Eighty Degrees in October?

Seriously? I know Texas has a reputation for unpredictable weather but still...

Huracán Harvey

Well, we here in Dallas appear to have survived Hurricane Harvey okay but the good people of Houston were not that lucky. My prayers go out to all the people down there who having to struggle with floods and power outages and worse. Hurricane Harvey may not have been as big a storm as Hurricane Katrina but it was big enough.

Movie Quote of the Week

Well I haven't seen any giant snakes, or big buxom naked women frolicking through the Texas hills lately.
--Renée Zellweger, The Whole Wide World (1996)

It's That Time Again

One of my Mexican-born aunts once told me that her local Catholic church had ceremonies like this back in her home town of San Francisco del Rincón, but I have never heard of such ceremonies happening here in Dallas until just last year. Even then, I had a little trouble believing that such a ceremony would take place at a Methodist church, much less a Methodist church in Dallas. Then again, I doubt Saint Francis of Assisi would mind and I'm sure that the animals themselves aren't likely to protest.

Indeed, given the number of self-proclaimed animal-lovers in Dallas, I suppose I should be more surprised that ceremonies like this are not more common.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Antonio López de Santa Anna!

AKA Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón.

Born February 21, 1794. Died June 21, 1876.

He was the one Mexican who had more of an influence on Texas history than almost any other person of Mexican descent that I can think of. I just wish it was a good influence.

Song Quote of the Week

This is the land where the Pharaoh died.
--The Doors, “The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)”

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Juan Seguín!



AKA Juan Nepomuceno Seguín.

Born October 27, 1806. Died August 27, 1890.

He was one of the most famous Texans of Mexican descent to join the Texas Revolution on the winning side. Unfortunately, his story is rarely told by most traditional historians.

Random Thoughts

It's official. Summer is my favorite season and lemons are my favorite fruit.

You know it's been a hot summer in Texas when you start thinking of 81 degrees as "cool."

Twenty years later and "It's the economy, stupid" is still a valid political slogan.

Believe it or not, many Mexican-Americans born in this country don't really care that much about immigration but that does not mean that continually bashing Mexican illegals is the way to win our hearts. Nor is continually equating mojado culture with Chicano culture. Or for that matter, with Mexican-American culture.

Just once I would like to see Ann Coulter write a book that doesn't look like it should be printed in an all caps format.

Anyone else suspect that many of the same people bashing actor Clint Eastwood for his speech at the 2012 GOP convention were the same people arguing a few months ago that Eastwood should be nominated for president just because he did a really cool voiceover for a car commercial?

Book of the Week

I have always liked Debbie Nathan's articles about the Texas-Mexico border and unfortunately this is the closest thing she has to a complete collection of articles. As you might guess from the title, it's not exclusively about the Mexican border and since it was published in 1991, one might even argue that it's a bit dated.

But it's still worth reading and given the type of rhetoric that has surrounded the Mexican border as of yet, one might say that its main problem is that it's not dated enough. Someday she might come up with a complete collection of her work but in the meantime, this is a good introduction to her work.

Trailer of the Week: Giant (1956)

It's tempting to call this movie the Mexican-American version of Gone with the Wind but of course, it's much more than that. The more I see of it, the more I wish I could hate it, and yet the more I try to hate it, the more the writer in me sees things in it I can't help but love. Which, come to think of it, basically sums up my attitude towards Texas history.

Movie Song of the Week: “Dance a Little Sidestep”

Well, it's election season again. Why not let Charles Durning show all those wannabes out there how it's done?

Halloween Song of the Week: “Ghost of a Texas Ladies Man”

There's not a whole lot of Halloween videos out there available for posting but there is this video from one of my favorite groups, Concrete Blonde.

I realize that Concrete Blonde is not to everyone's taste but I'd like to think that this is one of their most memorable songs. Plus the sight of lead singer Johnette Napolitano in nineteenth-century dress is hardly a sight I can easily turn away from.

I hope you all enjoy it.

These Boots Were Made for Walking but Not Selling

Geez, I didn't realize it until I passed not one but two such stores with a sign advertising a going-out-of-business sale, but apparently Western Warehouse is going out of business. And so is Boot Town.

Not that it's likely to affect me much. After all, I don't wear boots. But it does say something rather ominous about the local economy when even a store that sells boots can't stay in business here in Texas.

Whew!

Well, Hurricane Ike didn't affect Dallas too much apart from giving us all some rain and a few high winds but it sure had a far greater effect on coastal cities like Houston and Galveston.

Time will tell how long it takes these cities to recover.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the South

When I first moved to Texas from my native Michigan, I hated the South. I didn't hate it so much because it was the South but because it wasn't Michigan where all our relatives were. And I wasn't alone in my distaste for all things Southern. My siblings and I cried so much about having to live in Texas that my father promised my mother that our family would move back to Michigan if we hadn't adjusted to life in the Lone Star State within a year.

Well, we adjusted all right, but for years afterwards, part of me could not help feeling like an exile who was forever banned from his native land. As far as I was concerned, everything was better up north: the land, the people, the music, the food, the weather. I was always comparing notes with my fellow Yankees about how bad things were in the South and, of course, how better things were in the North.

It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties and able to spend a whole summer in Michigan that I realized that this wasn't necessarily so. Almost everything I hated about Dallas -- the traffic, the racial problems, the bad schools, the rude people -- could be found in Detroit, and the few advantages I enjoyed in Dallas -- cheap book stores, air conditioning, etc. -- weren't all that widespread in Detroit. Because air conditioning was not as common up north as in the south, the summers seemed a lot hotter than they had to be and the winters, of course, were a lot harsher. (Fortunately, the Northerners believed in central heating far more than they believed in air conditioning.)

I didn't realize how attached I was getting to the South until I realized one day in Michigan that I actually missed my life in Texas. I didn't kid myself that things would automatically be wonderful when I got back, but I did miss it in a way that I never thought would be possible.

I can't help but find it an odd coincidence that of the handful of women with whom I have actually fallen in love, at least six were Southern women. My best friend is a Southern woman (and gasp! a non-Catholic to boot) and, of course, the one woman I have ever got engaged to was born right here in Texas. The one time I dated a Yankee woman (actually, a Latvian immigrant who grew up in New York but I considered her a Yankee) proved a disaster. And when I got into a conversation last week with an Irish Catholic women from Chicago who insisted on badmouthing Southern women, my first instinct was not to say, “Right on.” It was to contradict her.

I'm not going to pretend that the South is perfect or that there aren't a lot of areas for improvement here in Texas. I'll never be the type of person who proudly displays the Stars and Bars or waxes nostalgic over the old Confederacy.

But I no longer kid myself that I would be happier up north than I am here in Texas. If I was forced to move there tomorrow, I'd probably learn to adjust. But it wouldn't be a process that I would look forward to.

All Politics Is Loco, Parte I

I've been trying to refrain from posting too much political stuff on this site because I'm really not into political debates as much as I used to be. The older I get, the more I see issues in shades of gray and most often, I think of things in terms of not so much good and evil as responsible and irresponsible. That doesn't mean I don't have political beliefs. Just that they tend to be far more complicated than most people would prefer.

Anyway, I'm going to vote in the Texas primary today.

Wish me well.