"Amarillo, Faces, Places and Open Spaces"

I have been reflecting on the 14 month experience of writing "Amarillo, Faces, Places & Open Spaces" and decided to share some of my observations about Amarillo and the people who live and work in the city. I had the privilege of working with Amarillo photographer, Ralph Duke. We were commissioned by the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce to create a book about the city of Amarillo. As I mentioned several times when Ralph and I visited with local media, the quality of his photography made my work simple in regard to creating captions for his photographs. I enjoyed that experience because Ralph’s photography made people and places around Amarillo come alive for me. Choosing and assembling his photographs into a coherent package suitable for publication gave me the inspiration for the narrative included in the book. It was hard work; yet it was great fun. I think we presented a lovely coffee table book to the city of Amarillo. Our goal was to combine the well-known aspects of our local heritage and traditions with our modern, cosmopolitan attributes to present a comprehensive picture of Amarillo today.

The book was sponsored by more than 80 non-profit organizations, government agencies, businesses, and other entities. I wrote over 80 profiles for those sponsors. I visited at least 75 of those sponsors. I toured hospitals, schools, institutions, churches, and a myriad of businesses. To say that I learned a lot would be a gross understatement. For close to a year, I was welcomed into offices, workshops, employee only work spaces, went down halls, entered private rooms, and was granted personal entrée’ into “behind the scenes” activities that go on every day in the City. I have said publicly that the people of Amarillo are gracious and generous; I want to reiterate that. I can’t imagine that finer people exist outside of Amarillo, Texas. I was kindly and eagerly welcomed almost everywhere. So many folks were excited to show me what they do every day to serve the people of Amarillo.

Just a short time into the project, I had the desire to write a synopsis of my experiences meeting all the wonderful people I encountered along the way. I am now ready to do that. I will endeavor to publish those experiences in a series during the next several months. This blog has been neglected too long…. Writing a book is a little time consuming so the blog has suffered. I am currently a contributing author for a book being published about Lexington, Kentucky. As I finish that project in the next several months, I will write about the remarkable people I met along the way while working on “Amarillo, Faces, Places and Open Spaces.”

Tune in later…..