Life In the Slow Lane

W e just passed the town of Pharr   TX as the odometer rolled over 9,000 miles for this trip. Probably we'll get back to Rockport with 15,000 miles on the trip odometer. We did some shopping at a farmers market in Brownsville. Among our acquisitions was some fresh cactus, which, when boiled for 15 minutes and drained, was supposed to taste like okra. Real good on/in eggs, the vendor promised. Barbara used some in her scrambled eggs. Note, she doesn’t even like okra much. The eggs were meh . Now, what to do with the leftover cactus? (We can’t throw it out until it has gone bad, duh.) I’ll make shrimp gumbo! First time for everything. We still had several pounds of frozen in-shell shrimp from the Port of Brownsville. So let’s thaw them, and peel them.   I’ll make a stock from the shells. The “holy trinity” of cajun cooking is celery, onions and green peppers. Put the onion skins and tops in the stock pot, too.   I search for some gumbo recipes. A tempting recipe calls for t...

Barbara's counterpoint to Life in the Slow Lane: Life in a Small Space Brownsville, TX T he Boma is a 21 ft travel trailer built by the Canadian company Safari Condo. The primary reasons we chose the Alto A2124 ( https://safaricondo.com/en/ travel-trailer-alto-serie-a- 2124/ ) was because of its shape and light weight. The pointed and down sloped nose and tail helps the trailer be more aerodynamic. By reducing wind resistance (or drag) one decreases the energy required to tow it. With an all-electric car, energy efficiency is paramount. Depending on the weather (e.g. headwind vs. tail wind) we can tow the Boma for 150 miles before needing to re-charge the car battery. The Boma is not as tiny as a teardrop, pop-up or some other trailer designs, but it is small, especially when inhabited with another. It has been 12 weeks on the road living in the Boma with Krem and Pemba. To illustrate (and perhaps validate) my experience of life in this small space, I created a sketch of the layout...

I ’ve made two visits to Boca Chica aka Starbase, the location of Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch center.  Boca Chica is at the extreme south of Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande, the Mexican border. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Last year’s visit to NASA Cape Canaveral was a major disappointment — nothing was actually happening, it was mostly a kid-centric museum of historic missions, but much less activity or sizzle than Houston. Essentially nothing about what NASA is doing now or in the near future. At the time, I told folks it seemed more like a Civil War museum than the center of America’s space programs. The multi-mile slow tram ride to the launch pads kept about a quarter mile away from anything interesting, no one was allowed off the tram, and there wasn’t much to see.   Yawn.     Driving to Boca Chica is across miles of desolate, barren sandy marsh. This is the zone south and east of Brownsville, south of Brownsville Port, near the Rio Grande. H...

  I've brought Barbara to another beautiful, empty beach.  Spring Break, anyone? Actually, a bit chilly, even Pemba has her red winter coat on. No hotties in bikinis, either.  The drive down from Rockport looked like Don Quixote's nightmare - hundreds, maybe thousands, of gigantic wind turbines to slay. Quite impressive, but hard to photograph.  Some nice contrast to smoke-spewing refineries, with turbines all around. Yesterday was an interesting day at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge. Like the beach, almost empty. I counted about four cars total in the 115,000 acre preserve. Highlights included seeing the Whooping Crane , one of the rarest birds in America. Unregulated hunting and habitat destruction reduced the population to c. 23 birds in 1941, but has recovered to over 800 birds now.  Turkey vultures aka buzzards get a bad rap from most Americans, but are an essential part of the ecosystem.  Lousy picture from just the cell phone. About...

The temperature here in Rockport is 69˚ and sunny. Whoa, wait, what? We are on Goose Island in Rockport TX. My cell phone tells me the temperature in Rockport is -1˚. Ah, the other  Rockport, in Maine. (For those who haven't visited, our mainland house is in Rockport ME and overlooks the little island/ledge in the Goose River.)  A few days ago we visited the Witte Museum in San Antonio, a beautiful, well-funded museum focusing on science and Texas cultures.  The first "unknown" people exhibit was about Black cowboys. Movie cowboys are almost always white Marlboro men, regardless whether the movie was spaghetti Western or American. Yet about 25% to 30% of all US cowboys were black after the Civil War. The exhibit told stories of dozens of black cowboys, both on the trail and in rodeos. The rodeos often had discrimination ("black cowboys aren't allowed to compete with white cowboys"), but on the trail, competence was far more important than skin color. One rem...

I had brunch with Charlyn, my boss when I worked in Austin several decades ago. As many of you have heard from me, she was by far my best boss ever. She sent me this two minute political video of her husband's campaign for city council. Regardless of your politics, I promise you will enjoy it. No political wokeness! https://clios.com/awards/winne r/public-relations/gerald- daugherty-campaign/please-re- elect-gerald-ple--16335 Charlyn plays herself in the video.

 Howdy y'all, We're having a great time in Texas. We left Houston, the big oil city. We are now in cowboy territory, San Antonio, and the sacred ground of the Alamo.  Reminiscent of the famous  New Yorker cover Note the spelling of Amarillo  Every nation has its origin story. Rome has  Romulus and Remus, Texas has the Alamo; both are mostly fiction. We visited Austin, where I lived for three years back when the kids were very young.  Among the stories I heard then is that Texas has the tallest state capitol. When I lived in Rhode Island, I heard that it has the second tallest state capitol. So, about to write a witty comment contrasting the 2nd largest state and the smallest, I checked the Google first. Both "facts" are wrong. Louisiana, Nebraska, Illinois, Kansas, and Florida all have taller capitols than Texas, although Texas is 14 feet taller than the US Capitol . The Rhode Island Capitol is in 24th place. So much for local legends/misinformation and att...