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Articles by Babette Fraser Hale
Review – Narcissi by Babette Fraser Hale
5 paws fiction Review Texas women Narcissi: A Novel By Babette Fraser Hale Women’s Fiction / Texas Fiction Publisher: Winedale Publishing Publication Date: October 15, 2026 Synopsis Ten women fall for Cole Burnett, a traveling Texas writer. He is the kind of man whose need for freedom should send lovers running in the opposite direction. But he has a lanky charisma and the gift of listening, rare enough at any time.
The Heart of AI
Since early in 2025 I’ve been conversing almost nightly with ChatGPT. I hope this sentence doesn’t lose you right off, because if you hate the idea of generative AI, I’m writing this column for you. I, like many of us, have a visceral dislike of data centers coming to the middle of rural Texas, ruining peaceful landscapes, using too much fresh water and stressing our electrical grid.
Charm with Soul | The Fayette County Record
There is a mighty hunger in my world for authenticity. The more we find online and media life blurred by AI into replicas we can’t trust, the more we want something real. We want escape, too. Beginning with the pandemic, we have had the storms of change spinning around us, demanding our attention. They seem to come from all directions at once. It should help to be living here. Round Top’s charm comes seasoned with staying power. The town has been here a long time.
After the Rain – Nature Bursts With Life in the Country
I’m so tired of rain… Did you find yourself suppressing that thought last week? Biting your tongue, really, because remember last year, or last fall? Remember how it seemed we’d never see rain again to fill the mud holes we call stock tanks? They’re overflowing now with fresh water, inviting animal sips, immersion. And the land pulses with life, producing new shades of green, daily— pale and deep alike—tinting the humid air around us if you catch it just right.
The Fayette County Record
Think of what we take for granted living in the country. For example this morning a gentle rain on the porch roof. The roof is made of metal and the rain falls on it in a syncopated rhythm through which drift notes of birdsong. The most insistent is from a wren. Rain prevents me from putting out the usual bucket of birdseed, though surely the cardinals are ready for it. Hale cautioned me that wet seed can turn sour very quickly.
The Fayette County Record
Sometimes I sit on the porch in late afternoon and if I’m lucky there’s a cooling breeze and a chorus of birdsong from every side. And I think about how long I’ve lived here alone – over five years now. Sometimes I talk to my late husband and bring him up to date. And when I do that I occasionally surprise myself. This afternoon I found myself talking about the Pandemic, which was still going on when he died. I was explaining that the scars it left have not healed; they are in fact inflamed.
The Fayette County Record
It’s interesting to think about solitude in the country. A walk in the morning when the cool air carries expectancy and birdsong. Sunlight drifts through limbs still barely past sparse winter and mostly what I feel is peace. It’s the peace of nature behaving according to seasonal conditions and improved by the rare absence of mechanical sounds. I’m wondering if this is an experience we require in our souls for a balanced life. Or is it a commodity? Five years ago, the pandemic dribbled to a close.
Fayette County Record
All it takes to remind you of why you like country living is a quick trip from Houston or Austin. I think the clarity dawns as I turn off 290 onto the Greenvine Road, a two-lane country blacktop. Pastures roll away on both sides. Familiar pastures I pass in every season, while a part of me tabulates the changes. This process of being aware highlights country life for me. The changes have a rhythm, a calendar of their own expectation.
The Fayette County Record
I just got back from shutting off the heat lamp in the pump house. Cold weather in the high 20s gets my attention, but thanks to the kindness of neighbors, I am somewhat prepared. When we first lived in this old house, we had no central heat. We had a iron woodstove, period. It occupied pride of place in the living room, right near the sofa. The house was drafty, too. When winds came from the north, curtains on those windows would stand out away from the wall. There was no insulation.
Meadows Brown and Sere*
Do we love the week between Christmas and New Year’s? It has always been a difficult one for me. Always, I say—but not truly always. Not when I was a child. Not when I was in my late teens, going to glamorous parties where I was expected to meet the young man I would marry. It began to be difficult when the parties stopped. Or maybe when they stopped seeming glamorous. Or maybe when too many of the people I loved were absent on Christmas.
Fayette County Record
Round Top is a long enough drive from Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Lots of construction and ill-tempered traffic to contend with. Once you get here, you find a central square with a bathroom almost as big as the courthouse. You find periodically overwhelmed restaurants, sometimes with long lines. You find a lot of crafty things to purchase in addition to high ticket designer goods you could buy with a whole lot less trouble in any of the cities you come from.
Fayette County Record
I have always found making a new friend harder than I think it should be. It’s not that I haven’t had friends. I’ve had four or five whom I would think of as best friends at the time I knew them. Four of them have died since then. I have a few more recent friends, too, who share an interest or several with me, but most blend into the category of friendly acquaintanceship. And that’s much easier. Of course there are the online friends, as well, via social media.
Fayette County Record
The new Poet Laureate of Texas is coming to Winedale on September 21. Just as the Shakespeare season closes, today’s poetry arrives in the person of Octavio Quintanilla, a triple-threat (to borrow football terminology). That is, poet, visual artist, publisher, also professor and director of a respected literary festival. That makes it five things, actually. I met Octavio at the Texas Institute of Letters’ annual meeting in April and I was impressed.
The Fayette County Record
I’ve been on the road a lot this month, some of it on hauls back and forth to Houston. Most of it, though, on the backroads of our county. Slow travel has come to interest me. Most of us think slow travel means traffic jams, or at the least a maze of construction lane changes and orange cones. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the slow travel we can choose. Where we can notice the stage of bloom achieved by thistles.
Fayette County Record
I was sitting there a few mornings ago watching a pair of bluebirds making a nest in our bluebird box. They’d been flirting with the box for several days. The male is neat and sleek in his bright blue frock coat and rosy vest. He has spent a lot of time sitting on a fence wire nearby. Keeping watch, I think. Sometimes he sits on the roof of the box, or on top of the fence post to which the box is attached. Occasionally he brings a tiny twig of something to the entrance hole.
Spring Thoughts | The Fayette County Record
Spring is so noisy. Have you noticed? No, I don’t mean the noise you hear with your ears. I mean visual noise: The daily green unfurlings of tiny leaves, tiny stems in the midst of brown winter grass; the wash of green along limbs of every deciduous tree. You drive along the backroads of Fayette and Washington Counties with a celebration underway on all sides. And this is well before wildflower season arrives.
Round Top: Looking From the Outside In
When I first came to Round Top the mayor was Don Nagel. The café was Birkelbach’s. One day in the early 1970s I went to a barbecue lunch there with Miss Ima Hogg (Winedale) and James Dick (Festival Hill). I remember wondering what Mr. Birkelbach thought of the potato salad Miss Hogg brought to the meal in a large, cut glass dish. Of course, except for him we were all outsiders that day. Leon Hale first came to Round Top in the late 1940s. He and I acquired our place at Winedale in 1985.
The Fayette County Record
In cold weather this old house is very vocal with creaks and moans and the scrabble of little feet with claws somewhere in the walls or on the roof. I feel sure I share habitation with a variety of wild things—mice, squirrels, possibly a snake. Insects, certainly. I wasn’t surprised to find a sleeping wasp under a box of Kleenex the other day. Our long Texas summers crowd us with thick vegetation that’s present for most of the year.
Of Cows and Gratitude
It’s the season of gratitude again – time to give thanks for all the good things we’ve been blessed with. Everyone’s list will be different, but mine, for example, includes: health, food, home, family. Or to sum it up in one word: Life.Gratitude for being alive. For being here. I like the way some families ask each member around the table to say one thing they’re thankful for during the past year… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
Leon Hale’s Old Hometown
I’m sitting in a little coffee shop here in Eastland, Texas this morning. My view is over some cars to a wooded hill washed in early morning light. Trees are necessary in this part of West Texas where sunshine seems to acquire a extra measure of glare.Those cars, by the way, are police cars, because just across the street from where I’m sitting is the jail. A line of prisoners in striped orange… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
The Fayette County Record
It’s still September as I’m writing this, but that doesn’t matter. As of last night, October’s here. That’s when the drier, cooler air came in on a northerly breeze.I was standing on my front sidewalk when it began. I raised my head and sniffed, the way our dogs used to, as though I might smell the shape of winter.This is my favorite time of year. Hale and I fell in love during September. We… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
The Fayette County Record
I’m so ready for cooler weather I may be imagining things. But this morning my large garden spider on the front porch disappeared.Yesterday she spent digesting her latest catch. That usually results in deliverance of an egg case in a few days. I expected to see her, considerably rounder, hanging on her freshened web over my front steps.But she’s gone. Poof! There are other very early signs of… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
The Fayette County Record
Lately it seems that every time I open my computer or pick up my phone, someone else I know or know of has died. Sudden deaths, too.If they haven’t died, they’ve had gruesome injuries.Or there is another angry weather system bearing down on us.(I’ve been in Houston all month, still waiting on that cortisone shot, scheduled for Tuesday.)On July 8, we had a hurricane hammering the glass walls of my… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
Lone Star Lit News: 7-20-2024 Mindset Shifts for Creating Your Author Brand, Summer Reads Highlights, and more!
We’ve been discussing building our author brands for the past few weeks. We’ve defined our values, decided on colors, and chosen fonts. Now, comes the hard part – creating your mindset around your author brand. When you’re standing at the beginning of your author marketing journey, you may feel dread, dismay, or perhaps incompetence.
Healthcare Frustrations
Healthcare proximity is a real concern for aging city folks contemplating a permanent move to the country. They’re accustomed to a hospital down the street. To pharmacies a block or two from home. They’re used to deliveries, too, of medicine and food. I had a lot of experience with these matters at Winedale during the time Hale was ill, even prior to the pandemic. For one emergency I drove him at night to the ER at Houston’s Methodist Hospital.
Closet Thinking During a Storm
I’m in the closet with Rosie.It’s a tall closet with a doorway leading to a hall but no door. The hallway has doors on each end. And they are closed.Above us is a thin ceiling of wood, topped by a tin roof. And over that the branches of a live oak and a howling, screaming wind. Every so often an alarming thump suggests damage of some kind.Here inside the closet, it’s pitch black. Rosie starts… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
Of Tomatoes and Roses
My “gardening” over the past several years has been waist-high. In boxes.It’s definitely a work in progress.Tomato sandwiches keep me trying–the old-fashioned kind with white bread, thick mayo and even thicker slices of juicy red, right-off-the-vine tomato.You know what happened last year to tomatoes, so the less said about that, the better. My peppers were more successful, then, but peppers… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
This Familiar Heart: An Improbable Love Story
The vows spoken during the marriage ceremony speak to a couple’s promises to each other while they share a life. Leon Hale’s valediction to his beloved wife was a promise to be kept after he left her world. Hale wanted Babette to reveal a part of him to a reading audience. Hale had lived a full life, yet his death in 2021 at age 99 still shook Babette.
Review for This Familiar Heart By Babette Fraser Hale
Theirs was a May-December romance lasting nearly 40 years. It was built on mutual love and respect but began with a fierce intensity in its infancy. When Leon Hale passed away just shy of 100 years old in 2021, his parting words to his widow Babette were touching directions: “Write about me!” Writing was what had brought the unlikely pair into each other’s world as Babette had reached out to Hale in 1981 for guidance with her own writing.
Fayette County Record
A few years ago we planted azaleas in front of our house in Winedale. By themselves, they sing the season in a harmonic chorus of pinks and whites outside the window. I listen all day long from my desk.Then there are the bluebonnets, this year outnumbering all other seasonal wild companions in our yard.They have turned what once was a bed of roses into an unexpected bower of blue, almost knee… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
The Fayette County Record
Skip to main content What do we think about age? Do we reveal how old we are? Do we pretend to an earlier birthdate?Social media has made that kind of pretense harder to sustain when you’re sharing photos of anniversary dinners and birthday cakes.Why bother? Ageism is why some do. I was reminded of this recently by the publication of an excellent new novel, Leaving, by Roxana Robinson. It’s the story of a love affair… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
The Fayette County Record
The Hall at Moulton Oaks The Hall at Moulton Oaks is an event venue located in Moulton, Texas. The building has hosted picnics, dances, concerts, weddings, and public gatherings. Moulton, Texas Round Top Real Estate Round Top Real Estate Texas real estate professionals with deep knowledge of local real estate. The company has special local expertise in farm and ranch and residential properties as well as commercial and investment properties. Established in 1988.
The Fayette County Record
Skip to main content We notice the shortening of days with a kind of shock when we lose daylight savings time in November. Suddenly the Solstice arrives, Robert Frost’s “darkest evening of the year.” And later that week comes Christmas with its enduring symbol, the Star of Bethlehem. Clear, cold December nights should spangle the dark skies with stars and the gleam of planets-- grandeur our forebears looked upwards… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
Fayette County Record
The season of holiday travel is upon us. Flocks of families in brightly colored clothes surge into airports where they will acquire the artificial wings they need to reach the home of their youth, or a substitute. Sometimes Granny or Paw-Paw does the traveling. We all need the ritual reminder that, far-flung though we are, Family endures beneath and inside the solitude in which so many live. … Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
Walking the Dog | The Fayette County Record
Fair warning: I’m writing about my dog. (She’s fine— no worries, there; old, like many of us, but fine…so far.) Or mostly fine. This morning we went on our usual circuit around our little acreage—up and down hills, through the woods, down to the creek, over to the stock tank. No stock and not much water, right now. But lots of lovely mud. Dog is a whitish Labrador, currently two-tone—bottom half… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
Fayette County Record
Think back with me for a moment. Place yourself in a typical day, say, in 2019. Visualize the routine, the errands you ran, the shopping, eating. Visualize your work load, email, phone calls. Think about what you were feeling, the ordinary worries— family, friends, weekend plans—even vacation plans for the following summer. Think of all the people you loved then, living their usual, ordinary… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
The Fayette County Record
Right now my rearview mirror is filling with August on its way out. As months go, hasn’t it been a doozy? Normally I kind of like August, at least in Houston where it cuts traffic inside the Loop to about half the usual density. Makes getting around so much easier—the way it used to be. And, except for the occasional hurricane, August is the most reliable month where Texas weather is concerned… Premium Content is available to subscribers only.
The Fayette County Record
For years, it seems, I’ve been trying to escape at least some part of a Texas summer. And now, for a few days, I have. Greetings to everyone from the best place on earth. Certainly this year with half the country stunned by 100 degree-plus weather, almost anyone would find where I am pretty fabulous. The people who live here think it’s a little warm with the sun out (80s), but they call the…
The Fayette County Record
The forces of change have been hard upon us for the last few years and they don’t let up. I’m thinking, first, of the real estate subdivisions whose signs of imminent arrival have sprouted in various Fayette County pastures. Some call it progress, but if we, personally, find it destructive, I think we can be forgiven. If we live in the country because we like a country way of doing things, we…
The Fayette County Record
Covid, that is. As I write this, I’m on Day 16 of what I think of as “naked Covid.” That is, the virus without treatment from a palliative drug like Paxlovid. The journey began at a business dinner I attended on Friday, May 5 in Houston, where I spent more than an hour about 28 inches away from my dinner partner as we discussed artificial intelligence. Clearly we need intelligence of some kind…
Fayette County Record
Words (almost) fail when I consider the imminent tsunami of AI-generated opinion that is about to engulf us. AI being Artificial Intelligence. Haven’t we created a sufficient flood all by ourselves– our fallible human selves? So many of us, simmering before screens around the world, have nothing better to do than release wordage into cyberspace. If we could see it all floating there—bit by…
The Fayette County Record
Leon Hale had a phrase he applied to people he thought highly of. He would say “he’s a feeling person.” That is, a person who expresses empathy in his, or her, behavior. He was such a person, himself, of course. And I’m like a modern-day Diogenes circulating with the lantern of my attention, looking for such people. Smiling when I find them. (Reading is said to cultivate empathy.) I’m thinking…
Fayette County Record
By the time we enter our Medicare years, most of us have accumulated a great deal of information about an enormous variety of subjects. Access to the internet cubes the quantity with no guarantee of quality. We all know this. It is especially a problem in groups. Around here we have many groups convened for purpose— charity, good works, spiritual encouragement or just plain fun. And every one…
The Fayette County Record
I happened to be out on foot during that heavy fog the other morning, doing chores. I was amazed by the transformation. Suddenly my yard, my neighbor’s pasture, my road, all wore a veil of mystery. If we’re not trying to drive somewhere, unfamiliarity like that can excite us, breaking through our normal failure to notice the most familiar objects, the ones we see every day. In a fog, we’re…
Seasons of Change in Growing Roundtopolis
You’ve invited some friends to visit Round Top over the holidays. They haven’t been here in a while. Ten or twenty years, maybe. Well before anyone thought of the word “Roundtopolis.” (How about that word? We’ve always needed a name, I think, for the area that spreads out around the town. This word does so many things—evokes Superman, drips with irony, fits nicely into hype of all kinds). But I…
Fayette County Record
I’m sitting here on the side of a mountain in Santa Fe, NM. It’s another perfectly gorgeous morning. Deep blue sky. And the sloping fall light that always seems three times brighter here. I’ve been in this little house all month, fleeing the heat and finishing my memoir manuscript about Leon Hale and me. The deadline has caught me thinking about timelessness and place. About tourists. In Fayette…
The Fayette County Record
Are men, really, “a lot of trouble?” A friend recently quoted a woman he knows as saying that. She was trying to explain why an eligible older fellow might have difficulty finding an interested new female partner. When I began to check it out, I discovered that a surprising number of unattached women have quit on men. They like the freedom of living alone. Housekeeping for one. Men, they say,…
The Fayette County Record
Texans often travel to escape summer’s heat, heading for the Gulf Coast, the Hill Country or the mountains. A few travel to Europe, where they’re finding a “heat wave” that’s even more punitive than ours. But at some point, you have to come back. Walk into the oven everyone else has been roasting in while you were gone. That makes it seem even hotter. I was only gone two weeks, but, driving…
Dear Boss, Let Me Explain!
Dear Boss, Please let me explain why I don’t have a column today, although I have struggled mightily to produce one. I blame it on the tomato. Yes, one tomato, and it had a blister on it bigger than a half dollar. (Remember those?) This was no ordinary tomato, either, but an heirloom variety given to me by a friend when it was just a sproutling. Anticipating its yield had my mouth watering for…
Shrug is an Action Verb
What we do is shrug. Honestly now, isn’t that true? All we’ve been through here in the past two years, with each news broadcast bringing the pain of hundreds, thousands, millions right into our homes. We begin to develop an emotional callus, a protection against feeling all that misery. So, a guy with a gun kills 19 children in an elementary school. How horrible! Deeply, truly, irrevocably…
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