New website is up at www.riograndeoutdoors.com. Web designer & freelance graphic artist Jenny Loken is going to continue working in some fresh content, but the important thing is, the old site's gone. Just wasn't much in the old site -- it was basically a parking space. It was a bro deal from a friend, and he did a nice job, it just needed to be updated.

One of the features of the new site is this very old blog of mine. Started it when I was writing opinion stuff about the Iraq War, back when I was trying to sort out in my mind why it was I had signed on. We've come a long way from there now, and turns out, it was more about youthful idealism and less about the writing, although it was originally supposed to be about the writing.

Well now it's about the writing again, so this idea of mine, which I call "Method Journalism," applies once more. I was hired to write hunting and fishing and outdoors for Valley Freedom Newspapers, as the site says, and so when I'm out the door to chase tarpon or shoot a new rifle, I just tell Lynette I'm "off to work." Indeed. It even works a lot of the time.

Readers have responded positively, and this is more for them than it is for me. I know how much South Texans love their deer and dove hunting, and their bay and bass fishing. So does Valley Freedom Newspapers, because they hired me specifically to fill that niche more than a year ago.

I also dig conservation and eco-friendly sustainable living, like good outdoors enthusiasts like hunters tend to do. So we hunt, we fish, we recycle, we compost, we garden, and we love our families. Peruse some of the old posts on the site. They're relics. Nature heals better than time does. Semper Fi.