I have this weird way of getting hooked on a particular meal or certain food and then eating it every meal until I am sick of it and never want it again. Right now the meal of choice is: A grilled chicken breast, salad with butter lettuce and fresh parm cheese, honey mustard vinaigrette dressing, and fresh green beans microwaved for a few minutes. I plan to have this meal every night this week or until I decide it doesn’t taste good anymore. It is also healthy and fits in my diet plan! So, it’s a win-win situation … Matt objected to having it a few meals this weekend so I mixed it up a bit. I will make other things for the rest of the crew if needed.

This week is full of graduating seniors. Tomorrow is the CHS graduation. Amanda is ushering and my nephew Chance is graduating. Today Amanda’s boyfriend’s sister graduated… yesterday my forever friend Melody’s daughter Megan graduated… and Friday night my niece Sarai and Amanda’s friend Melissa are graduating from HHS. Pretty exciting stuff. It will be Amanda’s turn next year! I can hardly imagine her graduating. Time flies!

The Stark Museum of Art in Orange, Texas, houses one of the nation’s most significant collections of American Western art. It began as a vision of H.J. Lutcher Stark and his mother, Miriam Lutcher Stark, an enthusiastic collector of art, furniture, and decorative items from around the world. Lutcher Stark developed a similar passion for collecting, with a particular interest in nature and art depicting the American West. Both Miriam and Lutcher Stark shared the desire that one day a museum in Orange, Texas, would display the works of art they collected.

Lutcher Stark began building his collection as an undergraduate at the University of Texas, when he started purchasing works from Texas artists. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he began collecting American Indian objects from New Mexico.

He married Nelda Childers in 1943, and together they continued to build the collection. From 1944 to 1962 they traveled annually to their ranch in Colorado, stopping along the way in Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, to meet with artists. From these visits they built a collection that strongly represents the Taos Society of Artists, a colony of artists drawn to the area for its scenery and culture.

In the 1950s, they expanded the collection with the rare five-volume set of John James Audubon’s Birds of America as well as letters and first edition copies of publications by Audubon and John Woodhouse Audubon. In that same decade, they collected porcelain birds and flowers by Dorothy Doughty and Edward M. Boehm as well as a series of Steuben Glass pieces, including the complete set of The United States in Crystal. In the late 1950s, the Starks added 230 works by Paul Kane, which was their last major purchase for the collection.

Inspired by their shared passion, Nelda and Lutcher Stark founded the Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation in 1961 to enrich the quality of life in Southeast Texas through education and the arts. After Lutcher Stark’s death in 1965, the Stark Foundation, under Nelda C. Stark’s direction, built the Stark Museum of Art, which opened on November 29, 1978, and continues to acquire new works of art today.