Holly Lucas, who sang, hiked, biked, snorkeled, canoed, sailed, stargazed, rafted, hang glided, rode horseback and kayaked her way from Alaska to Nova Scotia, from California’s Muir Woods to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, from Texas’ Big Bend to the Appalachian Trail, and from Maine’s Cadillac Mountain to Caribbean coral reefs, died on July 16, 2023.…
Twenty-nine years and six weeks ago, my husband and I chose to be married by our hero, Jerry Buchmeyer, the federal judge who on Aug. 17, 1982, decriminalized love between same-sex couples in Texas in the case known as Baker v. Wade. Buchmeyer’s ruling was way ahead of its time: The Fifth Circuit Court of…
Updated: Dear Lowes, Thank you for giving this story a happy ending! This story needs a happy ending. You can make that happen. A while back, my Dad and Mom paid Lowes to put new siding on their home in Woodbury, N.J. After my Dad died this year, my brother and I realized Lowes had failed…
Kelly and Portia are home, awaiting our return. We’re in Woodbury, New Jersey, my hometown, 1,700 miles, a cultural divide and a three-day drive from San Antonio. I’m going through my Dad’s remarkable photos, negatives, slides, and prints. Life here is like a combination of Groundhog Day, with familial behavior patterns in a never-changing loop,…
Joe Lucas was a gregarious iconoclast, an uncompromising defender of civil liberties and human rights and a passionate Atheist, preaching to all who would listen. He was born on Jan. 19, 1933, to Anna Kathryn Thaidigsman and Joseph Biddle Lucas in the Riverside, New Jersey, home built in the 1890s by his German immigrant grandparents.…
I struggle to write my Dad’s obit. And then I rewrite it. And rewrite it again. Where in the world to start? My Dad taught me to read before I entered Kindergarden, he taught me to be a photographer, how to build and fly radio control model airplanes, how to fish, how to paddle a canoe…
Just getting into the after-hours club in Phoenix required an unlikely combination of connections and trust. You had to know it existed in the first place. Then you needed directions – there was no sign outside advertising the joint that opened at 2 a.m., the hour Arizona law required all bars to close. After knocking…
Here are some of the links from my discussion today on Entrepreneurial Journalism at the SPJ Region 8 Conference in San Antonio.Books for news startups: Entrepreneurial Journalism by Mark BriggsThe Lean Startup by Eric RiesLean Analytics Croll & YoskovitzNet Smart by Howard RheingoldSmart Mobs by Howard Rheingold22 Immutable laws of Marketing, Reiss & TroutRocket Surgery…
I used to get flashbacks every August. The aching sadness would start to swallow me on the anniversary of the Aug. 2, 1985 crash of Delta Airlines Flight 191 in Dallas, followed by another collective sob on the anniversary of the Aug. 16, 1987 crash of Phoenix-bound Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in Detroit. As a…
This is going to be a little random, but I am grateful to Adrienne Flynn, my long-time friend, sister journalist, and now University of Maryland journalism professor, for asking me what I think journalism students should be learning these days. Away from academia, these centipede legs sometimes take me on a run, when what I…