Saturday, April 3. Barb had back surgery at Houston's Methodist Hospital on Wednesday and is now resting comfortably at home. Talking to reporters the day after, George was reminded of the time his mother called him after reading a poll showing him running atop the pack. Barb told George, "Son, I love your strategy: Don't let them get to know you."
Monday, April 5. Here's British journalist Julia Reed writing about Laura: "At least as popular and comfortable in her own skin as her husband. In fact, in Texas, it is possible she is even more popular. In Round Rock, at the opening of a Rainbow Room, an emergency resource centre for caseworkers who deal with battered or endangered children, I watch her circle the room in black wool pants and a buttoned-up black cardigan. 'She is just as attractive in person as she is in pictures,' one volunteer gushes in a sentiment that was echoed throughout the afternoon. 'She's a very thoughtful person,' says another. 'She has such a calm manner, she doesn't get stressed in stressful situations.' She listens to the heart-rending story of a caseworker, and retells it in a speech that leaves half the room in tears. 'She has a wonderful presence,' says yet another fan. 'She seems so genuine, and that is a rarity these days.'"
Wednesday,April 7. Wearing a lightweight checked sport jacket and a fashionable silk tie, George paid a Monday visit to an old haunt, The Ballpark at Arlington, to watch his Texas Rangers play the Detroit Tigers on opening day of the 1999 baseball season. On a sunny day before a sell-out crowd, the Governor surprised the Rangers' TV announcers by slipping into their booth for an inning of play-by-play at the mike before moving on. He left, saying that maybe if he wasn't at the microphone the Rangers would come back from an 8-0 deficit. They didn't, losing 11-5. Oh, well, there's always tomorrow.
Friday, April 9. More from Julia Reed. When Laura is "out of the public eye she presides over a relaxed household consisting of three stray cats, a springer spaniel and 17-year-old twin girls, named after their grandmothers Barbara and Jenna, and who she insists are being 'good sports' about the upcoming campaign. 'Actually,' she says, 'they hardly ever think of it. Like every other teenager, they have their own agenda and their own friends, and that's what they're concerned about.' The governor says the twins told him that if he ran it would ruin their lives, and he admits to being a bit nervous himself - the girls, one brunette and one blonde, are awfully gorgeous and leggy. It's true that as the campaign heats up next autumn, they will be entering college, but one suspects everyone will adjust. When their father gave his most recent inaugural address, the girls stood proudly at the podium wiping tears from their eyes. They also insisted that one of the inaugural balls feature their favourite artist, hip Texan singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen."
Sunday, April ll. George is never at a loss for a reporter to take down his words these days, but he never dreamed he'd be sitting across from one at the family dinner table. But Jenna Bush, an Austin High School junior, knows that quoting her father in the school newspaper is a no-no. Jenna reviews films and files reports on girls' basketball and soccer, but not long ago she reported on a possible case of racism in the Austin police department: "Senior Falls Victim to Police Prejudices."
Sunday, April 18. Last Sunday George ran in the Capitol 10,000, a 6.2 mile race through center city Austin that is usually the largest 10K race in the country. This year in clear, 70 degrees weather, it attracted 14,000 runners from all over the country, from age 5 to age 85, from 30-minute runners to three-hour runners. George made it in 47:30, a minute off his personal best. When the runners turned west off Congress and ran down Enfield, Rachele Sauls was there to hose down the perspiring pack with a garden hose. She missed the Governor, though, thinking he was his father because he was surrounded by bodyguards. They weren't in evidence at the finishe line down at Town Lake, however, as a thoroughly drenched George shook hands and patted backs of well-wishers. He attributed his "slow" time to "the stress of all this national speculation."
Monday, April 19. Barb and Dad recently took grandchildren Ashley and Lauren (Neil and Sharon's children) to a recent showing of Guys and Dolls at Houston's Theater Under the Stars. Jo Loesser, surviving wife of Guys amd Dolls' author Frank Loesser, was also in attendance.
Monday, April 26. President Bush, the only CIA director to become President, celebrated along with a VIP gathering outside the front doors of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, today, as the complex was renamed the "George Bush Center for Intelligence." Speaking of his tenure as director, G. H. W. said, "CIA became part of my heartbeat back then, and it's never gone away."
Tuesday, April 27. Reporter Julie Bonnin tells us about Laura and books: "Laura Bush is a book club member, an avid reader who always has a book or two at her bedside--last month she finished books by two University of Texas professors: Jim Magnuson's Windfall and Laura Furman's Tuxedo Park. As a girl she loved Little Women and Little House on the Prarie, with its brown-haired heroine named Laura." Laura's mother-in-law, Barbara, likes to tell the story about the time the elder George Bush's mother, called by Barbara, "the most athletic person in the world," asked Laura what she did. Laura replied, "I read." The matriarch "couldn't believe her ears," Barbara reports.
Thursday, April 29. Since Laura has credited SMU for, as George puts it, "nurturing her love of reading, learning and teaching," she's often told her husband she wanted to give something back, and last Christmas he thought of a way. He and a number of Laura's sorority sisters donated the construction of a campus walkway outside the library to the University. Here's George: "Last Christmas, when I was thinking about what to give as a gift, I first went with the soap on rope for the shower or the cat leash or the Elvis CD but decided no, I'm going to give something that would surprise Laura, a gift that others could share as well." George went on in a choking voice. "This gift reflects its namesake. This is a serene and peaceful place - just like Laura." Then, Laura kissed and embraced George.
Saturday, May l. If you turn off Lamar and drive west on Windsor towards Mopac, when you reach the crest of the hill take your first right and then another right. A short distance ahead on your right you'll see the charming outer walls of what looks to be an English castle in the heart of the Austin-swank, center city Pemberton neighborhood. Laura and number two Dell man Mort Tofler had a party there last monday, a fund-raising benefit for the building of an art museum downtown. Mort graciously lent out his home for the event.
Wednesday, May 5. Here's what Laura told the audience at the Texas Women's Hall of Fame gala: "When somebody asks me about life with George W. Bush, I have to resist using that old cliche: There's never a dull moment. I have to resist being sentimental and saying when I was in class in elementary school, I never dreamed there was a boy named George W. Bush who was also sitting in class across town at our rival school, and that one day I would grow up and marry him...I have to resist saying that according to my children life with their dad is like being a private under the direct command of a general. And that according to George, war is hell. Instead, when someone asks me about George W. Bush, I say marrying him apparently was the smartest political move I ever made. Not bad for somebody who knows nothing about politics."
Monday, May 10. George and Laura recently traveled to Houston to attend Dad and Barb's "Celebration of Reading," held at the Worthem Theater Center. Dad read about e-mail problems from his upcoming book of letters, collected from the time he was a World War II pilot to the present. Visiting author Dave Barry added a reading on male-female relationships, giving a good laugh to the crowd of 1600 who contributed a total of $1.4 million to the fundraiser for Barbara Bush literacy projects. George introduced his father to the crowd and Laura reported on her Family Literacy Initiative for Texas. After more readings from internationally recognized writers, half the crowd went outside to an air-conditioned tent on the plaza for a late supper with George Herbert and Barb, while the rest ate with George Walker and Laura in the Center's Grand Foyer. Barb said it was the "most successful literacy fund-raiser in the country."
Friday, May 14. Jeffrey's is a small, low-key restaurant in the heart of Clarksville, a charming, typically Austin neighborhood less than two miles west of the Governor's Mansion. It just happens to be one of the best restaurants in the city, has been for twenty years. So there was Bush gubernatorial opponent Garry Mauro, sitting at a table and enjoying his dinner. In walks George and Laura with Trent Lott in tow, reminding Garry all over again of an experience he's been trying hard to forget. Double-takes all around were reported.
Thursday, May 20. George remembers his time with the Texas Rangers as his time with Laura: "We grew close during the baseball games because of the amount of time we spent with each other. We could think about things and talk. We grew very close during the '94 campaign because it was like we were in combat to a certain extent, fellow warriors...I don't really fear failure, and one of the reasons I don't fear failure is because I know that I've got a wife who loves me. And she doesn't fear failure either."
Saturday, May 22. If you have some free time today and are within driving distance of College Station, you have an opportunity to obtain a limited-edition George Bush trading card. 1,000 of the little suckers are being given out gratis as part of the opening day festivities for an exhibit about Dad and baseball at the George Bush Presidential Library on the Texas A&M campus. Our ex-President played first base on his Yale University team in the late '40's. He played in 76 games for school, fielding .983 and batting .224. As President, he kept a baseball encyclopedia on his desk, an old mitt in the desk drawer, and threw out the first pitch at the beginning of each baseball season.
Thursday, May 27. Texas Monthly assistant art director Kathy Marcu says she had a devil of a time finding George's baby pictures! "Since Bush's childhood has been written about so rarely, nothing was available from the usual sources. Undeterred, Marcus called schools Bush attended, his friends, and the George Bush Presidential Library. "I'm tenacious. If I have to find something, I'll find it," she said. And she did. Her photographic findings here are not too shabby.
Thursday, June 3. At a recent press conference with George, reporters asked him what he thought about Dad's plan to parachute out of an airplane over Texas A&M next week, planned as a celebration of his 75th birthday and Barbara's 74th. Our governor said, "I hope the parachute opens." He went on to tell the reporters about his mother's reaction: Barbara didn't understand how the CIA could name an "intelligence" building after him!
Thursday, June 10. Well, Dad made it safely back to earth yesterday! When George Herbert hit the ground (see above), he was sorrounded by breathless secret agents who quickly released him from the cords of the chute and waved off the two ambulances standing nearby. Previous to the jump, Barb said it would be his last; after the jump, she said it was ok if he wanted to do it again. When he turns 80! This evening down in Houston birthday week continues with the Bushes hosting a benefit for cancer research at UT's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Their joint birthday cake will be decorated with cowboy boots and Maine lobsters, and the Astro Arena will be the scene of a "casual chic" concert featuring country headliners. $10 million has been collected for the fight against cancer. After George W.'s birth in New Haven the Bush family moved to Midland, Tx., where daughter Robin was born in 1949, only to die of leukemia at the age of three. Dr. John Mendelsohn, president of the Anderson Center, wondered if a photo of Robin and a message about her could be used to highlight the benefit event. Both Bushes "liked the notion that Robin's memory could play a part in raising funds for innovative therapies for Cancer." On Friday the Bush birthday celebration moves into the hill country to the popular Texas town of Fredericksburg, about 30 miles west of President Johnson's ranch, which is now a national park. Dad is expected to attend the opening of the George Bush Gallery at the Nimitz Museum, a state museum dedicated to Admiral Chester Nimitz and the war in the Pacific, of which George Herbert was a part, crash-landing at sea on Sept. 2, 1944 after an attack on a Japanese communications center.
Sunday, June 13. On the flight from Texas to Iowa yesterday, Laura told George, "Don't try to be charming, witty or intelligent. Just be yourself." When they arrived in Des Moines for the start of what might be 18 months of presidential campaigning, Laura told reporters, ""There's something actually moving about it for me to be with George on the first day in the presidential race. We know it's a long road, but I think we'll have a good time on it. I'm ready," she said, and jokingly added, "or is it just like having twins? You think you are prepared, but you're not."
Tuesday, June 22. Last month Sammy Citrano was sitting in his coffee shop in Gasteville, about 35 miles southwest of Waco, when in walks George and Laura. They were looking at land nearby for a ranch centrally located between Dallas, Houston, and Austin. Folks don't say Waco's deep in the heart of Texas on a whim. Anyway, the Bush family's still looking, but have narrowed it down to a spread of a couple of hundred acres near McGregor, about 20 miles southwest of Waco where routes 84 and 317 intersect. George says it has a creek running through the property and several canyons. Laura's been talking to home builders in the area. No word on what they'll do with their Ranibo Lakes property in East Texas.
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