The Grace, Abilene; Fort Phantom Hill, Abilene; Palace Theater, Childress.
Summer is my busiest season, and also my most hated season, with the heat, bugs and general swampiness that comes on around mid-June and stays until October. I’d like to hibernate indoors and skip the whole thing, but late spring through about November works best for travel planning, actual travel time, and making the books that my company publishes. Because other times of the year are busier with client projects and other priorities, during the summer, I am on the road every few weekends.
Coming up between now and the end of September: East Texas (four days, 13 towns — a lighter trip because I’ll be seeing family for a day or so); Port Isabel to Port Arthur (four days, 31 potential stops so far); Dallas to Santa Fe to Oklahoma City (TBD but probably 30-ish) and then back to East Texas, then hopefully an airplane trip somewhere later in the fall for a real vacation.
By the time all of this wraps up, I’m burnt out and saying never again. But at the end of the day, I really like what I do. It’s fun to see new things and interesting things in unexpected places. Last month in Athens, Texas, we saw a fiddle festival AND a robot barista. Found a new favorite “Mexican-Chamorro” coastal Mexican food restaurant alongside I-20. We’ve seen beautiful scenery, from canyons to mountains to bayous, within a few hours of our house in a very flat city. There’s a little Pennsylvania Dutch market and deli on the way from Dallas to Lufkin, and you won’t find a better kolache than theirs. Route 66’s Blue Whale of Catoosa, while not a hidden gem, is very fun.
Few things make me happier than when I hear that someone went somewhere cool that they learned about from me. When I was building my business, for a hot second I thought about adding a hosted tour component, but then remembered the words of an elderly boss at a church I once worked for: “Ya ignorant about politics, but ya know ya’self.” Harsh assessment? Backhanded compliment? Who can tell. But I know myself enough to know that I don’t have the temperament for all the interpersonal politics that hosted excursions would require. (*I did enjoy hosting art tours, but that’s a different scenario!)
I don’t want to be a travel influencer because, you’ll notice, none of my photos include selfies and influencing is all about selfies. I’m an older person who does not thrive outdoors. No one would be influenced by a sweating middle-aged lady on the sidewalk in Boll Weevil Tinytown, USA, fruitlessly typing “coffee shop Sunday hours” into her phone and wondering if the next public restroom will be as bad as the last one, or much worse.
So books it is, and other creative projects for clients and it’s working out pretty well. I spent a lot of years wondering what my life was going to look like and how things could possibly shape up after one thing went away or another thing never worked at all or all the myriad other ways that the future can seem to evaporate. I am fully aware that I will be wondering that again in my lifetime. But it’s nice to have a little less of that specific worry for now.
So, I pack my suitcase and the car cooler (again), say goodbye to the cats (again) and set off to see what lies just down the road.
I’ve written a lot about the many phases of the gas station saga, the spark and motivation of the Pine Curtain Project and my attempt to document, work though and move forward (and help move my family forward) as things change so much around them. It has been a while since I provided an update — for a long time nothing really happened. And then, kaboom.
There’s the gas station. When I took this photo, I was standing in my parents’ yard. Not at the edge of it, in their garage. It’s worse in front of my grandfather’s house. Around the time the gas station was finishing construction, other parcels of land began to sell around my families’ homes. It has become a (somewhat expensive and complicated) game of whack-a-mole, with my extended family members and my parents trying to figure out what’s for sale, is it worth buying themselves, is it a good investment, etc. just to maintain some sense of normalcy for a little bit longer. When I was home last, in early May, the area was hard to recognize. Trees have been cleared in all directions, new construction is going up, three or more houses on lots that used to hold space for just one. As these changes have happened, there has been a predictable increase in petty crime like loitering, trespassing and break-ins. And so begins the letting go.
My parents are still coming to terms with what happens next, and because they’re mentally and physically independent, I try to just stay out of the way let them do what they do. And then I look for a bag to breathe into.
They, and my cousin, uncle and grandfather are all handling things in their own way. My grandfather, who lives practically in the gas station parking lot, is getting by with blackout curtains and a good sleep mask. My cousin, the practical one, has bought up some property to delay the inevitable, but has also been making trips to where they all want to resettle to scope it out. My uncle is the only one to actually cross the store’s threshold, because they make a good slushie. My parents are in archaeologist mode.
Every so often, my mom will show up for a visit with a plastic tub of my old stuff. Some of it’s relevant to my research but mostly it’s a hodgepodge. My dad is taking a different approach and finding random old things to refurbish. And I do mean random.
Mom: “Your dad found your bike to fix up for you.”
Me: “What bike?”
Mom: “The little cowboy one. Maroon.”
Me: “The one I had in third grade?”
Mom: “Yes! That one,”
Reader, I am 47. I am almost six feet tall. I don’t have kids and I don’t know any little kids. My cats will never be able to ride that bike.
Mom: “So, do you want it?”
Me: “Umm, why don’t you guys keep it for me a little bit longer.”
A few weeks later.
Mom: “Guess what we found?”
Me: “What?”
Mom: “Your Barbie Dream House!”
Me: “From 1982!?”
Mom: “Yeah, do you want it?”
A few weeks later.
Mom: “I found something you might want in the old barn.”
Me. “??”
Mom: “Your recorder!”
Me: “From elementary school? Like, the ‘Hot Cross Buns’ recorder?”
Mom: “Do you want it or not?”
Other things they’ve “found” and fixed up for me include some kind of ancient weed tiller thing from my late grandfather’s farm, a little deer hide chair from the 1800s, a foot-pedal sewing machine, a 1970’s Ford, a 1960s Mercury Comet and a 1992 Chevy S10. (To be clear, I already have a car!)
I know this is them working through what they need to work through, and who knows, maybe one day I will want to play the recorder again. I think my bestie Missy reclaimed her own Barbie Dream House in a similar scenario, so maybe we can set them up and play, like old times.
The next phase is one that I deeply dread. I have long-promised to help my mom clean out my room, and after years of kicking that can down the road, the day is fast approaching. I do not want to do this. Not only is it going to be an absolute a$$-whip of a project, I know what all is in there.
In the tubs that my mother has brought, the ones she’s piled into my car as its driving away, and the many more that remain, there are stacks of old notes, old writing, old mementos, yearbooks, and photos. Painstakingly folded notes that air one side of long-ago grievances, photos of me looking weird, photos of me trying too hard. Crispy-dried prom corsages. A hand-painted egg from a junior high family science project, still unbroken, resting in its little plastic basket. Diaries that contain God-knows-what about God-knows-who. Tube tops and plastic barrettes and probably all my vinyl pants from the nineties. Notebooks with doodles, directions and things to remember from long-ago trips and my time in New York, when Google didn’t exist and I had to rely on my wits. All of it there, just waiting to bite me.
I know that the cleanest break is to just throw things away. Stop digging, wash my hands, move on. But I can’t. I have to look through these boxes, even the ones that I know will hurt. Because we all know the myth about boxes, and how sometimes, even when pain flies out, there’s still hope left inside. Maybe I’ll find something good.
Each year, I make a Christmas project based on the family cats.
This year, Bonnie and Beans were painted on a zipper pouch!
I used Golden acrylic paints mixed with Golden fabric medium (GAC 900). I haven’t heat cured it yet, but would probably only spot clean it, and only if absolutely necessary, anyway.
As I have mentioned, I have a business that publishes travel books and produces custom travel programs and content. This means I travel a LOT. What constitutes a lot? 91 towns in 2022! Our books focus on small towns, so while we see plenty of cities, we are especially fond of what you can find if you leave the interstate. Here are my favorite photos from a year on the road!
Kilgore, Texas January 2022
Shreveport, Louisiana January 2022
Cranfills Gap, Texas FEBRUARY 2022
Downtown Baird, Texas April 2022
Albany, Texas April 2022
Overton, Texas May 2022
Hamilton, Louisiana June 2022
Colorado City, Texas August 2022
Tucumcari, New Mexico August 2022
Texarkana OctOBER 2022
Galveston December 2022
If you like what you see, you might like our books! If you’re a business and would like to learn more about our corporate services, get in touch. Otherwise, just enjoy and be inspired.
You’ll notice these photos are much better than the ones you usually see on here. That’s because my husband took them! No particular order to these beyond the date. Just quirky destinations that that stood out to me.
We plan a few big trips a year in pursuit of our books. In 2023, we will be doing a trip up the Texas coast, from Port Isabel to Port Arthur as well as spending time photographing around the Texas Frontier regions – North Central Texas and the Panhandle. I’m sure there will be other trips along the way — the best ones are often instances where we just get in the car and go!
This year, according to insights on my Kindle app, I read 27 books, compared to 29 in 2021 and just 13 in 2020. This includes purchased books and digital loans from the Dallas Public Library, and doesn’t include physical books or the small selection loaned to me for review through NetGalley. I mostly read library books because well, I love to read but my budget and bookshelves can only accommodate so many physical books.
There are a few weeks left in 2022, and quite a bit of downtime for me as business slows and I don’t travel for Christmas. So, I expect to add one or two more titles.
I gravitated heavily toward nonfiction this year. It was a very busy year, so I would have thought the opposite to be true — that I would want to escape into fiction. But my favorites mostly were in the true crime and history genre.
Something new that I have done for years, but only now started tracking, is recommending titles to my 88 year old Grandfather in East Texas. He reads anything and everything, regardless of genre, politics or author. He really likes books that give new insight to history and current events. I send him books to entertain him and try to keep him inside and out of trouble. But like me, he is a quick reader, so there is usually time between book deliveries for him to get into his garden to lift heavy things or mow with one of his ancient, pieced together “Frankentractors” or give unsolicited advice to construction crews across the street, much to the consternation of his grown children and other grandchildren. I have indicated the books I’ve sent to him and when applicable, his unfiltered feedback. (Well, slightly filtered — he shares his reads of the day with my mom at dinner, and she passes it on to me. But she includes strong opinions, cuss words and his…colorful turns of phrase.) If you, too have an elderly person to calm and entertain, maybe these recommendations will help.
These are just a few memorable books from 2022 out of many that I read, and in no particular order. I didn’t review as I went along, and won’t overburden the list with reviews here, just some hot takes. I’m becoming more active on Goodreads if you’d like to follow me there.
The 2022 Notable Book List:
Notes on an Execution, Danya Kukafka (Bookshop.org) Zabar’s: A Family Story, with Recipes, Lori Zabar (Bookshop.org) Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me, Ada Calhoun (Bookshop.org) Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls, Kathleen Hale (Bookshop.org) *Hell’s Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier, Susan Jonusas (Bookshop.org) I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home, Jami Attenberg (Bookshop.org) *Big, Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas, Stephen Harrigan (Bookshop.org) *Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Timothy Snyder (Bookshop.org) *The Accommodation: The Politics of Race in an American City, Jim Schutze (Bookshop.org) *Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family, Jess Walter (Bookshop.org) A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews (Bookshop.org) A Woman’s Story, Annie Ernaux translated by Tanya Leslie (Bookshop.org) Gichigami Hearts: Stories and Histories from Misaabekong, Linda LeGarde Grover (Bookshop.org) Anna: The Biography, Amy Odell (Bookshop.org) I’ll Have What She’s Having: How Nora Ephron’s Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy, Erin Carlson (Bookshop.org) *The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, Studs Terkel (Bookshop.org)
*An asterisk marks the books that I had sent to my grandfather.
The Hot Takes:
Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls, Kathleen Hale This is an intimate look at mental illness in youth, online culture, the ferociousness of young girls and the worst case scenario when the worst of those elements combine. Throw in a detailed look at the juvenile incarceration system and barriers to appropriate mental health care access for incarcerated youth, and you’ll look at “weird kids” with more compassion.
*Hell’s Half-Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, a Serial Killer Family on the American Frontier, Susan Jonusas I really liked this one, and my grandfather loved it. He read it slowly so that the experience would last through the last hot weeks of summer. It had all the elements he liked, true crime, history and mystery partially set in Texas.
*Big, Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas, Stephen Harrigan I borrowed this one from the library and sent my grandfather a hard copy. If I wasn’t so sure I’d inherit it back in the next, oh, 50 years or so (if not longer, we can hope), I’d buy my own copy. He especially liked the archival photographs that went with the major points of the book.
*Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Timothy Snyder This was a grim read, but a good one. I’d think “uh-oh” when coming to an especially graphic bit, because I knew what my parents’ dinner table conversation would be once my grandfather got there himself. “I can’t believe people would do that,” he would say, before going into detail on just what they did and the results of their actions. But even grim stories are important and my grandfather agrees.
*Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family, Jess Walter I really liked this one, an unvarnished account of failures on the part of the government and the fringe beliefs and eccentricities of the Weaver family. “Damn crazy bunch, but the FBI was wrong to do what they did,” my grandfather said. (I’d like to note here that his favorite grandchild —not me!— is, in fact an FBI agent, but he calls things as he sees them.)
A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews This is set in a Mennonite community, but I found so much familiarity with my (secular) home community. I appreciated that Toews made the characters so multi-faceted. It is more common and I suppose, easier to write these insular communities as oppressed, simple or folksy but that does a great disservice to the very real lives they contain.
A Woman’s Story, Annie Ernaux translated by Tanya Leslie French writer Annie Ernaux and winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature was not a writer I was familiar with until her win was announced. While I regret that I have only just now begun to read her work, I’m also grateful that by now there is a lot of that work to read! Her stories are short and concise, and her literary voice is evocative and inspires emotion without being overly emotional. I have many more of her books on my library loan list, and can’t wait to read them.
Gichigami Hearts: Stories and Histories from Misaabekong, Linda LeGarde Grover I read this and then interviewed Dr. Grover for the New Books Network, my last interview before our neighborhood went haywire with spur of the moment yard work noises and podcasting became impossible. This was a great book that incorporated Dr. Grover’s own story with her family history and folklore, and I am so glad I got to speak with her to learn more. (You can listen to the podcast here. I hope to podcast more in 2023, but that depends on the leaf blower brigade which is sadly, not up to me.)
*The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, Studs Terkel I love everything that Studs Terkel has ever produced, and this is no exception. Like my grandfather with his history books, I am pacing myself because sadly, there are no more Studs Terkel books forthcoming and I have read almost all of them. I purchased this for my grandfather’s Christmas present. He had a beloved uncle who died in WWII during Operation Husky, in Italy. In my family research I always look for new details to fill in the part of his story that happened so far away from home. This book does a great job of filling in color and the impact on individual lives from a variety of people who lived and served during the war.
Installed art at the J. Erik Johnsson Central Library, Lillian Bradshaw Gallery.
Last Friday, I made a trip to Downtown Dallas to install my first solo show at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library. This show was supposed to happen last spring, but schedules could not quite align. Happily, now is a better time, and I have the space for the next month or so.
Although I have been creating some new work since the show was proposed and accepted, monotype prints still comprise the majority of my work, so that’s what’s on view.
I’m still in the “bring your own hammer and hangers” phase of my art career, but unlike my last big show, James was able to help me out, which made it a bit easier.
All-in-all, I have 16 pieces up, framed in various sizes. Since it had been a little while since I worked on these prints, it was fun to go back through them to pick and choose which art to display. The majority are from family photos, but one wall’s art highlights the greater Lufkin and East Texas community.
Here are a few that I chose, which link to their accompanying blog posts!
To see the rest, make a trip to the library! (While you’re there, get a library card! If you already have a card, pick out a new book! And if you already have your card and plenty to read, check out the library’s awesome new historical exhibition of archival materials around Big D Reads and “The Accommodation” book! I have to say, it’s an honor to be part of the good work of the Dallas Public Library.
If you see a piece that you are interested in here, at the show, or elsewhere please get in touch. After a break to focus on other things for the summer (did you know I published a travel book?!) I am open again for sales and a limited number of commissions. I am always interested in opportunities to showcase or share about my art, process and research project. Please get in touch if you’d like to learn more.
“Night Swimming,” Acrylic on Canvas by Stephanie Khattak.
Hello, why yes — it HAS been a while since I last updated my blog and my web site. What can I say, the first half of 2022 has gone by really quickly. And while in some ways it’s been really nice, it hasn’t left a lot of time for more creative pursuits, much less documenting those pursuits.
I secured a new freelance/contract client in January that takes up most of my weekday hours, and I published a travel book! The operative word there (after “published” I suppose) is travel. I haven’t been home many weekends in the past year or so. I am planning more travel books which entails more travel. So, it’s been a bit of a balance to learn, but I am getting better at it.
But I still paint as often as I can, and I still have the Pine Curtain Project going in the background. The above painting doesn’t look quite like the other pieces in the Pine Curtain Project. That’s another reason this blog has been quiet for a bit. I have felt compelled to bring the project into a more modern era, and am always tiptoeing around that a little bit. Some stories are not my stories to tell, but intersect with mine. So, what to do? My solution is to just focus on the scenes and feelings that I want the paintings to evoke while making everything else unidentifiable. This specific swimming pool didn’t exist, and neither did the specific girls in it. But what did exist, for me and I imagine many others, is night swimming with friends on a summer night. One of my besties had a pool, and my church rented one each summer from the time I was in middle school on out. There was a special kind of relaxed that we felt after swimming, and many pool nights melted easily into slumber parties. It was hot, and the June Bugs were loud, and we somehow felt sunburned even though we were swimming at dusk. And it was wonderful.
If you have been connected with me for any amount of time, you know I am a cat lady. Here is the kitty that started it all, Baby Kitty in my arms, in this print based off of a 1979 photo. Baby Kitty was a gray striped tabby who lived in the barn between my house and my great-grandmother’s house. I don’t remember her being an inside cat, but she was always around and a really good sport while I learned to love animals. Baby Kitty was a beloved member of our family, to be cherished and pampered as such. As has been the case with every cat, dog (and in my cousins’ cases – horse, snake, parakeet and Galapagos turtle) since then.
I’m not the first amateur archivist in the family. My dad, for as long as I can remember, has documented community and family life in East Texas, first with reel-to-reel recorders and Super 8 videos, then with a huge brick of a VHS camcorder (which went on every family vacation, duct-taped and cumbersome, until the late 90s, when the battery kept falling out at Graceland.) Now, like everyone else, he uses his iPhone and sometimes the video functionality on his digital camera. But he kept EVERYTHING, and a few years ago gifted me with a box of roughly 30-40 discs, each with 4-5 events captured on it. Best of all, he had long before captured the Super 8s onto the VHS, a painstaking process where he set up the screen in the living room, put on his oldies records, and videoed the screen while my mom and I tiptoed around the set-up and tried not to knock anything over or share incriminating gossip that might be picked up on audio. He later transferred those videos to DVDs as well, so they’re also in the box.
As modern technology evolved, I eventually found myself with no DVD player, and also no real way to copy those discs to a digital format. But they are treasures, and I knew that in particular, there was a Homer history talk by the OG Homer Historian, Mrs. Ruth Grant, in an event at our church in the early aughts. Because I don’t know of a labled map of old Homer, I needed to see if she mentioned any locations or had other information that I could use in my upcoming folklore presentation. So, I went on Amazon, bought some new equipment and started my journey down memory lane.
The good news is that it all works perfectly and I have been having a great time seeing so many memories again. I did find Mrs. Grant’s lecture, and it provided some missing links and also, since she was an expressive talker, I am able to estimate some of the important landmarks of old Homer based on which direction she pointed as she spoke.
This is really exciting for me, not only for this particular event I am preparing for, but also in general to see how I can use more multimedia content to create for and enhance the Pine Curtain Project.
The missing link!
The family dog’s haircut and then his funeral. Not on the same day. RIP Tater.
Not sure what happened at the Smokey Bear museum, but it must have been unpleasant!
My patron saint these days. She’s done all the hard work, I’m mostly just sifting through and organizing it. How I wish she was still with us to discuss these things in person!
stephaniekhattak.com 