Download Free Rockport Tex Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Rockport Tex and write the review.

When Coastal Living Magazine listed Rockport, Texas, among its "Top 10 Artists' Colonies"--grouping the Texas community with such destinations as Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, and Monhegan Island, Maine--eyebrows lifted in many parts of the country. But for those in the know, Rockport's inclusion represented the logical result of the area's unique land- and seascapes, its welcoming climate, and its tradition of providing a haven for creativity and individuality. The story begins with well-known portrait photographer Louis de Planque, who lived in Rockport in the late nineteenth century, and includes Annie Fulton Holden, who painted a portrait of the first governor of Texas that hung in the state Capitol until fire destroyed it in 1881. In the many decades since, a host of artists, art educators, and art historians have called the Rockport-Fulton area home, including contemporary and influential artists, instructors, and gallerists such as Herb Booth, Meredith Long, and Simon Michael, teacher of Dalhart Windberg. In The Story of the Rockport-Fulton Art Colony: How a Coastal Texas Town Became an Art Enclave, Kay Kronke Betz and Vickie Moon Merchant chronicle how this small Texas town, whose economy was based on fishing, shrimping, and tourism, became a major regional center for the visual arts. Generously illustrated throughout with full-color images of boats, bays, birds, and other hallmarks of this artistically rich community, this book is a visual and narrative treat for art lovers, conservationists, and historians alike.
Charlie Sweetwater returns to his hometown to visit his brother but arrives to find he is a no-show: The Coast Guard has discovered Johnny’s shrimp boat drifting abandoned in the Gulf. Is it “death by misadventure” as the authorities presume, or something more sinister? Meanwhile, Fulton Harbor, where Charlie’s family have docked their shrimp boats for generations, has changed—and not for the better. Hard-working Vietnamese fishermen are under the thumb of Col. Nguyen Ngoc Bao, a ruthless exiled gangster who aims to recreate his criminal enterprise in a New World setting. Confronting Bao and his thugs are Charlie and a mismatched group of good guys (and gals): a fast-and-loose Cajun hustler, a salty cast of “Third Coast” barroom regulars, a handful of courageous Vietnamese émigrés, a menacing ex-convict, and a misplaced Texas Ranger who discovers a slice of the Lone Star State that the cowboy movies of his boyhood never prepared him for. Along the way Charlie finds himself falling for his brother’s girlfriend, whose zealous desire to see justice served tests his own limits for loyalty and commitment. Unlikely heroes arise from improbable circumstances, and the denizens of the small seaside community find their fortunes and fates ebbing and flowing like the tidal flux of the ocean itself.
The days are gone when seemingly limitless numbers of canvasbacks, mallards, and Canada geese filled the skies above the Texas coast. Gone too are the days when, in a single morning, hunters often harvested ducks, shorebirds, and other waterfowl by the hundreds. The hundred-year period from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries brought momentous changes in attitudes and game laws: changes initially prompted by sportsmen who witnessed the disappearance of both the birds and their spectacular habitat. These changes forever affected the state’s storied hunting culture. Yet, as R. K. Sawyer discovered, the rich lore and reminiscences of the era’s hunters and guides who plied the marshy haunts from Beaumont to Brownsville, though fading, remain a colorful and essential part of the Texas outdoor heritage. Gleaned from interviews with sportsmen and guides of decades past as well as meticulous research in news archives, Sawyer’s vivid documentation of Texas’ deep-rooted waterfowl hunting tradition is accompanied by a superb collection of historical and modern photographs. He showcases the hunting clubs, the decoys, the duck and goose calls, the equipment, and the unique hunting practices of the period. By preserving this account of a way of life and a coastal environment that have both mostly vanished, A Hundred Years of Texas Waterfowl Hunting also pays tribute to the efforts of all those who fought to ensure that Texas’ waterfowl legacy would endure. This book will aid their efforts, along with those of coastal residents, birders, wildlife biologists, conservationists, and all who are interested in the state’s natural history and in championing the preservation of waterfowl and wetland resources for the benefit of future generations.