When this set of jewels came in the mail, an eBay purchase by the Wife, I knew they'd have to go on the site. This is the first in a series of nineteen Texas postcards, attached in a long folding strip, that bring you the goodness of Texas, both fact and fiction.

Texas is a magical place full of deep tradition and mythology, hard-luck stories, pistol-whippins, rags-to-riches stories, and a whole pile of contradictions. There are few states whose residents wear their state's identity on their sleeves as do the Texans. You see the passion for Virginia, or New York City, even the Big Sky West, but does the everyday Arkansan feel it as deeply?

As the wags say: "it's like a whole other country."

Having grown up there, these images remind me of the common words that are woven into the daily fabric of living and working there, words such as longhorn, oil, bluebonnet, Marfa, Aggie, Alamo, and so many more. Now that I live in Virginia, a place with twice the history of Texas, I occasionally struggle with the local parlance. How the hell does one pronounce "Powhatan", although "Fauquier" is now in my grasp after only nine years. And who was this Powhatan anyway?

So, I slipped into sort of a Virginia riff there, but am reminded that this is about Texas, the Texans, and the Texians.

Enjoy!