Category Archives: Texana

The Unknown Confederate Soldier

unknown soldierYou probably didn’t know there was one. I didn’t, until I found this photo at the site for Beauvoir, CSA President Jefferson Davis’s last home, at Biloxi, on the Mississippi coast. It took a big hit from Katrina, but it’s now restored and still owned and run as a memorial by the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

This unknowns crypt is part of the home’s cemetery in which 767 Confederate veterans (and some wives) are buried, listed by name, rank and unit . Four were in Texas units. (Watch your speakers when you click on the site link, or you will be blasted by the strains of “Dixie.” Pleasant enough version, actually, but not at full volume.)

The heat is on

In  the forecast, anyhow. It’s August. July’s cool and rain is over. One of the coolest and wettest ever. It was pretty nice.

Time to whack us with triple-digit heat. So hundred-degree days are forecast thru Wednesday. Ninety-nines on Thursday and Friday. Yech.

Sez my old meteorologist buddy Bob Rose at the LCRA: “the center of the high pressure ridge is now located over eastern Texas. This means the most stable atmosphere and the hottest temperatures have shifted to Texas and the Lower Mississippi Valley.”

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Good provincialism

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The National Council of Das Volk

An activist group for German-Americans, eerily reminiscent of Aryan Nazi racism. How about an Armenian Studies Program at a major university? Or a “wise Pakistani” on the Supreme Court?

Yet few seem to question The National Council of La Raza, the Chicano Studies Program, or the “wise Latina” —all eligible for Affirmative Action originally intended to redress only African-American slavery and segregation. VDH, as usual,  hits the contradictory nails.

Meanwhile, amid all the illegal-immigrant celebration of the recent court decision against Arizona’s anti-illegals (almost entirely from Mexico) law, there is the solace (buried in the news stories) that it is merely a temporary restraining order. Which is being appealed. After all, as VDH says:

“If the Border Patrol can question those on the American side of the fence on reasonable grounds, then why cannot the policeman do so too a few miles distant?”

The great game is no longer only in Central Asia. It’s also on the U.S.-Mexico border where, aided by corrupt politicians on both sides, it goes on and on, keeping the racist Mexican oligarchy in power and changing our country and our culture as if that was the most natural thing to be doing.

Rule 5 rocks

Indeed, one pic of the voluptuous and demonstrably-cute young French singer-exhibitionist Alizee, has brought me in the neighborhood of five hundred hits in the past three days alone.

As the embodiment (so to speak) of blogger Stacy McCain’s Rule 5, that is not a surprise. However, she still has a ways to go to beat out my previous (and ongoing) hit-makers, Lake Travis in drought, Port Aransas from the air, and Miles Austin’s girlfriend. Nevertheless, I’m grateful, both to Rule 5 and the fetching Ms. Alizee. Have a nice day, dear. You deserve it.

The Flying Barrel

F3f3oClockResearching my book on radar development in Texas, I encountered the Grumman F-3F, the last American military biplane fighter. Nevermind why. Pilots called it the “Flying Barrel,” not very affectionately would be my guess.

Mexican invasion? Naw

The online Cypress Times of little Cypress (northwest of Houston) is gaining notoriety today for this apparently inaccurate report of a Mexican drug gang’s cross-border invasion of some ranches near Laredo. A little call to the watch commander of the Laredo PD seems to have cleared it all up. Heh.

Via Instapundit.