The Laredo Cultural District’s (LCD) upcoming Concierto en El Jardin – Bolero Jazz Bajo La Luna Llena and the art exhibit of Bethany House residents is set for April 1 at 7:30 p.m. at Casa Ortiz (915 Zaragoza).

The outdoor Lunada concert features Esther Tovar, la dama del bolero, accompanied by Los Jazzdelics. Members of Los Jazzdelics are Ric Cortez, Bobby López, Luis Angel Pérez, Carlos Morales, and José Luis Vara III.

The art exhibit, which is made possible by a collaboration of the LCD with the Texas Commission on the Arts, features the art of Bethany House residents who have participated in LCD workshops that began in January with Laredo artist Christina Zorilla Speer as instructor.

The artwork of eight men who reside at Bethany House debuted at Casa Ortiz at the February Caminarte event. Thirteen women who participated in the March workshop for Bethany House residents will exhibit their work April 1. An April workshop of family art will correspond to a May exhibit.

“We are fortunate to have this relationship with Bethany House that presents the art and narratives of its residents,” noted LCD creative manager and director Jorge Santana. 

“Esther Tovar’s performance is the first of the 2026 Garden Series. Visitors will enjoy the full moon evening in the beautiful, recently restored gardens of Casa Ortiz,”, “The public is invited to this free concert that promises to be a magical night downtown at historic Casa Ortiz, which will mark its 200-year milestone in 2030,” he added. 

The River Pierce Foundation will host a Basket Weaving Workshop by artist Sarita Westrup in San Ygnacio on March 28 at the Treviño-Uribe Fort (604 Treviño St).  

The free workshop begins at 10 a.m. and concludes at 2 p.m. Space is limited, and registration is required at riverpierce.org. All materials will be provided. 

Workshop participants will learn an open-weave pattern to create a functional bulb basket in a single session. Woven in the round “in your lap,” these baskets take on a beautiful, organic shape. This is an introductory course for anyone interested in the art of basketry.
Instructor Sarita Westrup is a craft-based artist and contemporary basket weaver originally from the Rio Grande Valley. Through the use of mixed media and woven sculptural forms, her work explores themes of tension, movement, and containment, joined and permeable space, and the bi-cultural aesthetics of her home.
She has an MFA in Fiber Arts from the University of North Texas. Most recently her work has been shown in “Flow States-La Trienal” at El Museo del Barrio in NYC, in “The Weight of Wonder” at the Penland Gallery in Penland, NC, and in “Holding Space: Woven Works” at Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY.
Her work has been published in American Craft and Surface Design Journal Magazine.
Westrup is currently an artist-in-residence at the Penland School of Craft in Western North Carolina and is represented by Erin Cluley Gallery in Dallas.

San Ygnacio’s historic Treviño-Uribe Fort is the setting for the River Pierce Foundation’s annual Poetry Under the Sundial Festival on Saturday, March 28 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. 

The festival, which began in 2015, celebrates the Spring Equinox and features local and regional poets, writers, and musicians who present original works as well as literary classics.  
  Poetry as an oral tradition has the power to express and provoke new perspectives about the world and can be a powerful tool to address the social and environmental challenges of our times.  
The foundation encourages readings that resonate with the theme, “Restoration from Distortion: A Healing of the Mind.”   
 
The event is free and open to all poets, writers, and musicians. Each participant is allotted up to ten minutes for the reading of their original or favorite poetry, short stories, and spoken word.  We ask that material be appropriate for all ages. Register to participate at riverpierce.org

Don’t miss a trip to Bikini Bottom in the April 11 and 12 performances of The SpongeBob Musical: Theatre for Young Audiences Edition at the Guadalupe and Lilia Martinez Fine Arts Center Theater on the Laredo College Fort Macintosh Campus.

Admission is free with a valid Laredo College ID, and general admission is $10. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets will be sold at the door. 

Based on Nickelodeon’s popular cartoon series by Stephen Hillenburg, SpongeBob SquarePants, everybody’s favorite yellow sea sponge, will appear live on stage alongside his friends with two nights of laughter, Krabby Patties, and all manner of underwater hijinks. 

According to LC Music Professor Dr. Joseph Crabtree, many of the show’s favorite characters will be there, including Patrick, Squidward, Mr. Krabs, Plankton, Sandy, and more.  “The show is a delightful story of community reacting to events, and the story is really uplifting and delightfully entertaining,” Dr. Crabtree said. “SpongeBob is shown as a real human, helping others in Bikini Bottom face the challenges, or posing them, in Plankton’s case.” 

With local talent in the roles of Bikini Bottom’s loveable cast, audiences can expect real a heart and soul endeavor to elicit the show’s creativity and appeal. The songs and dance pieces accompanying the visuals will add to the spectacle that embodied every episode of the long-running series.  

Dr. Crabtree said that he watched the musical years ago, he immediately fell in love with it. This was the foundation for LC’s decision to produce the musical, as was the community’s  interest in its relevance and accessibility.  

“I relate really well to Sandy the Squirrel. Not being a Bikini Bottom native, she has adapted to life in the underwater community and always does her best to fit in and make things better for SpongeBob and the gang,” he said. “Watching this outsider work to save her community and make it better really speaks to what types of things we all can do here in the real world. So, this production will be a great time spent with friends we know, and Laredo’s community will really enjoy it.”

The Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) Edition of The SpongeBob Musical was developed by The Coterie Theatre, Kansas City, MO, in association with Nickelodeon and Concord Theatricals. The TYA Edition held its world premiere production at The Coterie Theatre in November 2021. 

For more information about LC’s Fine Arts and Communication Department, email david.mcginnis@laredo.edu or call (956) 794-4403.

Creativity takes center stage with Laredo College’s Out of the Box art exhibition that invites audiences to experience the work of 10 South Texas artists who push boundaries, challenge convention, and celebrate the spirit of experimentation. 

The exhibition will be on display through March 20 at the Martha Fenstermaker Memorial Visual Arts Gallery at the LC Visual and Performing Arts Building. Gallery hours are Monday to Thursday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Friday from 9 a.m. to noon. 

Artists in this diverse exhibit are Aimee Gonzalez, Oscar Gomez, Nancy Poinsot, Mary Provence, Araceli Reyes, Jacqueline Rodriguez, Virginia “Viky” García, Manuel Rodriguez, René Gutierrez, and Andrew Thorp.

The exhibit is free and open to the public. 

According to LC Art Professor Mary Provence, “Out of the Box is not just about unconventional materials or surprising imagery. It is about breaking habitual ways of seeing. As artists, we are often handed invisible frames such as tradition, genre, medium, and audience expectations. To step outside the box is to dismantle those frames and reimagine what art can communicate and how it can exist in the world.” 

From striking works that blend emotion and color to pieces that highlight the natural beauty of the region, the exhibit is one not to miss. 

Provence added that the LC Art Program helps students ignite their creativity by giving them both structure and freedom through mentorship, studio practice, and constructive critique. She added that they begin to see themselves as creators capable of shaping meaning and conversation. 

The exhibit brings together artists working across all media who reimagine creative possibilities and explore new ways of thinking. 

Curated by Nancy Poinsot, the exhibition highlights innovation and the power of stepping beyond the expected, encouraging viewers to engage with works that question tradition and embrace fresh perspectives. 

“The show features artists living in South Texas whose art is characterized by unconventional, innovative, or non-conformist thinking that transcends established norms or parameters of their medium or subject matter,” Poinsot said.

A resident of Laredo since 1998, Poinsot has taught art for over 35 years and currently teaches at J.B. Alexander High School. She is a nature enthusiast, artist, illustrator, musician, and educator with a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and a Master’s from Ohio State University.

Members of the non-profit Tu Casa Gráfica will host a March 15 paper making workshop in San Ygnacio at the studio of renowned artist and printmaker Dr. Eric Avery.

According to Avery, paper is not made from wood. It is made from cellulose. “All plant matter has cellulose. Its purest forms are cotton, linen, and flax,” he said.

He explains his papermaking process, which he has refined over decades, at docart.com, detailing that he makes paper pulp for block printing using 90% cotton linters (the small byproduct fibers left after ginning cotton) and 10% high strength Abaca paper fibers. 

The workshop is open to 10 participants. For further information, write to tucasagrafca25@gmail.com.

Upcoming Tu Casa Gráfica events include a July 18 ”Introduction to Plexi-Etching” and a September 7 workshop on “Erasers as Prints.”

The Marcos Varela Jazz Trio performance in Zapata on Feb. 2, the inaugural event of the Zapata County Tourism Board, filled the Zapata County Museum of History with the rhythms of swing, blues, and improvisation.

The performance was the first leg of bassist Varela’s San Ygnacio Tour. He was accompanied by Emilio Modeste of Los Angeles on the sax and NYC drummer Michael Ode. The tour continued to Houton, Austin, Santa Fe, and Taos

Varela, who has familial ties to the founders of SanYgnacio, visited with members of Zapata High School’s Mariachi Halcón after the set. He is regarded as a master of both acoustic and electric bass, and stands among the most respected bassists in the American and international jazz scenes today. He is considered a deeply expressive player and an adventurous composer.

Sponsors of the concert were On Point Taxes y Mas, Arnold Tire, Cornerstone Realty, Los Corralitos Ranch, Los Pasteles Bakery, IBC Bank, J.O. Dodier, Sara Rathmell, Joe Rathmell, and Sandra Santa María. The event raised $7,000 for the Museum.

The Zapata Tourism Board plans to host additional cultural events that increase tourism and generate revenues for local businesses. The Museum will be hosting a four-week genealogy workshop each Thursday from February 19 to March 12. In April, the Museum will host a reading of Carlos Nicolas Flores’ Pillars of Creation, a novel set in a fictional town called Escandon modelled after Zapata.

San Ygnacio, TX – As part of its continued programming supported by the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities in Place Grant, the River Pierce Foundation will host a special day of film and literature on Saturday, February 28, celebrating the paperback release of Brother Brontë, the latest novel by acclaimed author Fernando A. Flores.

The event will take place from noon to 5 p.m. at the Treviño–Uribe Fort (604 Treviño St.) in San Ygnacio. In addition to a book reading by Flores, the

River Pierce will screen Pretty Vacant, the award-winning film by filmmaker Jim Mendiola, who will introduce the film.

A complimentary lunch will be provided for all attendees. RSVP at riverpierce.org.

Flores is a Mexican-American author born in Reynosa, Mexico and raised in South Texas. He is the author of Tears of the Trufflepig, long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and Valleyesque. He is widely recognized for his surreal, border-inflected fiction rooted in the cultural, political, and ecological realities of the Río Grande Valley.

Longlisted for the 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by The Los Angeles Times, Brother Brontë is his second novel to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and continues Flores’ exploration of speculative futures, borderland identity, and the uneasy intersections of technology, power, and place. Flores will read selections from his writings and participate in a panel discussion and Q&A with attendees.

Mendiola’s Pretty Vacant (1996), is the winner of the award for Best Narrative Short at the SXSW Film Festival. Directed by San Antonio-based filmmaker Mendiola, the film blends documentary and narrative forms to examine Chicano culture, regional history, and popular mythology. He is a 1997 Rockefeller Intercultural Media Fellow and 2001 Artpace Resident, Mendiola's work has been screened internationally at film festivals and museums including the Havana International Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Mendiola will introduce the film and participate in a post-screening discussion.

Split Sketches, a site-specific immersive installation by artist Tim Gonchoroff will also be on view inside the Treviño–Uribe Fort during the event.

The event is free and open to the public and continues the River Pierce Foundation’s commitment to interdisciplinary humanities programming of borderland voices, regional histories, and creative practices rooted in place. For more information, follow @riverpiercefoundation and RSVP at riverpierce.org.

Schedule of Events

Noon - 2:00 p.m.: Lunch and viewing of Split Sketches installation by artist Tim Gonchoroff

2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.: Brother Brontë book reading by author Fernando A. Flores

3:00 p.m.- 4:00 p.m.: Screening of Pretty Vacant by filmmaker Jim Mendiola

4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.: Panel Discussion and Q& A with Fernando A. Flores and Jim Mendiola

Of nostalgia, Dan Clouse writes in the introduction of Laredo Stories, A Boyhood on the Río Grande, “Nostalgia always looks back at something lost. What my imagined Laredo readers and I look back on is not just our long-gone youth, but to a Laredo that has vanished. What we grew up loving, the small town mileu and the easy going back and forth between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, disappeared beneath the grinding millstones of drug trafficking, NAFTA, and uncontrolled immigration.”

He was born in Laredo on September 6, 1949, the son of Katherine and Lester Clouse.

Clouse characterizes himself after graduation from Nixon High School in 1967 as “a poorly prepared college student” at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. “If I couldn’t talk about James Joyce, Sartre, and Brecht the way other boys could, I could talk about Laredo,” regaling them and mesmerizing them, he said, with stories “which they believed were exotic tales from a distant land.”

Many and most of the stories in this volume were published in LareDOS [Redux] online from 2017 to 2022.

Page 4 of the collection, “Incident of the Cows in the Nighttime,” is a favorite of mine and likely that, too, of readers of LareDOS when it appeared online March 29, 2017.

Cows that escaped from a dairy farm near Three Points moved north to feast on the verdant lawns of neighborhoods, including the Clouse home on Garfield Street. His narrative captures the surreal image of four neighborhood patriarchs in their pajamas, one wearing a cowboy hat, moving the cattle on down the street, three of them “jumping around in the bright moonlight like lunatics.” He noted the gentleman in the cowboy hat, Scotty Pegues, a ranch manager, knew to stare down the cows to get them off his lawn.

While some of Clouse’s stories are carried on mirth and wry humor, to wit, “View of Bathsheba on Garfield Street” and “Danger at the Parsonage,” others, including those in the chapter called “In Memoriam” are tender, elegiac despedidas to his lifelong friends Chiqui Torres, Dick Ellis, Fred Dickey, and Johnny (”Espejo”) Snyder, as well as those written about his father, Lester Clouse, and science and physics teacher Humberto Segovia, who taught at Lamar Junior High and Nixon High School.

Ellis and Snyder were Clouse’s Yankee teammates in the then-newly formed American Little League — Clouse at first base, Ellis at third, and Snyder, an All Star pitcher and the prolific homerun hitter who took the Yankees to the League championship in 1960.

Clouse’s homage to Snyder is particularly poignant, and so are the photographs of a beautiful golden-haired boy poised to reap the incredible potential of his brilliant intellect. 

It is here that Clouse does what he does so well as a writer. He circles back to the underlying theme of this collection of stories: that Laredo of the 50s and 60s with downtown as the heart of the City was in its glory days. He calls our nostalgia for that Laredo, its downtown, now a boarded-up ruin in decline, “the classic re-run we call Laredo.”

He writes:

“Remember to enjoy today’s performance as we look back smiling; no matter how many cries of ‘Bravo!’ we hear in the theater of our minds, the show will only return for encores for as long as we have memory left to conjure up 14-year-old Johnny Snyder and the Laredo of old.

“We’ve missed you both for a long time, beloved friend and homeland.

“Welcome back to the world we carry around in our heads, you’re looking great.”

 

“Dan and I grew up in Laredo during the 60s in the Heights, in the Barrio El Ghost Town.  Dan was the one with the car, so we all just jumped in and rode along for the story. 

“Firing bottle rockets, or tooling down Convent (oh, the irony) Avenue toward the International Bridge in his 40’s Plymouth ‘Bomba,’ Dan with his head out the window screeching like an eagle, we were on our way to an adventure in Nuevo Laredo, bar hopping from the Cadillac Bar, to the Latino Bar, and yes, on rare occasions to Boys Town (aka La Zona), for the bars, of course. 

“All the while Dan was creating his Laredo Stories like so much dust roiling up behind his car as he drove it through the unpaved streets of our old Laredo neighborhoods. I believe Dan loved the Laredo that he couldn't wait to leave. Thanks for remembering Laredo, Dan.”

-Rolando L. García, Architect Emeritus FAIA
NHS, Class of 1967

Some of the photographs in Laredo Stories transport the reader spot-on back to those growing up days that Clouse characterizes as from “6 to 16” — school photos, photos of Boy Scout Troop 131, photos of Coach Fidel Hale’s Yankees team, and on page 90, the photo of Lamar Junior High School students in mock United Nations Day mode on October 20, 1962, featuring Dan Clouse as Fidel Castro, Johnny Snyder as Che Guevara, and Roger Nichols as Raul Castro with glued-on beards, military fatigues, boots, and hats. They have been chewing cigars and are bordered by protesters, including classmates Spencer Oldham and Patricia Belter.

Clouse asks, “Can you imagine a schoolteacher nowadays giving cigars to seventh and eighth grade students? Many things have changed, and not just the faces that surprise us in the mirror.”

He recalls that Nichols reacted physically to the gooey end of the cigar, but that he and Snyder did not suffer that dilemma. “We already had years of experience smoking cigars in the backyard and in the vacant lot down the street at the corner of Martin and Garfield.”

The photo didn’t run in The Laredo Times the next day, but it did two days later when the Cuban Missile Crisis became the news that terrified us all. The Associated Press picked up the photo, and it appeared on the front pages of newspapers across the state.

•••

•••

At mid-book, Clouse’s writing turns to a chapter called “Some Episodes in Laredo’s History,” writings that evince his love of language, well-researched stories, and his honed skills for narratives that effortlessly draw readers into his stories.

Among these are the chronicles of the almost arrest in Laredo of 1920’s heavyweight champion Jack Johnson; Frida Kahlo’s day in Laredo in August 1932 in a rush to the bedside of her dying mother in Mexico City, a trip sidelined momentarily by the flooding of the Río Grande; and the March 1966 trial of Dr. Timothy Leary for possession of marijuana.

The final episode in this chapter reveals the travails of Mexican artist José Clemente Orozco, who left Mexico City and crossed the international bridge in Laredo in 1917 for a new life in San Francisco, bringing with him a hundred pieces of his art.

U.S. Customs detained the artist with Carranzista leanings and examined his artwork to determine if the works were immoral in substance. Sixty pieces so deemed were smashed to pieces.

•••

“Dan’s stories transport readers to a magical time in our beloved hometown, putting us beside him on the sandlot baseball field; peyote growers, harvesters, and vendors; and familiar hangouts.

“He names names, and we wish we had been among them. Lyrical writing and evocative memories.”

-Wanda Garner Cash; NHS Class of 1967;
Author: Pancho Villa’s Saddle at the Cadillac Bar;
 Journalist; Instructor and Associate Director,
UT-Austin School of Journalism, retired.

•••

The chapter called “The Laredo Peyote Chronicles” documents the history of the cactus and peyote trade in Laredo. Clouse writes of the adventurous plantswoman Anna B. Nickels, owner of the Arcadia Gardens at 918 Matamoros (at San Agustin Ave.) who between 1885 and 1905 discovered new species of cacti in Mexico and South Texas, some that would be named after her.

Clouse calls her “a horticultural rock star” who at 61 supervised the loading of a box car with 300 species of plants bound for the 1893 Columbian World Exposition in Chicago via the IGNC Railway. The award-winning exhibit brought Nickels much deserved acclaim and national attention to Laredo that drew tourists, succulent and cactus collectors, and horticulturalists. Scientists and botanists were regular visitors at the Arcadia Gardens that housed a botanical ecosystem of 10,000 species of plants that included fruit trees, shade trees, caladiums, honeysuckle, and decorative plants.

Nickels grew peyote as a rooted plant for collectors, but now and again sold individual buttons for five-cents to locals who used it in a water solution for headaches or as a pulp applied to sores.

Clouse’s assiduous research on Nickels brings to life an accomplished Laredo woman for whom no one alive today has recall, lore, or data — a woman unfettered by age or gender to walk with a convoy of sluggish burros and ayudantes across the wilds of the Mexican deserts and mountains to harvest species of cactus and agaves yet unknown, yet to be named.

He writes, too, of the kind and trusted Amada Cardenas, a native of Los Ojuelos, who for decades supplied members of the Native American Church with her annual harvest of peyote buds carefully cut so that all but the buttontop was left in the caliche of the Bordas Escarpment to ensure that the plant would continue to grow.

He tells the story of Laredo businessmen Leopoldo Villegas and Ferdinand Wormser who were in possession of barrels of peyote buds from Los Ojuelos for future sales as “Japanese Buttons.” The two were in the sights of William E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson, a Prohibitionist and an agent for the Bureau of Indian Affairs who sought to halt the sale of peyote to Native Americans. In 1909, he threatened the two Laredoans with imprisonment, and with their promise never ever to sell peyote again, he agreed to pay them $443 for their stock of buttons, which he incinerated.

Clouse includes notes of a Laredo nursery on the San Antonio Highway called Moore’s Orchids. Its proprietor, Elsie S. Moore, shipped a box of 100 peyote buttons to Miami labeled “Orchid Plants – Perishable.” Clouse includes in this story the FDA’s wrangle with Moore for mislabeling her boxes, not providing the correct name and the quantity of the substance in the box, and omitting “Warning-may be habit forming.” Moore moved her business to Florida in the mid-1960s, far from the peyote gardens of Webb, Jim Hogg, and Starr counties

•••

There is more to read, but I pump the brakes here, dear reader, not because my unwavering enthusiasm for Dan Clouse’s writing wanes, but because I’m understanding I have pushed this story to more than 1,500 words of praise that modest and unassuming Dan might find embarrassing. And I wearied of calling my friend “Clouse” throughout this story and not Dan.

Dan and I were not childhood friends, but we knew each other because our fathers and other World War II veterans undertook the transformation of a few blocks of dirt and monte in southeast Laredo into the original American Little League baseball park. Go, Yankees!

Receiving Dan’s stories one at a time over the years for publication in LareDOS was a literary experience that engendered one of the most valuable friendships I am fortunate to claim. To read the stories all at once again in this volume is yet another gift.

•••

Dan Clouse, who lives in Lakebay, Washington — about 2,200 miles from Laredo — speaks impeccably correct Spanish. He and his wife Adèle Lund Clouse are the parents of Katherine E. Clouse and twins, Adele M. Pozutto and George Clouse, and the grandparents of Jack, Charlie, and Arthur (Arturito).

Dan earned a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in Spanish at Dartmouth College in 1971. He completed a Masters in Spanish Literature at the University of Texas-Austin in 1975; major field, Spanish Literature; thesis “The Garcineid: Latin text and English translation;” minor field: Latin.

He completed doctoral studies (all but dissertation) at UT-Austin in 1977 with a major field in Spanish literature, 16^th century poetry and prose; Renaissance poet Cristóbal de Castillejo. His minor was Applied Linguistics, French Literature.

While at Dartmouth, Dan was an apprentice teacher, and later a teaching assistant at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Texas. He has taught Spanish at the University of Puget Sound, University of Washington, and Seattle Pacific University.

Hank Sames to Dan Clouse
February, 9, 2026

Dan,

This is Hank Sames. I just finished your book, Laredo Stories, and it brought back so many memories. While reading it, I felt like I was right there experiencing it with you. The Laredo that we grew up in, the Laredo that no longer exists, is memorialized in the pages of Laredo Stories. 

I am a few years younger than you, born in 1952, but my boyhood experience was very similar to yours. I went to United Day School and had my mouth washed out with soap by Dalziel Cobb. Me and my buddies, Mike Jackson, Edmund Palacios, Richard "Sparky" Miller, and Carlos Castillon were part of the Lane Street gang. There were so many kids up and down the street, and we had the best time. We were unsupervised by our parents and were out on our bikes all day, exploring Chacon creek and more. We rode the bus to the movies downtown and then walked over to JC Twiss to peruse the Army surplus merchandise until Mr. Twiss ordered us out. 

In 5th Grade, I transferred to Ryan Elementary so I could be with my friends. Mike and I took guitar lessons that year with Josette Palacios, and that started a lifelong love of music. We went to Lamar and started a band called the “8 Balls.” We played at Noon Dancing and many junior high school parties. I was studious through Lamar and served as Student Council president in 9th grade. When I went to Nixon, I decided that school was not cool, and I languished, skipping school and smoking pot. We hung out in Nuevo Laredo on weekends, drinking bolas at Munich’s and stuffing ourselves with flautas at La Unica, across from the train station. A plate of flautas was one dollar! My friends and I did well enough to get into UT, but we were not prepared for college. The only reason I did not flunk out was my 18 hours of credit in Spanish. It wasn't until my junior year that I straightened out and started making grades, graduating in 1975 with a BBA in Finance. 

I came back to Laredo to work in the car business, got married and had kids here. Laredo grew up since then and, it is not the town of our youth. We still have our memories of that special time, and I still love Laredo, warts and all.

Mike Jackson is still a professional musician in Austin. Mike, Sparky, and I formed a band a few years ago called “Gringo Barrio” as a tribute to our hometown. We wrote enough songs for two albums and played live a few times in Laredo and Austin. It was a labor of love. You can find a few examples on Youtube if you search Gringo Barrio. 

                                   

Gringo Barrio

Well I'm right at home, in my Gringo Barrio
And there is no place that I would rather be
The living is good, right here in my barrio
This barrio will always be home to me

Down on the border, in old Laredo
Mariachi music and gritos fill the air
The smell of cabrito, drifts in the breeze
A senorita's smile, as pretty as you please

Now you know this place, it's not for everyone
If you don't like the culture, it might not be that fun
But as for me, it's downright charming
So I hung my hat, and here I'll stay till my time is done

St Augustine plaza, and old La Posada
And all the friendly faces at the Cadillac Bar
Time for a bootshine, on the sidewalks of Guerrero
A handful of pesos, will take you real far

The sun burns hot, in my gringo barrio
The few streets with asphalt will burn your feet
100 degrees, sitting here in the shade
Pop a cool one, it sure goes down real sweet

Not everyone, is from the same fabric
And you may not culturally agree
But as for me, all the botas and huaraches
There's no place that I would rather be
There's no place that I would rather be.

Dan, you cast a beautiful light on our hometown Laredo. Lots of people say that their town is different. I don't think that any town was as different as Laredo back in the day. We hit a home run being born here.

Regards,
Hank

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San Ygnacio, TX. –  As part of its continuing programming supported by the Mellon Foundations Humanities in Place Grant, the River Pierce Foundation presents Split Sketches, a site-specific exhibition and installation by artist Tim Gonchoroff taking place Saturday, January 24 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the Trevino-Uribe Fort t 604 Trevino St. in San Ygnacio.

The event includes lunch, and a film screening, presentation, and panel discussion featuring archaeologist Edward Gonzalez-Tennant.

Tim Gonchoroff is a fiber and mixed media artist originally from Appalachian Virginia. His work focuses on traditional crafting processes inclusive of natural dyeing, weaving, carpentry, and many others as a conduit for investigating and documenting particular elements in environments that are products of anthropogenic ecology.

Gonchoroff’s work has been exhibited at spaces including the Joshua Tree Art Gallery, Joshua Tree, CA; Small Projects, Tromsø, Norway; Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin; and Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, Alfred, NY. He is an assistant professor of sculpture at University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. Gonchroff’s exhibit and installation will include functional sculptures and immersive spaces that delicately engage with the historic 19th-century architecture of the Trevino-Uribe Fort.

Edward Gonzalez-Tennant is an assistant rofessor of historical archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University. His work utilizes geographic information systems, 3D modeling, geophysics, and remote sensing to address complex social issues including the intersections between power and violence in the past and present as well as the ways landscape and memory work to celebrate certain histories while erasing or otherwise obfuscating others. He regularly partners with descendant communities, their allies, and the public as part of his practice. The event is free and open to the public and is supported by the Mellon Foundation. To RSVP to this free event please visit riverpierce.org or scan the QR code.