Backyard Nature Wednesday: April showers

Texans like to brag that everything is bigger here. It's a sentiment that I have heard expressed in many ways regarding any number of things since I married a Texan and moved here back in the mid '70s. Little did I know that the boast would also be appropriate for Texas-style April showers.

We live about thirty minutes outside Houston, that behemoth city that sprawls all over much of Southeast Texas. Houston is notoriously flat, with a downtown that is about 50 feet above sea level. The city slopes downward toward the Gulf Coast and it is crisscrossed by numerous bayous, streams, and rivers that drain into the Gulf. Anytime we get a heavy dew, it can be prone to flooding.

Well, we had a very heavy dew over the weekend. A storm reached us early Sunday night and settled in to spend the night. All Sunday night and Monday morning thunder rolled and rain fell, often in torrents. It brought back unsettling memories of Hurricane Ike in September, 2008.

When I was finally able to check our rain gauge at mid-day on Monday, I found that we had received 9.60 inches of rain. I was actually surprised. I had thought it would be more. Some areas not far from us received as much as 17 inches. We were relatively lucky. 

Much of Houston and Harris County were not so lucky. They are in the throes of yet another of their periodic massive flooding events as more water flows in from upstream, and many of the waterways have not yet crested. 

At our place, we are more or less high and dry. There are no flood waters threatening our house, although there is plenty of standing water in low parts of our yard. And it is raining again today. Several years ago, we had a French drain installed along the back and southern perimeters of our house, draining down to the street. It's probably the best thing we've done since we've lived here.

We live less than a mile from Spring Creek, one of those many aforementioned waterways that traverse the area, and it is out of its banks and currently flooding a major highway that crosses it. The weather forecasters are saying that our rain should be tapering off toward the end of the week and then perhaps we'll have a chance to dry out.  

Texans are certainly no strangers to weird weather of all kinds. In 2010-2011, we suffered through extreme drought and had no rain for months. Plants died, large trees died, animals died. It was horrible. We were under water restrictions and were not able to water our gardens sufficiently. I told myself then that I would never again complain about too much rain, so don't consider this a complaint! It's just a recognition that all those boasts about things being bigger in Texas - even their April showers - may have some basis in truth. 

Finally, Texas is #1!

Yes, finally our state is rated number one in something, but we shouldn't break out the champagne or the Dos Equis just yet. It seems that the thing which we are rated tops in is the number of workplace discrimination complaints filed in 2011.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that during the 2011 fiscal year, nearly 10,000 of the record 99,947 federal charges of workplace discrimination received by the EEOC were filed in Texas. The most common complaints within the state were "retaliatory charges," or those alleging that the employer fired, demoted or otherwise retaliated against an employee because he or she fought against discrimination in some way, such as going to the EEOC. 

The second most common complaint was a claim of race bias and third was gender bias. These  were followed in rank by national origin bias claims and religious discrimination claims.

According to EEOC officials, one reason that Texas ranks number one is because it is very populous, with about 25 million people. But California is more populous and has many fewer complaints. The reason for that seems to be that the state agency for protecting workers in California is very robust and takes the job seriously, while the Texas state agency is, frankly, in the pockets of big business and the right-wing politicians who run the state and it provides very little protection for workers.

Texas politicians like to swagger and brag about how the state is so "business-friendly," by which they mean that they do everything possible to ensure that a business will never be inconvenienced by having to pay its workers fairly or treat them equitably. And should the workers complain about that and try to organize and demand fair treatment, well, there's always somebody else out there looking for a job, and the businesses can be pretty darn sure that the state of Texas has their back if they choose to fire the old workers and hire new ones.

On the other hand, Texas is providing job security for one group of employees. Those who work at the EEOC.  

What could Texas learn from Massachusetts?

Red states and tea partiers really, really love to beat up on Massachusetts. To hear them tell it, you would think that the Bay State is hell on Earth. Well, let's look at some facts and see how that assessment holds up.

Massachusetts is well-known for having some of the top colleges and universities in the country, or in the world for that matter, but what about children's education? Testing of fourth and eighth graders reveals that Massachusetts kids are tops in the nation in reading and math. Furthermore, rating the state as if it were a country, it would rank fifth in the world in reading and ninth in the world in math. That's a heckuva lot higher than the country as a whole rates.

Moreover, when it comes to health care and social well-being, the state again is tops in the country. For example:

• The state has the lowest rate of uninsured, 5 percent. (Texas has 25 percent.)  
• They have the highest level of first trimester pregnancy care.
• They are second highest in child access to medical and dental care.
• They have the lowest child mortality rate and the lowest teen death rate.
• They have the second lowest teen birth rate.
• The state ranks fourth lowest in suicide rate.
• It has the lowest traffic fatality rate.
• It is sixth lowest in obesity in the nation.
• In this state (where same-sex marriage is legal), there is the lowest divorce rate in the country! 

All in all, it sounds like a life-affirming, one might even say pro-life, state, doesn't it?  

As for financial issues, Massachusetts has the second highest per capita income in the country, and it has replaced California as the greenest, i.e., most energy-efficient state.

In a reality-based universe, a state like Texas, which ranks far down the list on all of these issues, would be camping on Massachusetts' doorstep trying to learn from their success and seeking ways to emulate it. But no, sir! We are Texas tough! We live in our own little fantasy world where all things Texas are always best.  We'll do things the Texas way and if that means our children have to suffer and grow up ignorant, well, so be it! Suffering and ignorance can make you Texas tough. We don't need any Massachusetts miracles in our rough, tough, independent (except for all that tax money we get from Massachusetts and the other blue states) state. No, we don't need no stinking miracles! 

The "Texas miracle"

Texas Governor Rick Perry likes to run around the country to all the conservative gatherings and brag about all the "tough conservative decisions" that he has made in order to keep the state budget in surplus while allowing the state to weather the storms of the recession. It's all a lie, of course. The state actually has a budget deficit of close to $30 million, and it will be extremely hard for Perry, like other Republican governors I might mention, to scapegoat public sector unions in Texas for the state's fiscal problems, since, essentially, there aren't any. At least none that have any clout.

The conservatives who run our state talk about Texas as a model of small government and, in this at least, they do not lie. Let's take a look at some of the things that "small government" has given us:

- Texas ranks fifth in child poverty among the 50 states.
- It ranks first in the percentage of children without health insurance.
- The high school graduation rate is 61.3% which ranks 43rd out of 50 states.
- We have the highest teenaged pregnancy rate of any state.
- While Perry likes to boast of low taxes, in fact taxes on the bottom 40% of the population, those who can least afford it, are actually above the national average.

These are shameful statistics and you would think that a government with any compassion for its citizens would be working 24/7 to try to find solutions to the problems, and you would be right, of course. But "compassion" is not in the vocabulary of Texas government officials and hasn't been since the time that former Governor George Bush dubbed himself a "compassionate conservative." Even then, while it may have been in his vocabulary, he didn't really know the meaning of the word and it never actually showed in his actions.

No, our present state governor and other elected officials are all about closing the budget gap and how do you suppose they are going to do it? Silly question! They'll do it by depriving the most vulnerable, of course, just like they always do. They are proposing deep spending cuts in Medicaid, the program that provides medical care for many of the state's children, and cuts to education which may result in 100,000 layoffs, meaning even lower quality education.

As Paul Krugman asked in his column today, "What's supposed to happen when today's neglected children become tomorrow's work force?"

I'll tell you exactly what will happen - they won't be able to cope. They are already not able to cope, and the future can only get worse as our self-proclaimed deficit hawks eat that future by shortchanging our children today.

The best investment that we can make in the future is for better health care, better nutrition, and better education for today's children. Our benighted state government would prefer to make their investments in increasing the profits of Big Oil and their other high-income cronies.

Poor Texas. Poor Texas' children.

A Sunday afternoon in Texas

"In future time, then may the pilgrim's eye see here an obelisk point toward the sky...."
— Anonymous poet

The above prediction was penned in the poem: “Ode to San Jacinto”, even before the Republic of Texas became the State of Texas. Today, the world’s tallest war memorial stands at San Jacinto—15 feet taller than the Washington monument—honoring all those who fought for Texas's independence.

The design was the brainchild of architect Alfred C. Finn, engineer Robert J. Cummins, and Jesse H. Jones. Construction ran from 1936 to 1939. With continued support, the San Jacinto Museum of History Association has occupied the facility since its doors first opened.

Its builder was the Warren S. Bellows Construction Company of Dallas and Houston. The monument building alone—apart from its great historical significance—is worth a trip to the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site. At 570 feet, this Texas giant one of the finest examples of Moderne (Art Deco) architecture in the United States. The monument has been recognized as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The museum is located in the base of the monument, greeting visitors with bronze doors emblazoned with the six flags of Texas. The base is 125 feet square, with text panels highlighting significant events in history leading up to and resulting from the Texas Revolution.

The shaft itself is octagonal, 48 feet at its base, 30 feet at the observation level and 19 feet square at the base of its crowning jewel—a 220-ton star made from stone, steel and concrete. Despite the scale, danger and novelty of the project, not a single life was lost during its construction.

- from History of the San Jacinto Monument