Category Archives: Texana

Off to the beach

Posted on August 8, 2009 | Comments Off on Off to the beach

Off to Port Aransas today through Wednesday, where the National Weather Service forecasts highs in the eighties and twenty percent chance of showers through the period. Sure hope they’re right.

What a nice break it would be from the triple digits here. On the other hand, the humidity is above ninety percent which will push the heat index above one hundred. Port A cam aimed at part of the beach will tell the tale.

UPDATE:  The humidity was high, but it felt cool nevertheless, especially at night. Didn’t rain once. We got the rain coming home on the 12th, just outside of Austin.

Comments Off on Off to the beach

Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

Tagged ,

Peak oil is a lie

Posted on August 7, 2009 | Comments Off on Peak oil is a lie

The next time you read or hear the phrase "peak oil," usually as part of some politician’s blather about how we need more solar cells and windmills, just think of this alternate: "North Dakota Oil." Not that there aren’t still naysayers.

Via The Seablogger.

UPDATE:  Here’s another for instance.

Comments Off on Peak oil is a lie

Posted in Obamalot, Texana

Tagged ,

AARP: Deaf

Posted on August 7, 2009 | Comments Off on AARP: Deaf

This eight-minute clip shows the main reason I trashcan AARP fliers when they come in the mail. It’s not really about seniors. It’s about whatever the execs and their lobbyists want to do with the dues money. And they proved it Tuesday in Dallas.

UPDATE:  About sixty thousand others also have gotten the message and stopped paying their dues. Or are switching. Competition is good.

Comments Off on AARP: Deaf

Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

Tagged , , , ,

Pretty country

Posted on August 6, 2009 | Comments Off on Pretty country

Texas1AcreHorse.jpg

Pasture near Bledsoe, Texas, west of Lubbock, in the Panhandle. From this realtor’s site. Probably taken one spring, long before the current drought. Or drouth, as the oldtimers used to say.

Comments Off on Pretty country

Posted in Texana

Tagged , ,

Alamo Chapel

Posted on August 4, 2009 | Comments Off on Alamo Chapel

alamo_chapel_interior

For those who have never been there, or have been but have forgotten what it looks like inside. No Texas blog can have too many pictures of the Alamo. Although I believe this was taken before the souvenir-trinket cases at the far end behind the camera were removed to a separate building elsewhere on the grounds. Then, the flags of all the states and countries the defenders came from were scrunched into a tiny room to the left of the entrance. They now line the walls here in the outer room. More such pictures, inside and out, old and new, some you’ve probably never seen, are available here.

Comments Off on Alamo Chapel

Posted in Blogosphere, Library, Texana

Tagged ,

Indianola

Posted on August 4, 2009 | Comments Off on Indianola

Researching the ghost town of Indianola, once the second-busiest port (after Galveston) on the Texas coast, which figures in a book of Texana I’m writing, I found this good site. Then-Secretary of War Jeff Davis shipped his thirty-two experimental Egyptian camels through the port on Matagorda Bay in 1856. They proved relatively useless. Among other problems, their feet were too tender for the rocky West Texas soil. But some people still like to experiment with them.

Comments Off on Indianola

Posted in Texana

Tagged , , ,

Port Aransas fever

Posted on July 31, 2009 | Comments Off on Port Aransas fever

799px-Tarpon_inn.jpg

This time of year, lots of inland Texans are thinking of the coast and the surf and the Gulf breezes. Course the latter come to us when there’s a good low-pressure area off to our west-northwest, sometimes bringing us the only summer rain we get. Anyhow, when we go we stay at the condo. Never have stayed at the little Tarpon Inn, at PortA, with its cavalry-barracks architecture, but lion tamer Clyde Beatty did, and cake-mix magnate Duncan Hines, etc., way back when. FDR caught a tarpon offshore, as many still do, but he slept somewhere else.

Comments Off on Port Aransas fever

Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather/Climate

Tagged , , , , , , , ,