The Lights Of Marfa

Doyle Dykes is one of the premier fingerstyle guitarists in the world. When guitar great Chet Atkins was asked a few years ago who he'd pay money to go see, his answer was, "People like Doyle Dykes, who is just an amazing fingerpicker, I think." He has thrilled secular and church audiences all over the world, from the Grand Ole Opry to Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, England (home of the some of the most famous rock concerts in history) to Shanghai, China; James' Burton's International Guitar Festival, Saddleback Community Church, and Harvest Christian Fellowship. But this book isn't just about his life as a guitar player. Infused into stories like how he was invited to be part of the Stamps Quartet (Elvis' backup band), why a white rose is on the headstock of his signature-model guitar, and how his worst night at the Opry turned out to be anything but, are accounts of the remarkable ways God has shown up in Doyle's life. His warm, engaging style will draw you into each chapter--and you'll finish the book having been inspired, feeling like Doyle is a new friend, and never viewing God the same way again. Includes DVD with music & interviews.

"Hunting Marfa Lights" reports the results of an eight-year investigation into mysterious lights seen near Marfa, a small west Texas town. Bunnell finds that while most of the lights can be explained, about three percent are truly mysterious and of unknown origin.

A collection of Courtney's columns from the Texas Monthly, curing the curious, exorcizing bedevilment, and orienting the disoriented, advising "on such things as: Is it wrong to wear your football team's jersey to church? When out at a dancehall, do you need to stick with the one that brung ya? Is it real Tex-Mex if it's served with a side of black beans? Can one have too many Texas-themed tattoos?"--Amazon.com.

In Defense of Marfa Lights These days, Marfa, Texas, is a mecca for art and artists. But Mitchell Flat, a vast stretch of ranch land to the east of Marfa, is a much older mecca, not for art, but for lights. Since the 19th century, reports of mysterious or unexplained lights have intrigued people who live in this far west Texas area. Some visitors (and there are many) declare distant, moving lights to be mysterious, while more skeptical visitors may tell you that what they saw were ranch lights and vehicle headlights. Who is right? What are these lights? A major research effort might give answers. But the answer boils down not to a concrete, singular fact, but rather to a choice between two camps. Author James Bunnell is squarely in the camp that rejects the headlights theory and pushes for more scientific investigation because he believes the lights are unusual, natural phenomena that have much to tell us about our own Earth. Unlike the headlight theorists, some of whom have never visited Marfa or Mitchell Flat, Bunnell backs up his conclusions about the lights with ten years of firsthand observations, photographs of many mysterious lights from multiple automatic night cameras, and a unique base of his own photographic evidence taken by him, onsite, in real time. He concludes A VERY SMALL NUMBER of these lights are indeed mysterious natural phenomena. A retired aerospace engineer, Bunnell has no quarrel with light gazers who have come to Mitchell Flat, seen lights, and declared them to be headlights. He understands why: Explainable lights heavily outnumber mysterious lights. A much different matter are those who do not come to Marfa, who question him at length over a series of months and then use, without permission, his copyrighted photographs and data to prove that mysterious lights do not exist. Those are the people who made this book necessary. This book is a closer look at what they did, and what James Bunnell did. You choose.

**Named a Best Book of the Year by The Boston Globe, Garden & Gun, Electric Literature, and St. Louis Public Radio** The New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights and Inciting Joy is back with exactly the book we need in these unsettling times. Margaret Roach of The New York Times says, “Yes, please. I'll have another dose of delight.” In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight. For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us. The Book of (More) Delights is a volume to savor and share.

This inviting book explores how small-town Marfa, Texas, has become a landmark arts destination and tourist attraction, despite--and because of--its remote location in the immense Chihuahuan desert.

Since 1889, mysterious lights have appeared outside Rostov, a remote Texas town. Ranchers believed them to be the campfires of rustlers, but campfires don’t rise and fall, merge, and change colors. In World War I, the locals believed that the lights came from German forces massing on the Mexican border. In the Second World War, the US military built an airfield there and used planes to try to discover the secret of the lights. In 1980, the entire town set out on a “Ghost Light Hunt.” For more than a century, each attempt to get close to the lights met with horrifying results. Now police officer Dan Page follows the trail of his missing wife from New Mexico to Texas and discovers that she and hundreds of spectators have become enraptured by the lights. After a crazed gunman fires obsessively into the crowd, the stage is set for more death. To save his wife, Page must confront the mystery of the lights. His desperate search reveals a government conspiracy that dates back to World War II. The abandoned airfield is more than what it seems. So is a nearby observatory, with a purpose even more mysterious and lethal than the lights themselves. Drawing his inspiration from the real-life Marfa lights, critically acclaimed Morrell packs The Shimmer with his trademark blend of action and terror.

Doyle Dykes is the natural heir to Chet Atkins' throne. This Nashville-based virtuoso fingerstyle guitarist plays solo guitar arrangements of originals, hymns, and secular pop music with astounding feel and unheard-of technique. This volume includes Doyle's original guitar compositions and his hugely popular arrangement of The Beatles' song Girl." Songs are: Angels Desire * Birmingham Steel * Caleb's Report * Celtic Cowboy * The Changing of the Guard * Country Fried Pickin' * Girl * The Howling of the Wood * The Jawbone * Martha's Kitchen * Miss Haley's Music Box * Misty Nights in Tokyo * The Road Back Home * Self Portrait on Acoustic Guitar * The Visitation * Wabash Cannonball * White Rose for Heidi."