Tag: #Texas

  • What is Up with Texas?

    What is Up with Texas?

    I used to get that question often when I first moved to NYC. I grew up in Texas, and when people would eventually find out I was from the Lone Star state, I would get asked, “Hey, what is up with Texas?” This was in 2006, the waning days of George W. Bush, and my adopted home state had an amazing reputation of crazy and gun crazy on top of that. (Luckily, Florida has seemed to taken on the mantel away from Texas in the last several years.)

    Today, The New York Times ran this story, “Red vs, Red in Texas, With Republicans Battle One Another After Mask Order,” and the title pretty much encapsulates what in now going on there. It even caused me to ask, what is up with Texas? It reminded me of this story The New Yorker put out a week ago, “How Texas Republicans Politized the Coronavirus Pandemic,” which goes into detail on how state Republicans were fighting each other to have a convention in Houston in the middle of an outbreak of Covid-19.

    My 77-year-old father, and  my brothers with their families are still in Texas, and I can only imagine that the anxiety and worry I have for them is the same thing they all had for us in March in New York. The difference is that at least the City and state of New York were committed to fighting Covid. Not that they did a perfect job, but at least everyone was aiming for the same goal. In Texas, it just seems like the state leaders are running around in a hurricane of chaos they have created under the guise of personal freedom.

    When people used to ask me that questions about Texas way back in the good old days of ‘Merica, I would tell them that growing up in Texas, there was a strong through line of independence balanced with respect. It seems to me that Texas conservatives have perverted this idea, and now it’s costing people their lives.

  • Music Leads to Other Things

    When I was a freshman in college at Sam Houston State, Steve Miller’s Greatest Hits was a CD that just about everybody had in their dorm room. This would be 1995/96, and though it was a still a grungy music world, Steve Miller kept popping up. I never put much thought into it, but as I was making a playlist, and put “Take the Money and Run” on it, this thought formed in my head. I wonder why that was, but as soon as I asked, I know that I will never find the answer.

    What was classic rock to me, are oldies to kids today, as my music has passed into classic rock.

    Another song that I put on the playlist “Just Got Paid” by ZZ Top. (I found a live version on YouTube that made me smile.) Having grown up in Texas, this is the kind of song that taps into a Texas spirit that I don’t think is around much anymore. The same way that Stevie Ray Vaughn and Willie Nelson capture a certain attitude of Texas. Not that conservative, wall building tough guy bullshit. It’s a slightly rough around the edges, individualistic, but respectful attitude.

    That actually does bother me, that the perception of Texas to the rest of the country is that it is a deep red land of reactionary crazies, who love God, Guns, stopping abortions and building walls. Hell, they elected Ted Cruz. Growing up there, it was different. Old Texas let people be themselves, and it was nobody’s business what they did.

    Somehow, I got from classic rock to here… Just connecting tangents of ideas today.