If only the leaders of the ‘party of personal responsibility’ were capable of feeling shame. They appear to be immune.I made a thing.
Final results:
For: 3,641 26.36%
Against: 10,172 73.64%
Coryell Co = Gatesville, Copperas Cove (nowhere near the coast or any body of water, don’t ask), most of Ft Hood, and the aforementioned livestock. Mostly goat country.
I left several acres of wildflowers standing for the butterflies to enjoy and for the cottontails and snakes to hide in. Most are prairie coneflower (Mexican hat) now, with a scattering of firewheel (Indian blanket), horsemint, purple thistles, and others.
Happy Juneteenth! - June 19, 1865
Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, commemorates the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. State of Texas on June 19, 1865.
Though the Emancipation Proclamation had been issued on September 22, 1862, with an effective date of January 1, 1863, it had minimal immediate effect on most slaves’ day-to-day lives, particularly in Texas, which was almost entirely under Confederate control. Texas was the most resistant state to the Emancipation Proclamation, as the entire state was heavily poor and reliant on slave labor.
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day Union General Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to take possession of the state and enforce the emancipation of its slaves. Legend has it while standing on the balcony of Galveston’s Ashton Villa, Granger read the contents of “General Order No. 3”:
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
That day has since become known as Juneteenth, a name derived from a portmanteau of the words June and nineteenth.
Former slaves in Galveston rejoiced in the streets with jubilant celebrations.
Juneteenth celebrations began in Texas the following year.Across many parts of Texas, freed people pooled their funds to purchase land specifically for their communities’ increasingly large Juneteenth gatherings — including Houston’s Emancipation Park, Mexia’s Booker T. Washington Park, and Emancipation Park in Austin.
Juneteenth celebrations include a wide range of festivities, such as parades, street fairs, cookouts, or park parties and include such things as music and dancing or even contests of physical strength and intellect.
“I fell in to a burnin’ ring of fire, I went down down down… and the flames went higher.”
A shot of the eclipse in West Texas.
Several burros accompanied protestors to the capitol in Austin last week to deliver a petition to end TP&W’s killing of wild burros in Big Bend Ranch State Park.
(via statesman.com)
Flash flooding after prolonged drought is stripping a lot of the thin soil off the hills.
Much of my yard consists of large clam fossils. This fine gravel near my mailbox is full of thin lentil shapes a few mm across that I assume are tiny bivalves. They are slightly asymmetrical with a hint of umbo and lack the central hole of crinoid segments.
