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I am not a bumper sticker person, but if I were, mine might read, “I dig cemeteries.” Not to be irreverent, I explore old graveyards to unearth facts not easily found in travel brochures. I don’t have a macabre personality, but rather, a keen interest in history and the people who lived it. I seek…

New heat-pump water heaters: What’s old is new again

Whoop it up in Victoria and catch a glimpse of 5-foot-tall cranes at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.

Scharffen Berger produces some of the finest chocolate in the world. If you want to find out how they turn the beans from a ripe cacao pod into the rich confection preferred by the world’s best bakers, read the new book by the company’s founders, John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg, called The Essence of Chocolate…

In 1848, shortly after Mexico surrendered its claim to Texas, an American trader and freighter traveled the brutal road through the Chihuahuan Desert to the Presidio del Norte, the most remote outpost of the Mexican empire. He was Benjamin Leaton, and he found himself in a tiny, struggling frontier pueblo, “a miserable, Indian-blighted place.” Leaton…