I finally decided what I like about Lubbock, or at least why I find myself generally happy here. It's a town that doesn't have much pretense. Yes, it's conservative, and people care passionately and give each other a hard time sometimes. But it's genuine. It doesn't pretend to be one thing, and then go off and do another.

The weather is kind of wacky. It's been steady 20-30 mile wind with no rain, clear blue sky, and sometimes dust in your teeth, and this has been going on all spring. Finally tonight it rained a little. It's been kind of a drought. Most years, we have two or three inches by now; apparently, so far, we only have one and a half, maybe. But it hasn't been so bad. For one thing, plenty of rain last year has left things green, and that holds down the dust. So, less dust in your teeth this year. Same steady wind, but less dust. I kind of like it. It changes all the time, and the wind is really the thing to watch and get familiar with - the wind even determines how fast the water dries that you sprinkle on your lawn. In this kind of northbound steady dry heat, watering your lawn seems especially hopeless. But, when the dust rises, you're glad for every little stump of grass that's holding out in the great outdoors.

Saw a t-shirt today that said "Dust City Hooligans," and seemed to be a soccer team. I was surprised, Dust City is another name for Lubbock; this was news to me. Dust City, somehow, sounds better than Hub City. The only good thing about being Hub City is that you can get from places like Littlefield and Plainview to places like Brownfield and Levelland - all roads go through Lubbock. Boston, too, used to be "Hub City." It struck me as nothing special. Maybe I'll rethink it somehow, so I have a good logo which I can then use on this blog.

A semester ended, and I'm free for a spell. I might be contributing here a little bit. I actually like the place - yet I have no idea what I could say that would make any difference. I'll work on it, promise. And, I haven't stopped taking pictures.

Golden Pecans, part I

Young, A. Lubbock's pecan bumper crop good for business, nut lovers, Lubbock Online. http://lubbockonline.com/local-news/2015-12-24/lubbocks-pecan-bumper-crop-good-business-nut-lovers#.Vn3qxlLjIeI. Accessed Dec. 2015.

It's good to hear about the people who are in the same occupation I am, namely picking up pecans wherever I can. My own back yard has been good for maybe ten pounds so far, and on my way to work, I stop at a professor's house and pick more. Also I have a neighbor who doesn't touch theirs'; I grab a few there as I walk by as well. I try to keep my hands off where I don't know the people or where I really don't know if they want to get out and harvest their own, but I've noticed that for the most part, people don't care. A whole town of pecans, and they're just sitting there, waiting for the harvesters.

A friend of mine told me that they're hot all of a sudden in China, but I haven't confirmed this. Does this keep the price high? Or would the price come down, later in the year, as people come out with these thousands of pounds of shelled pecans, and they all hit the market at the same time? Or, here's another question. Say I bring home my 26 pounds (as it stands, I've added a pound or two to that, but I'm not sure how it'll work, and I supposedly will be able to pick up my shelled pecans around the middle of March)....and let's say there's a glut on the market and I can't even give them away to my immediate relatives. Do they keep? If so, how? How long will they last?

The pecan place gave away two kinds of mulch: the rough kind, they sold, as people found it useful for all kinds of things. It breaks up the soil, someone said, so it's generally well-sought-after. But there was another kind, the finer mulch. That was free, and it sat out in their driveway in two large gallon-drums. People use that in pin-cushions, they said, and they gave that away free, or at least they gave some away free to an older lady who asked them. She had asked me first, but I had asked the worker there, who was an Iowa Hawkeye like myself, and also a musician. She, upon finding out that it was for pin cushions and was for free, got them to make her a bag of it, and she took off with it.

Now that set me to thinking: maybe I should go into the pincushion business. I have lots of quilt fabric still hanging around. I want to go back into quilt making, but for the time issues, and being overwhelmed by work backed up. Pincushions would allow me to basically do one little thing at a time, and, on top of it, put pecan mulch in there.

It's a true-to-life, down home, Lubbock-style occupation. We're into those, these days, due to the fact that the academic world is just pretty much going down the toilet.

A cold, snowy February has come down upon us, much like the Februaries we used to have in Illinois, only nobody here is really quite used to it. 82 accidents in one weekend; a 15-car pileup on the Marsha Sharp, and more snow expected tonight leaving everybody on pins and needles about whether the whole town will start up at ten, like we did the other day, or whether it's up and running at seven as usual, with or without a huge snow dump.

I tell everyone stay off the Marsha Sharp; hills are the hardest. Hey, people in Iowa and Minnesota don't know how to handle those glazed hilly on ramps either. Staying off them is the best way.

They shouldn't have messed with the groundhog, I say. I'm very superstitious. You diss the groundhog, what is he supposed to do? Six weeks of winter, that's not proper punishment, that's just the usual. But a couple of ice storms will go a long way.

Ambulances, medi-vacs, those guys are having a field day. But spring is around the corner - and what does that mean, dust?