Tag: Texas

Fort Worth on my mind

top 10

I’ve had Fort Worth on my mind lately, though I’ve never been to the city in Texas. Two or three years ago, I was at a trivia contest at WAMC’s auditorium, the Linda. 

The final question said the state with the most Top 15 US cities by population had the 15th-largest city. We had to name the city. So which state would it have been? Some in our group said California, but I was positive it was Texas. My problem is that I didn’t know the rankings. I knew Houston was a Top 5 city and assumed Dallas was up there. Austin, where a friend lives, has been growing like crazy. I think we picked San Antonio, actually bigger than Dallas.   

The answer was Fort Worth. Fort Worth? It never crossed my mind. I thought it was just a Dallas suburb. According to Wikipedia, the 2025 estimate is that it is now a Top 10 city in the US, bypassing Austin.

A recent NYT Connections had the answer as FORTH, but my second guess was WORTH because of that experience.

I haven’t been to Texas since about 1995, when I was at a work conference in Galveston, which I enjoyed tremendously.

Texas wants you anyway

In the New York Times, the piece ‘They Picked the Wrong Candidate’: 12 Texas Swing Voters on the Paxton-Talarico Race asked some questions I found interesting. 

“All of you have lived in Texas for 10 or more years. What has changed the most about Texas in the time that you have lived in the state?” One replied: “The initial joy of living here over the last decade has definitely deteriorated. I don’t love living here anymore. I don’t like the weather. It’s like a desert seven months of the year. Initially, I thought I could deal with it. Now it’s like I’ve got to hibernate for a few months of the year.”

Moderator: “And has that changed in the last 10 years? Is that different?” Another replied: “It feels like the summers are hotter and the winters are colder. And the cities have grown so much. When I was a kid, San Antonio to Houston seemed so far away. Now you’re at the edge of one and into the other within about two hours.”

I found this insight useful. The cliché is correct: everything’s bigger in the Lone Star State.

To me, Fort Worth’s population explosion is matched or exceeded by other locales in the state. Of the U.S. cities with the greatest growth in 2025 compared with 2020 by percentage, four of the top 10 (Georgetown, New Braunfels, Conroe, and Lewisville) and eight of the top 20 were in Texas.  

The SCOTUS abortion ballet

“enlisting private citizens to do what the State could not”

abortionIt’s not that I’m happy that the Texas state legislature passed legislation severely restricting abortion. It’s that I’m unsurprised. I’ve come to expect dreadful things from the Texas legislature – see its recent restrictive voting bill.

These bills were signed by its terrible, awful, not very good governor, Greg Abbott, who’s always in fierce contention with Florida’s Ron DeSantis as my least favorite state chief executive.

The latest bad law in Texas bans abortion as early as six weeks. For women with regular menstruation cycles, they have only two weeks after missing a period to determine pregnancy. This is before most people even know they are pregnant.

Vigilantes

Worse, the state law allows anyone to sue a person or organization that provides abortion care or even helps someone obtain an abortion. As Truthout notes: “The drafters of SB 8 established a novel scheme to prevent lawsuits against state officials by privatizing enforcement and deputizing private persons to sue people who provide abortions.

“The bill gives any non-governmental person the right to sue abortion providers and those who ‘aid and abet’ them, financially or otherwise… Defendants must pay plaintiffs who win their lawsuits a $10,000 bounty plus attorneys’ fees. In other words, Texas is bribing its residents to sue people who help women get abortions.”

This variation on vigilante justice is not only constitutionally dubious but potentially dangerous to the potential defendants. The targets “could include anyone — doctors, nurses, friends, spouses, parents, domestic violence counselors, clergy members or Uber drivers.” Given the rage people have over vaccine requirements and mask mandates, this is scary stuff. As VoteVets noted: “In a state with fewer restrictions on guns than on reproductive health care, that kind of vigilante justice is pretty terrifying.”

Supreme Court punts

So I’m furious with the SCOTUS abortion ballet. In a one-paragraph, unsigned order, the court acknowledged that the providers had “raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law.” But that was not enough to stop the law from going into effect. The court explained it’s because of the way the law operates.

Specifically, the court observed, it wasn’t clear whether the state officials – a judge and court clerk – and the anti-abortion activist whom the abortion providers had named as defendants “can or will seek to enforce the Texas law” against the providers in a way that would allow the court to get involved in the dispute at this stage.”

That’s legal mumbo jumbo for BS. As Chief Justice John Roberts notes, SCOTUS has allowed the state to allow the implementation of a law that could be unconstitutional. “The Court’s order is emphatic in making clear that it cannot be understood as sustaining the constitutionality of the law at issue.”

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained in dissent, the Texas “Legislature took the extraordinary step of enlisting private citizens to do what the State could not…The Court should not be so content to ignore its constitutional obligation to not only protect the rights of women but also the sanctity of its precedents and of the rule of law.”

Onerous

In a state that leads the country and much of the developed world in the rate of maternal mortality, women in Texas will now have to travel to another state to secure an abortion or resort to life-threatening back-alley coat-hanger abortions. There is no exception for rape or incest.

Biden said the Court’s [in]action in Woman’s Whole Health “unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts.” He added, “Complete strangers will now be empowered to inject themselves in the most private and personal health decisions faced by women.”

Future

Does this mean that Roe v. Wade has been overturned? Not necessarily. This was a wuss non-action by SCOTUS. The Court will address Roe in a  Mississippi case soon. The Court’s actions in Texas DOES make me nervous about Roe’s future.

It’d be nice if Congress would pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, but I’m not encouraged. 

February rambling: Perseverance

Chick Corea

perseveranceShe counted ballots in a pandemic, and he killed two people. Guess who gets treated like a hero?

One county, worlds apart: Bridging the political divide.

Weekly Sift: Why You Can’t Understand Conservative Rhetoric

Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Fixing our Democracy.

Trust Is The Coin Of The Realm.” by the late former secretary of state George Schultz.

Detailed interactive map of the 2020 Election.

How 100 years of Democratic rule have shaped the city of Albany.

How I survived a Chinese ‘re-education’ camp for Uighurs.

Texas

Rick Perry and the Hard Libertarian Formulation.

How the Bush family turned off the lights.

El Paso Heeded the Warnings and Avoided a Winter Catastrophe.

Ted Cruz is feckless.

Perseverance needed

Fascist insurgency persists with the merging of QAnon, militia movements, white extremists. They spread new conspiracy Trump will be president again on March 4, so Trump’s D.C. hotel nearly triples its rates.

History Will Find Trump Guilty.

How the Proud Boys Pitch Themselves to People of Color.

Health  and wellness

COVID-19 Is Ravaging Local Newspapers, Making it Easier for Misinformation to Spread.

John Green: I Predicted the Pandemic (over and over and over again).

The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship

Second COVID-19 Shot Is a Rude Reawakening for Immune Cells. Side effects are just a sign that protection is kicking in as it should.

I’m getting good at this grief thing.

Tony Bennett’s Battle With Alzheimer’s. 

Embrace the nap. 

Assemblage

How to be a  genius. 

Bill Mahar gives the Baldy Award to policy wonk Henry Waxman.

17 years ago, Jason West, mayor of New Paltz, NY set the groundwork for the 2011 marriage equality law by presiding over same-sex marriages in his community.

“When in Doubt, Do Something.” Harry Chapin in Recent Media.

Jaquandor reviews the 1994 film What Happened Was… 

After GM poked fun of Norway in Super Bowl ad, Norway painfully hits back.

The Curse of the Buried Treasure. 

The Hollywood Con Queen Who Scammed Aspiring Stars Out of Hundreds of Thousands.

Missed: He flew to Paris to surprise his girlfriend. She flew to Edinburgh to surprise him

Larry Flynt paid me $1,000 to keep my clothes ON.

She traded her way from a bobby pin to a tiny house in 6 months.

JEOPARDY!

Alex Trebek’s family donates his wardrobe to charity.

Brayden Smith 

The guest host schedule.

Now I Know

Frederick Douglass  Is Not Amused. The Hunger Stones.  When Ziggy  Should Have Zagged. The Little Bit of Sun That Cost a Half-Million Dollars.  In the President’s Dog House.  The Search For Life on Earth.

Black History Month

Black Futures Month. 

Jacob Lawrence painted Black America for Black people — not the white gaze.

Jim Crow Filibuster. 

The history of overalls. 

Caste book supplement.

Lift Every Voice and Sing, A Celebration of African American Music – Sounds of St Olaf.

MUSIC

With God on Our Side – The Neville Brothers.

Who’s Yellen Now? – Dessa.

Marjorie Taylor Greene – Randy Rainbow.

I Won’t Dance -Willie Nelson ft. Diana Krall.

Tribute to Pops and Ella – Leonard Patton with Rebecca Jade.

Sixteen Tons – Geoff Castellucci.

Psychedelic Jazz Guitar – Boogaloo Joe Jones, 1967 album.

Sweet Blindness – The Fifth Dimension and Frank Sinatra.

A video analyzing in extreme detail Lady Gaga’s rendition of the national anthem at the inauguration. (ht/ch)

Coverville

1344: Cover Stories for Alicia Keys, Neil Diamond, and Phil Collins.

1345: Justin Timberlake Cover Story and Delvon Lamarr Interview. 

1346: Cover Stories for Gene Pitney and Feist. 

1347: Stone Roses Cover Story and the 50th Anniversary of Tapestry

Chick Corea

Obit and photo tribute and Remembrance and video link.

Movie documentary: Boys State

youth politics

Boys StateOK, I’ve decided that I need to try to systematically see more movies. Recent movies. Normally, I would be at the cinema a lot this month, but I’m not. Luckily, I saw this list  of Ty Burr’s “Watch these 10 recent movies.”

Currently, I don’t have Netflix or Disney+ or Hulu, or HBO Max. But only since the end of December, I do have Apple TV+. I bought a new phone, which I haven’t figured out how to operate yet. But it came with a free year of the streaming service. And Boys State is available presently on that platform.

It is a “documentary about the Texas version of the one-week civics program where high school kids divide into parties and run for office.” As a political science junkie, this could be heaven or horrific. I found it closer to the former. “It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2020, where the film won the U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize.” Then it was released in August.

One may be potentially seeing “the next generation of politicians.” The program is sponsored by the American Legion across the country, with separate tracks for boys and girls. Alumni include political figures as diverse as Bill Clinton, Samuel Alito, Dick Cheney, Cory Booker, and Rush Limbaugh.

Politics, and tricks

Are the young men better than what we have now, or are they just emulating the mistakes of the adults they admire? “They are fascinatingly complex.” For certain. “Boys State shows that those [noble] aims can only do so much to keep the uglier side of that process at bay,” Erik Adams of AV Club noted.

One candidate for governor took a position diametrically opposed to what he believed because thought it would be more palatable to the constituents. Steven, on the other hand, was “a young man whose political skills are second to his open-mindedness and decency. In short, there’s hope.”

I highly recommend Boys State.

T for Texas, T for Tennessee

Lorraine Motel

Texas.TennesseeT for Texas, T for Tennessee. This is a reference to a Jimmie Rogers song that was covered by several artists, including Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The version I first heard, segueing into another song, was by the Everly Brothers.

The states are separated by Arkansas, where I have never been, though my wife’s best friend moved there several years ago.

Tennessee Waltz

I’ve been to Tennessee twice. the first time was in 1970. A bunch of us high school kids raised money to visit Fayette County, which was described to us as the poorest county in the country. It was certainly very rural.

On that trip, we traveled rather quickly to Memphis, where we saw the Lorraine Motel. That was the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It would subsequently be turned into a civil rights museum.

Memphis Blues – Duke Ellington

The other was c 2002 when I attended the Association of Small Business Development Centers conference in the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, which was part mall, part amusement park.

Crazy Town – Jason Aldean

TN Tennessee, a state in the southeast US, historically abbreviated Tenn. Capital and largest city: Nashville.

Tennessee Waltz – Connie Francis

The Six Flags of Texas

If you’re not from the United States, you may or may not realize that Texas has an oversized presence in the American narrative. It has a unique history. It was controlled by Spain for three centuries, interrupted by a five-year rule by France. From 1821 to 1836, it was under Mexican control; remember the Alamo.

Then in 1836, it was a republic until 1845, when it became a US state. It’s been that ever since. Well, except for that period between 1861 and 1865.

Everything is bigger in Texas. It was the largest state by area until Alaska supplanted it in 1959. Now Texas is the second-largest state in terms of population. It has the biggest state fair.

TX Texas, a state in the south-central US, abbreviated Tex. Largest city: Houston, the fourth largest in the US, while San Antonio is seventh. “Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and fifth largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, respectively.” Capital: Austin, the second-most populous state capital in the US, after Phoenix, AZ.

I went to a Texas state conference of Small Business Development Centers in 1996. It was held in Galveston, on the Gulf Coast. I woke up at 6 a.m. Eastern time, which was 5 in the Central Time Zone. I walked out on a jetty, and I stood there as the tide came in; it was glorious. Later, I saw a Houston Astros game in the Astrodome, which was not a great place to see baseball.

There are tons of songs about Texas. My favorite is That’s Right, You’re Not from Texas by Lyle Lovett.

ABC Wednesday