Tag Archives: Gulf of Mexico

State news

Storm brings misery — and prompts the best in humanity

Harvey is hanging around. The storm won’t dissipate. It won’t fizzle out and become a memory.

The one-time hurricane that is still ravaging the Texas Gulf Coast appears to be backing up over the Gulf of Mexico, where it is expected to recharge and bring even more misery to the battered residents of Southeast Texas.

What on God’s Earth do we do about this? Well, humanity is left to do what it can to help those who are stricken. It’s the human thing to do.

There’s no good news to be gleaned from this event. I won’t pretend to gloss over any single bit of the tragedy that has befallen that region. My heart, though, is lifted — if only just a tiny bit — by news of the aid that is pouring in from neighboring communities. It is arriving to assist storm victims with transportation, shelter, food, money — even good wishes and prayer.

It’s what we do for those who are caught by the storm’s wrath.

Here we are, roughly 700 miles north-northwest of the battered region. My own feeling of helplessness remains, although we do have a certain sense of empathy for the friends we left behind when we departed Beaumont for the High Plains in January 1995.

I dare not pretend to understand, though, the extent of the misery from which they are suffering. I am left to sit in my safe haven and salute those who are able to assist in any way they are able.

It’s what their sense of humanity and compassion compels them to do. They are answering the call.

God bless you all.

International news

The Wall won’t keep them out

A friend of ours who grew up in South Texas has some strong feelings about Donald J. Trump’s “big, beautiful wall.”

We had dinner with him and another friend this evening and we chatted about this and that — shared a few laughs along with a few groans.

Then our conversation turned to Trump’s wall. Our friend was blunt.

It won’t work.

It won’t keep out the criminals.

It is a foolish gesture meant only to appease those who voted for the president of the United States.

Our friend is a highly educated man. He has family still living in South Texas, not far from the Rio Grande River. Build a wall? Who’ll pay for it? The president says Mexico will foot the bill. How is that going to happen on a structure meant to be built on the American side of its lengthy border with Mexico.

This good buddy of ours has considerable knowledge of life along our border. I’ll accept what he knows and what he has seen.

He acknowledges that the bad guys — the drug dealers and human traffickers — already have carved out extensive tunnel networks all along our southern border that would enable such activity to continue.

Moreover, my pal has asked, how is the president going to stop illegal immigrants from entering from either end of the U.S-Mexico border — from splashing ashore from the Pacific Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico?

Just think, Trump believes he can underwrite construction of the wall by levying a 20-percent tariff on all goods imported from Mexico. Who pays the tariff? You and I do — when importers pass the increased cost of the imports to their American customers.

Yep, that’ll show them Mexicans.

local news, State news

Heat: It’s all relative

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The dog days of summer have arrived a bit earlier than usual on the Texas High Plains.

We’ve been simmering in 100 or near-100-degree weather for several days now. How’s it going with my fellow Panhandle residents? Not too well, based on some of the social media postings I have been reading of late.

Pardon me for snickering … just a bit. I promise I’ll be discreet. I won’t guffaw out loud.

Still, I must remind my many friends here just how bad it could be during this time of year. We could be living on the Texas Gulf Coast, where my family and I lived for nearly 11 years before my wife and I skedaddled to the High Plains in January 1995. Our sons were in college and were on their own.

I now shall inflict a brief version of a story I’ve told many times about life in what I call The Swamp.

It was around 1989. I was working in my yard. The temperature outside that summer day was just this side of 100 degrees.

The humidity? About the same. High 90s. I’m telling you, there’s nothing quite like the Gulf Coast heat/humidity combo that makes one appreciate cooler places and cooler times of the year. Our many friends who live between Beaumont and Corpus Christi know of which I speak.

I stopped working in my yard and went inside the house. I announced to my wife, “We’re going to the beach!” So, we gathered up our beach gear, threw it into our Honda Civic and peeled out for the coast.

We raced through Mid-Jefferson County then turned east, across the Sabine River that borders Texas and Louisiana and headed for our favorite spot on the coast.

Holly Beach, La., beckoned us. Hurricane Katrina and later Hurricane Rita in 2005 wiped out what passed for the “resort” there. On this day, though, it awaited us.

We drove our Honda onto the beach, we got out and raced to the water.

I plunged into the surf — and came up immediately and ran back out onto the sand! Why? The water was as stinkin’ hot as the ambient air. That’s why!

There was no refreshment to be found in the Gulf of Mexico that day.

OK, we stayed for the rest of the day. We rented inner tubes and lolled around in the surf. Why go back home when we’d made the effort to find some comfort in that oppressive heat?

The moral of the story?

Suck it up, my Panhandle neighbors and remember: It’s a dry heat.

State news

A whole other country … indeed

gulf of mexico

ROCKPORT, Texas — We’re learning first-hand what the Texas travel industry has been saying since, oh, seemingly forever.

The state is like “a whole other country.”

That’s how it goes. The idea is to tell visitors about the physical diversity of this huge state. Politically diverse? Not really, but that’s a subject for another time.

My wife — and our dog and cat — and I are halfway through a two-week journey through much of the eastern half of our huge state.

Texas comprises more than 260,000 square miles. We’re going to see most of its physical diversity by the time we arrive back home on the High Plains, which I refer to affectionately as the Texas Tundra.

We’ve traipsed across the treeless Caprock, camped out among the thick forests that surround Lake Texoma, motored through the Piney Woods of East Texas, endured the stifling humidity of the Golden Triangle and again just west of Houston.

Tonight we’re camped out along the bay that comes off the Gulf of Mexico. We’re about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi. Rockport’s a nice town, but we intend to enjoy the gulf water as much as is humanly possible.

The nice part about this latest stop on our intrastate journey is that it’s cool enough during the day that we can go without turning on the air conditioner in the fifth wheel we’ve hauled from Amarillo.

Does it get any better than that?

In a few days we’ll head toward the Hill Country, where we’ll see even more lovely countryside.

I doubt we’ll be able to go without the A/C but, what the heck, you can’t have everything.

We’ll be back home on the Tundra soon enough.

The journey across this vast state, however, has given us a treat we’ll carry with us for a very long time.

 

Uncategorized

POTUS is misdirected on port sites

A friend and former colleague brought something to my attention overnight that I must share here.

Seems the president of the United States needs a lesson in Geography 101. My friend was scolding me a bit because I needled Gov. Rick Perry for not knowing where he was when he delivered remarks the other day from a podium in New Orleans, La. He said he was in Florida at that moment. Not good, right? My pal wants me to apply the same level of zeal to critiquing Barack Obama as I did to the Pride of Paint Creek.

President Obama said this on Jay Leno’s talk show Tuesday night:

“If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia, or Jacksonville, Florida — if we don’t do that, those ships are going to go someplace else.”

Ouch, Mr. President.

All of those ports face the Atlantic Ocean, not the Gulf of Mexico.

Shouldn’t the leader of the Free World know better? I’m quite sure the president’s many critics on the right will ensure that he gets his share of fiery criticism.