My Wasted Space » Photography

Riverwalk

Paul B Womack — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:36:47 +0000

The Riverwalk in San Antonio is more a tourist trap and restaurant row these days than anything else. Tour boats and colored umbrellas and thousands of people with their eyes on everything buts what’s in front of them. I think that all sounds too negative. I love the Riverwalk. I love the cobbled walkways and stone foot bridges. There are even a couple of places I like the Mexican food. But to me it is an older place with steel bridges spanning the river and old hotels from the art deco ’30s. That’s what I see, anyway. That’s what I take pictures of. Anybody can take a picture of a girl in a bikini top drinking a 3-foot tall frozen margarita, but that’s just what the place has become. Not what it is.

Mother & Daughter

Paul B Womack — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:49:37 +0000

Our Texas tours are all about history – creating our family’s personal history, that is. One of the most beautiful parts of that history is watching my wife and our daughter. It is a relationship I will never fully know. I see it in it’s maturity between my wife and her mother. I see it growing between my daughter and her mother. They don’t always get along. They don’t even mostly get along. But that give and take is changing them both. Showing us all a kind of love that is rooted deeply in their souls.

iTexas Tour: Mission Details

Paul B Womack — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:42:18 +0000

Beautiful, hand-crafted, bridging worlds. The details of these places of worship and war on the San Antonio Mission Trail reveal the life and aspirations of those that lived there. The simple carpentry of the communion table, the color and intricacy of a plaster wall, a Virgin that speaks to the native tribes. From across the seas these explorers brought their world with them and adapted it to their new world. It is a testament to the human spirit.

iTexas Tour: Mission Windows

Paul B Womack — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:46:54 +0000

We’re back on the San Antonio Mission Trail, piecing together the convergence of Christ and conquest these beautiful, ruined churches represent. Most of them are still working parish churches with a resident priest. In fact, there was a christening at the Espada mission when we came to see it. But these missions were not all about the things of God, as their soaring spires and intricate carvings might suggest. These were also forts with military garrisons on the frontier of what was then a new world. Just look at the windows. Always shuttered. Sometimes barred. Many mere holes in the stone walls, more for pointing a rifle out than letting light in. Such is the conflict of our souls – at war with the world, seeking a place of peace.

iTexas Tour: Mission Doors

Paul B Womack — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:00:54 +0000

There are a group of Spanish missions, including the Alamo, from the late 17th and early 18th centuries that run along an old trade route, south from San Antonio. I remembered them from a field trip I took when I was a boy, colored with adventure the way so many childhood memories are. And still they speak a tale of adventure, these monuments to religion and fortresses of war. I did not notice the city that had grown up around them or their sometimes desolate condition. I chose instead to see the Spanish friars and Spanish soldiers sequestered there. The great oaken doors and shuttered windows and great stone battlements and soaring cathedrals. And ultimately the great commission they represent, in what was (and still is) a real and dangerous world.

Becoming an Airman

Paul B Womack — Mon, 23 May 2011 17:24:00 +0000

My nephew, Airman Jonathan Womack, graduated from boot camp at Lackland AFB in San Antonio on May 6, 2011. He was one of 722 on that day, and they graduate that many every week – over 39,000 in a year. I told him in a letter I wrote him while he was in boot camp, “he may not realize it yet, but he is becoming the kind of man that other men honor.” Even my seven year old son thought that wasn’t such a bad thing.

iTexas Tour : Hallowed Ground

Paul B Womack — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:10:13 +0000

We found much more than a monument to Sam Houston when we visited the place he was buried. We found a tableau of our history. Dating back over 150 years, we passed by the tombs of men who fought for Texas Independence, men who died during the Civil War, and many of the men, women and babies who died when a yellow fever epidemic swept through Texas in 1867. The sacrifice that made it possible for us to become Texas is all here, on this hallowed ground.

iTexas Tour : Sam Houston

Paul B Womack — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:15:42 +0000

Maybe Sam Houston finally got his props when they built that 67′ statue of him on I-45 at Huntsville. He is our George Washington – Commander of the Texas Armies, President of the Texas Republic, and Senator and Governor of the State of Texas. He was also a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Not an honorary citizen, but an actual member of the tribe who took a Cherokee woman named Tiana as his second wife. Heck, he’s what John Wayne wanted to be when he grew up.

iTexas Tour : Battleship Texas

Paul B Womack — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:33:52 +0000

This is an old boat – almost 100 years old. It has served in two World Wars, and participated in the battles on D-Day, at Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Guadalcanal. It was by far my son’s favorite destination on our Texas Tour. But what caught my attention most was the claustrophobia below deck – the low ceilings and bunk beds chained to the roof and walls wherever there is room. God bless the 1700 men who sailed on each of her missions in defense of our country.

iTexas Tour : San Jacinto

Paul B Womack — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:59:50 +0000

Outnumbered. Do or die. With a dash of luck for good measure. This is the kind of stuff that makes you a Texan. The Battle of San Jacinto is our Waterloo, our Gettysburg. Not just the decisive battle that birthed the Republic of Texas, but decisive for our adopted nation and the nations of the world. Remember the Alamo. Remember Goliad. Remember San Jacinto.