Back in the early 1980's my dad's job took us to Houston. He'd been working his way up the ladder of the Insurance industry and had made a name for himself underwriting high-risk ventures. In those days the big money was in Oil and Gas, particularly writing for rigs and decking in the Gulf of Mexico. As a newly minted VP for a successful mid-sized firm that would be his bread and butter. The late 70's early 80's oil boom had created a massive growth economy and my family landed right in the middle of it.
The farm we left, where my dad had also grown up, was situated not far from Lexington and Concord in a town established in the early 1700's as part of a British outpost in what was referred to at the time as Indian Territory. By the time I came along in the 1970's it was a bastion of the kind of progressive social liberalism Massachusetts has become known for.
My elementary school, still among the highest rated in the state, was an incubator for Democratic values and liberal thinking. We were taught about the how Native people were treated and it was pretty unvarnished. We were taught about the scourge of slavery and how our town was a stop along the Underground Railroad, and only later did I learn our house had been a part of that effort. Environmentalism was a major theme in our science studies. Kids were taught that voting was a civic duty and civics in general were a very big deal.
Being so close to Lexington and Concord we also learned a lot about the American Revolution and the principles behind it. Patriotism and pride in the United States of America and in representative government was culturally ingrained and everywhere one looked the evidence was apparent. The local technical High School was (and is) named Minuteman, with a statue of a Patriot in tricorner hat with a rifle placed right out front along Great Road. Town cemeteries are filled with flags marking soldiers from every war since the Revolution. The Fourth of July in Massachusetts was a very big deal, but red white and blue bunting and American flags could be found all year round. As far as I knew every place in America was like this. It was all that I knew.
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Needless to say, Houston was a great big shock for me and boy did I hate it. First, it was goddamn hot and second it was just as humid. Up in MA when it was hot it was in the upper 80's and all the windows were propped open with fans. Where I was used to spending all my time outdoors in Texas I found that outdoors was the transition between one air conditioned place and another. I hated Texas and I hated everything about the concrete suburb and cookie cutter houses with ouchy Bermuda grass lawns we moved into. This is to say nothing at all of the fire ants. No, Houston was not for me and I let everyone around me know it every chance I got. To further complicate matters all of this coincided with puberty. I was one pissed of kid and did everything in my power to make sure may parents, teachers and several vacant houses in the area paid for that.
And then there was school. Forget about collecting frog eggs from the pond in the woods or learning a song in Wampanoag, fifth grade (and seventh) seemed to be dedicated to the miserable state of Texas and its stupid ass history. Between masochistic football coaches in their tight spandex shorts and church-lady librarians taking books from the shelf because they might have Satanic influence, I had zero use for any of it. All I wanted to do from sixth grade on was smoke pot, listen to Led Zeppelin and go to as many concerts as possible. Summer, when I went back to MA to my grandparents on the farm, could never come soon enough.
There were some bright spots in there, though, and they began to crack my hatred of the State and of Houston a little at a time. A trip out to Big Bend National Park with my dad was my first taste of any desert, as well as my first taste of the Border with Mexico, and I fell in love with the majestic beauty of this rugged environment. I was also introduced to the coast, first by way of Galveston, where giant tar balls could be found at regular intervals, but later by way of the Bolivar Peninsula, a far cleaner and truly amazing stretch of wide sand beach. Somewhere in there we visited NASA and I climbed into a landing capsule. My great uncle Jack had designed a crucial hose for the Space Shuttle and the first one to go up he gave to me as a gift when we moved. I thought NASA was pretty awesome.
Houston started to show its positives as well. We lived out in Alief, a far SW community Houston had annexed. While Alief was (is) a suburban nightmare the inner loop proved an exciting diversion. My brother had been accepted into the local Arts magnet high school in the heart of Montrose and I found myself more and more on the periphery of the gay and arts circles he ran in. Where most of the kids I went to middle school with were rednecks or jocks or headbangers (like me) and anything outside the norm was discouraged or punished, arts and music were part of my family lifestyle and I took to that like fire ants to a spit out Jolly Rancher on the sidewalk. I bought a vintage dashiki at Timeless Taffeta, a funky resale shop among the other funky shops along the Westheimer Strip in the heart of Montrose, and started to wear it to school. When my teachers and the principal didn't like it I wore it anyway. Did I say my attitude had a contrary side?
A seminal event from this time was the Jean Michelle Jarre concert held along Buffalo Bayou in downtown Houston. A million and a half people turned out to experience this transformative and experimental display of light and sound. Walking along the bayou from where we parked at Shepherd Dr. at Allen Parkway alongside hundreds of thousands of people I had a realization: there were some things I really liked about this place and a focus on arts and culture was a big part of that. Despite all the heat and pollution and sundown billboards at the outskirts of cities like Pasadena, there was something I now recognized about this place that had escaped me before. Texas had a progressive side and a liberal side that was very different from, but equally as strong as, the culture I knew from Massachusetts.
Now, everyone here knows about Texas Governor Ann Richards and her famous wit, best conveyed in the writings and commentary of Molly Ivins, two of the most important Democratic and progressive women in Texas and anywhere else on the planet. Richards was a fixture of Texas politics for almost all of time I lived in Texas until my last return to the state in 2005. Before she was governor she was State Treasurer and even during that time her acerbic wit and sharp political acumen as a feature of the landscape. Molly Ivins had the same kind of ubiquitous presence and even as a young person, before I had any interest in politics, these two women made an impression on how I thought of the state. They represented a Democratic voice of reason in the face of bigotry and ignorance and were a show of power for the legacy of non-Dixiecrat Democrats that grew out of the Johnson Governorship and became ascendent in the 1980's. They were tough, shot straight and most importantly to me at the time, believed in equality for GLBT people.
I returned to Houston in high school to attend the same Arts magnet my brother had attended and it was there my passion for the State of Texas really developed. Taught by an ultra progressive faculty and sporting an amazingly diverse student body, this school gave me an understanding and appreciation for Texas politics and civic pride I never would have anticipated. Somehow I had retained all that Texas history from middle school, and when I found myself studying it again in high school, with a passionate and exuberant teacher at the helm I began to see just exactly what all of the fuss was about.
My childhood in Massachusetts, full of Minutemen and The Shot Heard Around the World, helped me relate to the quasi-nationalistic Texas State pride. While I didn't harbor that kind of pride I began to understand why people revered the Alamo and the Republic of Texas. Texas was the only state in the union that had been its own country and the origin of the pride that came with such a history, which people outside of Texas tend to view as arrogant and obnoxious, was coming into focus for me.
At that time Ann Richards, bolstered by her keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention and her popularity in running the Treasury, was gearing up for a run at Governor. I worked at the student newspaper and by this time was very involved politically. I went to Washington Journalism Conference where my future wife, out editor, represented us in placing among the top student newspapers in the country. Our parent advisor, a firebrand Democrat and sponsor at the conference, was a dedicated Richards supporter and friend of Molly Ivins. Ivins was, without a doubt, the editorial muse of our paper. She embodied everything we aspired to as young people writing about the political world and as we watched Ann Richards eviscerate George Herbert Walker Bush from the podium in Atlanta ("Poor George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth") it was Molly we turned to to for clarity on what it all meant.
One thing I learned from both of these women was that Texas is a lot more than oil, racism and pollution. While it's easy to focus on those things because they exist in abundance and can sometimes seem to overwhelm the positives, there are a lot of good people, progressive people who support arts and culture and education, and a lot of great things worth fighting for. Texas had a strong focus on real education, really good roads, a resilient economic infrastructure and an impressive dedication to the arts. We were working hard to clean up our environment and State Parks were a pride of the State. There was a real sense that Texas was the future and I wanted to be a part of that future.
When I moved back to Texas (for the third time) in the mid-1990's Richards had just lost her race against GW Bush and Democrats were realizing a major public shift and decrease in power. Richards and Ivins had warned repeatedly that the right wing zealotry and corporate corruption of this new brand of Texas Republicanism spelled the end of things Texans of all stripes held dear. All of our roads and arts, education and infrastructure would be subject to the tax-cutting fervor and opportunistic religious extremism that Bush's corrupt rule eventually wrought. Molly Ivins, writing for Mother Jones magazine in a classic takedown of Bush called The Uncompassionate Conservative well illustrated what we were up against in this new and degraded Texas.
When the 1999 hunger stats were announced, Bush threw a tantrum. He thought it was some malign Clinton plot to make his state look bad because he was running for president. "I saw the report that children in Texas are going hungry. Where?" he demanded. "No children are going to go hungry in this state. You'd think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas." You would, wouldn't you? That is the point at which ignorance becomes inexcusable. In five years, Bush had never spent time with people in the colonias, South Texas' shantytowns; he had never been to a session with Valley Interfaith, a consortium of border churches and schools and the best community organization in the state. There is no excuse for a governor to be unaware of this huge reality of Texas.
There was no excuse for a Governor to be that clueless and that heartless but unfortunately under Rick Perry, Bush's successor and now the longest serving Governor in Texas history at 15 years, we have seen this attitude and the accompanying destruction of the things Texans always held dear taken to a whole new level. Our public roads have been privatized and turned into toll roads by cronies and the energy sector has stopped bothering to pay their taxes and is destroying the free roads that are left. Education has been ruined by mandates and high stakes testing at the same time religious zealots work to devolve the minds of schoolchildren around the nation with asinine and dangerous textbook "reform". The state of the Arts in Texas is a shadow of what it once was, though compared to infrastructure and education it is better than on life support. Parks are underfunded and there are attempts to privatize. The environment is a continuing casualty and has significantly worsened in terms of pollution water quality. The list is almost too long to compile.
Now with hateful Attorney General Greg Abbott and his vile Lt. Governor running mate, sportscaster-turned RW radio jock and snake oil salesman Dan Patrick, waiting in the wings to further damage our state Democrats are faced with a potentially ruinous four years. We have all see the rightward trajectory Texas has taken, it is no mystery to anyone here. The various Tea Party crazies like Louie Gohmert and Joe Barton have made sure that folks outside of the state got a wiff of our stink. Set on top of that the various religious wackjobs and Open Carry militia "patriots" and the requisite gun insanity that goes along with it and you've got a picture of a place that frankly people don't want to visit. It's scary, it's extreme and why would you subject yourself to it if you don't have to?
I totally get this, I really do. It is an understandable reaction to a harsh reality. I want the people to go away, too and I have been doing as much as I can my part to elect Wendy Davis and Letecia Van De Putte in November. I want to stop this downward spiral and take this amazing state back from the brink. And while it is an uphill battle it's one we have to fight, and I am committed to doing that for as long as it takes.
What I don't get, though, is the need some progressives have to bash Texas and paint a picture of the state in broad-brush terms. It has moved past the jocular ribbing into truly hateful and ignorant territory. I never thought I would see people who claim to be progressive make such incorrect generalizations about an entire state of people. We are supposed to be in these fights together, to elect more and better Democrats. Making Texas bashing a sport not only detracts from that but it is demoralizing to people who work hard for change. We come here to support each other and while none of us will ever agree on everything, it seems to me there are some things we should all be able to agree on. Being supportive of Democrats working for change and not gratuitously bashing the state as a whole should be one of them. And I believe that should be the case for Florida and other states that suffer this kind of treatment as well.
Thanks for reading. I'll take my inevitable lumps for whining in comments.
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TOP COMMENTS
September 21, 2014
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From Otteray Scribe
Morning Open Thread today was hosted by Joy of Fishes, with the theme of "Boatlift." She started MoT with an outstanding video of a remarkable event that took place the morning of 9-11. Somehow, I had never heard of this before now. Perhaps it should not be surprising there are hundreds of tales of heroism and bravery that are just now being told. You have to watch the video to understand the full meaning of this top comment:
43north, a former first responder, fireman/paramedic himself, had a response that summed it up succinctly: How you know the SHTF
(SHTF = Shit Hit The Fan)
From JayRaye
A great comment from GreenMother in LaFeminista's diary New Rule: You Should Always Wear Knickers In Texas, but not sure snark warning really needed because truth is stranger than conflation
From bastrop with a reminder in comments from Deja
This comment from BlackSheep1 in Chrislove's morning diary TX WOMAN DENIED DRIVER LICENSE BECAUSE OF HER SAME-SEX MARRIAGE is what cemented my motivation to write this tonight for Top Comments in the first place.
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TOP PHOTOS
September 20, 2014
Enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt™ below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. Have fun, Kossacks!
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