Explore by Schooley Media Ventures, LLC

February 2015

31300 IH-10 West (exit 543 across from Toyota) • Boerne, Texas 78006

830.755.6355 • 210.535.3070

www.CatrinasRanchInteriors.com • catrina@catrinasranchinteriors.com

Welcome to Boerne

Scan Code With Your Smart Phone

Bluebonnet Realty HOMES FOR SALE

1.) FOR SALE - $215,000 - Charming Hill Country Home, sitting on over a 1/2 acre, in sought after Boerne, TX. This is a must see! New roof, paint, floors, windows, bathrooms, A/C... too many upgrades to list.

2.) FOR SALE - $499,000 PRICED TO SELL. Waterfront property in River Mountain Ranch with private access! Custom home built with views of the Guadalupe from the master bedroom, family room, and balcony. Outdoor balcony runs the length of the home and features a fireplace and surround sound speakers. Private road on the property going down to the river. 3.57 acres.

HOMES & COMMERCIAL FOR LEASE

3.) FOR LEASE - $1375 - 3 bed, 2 bath restored turn of century home with approx. 1665 s.f. of living area, all new appliances in Comfort, TX

4.) FOR LEASE - $1150 - 3 bed, 2 ba mobile on 2 acs off Walnut Grove Rd

5.) FOR LEASE - $2500 - Garden home on golf course in Fair Oaks Ranch. 2 bed, 2 ba approx. 2245 s.f; with 2 car garage

6.) FOR LEASE - $1200 - 3 bed, 2 ba updated moble in Walnut Hills

7.) FOR LEASE - $2200 - 3 bed, 3 bath townhome in Tapatio Springs. One car garage. Golf course view! ALSO FOR SALE!

8.) FOR LEASE - $3000 - 4 bed, 3.5 baths, media room, approx. 3240 s.f.of liv. area, 2 water heaters, on cul-de-sac in Woods of Frederick Creek.

MORE HOMES AVAILABLE. CALL FOR LISTINGS.

830-816-2288 â&#x20AC;˘ www.boernetexashomes.com

styling for the discerning gentleman

MAKE THIS YOUR BEST YEAR.

hair

accessories |

gifts

$10 OFF YOUR FIRST EXPERIENCE 930 E. BLANCO, BOERNE TX

830.443.4500

w w w. c o m p l e t e g e n t . c o m

FEBRUARY

Explore what's inside this issue!

10 From the Publisher 12 Calendar 14 MUSIC

TROUBADOUR

16 The art of

Outdoor living

Mike Logsden tells us that there’s more to creating an outdoor space than brick and mortar.

24 Performing Arts

38 Cooking

cream of the crop

New Shanghai Circus

Chef Denise educates us on how to cook a wonderful dessert.

The Chinese circus bring their unique flavor to Boerne Performing Arts.

42 Life

26 Spiritual

eating like your life depends on it

Suck it up buttercup

Are you one of the millions of Americans who made a resolution to loose some weight?

28 Aphrodisiacs

just in time for valentine’s day

5 things you may or may not have know were libido boosts from around the world.

Publisher Benjamin D. Schooley ben@hillcountryexplore.com Operations Manager Kristine Duran kristine@smvtexas.vom Creative Director Benjamin N. Weber ben.weber@smvtexas.com Assistant Creative Director Kayla Davisson kayla@smvtexas.com ADVERTISING SALES 210-507-5250 sales@hillcountryexplore.com

32 Jane ROach

Joy Beyond Agony

46 OLD TIMER

things i miss about old borne... and some I don’t

20 History

Old Timer reminisces on things that have changed in our fair town.

Ancient Scourge

Tuberculosis and how it impacted our little slice of heaven.

EXPLORE magazine is published by Schooley Media Ventures in Boerne, TX. EXPLORE Magazine and Schooley Media Ventures are not responsible for any inaccuracies, erroneous information, or typographical errors contained in this publication submitted by advertisers. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the opinions of EXPLORE and/or Schooley Media Ventures. Copyright 2015 Schooley Media Ventures, 930 E. Blanco, Ste. 200, Boerne, TX 78006

Contributing Writers

Marjorie Hagy History

Rene Villanueva Music

Kendall D. Aaron Spiritual

Old Timer Just Old Timer

Paul Wilson Life & Living

MARJORIE is a bibliophile, a history nut and an insomniac, among several other conditions, both diagnosed and otherwise. When she's not working tirelessly to avoid getting a real job, she nurses an obsession with her grandson and is involved in passing legislation restricting the wearing of socks with sandals. She is an aspiring pet hoarder who enjoys vicious games of Scrabble, reading Agatha Christie, and sitting around doing nothing while claiming to be thinking deeply. Marjorie has five grown children, a poodle to whom she is inordinately devoted in spite of his breath, and holds an Explore record for never having submitted an article on time. She's been writing for us for five years now.

Rene Villanueva is the lead singer/bass player for the band Hacienda. Having toured worldwide, hacienda has also been featured on several late night shows, including Late Show with David Letterman. Rene and his wife Rachel live in Boerne, TX and just welcomed thier first child.

I’m just a normal guy. I’m not a theology student, I don’t preach in church, and I’ve never written a book. I’m just a normal guy that thinks, and feels, and is on a never-ending journey attempting to be the best person I can be. I fail frequently at this quest, yet each day, the quest continues. I’ve lived in Boerne since the late ‘80s, I’ve got a most beautiful wife, three wonderful children, and just really, really love God. Thanks for going on my spiritual journey with me.

The Old Timer tells us he's been a resident of Boerne since about 1965. He enjoys telling people what he doesn't like. When not bust'n punks he can be found feeding the ducks just off Main St. or wandering aimlessly in the newly expanded HEB. Despite his rough and sometimes brash persona, Old Timer is really a wise and thoughtful individual. If you can sort through the BS.

An insatiable curiosity for life and an incurable fascination with human behavior has forged in Paul Wilson a keen interest in helping people think about wise living. As a Life Coach, Paul offers professional mentoring to clients seeking greater personal fulfillment in their life. He currently serves as the Lead Pastor of Cibolo Creek Community Church in Fair Oaks Ranch, a faith community he began in 1996 to serve people who didn’t really like church. As artistowner of The Paul Wilson Studio, he also creates bronze sculptures for private and corporate collections. Paul and his wife, Charlotte, who make their home in Fair Oaks Ranch, are the proud parents of two teenage sons. If you’re interested in receiving daily thought-provoking insights about life and living, follow Paul on Twitter at @paulwilsonTX or Facebook at facebook.com/ paulwilsonTX.

8 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

Location. Location. Location.

39 Old Fredericksburg Rd, Boerne. 20+ acres – $1,295,000

808 River Mountain Drive, River Mountain Ranch, Boerne – $1,100,000

108 Well Springs, Menger Springs – $939,900

124 Bendel Ranch Rd., Canyon Lake – $695,000

1147 Waterstone Parkway, Boerne – $525,000

772 Rio Colorado, Waterstone – $594,500 (Owner will finance)

1453 Kendall Jackson, Comfort – $999,000

101 Noel Court, Gemini Oaks – $625,000

7815 Sendero Ridge, Fair Oaks Ranch – $499,500

530 2nd Street, Comfort – $599,500

The saying goes that there are three things to remember when looking at real estate: 1. Location 2. Location 3. Location. Some buyers only look at homes located within a specific school district. Some people want big acreage, out in the country, with spectacular views and a private gated entrance. For others, the ease of high-rise living in the city is a long awaited goal. Being a luxury real estate professional means getting to know the ideal location for each and every client. What about you? What’s your preferred location? What’s your luxury?TM

Denise Graves, Certified Luxury Home marketinG speCiaList

The Graves Group What’s your luxury?

www.thegravesgroup.com I office: 830-331-9898 I cell: 210-260-2176

From the Publisher Dearest EXPLORE reader, When you are a kid (as in under 10), you received praise frequently. Your parents encouraged you when you did the dishes correctly, your teachers sent a note home with a smiley face on it, and you were told frequently how great you tried (no matter what you tried to do). Kids need a fair amount of encouragement so that they don’t get discouraged, and most parents, teachers, and coaches pile it on pretty thick in order to establish a foundation of confidence for the little rascals. Because we fail frequently at virtually everything when we are young, this encouragement is what keeps us from giving up easily. So long as Mom and Dad keep telling me I can do it, then I’ll keep believing that I can. As we age and grow, however, that never-ending encouragement stops. The expectation changes. You are expected to not give up, you are expected to persevere, and to ultimately succeed. Instead of receiving feedback filled with encouragement about your struggles, instead, you are to be self confident enough to identify the struggle, devise a plan to overcome, and to conquer it. You may or may not hear much from those around you for overcoming your struggle, as your success was expected. Somewhere along the line, the acceptance of struggle and failure cease, and the pursuit of perfection is the new norm. As the owner of a brick and mortar store here in town, I have learned much about this. At my business (most businesses in fact), we seek perfection in all areas. Every system is in place for a customer to enjoy the ultimate experience in my store, and the expectation is set that we will deliver. Everything is set up ahead of time to ensure that customers are treated like royalty and staff can perform flawlessly. Do we deliver perfection frequently? Yes. Do we get it right every time? Nope. I check in with clients all the time and ask for feedback. 99% of the time, these customers say, “Oh man – it was great!” They shrug their shoulders and say that they enjoyed their experience and had no further critique or comment. I asked for feedback, and received it. They did not seek to provide the compliment, but rather, I drew it out of them. On the contrary, a negative comment or experience typically requires no request. It will come in the form of an email and be filled with frustrated language about inconvenience, confusion, and anger. While the “issue” of concern is typically something very minor and easily rectified, the sender often times seems hell-bent on ensuring that my day is brought down a few notches. They will throw in a line along the lines of “I really dig the place, but I just can’t stand for this great injustice.” It’s as if they’re standing up to the British Monarchy. Don’t get me wrong – I love ALL feedback. I mean that. At the end of the day, it will only make us better. However, because of the perspective I have been granted on the receiving end of never-ending feedback, I’ve been doing a few things differently in my life, and just thought I’d share. My check-out girl at HEB the other day was very pleasant. She had a bright and healthy smile, worked quickly, and was extremely polite and courteous. As she handed me the receipt and smiled, I simply looked at her and said, “You are doing a great job here. It was a pleasure being your customer today.” Her smile got inconceivably larger, she gasped and said “Oh my goodness. Thank you SO much!” and with that, I left. I repeated this at the Sonic Drive Thru, the YMCA, and even at Wal-Mart (though it took some patience). I found opportunities to simply ENCOURAGE someone for doing the expected. And now I’ll get a little preachy and discuss this from a relational standpoint. How do YOU encourage those you are closest? When your wife does the dishes, do you stop her in the hallway and say, “Babe, just wanted you to know that those dishes didn’t stand a chance against your dish-washing prowess.” You probably don’t. Do you walk outside after your husband mows the yard and proclaim, “We now have the finest yard in all the town because you are so good at what you do!” I doubt it. You probably didn’t notice, much less comment. My examples might seem a little silly, but why? If your child had mowed the yard, you would have brought him a lemonade, ruffled his hair, and said “Son, you did a great job on the yard. I’m so proud of you!” I’m not saying that your husband would understand or appreciate this treatment, but what if you said, “Thank you for being such a hardworker for our family.” What if you told your wife, “I’m just so appreciative of how much you do around here.” What would your relationships look like if, at the end of a casual lunch, you simply said, “Thanks for talking with me. I really appreciate your perspective and how well you listen.” What if you complimented your waitress? The bank teller? The gas station attendant? What would our town/community look like? I don’t know why, but I’m just a little sad sometimes at the gestures of kindness that we all fail to extend sometimes and I’m no different. Life has the capability to be so full of beauty and richness, and it’s up to us to cultivate that. After all, we all stand around at a person’s funeral and say “Man, I so wish I had a chance to tell him what he meant to me.” And I fear that regret more than most. Welcome to February. The month of LOVE. Get out there, EXPLORE, and just love on those in your life. Be appreciative for all the beauty in your life, embrace it, and then find some more. Smiling,

ben@hillcountryexplore.com

10 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

Valentine’s Menu available Friday & Saturday February 13th & 14th 518 River Road, Boerne, TX www.littlegretel.com

830-331-1368

10% OFF ALL ARCHERY ACCESSORIES

WITH THE PURCHASE OF ANY BOW with coupon. Expires 2/28/2015.

3351 SOUTH #115, BOERNE, TEXAS

830-336-3466

Bear Archery now offered at Twisted Oak Hunting & Fishing Supply

February 2015

NOW OPEN

www.hillcountryexplore.com

AT 46 CROSSING, IN BERGHEIM, BEHIND VALERO

FEBRUARY

Get out and enjoy the great Texas Hill Country! The most comprehensive events calendar. Send submissions to info@hillcountryexplore.com

February 3 New Braunfels Taste Of The Town

Local restaurants will provide sample “tastes” from their menus at this fundraiser event for the New Braunfels ISD Education Foundation. Tickets required.

February 4-7 Bandera 11th Street Cowboy Mardi Gras

Enjoy live Cajun and country music, Cajun food, a gumbo cook-off, costume contest, canine costume contest, the Cowboy Mardi Gras Parade, floats, horses, cowboys, feathers, masks and plenty of beads.

February 6 Fredericksburg First Friday Art Walk

Tour fine art galleries offering special exhibits, demonstrations, refreshments and extended viewing hours the first Friday of every month.

February 6-22 Fredericksburg Wine Lover’s Trail

Enjoy special events, tours, tastings and live music around Fredericksburg.

February 8 Bandera Frontier Times Museum Cowboy Camp

Enjoy listening to traditional cowboy music or bring your own guitar and join the song circle.

February 8 Kerrville “Night in New Orleans”

A trio of seasoned performers, The New Orleans Blue Serenaders, thrill listeners with the elegant, thrilling and undeniable infectious sounds of the Big Easy.

February 13-15 Luckenbach Luckenbach Hug-In and Valentine Ball

Get back to the basics of love during this annual camping event with plenty of boot scootin’.

February 14 Boerne Chocolate Walk

Stroll through charming downtown Boerne picking up delicious morsels. Tickets include a map of participating businesses, a bag to collect treats in and a raffle ticket to enter once you’ve visited all the stores.

February 14 Boerne Second Saturday Art and Wine Enjoy complimentary beverages and hors d’oeuvres with fantastic art in local galleries.

February 14 Boerne Piano Man

Lucas Jack performs at Random on Valentine’s Day. Fun for the whole family.

February 14-15 Boerne Boerne Market Days

Since 1850, Main Plaza has been a central point of trade for the people of Boerne. Now, on the second weekend of every month, Main Plaza hosts a magical outdoor market that blends the traditions of the Texas Hill Country with contemporary creations. Hundreds of festive booths display everything from collectibles and nostalgia to modern innovations. Also enjoy food and live entertainment.

February 14-15 Gruene Old Gruene Market Days

Nearly 100 vendors offer uniquely crafted items and packaged Texas foods.

February 17 New Braunfels Fat Tuesday with Alex Meisner

Experience Alex Meixner and his band in a whole new setting that showcases their capabilities from a variety of jazz, zydeco, rock, country, polka and other musical styles.

February 19 Gruene Come and Taste It

Eleven wineries and craft brewers are showcased on the patio and garden of a popular tasting room. Complimentary tastings are offered of the craft beer and three wines.

February 19-22 New Braunfels U.S. Spring Horseback Archery Championship

February 21 Johnson City Ragin’ Cajun on the 290 Wine Trail

One of our most popular events Cajun food and good wine! Ragin Cajun Shrimp Festa is the name of the event and the wineries along Highway 290 invite you to join them in celebrating the end of winter. Recognized as the #2 wine destination in America, second only to Napa, the Texas Wine Country wants to celebrate! No ticket to buy just drive to each of the participating wineries and get your serving of a Cajun prepared shrimp dish paired with a sample of that winery’s fine wine, plus a throw bead necklace (how much more Cajun can we get?)! Free during regular winery hours until samples are gone. Additional wine tasting fees do apply.

February 20-22 Fredericksburg Trade Days

Shop with more than 350 vendors in six barns, plus acres of antiques and collectibles, or kick back and enjoy the biergarten and live music.

FEBRUARY 26 BOERNE New Shanghai Circus

Direct from China, the troupe of The New Shanghai Circus features astonishing athletes that defy gravity and execute breathtaking in this spellbinding show.

February 26 Kerrville “True Romance” Concert

Symphony of the Hills presents love songs for the ages.

February 27 Fredericksburg Empty Bowl Headstart Fundraiser

Savor a bowl of hearty soup, buy a beautiful handcrafted bowl and enjoy live entertainment for a good cause. Begins at 6:30 p.m.

Horseback archers from around the world come to compete at shooting targets while riding a galloping horse. Includes a Walk/Trot HBA Competition on Thursday for beginners who are not quite ready to shoot at a gallop.

12 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

By Rene Villanueva

My brothers and I had driven up to Austin from San Antonio early in the morning. Feeling high. Feeling invincible. Though the traffic was bad. Though the sky was ready for rain. Though we had a hard time parking. All I was thinking was, ‘this is happening... this is really happening.’ Our first official meeting with a record label was at a small hotel along the river. Abe checked his phone for the last text, “He’s in the brunch area...” “The brunch area?” It sounded so un-rock-n-roll to me. The concierge pointed us down a long narrow hallway towards the back of the hotel. And while the lobby was impressively modern with polished marble floors and pillars, gold railings, an automated computer check-in, a contemporary jazz pianist under a chandelier and large art installations, this part of the hotel seemed surprisingly neglected. Going through the hallway was like walking backward through time, with a chronological collection of the hotel’s past hung on the faded yellow paper in plain wooden frames, moving us further and further back. The carpet was stained and worn thin; a dull brown pattern with endless blue diamonds. Abe leading the way, no one saying a word as we approached the end of the hall towards a dark wooden carved door. Maybe we were all thinking how strange this was. Maybe we were trying to get our negotiation faces on. We had no idea what to expect. The closest idea I had was a mixture of crime movies and music documentaries. Old guys in big suits and cigars. Guys who swung around in big leather office chairs and laughed while they answered vintage rotary phones, and always pointed a fat, gold ringed finger when they shouted to make their deals. Through the door came a blast of sunlight and cold air. I felt it push down into my chest. Or maybe that was my nerves. We walked into a small room converted from a patio; the walls an amber tinted glass that sloped up and over our heads. On a good day it would’ve been a nice view of downtown, but on a rainy day like this, the windows were steamed and the sunlight barely came in through the foggy blur. “We’re here to meet our uh,” I said to the captain trying to think if the reservation was under his name, my name, our band name or the name of the label. The twenty-something blonde girl with her hair pulled back tight into a ponytail didn’t notice my fumbling. She seemed to be expecting three teenagers in western boots and jeans. “Right over here,” she interrupted. Saving me from murdering the rest of my sentence, she took us to the corner of the room and a small table set for one.

She swept her arm across the air towards four chairs crammed into the small area, “Should I send three more plates?” Without looking up from his plate or the smear of eggs below his nose, he waived her away with a grunt. Her eyebrows jumped quickly as if taken back by his answer as she left politely. “I’m almost done.” Here he was. The guy with our future in his hands. And the first look at him, the look on his face, put me off. And I wondered if the captain had the right idea. His eyes were tired. Not the good kind from lack of sleep or last night’s party. Not the tired I felt having built up so much excitement in my 19-year-old brain. His tiredness came from deeper in his soul. The kind that permeates bone and changes the nature of the body. To know genetically the beat, battered, exhausted feeling of struggling with yourself. The dark circles, the peppered uneven beard, short sandy-blonde hair, the yellowedwhite Hanes and stained jeans; everything about him was worn. After a quick introduction and some complimentary waters, we started really talking... “Things are bad. Not just for me. I’m actually one of the better ones. I’m talking across the board. Bad... F***** Bad. Man, if this was a few years ago... if this was the nineties... you know what I mean? We’d be going. There’s no doubt you guys have talent.” I didn’t know what he meant. The nineties for me were spent watching cartoons, hanging out in the library, little league, and listening to the radio. I wouldn’t know what he was talking about for a long while. At the time, I felt like he wasn’t coming down on us. And by the serious looks on my brother’s faces, they thought so too. I watched him eat as he talked, his plate, his knife sliding against porcelain, the yolk bleeding out and around, crashing into the toast. The fork rising to his lips, and the cracked lips taking in every bite. “Forget albums... Albums are dead. You think anyone makes money on albums anymore? Like I said, if this was the nineties man... Back then albums made f***** money. If you’d get on the radio, get some buzz going, you’ve practically got your own printer going. I could develop... artists like you, you know... but now, f*** I don’t know. But the thing is... and I know I’m back and forth on this... What are you guys gonna do? You gotta have an album... I mean what good is a band without an album right?” At first I thought this guy was just a downer, or brushing us off, maybe both of those are true but he was still telling the truth. It really felt like he was being honest. It would take us some time to learn how things were changing. It took us time to learn what his advice meant. That’s the thing about being on our own. We had no manage-

14 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

ment. No directions. We were stumbling our way through this. Teenagers putting together an insanely complex puzzle. Learning as we go. It takes time. I always had this feeling that I never had the complete picture. He wanted to be truthful, but you can’t do that and keep a secret hidden right under the surface. I could feel the truth fighting to come up, wanting to tell us the bigger picture, but with each bite he seemed to push it back down. But it wasn’t all a loss. I understood things were changing. Big things. Behind the curtain things. And this big change in the industry wasn’t a surprise; the industry had seen it coming for a while. It wasn’t a burst, but a series of small cuts. Slowly bleeding out from the larger body from all sides, without one centralized place to take stock. Without one vision of how to stop it. But there was the question. And the feeling like someone just needed to come up with the answer. What is the value of music? What is it worth? If you could figure it out. If you could answer that, you could stop the bleeding. I stretched out my neck with a snap. I hadn’t realized how long I’d sat nodding my head quietly. This meeting was too much to take in. Too much to understand. I had no idea what the industry transition meant for us because I didn’t know where the industry was, much less where it was going. “I’ve never seen a band look so happy,” he leaned back in his chair. “You guys are doing things, s*** you shouldn’t even be doing. I mean, no one writes songs like this anymore. You know? The guys I work with, they’re never as happy as you guys.” The waitress came by to get his plate. “I just don’t know right now, about a band that’s never played a show. Doesn’t have anything. It’s just not how it’s done. I mean, it’s been done. But everything’s changed now. Those big money days are gone. But hell, I wasn’t in it either. Just stories. I’ve gotta worry about my s**** now and tomorrow. What does it mean to even have a band? F*** it’s like I said guys: What’s it worth?” So many things I wanted to ask. Or say. But they didn’t come to me. I watched my glass of water, the falling condensation run against my finger tip as his words washed into me. ‘What’s it worth?’ Music is worth everything to me. An album, a song, a melody. They are an expression of my being. My life and place in the world. I’d give it to anyone who’d listen. I’d give it to no one. To the air. To the sky. I’d give it to the animals. The trees. And emptiness. And the stars. That’s what I wanted. Help getting our music out there. We weren’t thinking of trying to make a printing press. We were thinking about music business. If money was my goal, I’d probably have done something else for a career. What is it worth? What is an emotion

February 2015

worth? An idea? A philosophy? A move? A life? A song? But don’t think I am some artist who is against return. I’d love to get paid more for what I do. I’d love to not have to worry about rent and food and bills. And like I said, I’ve learned a lot since that meeting. The me of today would have answers and a different view. Confidence. That meeting would be so different. But life moves one way. So it’s about the next one, not the first one. I keep trying to make it better. More accessible. More vibrant. Answering the question. What’s it worth. It’s up to the business minds to figure out how to monetize it. The label, manager, and most importantly, the artist because they are the one who can set everything with direction. It takes a team, but the artist is the captain, the leader, the vision. Any artist concerned with success needs to have a business mind or know someone else who has one. It’s up to the artist to create desire. Desire is worth. But it’s up to a society to set the price. They are the regulators. The hidden force that says: This is how I listen to music. This is how I want to buy it. This is what I will pay for it. This is who I will give my money to. And so the question is for all of us. ‘Cause I believe that people want to help people. Artists want to give to fans. Fans want to give to artists. And more importantly, fans care more about the quality of the work than any dollar amount. That’s why I pour everything into every word I write. My songs, poems, this. What I put out matters more than what comes back. And hopefully what I put out will help what comes back. He didn’t stand when the meeting was over. He shook our hands from his seat, and ordered an afternoon beer. “I’ve got lots more people to see today gentleman. Later.” It was a quiet walk back to the van. Back through the hotel. The hallway back to the lobby. The pianist was on break, the morning check-ins were done. Everything was quiet but the slushing sounds of cars running through the street. We left the meeting without a deal, without answers, but a strange optimism to find my solution to “what’s it worth?” “What do you guys think?” Jaime asked. “I think we should’ve gotten a plate.” After a few hours, I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. “I mean we drove up here. I think we should’ve at least gotten fed.”

www.hillcountryexplore.com

THE ART OF

16 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

BY KRISTINE DURAN

Artists exist everywhere. While we tend to think of them as people that work with sculpture, paint, or music, an artist isn’t always confined to these mediums. We got to thinking about the true “artists” in our area that use their craft to express their art in nontypical ways. Stone masons. Landscapers. Architects. Designers. While we might not think of their line of work as “the arts”, these people are pouring the same amount of passion and expertise into expressing themselves via a variety of industries. Mike Logsdon, owner of LandDesign, is one such person. Walking into a yard with well-designed landscaping can move someone to utter, “What a beautiful yard.” Is that an automated response or do they really notice the painstaking detail and thought that went into designing what lays before them? Typically, it’s the former. Landscape architect and aquatic designer Mike Logsdon, like many excellent craftsmen, is an artist of his trade. His company Land Design is known for their high-end, custom pools ranging from $30,000 to $480,000, along with a myriad of other elaborate landscape features. After losing almost everything in the 2008 recession, he knows this devaluation all too well and is ready to change consumers’ perspective on art in the yard. For Mike, landscape architecture is purely artistic, but that aspect is frequently overlooked in the pool industry. “Design is a process to me, not an event. It starts from the head to the pencil. It’s the sketching,” Mike explains. “The problem is, [clients] call six people and they get six people that just throw down a bunch of junk. Most of them aren’t designers, they’re salesman that design. I’m a designer that builds stuff. The design part is so underrated. If you like an artist’s art, you go to that person for art. I’ve always thought that I’m like a commissioned artist. So the client that doesn’t value that, I don’t usually work with.” Before 2008, Logsdon had the luxury of practically naming his price and clients would flock because it was quality work done by a quality designer. “It’s no good unless you have an artistic excavator, artistic steel guy; they

all have to be artists. I’m trying to surround myself with people who are literally artists in their craft and a price tag comes with that,” Mike says. “I used to tell people no way no how can I even come talk to you if you don’t have [$50,000]. It really got to be 75 prior to the great demise, then I lowered my standards to 50, and truly most of our stuff was over 100.” Business at Land Design was booming and it seemed as if there was nowhere to go but up, and with all of his success came a massive ego. But it was during “the great demise” that Mike was forced to take a step back and reevaluate the purpose of his business and, ultimately, his life. Hitting rock bottom means something different to each individual. For Mike Logsdon, losing everything except his wife and house, including a million dollars, was the absolute lowest. Up until December 7, 2008, Mike had been a high-functioning alcoholic. “I was drunk every day for years. I drank from 7 in the morning until I passed out at night,” Mike says. But it wasn’t until he decided to get sober that his business began to struggle. “I thought I had lost my craft. I had done everything I had ever done; all of my creations, all of my awards that I had won, everything I had done I’d always done drunk or high. And it almost killed me. After things went bad, it wasn’t about the art anymore. It was about how low can you go. ” For those first six months, Mike struggled to achieve the same level of artistic architecture he had in the past. Although he tried, the economy’s wretched state was anything but conducive to any effort he made to get his business back to what he knew as the norm. And the So Mike took everything back to the basics. “I went from this custom high-end water art aspect of design that Land Design was to predesigned pools,” Mike says. “I went back to my favorite landscape architect, Thomas Church that designed in the 20’s and 30’s. His pools that are still there: a round pool, an oval pool, a kidney pool, etc. You know, just the classic shapes.” This branch of his company is now known as Watershapes by Land Design; a venture that has created a greater deal of revenue for the company, as well as

allowed Mike to work with clients whose budget is far more modest than he would have worked with six years ago. “It’s not like I designed the circle, but you can make that look really good; that can be very artistic. The pool industry wants you to have all of these whistles and bells. That doesn’t make good design; those are some of the crappiest pools.” But still, Mike is forced to combat a client’s request for the “wow” factor. Mike defends his artistic simplicity by stating, “To me, the ‘wow’ factor is to go out to a simple thing and it’s nicely done.” During 2014, Mike has noticed that clients are beginning to see the bigger picture; one that isn’t littered with slides and changing color lights for the most part. Last year was his best year since “the great demise”, in more ways than one. “Now, people have crawled out of their cave and started spending money. They’re more interested in the art part” Mike says. Although things are looking up, it’ll probably never go back to the way things were. Throughout those years of reevaluation, Mike sought the guidance of a friend to rebuild his business on a Godly basis. “I forgot something. It wasn’t my business; it never was my business. I got off track. It’s God’s business. He’s your boss and you’re just an agent,” Mike says. Now entering 2015, he wants every aspect of his business to reflect the word ‘excellence’ in every project they complete. His new outlook for Land Design is to serve people and the Lord. Just as his slogan says, everybody deserves to swim. Mike elaborates, “It’s just to change this up and really think that if I serve my client well, everything else falls in place. The more the client gets involved, the more I can meet their needs. The 10,000 sq. ft. view is to change things from a transaction to a relationship.”

To view a gallery of Mike Logsden’s work visit landdesigntx.com 210-669-6111

February 2015

www.hillcountryexplore.com

Chet hawkins, dds magd, faCd MASTERFUL DENTISTRY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US Thank you to all our wonderful patients for a blessed year.

Master in the Academy of General Dentistry

30 YEARS EXPERIENCE

806 N. Main St. â&#x20AC;˘ Boerne 830-249-7870 www.drchethawkins.com

First American Realty Company Now Serving the San Antonio Metro Area! Stop by our NEW Office in Boerne, TX

Russell Tisdale

www.firs tamericanrealty.co m

18 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

HISTORY

BY Marjorie Hagy If you’ve never heard of a book called Historic Images of Boerne but you don’t actually own it, then I think you should put this magazine down and go buy yourself a copy immediately. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Welcome back. That book you just purchased is an invaluable, encyclopedic resource for all things old Boerne. I’m seriously on my second copy, the first one having fallen all to pieces due to frequent thumbing and the current number not looking all that chipper. It’s not everything you’ll ever need, and it’s not the whole story, but it’s this great jumping-off place that’ll make you want to dive into the vertical files at the library and only come up for air and the occasional bathroom break or at least that’s the effect it had on me a long, long time ago. Written by a wonderful man whom I personally knew named Garland Perry and first published in 1982 - the year I graduated from Boerne High School - Historic Images happens to contain two oddly intriguing sentences; a little scrap of a story that started it all for me: “Reinhard ignored his advice and went on out to the woods near the present Masonic Lodge on Blanco Road. Later his team came running into town pulling an empty wagon.” That’s it, that’s the one random, kind of offhand little morsel that grabbed my imagination and set off a lifelong fascination with real-life history. It was so mind-blowing to me that right there, along Blanco Street in the middle of town, a place I passed every day on my way to school, had once been a stand of thick woods on the outskirts of town, and that on a January morning more than a hundred years ago, a man rode into that cold, foggy thicket and never rode out. After that - and I was 18 years old! - I developed this weird habit of lurking around cemeteries and trespassing on other people’s property on the trail of rock fences and weed-choked ruins and skeletons of longgone houses. I mean, before that sentence caught my fancy, history had just been a required course at school; one that was usually assigned to a coach and that consisted mostly of names of dead presidents and battles long won or lost, fought for reasons nobody could remember anymore. But Garland Perry and his two fluky sentences got me hooked, and I owe him a debt of gratitude not only for all the facts and the pictures and the stories he rescued from the past, but also for inspiring this love of Boerne and its history in me. Having said all that, I do have this one bone to pick with my hero: his book barely mentions the long period in our town’s early history

when Boerne was a world-famous health resort and spa town; when the visitors who came here from all over the world often outnumbered the permanent citizens and almost every home sheltered a lodger. I mean, he alludes to it kind of offhandedly here and there when talking about an old building, but come on, man, this is a big deal! That said though, I’m still permanently in Mr. Perry’s debt, and right now as I write this I’m pouring out a little of my iced tea for my homie. Tuberculosis was an ancient scourge that cut a swath through every segment of every society in the world. It was a disease that had ravaged the Holy Lands in ancient times and killed pharaoh and slave alike. The Old Testament speaks of it - a consumptive illness that felled the Jewish people if they strayed from God. As phthisis, it first made an appearance in Greek literature five hundred years before Christ was born, and Hippocrates called it the most common cause of illness and death in his time. In Europe, an epidemic had begun in the 17th century that would rage for two hundred years, earning itself the epithet The Great White Plague, and in the United States nearly twenty percent of all deaths were due to the scourge of tuberculosis. Consumption. The White Death. “Captain Among these Men of Death”, they called it. Throughout history, tuberculosis has killed more people than the black death, leprosy, and HIV combined. German scientist Robert Koch, who in 1882 first isolated the bacteria responsible for TB, wrote that, “If the importance of a disease for mankind is measured from the number of fatalities which are due to it, then tuberculosis must be considered much more important than those most feared infectious diseases, plague, cholera and the like. Statistics have shown that 1/7 of all humans die of tuberculosis.” Wow. By the middle of the nineteenth century, about the time Boerne was first settled (1849- but you should already know that), consumption had been romanticized by poets and novelists who portrayed tuberculosis as an idyllic, dreamy kind of death; a “good death” in which long-suffering victims had time to put their earthly affairs in order and arrange poignant deathbed scenes. The mal de vivir was dreamily supposed to confer heightened sensitivity upon the sufferer, and came to represent spiritual purity and even worldly wealth. To the extent that rich young women would sometimes make themselves up to appear pale, sickly and wasted. Lord Byron once wrote, “I should like to die from consumption,” making

20 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

it seem like a disease of artists and a lovely way to go. People died fanciful, maudlin deaths from tuberculosis in popular works of the time like Les Misérables, Verdi’s La traviata and Puccini’s La bohème. Even today, when we should all know better, audiences still thrill to Nicole Kidman kicking a misty, euphoric bucket in Moulin Rouge. Rot and nonsense. The truth is that TB is a nasty, painful death, with the victim coughing until their ribs break and the abscesses in their lungs bleed and breathing becomes nearly impossible. In contrast to the whimsical image of TB as a spiritual, romantic death for artists and the wealthy, the disease raged alike among the poor in the cities, while both physicians and the middle class blamed the poor themselves for the spread of the White Plague. It was a mean killing disease and knew no social boundaries, nor age restrictions. Dr Ferdinand Herff, San Antonio doctor and Boerne landowner, saw its victims dying no sentimentalized “good” deaths, but only the sadness and utter heartbreaking waste of the thing. Dr Herff, after much adventuring around in his German homeland and in the high Texas Hill Country, finally settled down with his family in San Antonio where he would eventually help found Santa Rosa Hospital. Like most German-Texans, Dr Herff cherished the dream of land ownership in addition to his home in the city. And in 1850, after searching for some months, he “finally arrived at the rim of the Boerne Valley,” where the sight of “pastures padded by knee-deep stands of grass; sturdy, primeval trees hovering like great beasts of fable; Texas wild flowers closely crowding each other in a colorful, paradisiacal riot, their hues now changing, now fading into the hushed anonymity of twilight,” made him fall in love with the place. The next day he signed the papers for the first three hundred acres of a freehold that would one day encompass most of the Boerne valley. The town had only been established in 1849, barely a year before Herff discovered it, so the history of the Herff family here is nearly as old as Boerne itself. This would become their beloved retreat and second home, with members of the family still living here today. One thing Herff the doctor noticed about this mountain village he loved, was that he’d never seen so much as one case here of the disease which was killing people elsewhere at a devastating rate. He’d been a surgeon with the Hessian army before coming to Texas and had developed his own techniques for treatment of the disease, which he had then applied in his work among the Texas Indians and with his patients in San Antonio. He, along with many physicians of his time, was a proponent of the open-air method of treatment of TB, which called for plenty of pure air, lots of rest and a plethora of good food, but especially the pure air. As a professor of medicine of the time stated, “[t]he more abundantly the former can be given the greater and faster will be the progress towards recovery”. And Herff’s adopted Boerne certainly had an inexhaustible supply of pure air. “The burg is principally noted for the unlimited quantity and excellent quality of its ozone, whatever that is,” reads a contemporary travel guide about Boerne. It didn’t take Herff long to attribute the absence of consumption in this burg to the high, dry mountain air. Sometime in the 1860s, he sent his first tubercular patients to town to try some of that famous ozone. There were a few hotels in town by this time, although the village was still very small, but most visitors or passers-through would lodge in boarding houses or with families with a room to let. But neither of these options were always open to “lungers”, and for obvious reasons. It would be twenty years before scientist Koch discovered what caused TB and how it was spread. And even if the townspeople had known that the disease was wildly contagious, it would hardly have encouraged them to throw their doors open to the pale, hacking foreigners suddenly in their midst. It’s hard to say when and where the first consumptive found lodging in Boerne. It may have started when some householder decided that the money offered outweighed the danger of contracting the sickness and took the chance. Or maybe it was compassion that opened the first door. And after all, Dr. Herff may have lined up the lodging situation before he sent his first consumptive to town. At any rate, the sufferers who came to town for the cure found places enough to take them in, and enough good people to tend to them. At first, Herff sent his most hopeless cases, the victims for whom nothing else worked, for whom nothing more could be done, maybe as their one final hope or perhaps simply for the opportunity to die in relative comfort, breathing in the thin, dry mountain air. He sent so many

February 2015

of these pale ghosts to Boerne that some began to call the town “Herff’s burying ground”. “His detractors,” said Herff’s grandson in later years, “blamed him for having converted their scenic mountain hamlet into a graveyard for tuberculars.” “A consumptive newly arrived in Boerne,” one man complained, “found too many invalids like himself, invalids who talked about themselves and their poor remnants of lungs, and coughed and groaned all night. The hotels and boarding houses smelled like drugstores, and the invalids drank to each other’s better health in cod liver oil until they smelled like ancient fishermen.” So there’s that image. But then something happened. Herff’s “lungers”, those walking dead, began to heal in the higher altitude and drier air in the hills above the city. And other San Antonio doctors began to recommend Boerne’s air to their TB patients, and Boerne’s reputation spread, a little at first, until folks were arriving here and there from further afield, from Chicago and St Louis and New Orleans, from the damp and soggy coastal states. More homes took in more boarders, so that at one point they said almost every household had at least one consumptive lodger. Nobody, though, knew anything then about how TB was spread, and precautions against the spread of the disease weren’t always maintained so that some families had members who became infected and died. Servant girls, too, who were poor and, in those dirt poor days after the Civil War, often

hungry, sometimes finished the uneaten food left on the lungers’ plates and they would sicken and sometimes died. It wasn’t a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination, but Boerne was fast becoming known as the Texas Alps, and more consumptives arrived all the time. What changed the game was when the railroad came to town. Dr. Herff was also instrumental in getting the branch line of the San Antonio & Aransas Pass (SA & AP) Railroad to Boerne, donating a lot of land from his hill country ranch for right-of-way as well as tracts in San Antonio. And in March of 1887, the first train arrived in Boerne. Suddenly it was a whole lot easier to get to the Texas Alps, to that healing, life-giving mountain ozone. And suddenly it was time for Boerne to step up its game. The San Antonio Daily Express, in an article titled “First Train to Boerne over Northwestern Extension: A Pleasant Ride over a Beautiful Country; Day Spent in Romantic Hills around Boerne”, touted the numerous enjoyments to be had in Boerne, including opportunities to “drink the cold water of the iron and sulphur spring four miles distant,” or “expand the lungs with deep draughts of ozone, or “watch the slow and painful steps of the poor consumptive invalid who generally comes to West Texas when it is everlastingly too late for all the ozone in the world to do him any good.” Fun times indeed. The piece ends with a suggestion to the townspeople that they would soon take to heart: “Altogether, Boerne offers a desirable place for excursionists, and it can be made one of the most popular health resorts in the South, if her people will exert themselves a little and make her advantages known to the great outside world. Nature has been most lavish in her gifts to Boerne and Kendall County. The ozone is there, but her people must do the rest.” So they did. A Dr. William Miller opened one of the first sanitaria (which I just discovered is the plural for sanitarium) in town. A stone building he called White Gables on the property along Main Street across

www.hillcountryexplore.com

from St Helena’s Episcopal Church, where today the new library and city campus stand. Over on Adler Road, the Frederick Adler family added a four-room wing onto their home and ran it as Adler House, a boarding home. It would become a tuberculosis sanitarium called Winona Home after the railroad began to bring more of “the invalid[s] with flushed cheek and hectic cough.” The house still stands today, roughly across the street from Curington Elementary, looking slightly different without that extra wing. But the largest of the tuberculosis hospitals by far was the one built in 1896 by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, with the very substantial help of, once again, Dr. Herff, as an extension of Santa Rosa hospital which did not accept TB cases. The Sisters bought the White Gables hospital from Dr Miller and rebuilt it, added kitchens, a chapel and a laundry, and re-christened it St. Mary’s Sanitorium. (For some reason the terms sanitarium and sanitorium were used pretty much interchangeably.) At first the hospital had beds for about thirty patients, while an additional one hundred and fifty were farmed out to so-called “open-air sanitaria”. More rooms were added as the hospital was rebuilt, and between 1896 and 1897, 731 patients were treated at St. Mary’s. The permanent population of Boerne was about seven hundred people at the time, so St. Mary’s literally doubled Boerne’s population. There were other resorts as well, that catered to a different kind of visitor and didn’t welcome lungers to join in on the fun. Judge John Reinhard bought a 640 acre property on the road to Sisterdale in 1882 and opened his Walnut Grove resort in 1885. At first, the Reinhard family boarded guests in their home, but soon the resort went upscale, adding cottages, tennis courts, a limestone house around the springs and a broad, tree-lined esplanade along which guests could walk to their familystyle dinner in the main house. “There is a mineral spring within one mile of Boerne, iron and magnesia,” stated early Boerne citizen John O’Grady in a piece he did for the 1867 Texas Almanac, “said, by Dr. [Herff] and other scientific men, to be invaluable, particularly for consumptives.” Unfortunately for the consumptives, after Reinhard got ahold of the place, they could no longer try the water cure there. About that esplanade though: I went to a BBQ out on Walnut Grove Road back twenty years or so when I was struck by the eeriest sense of deja vu, another gift from Garland Perry and his Historic Images. I suddenly found myself standing between two straight rows of mature trees, with a bit of crumbling concrete border at my feet, and then this half-forgotten picture emerged from wherever it had been hiding in my memory: the image of the wide, paved avenue they called Broadway at the old Walnut Grove resort, that I remembered seeing in Mr. Perry’s book as a teenager. It doesn’t get too much closer to time travel than that. There were Phillip Manor House on North Main and Becker House, proprietor Mary Becker, first white child born in Boerne, on Rosewood near where Ebensberger-Fisher stands today; there were the Boerne Hotel/Kendall Inn and the St James Hotel on the corner of Main across the street from the Dienger building, and rooms to let in just about every house in town for those of more humble means. And folks could come to Boerne and not rent a room too, once the railroad made a trip to Boerne - a thing that could be done over a weekend - a campground sprang up on the Cibolo on River Road. They called the spillway below the River Road dam the Boerne Lake, and it was a very popular picnic spot with the campground next to it. Thousands of people made the trip to Boerne in its resort era, to walk the streets and breathe in the air, to take the waters and to take the cure, to bathe in the sulphur springs and bask in the high, dry, mountain ozone. Boerne was a tourist town way, way before the pretty red benches and the River South art thing, and the whole Dickens on Main thing, and the over-priced boutiques and all the rest; people came from all over the world to the Texas Alps, just to be and breathe in Boerne.

After the first World War ended, a whole new wave of sanitaria came into being to treat not only lungers suffering from TB, but to minister to returning soldiers whose lungs had been poisoned by mustard and nerve gasses. A Dr. WE Wright bought the old Kuhlmann house on the hill where Care Choice nursing home stands today, and turned the big private home into a hospital surrounded by smaller cottages, housing four men a piece. In 1919, Dr. Wright contracted with the VA to treat WWI vets recovering from TB and poison gas. His first of one hundred and fifty patients was one Dr. Dewitt Hogue, who would heal from his lung ailment and, along with his wife Cora, live the rest of his life in Boerne and be laid to rest in the cemetery here. The Lex Sanitarium also began operation in 1919, when Emilie Lex opened her home on Johns Road a mile from town, where she took Dr. Nooe’s patients, eventually converting two rooms into operating rooms for him. Henry Graham, who had his finger in just about every pie in town, built a huge frame home on the Guadalupe near Bergheim, opening it in 1920 as the Rainbow Rest Home, also catering to returning soldiers with lung troubles. That home would eventually become the ranch headquarters for the enormous Elmax Ranch. The tuberculosis epidemic had slowed way down by the early 1920s, and with the dawn of the Dirty Thirties, nobody had the money anymore to see and be seen at all the old fashionable resorts anymore. The tourism industry in Boerne, which had once involved just about everyone in town, from merchants and politicians and businessmen to servant girls and livery boys and the women who did the laundry for the hotels, just kind of withered up and blew away one day. The Adlers tore down their addition and used the wood to build a house for a family daughter. The Becker House Hotel, opened in 1896 and grown to include fifteen rooms, favorite vacation destination for several Texas governors and other notables, finally closed its doors in 1920. And also begun in 1896, the great St. Mary’s Sanitorium on Main Street was down to sixty or so patients by 1923, and then, finally, there were none. The beautiful building with its long, wide screen porches both upstairs and down and the gracious gables looking out onto Main Street, was used for a time as a retirement home for the Incarnate Word nuns for a while, but in 1930 the whole thing was bulldozed. Ashes to ashes. Sometime in the late 70s, an old photo of the Sanitorium that once doubled the population of Boerne appeared in the Boerne Star over the caption, “Does anybody know this place?” And it was an appeal for help, not a ‘Remember When’ kinda thing. We had just forgotten. Not fifty years later and nobody remembered anymore. Boerne had been a “health and recreation resort ringed by wooded hillsides, spreading its winding streets past old stone houses.” The railroad had delivered thousands to town. “[N]early every passenger train,” said Herff’s grandson years later, “brought in several hollow-eyed, hectically coughing specters, many of whom were journeying to their deaths.” But many weren’t. Many took in the ozone and were healed, and stayed in the pure mountain air and prospered, and when the end finally came were laid to rest under that precious ozone. Boerne, in common with most little towns all over the South, would face an era of dirt-poor hard times, the boll weevil would come and the Depression and drought and war. Maybe those lean, gritty years had the effect of grinding down the memory of when this town was something different, something more, something special; when Boerne was the gem of the Texas Alps, when the air was pure and healing and good, and this was the best place to be.

thefam2001@yahoo.com

22 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

24 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

BOERNE PERFORMING ARTS

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages…Welcome to the New Shanghai Circus! Acrobatics have a 2,500-year history in China. Developed from everyday life and work, the early acrobatic skills presented in village harvest festivals have now evolved into one of China’s national treasurers. Building on traditional performances, today’s artists have added new techniques and spectacular stunts, thrilling audiences around the globe. Highly skilled, rigorously trained and superbly talented, these performers follow an unbroken tradition since 700 B.C. East meets West in the New Shanghai Circus’ fastpaced, exciting production featuring internationally award-winning acts. There will not be three rings under the big top, but instead a state-of-the-art theater filled with spectacular backdrops, beautiful costuming, lighting, and of course the artists! Witness over 40 acrobats when they come tumbling into town on February 26. The New Shanghai Circus presents a revolving lineup of favorite acts including Diablo (Chinese Yo-Yo), Bicycle Tricks, Pole Climbing, Russian Bar, Plate Spinning, Magic Clock, Roller Skating, Handstand Art, Human Top, Chair Stack and more. Each year, the troupe adds new performers who have won national and international competitions. The show combines extraordinary and inventive feats of strength and skill, control and balance.

February 2015

Animals you ask? Dancing Lions! This act is in fact rooted in Chinese history, where the lion is a symbol of good fortune, and rivals the dragon as the most auspicious animal to guard against evil. The lion is also depicted as the carrier of wisdom. The lion dance is a display of balance, coordination and strength combined into one. The ease with which the two acrobats within the lion’s costume perform as one belies the difficulty of the act. Considered to be China’s most celebrated acrobatic company, the performers of the New Shanghai Circus have stunned audiences all over the world, but only now will they have their opportunity to be the ringleaders in Boerne, Texas! So go head over heels with this family show! Bring Grandma and Grandpa along with all the kids for an evening of lively entertainment and amazing feats! With the celebration of the Chinese New Year on February 19, you can “ring in the new Chinese Year” and celebrate the Year of the Sheep!

of performing arts has ranged from the illustrious Five Browns, to the vocal wonder from down under: The Ten Tenors, to the art of Japanese Taiko Drumming! The New Shanghai Circus will add one more element of truly bringing the world of performing arts to our community. No clown costumes necessary, just a ticket at the door! As with all Boerne Performing Arts events, student tickets are available for $20 and Adult tickets range in price from $30-$60. At the time of publication, 223 seats remain for the event. Online tickets (that you can print at home) are available at BoernePerformingArts.com. Or step right up and get your tickets in person at Greater Boerne Chamber of Commerce or the Boerne Convention and Visitors Bureau. Phone orders can be placed at 830-331-9079. Showtime is at 7:30pm at Boerne Champion Auditorium on Thursday, February 26.

Boerne Performing Arts continues their tradition of presenting world-class entertainment in our small town with this HUGE event! Their broad spectrum

www.hillcountryexplore.com

SPIRITUAL

By Kendall D.Aaron

Proverbs 16:20 – He that handles a matter wisely shall find good; and whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he. Life is as hard as we make it often times. That reads overly simplistic, as I doubt any of us wake up and think, “You know, I think I’m going to complicate my life and make things HARDER for myself.” However, it’s exactly what we do. Constantly. I’m no different than all of you out there seeking a peaceful and happy existence. Do I have it? No more than you do. Times are good, and times are bad. They are always shifting and progressing through the seasons of life. I’ve been in a bit of funk of late. My “unhappy season” I have found myself has stretched beyond the typical boundaries of what I would classify as a crummy DAY. In reality, it has dragged me down for several months now, and I just haven’t been able to shake out of it. I’ll spare you the identity of what I think has bummed me out so much, as it’s just not important. To keep things relatable, I’ll just say that I’ve been feeling down in the dumps for a little too long now. I’ve got a friend that I eat lunch with frequently, and during these get togethers, I invariably have been pissing and moaning about these issues that have been dragging me down. He listens well, nods his head in sympathy, and tells me to suck it up, buttercup. However, he’s now done that several times with me, and I have simply been returning to our lunch tables time and again with the same whiny sob story. At our last lunch, he was a little frustrated with me, and the conversation went something like this: ME: I just can’t seem to shake out of it. Life seems so grey. HIM: Well, I get your frustration, but you can’t wallow in this forever. ME: Yeah, I know, but I can’t seem to find a resolution. HIM: Why do you need that? ME: Oh, just because I’d like things to fix themselves so that I could move forward. HIM: But it might not. ME: Yeah, and that’s what sucks. HIM: Look, you can sit here and whine about it forever. Or you can wake up tomorrow, dust yourself off, and choose to drop this baggage and seek the good, instead of focusing on the bad. God thinks you are AMAZING. Why are you so busy saying otherwise? Let it go, and LIVE!!! Life is short, and you’re wasting it with your pity-party.

And that was the 2x4 to the head that I needed. I have thought about that conversation several times, and while I think that I might have resisted it initially, I have come to see the pure wisdom in it. I tend to be pretty analytical – I need to understand the logic behind things and the WHY. Why is this happening? How can this occur? How do I keep this from happening tomorrow? I take the issue, put it in my pocket, and carry it around until I feel like I have come to grips with the lessons it contains and until I feel I have paid my lumps for the issue itself. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I bet many of you do the same things. You have an issue, and it bums you out. It can bum you out for weeks, months, and even years. You want it to go away, and yet you can’t seem to stop carrying it around with you. So here’s my brilliant, well thought-out, deep, profound advice (that’s said totally sarcastic, by the way): STOP CARRYING THE WEIGHT. SEEK HAPPINESS. That’s it. That’s the advice. God didn’t design this life to be as difficult as we make it. Is it hard sometimes? Sure. But His intention has never been for you to wallow in the troubles of the day. 1 Peter 4:12-13 puts it pretty good: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed.” I love it – (my more modern translation of the verse):“You act like this is something CRAZY that is happening to you! It’s not. It’s just life, and it’s tough sometimes. But rejoice that you are alive and breathing and soaking in the life that He has provided you. Now stop it, and get back to being happy.” How would your life look if you simply let go of that issue that has been bogging you down? What if you just put it in the trash, walked over to the window, looked outside and just smiled? The decisions we make to continue in our happiness are of our own creation often times. Life is so short and so precious – why waste even one additional minute than necessary being unhappy? Throw off the shackles and rejoice. You’ll often find that the issue resolves itself when you focus not on it, but on your blessed life itself.

26 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

a cb

gc FUbXc 6æ]b[ U`` Mchf GãYg\YUfgĠ

ents os, grandpar d id k s, d n a sb s,aunts Wives, hu friends,uncle y o b s, d n ie r girlf do too! friends and fi

b U c A

& " , / ) & V Y :

b U ] D

D. EEK R O CR L O B I PER C -0467 11 UP (210) 288 EBOOK: N FAC ILYFUN US O AM LIKE XASF T BEER E F OMT A D R N C A R S OF P A T 80

LUCAS HAS PERFORMED AT THE AT&T CENTER & THE MAJESTIC. FEB 14TH HE PERFORMS AT RANDOM

February 2015

www.hillcountryexplore.com

APHRODISIACS By Kristine Duran

Just in time for Valentine’s Day Sex is always on the human brain, especially at Valentine’s Day. Maybe not every seven seconds as the age-old myth suggests, but it is frequently in the back of our minds – especially for men. Before you get all meninist on me, read over the facts yourself. Study after study has shown that men clearly think about it, dream about it, plot about it twice as often as the average woman. One common, albeit impractical, type of sexual plotting dates back millennia to a search for edible substances that arouse lust, known as aphrodisiacs.

Now, no one in their right mind would actually believe that slurping down oysters could get a woman all hot and bothered. But when men have sex on their mind, their blood is not necessarily flowing freely to their brain (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). And it’s painfully obvious considering the following list of aphrodisiacs used by desperate men around the world.

Zimbabwe: Baboon Urine Locals can’t get enough of the stuff! Seriously… they’re taking shots of monkey pee like there’s no tomorrow. It’s a real “picker-upper” when drank with beer.

Vietnam and China: cobra A Cantonese tradition for centuries, this deadly snake’s blood and meat are thought to have romance-inducing qualities. Mix blood with choice of alcohol and voila! Sex.

South America: Giant Leaf Cutter Ants It’s a centuries-old tradition to gift newlyweds with these disgusting insects. Roast these creepy crawlers for your lady and you’re in for a Fifty Shades of Grey kinda night! (allegedly)

Europe: Spanish Fly Waltz into a European apothecary for a vile of blister beetle secretions known to induce tumescence. Be careful though, the moment this stuff touches you, your flesh will start to burn and swell like that blueberry girl in Willy Wonka. All in the name of love making!

Call me Richard

China/Taiwan/South Korea: Tiger Penis Served in a soup, this Asian delicacy is known to increase male stamina. It is also part of the reason why the animal is endangered. Small price to pay for sexual satisfaction!

In the mood yet? Didn’t think so. If you’re trying to get lucky this Valentine’s Day, get in the kitchen and cook your significant other a real meal – free of blister beetle

{

and baboon urine. Oh, and don’t forget that traditional American aphrodisiac: edible body paint.

Fun Fact In the 1970s, the rumor began that the candy coating on the green-colored M&M contained an aphrodisiac and consumers started feeding them to the objects of their desires. After Mars, Inc. (M&Ms parent company) was reportedly fined for the substance (it was really for red dye #2), rumor spread like wildfire inspiring the brand to cash in on the myth with the introduction of the “sexy” green M&M character in their advertising.

28 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

{

We care for seniors in their home... INDEPENDANT LIVING COTTAGES AMENITIES: • One or two bedrooms, kitchen, living room, bathroom, laundry room & screened in portch overlooking beautiful woodland grounds and pond • 3 Meals a day delivered to cottage • Housekeeping and laundry service • Medication reminders • Activities, socialization and entertainment • Senior Buddies personal assistance available as needed. • Pets Allowed

ASSISTED LIVING AMENITIES: • Private and Semi private rooms and suites • Assistance with bathing, dressing & grooming • Medication assistance and healthcare management • Assistance with ambulation to meals and activities • Excellent home cooked meals and special diets • Activities, exercise and entertainment • 24 hour staff • Housekeeping and laundry service • Beauty and barber shop services • Senior Buddies personal assistance service is available for one on one care. • Walking paths in a beautiful woodland setting

...where their heart is SENIOR BUDDIES was founded to provide a loving, caring way to assist the elderly and their families. We specialize in enhancing the lives of seniors limited by Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and strokes. We also provide respite care, surgery recovery and service for other seniorrelated needs.

WE meet with clients and their families in their own

home-setting to effectively facilitate a match between our caregiver and the client.

OUR personal assistance services may be just what is

needed to safely maintain our client’s independence in their own home.

OUR KIND AND THOUGHTFUL CAREGIVERS PROVIDE THE FOLLOWING:

• Respite Care

• Joyful Positive Companionship • Bathing • Hygiene Assistance • Alzheimer’s Care • Meal Preparation • Light Housekeeping • Errands & Shopping • Medication Reminders • Incontinence Assistance

License # 030092

WE OFFER:

210.698.9365 210.410.3864

24137 Boerne Stage Rd • San Antonio, TX 78255

www.thelodgeatleonsprings.com

• Affordable Hourly Rate • Morning, Midday & Evening

210.698.7772

License # 01411

www.senior-buddies.com

Gentle, Caring, Family Practice, Courteous Professional Staff • State of the Art Procedures & Techniques

WE’ VE RECENTLY E XPANDED George E. Metz III, DDS • Michael Hoeppner, DDS

830-229-5581

Gentle, Caring, Family Practice, Courteous Professional Staff State of the Art Procedures & Techniques

NowRaccepting appointments for Kevin Beitchman, DDS, MS - Orthodontist WE’ VE ECENTLY E X PA N DED George E. Metz III, DDS • Michael Hoeppner, DDS

Kendall Woods Dental 830-229-5581

25 FM 3351 South Boerne, Texas 78006

Now accepting appointments for Kevin Beitchman, DDS, MS - Orthodontist

Kendall Woods Dental 30 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

Premier Custom Home Builder in the Texas Hill Country For over 40 years, KCN has been building beautiful custom homes of all sizes in Boerne, Comfort, Bandera, Castroville and throughout the Texas Hill Country.

HAPPY HOUR!

Our reputation for honesty and integrity, combined with our commitment to deliver excellent quality, expert craftsmanship, and customer service, has afforded us the opportunity to build many long lasting relationships with our clients. In fact, we have constructed two or more jobs for 31 different customers.

4 - 7 PM

830-981-9011

30775 IH 10 West Boerne, TX 78006 Open Sun-Thurs 11-9; Fri-Sat 11-10

210-826-8303

2442 Nacogdoches San Antonio, TX 78217 Open Sun-Thurs 11-9;

Free 1/2 order of mushrooms with purchase of an entrĂŠe Dine In Only, Not To Be Used With Other Coupons Please Please use by 2/28/15

830-816-5202 920 East Blanco Road Boerne, TX 78006 www.kcnbuilders.com

www.riverbedconcrete.com polished concrete flooring | stained concrete flooring concrete countertops & sinks | concrete basins & firebowls

As Seen On:

39390 W IH 10 #C - Boerne, Tx 78006 830-981-2210 (p) | 830-755-6055 (f) showroom by appointment

February 2015

www.hillcountryexplore.com

Joy Beyond Agony By Kristine Duran

Longtime Boerne resident Jane Roach’s passion to learn and teach others about the crucifixion of Christ stems from her early childhood, sitting in the pews of church during Lent, reading about the passion of Christ. Now, after 26 years of teaching and training at Bible Study Fellowship (BSF), she has compiled her many years of knowledge on this topic in her first book, Joy beyond Agony: Embracing the Cross of Christ. “My purpose in writing it was to cause people to not avoid that subject, thinking it doesn’t matter today or that it’s too gory, but rather to see it as a beautiful gift from God; to embrace the cross of Christ, to love it and to see that it’s something very valuable to them.” The same purpose she had as a bible study teacher and the Director of Training at BSF. She saw her prominent role at BSF as a conduit to getting the message of the cross of Christ to those she was training. “I began to realize that they also needed to know this important truth. So that became a sort of theme in the teaching that I did for them.” Although her goal was never to write a book, it was just something she was called upon to do. “I had two friends who kept telling me that I had to write a book about the cross of Christ for ten years because they saw that it was one of my passions. I was working full-time and I didn’t have time for that. The summer before I retired, two different people came to my office and said, ‘You should write some of the things that you’ve been teaching.’ Two of them, totally out of the blue! So the thought was in the back of my head.” Once Jane retired from BSF in 2011, she was asked to teach a bible study at Cordillera Ranch, where she focused all of her teachings on the cross of Christ. Retired, Jane now had the time to focus solely on these teaching as well as give some serious thought to the book her peers had so fervently pleaded with her to write. “So in the spring of 2013, I resurrected these old ideas that I had and added to them much information that I had learned; added some life stories of people I had met over the years who actually demonstrated a love for the cross of Christ, and showed how it had made a difference when they faced difficult times.” Joy beyond Agony is a 12-week study based on two verses of scripture: Hebrews 12:1-2. “Each week focuses on a different aspect of the cross of Jesus Christ; the promise of it in the Old Testament, the person who is actually hanging on it and who he is, the other people who watched it, the pain he suffered... just taking a lot of different looks at the same event.” For some, it might be hard to study this topic, but even Jane knows how to get through to them with the books over arching theme. “As Christians, sometimes we’re not appreciated, sometimes we’re rejected, and sometimes people actually suffer death for their faith in Christ. But what gets them through that is knowing that he’s already there, we’re already in him, and he’s waiting to welcome us home.” Jane has been chosen as one of four seminar speakers at the Texas Hill Country Bible Conference in Boerne later on this month. For more information, please visit www.alliancenet.org. Texas Hill Country Bible Conference 2015 Sanctification: The Long Journey Home February 27-28 St. John Lutheran Church 315 Rosewood Ave.

32 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

February 2015

www.hillcountryexplore.com

TEXAS HILL COUNTRY BIBLE CONFERENCE 2015

SANCTIFICATION: The Long Journey Home

Greg Gilbert • Derek Thomas • Jane Roach • Rob Shelton

February 27 - 28, 2015 Boerne, Texas

34 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

Mary Mellard, DDS

Randy Mellard, DDS, MS

• American Dental Association

• Texas Dental Association

• San Antonio Dental Society

• Academy of General Dentistry

DENTISTRY for the WHOLE FAMILY

The minute you walk through the doors at Mellard Dentistry, you will know you’ve come to the right place. Dr. Mary Mellard and Dr. Randy Mellard, a well-regarded husband-and-wife dental team, will help make you and your family more comfortable than you ever thought possible. Both doctors received their degrees from the University of Texas at Houston, and each year they continue to study advanced, postgraduate dentistry with some of the best-known clinicians in the country, In addition, Dr. Randy Mellard is a specialist in periodontology (gum therapy), and has advanced training in implant dentistry. But despite their clinical accolades, Dr. Mellard and Dr. Mellard do something all too rare in today’s rushed world... they listen, and get to know each patient one-on-one. So whether you’re looking for advanced cosmetic and restorative dentistry or simply a dentist to help maintain your family’s dental health, join us. We’ll give you something to smile about! Dr. Mary Mellard and Dr. Randy Mellard have been married more than twenty years, and have four children. They are native Texans, and enjoy being active in our local community.

Important Awards: Fellow, Academy of General Dentistry - Dr. Mary & Dr. Randy Mellard Master, Academy of General Dentistry - Dr. Mary Mellard Lifelong Learning and Service Recognition Award - Dr. Mary Mellard (one of 10 dentists in the state)

Comprehensive Dental Care

Cosmetic and Aesthetic Dentistry

• Great with children and adults • Professional dental cleanings • State-of-the-art equipment • Digital x-rays significantly reduce radiation • We make your comfort our priority • Periodontal specialist on staff

• Advanced training in cosmetic dentistry • Invisalign® “invisible” orthodontics • Galileos ® 3D Dental Imaging System • Implants to replace missing teeth

Twice nominated as Texas Dentist of the Year (2007 & 2009) - Dr. Mary Mellard Master of Science in Periodontics, University of Texas -Dr. Randy Mellard

Services Offered:

Sedation Dentistry for fearful patients or long procedures All-on-Four Smile in a Day Same day crowns (Cerec) Implants Six Month Smiles Cosmetic makeovers Invisalign Non-surgical treatment for gum disease

CARE for the whole Children deserve a wonderful dental experience. We encourage parents to bring their children in for a visit any time after their first birthday. Your child will love it here!

Now Welcoming New Patients

(210) 782-8421

www.mellarddentistry.com

Creating the healthy beautiful smile of your dreams in a comfortable caring atmosphere

203 Shadywood $214,500

Recently renovated 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom home on .25 acres close to downtown Boerne, shopping and schools

318 Hoskins Trail $499,000

PRICED TO SELL. Waterfront property in River Mountain Ranch with private access! Custom home built with views of the Guadalupe from the master bedroom, family room, and balcony. Outdoor balcony runs the length of the home and features a fireplace and surround sound speakers. Private road on the property going down to the river. 3.57 acres. MLS #1077562

120 Roadrunner Trail â&#x20AC;˘ $215,000

Charming Hill Country home, sitting on over a 1/2 acre, in sought after Boerne, TX. This is a must see! New roof, paint, floors, windows, bathrooms, A/C... There are too many upgrades to list. Property includes a greenhouse, shed, garden, and a fabulous deck. Garage has been converted adding additional square footage.

angela@smvtexas.com www.boernetexashomes.com

ley

o cho

gel

C 210.912.8221 | P 830.816.2288 F 830.816.5903

Bluebonnet Realty

COOKING

CREAM OF the crop

This crisp, white meringue-layered, filled with whipped cream and fresh fruit is an elegant dessert. Named for the Russian ballerina, Pavlova. Voila! Now several decades later, we can still enjoy this wonderful after dinner treat.

Many thanks to the staff and chefs at Little Gretel for assisting with the production of this special section.

38 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

INGREDIENTS:

4 large egg whites at room temperature 1 cup granulated sugar

DIRECTIONS

The Day Before Preheat oven to 200 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper In a kitchen aid mixer, using the whisk attachment on high, beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Gradually add sugar 1 tablespoon at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat until thick and glossy. Using a piping bag, create circles on the parchment paper. Working from the center, using a swirling motion, go increasing the height of the ingredient (much as you would do if you were serving a soft serve ice cream). Bake for 2-3 hours. Turn oven off and leave meringues inside the oven until the next day.

ASSEMBLY DAY: Chantilly Cream

INGREDIENTS:

1 pint heavy cream 1/4 cup of powdered sugar In a small bowl, beat the heavy cream with sugar until stiff peaks appear. Do not overbeat.

TO ASSEMBLE:

Place the meringue on top of the Chantilly cream and decorate with fresh strawberry, raspberry and blueberry. Savor your Pavlova! Chef Denise

Chef Dame Denise Mazal Member of Czech Culinary Associations, WACS and LDEI Honored by Best Chefs America BCA

February 2015

www.hillcountryexplore.com

Our beautiful Cellar is located across from Cibolo Creek on River Road in Boerne, Texas. Tingo Vino is all about bringing a unique Texas wine selection to this wonderful community. As Tingo Vino grows, so does the wine list. With newly added wines ranging from Chile to California there is a little something for everyone. With an outdoor patio facing the creek we have created a casual atmosphere for everyone to enjoy. Just two blocks from downtown Boerne, Tingo Vino is the perfect spot to sit down and unwind for the day.

Tingo Vino Is Open Wednesday-Saturday. 412 River Rd. | Boer ne, TX | 830.331.2772 | tingovinocellars.com

BUY ONE GLASS OF WINE, GET ONE FREE OR 10% OFF A BOTTLE OF WINE

one coupon per visit. redeemable for craft and domestic beer Coupon expires 3/31/2015. Bring coupon to redeem.

40 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

Customized Solutions

From start to finish we want you to be comfortable with your Performance Land Cruisers experience. We can tailor our services to meet the level of input you want. As early as guiding you during the initial purchase of your vehicle, transport, suggestions for customization or conversion options we will be there every step of the way. Your Performance Land Cruiser might be your every day driver, your ranch/utility or your conversation piece vehicle. But rest assured it will continue to perform for years to come and we want you to enjoy your vehicle for whatever purpose you have for it.

Cr eate or Convert

We have the ability to create your vehicle into any road legal (or not) vehicle you have in mind. With our years of experience we can troubleshoot to solve most conversion or customization requests. If you have something special in mind then you have come to the right place. We install & distribute ICON, Rigid Light Industries, ARB, Warn, Rotopax & Auto Meter in addition to our customized parts and solutions. Our personal hobby is hot rods, road racing, hunting & fishing. So feel free to contact us if you share the same interests or visit us on facebook to watch us roll!

Speed Shop

Wether your vehicle is in need of an upgrade or perhaps itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been sitting in your garage and in need of a complete overhaul or you have one that needs some fine tuning to restore it or turn it into a mega motor machine we have the expertise to create, convert or modify the vehicle of your dreams.

Fr ee Estimates

Cur r ent Specials 20% OFF hot rod service. $300 Minimum

20% OFF light bar installation. A $200 Savings

830-623 -0530 Come see us at our new shop:

115 Pleasant Valley - Boerne, Texas 78006

www.pcass-tx.com

LIFE

BY Paul J. Wilson

Are you one of the millions of Americans who made a New Year’s resolution to lose some weight? It wouldn’t be a surprise to me if you were. Studies show the single most popular New Year’s resolution is the quest to lose weight. It is followed, of course, by other popular resolutions like: to start exercising, to get organized, to quit smoking, to pay off a credit card, or to tackle the next big adventure on one’s Bucket List. Dumping that freeloading boyfriend and finding another job have to be somewhere in the mix too. It’s been about thirty days now since we embarked on the New Year. Like every New Year’s resolution, the determination to lose weight lasts for about two weeks or right up until we face the first really difficult challenge of our resolve to change. (Whichever of the two comes first. It’s usually the

difficult challenge; typically within the first seventy-two hours of making a resolution.) There’s the big football game with a countertop full of chips, dips and soda of every kind. That long awaited winter cruise offering endless buffets, overflowing with every imaginable appetizer, entree and dessert. Then there’s that last gallon storage bag of your favorite Christmas fudge still in the freezer. If you’re like most people making a New Year’s resolution to go on a diet after the holidays, you’re probably already back to the old, familiar ways of eating that got you into trouble in the first place. There’s a lot of talk about New Year’s resolutions in the first few weeks of January. A lot of it is accompanied with the advice that “it takes twenty-one days to form a habit.” While that may be true mechanically, it only takes one day to undo every

In moments of social honesty, most people say it this way: “I could probably stand to lose a few pounds.” For starters, it’s not a matter of probability; it’s a matter of priority! Secondly, we need to be honest about those “few pounds.” The truth about “a few pounds” is usually somewhere between ten and thirty. The last time I checked, the phrase “a few” is used to describe three or four of something. Most of us are wrestling with twenty or thirty extra pounds, not three or four. We just say it that way to cushion the blow that we have “a lot” of fat to shed. We’re just hiding it under those untucked shirts and loose-fitting wraps. Denial sure looks better on us than a swimsuit. When your bathroom scale reads, “One at a time, please,” it’s time to get serious about losing some weight. What do you say we start with reframing this whole “diet” thing? We’ve been thinking about it all wrong. Just the way we commonly speak of a diet sets us up for frustration and failure. The word itself is usually said in that same dread-dripping tone of voice we use to describe a pending prostate exam or pap smear. For most people, losing weight is perceived as a burdensome chore. It is almost always discussed in terms of what you have to give up.

inch of ground you’ve gained – or pounds you’ve lost - in three weeks. There are lots of people who resolve to get into shape in January who will be paying for a health club membership they’re no longer using after, say, the end of that same month. Habits are governed by the decisions we make every day – often the same decision made hundreds of times each day - long after the initial three weeks of starting your diet. I am talking about the daily exercise of personal discipline. Habits must come from a place deep within; that place where our beliefs and values reside. Until they do, the mere mechanics of behavior adaptation will not last. You might make it a few days, even a few weeks, longer than your initial twenty-one day goal to change. However, without the daily determination - the tireless choosing - to honor a deeply held value for why the change is important,

you will eventually fall back into old habits. Those new running shoes will become your running-around-making-people-thinkyou’re-a-runner shoes. Healthy and productive “habits” NEVER become the default mode of our mind or body. Healthy habits are never automatic even after twenty-one days or twenty-one months. Only bad habits work like that. Healthy habits are disciplines we must choose every day; over and over again. It usually takes much longer than three weeks until the improvements start to reward you with the levels of satisfaction that convince you going back to old ways just isn’t worth it. The new way really is more rewarding. And for that reason, you keep choosing to do what is healthier. Different. Better. Then, and only then, do they become a part of the way you live your life.

you’re on a good diet or a bad diet; a smart diet or a stupid one. The diet you are on is either helping you or hurting you. Here’s the deal: your naked body, your bathroom scale and your bedroom mirror don’t lie. They will tell you whether your current diet is working for you…or not. Oh, you can put on clothes to cover up the truth, but you’ll always rub soap all over the bare facts every time you take a shower! Whether anybody but yourself sees it, the extra weight you are scrubbing in the shower every day is jeopardizing both your health and your happiness. Don’t miss the connection. There is a definite relationship between health and happiness. Did you hear what I just said? A large part of how happy you are is related to how you feel. An enormous part of that equation is related to your eating habits.

•I’ll have to stop eating the foods I really like. •Healthy food doesn’t have any taste. •I’ll always be hungry because the portions are so stinkin’ small. •It’s such a hassle to have to count calories, measure portions and read labels. We rarely, if ever, speak about a diet in terms of what we stand to gain. If we could think of a diet as one of the greatest life-saving, health-improving, energy-giving, esteem-building, relationshipenhancing, sex-boosting, confidence-increasing, stress-relieving, momentum-injecting, happiness-producing moves of our life, most of us would do it in a heartbeat and stick with it until the day we die. Who doesn’t want to live like that? Unfortunately, most people fail to see the relationship between their health and their happiness! People whine in defiance, “I don’t want to go on some stupid diet.” Let’s get one thing straight right up front. You’re already on a diet! If you eat food and drink liquids, you are on a diet. Everybody on the planet is on a diet. A diet is simply the choices we make about the food we eat and the beverages we drink. So, Mr. and Mrs. Ain’t-Nobody-Gonna’-Tell-Me-What-I-Canor-Cannot-Eat, you’re already on a diet. The question is whether

42 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

Americans are gluttons for diet plans. The diet industry in America is a billion dollar empire of promises and products guaranteed to help people shed fat. Unfortunately, most diet plans focus on what you eat and how much you eat. Very few, if any, of them ever address the most important issue. And that is: why do you eat in the first place? Until you figure out the answer to why you eat, you’ll always battle with your resolve in those critical moments of choosing what to eat. Eating to con-

sole your feelings, to occupy your boredom, to kill time or to entertain your taste buds are not healthy reasons to eat. Yet, that is precisely why most Americans consume food. Eating was primarily intended to fulfill the utilitarian function of providing our body the nutritional fuel it needs to perform the activities of our life. That doesn’t mean that food can’t be delicious or that eating can’t be an enjoyable experience. However, when it becomes a form of entertainment in and of itself, we have strayed far from its intended purpose. Did you know that you could actually take fat, remove it from the human body and weigh it on a scale? It looks something like a nasty caramel colored mass of thick gelatin. And it’s accumulating inside of your body with every unhealthy meal you eat and all the sugarladen

snacks consumed in between. That soda you’re downing throughout the day is packing on the fat by the fistfuls. Five pounds of body fat is about the size of a small infant cradled in your arms. Twenty pounds of the same wouldn’t fit into a large paper grocery sack. (Imagine that clinging to the organs inside of your body!) Yep. That’s what’s growing inside of you with each trip to your favorite fast-food restaurant. That’s what you’re spawning with each late night feeding frenzy while putting off going to bed because you know it just means you’ll have to get up and go to work again in the morning. Have you ever considered the relationship there? You may be eating to soothe the dread of having to go back to work again at a job that’s not flipping your switches, insufficient for your financial obligations and robbing you of time for the things you enjoy more. What most people are completely unaware of – or terribly underestimate – is the toxic nature of excess body fat. It contaminates what it surrounds with toxins that compromise the healthy function of organs such as your lungs, liver, heart and colon. The added weight is wreaking havoc on your bones and ligaments, resulting in aches and pains that discourage you from doing anything active. It draws on your energy reserves, robbing you of the enthusiasm and vitality you need for life’s opportunities. I’ll scale back the language of “it’s killing you” to say, confidently, that it is not doing you any favors! The most popular reasons why

people eat are as follows: •To fuel their body. •To socialize with friends. •To occupy themselves when bored. •To console emotions when alone. •To quench the desire for the foods they crave. Only the first one in that list is the right reason to eat. The rest of them are rife with risks. The rest are not about being hungry and providing for your body’s nutritional needs. They are about the gratification that comes from tasting what you desire and enjoying the sense of satisfaction that comes with feeling full. It’s a seeking of pleasure. When food becomes about pleasure instead of purpose, we are on a very slippery slope. Many New Year’s resolutions to lose weight are often accompanied by the decision to start exercising. While moving more is certainly an important part of weight management, it is not the cure for a lousy diet. Losing weight is done in the kitchen, not the gym. They say you can’t out exercise a lousy diet. You’d have to work out like an Olympic athlete if you insist on trying to lose your extra pounds while refusing to stop eating all those lousy foods on your current diet. Even that will not get you to where you need to be. You might be able to burn off the surplus calories by doing the workout regiment of an Olympian, but you’re still poisoning your body with the sugar-laced, grease-laden, chemicalinfested food products you’re putting in your mouth. Your body is a finely tuned, high-performance engine and food is the fuel you put into its tank. When we are younger, our engine is a bit more forgiving when it comes to the fuel we put in our tank. When I say younger, I’m talking about when we are children. Our metabolism works a bit more efficiently when we are younger, and children tend to have more time and opportunity to be active. That’s not to say that children who eat a lousy diet are not in danger of health risks. The current statistics of children in America who fall into the obese category hovers around

17%. Even children who aren’t overweight but are consuming a lot of unhealthy foods are at risk of health complications such as compromised immunity, increased allergies, decreased energy and gastrointestinal issues. Not to mention the horrible habits they are learning about eating properly. Or would that be, improperly? As we get older and our metabolism changes, our engine becomes more sensitive to the type of fuel we put in our tank. Almost everybody who has ever hit their mid-forties can tell you something changed around that point in their life. Their body just didn’t work quite like it did the previous fortyfive years. Nagging aches and

February 2015

lower energy reserves became the new norm. And to make matters worse, your trusty diet of “eating anything and everything you want without gaining a single pound” starts to turn on you. After forty, and certainly after fifty, everybody will tell you it becomes a whole lot easier to gain weight and a whole lot harder to lose it. Food is fuel. If you put premium fuel in your tank, you will be amazed at the results. If not, expect your body to give you all kinds of indications that the fuel you are using in your engine is not the right mixture it needs for maximum performance. Heartburn, head aches, gas, bloating, weight gain, digestive issues, lack

of energy, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and compromised immunity are just a few of the indicator lights flashing on your body’s dashboard to warn you that your engine is not getting the proper fuel it needs to perform to its peak potential. The first change I suggest you make is to eliminate the “I am on a diet” language from your vocabulary. It’s time to start thinking, “I am not on a diet. I’m choosing to live a healthier life.” I tell myself that every time I go for an early morning run or somebody leaves a delicious dessert in the break room at work. Eating better, eating less and exercising regularly are three

great ways to live a healthier life. The difference it can make in your life is enormous. People who eat properly and exercise regularly almost always like what they see in the mirror. Healthy is a nice reflection on you. Simply put, a diet is all about the choices you make when it comes to the kind and the amount of food you consume every time you put something in your mouth. I guarantee you, if you put healthy food in your mouth, your body will reward you with the many benefits of being healthy. If you put lousy food in your mouth, don’t be surprised that your body doesn’t perform quite like you’d prefer. And that, my friend, is all on you.

www.hillcountryexplore.com

You and you alone choose to eat your way into feeling like you do. You can be sure of this: the diet you are currently following is yielding the exact results you are presently getting. If you don’t like those results, change your diet. Because everybody eats, a diet really comes down to the choices about what and how much we consume. Unless you’re still being spoon fed, you alone determine what goes into your mouth. Let’s start taking responsibility for the food we choose to put into our body. What do you say we start eating like our life depended upon it? Oh wait. It does!

To view a gallery of our work visit landdesigntx.com | 210-669-6111

Rehabilitate in Boerne, One Step Closer to Home

Cibolo Creek provides accommodations

in the heart of Boerne, with individualized therapy programs that enable one to return home quickly. By receiving rehabilitation services close to home, family and friends are able to visit often and with ease.

Cibolo Creek stands apart by:

• Being the most contemporary rehabilitation facility in Boerne • Providing physical, occupational, speech, and vital stim therapy in a modern and innovative setting under the guidance of highly trained and experienced therapists • Offering both inpatient and outpatient therapy services to improve one’s overall strength and mobility • Facilitating admissions 24/7

1440 River Road • Boerne, Texas 78006 • 830.816.5095

C ibolo C reek H ealtH . org

44 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

Things that I Miss about Boerne. and some I don’t. PARADES

The Berges Fest Parade begins at about 10am. At about 730am, the participants used to set up on the North end of town and begin drinking beer. I have no idea why this tradition started, but the Berges Fest parade = beer. While they would crawl down Main Street, the people on the float would hoist a beer to their friends that they would see along the street, while throwing candy out to all the kids. This has now been outlawed (the throwing of candy) because it’s too dangerous for our precious little snowflakes to venture into the street to retrieve the candy. The wussification of American continues.

BOERNE LAKE

The lake’s old purpose was 1. City water and 2. The place for teenagers to go drink beer and make out. It was Boerne’s version of “Lookout Point”. Kids would go out there, act stupid, get their trucks stuck in the mud and I’m certain many unplanned pregnancies began there. Now it is all cleanly paved, roped off for your safety, and is locked at sundown via the stupid security hut. This is NOT improvement, in my humble opinion. The privileges of youth are slowly being taken from kids, and then we wonder why they have no idea how to behave as adults. I don’t like it…not one bit.

OLD RESTAURANTS

Scuzzi’s. Beef & Brew. La Hacienda. Old restaurants that used to be here in town have been romanticized by fellow Old Timers as these old hang-outs that were producing manna from heaven. No restaurant since can match the flavor and character of these old places, and all new restaurants are simply pillagers embarking on our territory. STOP IT. I hate to tell you, but “La Ha” was a dump. We all knew it was, and you rolled the dice when eating there to see if you might end up tied to a bathroom for a long weekend. Scuzzi’s was run by a lunatic. Saliano’s made pizza that would make your stomach do backflips for the next 12 hours. Many of these new restaurants are light-years ahead in terms of their cleanliness and food quality. Stop re-writing history, and instead, laugh at the insanity of those early days.

TRAFFIC

Traffic is a mess in town. Yes, it’s the result of the growth that our city leaders are hoping will continue to happen. Yes, it pisses me off, too. Here’s the deal that is probably exhausting to those same city leaders: you whine about it on Facebook, but can’t be bothered to do anything about it. Run for Council. Boot the Mayor. Write a letter. Attend a Council meeting. DO SOMETHING. Sitting around with your phone in your face while you cry about it to your friends does nothing. So stop. Thanks.

TEACHERS

When I was in school here, there was one particular teacher that was a total hard-ass. If you and another guy decided to fight, he would let you come to his house and duke it out in his back-yard after school. He would referee. At the end, you had to shake hands. This teacher would literally be locked up now. Teachers used to be interested in teaching kids how to GROW UP, not how to remain helpless children forever. I miss that. Do they even give “licks” anymore? My God, Assistant Vice Principal Jubela (from the 90s) could lift a kid up off the ground with his damned wooden board. But guess what happened? You didn’t do it anymore. There should be more of this, and less of you helicopter parents out there threatening lawsuits every time a teacher so much as eye-balls your little snowflake.

Come on boys. We gotta kill these 40s before we get to the library. Otherwise the soccer moms might see and write a strongly worded letter to the city.

46 EXPLORE it! LIVE IT! The REAL Kendall County.

Happy Valentineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Day

830-816-2042

437 S MAIN, BOERNE, TX

www.flowershopboernetexas.com

$10.00 OFF

1 dozen roses for the month of February. Not valid with any other discounts.