Author: Ron Rozelle

Miss Flannery O’Connor was a petite little lady in horn rimmed glasses who never married and lived almost all of her much too brief life – she died at the age of 39 of complications from lupus disease in 1964 – in a modest house in Milledgeville, Georgia. She raised peacocks, birds that are resolutely … Continue reading A rare, gifted bird of a completely different feather

My father, Lester Rozelle, died 24 years ago today. Though this blog purports to be about reading, writing, and literacy, I have to admit up front that though my dad read three newspapers - the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Post, and the Palestine Herald Press - religiously every day, I think he read only … Continue reading A life well lived is a story worth telling

Help me to be a blessing this day For the people who need me, And not too much Of a nuisance For those who don’t.

Some of the finest wordsmithing down the ages has come in prayers. Homer began each of his epics with an invocation to a Muse, one of the daughters of Zeus, asking for guidance and the talent needed to tell his tales. And the Old Testament Psalms have been the go-to source of comfort and inspiration … Continue reading Conversations

The Houston Astros Baseball Club is a cruel mistress. Every summer, for over fifty summers now, I’ve been teased, baited with promises, and had my expectations lifted.  And every autumn my heart’s been broken. Yet I let it happen again year after year. Now that the World Series, a particularly exciting and definitely historic one, … Continue reading On baseball, baseball books, and baseball misery

Do you like history? Your answer will more than likely be “yes” or “no”.  Not “sometimes” or “not so much” or “it depends on the era”.  Having asked that question of a lot of people for a lot of years, I’ve determined that there is very little middle ground here.  It’s almost always black or … Continue reading Yet another example of the power of storytelling

I spent a fine time yesterday at the Alton C. Allen Historical Conference in Halletsville, where this year's topic was "Texas Disasters". Before some of you go thinking I was invited because of my writing being disastrous I was asked to speak about the 1937 New London school explosion.  A book I wrote in 2012, My … Continue reading When you’ve got a story to tell, you’ve got options

Do you know what I miss? Other than coffee served in real cups with saucers, newspaper pages that when opened up spread out to a wingspan of a full yard, talk shows with hosts like Johnnie Carson and Merv Griffin, lunch counters in drug stores and S&H Green Stamp redemption centers? In addition to those … Continue reading A place for everything, and everything in its place

One of the absolute requirements for becoming a good writer is to be an avid reader of good writing.  In fact, one of the best descriptions I’ve heard of a writer is “a reader who has spilled over.” I tell people who want to get serious about writing, or reading for that matter, they’d do … Continue reading A little Homer should be in every writer’s DNA

Let me tell you about the three linear feet of frayed hardbacks in one of my bookcases.  I call it Quinda’s shelf. Quinda, you see, was my mother.  And her love for books and reading fell happily down to yours truly.  So did this little collection that she chose to keep from the thousands of … Continue reading If you’re looking for someone you lost, try reading the books they read