Palace Boot Shop, located in downtown Houston from 1919-2005, and a little about Lucchese

Search though I did, I couldn’t turn up much information about Palace Boot Shop, in business in Houston, Texas, from 1919 until 2005. Eighty-seven years of making custom boots and performing wonders with boots in need of repair. Why would I know that Paul Newman was a customer of Palace Boots? Apparently, he was, according to an article in the Houston Chronicle, March 5, 2005. I found an another article about the closing of Palace, written by a Houston attorney for the February 26, 2005 edition of the Chronicle. He started buying boots at Palace in the early 1970s. However you do the math, that’s at least 30 years of patronage. Not only did Palace make boots, they carried brands like Lucchese of San Antonio, another maker with a proud history in Texas. Lucchese, founded in 1883 by Sam Lucchese, stayed in the family until 1970, when Lucchese’s grandson sold the company to Blue Bell, Incorporated, the parent company of Wrangler. I have owned a few pair of Lucchese boots, and hang on to them still, even though my cranky left foot just doesn’t want to spend any time at all in boots any more, even though there was a time when these very same pairs of boots were like putting your hand in a pair of buckskin gloves.

The pair of boots pictured here are customs made by Palace Boot Shop. They weren’t made for me—I bought them second hand—but they fit me well, if only my feet would agree. This extreme “pointy-toed” model is called “cockroach killers” and “roach stompers” by some. According to an article by Joe Nick Patoski from June, 2002, “Your choice of toe reveals what kind of person you are. Rock stars and fashionmongers gravitate to pointy toes, also known as pin box toes, roach stompers, and fence climbers. Yes, they’re trendy, but they're actually the kind grandpa used to wear when he rode horses (the pointy toe makes it easier to stick the boot into the stirrup)."

Metanoia - turn toward the light

Origin and Etymology of metanoia

Greek, from metanoiein to change one’s mind, repent, from meta- + noein to think, from nous mind

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/metanoia

Metanoia. Greek, literally meaning “change of mind”. Yet the full meaning is somewhat more. In the New Testament, the word metanoia is often translated as “repentance”.

But this kind of repentance is not about regret or guilt or shame; it implies making a decision to turn around, to face a new direction.

from https://metanoia.org/light.htm

Taking Back Christianity From The Religious Right--Jay Parini

"The narrowness and hypocrisy of the Christian right upsets me, as I’m myself a Christian.  That my faith has been miserably sideswiped by this particular eighteen-wheeler is disconcerting; but I sense that their movement has begun to burn out.  Certainly the statistics bear this out. The religious right is waning, and fewer and fewer young people belong to any religion at all.  The vast majority of my parent’s generation, the so-called Silent Generation, identified as Christians: 85 percent.  Just over half of Millennials do." Click on the link below to read more:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/taking-back-christianity-from-the-religious-right?ref=home?ref=home

What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?

Here are a few thoughts from the Rev. Dr. Robin R. Meyers, an American Christian minister, peace activist, philosophy professor and author of seven books on Progressive Christianity and Western society. From a lecture the Rev. Meyers delivered at Pitt Street Uniting Church in Sydney Australia on May 20, 2016.

Jasmine auriculatum,
found in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka,
Bhutan, the Andaman Islands,
and my Albuquerque garden.

Next time you are in the grocery store and you see the young black man sacking your groceries lower his gaze, meet it and say thank you, sir.

Plant a garden and tend it.

Raise your children to understand that violence in all its forms is a scourge.

Practice the lost art of being humble and walk lightly through your day.

Leave places, things and people better than you found them.

Don’t cheat on your taxes.

Remember, you are not self-made.

Give people the benefit of the doubt.

When you think you know, that is when you do not know; but when you know that you do not know, that is when you know. (referencing the Tao)

We need sacred spaces and must try to keep them.

Either all of us matter, or none of us do.

You can’t be too honest or too compassionate.

See and understand that a father with 4 kids and no job is a crisis.

See and understand that a mother of 4 kids whose husband has left her and who shoots up as a means of coping is in crisis.

See and understand that a photo of the arctic shelf showing that it is 40% less than it was 30 years ago (1986) is a crisis.

See and understand that Jesus was a subversive for the cause of love.