Blog Archives
trail
A couple of years ago, I needed to go from Lubbock, Texas, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which is about a 360 mile drive. And the drive goes through two states: Texas and Oklahoma.
But also we’d heard about a good restaurant in a little town in Colorado and added that into the trip. And then we added a swing through Tesuque, New Mexico, just for the hell of it. That expanded the trip to about 1600 miles* and included five states.
Anyway, this is something that we saw along the way that we’d’ve missed going the regular way.
near Cheyenne Wells, Colorado
photographed 9.4.24
*Not counting all the u-turns that photography seems to demand.
presentation
The cathedral is one of the greatest still-standing examples of Norman architecture; here’s a statue of King William II of Sicily offering a model of the cathedral to the Virgin Mary. The sand color of the statue and the texture of the stone will forever make me think about this as a sand sculpture (just one more example of how my brain works). The building was constructed between 1172 and 1185, which is an astonishingly fast pace for a building of its size and detailing. (Coincidently, that is faster than the time it took the City of Lubock and the Texas Department of Transportation to reconstruct approximately two miles of 19th Street.)
Duomo di Monreale
Monreale, Sicily
photographed 1.30.2025
sharing space
I saw an interesting store display in El Paso last month. It was like a “compare and contrast” essay about the differences between European and Mexican versions of Catholicism.
On a side note, this sighting did increase my annual “white baby Jesus” tally by one.
El Paso, Texas
photographed 12.14.2025




