Category: Arizona

'HIGH AND DRY' 2024

12/16/2024

Each year the International Cultural Center at Texas Tech University—located in the campus's museum district—hosts in its gallery a juried show of photographs taken in arid and semiarid locales throughout the world. I am pleased to say that of 50+ displayed photographs, I placed 10th as an honorable mention. You may view this photograph in several places:
1) By clicking here at my website www.richardjespers.com/photos.html
2) Clicking here to view an online display of all the winners: www.depts.ttu.edu/international/events/2025/high_and_dry/
3) If you live in West Texas you can see these photos in person at the ICC.
Enjoy viewing! RJ

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HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTHWEST

9/15/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.
Agatha Christie
Author of Sixty-six Detective Novels
Born September 15, 1890

A. Christie

My Book World

Ventura, Michael. If I Was a Highway: Essays. With a foreword by Dan Flores and photographs by Butch Hancock. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP, 2011.

This journalist originally from New York befriends the Southwest US, from Lubbock, Texas to Los Angeles; and, in turn, the Southwest seems to befriend him. In “A Life of Destinations,” Ventura says: “To be that man who only lives to live. That is my task from now on. It isn’t about writing anymore, or finding a meaning, or changing the world, or getting and keeping love, though all of that is important; but it isn’t about that stuff anymore. The task now is to be that man who only lives to live. For whom life, life, life, is enough” (15). What a great attitude!

As a Lubbockian (a term the author may have coined for no one I know uses it seriously), myself, I particularly liked Ventura’s essay, “Lubbockian Identity,” He begins this way: “Let us consider Lubbock Texas. In 1973, January through September, I lived in Lubbock—not a resident; a drifter, taking my time passing through. The Lubbockians I got to know all were Texans, mostly born and raised in Lubbock. Ethnically, most were some mixture of Anglo-Saxon-Celt, often with Cherokee stirred in a few generations back. Many traced their American ancestry to well before the Civil War” (35). But this delineation is only the beginning of Ventura’s portrayal of Lubbock—a place he likes more than he doesn’t. Will buy copies of this for friends [and I did] who don’t live in Lubbock—just so they know I’m not entirely crazy for living here!

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Rachel Field
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anne Meara
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Mark Levin
FRI: My Book World | Rachel Louise Snyder, Women We Buried, Women We Burned

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My Journey of States-24 Arizona

9/26/2018

A WRITER'S WIT
As gun owners, my husband and I understand that the Second Amendment is most at risk when a criminal or deranged person commits a gun crime. These acts only embolden those who oppose gun ownership. Promoting responsible gun laws protects the Second Amendment and reduces lives lost from guns.
Gabrielle Giffords
Born June 8, 1970 Tucson, Arizona

G. Giffords

MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the twenty-fourth post of fifty.

ARIZONA (1975, 1993, 2004, 2017)

I first made it to Arizona when, in 1975, I accompanied a couple of friends who wanted to drive to Phoenix from Lubbock. It was in June, and while Texas is certainly hot at that time of the year, it has nothing on Phoenix. One evening, as the sun went down and the temperature fell to 102°, someone was heard to say that it was nice that things had cooled off. Anyway . . . we spent a great deal of time either in a pool or inside bars with AC.

The second time I visited the state was in 1993, when I drove my mother and father out to visit my mother’s sister, who lived in Mesa. Again, June. Again, hot! I met two of Mother’s cousins, and when we all sat in a circle in one cousin’s living room, Mother looked more at home than I’d seen her in years, more genteel, more loquacious. She was at home! We visited a friend, an interior designer who’d bought an old adobe home and was remodeling it. Dinner with him was a respite from hauling the folks around.

R. Jespers, Santa Rita Mountains, Arizona — 2004

Ken and I visited Arizona again in 2004, staying with a cousin from my father’s side of the family, as well as working in a visit with my late mother’s cousin, whose wife and he greeted us with great hospitality, a meal, and a jar of preserves.

From Our Hotel Room, Gilbert, Arizona — 2017

In 2017, I visited my aunt who lives in Mesa, eighty-six at the time. She called together all my cousins, one of whom I hadn’t seen since we were children (see below). More of my family resides in Arizona than any other state in the union.

Jespers and Summers Cousins with Grandma & Grandpa Richards —1960

HISTORICAL POSTCARDS & Trunk Decals

If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on a link:
1-Kansas   13. New Jersey
2-Oklahoma   14. Delaware
3-Texas     15. New York
4-Louisiana     16. Connecticut
5-Missouri 17. Colorado
6-Illinois 18. Arkansas
7-Indiana   19. California
8-Ohio 20. Florida
9-Pennsylvania 21-Mississippi
10-West VA   22. New Mexico
11-Maryland 23. Tennessee
12. Virginia

NEXT TIME: My Book World | Bullets Into Bells

'HIGH AND DRY' 2024

HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTHWEST

My Book World

My Journey of States-24 Arizona

ARIZONA (1975, 1993, 2004, 2017)

HISTORICAL POSTCARDS & Trunk Decals

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