This is what almost 18 feet above normal looks like in the Cypress Creek channel at Lake Travis. The floating docks on either side rose, the flagpole didn’t. And the cleat for the flag’s halyard being well underwater, nobody’s going to be taking it down soon. Especially when LCRA says almost 3 inches of rain Saturday in the Colorado River watershed around San Saba will push the lake to 701 feet in a few days. It could be weeks before things are back to semi-normal.
Comments Off on Lake Travis flag
Posted in Sailing, Scribbles, Texana, Weather/Climate
Tagged floating docks with nonfloating flag pole, Lake Travis flood, LCRA
So who should be insulted by the knighting of Salman Rushdie, the man whose first name would be spelled like a fish if an ‘a’ was changed to an ‘o’? Not the Muslims. The Muslims, being no more than consumers on the world’s teat, are always insulted about something. No, by golly, it’s Rushdie, himself. So says Harry Hutton, who, having been through a few of these things, really should know.
Comments Off on Lancelot he’s not
Posted in Scribbles
Tagged Harry Hutton, knighthood, Salman Rushdie
For you birdwatchers who may have doubted the existence of these beauties, a pair on the Gallapagos Islands, photographed in 2005 by a visiting relative of mine. There are also red-footed ones, which nest in trees.
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Posted in Scribbles, South of the Border
An oldie but a goodie. Variously attributed to Poles, Aggies, etc. Any of the technologically challenged.
Some Hispanics were just as opposed to the shot-down-in-flames immigration bill as some gringoes:
"We all know that the temporary guest worker program that the bill proposed was a cheap labor program. Obviously that was the point. What wasn’t so obvious is that if you were one of the less-educated immigrants–for example if you didn’t graduate in high school–your wages would be decreasing. The bill had no wage floor provisions: there was no requirement that the employers pay prevailing wages…The influx of cheap labor would have had a depressing effect on wages across the board, not just on unskilled labor."
Meanwhile, where’s the fence? Even the piddling one being built is fouled up, as this AP editorial-as-news reports. Of course the Mexican government won’t cooperate. They’re the problem to begin with.
Comments Off on Where’s the fence, George?
Posted in Scribbles, South of the Border
Tagged Fausta Wertz, Hispanics, immigration bill
"I believe Texans share a special kinship with the Israeli people. We are both independent-minded and self-reliant, and our history is grounded in strong stands against impossible odds." –Texas Gov. Rick Perry
I’d say that’s exactly right, and I would not join in the sniping the Texas media did about his foreign travel: to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Turkey, Israel and Jordan, apparently trying to drum up new business for the state. We do, after all, have the eighth largest economy in the world. Though I do wonder about Rick’s man-in-black, desperado look in the official Israel government photo that ran in the daily.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 