Wednesday, November 18, 2015

what the sign says




NOW THAT WE LIVE in a different neighborhood, I have a new commute into the city. It’s a cool ride. I bike from our apartment near Memorial Park, all along Buffalo Bayou, into downtown Houston — and I never have to stop at a stop sign or a traffic light. The bike trails go over and under the surface streets.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

a family like a fricassee



HE DOESN’T SEEM to talk much, but then he doesn’t have to. When you’ve fathered almost an entire town, words are unnecessary. “Pop” Joe Courville celebrates his 87th birthday today on the banks of Catahoula Lake. According to his oldest daughter, Mrs. J. B. (Yola) Laviolette, almost everyone in the town will attend. 

goose



Thursday, November 12, 2015

picture catahoula



I HAD NO IDEA how it would end when it began. All I knew is that I’d discovered a trove of great material, and that I wanted to create a book befitting that material, as elegant and as surprising as the photographs I’d unearthed. When I began, I was just groping in the dark. But if I shuffled the images around enough, I suspected, grouping and regrouping them, eventually a story might come into view.