Tag Archives: Texas Panhandle

Let's guard against drought smugness

The latest downpour that drenched the Texas Panhandle this morning likely means a couple of things.

One: Our year-to-date precipitation total is more than double the normal amount at this time of the year. Normal is around 5 inches; I’m betting our total now exceeds 10 inches of precipitation for the year.

Two: Our total precipitation for this year is now about 10 times the amount of moisture that fell a year ago to date.

OK, here’s a third thing this abundant rain means: Our drought is far from being over.

I trust you understand that.

The drought we’ve endured on the Texas Tundra has been years in the making. It’s going to take years — and I mean several years — of abundant rain and snowfall to abate this drought.

What does it mean? It means we ought to still take care when watering our lawns and washing our vehicles.

I know we city folks cannot control how farmers irrigate their crops. Then again, they know better than we do about the value of the water that runs underground and are likely to ensure they have enough of it to keep irrigating their crops.

The rain is welcome. As always.

Let’s not get too smug, though, about the drought. It’s still with us.

Rain, rain, rain … and there's still a drought

Those of us who live on the Texas Tundra are enjoying the rain that’s pelting these parts.

We had more than an inch of it today, according to the National Weather Service office at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport.

This means we’re more than 2 inches over normal precipitation for the year to date.

Great news? Absolutely!

Is it a drought-buster? Hardly.

Can we predict what the weather will do for the rest of the year? We cannot predict for the rest of the week.

I stopped by Amarillo City Hall about a week ago and noticed the city’s “Every Drop Counts” water-use monitor over the first-floor elevator. The water use goal for that day was 48 million gallons; the actual use that day was 19 million gallons. Folks who normally water their lawns time of year didn’t turn the sprinklers on to irrigate their grass.

I reckon tomorrow’s water-use meter will register similar figures.

That, too, is great news.

I prefer to stay in water-conservation mode, no matter how much rain we get.

You see, it’s going to take a literal deluge to eradicate the drought threat that continues to draw down the water flowing through the Ogallala Aquifer, which gives our region its life.

The recent rainfall — and the prospect of more of it in the days and weeks ahead — gives City Hall, the water conservation districts, the counties and even the state a chance to remind us of what some of us sometimes forget when we get any significant moisture.

It’s that the drought hasn’t let up. The Texas drought remains a serious threat to our way of life — and even our lives.

 

Rain offers new appreciation

I awoke this morning to the sound of rain beating on the front of my house.

It was music to my ears.

The sound used to be like fingernails on the chalkboard. It annoyed me. I was a lot younger then, growing up in a community known for its incessant rain.

Portland, Ore., is a lovely city. It’s full of tall timber and lots of flowers. It’s called the City of Roses and every June, it stages a festival honoring the roses that are in full bloom. The highlight of the festival, for me, was the Grand Floral Parade through downtown Portland. Mom and Dad would take us every year. We’d get there early, find a nice spot on the parade route and wait for the sounds of the drums.

It seemed to rain every year on our parade, though.

Which brings me to my point.

I hated the rain as a kid. I griped about it constantly. My parents tired of me always complaining.

Then I grew up, went away for a couple of years to serve in the Army, came home, got married and eventually my bride and I moved to Texas.

We gravitated to Amarillo more than 20 years ago.

It doesn’t rain nearly as much here as it does in Portland, or in Beaumont, where my family and I lived for the first 11 years of our Texas residency. It’s not that Portland gets a lot of rain each year, it’s that it seems to drizzle constantly. We could more rain in Beaumont in an hour than would fall in Portland in a month.

I’ve come to appreciate the rain much more now. The Panhandle drought has awakened me to the value that rainwater brings to everything. To the economy, to our ability to function as a society, to the fulfillment of our basic needs — such as quenching our thirst and, you know, bathing.

I won’t complain ever again about too much rain.

Growing up teaches us the value of things that used to annoy us.

Today, I intend to enjoy the sight and smell of the rain.

Ode to spring: I'm glad it's arrived … finally

People I meet as I go through life occasionally comment on their favorite season of the year on the Texas Tundra.

Surprisingly — to me, at least — most of them seem to prefer the fall. Leaves changing colors. Our landscape brightens just a bit. The cooler days. All that stuff seems to appeal to many people.

Me, too.

But this is my favorite season of the year. Bring on the spring, man.

The terrain out there can get pretty bleak in the winter. We’ve had a good bit of snow in these parts during the winter of 2014-15. For all I know, more might be on the way. Hey, it’s only early April.

It’s the renewal aspect of the season that I find so joyous.

Those bare trees are beginning to blossom. Some of them go from naked to “fully clothed” in green seemingly overnight. That’s all right. The greenery is a sign of that spring has sprung.

It also has a good bit to do with my faith. We’re going to celebrate Easter tomorrow along with billions of other Christians around the world. We’ll go to church, listen to the pastor praise the new life that Jesus promises us. We’ll sing joyful hymns celebrating The Resurrection. We’ll have a nice dinner later in the day with family and friends.

Indeed, Easter is all about renewal and rebirth.

It’s all around us.

The signs of spring are unmistakable. They’re quite welcome in our home. Very soon, summer will arrive. Temperatures will rise and, oh yes, we’ll commence the gripes about the triple-digit heat and wish dearly for the return of autumn.

My friends and acquaintances will cherish autumn’s arrival and say, once again, how it’s their favorite season of the year.

Me? I’ll just wait for next spring.

First things first. I plan to enjoy the current spring to the max.

 

Drug-bust stories becoming … um, boring

“Police grab drugs in ‘traffic stop.'”

You hear and read these headlines all the time. I almost always chuckle when I see these stories. Why? Because the traffic stop, such as it is, usually is something of a ruse. The police pull motorists over expecting to find contraband hidden away.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/28575346/dps-finds-15-pounds-of-marijuana-on-i-40

Texas Department of Public Safety troopers have gotten really good at this.

The Interstate 40 corridor across the Texas Panhandle usually is among the most lucrative for DPS traffic troopers of any district within the state police network.

How do these troopers do it? As I understand it, they “profile” motorists as they blaze their way along I-40. If the motorist or a passenger looks suspicious when they pass a DPS trooper, the officer will give chase. Then they just might find something in the trunk of the car, or stuffed under the seats, or duct-taped to the undercarriage a “controlled substance” of some sort.

The War on Drugs, which has produced mixed results — and that’s the best thing I can say about it — has made law enforcement officers quite proficient at intercepting drugs on our major highway corridors.

Have these “traffic stops” done anything to curb the manufacture, sale, distribution and use/abuse of these drugs? Not one bit.

However, I continue to marvel at how good the police have gotten at this endeavor.

To be sure — as any cop on the beat will tell you — none of these “traffic stops” ever can be called “routine.”

Panhandle activist to lead Texas GOP

There’s a certain justice in the selection of Tom Mechler to lead the Texas Republican Party.

Mechler is from Amarillo, the unofficial “capital” of the Texas Panhandle, which is the unofficial capital of the Texas conservative movement that is so tightly bound to the Republican Party.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/03/07/mechler-picked-new-texas-gop-chair/

I’ve known Mechler for a number of years. I like him. I admire his tenacity. I think he’ll do a good — maybe even a great — job as chairman of the Texas GOP.

Why the justice angle?

Mechler served on the Texas Criminal Justice Department of board. So he’s well-versed in punishing criminals for the misdeeds they commit.

But more to the point: The Panhandle has been known for decades as the place where conservatism was cool before it was cool anywhere else. The state’s political tides began turning first in the Panhandle. While the rest of Texas remained solidly Democratic, the Panhandle started turning Republican, sending up signals that the rest of the state began to understand.

There’ve been pockets of arch-conservatism here, starting with the John Birch Society, which for many years has preached a brand of isolationism that hasn’t really gone mainstream.

I don’t know how Mechler intends to lead the Texas Republican Party. Perhaps he’ll take this advice, should he ever read it. It would be that the party needs to return somewhat to the center, back toward the few remaining Texans who still call themselves Democrats.

There once was a tradition in Texas of the parties working together for the common good. The reality of late has been that Republicans — who’ve grown into a colossus — are trying to bulldoze an agenda into public policy that isn’t a good fit for all Texans.

Mechler seems on the surface to be of a quite conservative persuasion. Maybe that’s how he campaigned for the office he’s just obtained. Now that he has, might he drift more toward the center?

I’m hoping.

 

Look at global picture, Sen. Inhofe

It was just a matter of time before someone would do this.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., brought a snowball to the Senate floor Thursday to prove, by golly, that climate change is a hoax.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/234026-sen-inhofe-throws-snowball-to-disprove-climate-change

Inhofe chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and he also is one of the Senate’s leading deniers on climate change/global warming. He just will not tolerate the notion that climate change might be caused by carbon emissions thrown into the air by manmade sources — you know, coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, petrochemical plants, deforestation, motor vehicle exhaust … those kinds of things.

So he pulled a snowball out of a bag and noted how “unseasonable” the temperature is outside the Senate chamber, meaning it’s really cold out there.

I just want to remind the senator that conditions outdoors at any particular time doesn’t prove a single thing about this issue. He knows that, of course, but he refuses to look at the big picture when it might go against whatever point he seeks to make.

My friends on the right keep insisting that climate change is a concoction brewed by leftist influences out to destroy American industry. Scientific data, though, suggest that the planet’s climate is changing. It’s getting warmer. The only debating point left is over whether it’s manmade or part of some ecological cycle that Earth experiences every few million years.

Whatever, Chairman Inhofe should cease playing silly snowball games.

Yes, it’s cold in the Texas Tundra, too, Sen. Inhofe. It’s snowing as I write these words. The temperature is in the low teens.

Is it prudent to use current weather conditions to pass judgment on what science has been tracking over many years? It’s wiser to look at the really big picture.

 

 

Police chief loses his badge

A report out of a tiny Texas Panhandle town makes me wonder whether I should laugh … or laugh harder.

It goes something like this: The police chief of Estelline has been charged with official oppression, ordered to surrender his peace officer’s license and now faces prosecution on charges that he threatened and terrorized two female motorists passing through his town of 130 residents.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/28095627/estelline-chief-of-police-charged-with-official-oppression

Duwayne Marcolesco is in trouble for allegedly stopping the women while he was off duty. The women filed a complaint with the Childress County Sheriff’s Department, which then brought charges against the former chief.

So, why the struggle to suppress my laughter?

It’s that Estelline has this reputation throughout Texas — and perhaps even parts of Oklahoma — for being a speed-trap town. You’d better obey the speed limit signs posted on either side of U.S. 287 coming into Estelline, either from Childress or Memphis, or else the cops’ll get ya.

That’s what residents in the Texas Panhandle are known to advise others from outside the region who are driving through Estelline.

Indeed, I received that exact advice when I arrived in the Panhandle in early January 1995 to take my post as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News — and I’ve been giving that advice to others for the past two decades.

The term “official oppression” is a kind of legalese for misusing one’s authority. Motorists have griped for as long as I can remember about that very thing as they drive through this tiny Panhandle town.

I don’t know what the former chief allegedly did to those women — but none of this sounds all that surprising.

 

Puppy tales, Part 11

What a glorious mid-winter day on the Texas Tundra.

Indeed, days like this occasionally make me forget we’re still in the grip of winter. After all, didn’t The Groundhog tell us a few days ago we were in for six more weeks of it? Not around here, Phil.

So, with that my wife and I spent the morning trimming perennials, raking leaves that fell several months ago, clearing out the back yard as we prepare for spring.

We also listened to a canine cacophony from next door and across the alley that separates us from our neighbors to the south.

What does this have to do with Toby the Dog, our little bundle of excitement?

He didn’t make a sound while the three neighbor dogs yipped and yapped incessantly at my wife and me — and at Toby as he traipsed along the fence; I’m thinking he was baiting the neighbor pooches. Nor did he make a sound while we all listened to the much bigger dogs across the alley. For the record, we have another dog living on the other side of us, but she’s a very well-behaved mid-sized pooch.

No, the only sound Toby made this morning was to yip just a little bit at a neighbor kitty that’s a frequent visitor to our yard; once in a while she ventures into our home, apparently when Toby and Mittens (our very territorial cat) are looking the other way.

I know some of you out there own small dogs. Ours is a little one. However, take it from me: When he decides to bark — which isn’t very often — it usually is for a reason, such as when the UPS guy or the Fed Ex guy delivers something at the front door. And when Toby does let loose, he sounds a lot larger — and meaner — than he actually is.

Today? Virtually nothing came from him while the chorus was erupting all around us.

Good job, Toby.

 

 

Obama goes 'Red' to tell his story

Hand it to President Obama. He delivered a State of the Union speech to a Congress now in full control of the opposing party and then he heads right into the center of the Red State base of the Republican Party.

He took his sales campaign today to Idaho. He is heading to Kansas on Thursday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/us/obama-to-take-state-of-the-union-theme-to-idaho-and-kansas.html?_r=0

Idaho gave 64 percent of its vote in 2012 to GOP nominee Mitt Romney, while Kansas was casting nearly 60 percent of its vote for Mitt.

That doesn’t deter a lame-duck president who isn’t likely to call himself such as he pitches his middle-class tax cut to residents in states where he’s held in relatively low esteem.

“I still believe what I said back then,” Mr. Obama told a crowd at Boise State University. “I still believe that as Americans we have more in common than not.”

He’s surely entitled to believe that. Some of us out here in the Heartland aren’t so sure about the commonality. Still, I give the president props for taking the campaign into the heart of the loyal opposition’s territory.

Here’s a thought. How about coming here, Mr. President?

Texas isn’t friendly to you, either. But you did do nominally better in the Lone Star State than you did in Kansas, winning 42 percent of the 2012 vote against Mitt.

I even can make a pitch for Barack Obama to come to the Panhandle, where the 26 counties of this region only gave him 20 percent of the vote in 2012. But hey, he says we’re “not a Blue America or a Red America. We’re the United States of America.” He repeated that mantra Tuesday night at his State of the Union speech, recalling how he introduced it to the nation during his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Look at it this way: If Bill Clinton can come here in 2008 and campaign on behalf of his wife, Hillary, and pack the Civic Center Grand Plaza Ballroom to overflowing, surely the Leader of the Free World can command a big audience to sell his vision for the country.

I know more than a few Republicans who’d attend.