Category Archives: Texana

On My Honor

Posted on February 28, 2008 | Comments Off on On My Honor

An intriguing new "culture war" book by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, an Aggie and an Eagle Scout, on the value of the Scouts, who are under political and legal assualt for denying leadership roles to gay men and women. I’m not so sure I agree with the denial, but, as an old Scout myself, who learned a lot and had a lot of fun, I’ve been pleased to see Mr. B. take to it–and I agree that its civilizing value for boys is unquestionable.

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Posted in Library, Texana

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Here be sea monsters

Posted on February 28, 2008 | Comments Off on Here be sea monsters

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The denigrating chuckles long enjoyed about ancient cartographic reports of sea monsters will be stifled as this prehistoric pliosaur is added to the fossil record. At fifty-feet long, he would have brought ocean-going commerce to a standstill, assuming just a few survived into historical times. Smaller (well, thirty-feet-long) cousins, called mosasaurs, once hunted the shallow seas covering Texas. Mo, whose fossil was found in Ohion Creek in Southeast Austin, is in the dinosaur collection at the Texas Memorial Museum–one of Mr. B.’s favorite haunts.

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Posted in Science/Engineering, Texana

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No cowboys

Posted on February 21, 2008 | Comments Off on No cowboys

Now here’s a shocker. I went to H.E.B. this morning to order Mr. B.’s birthday cake for Sunday. Chocolate cake. Check. Chocolate icing. Check. Last year we did Harry Potter, the year before it was Spiderman, and before that Bob the Builder. So, this year, how about a plastic cowboy and horse or two on top? No cowboys. No cowboys? No cowboys. This is the oldest and largest grocery chain in Texas, found only in Texas (and Mexico), for that matter, and it has no cowboys for a kid’s birthday cake? No cowboys. Sheesh.

UPDATE:  Cowboy figures with lassos also are in short supply in local toy stores. Found plenty with six-guns, but then I ran across a shelf of Papo’s handpainted knights and decided to go for two more. Mr. B. already has several and enjoys them. All mine were one color. I’m envious of these. 

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

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Memo to Houston

Posted on February 20, 2008 | Comments Off on Memo to Houston

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In case Barry’s campaign workers in the Bayou City didn’t get the word. 

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Posted in Texana

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The Texas primary

Posted on February 19, 2008 | Comments Off on The Texas primary

I’m not sure who will win the March 4 Texas primary, where early voting began today, and I can’t say I really care. I think either Democrat candidate is, as I have said before, imminently beatable–Hilarity because she has Bad Bill in tow, and Barry (the name Obama went by in high school) because he’s a pure lefty populist-socialist whose only compelling asset is his race. Half of it, anyhow. Some think Huckabee could beat McCain, but we’ll see. I don’t understand why so many Republicans are throwing in the towel against the Dems before the race even begins. Because our former governor, GW Bush, is so unpopular? Nonsense. You could be pardoned for believing that, given that the MSM harps on his negatives every day, but, hey, they have done that for eight years–including the day after he won re-election in 2004 by five million votes. As for Texas, the Democrat primary may get the lefty press ink but it’s just a sideshow. No way, their nominee will carry this state in November. Huckabee might do well in the primary, but I believe McCain will prevail, here on March 4, and here again on Nov. 4 and in the rest of the country.

UPDATE: I have been asked whether I, like this fellow, intend to vote in our open primary for one of the Dems, just to keep them unresolved until their convention. I thought about it. But I can’t do it.

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Posted in Scribbles, Texana

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Colonel Lee’s pet rattlesnake

Posted on February 19, 2008 | Comments Off on Colonel Lee’s pet rattlesnake

One of the best Civil War books I’ve read is Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s "Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters." Still reading, actually. The letters are new, recently found in a bank vault and released to Pryor by his descendents. The Texas chapter, "Odyssey," chronicles in his own words, his time with the Second Cavalry "in the paradise of the Texans" right before the war. Details such as his horse, Bald Eagle; feeding frogs to his pet rattlesnake; and an audience with "Ka tem a se, the head chief of the Southern Comanches" invalided by pleurisy on his buffalo robes, attended by "his wives & suitors," his shield, bow and quiver nearby, as is his war horse, ready to be slain if the Comanche chief dies to carry him to the happy hunting ground. A new Lee. A step down from the Marble Man, but a leap up in humanity.

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Posted in Civil War, Library, Texana

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Weener Waxman

Posted on February 16, 2008 | Comments Off on Weener Waxman

I was at the Honda dealer last week getting the rice-burning CRV its 80,000 mile checkup so I saw the Roger Clemens appearance before Democrat dingbat Henry Waxman’s dog-and-pony-show on CNN. I didn’t actually listen. I preferred the Outlaws on my MP3 player. But I noticed from the body language that Clemens, the Longhorns ex and Houston Astros ace, was consistently defiant, and Waxman, a political bully of consistently ill repute, was more weasel-like than usual. Now he’s sorry, in a manner of speaking. I’ll say. He sure is.

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Posted in Texana

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