their home to be her new studio. Their split-level house sits on a
June 2015
hillside, meaning the first story of their home is underground. There are no neighbors on either side of the house, providing the ideal spot to be free from distractions, save for the crickets and birds. The downstairs area had become a storage area for her parents, so they had no problem lending it to their entrepreneurial daughter. Rachel says, “Part of it was me selfishly not wanting to go back to work. It kind of worked out really nicely since I had a lot of people that I taught privately.” Rachel has made her mark in town by being completely beginner friendly and approachable. She spends 50% of the time on her mat because she’s found that people are very visual. The other 50% is spent walking around to adjust alignments for everyone’s safety. At The Yoga House, only English is used instead of Sanskrit, as many people are intimidated by the use of Sanskrit. The casual environment is completely unpretentious and encourages questions and comments during the session. But don’t underestimate her because she knows how to challenge those with advanced practice as well. The intimate space only fits ten people a class where Rachel can tailor-make her practice each time so that each person receives individualized attention. “The classes are interesting because there’s that dynamic of a group. Sometimes it’s really not motivating by yourself and it’s extra motivating with other people.” She is also available for private practice if group exercise is not your thing. Many of her clients come to her for injuries, a number of them being from motorcycle accidents. “There’s a lot of anatomy and science involved with yoga if you’re going to teach it safely,” Rachel says. She is skilled at getting in tune with each client, learning what feels good for them and where they are hurting. With very little advertising, The Yoga House is steadily growing by word of mouth. “I was afraid that since it was out of a house that no one was going to come, but the exact opposite is happening. People want more of a connection, which is cool,” Rachel says. Many clients are repeat offenders who often bring their friends along who also become regulars. Although Rachel loves to see the business growing, she doesn’t see herself ever taking the business out of her parents’ home. She says, “I want to stay true to myself and attract people who are looking for a more personalized and unique practice.” For Rachel, Yoga has always been a reminder of being connected. “You start to breathe and move right, synchronizing things together. You just start to feel better. You feel good in your body. You don’t have any aches and pains and you can move comfortably.” There are also the aesthetic benefits of yoga that Rachel doesn’t discount. “That’s probably as exciting because those are things that you can see and measure. Everyone has a reason why they start yoga, but I find that it’s always something else that keeps them coming back.” The Yoga House 9417 Aqua Drive Boerne, TX 78006 210-625-0280 RachelLauraYoga.com
www.hillcountryexplore.com
17
Chet hawkins, dds magd, faCd MASTERFUL DENTISTRY COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT DENTAL CARE #2 FALLACY: Gum disease doesn’t affect overall health
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Master in the Academy of General Dentistry
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806 N. Main St. • Boerne 830-249-7870 www.drchethawkins.com
18
EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
HISTORY
By Marjorie Hagy
20
EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
This is the 4th chapter
in the complete, entire, exhaustive, everything you’ve ever wanted to know about everything history of Boerne! If you’re just joining the party and you’d like to catch up, head on over to www.hillcountryexplore.com and check out the March, April and May issues under the archives tab. This month, we’re going to look at what else was going on in town in the 1860s in addition to the Civil War.
In the beginning, Texas was divided up into just a handful of really enormous counties because there were hardly any people here, and not much need for a whole lot of seats of government. But as more people moved in, the need for more county seats grew and the original counties started splitting up; as former county judge MJ Lehmann put it, “When a particular area of the country became fairly well populated, due to the bad conditions of the roads and slow transportation, a demand was made for the creation of a new county with a county seat more convenient for the citizen to file his deed, record his brand and mark, and hang the horse and cow thief in the live oak tree on the court house [sic] yard.” In 1859, a group of men from Boerne and Sisterdale got together and decided it was time to establish a whole new county of their own, as they certainly weren’t happy with their present situation. “We belonged originally to Bexar,” they wrote in their petition to the State Legislature, “and were well satisfied with the arrangement.” But then things started going downhill. “We have since been annexed to Comal, Kerr, and Blanco County and each time lost by the change. Our connection to Blanco, however, is so unnatural, inconvenient, and intolerable that we believe our situation cannot be made any worse than it is now and any change would be agreeable.” Wow. Well, in those days the county seat of Blanco County was Blanco itself, a forty mile trip from Boerne and nothing to sneeze at traveling over rough-to-nonexistent roads by horse or oxen-drawn wagon, so the inconvenient part is certainly understandable, but Lord only knows what horrible things had to happen to make a bunch of 19th century gents resort to the adjectives ‘unnatural’ and ‘intolerable’. At any rate, they wanted out, and most of the leading citizens in both Boerne and Sisterdale signed the petition. First among them was that ‘swashbuckling journalist’, war correspondent and world-traveler turned sheep rancher, George Wilkins Kendall, for whom of course, the new county would eventually be named. Other signers included Adam Vogt, Fortier and Tusculum pioneer; Joseph Graham, soon to be appointed judge in the newly-minted county; August Staffel, owner of the first store in town and first postmaster of the post office established in 1856; and other still-familiar names including Zoeller, Wendler, Fabra, Herff, Theis, Bergmann, Dienger and Stendebach. But not everybody was ripped on the whole idea. For some reason, the good folks of Boerne and Sisterdale were bent on taking Comfort with them, and Comfort didn’t want to go. Per a historian writing in 1978, “It appears that citizens of Comfort, Texas, felt a close relationship with the citizens of Kerrville and Fredericksburg and did not wish to be a part of the new Kendall County.” This is the thing: the people of Comfort were more closely akin to their neighbors in those other two towns. They were Freethinkers and socialists, staunch abolitionists, and although they shared this philosophy with the people of Sisterdale, they had little in common with the purely capitalist villagers of Boerne. Tusculum, that first little commune right next door to Boerne, had been liberal like that, a Latin colony and a commune, but Boerne was a whole different box of cookies, and Comfort preferred to stay with their friends in Kerr County, thank you very much. Indeed, at the time, Comfort was the county seat of Kerr County – and by the way, if you look at a map you can see that Comfort doesn’t even really fit geographically into Kendall County, that it makes kind of an awkward, crooked little grab up there to snatch it right out of the county where it wanted to stay. Anyway, Comfort fired back and sent their own petition to the legislature, protesting the organization of Kendall County and their own inclusion in it. But the Boerne/Sisterdale faction won the day and in January 1862, Kendall County was formed, dragging Comfort, kicking and screaming, along with it. This was the beginning of a rivalry, sometimes bordering on animosity, that has existed between Comfort and Boerne for a century and a half now. The rift was widened by the Civil War, just as that bloody conflict did all over the country, so in the Hill Country it turned families against one another, pitted neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend and one town against another. Just about every German transplant to Texas strongly opposed slavery – both Boerne and Comfort voted overwhelmingly against Texas’ secession from the United States – but the response to secession and the war and Confederate rule were very, very different between the two villages. Those in Comfort and Sisterdale – socialist Freethinkers, damned if they were going to commit treason against their adopted United States and double-damned if they’d go to war to uphold the evil system of slavery – were outspoken in their continued support of the Union. In more conservative Boerne – founded on capitalism and the free market, home, even, to a handful of actual slave-owners – after Texas went ahead and seceded, the people caved and threw their support, whole-hearted or otherwise, behind the CSA. Said Emma Altgelt, wife of the founder of Comfort, “What made the war doubly horrible was the fact that the enemy had sympathizers in the South causing old friends, neighbors, and relatives to oppose and spy on one another. Many who were fit to bear arms left Texas to wait for the end of the war in Mexico or Europe. Thus, in Kendall County, there were two main factions: those who were loyal to the south, did not believe in slavery, but supported the confederacy [sic]; and those who remained loyal to the Union and tried either to remain neutral or left the state to support the Union.” When the hill country came under martial law and there was hell to pay in Sisterdale, Comfort and Fredericksburg, the Bushwhacker’s War and the time of the hanging band and all the bloody atrocities visited on the Union loyalists, Confederate Boerne sailed through in relative peace. And to add to all that, it was a Boerne man, one Charles Bergmann, who, after having met the members of the Union Loyalist League at the Guadalupe River on their
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way to join the Union forces on the Texas coast, ratted them out to the Confederate Home Guard, which action directly or indirectly led to the infamous Nueces Creek Massacre. Some say Bergmann had been robbed by the Unionist party and was bent on revenge, and others that the Confederates forced the information out of him. But however it went down exactly, when his report reached James Duff, Confederate provost marshall and the brutal ‘Butcher of Fredericksburg’, Duff exploded in a rage and gave the order to track the ‘deserters’ down and ‘do what needed to be done’. This was seen by loyalists in Comfort as a bitter betrayal and the rift between Comfort and Boerne became an uncrossable divide. After the war, Comfort again petitioned the legislature to put them back into Kerr County, stating, “...all the wrongs and grievances inflicted on the people of this state, particularly on our settlement, by the consequences of the late war, ought and should be redressed.” Their petition was denied. With the years, the breach between the two small towns grew wider, and vestiges of the old, bad feelings still linger today, one hundred and fifty years after that terrible war officially ended. Well, the new county measuring 430,000 acres, about 670 square miles in the Guadalupe River Valley, was the only county created during the Civil War and the 153rd county in Texas, and in 1860, according to the US census, was home to 300 German immigrants and 250 ‘others’, mostly from other US states, for a total of 550 souls. The first order of business for Kendall County was selecting the county seat. Sisterdale was the oldest town in the new county, having been founded in 1847, but Boerne was bigger and more centrally located, making a strong case for itself. (Comfort, formerly the county seat of Kerr County, was apparently not ever in the running, undoubtedly another bitter pill to swallow.) John James, co-founder of Boerne, also sweetened the pot by promising to chip in fourteen town lots to be used as the courthouse square in the event Boerne was chosen, and in the end Boerne prevailed, beating Sisterdale by only 67 votes – a fact which may seem surprising considering the relative populations of the two towns today. The second thing to do was to appoint and elect the county officials, and Adam Vogt was put in charge of that. He himself was elected County Judge, Joseph Graham was appointed Chief Justice, and former Texas Ranger and Indian fighter John Sansom was elected as the first sheriff. Kendall County, like everywhere else in the south during the Civil War, was broke as a joke and nobody had the dough to build a courthouse – construction wouldn’t begin on that until 1869, and then only on a loan floated to the county by none other than our old friend August Staffel, storekeeper, postmaster and signer of the Kendall County petition, saloon-keeper and liverystable owner. Lacking an official government building, the earliest county duties were seen to in Mr Staffel’s home/store at the corner of Main Street and West Theissen. One of the first pieces of business was seeing to the aid of eighteen needy families of Kendall County Confederate soldiers. In March of 1863, provisions were made to distribute state money to them at the rate of $5.00 per wife and $2.50 for each child, with another $5.00 going to a mother with four sons serving in the Confederate army. In the minutes of the County Court in 1864, it was noted that a fellow by name of Jacob Saner donated 9 1/2 bushels of wheat to the county to be distributed amongst the needy soldier families of Kendall County. Again, to give some perspective on the bitter differences between Boerne and her neighboring town: this distribution of benefits to Confederate families took place just seven months after the Nueces Creek Massacre in which thirty-five men, Union loyalists from Comfort and Sisterdale in the same county, had been ambushed and slain by Confederate soldiers. Garland Perry, that great Father of Boerne History, wrote in his Historic Images that “[t]he Texas frontier of the early 1860s actually receded 100 miles [because of the Civil War], as many families moved back to more heavily-populated areas,” and indeed some people were to leave the Hill Country, Texas, and even the United States forever after the hardships and misery of that brutal time. The Latin colony of Sisterdale would not survive the Civil War intact. The dreamers, idealists and intellectuals who had moved to the wilderness to establish a new society of learning, culture and brotherhood, left the hill country and moved on to other parts of the world, and more realistic, hard-headed farmers took over the places those pioneers had carved out of the woods. All over the Hill Country the frontier may have receded, but Boerne kept on pushing right through and kept on growing. Maybe it was that location on the Pinta Trail, after all, it was a military pipeline and heavily traveled during the war. But for whatever reason, Boerne grew like a wildflower during the 1860s. In 1857 the first public school in town opened up for business with Herman Toepperwein teaching at the rate of $25 a month. Nine families and nineteen students were represented in that first class: Baumans, Bergmans, Hagemanns, Pfeiffers, Schaefers, Stephens, Theis’, Vogts and Wendlers. Those first students are believed to have attended class in a big house near what’s now Blanco Street, and a tworoom limestone block schoolhouse was built for them in 1870 that still stands behind today’s City Hall. In 1859, the first part of Ye Kendall Inn was built alongside the Plaza in the middle of town, although it was called the Reed House in those days and looked drastically different from the great big affair we know today. The Inn, of course, went up before the war but stayed open right through the ‘60s and beyond and apparently flourished, even with the St James Hotel (across the street from today’s Dienger building) and John O’Grady’s Kendall House inn (on the south bank of the Cibolo) vying for available boarders. But there were lots and lots of visitors coming through town during the war years. O’Grady even played host to Robert E Lee in one of the little rock
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cottages of his inn on Lee’s last tour before joining the Confederacy. And Lee is also said to have stayed at what would become Ye Kendall Inn, as did Jefferson Davis and, much later, Dwight D Eisenhower. The original portion of the Phillip Manor House was built in that period too, and one account says the Scheutzen Verein – Shooting Club – was founded there in 1864 with the original target range located out back, while another has it that the first rifle range was up on north Main Street where Security State Bank is now. Any rate, the Scheutzen Verein was just one example of the social societies that sprang up in just about all communities with a large German population. The men of the shooting club went to hang out together and out-shoot each other, probably talking a little smack and drinking a lot of beer, and they often made a day-long event out of it, with the wives cooking and the kids all playing together as people do and have always done. The villagers of Boerne were hard-working people and their societies were some of the things that helped them unwind. The Gesang Verein was another popular club. This was an all-male singing society, versions of which were formed in just about every German town in Texas during the last half of the 19th century. Sisterdale had its own quartet in the 1850s as did Comfort, which organized their own verein in 1858. Boerne’s Gesang Verein was established in the Spring of 1860 with the stated purpose of promoting the general welfare of the settlers, continuing the heritage of song of the German settlers, and to be a pleasant social activity, or put another way, they “pledged to uphold what they inherited from their parents in music and song, and to foster these fine ideals, and for their social and neighborly happiness.” The choral group was led by Karl Dienger, member of one of Boerne’s first families and the very first teacher in town at the original private school, and the names of the charter members should be starting to sound familiar to you guys: Klaus, Stephen, Wendler, Lohmann, Toepperwein, Falkenstein, Bergmann, Schluter, Brotze, Vogt, Froebel and Dietert. The earliest version of the Boerne Village Band was also founded in 1860 to accompany the singers, and today the band is still going strong, and has the distinction of being the oldest continuously organized German band in the world outside of Germany. George Kendall, meanwhile, local bigwig and guy with a brand new county named after him, was living out on his 15,000 acre Post Oak Springs ranch (the ranch was all along where Hwy 46 is today, down to present-day Bergheim and beyond). He was raising a selectively-bred herd of 5,000 sheep with the aid of some career shepherds he’d brought to Texas from Scotland and he’d even imported the sheepdogs as well. Historian Garland Perry speculated that they may have been the forerunner of the Border Collie breed, but who knows? Violent tragedy struck those immigrant shepherds on the Kendall place and the horrified village of Boerne during those terrible war years, when, in January of 1862, an Indian raid took the lives of five people. Frederick Reinhardt, who with his wife ran the St James Hotel, was ambushed by Comanches while out in the woods near town chopping wood, and was killed by a lance and many arrow wounds. His attackers – numbering some twenty-five to thirty men – then made their way to Kendall’s Post Oak Springs ranch where they encountered Kendall’s head shepherd standing talking to a shepherd boy, sixteen years old. The head shepherd – who would be called ‘the craven’ in contemporary accounts of the massacre as a reward for his cowardice – took to his heels and ran, eventually bursting through the door of the Kendall home screaming “Indians!” but not stopping until he was cowered in the remotest corner of the cellar, from whence he refused to emerge until the danger had passed. The shepherd boy, left to face the Comanches on his own, was found by searchers the next day, lying under an oak tree with his ‘scotch’ dog dead beside him, having fought for his master to the end. Two other shepherds were killed that day, one an old frontiersman named Baptiste found horribly mutilated the next day and the other a man by the name of Scholsson whose body would be found by children weeks later, a mile and a half from the village. The final man to die that day was Louis von Donop with seventeen arrow wounds, near his home on Wasp Creek. Louis was a husband and father, singer and guitar player and beloved member of the Gesang Verein. While the slaughter was taking place, George Kendall himself was four miles distant at a sheep camp on his place, and his wife was at home, alone with her four children and her aged mother. When the ‘craven’ head shepherd came flying through her door on his way to hide in the cellar, Mrs Adeline Kendall, society belle and sheltered Parisian beauty, first herded her family to shelter and then donned her husband’s overcoat, armed herself with his double-barreled shotgun and went outside to meet the enemy. All that cold, wet, pea-soup foggy afternoon, as the skies dripped and her family huddled terrified inside, Adeline marched up and down the porch of her home, prepared to protect her own or die in the attempt. The raiding party never got to the house, though Mrs. Kendall was ready for them. This wife of George Kendall – it was funny, how that happened. He’d been all over the world and mixed up in all kinds of adventures, had been a prisoner of war and established a newspaper and was just an all-round dashing buccaneer, but while in France, he suddenly fell under a spell he’d eluded for forty-six years of an adventurous life: he met this beautiful eighteen-year-old Paris belle and fell head over heels in love. Now Adeline Kendall nee de Valcourt and their four children lived in this rough wilderness with him, braving the primitive conditions, the hardships and isolation and the Indians, but there was one thing Adeline did long for –she was Catholic, and she yearned for a place to worship her Dieu. With logs from a cedar break near the Guadalupe River at Ammann Crossing on his ranch, George Kendall built the very first church in Boerne – a rough log chapel at Post Oak Springs ranch for his lovely, lionhearted, French-Catholic bride. Now allow me to change direction here for a moment and just quickly, angrily blow a stupid, persistent rumor out of the water. There is an asinine piece of fiction that’s somehow taken traction, I suppose because it makes a good story, but at any rate it’s not even a little tiny bit true. This is it: I’ve seen it written various places that the early settlers of Boerne were Freethinkers and virulent agnostics who were violently opposed to organized religion, to the point that they wouldn’t allow a church within the city limits and even went so far as to post a sign warning priests not to show their faces in town, and this is why St Peter’s Catholic Church had to be built on a hill outside of Boerne. Hogwash!! In the first place, Boerne was NOT founded by Freethinkers and agnostics and all that – that would be Tusculum, Sisterdale, Comfort, etc, But as we have seen here, Boerne was founded by a pair of hard-headed businessmen whose mission was to sell city lots, and settled by people from all over the United States and the world, Germany in particular, but people who had no affiliation with the Fortiers and Freethinkers and who just wanted to make a living. They weren’t violently opposed to the church at all, they just wanted to be left alone to pursue or not pursue a religion as they saw fit and as was their right as Americans, and in fact, a whole lot of them considered themselves Catholics. And that sign warning off preachers? I’ve never found any evidence that that’s true at all; have nev-
er read about such a sign in any oral history or reports of the time. I have seen an actual photograph of a sign with a similar message, but this picture was taken on the outskirts of Boerne in the 1920s during a time of resurgence for the KKK when it had a very visible presence here. The sign I saw said ‘N------, don’t let the sun go down on you in this town’ and doesn’t make a fun little story, but nevertheless is a true part of our history. This other story, however, is always repeated the same way, making me suspect it came from one wrong source from the very beginning and that people keep repeating it without looking into it or doing any research. It just doesn’t hold up, and it isn’t true. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I beg of you, when you run into this nonsense anywhere, take a stand, rise up and say, ‘Bosh and piffle! Rot!’ People will look at you funny if you happen to be in a public space, but other faithful readers will understand, and hopefully join in. Now that I’ve gotten that out, I can continue. Man, the stuff that makes nerds mad, am I right? So anyway, plenty of the German settlers in Boerne were of the Catholic faith, and those first Boerneites had their religious rites seen to by itinerant priests who would travel out here occasionally from San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio to visit them in their homes to celebrate Mass and the various sacraments. Father Claude Dubuis, soon-to-be Bishop of Galveston, had himself visited the scattered and isolated folks of the hill country to celebrate the sacraments in their homes on the frontier, and in 1860 he sent a young deacon to this area he loved to build a Catholic church here in Boerne. This was a very young man by the name of Emil LJ Fleury, the very first priest to be assigned to Boerne, and he certainly didn’t face any hatred or opposition from any of the townspeople- in fact, he was welcomed and greatly aided in his work by many of Boerne’s leading citizens, among them the Phillips family, the ubiquitous August Staffel, the Diengers, Sueltenfuss’, O’Gradys, Rileys, Daizers, Ackers, Beeks, Kunz, Rileys and Kaisers, as well as many Hispanic families whose names were, typically, not recorded. One church historian explained that, ‘by sending the young and inexperienced deacon to this outpost to build a church, Bishop Dubuis sought to test his sincerity. The Bishop promised Fleury that if he succeeded in establishing a church in the community, he would see to the young man’s education and priesthood. Fleury did not return until he had completed his taskadmirably. He presented a completed church to the Bishop, debt-free.’ Debt-free! This is how he pulled that off: first of all, the German-speaking Frenchman Fleury managed to raise $200 toward the building fund, a feat that surely would have been impossible in the hostile atmosphere that dumb story claims existed at the time. Secondly, he was able to rely on the help of many volunteers- again disproving that false history- who threw their very material support behind the task, and Fleury himself busted his butt right alongside his workers. Another thing the young deacon did was hotfoot it to Fredericksburg- he already had considerable experience in construction, but he went to Fredericksburg to learn the process of making lime for mortar, and while there he hired a couple of expert stone masons. Fleury must have explained to the rock workers that he was building this church on a shoestring budget, because the two fellows agreed to do the job if he provided their room and board- that way, they figured, even if he couldn’t ever pay them, at least they wouldn’t be out any of their own money, ‘all they would be out would be their time.’ Fleury arranged their food and lodging with the Phillips’ House inn next door to the church property, on credit. And Fleury didn’t choose the site for his church because it was outside of town limits- he chose that site because he liked its position on the hill, overlooking the little village and the creek.
Fleury and his paid workers, along with the volunteers, quarried limestone from the Herff ranch and from Kendall’s Post Oak Springs, and hauled it laboriously over rough roads into town. They built the lime kiln for their mortar on top of Kronkosky Hill, on the back of church property, and a hand-dug well was located to the right of the church building site for the use of the workers and later the rectory and the people who came to worship, and their animals. Fleury chose to save money by staying not at the inn with the rock masons but camping on a pallet on the construction site, but one night after a grueling day on the job, he was so worn out he fell asleep on the scaffolding instead. That night there was an Indian raid, Fleury’s horse, tied up behind Phillips’ inn, was killed, and Fleury’s blanket on his usual pallet was discovered shot through with arrows. The Indians must have thought they’d killed the young deacon, but God was surely protecting His own. The church was finished in 1866, and St Peter’s parish in Boerne was born. Emil Fleury, after presenting Bishop Dubuis with a beautiful little debt-free church, left to begin his studies, as promised, at the seminary in San Antonio, and was ordained in January of 1868, after which he took his place as the first resident priest of St Peter’s Church. That first little church, a labor of love, measured 20 x 50 feet on the outside, its thick stone walls reducing the inside dimensions to 17 x 47. The only heat in the building was a fireplace in the tiny sacristy behind the altar, which was also where Father Emil lived, and so far from being an unpopular and unwelcome institution in town, St Peter’s was beloved and attracted all kinds of congregants, from the German Texans to Native Americans who had been introduced to Christianity by the Spanish missionary priests, from Tejanos (Texans of Mexican descent) to Anglos (Texans from other states in the US), from Mexicans to Spaniards to the Irish O’Gradys and the French-American Kendalls. After a time of war and misery, the worst hard times, grinding poverty and animosity between neighbors, family and friends, St Peter’s church brought a great measure of peace and healing to bruised and battered, slowly recovering, tenacious young Kendall County. thefam2001@yahoo.com
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EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
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WINE
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EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
By Tom Geoghegan TGeoghegan@boernewineco.com
Most of us have read his famous quote on his father...“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” And that was a great point to start my winery profile of McPherson Cellars. Kim founded his namesake winery in 2008 after a long career in the wine business with projects all the way from Napa, back to his roots in the high plains of Texas. But the story really starts with his dad, Clint, affectionately called Doc. He had been tinkering with grapes since the late ‘30s, a real novelty for someone who had been born and raised in cotton country. WWII, starting a family, acquiring a degree, and finally teaching chemistry at Texas Tech all put the grape thing on the back burner. But then a lunchtime conversation with a fellow teacher in the ‘60s brought it to the forefront again. Doc and Bill Reed, a horticulture professor at Tech, were discussing ways to supplement their meager teaching salaries during the summer months. Over their PB&J sandwiches, Doc recalled his peach wine experiments in the dorm during his undergraduate years. His thought was they could grow grapes and sell jelly at the local farmers market. As luck would have it, the university was pulling out some old, neglected grape vines that were planted around the greenhouse on campus. These reclaimed vines found a new home on Doc’s back patio. As these matured and began to bear their early fruit after careful pruning and nurturing, he took the original idea to its logical conclusion for a chemistry professor. ”Let’s make some wine.” Now I’ve heard the term “P” wine used before…heck I’ve used it myself to describe wines that I’ve tasted that I thought would be perfect for enjoying on the porch, by the pool, or on the patio. Well it seemed the first harvest consisted of red grapes of unknown origin, so Doc simply christened them “patio red”. A short time later, Doc was able to put together a research program in the basement of the chemistry building where he continued his research with Bob Reed. He continued his work with his “patio” grapes, converting part of his garage to a small wine-making lab. Kim has even conceded he and his friend in the neighborhood would sneak in on occasion to take in the whole process, and probably some small samples. Since wine has become truly a global product, Doc was probably the inspiration for the “garagistes” movement for the “Vins de garage” wines that became all the rage in the new millennium for innovative wines in France and California. The next step for Doc and Bob was to acquire more land and continue the experiment. Together they acquired 20 acres, and Doc proceeded to plant over 140 varietals, trying to find by trial and error what varietals would work best in the west Texas soil and climate. Their experiments proved successful, and with some seed money, they founded the first winery since the end of prohibition: Llano Estacado in 1976.This is one of the top wineries in Texas today, but has an interesting connection to Kim years later. Doc continued to work his original vineyard, and in the early ‘80s tore everything out and started from scratch with 2 varietals he thought would work the best: #7clone Cabernet Sauvignon, and the Mirrasou clone Sauvignon Blanc. Still tinkering, in 1984 he replaced the Sauvignon Blanc with the first Sangiovese planted in the state. Today, over 30 years later, Kim sources his dad’s Sangiovese for his uniquely styled wines. He even makes a little Cab from the few vines left. Kim says, “I still do a little Cab since it’s my dad’s fruit”. Now for Kim, it was a round trip in the world of winemaking. Growing up in the McPherson household was an education in itself. Kim graduated from Tech in 1976 with a degree in food science. But the pull of the vine was strong, and with his parents support, he completed his degree work in oenology from the University of California, Davis before landing his first job with Trefethen vineyards in Napa, California. I guess it would be hard to not get wrapped up in the California wine culture, but it’s even harder to take the Texas out of a native born son. With the wonderful addition of his new wife Sylvia, Kim returned to his Texas root as the new winemaker for Llano Estacado. There he continued to hone his craft, until he received a call from an old childhood friend from the old neighborhood. Now a respected banker, he told Kim about an opportunity at the old Teysha winery, now renamed Cap Rock.”Remember how we used to sneak into your dad’s garage…well here’s the chance to show what you can really do as a winemaker.” The result was a 16-year run at Cap Rock, producing innovative and award winning wines. In 1998, he and Doc were inducted into the Who’s Who in Food and Wine in Texas, the only father/son combination so honored. Kim continued to preach the potential of Texas wines to anyone who would listen, or as Kim described of the early days, “trying to throw rocks uphill.” He still managed to produce a small amount of his own wine and in 2008, took the final step and opened McPherson Cellars. Doc and Kim both fervently believed in planting the right gapes for the soil and climate of the Texas high plains, a trend embraced worldwide as terrior. Kim says, “Anyone can grow grapes and make chocolate, strawberry and vanilla wines (Cab, Chard, and Merlot) with enough time, money and patience. I’m trying to discover the grape varietals that will do the best in Texas. In the end…we’re not Napa, and we shouldn’t try to be.” Kim and Doc had looked at the globe in the study and drew their fingers in a loose arc from Texas across to Europe. That path traversed southern France, northern Spain, the Rhone region, and the northern part of Italy; all regions that have
June 2015
climate and soil conditions very similar to Texas. The popular varietals that grow there thrive in that warm climate and soil. They both looked at the varietals that were native to the area, and came up with a list that became the blueprint for the McPherson portfolio. Today Kim produces Tempranillo, Viognier, Roussane, Albarino, Syrah, Dolcetto, Barbera, and Doc’s beloved Sangiovese as either stand alone bottlings or artfully blended. Kim was one of the first to see the potential of Viognier, and develop it into the signature white of the Texas industry. A funny anecdote concerning Viognier. I was attending a trade show highlighting the wines of a small distributor. You had the chance to taste (and spit) a wide variety of wines from a large group of wineries. Most tables had someone pouring and answering what questions they could. I came up to a table, and the gentleman asked me which wines I’d like to try. I asked for a sample of the best white on the table. His response was to pour a small glass of something I had read about, but have never really tasted: Viognier. He indicated it was a new grape to Texas, but thought it had tremendous potential, and asked what I thought of it. Three tables earlier, I had tried another Texas Viognier, and tried to do a quick comparison in my head. And of course, in my ignorance, put my boot firmly in my mouth and declared it was the second best Viognier I had tasted that day. We all remember that scene in the Hulk TV series (yes, before the Age of Ultron in the Marvel movie franchise), where David Banner says you don’t want to see me get angry and is quickly transformed into the Incredible Hulk. That’s what happened to the gentleman at the table as he asked me which one was the best. When I meekly mentioned the competing winery, he smiled and quickly shrank back to his normal size. “No harm done…I made that for them when I was consulting. I’m Kim McPherson” as he extended his hand for me to shake. Tasting wine with a winemaker is an incredible experience, and Kim graciously took the time to walk me thru the highlites of his wine. This wine is certainly one of my favorites to sip, as it pairs so well with many of our summer favorites, and is one of the original ABC (Anything but Chardonnay) alternatives to those burned out on your typical Chards. I had read about his Roussane, and discovered that he also does a reserve bottling. The Wine Spectator had done a restaurant profile on the Pappas chain out of Houston, and included some of their favorite recipes for the summer combined with wine pairings. Looking for it after the issue came out, I quickly discovered that it had quickly sold out (always a good sign). Comforting myself with the regular version (which was very good), I put myself on the waiting list for the next release. It was more than worth the wait. Today, almost 2 years later, it is still the best Texas white I’ve ever had. Kathy and I had our first bottle with Thanksgiving dinner and it paired beautifully. And we’re back on the list for more. Seventy percent of Kim’s current production is geared to Reds, and his DBS is a great choice for almost anything coming off the grill. This is his uniquely styled blend of Dolcetto, Barbera and Sangiovese. Now I have no idea where Kim sources the Dolcetto and Barbera, as he has a knack of finding small growers who farm the varietals he loves. Of course, he’s able to source his dad’s Sangiovese which certainly adds the crowning touch to his cuvee. I had the privilege of selling Kim’s wine for a small distributor for several years and asked him what would be the trick to selling this new release. His response was a simple one. “Sell it the way you’ve sold all my other Texas varietals…brown bag em!” So the next day, I hit all my best accounts, with the DBS wrapped in a paper bag. I tasted my buyers, had all the technical sheets on the wine, and broke down the pricing. I shared it was made by a top winemaker, but didn’t disclose where the wine was from. After commenting on how much they loved the wine, their curiosity took over. As I pulled the wine out to show them this Texas blend, they were stunned…but almost every account ordered the wine. Later the rest of the world caught up as Kim was named one of the top 100 winemakers in the U.S (#20!) by an industry trade paper. As Kim puts it, “It’s not Italian, but it’s McPherson, and that’s enough.” And to finish, McPherson Cabernet. This is a labor of love for Kim, as he sources the fruit from the few remain Cab vines his dad planted back at the beginning. “He put his heart and soul into his Sagmor vineyard. I just had to do a Cab for him”. Kathy and I have just a few of his older vintages left, and save them for special dinners. Just as with the whites, this is the best Texas Cab I’ve tasted to date. So over the years, Kim and I have managed to keep in touch, tell some stories, and swap some good natured half-truths. I even had the pleasure of working with him on a private label for a local retailer. Nice at my age to be able to scratch one of my biggest bucket list items by working on that project. Certainly not as simple as it looks from the outside, but worth every bit of time and effort to see it to fruition. A little intimidating to tell a world class winemaker what you’re looking for in the blend, but Kim hit a home run with the first release, and continues to work his magic on the subsequent bottlings. As usual, I pass on the call to support our Texas wine industry by buying more Texas wines. As Kim acknowledged recently, the industry has come a long way. It’s no longer “tossing rocks up a hill”. So find yourself a nice bottle of Texas wine, pull the cork and enjoy with family and friends. And if it’s a McPherson bottle, save a little bit for a toast to Doc and Kim…they’re the ones who “brung us” here! Salute!
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ART
Light Light An Interview with artist Cliff Cavin
After years of painting nights and running the family business, artist Cliff Cavin has not been relaxing in his retirement. With a roster of prestigious shows on the horizon, he states, “Since I’ve retired, well...I thought I had more time, seems like I’m more busier now than I was when I had a full time job. But, I do have more time to paint...I spend a lot of time at the easel now, so I’m trying to improve.” Fresh from a successful near sellout showing at the Night of the Artists benefit at the Briscoe Western Art Museum, he is busily painting away each day, getting up early every morning and hitting the studio to fulfill his exhibition obligations: a solo show at the J.R. Mooney Gallery in May and a four man group exhibition at the Nave Museum in Victoria, TX slated for January of 2016, which will include well known artists Robert Harrison, Eric Harrison and Noe Perez. Taking a break, Cavin arrived at the J.R. Mooney Gallery to discuss his thirty-five-year career in the arts amidst a backdrop of his colorful and vibrant landscape paintings. After a brief stint in the commercial art field, Cavin was persuaded by a friend to join him in the pursuit of
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EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
fine art painting. “He convinced me that’s where it was at. And I agreed. At the time we worked commercial art, but we went ahead and began to do fine art, began to paint pretty pictures-of landscapes, figurative work, western…” Despite his financial and critical success with his landscapes, Cavin expresses desire to branch out and create works in other genres and be well rounded, “Right now I do a lot of landscapes and things and I want to do other things. I don’t want to do just landscapes; I want to be known as a painter.” Landscape is the subject matter that Cavin has focused on using the language of light, color, atmosphere and depth as a vehicle to guide the viewer into his spectacular panoramas. Cavin uses photographs and slides of his travels to recreate the places he has been in his paintings, in order to recapture a certain feeling. Cavin’s landscapes recall the memory of his presence observing the terrain before him, embodied through his brushstroke technique; raw, loose and fluid, never ceasing up in depicting what he wants the viewer to take notice and pay attention to. Light is one of Cavin’s primary tools for drawing the viewer into his paintings. The use of this element was the primary curatorial theme that J.R. Mooney Gallery Director, Gabriel Delgado applied towards selecting his paintings for the upcoming show entitled Light. The paintings chosen possess dramatic qualities that enunciate the interplay of light and shadow in the composition. Delgado explains, “I wanted to highlight a broad body of work; from his earlier artworks to the more mature impressionistic collections. I understood Cavin’s intent was to always address the atmospheric light of the various topographies, including his first love, New Mexico, while addressing the various terrains of his home state of Texas.” Gazing up at the painting entitled Ghost Ranch, I mention how I love the way he captures the glow on the rock formations, which are a common sight in that area of New Mexico. The Ghost Ranch is Cavin’s favorite place to paint and it has long been a spiritual and creative retreat for many artists, notably Georgia O’Keefe. This striking scenery draws Cavin again and again to recreate in his signature brush strokes its features that are singular and most poignant. composition, right there standing beside him, leading your view towards the subject that has captured his attention, all with conscientious intent. “I love big paintings and then you go into the painting and see something that we’re trying to show you. Something draws you to it. That’s a planned thing by the artist...that’s what we try to do.” Cavin’s style has evolved from smooth and thin to looser and more textural strokes achieved by painting straight from the tube without any mediums. I remarked that his paintings evoke an impressionistic aesthetic. He expressed his preference to not adhere to categorization, “It’s not that you try to develop a style. It just automatically comes. And people ask, ‘what’s your style?’ You paint long enough, it’ll come out. You don’t have to worry about a style. It’ll actually come and it came.” What does Cavin foresee on the horizon? It is essentially the simplicity of doing what he loves. “I’m not necessarily trying to leave a legacy or anything. I just want to be a painter and I enjoy it and I love it...I hope other people enjoy the art when they see something they like because all the things I paint are some place I’ve been; stood in front of those places that I’ve painted. I’ll probably paint until I die, so that’s my plan.”
Having first visited New Mexico in late 1988 Cavin was immediately struck by the wild beauty of the terrain. Reminiscing, with a faraway gaze in his eyes Cavin recalls, “Everything was changing, blues are bluer, yellows are yellower and orange-er... purples... Good night! It’s just fabulous...I see why people are drawn to New Mexico. It’s because of the higher altitude. You can see a longer distance and the colors are more vivid in that area.” Cavin was also pleasantly surprised when his canvases of New Mexico precipitated a doubling in sales. He now strives to return every year as an artistic pilgrimage. The Hill Country is without a doubt in Cavin’s eyes, “the prettiest part of Texas to paint” and remains close to his heart, inspiring him on his travels around the state, with camera in tow, to capture the phenomenal wildflower display this spring. “I went south to do the flowers this year. The stuff I’m painting now is south, Poteet and Floresville, down in that area.” Although partial to bluebonnets, Cavin enjoys painting the intense golden oranges and yellows that come after the bluebonnets have gone. “We get a different group of flowers coming in...We’re getting into the Indian Blanket, Indian Paint...and there it’s like, whoa! A totally different color range.” What sets his landscapes apart is that Cavin puts you in his point of view, as if you are in the forefront of the
June 2015
Cliff Cavin “Light” May 9th-June 6th 2015, J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art, 305 S. Main St. Suite 400, Boerne, TX 78006 ©Katherine Shevchenko, Art Consultant, Boerne TX. A recording of this interview can be heard at: www.soundcloud.com/j-r-mooney-galleries/jr-mooney-podcast-episode-6-cliff-cavin
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SPIRITUAL
By Kendall D. Aaron
There are countless jokes made about the women in our lives and their inability to “pack light.” We could be going on an overnight trip to the coast, and sure enough, I’m somehow lugging three different duffel bags to the truck, and shaking my head the entire time. Wives, what do you think we’ll possibly be doing in the next twelve hours to necessitate this much crap? And yes ladies, before you start sending me emails, it is true: stereotypically speaking, you guys ARE pretty bad about this. We’ve got multiple outfit options for dinner, shoes that take an entire bag, and that mountain of hair and make-up equipment that you desire. Put all that together, and an overnight trip can pretty quickly equal multiple giant bags. Your husband, on the other hand, probably grabbed a recycled HEB plastic bag, threw some fresh underwear in there along with his toothbrush, and packing was complete. While the sexes might have very different ways to pack our baggage, we are all equally guilty at the amount of baggage that we carry emotionally. Oh my goodness, not only do we pack heavy, but we carry things for far, far longer than we should. What’s worse is that it’s not always necessarily the amount of baggage that we carry, but how long we’re willing to carry it. Men and women alike. I’ve got hang-ups from when I was a kid. I can remember a particular coach when I was a kid that made fun of how I ran. He literally took it upon himself to laugh out loud at me running the 100 yard dash, and all of my friends in class busted out with belly laughs. Keep in
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mind that I was in middle school, and in middle school, our bodies don’t exactly work together in harmony. Kids are growing practically overnight, and I’m sure that I did look like some sort of deranged marionette as I ran down the track. I thought I was about to set the land speed record as I was really giving it all that I had, but instead, I was left feeling completely shamed for my efforts. And here I am, a 39 year old professional, and I STILL think about that comment when I go for a jog, or chase my kids. It’s ridiculous. Some guy’s boneheaded statement really stuck with me. I’ll even give him grace and say that he didn’t mean to affect me the way that he did, but I took those words from him, put them in my baggage, and have been carrying them ever since. It’s sad, really. When my 1st wife and I broke up, I was called a lot of names too. This happens all the time in divorce, but I tend to be a pretty emotional guy, and I took those insults and accusations, put them in my other pocket, and carried them for a long time. It’s a struggle to this day to shake them off and think to myself, “What was said simply wasn’t true. I really am a good person.” I give these examples about me only because I don’t know what baggage you might be carrying personally. You’ll have your own examples of teachers, coaches, parents, friends, and spouses that have said things to you that truly impacted you negatively. You may have never admitted it to the assaulting party, but you have put those hurtful things in your own duffel bag, and you are still carrying them. It’s truly sad.
How do you think God sees you? If you step back from all of the things that you carry: the shame, the guilt, the failures, the baggage…what do you think God Himself has to say about those things? Do you think that it’s His desire that you carry them with you daily? John 15:16 says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” He CHOSE you, and you are His child. He has forgiven you time and again, and His ability to do so is endless. Do you think that He wants you to burden yourself with stupid comments you have heard from decades ago? Do you think that He wants you to carry your baggage? Or do you think that it’s time for you to stop your journey, shrug off your burdens and leave them in your path? How free would you be? Where could your life change if you were free of the weight that you have saddled yourself with? We are all people – and we all have our hang-ups. We all have our wounds and things that we have accepted as our burden to carry. The reality, however, is that God never intended for you to carry it. Give it to Him. Release it. Raise your hands and exclaim that it’s His to remove. He can do it, even when you can’t. Your journey can be light, your journey can be focused on glorifying God. Your journey can be a testament to others – but only if you stop, release your baggage, and recognize that many things are not yours to carry. De Colores.
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LIFE Exactly how does one go about introducing a new word into the English language? Is there a form to fill out? Somebody you need to talk to? A video that has to go viral? I’d like to propose a new word for the dictionary. Can somebody hook me up with a contact at Merriam-Webster’s New Word department? I mean, there has to be such a thing, right? How else did words like hashtag, hotspot, tweep, selfie, gamification, staycation, dubstep, fracking, man crush, crowdfunding, steampunk, and baby bump make it into the dictionary in the past year or so? In 2014 alone, Marriam-Webster’s dictionary introduced one hundred and fifty new words. Surely, there’s room for one more. I assume making it into the hallowed pages of the dictionary is the pinnacle of a new word’s greatest ambitions, right? To be included in the great treasury of all words alongside other distinguished words – many of which have been around for centuries – has to be what it means
Yep, saves for everything, that one.” To be whealthy is more noble than wealthy. It’s more of a compliment to be referred to as “whealthy” than merely “rich.” You see, being wealthy is not necessarily the same thing as being whealthy. Whealthy has nothing to do with the kind of money you make or the amount of money you have. Whealthy doesn’t have anything to do with the lifestyle you lead. It’s not about what you drive, the size of your house, the brand of clothes you wear, or where you go for vacation. People without a lot of money can be very whealthy. People who make minimum wage and only work parttime can be extremely whealthy. Whealthy people can drive older model vehicles, live in a mobile home, wear thrift-shop clothing, and never go anywhere fancy, let alone on a vacation. Many blue-collar people can be much whealthier than their more extravagant neighbors who live in the prestigious areas of town, drive their foreign imports, wear designer brand names, and take multiple vacations to exotic places every year.
and whealthy’s used close together. If you have to read it a second time, I’d understand. In fact, I’d encourage it.) If I have learned anything in thirty-years of coaching some very wealthy people, appearances can be deceiving! It is amazing the number of people who appear to be living an extremely wealthy life – in a very convincing fashion – that are just one paycheck from broke; one disappointed client from financial ruin; one lost contract from bankruptcy. They are often leveraged to the hilt, grossly underinsured, in debt up to their eyeballs, and pursuing a lifestyle that is far beyond their means. It all comes down to appearances. What you don’t get to see is the fear, the guilt, the shame, the ulcers, the high blood pressure, the migraines, the calls from collection agencies, the smoldering anger, the growing resentment, the sleepless nights and the drinking to drown the sorrows. It’s not always very pretty inside of “wealthy.” However, inside of whealthy it’s always beautiful. Always.
HOW Are You? By Paul Wilson
“to have arrived” in the world of words. After all, if you can be found in the dictionary you are now an official candidate for Scrabble. That’s pretty heady stuff for a word. MY NEW WORD The new word I’d like to introduce is “Whealthy.” No, that’s not a typo. The word is “whealthy” with an extra “h”. Yeah, the first “h” is silent; officially called a digraph along with other familiar arrangements of consonants like ch, th, ph, and sh. Like in the words “what” and “where” or “why.” “Whealthy” is a mash-up of the words “wealthy” and “healthy.” It has to do with the healthy management of one’s money or wealth. whealth.y (whel’the) adj. 1. to manage one’s wealth in a healthy manner 2. of, characterized by, or suggestive of financial health – whealth, n.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Used as a noun, it would be “whealth.” Like a financial doctor, your broker wants to discuss “some concerns” he has about your “whealth.” He might say, “As your primary whealth-care professional, I need to inform you that the continued abuse of your credit card may be hazardous to your whealth.” See, “hazardous to your whealth”! That just works, doesn’t it? The word has so much potential. I can already see its star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The only catch is how to distinguish it from its similarsounding cousin “wealth.” Would you always have to say, “That’s ‘whealth’ with an h”? I’m pretty sure always having to explain your word is going to hurt its chances for popular acceptance. That could prove cumbersome in a conversation. (Details! I’ll work that out after I get the nod from the academy that my word has been nominated for inclusion in the dictionary. I’m already nervous. Limo, red carpet, tuxedo, and paparazzi. Pretty heady stuff for a writer in Explore.) As an adjective, “whealthy” is used to describe somebody who has a very healthy financial picture. “Oh, he’s very whealthy. He never buys anything he can’t afford.
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In truth, whealthy people are much better off than wealthy people. IMAGINE A WHEALTHY WORLD Imagine a world where people were more concerned with being “whealthy” than being “wealthy.” Oh, the credit card companies wouldn’t like it one bit. Car dealerships, health clubs, cable television companies, mortgage lenders, and a lot of enterprises hawking their wares on billboards, television, and the internet wouldn’t think a “whealth-conscience” world would be a great place to live. It would be similar to how fast food chains and soda companies would feel if the entire population decided to swear off junk food. They’d go crazy at the idea of the world getting all healthy on them. There are plenty of people out there who would feel the same way if everybody got “whealthy” on them. After all, they make their living leeching off the financial unhealthiness that thrives in most people’s lives. A “whealthy” world would revolutionize the entire niche of strategically placed impulse-buying traps you find everywhere you shop. It sure would alter what the area around the cash register would look like. Candy, soft drinks, magazines, lip balm and trinkets no child can live without (apparently) would become a thing of the past. Would moms even know what to do when checking out their groceries if they didn’t have to spend the entire ordeal impatiently negotiating with relentless children whining, “I want one of those.” “Whealthy” is about consistently honoring the fundamental practices of healthy financial management and enjoying the many rewards that come with such discipline. Oh, there it is. The “D” word: discipline. Yep, whealthy, like anything having to do with health, ultimately comes back to discipline. You know, self-control? Discipline is the one trait that most distinguishes whealthy people from wealthy people. It is the ability to discipline one’s thinking about financial choices that jettison them into whealthy status. Now, that’s not to say wealthy people aren’t whealthy people. Many of them are wealthy precisely because they are whealthy. But don’t assume for a moment that just because they are wealthy, they are also whealthy. Being wealthy does not necessarily mean a person is whealthy. (Did you follow that? That’s a lot of wealthy’s
WHEALTHY 101 Whealthy people often understand and honor several very wise financial disciplines that wealthy people never really grasp. Here’s a short list of just some of the important principles that govern the thinking of very whealthy people. Do without. Make it last. Doesn’t have to be new. Doesn’t have to be the biggest. Doesn’t have to be the most expensive. Doesn’t have to be name brand. Doesn’t matter what other people think. Even if I can, doesn’t mean I have to. Even if I could, doesn’t mean I should. Not right now. There are more important things. No use buying more when we’re not using the ones we have. We have plenty. When I have the cash. We’ll just have to wait. We have exceeded our budget for that this month. We don’t use a credit card for those kinds of purchases. There are more, of course, but these are some of the most important values that guide a whealthy person’s life when it comes to healthy financial management. People who don’t make a lot of money can be much whealthier than their wealthy peers precisely because they know how to live within their means and enjoy the peace that comes with being grateful for what they have. Wealthy often comes saddled with a whole lot of social pressure to live a certain way in order to maintain an image of affluence. That image is usually pretty expensive. Sadly, nine times out of ten, it is just outside the financial limits of those who want to live there. That’s where we get terms like “house poor,” “strapped,” “in over our heads,” and “keeping up with the Jones’.” They are all born in the homes of people who live just beyond their means even when they have more than enough money. It’s the desire to have just a little bit more than what they can really afford that puts them over the edge. That edge is often a cliff. Get a few wealthy people to shoot straight with you about their lives and many of them will tell you in so
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many words, “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. The more money you make, the more you spend.” As one client said to me, “Bigger paycheck, bigger problems.” So what do whealthy people do better than wealthy people? Well, the list is fairly long, but here are just a few of the key strategies that typically characterize very whealthy people. Whealthy people avoid the danger of consumer credit at all costs. Simply put, whealthy people believe a credit card is hazardous to your wealth. Whealthy people understand the value of delayed gratification. Whealthy people believe the person who saves up for what they want is happier, regardless of how long they might have to wait to possess it. It just feels good to buy something without going into debt to do it. Whealthy people honor the discipline of a budget. Wealthy people understand money really doesn’t grow
Whealthy people believe money can’t buy happiness. Oh, everybody is familiar with the phrase, “Money doesn’t buy happiness.” However, most people keep falling for the same ruse. They really want to give greater wealth a try in the hopes they will be the exception to the rule. They are the same people who keep proving the point that “money doesn’t buy happiness.” Whealthy people recognize that saving money is generally wiser than spending it. Saving is a difficult discipline to honor. Spending it is a hard habit to break. Whealthy people are generally much more disciplined than their wealthier counterparts. Whealthy people determine to live well within their means. It’s the simplest rule of acquiring wealth. You have to spend less than you make and multiply what you save. The better you do either of those, the whealthier – and wealthier – you become.
That’s only ten of the most crucial disciplines of a whealthy person. Using that list as a place to start, how would you evaluate your current financial health? If you were to appraise your financial “whealth” based on these ten markers, how are you doing? On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Awful and 10 being Awesome, where would you evaluate yourself when it comes to how “whealthy” you are? Be honest now. This is a serious matter. We’re talking about your whealth! We call a visit to the doctor for our annual checkup a “physical.” It’s intended to provide us a current evaluation of our health. Does that mean a visit to your broker for an evaluation of your wealth should be called a “financial”? When was the last time you sat down with a qualified person – an objective person, for that matter – and had a very candid discussion about your whealth? As a Life Coach, I have found time and time again that much of the stress in our lives and the relational drama in
on trees. They live within their means and carefully manage what they have by sticking to a plan for how to spend what they have, not what they wish they had. Whealthy people prepare for the needs of the future. People who set aside a percentage of their income each month in savings worry a whole lot less about having what they’ll need in the future for automobiles, college, weddings, and retirement. Whealthy people enjoy a genuine contentment with what they have. Whealthy people understand it is not happy people who are grateful, but it is grateful people who are happy. What’s that saying? “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”
Whealthy people understand the importance of an emergency fund. Whealthy people know that some money set aside for those unexpected expenses that inevitably arise in the course of a year is one of the wisest moves a person can make when it comes to financial health. Whealthy people are not suckers for the seduction of advertising and peer pressure. Whealthy people are mature enough to know that most of what people are selling will not really deliver what is promised and most of what their friends are buying is not really making their lives any better.
our homes are often sourced in financial disarray. The underlying toxins of mismanaged finances poison so many delicate dimensions of our life and rob us of the happiness, the peace, and the contentment we all long for in our life. Maybe it’s time we adopted a new word; something a bit more helpful. What if we dropped the old familiar go-to of “wealthy” and learned what it means to be “whealthy”? It might make all the difference in our world.
June 2015
If only such a word existed.
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BOOKS
Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas by Erica Grieder Erica Grieder’s Texas is a state that is not only an outlier but an exaggeration of some of America’s most striking virtues and flaws. Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right is a witty, enlightening inquiry into how Texas works, and why, in the future, the rest of America may look a lot like Texas.
The Homesick Texan’s Family Table: Lone Star Cooking from My Kitchen to Yours by Lisa Fain From beloved food blogger Lisa Fain, aka the Homesick Texan, comes this follow-up to her wildly popular debut cookbook, featuring more than 125 recipes for wonderfully comforting, ingredient-driven Lone Star classics that the whole family will love. There are few things finer than a delicious, homemade meal shared with family and friends. Take it from Lisa Fain, a seventh-generation Texan who loves to cook and serve up the best dishes her home state has to offer— even though she now lives half a country away. The Homesick Texan’s Family Table showcases more than 100 of Lisa’s best and most-loved recipes, ranging from down-home standards (think cheesy nachos, comforting chicken and dumplings, and fiery wings) to contemporary riffs on the classics (who knew adding Mexican spices to a German chocolate cake would taste so good?). All of Lisa’s recipes are made with fresh, seasonal ingredients, yet still packed with real Texas flavor that will make your grandmother smile. Whether you’re looking for a party-friendly snack like Pigs in Jalapeño Blankets, a Mustard Coleslaw to bring as a side to your next potluck, a weeknight- and family-friendly meal like Steak Fingers with Cream Gravy, or a mouthwatering dessert like Ruby Red Grapefruit and Pecan Sheet Cake, The Homesick Texan’s Family Table has you covered. After all, with some mighty fine food and mighty fine people to enjoy it, any meal can be cause for celebration.
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Texas Hill Country by John Graves Limestone hills, cold spring-fed streams, live oaks and cedar, old German towns—the Texas Hill Country may well be the most beloved region of the state. Unlike West Texas with its dramatic expanses of plains and sky, or the eastern Piney Woods in their lush fecundity, the Hill Country never overwhelms. Its intimate landscapes of rolling hills, fields of wildflowers, and cypress-shaded rivers impart a peace and serenity that draws the urban-weary from across Texas and even beyond. In this volume, two of the state’s most respected artists join their talents to create an unsurpassed portrait of the Texas Hill Country. With an unerring eye for landscape photography, Wyman Meinzer distills the visual essence of the Hill Country—long vistas of oak-and-cedar-covered hills, clear streams running over rocks, bluebonnets turning fields into lapis-colored seas. His photographs also go beyond the familiar to reveal surprising contrasts and juxtapositions—prickly pear cactus delicately frosted with ice, black-eyed susans growing among granite boulders. With an equally true feeling for what makes the Hill Country distinct, John Graves writes about the land and its people and how they have shaped one another. He pays tribute to the tenacious German pioneers who turned unpromising land into farms and ranches, the AngloAmerican “cedar-choppers” who harvested the region’s pest plant, and even the generations of vacationers who have found solace in the Hill Country. As Graves observes, “since well over a century ago, the region has been a sort of reference point for natives of other parts of the state, and mention of it usually brings smiles and nods.” Together, John Graves and Wyman Meinzer once again demonstrate that they are the foremost artists of the Texas landscape. The portrait they create in images and words is as close as you can come to the heart of the Hill Country without being there.
Lone Star: A History of Texas and The Texans by T.R. Fehrenbach Here is an up-to-the-moment history of the Lone Star State, together with an insider’s look at the people, politics, and events that have shaped Texas from the beginning right up to our days. Never before has the story been told with more vitality and immediacy. Fehrenbach re-creates the Texas saga from prehistory to the Spanish and French invasions to the heyday of the cotton and cattle empires. He dramatically describes the emergence of Texas as a republic, the vote for secession before the Civil War, and the state’s readmission to the Union after the War. In the twentieth century oil would emerge as an important economic resource and social change would come. But Texas would remain unmistakably Texas, because Texans “have been made different by the crucible of history; they think and act in different ways, according to the history that shaped their hearts and minds.”
Speak Texan in 30 Minutes or Less by Lou Hudson In a parody of Berlitz phrasebooks, veteran Lone Star journalist Lou Hudson has spilled the beans on how best to wrap one’s tongue around Texaspeak so that even recovering Yankees can make their way in this whole other country. Finally there’s hope for that brother-in-law from Hoboken and your banker from Duluth. Folks like them will be able to make themselves understood to Texans without having to revert to notepads and hand gestures. Speak Texan not only is a pronunciation guide but also a handy work that provides numerous insights into Lone Star lingo and the thinking that goes behind it in a very entertaining format. It’s designed to fit in the rear pocket of your Wranglers for a quick point of reference. Hudson was born, weaned, and schooled in Texas and has never lived anywhere else. The rest of the book is pure de Texas too. Designer Ty Walls also is a lifelong Texan. The whole deal was printed and bound in Fort Worth. Can’t get more Texan than that, surely. Speak Texan is the first work of the aggressive, but nearly mythical Texas Twang Preservation Society. Its conception was motivated by the need to conserve, promote and document the lingua franca of this unique state of mind, endangered as it is by Hollywood miselocution and by for-profit, accent-reduction scams.
Lone Star America: How Texas Can Save Our Country by Mark Davis Throughout America and around the world, the United States has been known as a beacon of hope and opportunity, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Sadly, from the crumbling urban ghetto of Detroit to the cash-strapped shores of California to the rust belt of the Midwest, America is not living up to that promise. Except in Texas. While unemployment soars elsewhere, Texans are hard at work. While small businesses across the country are going under, Texas entrepreneurs are thriving. While large companies are being squeezed by taxes, regulations and unions, more and more corporations are moving to Texas to grow and expand. While people of faith are ridiculed and marginalized in most cities on both coasts, in Texas churches and synagogues are bursting at the seams. How did Texas embrace what the rest of America seems to have forgotten? In Lonestar America, popular talk radio show host Mark Davis presents a powerful case for economic prosperity, individual freedom, strong families, and even stronger pride of place – alive and kicking in Texas, and easily exportable to the rest of America. Davis shows how Texas has done it, how some “honorary Texans” in other states (governors and even local communities) have adopted some of the same policies and approaches, and how states across the country can reclaim the promise of the American dream.
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Old
Timer
Emperor Old Timer via USA Today 27 mins
Newly Elected Small Town Emperor Enacts Martial Law; Warns New Developers Will Be Arrested On Sight Internment camps established throughout Kendall County. Citizens overjoyed an elected official is finally listening... USATODAY.COM Like
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Sometimes I just sit around and think about why you people out there should elect me as Mayor. No, not mayor. More like EMPEROR of Boerne. I can come up with the best ideas, and then I realize that nobody is around to validate them. I nod approvingly at my own ideas, smile at their brilliance, and then leave my front porch to see if the commercials are over and if I can get back to the Wheel of Fortune. Case in point: There’s all sorts of new developments coming into Boerne. Some are residential in nature (think “Gargantuan housing development on 7’ lot lines) and some are commercial (think Discount Tire and the behemoth development coming for the land behind Herbst Vet – oh please include a Chick-Fil-A). Regardless, they’re coming. When word leaks out that they are going to begin production, residents freak. They complain about it over lunch at Chilis, they rant about it on Facebook, and blog about it incessantly. Our beloved government officials eventually catch wind that their approval of these developments was (gasp) unpopular, and so they pull out their perpetual “Get out of Jail” card: You didn’t show up to the Council meetings, so how were we to know that you didn’t like the proposed development? We figured that the improved tax base would be seen as popular. Whodathunkit? So here’s why you want me to be your Mayor. The following is how I’m going to fix the communication gap between our local government and citizens.
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STOP TELLING US TO SHOW UP AT COUNCIL MEETINGS. Seriously, stop. We’re busy people. We elected YOU to be our voice at these meetings. We know that you hear us complaining about developments, because we make a point of it to do it when we see you getting coffee at Starbucks. We know you read our FB posts. We know that YOU KNOW. So step 1 is to stop this tired excuse. We don’t want to go to council meetings – we want you to make the right decisions based on what the community wants. That’s it. It’s not hard. USE EMAIL. This is 2015. Virtually every single citizen in town has an email, and it is 100% free for you to communicate with us by using it. When we get City Utilities, ask for our email. No, we don’t have to give it to you (cause we don’t trust you). But if we do, email us what’s going on. Tell us about what the Council is being proposed. Tell us how they voted. Ask for our feedback, and then make it easy to simply respond to the email with our thoughts. And then take those thoughts and give them to Council. OFFICE HOURS Remember when you were in college and professors had to have “Office Hours” where they were available for questions, even if nobody showed up to ask questions? I propose the same thing, but with one small twist: if nobody is there for questions, government officials should be required to take those two hours and simply call constituents. Pick up the phone, call a local resident
or business owner and simply ask them for their opinion. “Hey, did you hear about that new Discount Tire coming to town? Well, I was just curious: what do YOU think about it?” The official is now getting the response they have requested, and the resident now feels that government is listening. Win/Win. UTILITY BILLS So some people told you to go to hell when you asked for their email address when getting city utilities? Ok – you are snail-mailing them a bill. Why not simply insert a 1 page summary of key issues and topics that are up for debate. Do NOT use this to announce how pleased you are with the current status of construction at River/ Esser…all you do is piss people off. Tell me that next month you’re considering putting a Hooters on River Rd. You’ll get my attention. And hopefully, if you’ve thought this through, you’ll make it VERY easy for me to provide feedback. Ok, I’m tired. This stuff is just off the top of my head, and I am admittedly not a smart man. I’m a crotchety old fart, banging out this article on my front porch. As I said, the commercials are almost over and it’s time to get back into the A/C. However, if this very old man can provide simple, FREE suggestions that would help bridge the communication gap between the city and its residents, I would only assume that with all the smart people in city government, they can implement a few. Come on – it would be fun.
EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.
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