South Texas in the Civil War

The big news today is that our new coach was sent out for painting to Forest City, IA. CDI, the company that paints New Horizons coaches, also paints Winnebagos and is nationally known for its quality work. The round trip from Junction City to Forest City is over 900 miles, so New Horizons must really value the great paint jobs that CDI does. Our full body paint, including the graphics, will be protected by four coats of clear coat. Many of the decals on our Excel are faded and peeling, so we're very glad that we won't have decals to worry about.

Tomorrow we'll be three weeks, 21 days, from our arrival in Junction City, and it sounds like our new home will be ready for us to move into.

This afternoon we went to our last Monday afternoon C-1 workshop with Darryl. It's easy to tell that the season is winding down. We've had ten or eleven squares, but today we were down to five squares, and many of those dancers (including us) will be leaving soon. We said our goodbyes to some of our friends we won't be seeing until we come back in the fall.

After the dance we stopped by HEB and Office Max to see if we could find some boxes. At both places we were told that we'd have to come very early in the morning to get any boxes before they were broken down and bailed, and in the case of HEB, we'd have to call after 11:00 p.m. to talk with the night manager and make our request. Hmmm. We'd have to get up really early to get there, so we're hoping to find some other options.

Then we drove out to UTPA, where we were planning to meet Hardy and Judy and Steve and Jan for a talk on the Civil War.

Monday, March 26 from 7 – 9 p.m. Dr. Jerry Thompson from Texas A & M International in Laredo will speak on “South Texas in the American Civil War”. And as the perfect complement to this LTAI program, Alexander Mendoza, history lecturer at North Texas University will open the program at 6 p.m. talking about “Tejanos and the Civil War”. The presentations will be at the UTPA Library Auditorium.

Dr. Thompson is the author of over 20 books (most of which are held by UTPA Library). He is nationally known as a Civil War historian and a lively speaker not to be missed. He will be bringing some of his books which will be sold by the UTPA Bookstore.

And as a special photo opportunity LTAI participant Ruben Cordova and other Civil War re-actors will be at the programs in their Civil War uniforms!

Dr. Thompson is indeed a "lively speaker" and very gracious, engaging, and informative. He talks about events and people in the Civil War as though he had personal experience with them.

Afterwards we went to the DQ to hash over what we had learned. We talked about the closing of Angels, our favorite breakfast place, and what our options are for Sunday morning breakfasts in the fall.  We'll definitely miss the nice extended family and the comfortable atmosphere of Angel's--and the regularly filled bottomless coffee cups.

We just caught an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Tavis Smiley Show. Tyson is an impassioned advocate for the exploration of space and dreaming big dreams. Ken is reading his latest book, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier.