What I needed to hear today

You Are What You Think

If you use language in one way, it can support you, but if you use it in another way, it can sabotage you.

Daily Om interviewed psychologist and author Eric Maisel. (I've snipped the following from the article posted Sunday, June 30, 2024.)

 For thousands of years, natural philosophers and spiritual leaders have accurately pinpointed our thoughts as a primary source of our suffering. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a contemporary version of that long tradition. CBT therapists ask you to notice what you are thinking, reject thoughts that aren't serving you, and replace them with thoughts that do serve you.

There are two questions that come up when we ask what will help us meet life's challenges, heal emotional distress, and deal with states of being associated with depression, anxiety, and addiction. The first is, "What's causing it?" The second is, "What helps?" Many kinds of answers have been offered to both questions. One consistent answer to the first question is "how we think," and one consistent answer to the second question is to "take charge of what you think." 

Thinking life is scary naturally leads to anxiety. Thinking that you don't matter can naturally lead to depression and continual thoughts of feeling completely overwhelmed, which can lead to addiction. The thought is tied to your moods and behaviors.

DAILY OM: "If you're smart, sensitive, and creative, I'm guessing that you're also regularly troubled." What do you mean by this?

ERIC: I have identified many of the special sources of pain and difficulty that smart, sensitive, creative people regularly face. The pain from what I've dubbed "the smart gap," the great distance between what you perceive to be your talents and abilities and the intellectual or creative work you feel called to do, ends up putting them in a small corner of a large universe.

DAILY OM: In your course, you suggest that people substitute silly words to stop caustic thought patterns. How and why does this work to alter thought patterns?

ERIC: If you use language in one way, it can support you, but if you use it in another way, it can sabotage you. If you repeatedly say, "I have no chance," that repeated demoralization really does matter. But if you change that to "I have no celery," or "I have no animal crackers," all that does is send you off shopping. Changing our inner language, in serious ways or in silly ways, really does help and really does matter.

DAILY OM: In your course, you write that we are kidnapping neurons and wearing ourselves out when we engage in negative self-talk. What do you mean by this? Eric: Our brain is made up of a large number of neurons, on the order of several billions. That sounds like an enormous number, but we have to remember that it takes millions of neurons, often hundreds of millions of neurons, to have a thought. Thinking means giving neurons over to particular thoughts. If you are using your neurons on thoughts like "I hate life," or "I need to weed my yard," then you have hundreds of millions fewer neurons available to solve your problems, create your symphony, or think pleasurable and soothing thoughts. This is actually simple, straightforward physiology.  The main way we honor the creative process is by getting quiet — that is, silencing all those thoughts that are using neurons — so that all of our neurons are available to bubble up creative ideas. I guess you could call thinking a zero-sum game. If you are worrying about your overgrown weeds, you also can't be composing your Symphony No. 9.   Daily Om goes on to offer an 8 session course, at pay rate determined by student. I may very well look further into this. I'll let you know....

Saturday's Critters

 

                            

Black Mountain center from years back

And one must not forget the sister of all these ducks, namely duct tape!

Some interesting skies over Lake Tomahawk

Sharing with Eileen's Saturday's Critters and Skywatch Friday.

Today's quote:

No matter where life takes you, the place that you stand at any moment is holy ground. Love hard, and love wide and love long and you will find the goodness in it.

SUSAN VREELAND

Meeting for dinner

 A visit from a long time friend...kind of relative. 

On Tuesday last week we had the fun of trying to find a place to eat dinner. Well, apparently two restaurants I recommended were closed, one on vacation, and I just saw the empty parking lot at the other. (Note, most of our restaurants are usually closed on Mondays, so this was so Not Like Them!) 

Next choice at 6 pm was my favorite Mexican restaurant. And there was NO available parking. They had all the people from the other two restaurants there.

So the 4th choice, I knew we would have to wait, but we did find good parking, and put our names on the waiting list at The Trailhead. A 30 minute wait was doable since we could stand near the bar and have refreshing drinks while we waited (Coke for me.) 

So who is this lovely redhead? She's the mother of two of my grandchildren. I've always enjoyed her company since I met her way back when! She was up in Asheville visiting a good friend from FL, and had set aside this evening to visit with me. Cinnamon may be divorced from my oldest son, but she still has a good relationship with him, after all they share their adult children's lives still.

The photo above shows in the background a person eating at a table against the wall. It ended up being where we finally had dinner as well. Then taking left-overs home for another meal, we went over to my apartment.

This may sound strange, but I'm trying to give my friends and relatives my pottery...things they choose when visiting. That way when the time comes that I've died (does happen to us all!) and someone has to clean out my apartment, the various pottery and sculptures in clay won't have to be tossed aside, or given to folks that really didn't want them. This started with my carrying a tub of pottery with me to various family visits whenever I drove to see them. And last fall I had some Texas and South Carolina cousins visit also, who also chose their wishes. Unfortunately I still haven't mailed the Texas pots to my dear patient cousins.

Cinnamon was driving her own car from Tampa FL, thus could carry a box of pottery with her. So she went home with Themis (daughter of Gaia, who gives judgements based on the laws of nature), and a dragon, and a teapot. She also chose a tiny dragon to take to her daughter. I'm so thrilled. But then I thought, do I have photos of Themis? Of course I must, somewhere or another. No need to go looking through all those old folders actually.

And perhaps I will now be moved to create more dragons. Mmm, yes, rather than more things to sell but now more things to give away. Things to sell are still in the trunk of my car waiting to display next Saturday at the Tailgate Market. And as Cinn reminded me, I can look for what gives me joy in the making.

On a more personal note, my health is still slightly up and down. When I walked a long way (double my usual trek) to lunch the other day, in the noonday sun, I was pretty washed out. Longer walk was because parking is now being used by those going to the pool, rather than those going to the Senior Programs. Spent the rest of that day coughing, which comes when I get tired. Next day still pretty tired! But the cough was gone and I hadn't moved into the fever part of this situation that can happen. So I was glad to feel up to a night out, so to speak, with Cinnamon. 

As I write this on Wednesday morning, the windows are open to 66 degrees. It won't last, but I enjoyed hearing birds greeting the day at 6 am. Not my choice, but I did get up early today! Due to be 90 so I'm going earlier to the Senior Center, and hope to grab a parking place before going to Sit-R-Cise!

Today's quote:

We don’t have to pretend to be fine when we are not. We don’t need to push through and be strong. Gratitude is a soft landing place that requires us to be honest, open, and willing to look at everything we’re facing and not turn away.

ALEX ELLE

Heat wave '23 and climate change

 

from Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

"Finch" the movie

 I just watched a most enjoyable touching film, "Finch." 

Tom Hanks once again has a single staring role with an adorable dog and a new wonderful robotic companion amidst a post apocalyptic world. I watched it on Apple TV and was miffed that the credits were cut short, so I had to search DuckDuckGo to find who the robot voice was. After all, the supporting actor in the film is "Jeff" who is a robot learning lots of things that Finch is teaching him, including learning to drive. Caleb Landry Jones did the voice for Jeff. AI has definitely done a great job of showing Jeff's abilities.

Of course one must approach the whole thing with acceptance of many gaps in realism. A motor home that somehow continues across country with little gas needs is one such un-realistic thing. However, the message is clear...surviving climate change is unlikely. 

Wikipedia says this:

In May 2018, the film was scheduled to be released in theaters by Universal Pictures on October 2, 2020. In June 2020, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic shutting down theaters worldwide, it was delayed to April 16, 2021. In January 2021, it was moved to August 13, 2021, and in March, it was moved a week later to August 20.

In May 2021, it was announced that the film had been retitled from BIOS to Finch and bought by Apple TV+ for a release on November 5, 2021, while Universal Pictures Home Entertainment would also retain home entertainment and linear television rights to the film. According to Samba TV, the film was watched in 1.4 million households in its first 30 days of release, including 328,500 over its first two days.

There's no surprise that this wasn't a really popular movie with critics. Not much fighting, nor chase scenes (there is one however), nor love interest unless you consider man-dog love! But I came away with a good feeling, and remembering snippets of conversation that had deep meaning.

Today's quote:

Doing those deeply unfashionable things—slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting—is a radical act now, but it is essential.

KATHERINE MAY

Good news for renewable electric generation

From Katharine Hayhoe's newsletter this week:

" During extreme heat, air conditioning use and electricity demand spikes: so it’s very good news that renewables generated a full 30 percent of electricity worldwide last year, according to the Global Electricity Review 2024. When you add in nuclear power, the amount of electricity from carbon-free sources jumps to 40 percent globally. “A new era of falling fossil generation is imminent. 2023 was likely the pivot point,” the report’s executive summary says. 

 

China led the way, accounting for 51 percent of new solar and 60 percent of new wind worldwide in 2023. Last year alone, China installed more solar energy than the U.S. has in its entire history. In Texas, where I live, solar also outpaced coal for the first time ever this March and it’s the economics of clean energy that are turning the tide.

As the Financial Times explains: “It’s not that politics don’t matter. But economics, which shape politics, can turn even the biggest climate change skeptic into a clean energy evangelist.” And a new study agrees: researchers found the increase in wind and solar generation from 2019 to 2022 generated $250 billion in climate and air quality benefits in the U.S. alone."

Source: "Talking Climate with Katharine Hayhoe"

Did you notice that China led the  way for new solar and wind worldwide? Pretty amazing that they've got their industries working to have renewable energy sources...compared to the stuck-in-the-mud folks that believe various tall tales about wind and solar energy. (More below about the myths around wind and solar...and more!)

GettyImages-925988662

In addition to the above, she gives a link to a report of "Rebutting the 33 False Claims about Solar, Wind, and Electric Vehicles."

HERE by Columbia Law School's Sabine Center for Climate Change Law

The abstract says:

Achieving the United States’ ambitious emissions reduction goals depends in large part on the rapid adoption of wind and solar energy and the electrification of consumer vehicles. However, misinformation and coordinated disinformation about renewable energy is widespread and threatens to undermine the transition. In this report, the Sabin Center identifies and examines 33 of the most pervasive false claims about solar energy, wind energy, and electric vehicles, with the aim of promoting a more informed discussion.

 

I downloaded the 68 page very academic report, but here are screenshots of the table of contents if you should like to look further.

I do like having a more scientific approach to understanding these claims. 

I'm also watching Maria Curie's sort-of-life movie "Radioactive," this evening, so science is high in my thoughts right now. But the movie also puts a lot of emphasis on the dangers of nuclear uses.

Today's quote:

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

THORNTON WILDER

June 21 Letters From An American

 Heather Cox Richardson shared this on June 21, 2024:

Sixty years ago today, on June 21, 1964, twenty-year-old Andrew Goodman mailed a postcard to his parents in New York City. He had arrived in Meridian, Mississippi, the day before to work with Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old former New York social worker, and James Chaney, a 21-year-old Black man from Meridian, to register Black voters in what became known as Freedom Summer. 

“Dear Mom and Dad,” Goodman wrote. “I have arrived safely in Meridian Mississippi. This is a wonderful town and the weather is fine. I wish you were here. The people in this city are wonderful and our reception was very good. All my love, Andy.” 

Mississippi had become a focal point for voter registration because fewer than 7% of Black Mississippians were registered, but members of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, dedicated to preserving segregation and to keeping Black people from voting, intended to stop the people challenging their power. They had come to loathe Schwerner— like Goodman, a Jewish man— who along with his wife, Rita, had taken over the field office of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Meridian and had begun grassroots organizing. 

At meetings, Ku Klux Klan members routinely talked about killing Schwerner, but without authorization from the Klan’s state leader, Sam Bowers, they held off. Several weeks before Goodman arrived in Mississippi, they got that authorization. 

On June 21, Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman set out to investigate the recent burning of a church whose leaders had agreed to participate in voter registration, an arson that, unbeknownst to them, was committed by the same Klan members who had received authorization to kill Schwerner. 

After the three men left the burned church, Deputy Sheriff Cecil Ray Price stopped their car, arrested Schwerner for speeding, and held Chaney and Goodman under suspicion that they were the ones who had burned the church. Once night had dropped, after they paid the speeding ticket and left the Philadelphia, Mississippi, jail, Price followed them, stopped them, ordered them into his car, and then took them down a deserted road and turned them over to two carloads of his fellow terrorists. They beat the men, murdered them, and buried them in an earthen dam that was under construction.

Aside from the murderers, no one knew where the three men had gone. Their fellow CORE workers had begun calling jails and police stations as soon as they didn’t turn up according to schedule, but no one told them where the men were. By June 22 the men’s friends had gotten FBI agents from New Orleans to join the search. On June 23 the agents found the station wagon the men had been driving, still smoldering from an attempt to burn it.

Norman Rockwell's "Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi)" depiction of the murders of  Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and  Andrew Goodman

As the agents searched—turning up 8 murdered Black men, but not the three they were looking for— President Lyndon B. Johnson, who as Senate majority leader had wrestled the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through Congress and who had pushed hard for a stronger civil rights law since becoming president in November 1963, harnessed the growing outrage over the missing men. 

The House had passed a civil rights bill in February 1964, but southern segregationist Democrats in the Senate filibustered it from March until June 18, when news stations covered the story of hotel owner James Brock pouring acid into a whites-only swimming pool at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida, after Black and white people jumped into the water together. The water diluted the acid and the swimmers were not injured, but law enforcement arrested them. Seeing a white man pour acid into a swimming pool to drive out Black people created such outrage that senators abandoned their opposition to the measure.

On June 19, Republican Everett Dirksen (R-IL), the Senate minority leader, managed to deliver enough Republican votes to Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) to break the filibuster. The Senate passed the bill and sent their version back to the House. Johnson used the popular rage over the three missing voting rights workers to pressure the House to pass the bill, and it did.

Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2.

Just before he wrote his name, Johnson addressed the American people on television. Tying the new law to the upcoming anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, he noted that “those who founded our country knew that freedom would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its meaning…. Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders.”

Johnson celebrated that the bill had bipartisan support of more than two thirds of the lawmakers in Congress and that it enjoyed the support of “the great majority of the American people.” “[M]ost Americans are law-abiding citizens who want to do what is right,” he said. “My fellow citizens, we have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail.”

Those opposed to Black equality saw the passage of the Civil Rights Act as a call to arms. On July 16, two weeks after Johnson signed the bill and a little more than three weeks after Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner disappeared and while they were still missing, Arizona senator Barry Goldwater strode across the stage at the Republican National Convention to accept the party’s nomination for president. To thunderous applause, he told delegates that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” The votes of the delegates from South Carolina, the state that launched the Civil War in defense of American slavery, were the ones that put his nomination over the top.

On August 4 the bodies of the missing men were found in the dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

It turned out that Deputy Sheriff Price, who had arrested Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, and his boss, Sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey, were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Price had alerted his fellow Klansman Edgar Ray Killen that he had the three men in custody, and Killen called the local Klan together to attack the men when they got out of jail. Then Price dropped the three civil rights workers into their hands. 

While the state of Mississippi would not prosecute, claiming insufficient evidence, in January 1965 a federal grand jury indicted 18 men for their participation in the murders. The Ku Klux Klan members, who were accustomed to running their states as they saw fit, did not believe they would be punished. An infamous photograph caught Price and Rainey laughing during a hearing after their federal arraignment on charges of conspiracy and violating the civil rights of the murdered men. 

Ultimately, a jury found seven of the defendants guilty. Killen walked free because in addition to being a Klan leader, he was also a Baptist minister, and a member of the jury would not convict a minister. Price was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison (he served four). Rainey, who was not at the murder scene, was found not guilty, but he lost his job and his marriage and blamed the FBI and the media for ruining his life.

Voters in the 1964 election backed Johnson’s vision of the country, rejecting Goldwater by a landslide. Ominously, though, Goldwater won his own state of Arizona and five states of the Deep South—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. The Republican Party had begun to court the segregationist southern Democrats.

In 1980, Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan spoke in Philadelphia, Mississippi, on August 3, sixteen years almost to the day after the bodies of the three men had been found.

“I believe in states' rights,” he said. “I believe in people doing as much as they can for themselves at the community level and at the private level. And I believe that we've distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended in the constitution to that federal establishment. And if I do get the job I'm looking for, I'm going to devote myself to trying to reorder those priorities and to restore to the states and local communities those functions which properly belong there.”

In January 2004 a multiracial group of citizens who wanted justice for the 1964 murders met with Mississippi state attorney general Jim Hood and local district attorney Mark Duncan, as well as with Andrew Goodman's mother Carolyn Goodman and brother David Goodman, to ask Hood to reopen the case. In January 2005 a grand jury indicted Killen, who had organized the Klan to go after Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, for their murder. 

On June 21, 2005, a jury found the 80-year-old Killen guilty of manslaughter. 

He died in prison six years ago.

—

Notes:

https://andrewgoodman.org/news-list/civics-for-change-freedom-summer-1964/

https://www.justice.gov/crt/case-document/micheal-schwerner-james-chaney-andrew-goodman

https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/july-2-1964-remarks-upon-signing-civil-rights-bill

https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/node/175859

https://www.npr.org/2014/06/13/321380585/remembering-a-civil-rights-swim-in-it-was-a-milestone

https://www.nytimes.com/1964/06/19/archives/text-of-goldwater-speech-on-rights.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20200521120444/https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis64.htm#1964cra64h

https://neshobademocrat.com/stories/ronald-reagans-1980-neshoba-county-fair-speech,49123

https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/journeytojustice/2018/01/12/klansman-who-orchestrated-mississippi-burning-killings-dies-prison/1028454001/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwaterspeech.htm

My family from Galveston TX and the beach

 The beach I'm most familiar with is in Galveston TX.

(From a post in 2013...)

My father was born there in 1914.
His father, George Elmore Rogers, Sr., built the house my father was born in, and they lived there many years. (See george-elmore-rogers-sr HERE)

House built by George Rogers Sr. in Galveston, TX

My grandfather's mother, Bettie Bass Rogers, lived in Galveston the later part of her life (from before the storm of 1900 till her death in 1924).  (I featured my family survivors of the Storm of 1900 HERE)

My father's mother, Ada Phillips Swasey Rogers, was raised in Galveston. Here's a quick summary of her family who lived there as well.

Her mother, Zulieka Phillips Swasey had been raised as an orphan living with her mother's sisters in Galveston during and following the Civil War. (See this blog posting on Zulieka Phillips Swasey's birthday.)  Zulieka and Ada Phillips were brought up in their aunts' homes, probably that of  Elizabeth Pulsifer Granger Sweet or with their other aunt, Lucy Ellen Granger Wakeley.  I have some letters written in the household by children, which don't describe clearly who was where.




But what of the time when Galveston was the largest city in Texas?  My family first came there before the Civil War. 

The Handbook of Texas History (see below) talks about an epidemic of Yellow Fever in 1867, affecting three fourths of the population.  "Galveston nonetheless surged ahead and ranked as the largest Texas city in 1870 with 13,818 people and also in 1880 with 22,248 people."

Incidentally I can't find anyone in my family tree who died in 1867.  But of the relatives living in Galveston at that time, there are a lot who don't even have a date of their death.  That has little meaning, but the conjecture is that if 20 people died in a day, (see below) it was probably difficult to keep track of who they were.

Also many people would pass through an international port from far across the oceans.  Many of the German settlers in Texas came through Galveston.  So my mother's grandfather's guardians might have walked the streets around 1870 as they first learned English before going towards Hillsboro, Texas. I have no idea who brought my great grandfather from Germany to Texas, nor even the ship he arrived on nor the year.





Source:
Handbook of Texas History online 

GALVESTON, TEXAS. The city of Galveston is on Galveston Island two miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, at 29°18' north latitude and 94°47' west longitude, in Galveston County. It is fifty miles from Houston and is the southern terminal point of Interstate Highway 45. The island is a part of the string of sand barrier islands along the coastal zone of Texas. On its eastern end where the city stands the currents of Galveston Bay maintain a natural harbor which historically provided the best port site between New Orleans and Veracruz.

 Karankawa Indians used the island for hunting and fishing, and it was the probable location of the shipwreck landing of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in 1528. José de Evia^qv, who charted the Texas coast in 1785, named Galveston Bay in honor of Bernardo de Gálvez, the viceroy of Mexico. Later mapmakers applied the name Galveston to the island. Louis Aury established a naval base at the harbor in 1816 to support the revolution in Mexico, and from this point Aury, Francisco Xavier Mina, and Henry Perry launched an unsuccessful attack against the Spanish in Mexico.

When Aury returned with his ships after leaving Perry and Mina on the Mexican coast he found Galveston occupied by Jean Laffite, who had set up a pirate camp called Campeachy to dispose of contraband and provide supplies for the freebooters. In 1821, however, the United States forced Laffite to evacuate.

Mexico designated Galveston a port of entry in 1825 and established a small customshouse in 1830. During the Texas Revolution the harbor served as the port for the Texas Navy and the last point of retreat of the Texas government. Following the war Michel B. Menard and a group of investors obtained ownership of 4,605 acres at the harbor to found a town. After platting the land in gridiron fashion and adopting the name Galveston, Menard and his associates began selling town lots on April 20, 1838. The following year the Texas legislature granted incorporation to the city of Galveston with the power to elect town officers.

Galveston grew on the strength of the port; cotton moved outward, and farming supplies and immigrants came in. The city served as a transfer point for oceangoing vessels and coastal steamers which ran a route through Galveston Bay and Buffalo Bayou to Houston. The construction of the Galveston, Houston and Henderson Railroad, which built a bridge to the island in 1860, strengthened the link between the two towns.

Business collapsed, however, when the Civil War brought a blockade of the port by Union ships and a brief occupation of the town by federal troops. The dramatic battle of Galveston on New Year's Day, 1863, ended the occupation, but the port remained isolated and served mainly as a departure point for small blockade runners. Following the war Galveston quickly recovered; northern troops were stationed in the city, and a depleted state demanded the trade goods denied by the blockade and the war effort.

With so many susceptible people present, however, the city in 1867 suffered one of its worst onslaughts of yellow fever, which affected about three-fourths of the population and killed at a rate of twenty per day. This disease, a malady of most southern ports, did not cease to be a threat until the institution of rigid quarantines after 1873.

Galveston nonetheless surged ahead and ranked as the largest Texas city in 1870 with 13,818 people and also in 1880 with 22,248 people. It had the first structure to use electric lighting, the Galveston Pavilion; the first telephone; and the first baseball game in the state. The Galveston News, founded in 1842, is the state's oldest continuing daily newspaper. The Galveston buildings, especially those designed by architect Nicholas J. Clayton, were among the finest of the time; in 1881 the city won the site of the state medical school in a statewide election; and the Grand Opera House was built in 1894 and presented the best theatrical productions in Texas. The opera house was restored as a modern performing arts hall in the 1980s.
In spite of efforts to maintain trade supremacy by improving port facilities and contributing to the construction of railways running to the city, Galveston business leaders saw their town slip to fourth place in population by 1900. Galveston acquired a coast guard station in 1897 which still operated in the 1990s and a small military base, Fort Crockett (1897–1957), but other cities such as Dallas acquired transcontinental rail connections and a growth in manufacturing establishments. At a time when Houston, Beaumont, and Port Arthur benefitted from the oil discoveries of the early twentieth century, Galveston had to put its energy into a recovery from the nation's worst natural disaster, the Galveston hurricane of 1900. The island lay in the pathway of hurricanes coursing across the Gulf of Mexico and suffered at least eleven times in the nineteenth century. The Galveston hurricane of 1900, with wind gusts of 120 miles per hour, flooded the city, battered homes and buildings with floating debris, and killed an estimated 6,000 people in the city. Another 4,000 to 6,000 people died on the nearby coast. For future protection the city and county constructed a seventeen-foot seawall on the Gulf side of the island, raised the grade level, and built an all-weather bridge to the mainland. The development of other ports by means of the ship channels, alternative sites for business and manufacturing provided by other modes of transportation, and notoriety because of hurricanes destined the island city to medium size. In 1980 it had a population of 61,902 and ranked twenty-ninth in the state.

Around 1900 business leaders redesigned the city government into the first commission form in the country (see COMMISSION FORM OF CITY GOVERNMENT). Their idea was to have the governor of the state appoint a mayor and four commissioners. Each commissioner would control a specific function of government-finance, police and fire control, water and sewage, streets and public improvements. Since the original plan was patently undemocratic, it was subsequently revised to provide for the election of the officers. The commission plan was somewhat popular in the years before World War I but faded in the 1920s in favor of the city-manager plan. Galveston, however, continued with the commission government until 1960, when it too changed to a city-manager form.
During the years between the world wars Galveston, under the influence of Sam and Rosario (Rose) Maceo, exploited the prohibition of liquor and gambling by offering illegal drinks and betting in nightclubs and saloons. This, combined with the extensive prostitution which had existed in the port city since the Civil War, made Galveston the sin city of the Gulf. The citizens tolerated and supported the illegal activities and took pride in being "the free state of Galveston." In 1957, however, Attorney General Will Wilson with the help of Texas Rangers^qv shut down bars such as the famous Ballinese Room, destroyed gambling equipment, and closed many houses of prostitution. Between 1985 and 1988 Galveston voters in nonbinding referenda defeated proposals to legalize casino gambling, although proponents argued that gambling could promote the local economy. Pursuant to a law enacted by the Texas legislature, however, gambling on board cruise ships embarking from Galveston was expected to boost business activity in the wharf district beginning in September 1989.

Galveston has survived on its port, tourism, and the University of Texas Medical Branch^qv. In the later 1900s the Galveston Historical Foundation encouraged historic preservation in the old business area of the Strand and various Victorian homes, which has added to the visitor attractions of the city. The famous Rosenberg Library serves as a circulating library as well as an important repository for archival materials pertaining to the history of Galveston and Texas. The restoration of the nineteenth-century square-rigged vessel, Elissa, in 1975–82 gave Texans their own "Tall Ship" to sail into New York harbor for the celebration of the centennial of the Statue of Liberty. In 2000 the population was 57,247.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

Howard Barnstone, The Galveston That Was (New York: Macmillan, 1966). Charles Waldo Hayes, Galveston: History of the Island and the City (2 vols., Austin: Jenkins Garrett, 1974). David G. McComb, Galveston: A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).

Galveston beach with seawall, about 1915

Sharing with Sepia Saturday this week.

Today's quote:

Flowers unfold slowly and gently, bit by bit in the sunshine, and a soul too must never be punished or driven, but unfolds in its own perfect timing to reveal its true wonder and beauty.
            - "The Findhorn Garden," The Findhorn Community

June 20, 2024

 The June Solstice will be with us soon - on the 20th June to be precise. 

Is that precise?

Convention dictates that we think of the solstice as lasting a day, but it doesn't last a second (in the same way that midday doesn't last a second).

The June solstice is the fleeting moment when the sun is overhead the most northerly part of the Earth it ever reaches - the Tropic of Cancer. It is also the moment that the North Pole is titled as much as it ever is towards the sun - and this has big implications for navigating using the sun.

 For a refresher on how to navigate using the Sun, please see this page:

FIND YOUR WAY USING THE SUN

Source: The Natural Navigator

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And from an old post of mine in 2013...

Happy Summer Solstice!

This is Panther

This is Muffin, my queen who I raised from a newborn kitten (born on my front porch from a feral mother.)

Unconditional love...?

Neither of these lovelies ever knocked off any of my pottery from a shelf. What considerate furbies they were.

May your shortest night and longest day give you many blessings...surprises, gifts, loving, good health and joy  throughout the whole 24 hours!

Today's Quote:

Cooperation flows more easily when we let go of the necessity to be right all the time.

Sharing with Thankful Thursday

Juneteenth 2024 is tomorrow

 Repost from 2019, with links for 2020 and 2022!

Many of my family members still live in Texas, and it was maybe sometime in my adulthood that I first heard of Juneteenth!

I was really interested (beginning about 10 years ago) in learning about the Texas Reconstruction. They had troubles with acknowledging Black people as free men and women. There were many politicians coming up with ways to keep those who had been enslaved from receiving recognition or education or opportunities...known as Jim Crow laws.

There were also some other people who helped by donating land for schools, as well as land for communities to build on and farms that were available for "truck farming" - where usually the Black farmers would get a portion of the crop that they raised. 

But the actual announcement that the Civil War was over was the cause for Juneteenth...not the actual Emancipation Proclamation which had happened in 1862! 

The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on Sep. 22, 1862, announced, “That on the 1st day of January. A.D. 1863, all person held as slaves within any state…in rebellion against the U.S. shall be then, thenceforward and forever free."

Lincoln freed the slaves on New Years Day of 1863. Of course the Confederate leadership didn't share that information with their slaves, or maybe even to the soldiers who were giving their lives for the cause of slavery. My Texas ancestors weren't at all happy with Lincoln becoming President...and I've got a copy of their hand written letters that said as much.

Lee surrendered his Confederate Army on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox Court House. But there wasn't a way that all the various battlefields received that information right away. It wasn't until May 23 near Brownsville, TX that the last battle occurred...known as the Battle of Palmito Ranch.  The news about the Appomattox surrender had finally arrived and many of the soldiers just went home by May 26 when Lt. Gen. E. Kirby Smith's Army of the Trans-Mississippi surrendered at Galveston TX.

"After the Civil War ended in April 1865 most slaves in Texas were still unaware of their freedom. This began to change when Union troops arrived in Galveston. Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, (Union) commanding officer, District of Texas, from his headquarters in the Osterman building (Strand and 22nd St.), read ‘General Order No. 3’ on June 19, 1865. The order stated “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.” With this notice, reconstruction era Texas began."

In Texas, Juneteenth was celebrated as the Texas Blacks' first knowledge of Emancipation Day. Until that announcement, the slave owners probably were keeping it secret from the slaves. The slaves in Texas were free for 2-1/2 years and still obeying their owners!

It was first celebrated publicly, then more privately until the mid twentieth century. In 1979 June 19th became a Texas Sate Holiday.

This marker stands in Galveston TX to commemorate Gen. Granger's proclamation as quoted above. The marker was erected in 2014.

Incidentally, my great great great grandparents were Grangers from New England, I wonder if we were related to Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger. (going to Ancestry to see if I can find an ancestor in common. My Granger relations came to Texas from Newburyport, MA and settled in Galveston in 1860.)

And in 2020 who can forget George Floyd?  Here is my post about the rally in Black Mountain for Juneteenth and Black Lives Matter.

Here's another post from the past in 2022, quoted from a Facebook post.  HERE which looks at the history of all slavery throughout the world.