The Terrible Catsafterme

Cats have always been my household pet of choice. So much so in fact that to date I have had ten different cats who played a significant role in my life. The very first one was the least memorable…mostly because I don’t remember him/her. While no dissertation of my life would be complete without including a tribute to the very first in a long line of feline friends, this one was merely a flash in the pan with no given name. It simply became referred to as “the cat on John Glenn,” a stray that hung out with us for just a brief time in 1973. But it would pave the way for my first official cat to be given a name a year or so later.

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Bob and I awoke on the morning of Tuesday, April 1 (he wished me happy birthday) in Kerrville, Texas at the Whitten Inn. This was not our intended destination, but because we had taken the wrong turning in San Antonio, this is where we parked ourselves and I immediately plotted our substitute course. It started with our continental breakfast at the Whitten which included waffles shaped like the state of Texas. From there we headed to Fredericksburg… Read the rest of this entry »

Lyndon Johnson presided over our country as the 36th President during one of the tumultuous and historical significant periods of United States history. Becoming President just as the nation was rocked by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, life as America knew it immediately began to change. As for civil reform, it’s possible no President did more than LBJ. His Great Society programs which included voting rights, Medicaid, foodstamps, education aid, environmental protection, consumer protection, public radio and telelvision, and the Civil Rights Act, have left an impact that resonates even today. And his commitment to the space program ensured that we would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Read the rest of this entry »

Two of Hume Cronyn’s earliest roles were in Alfred Hitchcock films, Shadow of Doubt in 1943 (in which he nearly stole every scene in which he appeared) and Lifeboat  in 1944. He went on to work of the screenplay adapatations for two additional films with the Master of Suspense, Rope and Under Capricorn. His celebrated career went on for nearly sixty years, culminating in the magnificent Marvin’s Room (with my buddy Robert DeNiro), in which he again stole the show – without uttering a single word. Read the rest of this entry »