How much time you got? Mostly, Texas is high on its own supply … of folklore. Cowboys, ranchers, and manifest destiny tell the same story of one white man against the system, whether that system is a starving horde of “Mexican rapists,” a tax-hungry federal government, agricultural inspectors, science (but with a dripping syringe of Covid vaccine in its filthy paw), women’s libbers, “that #MeToo horseshit,” gay weddings, foreigners, or Democrats.It’s the Lone Star state, as in one. As in that’s exactly how Texans see themselves. It’s: bootstraps, up by, every hour of the day. Failure to keep up means you get left behind. We got ourselves a nice little boys’ club here, commie, and you ain’t in it.
I can’t return to Texas without remembering my car’s A/C blowing chunks of ice at me at 4.30am. It was THAT humid. Also getting to my destination in Seabrook, realizing it was July… and that I was now living there. Replaying on an endless loop in my mind was one panicked thought: “WTF have I done???”
I miss Molly Ivins. I saw her speak in Portland once...and I remember being shocked that Texas could produce some possessed of so much common sense AND a sense of humor. She held up a mirror to the absurdities of Texas (and they're LEGION)...and not surprisingly, Texans didn't uniformly love her back. Go figure.
As for Houston...if you could get past the heat, the humidity, the mosquitoes, the hypocrisy, and the ridiculous distances between anything and everything (I once drove 70 miles from SE Houston to NW Houston without leaving the city limits), it was a virtual Paradise. Then again, I always thought I-10 was shorter than "a multi-lane portal to Hell."
I refer to myself as a "recovering former Texan" because I lived there just long enough to understand the Lone Star State well enough to know that, outside of Austin, it's a "shit-hole country."
Yeah, I miss Texas...about as much as I'd much an incurable social disease.
Houston is such an abomination of a place. I had a job once that required a lot of traveling, and I ended up in Houston on several occasions. Austin, the Capitol, is pretty livable. I had a professor at SIUC who spent quite a few years at one of the UT's. He tells the story of his old pickup that leaked radiator fluid faster than it burned gasoline. But he knew every spot on the road where he could water his vehicle, so he'd have these daily stops to and from the University. But overall, it is like the old postcard said: "Miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles."
(By the bye, since you mentioned it, I did my undergrad at Occidental College. Because of that, I'm one degree of separation from Barrack Obama.)
"Perhaps if the GOP can get out of its own way, disentangle itself from its most dangerous coalition, and start adhering to its basic principles of decency, small “c” conservatism, and obedience to the law, Texas can right its disastrous course."
Now *THAT* is what we in the philosophy call a "hypothetical" ...
I can’t return to Texas without remembering my car’s A/C blowing chunks of ice at me at 4.30am. It was THAT humid. Also getting to my destination in Seabrook, realizing it was July… and that I was now living there. Replaying on an endless loop in my mind was one panicked thought: “WTF have I done???”
I miss Molly Ivins. I saw her speak in Portland once...and I remember being shocked that Texas could produce some possessed of so much common sense AND a sense of humor. She held up a mirror to the absurdities of Texas (and they're LEGION)...and not surprisingly, Texans didn't uniformly love her back. Go figure.
As for Houston...if you could get past the heat, the humidity, the mosquitoes, the hypocrisy, and the ridiculous distances between anything and everything (I once drove 70 miles from SE Houston to NW Houston without leaving the city limits), it was a virtual Paradise. Then again, I always thought I-10 was shorter than "a multi-lane portal to Hell."
I refer to myself as a "recovering former Texan" because I lived there just long enough to understand the Lone Star State well enough to know that, outside of Austin, it's a "shit-hole country."
Yeah, I miss Texas...about as much as I'd much an incurable social disease.
Houston is such an abomination of a place. I had a job once that required a lot of traveling, and I ended up in Houston on several occasions. Austin, the Capitol, is pretty livable. I had a professor at SIUC who spent quite a few years at one of the UT's. He tells the story of his old pickup that leaked radiator fluid faster than it burned gasoline. But he knew every spot on the road where he could water his vehicle, so he'd have these daily stops to and from the University. But overall, it is like the old postcard said: "Miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles."
(By the bye, since you mentioned it, I did my undergrad at Occidental College. Because of that, I'm one degree of separation from Barrack Obama.)
"Perhaps if the GOP can get out of its own way, disentangle itself from its most dangerous coalition, and start adhering to its basic principles of decency, small “c” conservatism, and obedience to the law, Texas can right its disastrous course."
Now *THAT* is what we in the philosophy call a "hypothetical" ...