The Nature of Things

Texans like to brag that everything is bigger here. It's a sentiment that I have heard expressed in many ways regarding any number of things since I married a Texan and moved here back in the mid '70s. Little did I know that the boast would also be appropriate for Texas-style April showers. We live about thirty minutes outside Houston, that behemoth city that sprawls all over much of Southeast Texas. Houston is notoriously flat, with a downtown that is about 50 feet above sea level. The city slopes downward toward the Gulf Coast and it is crisscrossed by numerous bayous, streams, and rivers that drain into the Gulf. Anytime we get a heavy dew, it can be prone to flooding. Well, we had a very heavy dew over the weekend. A storm reached us early Sunday night and settled in to spend the night. All Sunday night and Monday morning thunder rolled and rain fell, often in torrents. It brought back unsettling memories of Hurricane Ike in September, 2008. When I was finally able to check...

Yes, finally our state is rated number one in something, but we shouldn't break out the champagne or the Dos Equis just yet. It seems that the thing which we are rated tops in is the number of workplace discrimination complaints filed in 2011 . The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that  during the 2011 fiscal year,  nearly 10,000 of the record 99,947 federal charges of workplace discrimination received by the EEOC were filed in Texas .  The most common complaints within the state were "retaliatory charges," or those alleging that the employer fired, demoted or otherwise retaliated against an employee because he or she fought against discrimination in some way, such as going to the EEOC.  The second most common complaint was a claim of race bias and third was gender bias. These  were followed in rank by national origin bias claims and religious discrimination claims. According to EEOC officials, one reason that Texas ranks number one is because it...

Red states and tea partiers really, really love to beat up on Massachusetts. To hear them tell it, you would think that the Bay State is hell on Earth. Well, let's look at some facts and see how that assessment holds up . Massachusetts is well-known for having some of the top colleges and universities in the country, or in the world for that matter, but what about children's education? Testing of fourth and eighth graders reveals that Massachusetts kids are tops in the nation in reading and math. Furthermore, rating the state as if it were a country, it would rank fifth in the world in reading and ninth in the world in math. That's a heckuva lot higher than the country as a whole rates. Moreover, when it comes to health care and social well-being, the state again is tops in the country. For example: The state has the lowest rate of uninsured, 5 percent. ( Texas has 25 percent .)   They have the highest level of first trimester pregnancy care. They are second highest in chil...

Texas Governor Rick Perry likes to run around the country to all the conservative gatherings and brag about all the "tough conservative decisions" that he has made in order to keep the state budget in surplus while allowing the state to weather the storms of the recession. It's all a lie, of course. The state actually has a budget deficit of close to $30 million, and it will be extremely hard for Perry, like other Republican governors I might mention, to scapegoat public sector unions in Texas for the state's fiscal problems, since, essentially, there aren't any. At least none that have any clout. The conservatives who run our state talk about Texas as a model of small government and, in this at least, they do not lie. Let's take a look at some of the things that "small government" has given us: - Texas ranks fifth in child poverty among the 50 states. - It ranks first in the percentage of children without health insurance. - The high school grad...

"In future time, then may the pilgrim's eye see here an obelisk point toward the sky...." — Anonymous poet The above prediction was penned in the poem: “Ode to San Jacinto”, even before the Republic of Texas became the State of Texas. Today, the world’s tallest war memorial stands at San Jacinto—15 feet taller than the Washington monument—honoring all those who fought for Texas's independence. The design was the brainchild of architect Alfred C. Finn, engineer Robert J. Cummins, and Jesse H. Jones. Construction ran from 1936 to 1939. With continued support, the San Jacinto Museum of History Association has occupied the facility since its doors first opened. Its builder was the Warren S. Bellows Construction Company of Dallas and Houston. The monument building alone—apart from its great historical significance—is worth a trip to the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site. At 570 feet, this Texas giant one of the finest examples of Moderne (Art Deco) architecture ...