My niece Diane Thompson took a break from her work with the National Consumer Law Center and brought her two daughters over to view the bridal dress exhibit at the Missouri History Museum (click here for beautiful pictures from the exhibit) (Lindell and DeBaliviere in Forest Park). Amazingly, it’s free! And continues through September 9th. […]

Country Mouse….then city mouse. As city mouse I’m experiencing wonders such as the Butterfly House, Japanese films and gallery talks on Romare Beardon’s “Show Time” at the St. Louis Art Museum, a Black Artists Exhibition at the Urban League Convention held at the America Center…all in St. Louis, of course.
Cousin Cynthia and I compared notes […]

Hal’s 8 facts begin…
1. I was born in the Golden Year Of The Pig. My Chinese friends tell me that’s special, although I’m not really sure why. Perhaps the reason is it only comes every 60 years, and this year happens to be a Golden Pig year based on the Chinese calendar.
2. I grew up in a […]

As I settle into my new life I freely swing between my new place and my father’s place. Janet’s world and Daddy’s world. Janet’s world is tentative and emerging. Daddy’s world is in its own orbit, with its established rhythms, yet fewer rules than I’ve ever experienced before.
Pop was raised on this homeplace founded […]

Susan Gallacher-Turner posted her 8 Random Facts for the Meme Tag on Wednesday, July 25th. She calls it “Playing Tag for Grown-Ups.” I like that. Susan’s blog is Susan’s Art and Words. She has wonderful photos of her colorful and fanciful sculptures.
Billy Jones, the Blogging Poet just posted his 8 random facts and explains the […]

For the past 3 weeks I’ve been sleeping in a closet. That’s right, a sleeping closet. It’s all part of camping-in (as opposed to camping-out) as I get settled in my new place.
When I first arrived, I grabbed a few things from my father’s house, along the camping-in model (something to sleep on, something to […]

The top frustration for my move to St. Louis was getting my phone and internet service up and running. For the first two weeks I was here, I was steady-dating a steady stream of technicans from Charter that kept me in a steady state of on-the-verge-ness. If it wasn’t my phone, it was the […]

It was a long Harry Potter Weekend, even out here in the Midwest.
On Friday I read about the pirating of “Deathly Halllows” and Scholastic’s countermeasures in the Wall Street Journal as I sat down for a “Fish in a Boat” lunch at a bohemian cafe near the City Museum where I’d gone to watch my […]

There’s a new review of my father Erwin A. Thompson’s “Cattle Country and Back Trail: Two Tales from the Thompson Western Series” on Book Pleasures
Among other comments, the reviewer Ernest Dempsey says:

“Cattle Country and Back Trail is an exciting reading of the values that characterized the heroes of the not-so-remote past. Foremost, these heroes were […]

While Arletta Dawdy researched her book HUACHUCA WOMAN, she read widely about the Mexican Revolution, visited Columbus, New Mexico and learned to admire Pancho Villa.
Arletta says, “Many controversies whirled around the man, including tales of his sister’s fate and his response. Variously, we are told the hacendado came to claim her and Doroteo Arango […]