Category Archives: Riffs

Spring along South Rice

It’s just a drainage ditch that runs out from under the streets of Bellaire, down between the two sides of South Rice Avenue and empties into Brays Bayou. Maybe it was once a natural little bayou that was channelized, or maybe it’s a remnant of the time this area was all rice paddies. Most likely, […]

Memorial Day.

We fly our flags and post our pictures of the orderly rows of gravestones in veterans’ cemeteries; we call to mind our fathers or sons or brothers or cousins (and, more frequently, now, our mothers and daughters and sisters) who died while serving in time of war. All this is fitting; we should remember these […]

Kindly Fruits of the Earth

In the litany of the Anglican Liturgy is this petition: That it may please thee to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, so that in due time we may enjoy them; We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord. Whenever I’m in the produce section of the local grocery, I […]

Things You See in Houston

Tucked away in a far-southwestern suburb is this exuberant building of the Cao Dai religion, a syncretist sect founded in Vietnam in 1926. Around the corner is an Ethiopian Evangelical Church. Nearby are a half-dozen small Baptist and independent churches, tire shops, bars, smoke shops and various other organizations which move in when rents are cheap […]

Iced Tea and Bad Moods

Standing at the self-serve ice tea station, getting my mother sweet tea. A whistling, hearty man taps me on the shoulder: “How is your day going this fine Sunday morning, my friend?” “Sucks,” I say. “Oh. Well. I am sorry it sucks,” he says with a sniff, heartiness a little less hearty, and his whistling stopped, […]