I have been pondering wealth and philanthropy.  I just read Steve Jobs biography, great book, lots of history.  Jobs was wealthy but not that interested in philanthropy.  His friend, Larry Ellison, is fantastically wealthy, but seems to put his wealth into estates, sail boats, airplanes and the like.  I haven't heard of an Oracle Hospital, or an Apple Orphanage.  Bill Gates, though, is a philanthropist.  I usually only hear about his African endeavors.  Can you imagine is Gates and Ellison funded a giant scholarship fund for promising high school students to study in fields that G&E favored?  Maybe they do. 

In the Gilded Age, when the US had similarly wealthy people, Carnegie and Mellon competed with each other in their philanthropic achievements.  Then they joined forces, Carnegie-Mellon University.  Pittsburgh is littered with parks, museums, libraries and the like funded by one of these guys.

I think the US public would be more forthcoming with tax-breaks for the wealthy if we saw more projects like these.

Crazy Summer of 2011

I also find it irritating when NPR celebrates anything AGAINST the Church as something wonderful.

Don't Let the Pug Bug Bite!

I have just offered a book I wrote for sale through the web site, blurb.com.  The book is called Don't Let the Pug Bug Bite.  It is about my pug, named Poppy.  It is illustrated by an artist from Houston who I met at a dog show last summer. I focus on puns and rhymes and word-play on the word 'pug' as well as Poppy.  The book should appeal to pug fans, dog lovers and children of all ages.

The direct link to the book is http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2083167

enjoy.

Memoirs -- Father Joe

I have been on a memoir reading kick for about eighteen months. I find it fascinating how people's lives develop. A recent gem I just finished was Tony Hendra's Father Joe. It is sub-titled "The man who saved my soul."

Who is Tony Hendra?, you may ask. I didn't know either. His major claim to fame was that he was one of the creative forces behind National Lampoon magazine, Saturday Night Live, Lemmings and Radio Dinner, as well as numerous scathingly satiric smaller pieces of the same ilk.

Father Joe was a Benedictine monk at an English monastery named Quarr. Tony is forcibly introduced to Father Joe at the age of 14 by an irate husband with whose wife Tony was beginning an affair.

From this inauspicious beginning, a story of faith won and lost and reclaimed. Hendra, like so many of us in the 70s, descends into self-centered existence of drugs, sex and rock-n-roll. I subscribed to National Lampoon in the 70s and recalled several of the pieces he wrote described. I even had a 'Father Joe' in my life, though he died much too soon.

Sometimes it seems that the zeitgeist into which we are born can overwhelm all but the strongest of wills. In my study of stock equities, the market sentiment about a particular sector or industry affects both good and bad stocks alike. Oil stocks, for example, will all move in the same direction for a period of time, even the high-quality ones which are earning money, growing and increasing market share. Only a truly exceptional stock seems able to resist these trends. All of this is to say I see a parallel in my life to Tony Hendra's, not in all the details, but in faith during the last decades of the twentieth century. Father Joe was like an Exxon, steadfast in faith, growing, not faltering to the very end of his life.

This is an amazing little book, well worth the read.

Texas Shangri-La

Abandoned half a century ago, a secret garden blooms anew By Tracy Barnett - Houston Chronicle ORANGE, Texas — Far, far away, down the interstate and past the road construction and the 18-wheelers and the noise and commotion, past Baytown and Beaumont and Port Arthur, lies a land that time forgot. A place near the Louisiana border where snowy egrets and great blue herons and cormorants gather in the trees by the hundreds, flapping their wings and calling to each other as the sun sets over the sparkling waters of the bayou. A place where bright green aquatic plants carpet the dark waters around the knees of the ancient cypress. A place where a secret garden, locked behind walls for half a century, has come back to life. A place called Shangri La. At the Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center, the largesse of one man - timber baron and philanthropist H.J. Lutcher Stark - transformed an abandoned bayou into a celebration of nature in the 1950s. Named after the mythical land in the 1933 book Lost Horizon, the garden was to be a place of beauty, peace and enlightenment. A who's who of southeast Texas attended the celebrated inauguration of the garden, but a freakish coastal snowstorm nipped Stark's project in the bud soon afterward, and he closed the gates. Fifty years passed before the foundation that bears his name decided to put the garden back together again. They found a man particularly well-suited to the job: Michael Hoke, a high school science teacher who left the profession to educate the public in a different way, through a nature education center in Orange. He was brought on board to coordinate planning for the center in 2002, and its gates opened to the public last year - just five months before Hurricane Ike came through, leaving splinters and flooding in its wake. All winter long, Shangri La Botanical Gardens has been rebuilding under the steady and watchful eye of managing director Hoke and horticulturist Gary Outenreath, formerly of Moody Gardens. It reopened to the public in early March, and the legend begins anew. We were there the last day of February, when last-minute plantings were being sheltered in greenhouses as the threat of a last-minute frost loomed. But the enchantment of the gardens still was apparent. And even more enchanting than the gardens is the bayou itself; a big part of the experience is the ride on an electric-powered boat through the cypress-tupelo swamp past three outdoor classrooms called "educational outposts." We docked at one of them, and Hoke led us down a boardwalk through the cypress trees and an expanse of brilliant green, and he stopped short. "Now take a look," he said. "If you don't think that's beautiful, you need to stay after school!" The 252-acre Shangri La is not all swamps and woods. A meditation pavilion, a lake and nine formal gardens greet visitors who wander more than a mile and a half of carefully manicured footpaths. At the heart of the gardens, two ancient cypress trees form a giant gate framing the garden and the heronry beyond. The heron rookery was fluttering with waterfowl as they took their perches and prepared for sunset. A large bird blind down the trail offers several high-power telescopes where you can watch the feathered multitudes preen and fish for hours. In addition to the outdoor classrooms, there's a children's garden called "Good to Grow." Its whimsical and hands-on approach is geared toward drawing kids into a more intimate relationship with nature. Hoke's enthusiasm for the garden and for the earth in general is highly contagious, and his mission goes far beyond running a garden and nature center. Under his guidance, architects designed the facility using the most stringent environmental standards to earn a LEEDS platinum rating, the highest and the first in Texas. As the sun goes down, we take our leave, and as we reach the highway, I turn back to look at the entry sign. "Be kind to your world," it says, echoing a phrase I saw repeated inside the gardens. Clearly, Michael Hoke's garden doesn't stop at his gate.

Find this article at:  http://www.mysanantonio.com/life/travel/Abandoned_half_a_century_ago_a_secret_garden_blooms_anew.html If you go Shangri La Botanical Gardens and Nature Center offers a restorative retreat for all ages. Plan to spend at least four hours if you want to see the entire garden and take the one-hour boat tour. There may be a wait for the boat ride. Getting there: To get away from the traffic, exit Interstate 10 at Winnie and take Highway 73 through Port Arthur and Bridge City. Shangri La is at 2111 W. Park in Orange. Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturdays, noon-5 p.m. Sundays through October. From November through February, open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily and noon-5 p.m. Sundays. Admission: Adults $6, students and seniors $5 and children under 12, $4. Outpost boat tours are $4-$6. Best bet: Buy an all-entry pass for the gardens and the boat tours for $6-$10. Don't miss: Lunch at the Star and Crescent Moon Cafe and shopping at the Garden Store, which stocks a variety of gift and educational items for adults and children alike. More information: 409-670-9113, www.shangrilagardens.org

Texas Birding Trail

Birding trail includes 310 sites on the Texas Gulf Coast

By Tracy Barnett - Houston Chronicle

World travelers migrate to the Texas coast for the astounding variety of birds that congregate here. Yet birding remains a mystery to many Americans.

It shouldn't be. You don't have to spend a fortune or years of training to enjoy the parallel universe unfolding outside your window. You just have to pay attention.

A good place to start is the Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail, which marks its 10th anniversary next year. This network of more than 300 birding sites was such a good idea that other states are copying it.

We've selected a dozen of the trail's best bird-watching sites and asked a team of experts to pick a single bird to represent each one.

So grab some binoculars and a field guide, and let's get started.

Upper Coast

GREAT EGRET

Location: High Island

Formed from a salt dome that rises 32 feet above the surrounding marshes, High Island's altitude has attracted migrating birds for centuries. The place was hit hard by Hurricane Ike but is still rated one of the top birding sites in the nation. Four sanctuaries and a visitor center are run by the Houston Audubon Society.

Look for: Pure white feathers, long black legs, long yellow beak.

Size: 37-41 inches, wingspan up to 4 1/2 feet.

When to look for it: Year-round.

Factoid: Hunted nearly to extinction for its fine white feathers; now the symbol for the National Audubon Society.

More High Island birds: Ruby-throated hummingbird, rose-breasted grosbeak, white ibis, anhinga, roseate spoonbill.

Directions: www.houstonaudubon.org

PILEATED WOODPECKER

Location: Big Thicket National Preserve

Called "the Galapagos Islands of Texas," this vast wilderness of 97,000 acres includes a variety of habitats: arid uplands, boggy lowlands and eastern forest.

Look for: Red crest, black and white stripes on face, black body.

Size: 16-19 inches, wingspan up to 2 1/2 feet.

When to look for it: Year-round.

Factoid: These woodpeckers dig huge rectangular holes in trees in their search for ants. Sometimes the holes are so big they break a small tree in half.

More Big Thicket birds: Red-cockaded woodpecker, Bachman's sparrow, Eastern bluebird, brown-headed nuthatch.

Directions: www.nps.gov/bith

WOOD DUCK

Location: Armand Bayou Nature Center

Boardwalk through forest and marshes, butterfly gardens, 1800s farm site and live animal displays. Stay late and try a moonlight pontoon boat cruise.

Look for: Shiny green crest on head, blue-green patch on wings, white patches on a harlequin face.

Size: 18-21 inches with 2 1/2-foot wingspan.

When to look for it: Year-round.

Factoid: After they hatch, ducklings jump from a nest in a tree and head for water. The ducklings may jump from heights of up to 18 feet without being injured.

More Armand Bayou birds: White and brown pelicans, anhinga, black- and yellow-crowned night herons, black-bellied whistling duck, belted kingfisher.

Directions: www.abnc.org

SCISSOR-TAILED FLYCATCHER

Location: San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge

One of three coastal preserves that harbor more than 300 bird species. The other two are Brazoria and Big Boggy.

Look for: Long, forked tail and salmon-colored underbelly.

Size: 9-15 inches.

When to look for it: Early spring to summer months.

Factoid: The scissor-tail is an avid recycler, using bits of trash in its nests - everything from cigarette butts to carpet fuzz. One study showed up to 30 percent artificial material in the nests.

More San Bernard birds: Common moorhen, clapper rail, Carolina chickadee, red-bellied woodpecker, common yellowthroat.

Directions: www.fws.gov/southwest/refuges, click on Texas

Central Coast

BLACK SKIMMER

Location: Matagorda Bay Nature Park

The park features miles of pristine coastline, miles of river and hundreds of acres of wetlands at the mouth of the Colorado River. Managed by the Lower Colorado River Authority, it has facilities for campers, anglers, bird-watchers and outdoor lovers of all sorts, plus an RV park.

Look for: Bright red bill with a lower mandible that's much longer than the top one; black on top, white underneath with short red legs.

Size: 16-20 inches.

When to look for it: Year-round

Factoid: The skimmer drags its lower bill through the water as it flies, catching small fish as it goes.

More Matagorda Bay birds: Black-bellied whistling duck, blue- and green-winged teals, gadwall, ibis, sandhill crane.

Directions: www.lcra.org/parks, click on "Developed parks"

WHOOPING CRANE

Location: Aransas National Wildlife Refuge

The largest and most accessible wild flock of whooping cranes in North America can be found here, along with a wealth of other species, including alligator, javelina, white-tailed deer and armadillo.

Look for: Very tall white bird with black wingtips and red forehead and cheeks.

Size: Almost 5 feet tall, with a wingspan of nearly 8 feet.

When to look for it: November through March.

Factoid: Only 16 whooping cranes - the tallest bird in North America - were left in 1941. Intensive management has brought the population up to 230, but the bird remains highly endangered.

More Aransas refuge birds: White and brown pelicans, ibises and spoonbills, six kinds of herons, four kinds of egrets.

Directions: www.fws.gov/southwest/refuges, click on Texas

ROSEATE SPOONBILL

Location: Port Aransas

Who says you have to rough it to watch birds? This laid-back beach town boasts multiple bird-watching sites, including Mustang Island State Park, Wetlands Park, Port Aransas Jetty and Paradise Pond, just to name a few.

Look for: Bright pink coloring and long, spoon-shaped bill.

Size: 2 1/2 to almost 3 feet.

When to look for it: Year-round.

Factoid: Inside the odd-looking bill are thousands of nerve endings, so when the bird thrusts it down into murky waters and sweeps back and forth, it detects vibrations from crustaceans, snails and other aquatic creatures, which quickly become dinner.

More Port Aransas birds: Reddish egret, American oystercatcher, red-winged blackbird, seaside sparrow and Caspian, royal, sandwich, least and Forester's terns.

Directions: www.portaransas.org/viewing_locations.html

BROWN PELICAN

Location: Corpus Christi

In America's Birdiest City,cq birding spots include Blucher Park, Suter Wildlife Area, the hike and bike trail on the Texas A&M campus, Packery Channel County Park and even the John F. Kennedy Causeway.

Look for: Dark gray-brown body with white head and neck; distinctive bill with expandable pouch.

Size: 3 to 4 1/2 feet with a wingspan of up to 6 1/2 feet.

When to look for it: Year-round.

Factoid: The pelican incubates eggs with its feet, not the breast like most birds. This led to their near-extinction during the mid-1900s when DDT was used widely. The chemical weakened eggshells and made them more vulnerable to breakage. A DDT ban led to their recovery.

More Corpus birds: Roseate spoonbill, egrets, herons, gulls, terns, osprey, peregrine falcon, crested caracara.

Directions: www.ccbirding.com/aoc, click on "Where can I go birding?"

Lower Coast

CRESTED CARACARA

Location: Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge

At 45,000 acres, it's the largest protected area of natural habitat left in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. If you're very lucky, you may spy an ocelot.

Look for: A large, falcon-like bird with a white head and neck and a black cap and crest.

Size: 19-23 inches with a wingspan of nearly 4 feet.

When to look for it: Year-round.

Factoid: This striking raptor is the subject of legends and folklore throughout Latin America. Some sources identify it as the bird depicted on the Mexican flag.

More Laguna Atascosa birds: Pied-billed grebe, northern shoveler, mottled duck, chachalaca, aplomado falcon.

Directions: www.fws.gov/southwest/refuges/texas/laguna.html

GREAT BLUE HERON

Location: South Padre Island

The island is a crucial first landfall site for birds making the long migration across the Gulf of Mexico. The South Padre Island Birding and Nature Center, a part of the World Birding Center network, is at the southern tip of the island.

Look for: Tall, gray bird with long legs and long, S-shaped neck, a white stripe on the top of the head and a black streak below that.

Size: 3-4 1/2 feet with a wingspan of up to 6 1/2 feet.

When to look for it: Year-round.

Factoid: A white version of the great blue heron, the great white heron, lives in Florida and the Caribbean. In parts of Florida where both birds are found, there's a blend with a blue-gray body and a white head and neck.

More South Padre birds: Piping plover,peregrine falcon, brown pelican and various warblers, tanagers, orioles and thrushes.

Directions: www.worldbirdingcenter.org/sites/spi

GREAT KISKADEE

Location: Weslaco

This town has been called a model for the coexistence of nature and urban areas. Estero Llano Grande State Park is a part of the World Birding Center network, but there's also the Valley Nature Center and Frontera Audubon Thicket.

Look for: Large black-and-white striped head, brown wings and tail, bright-yellow underparts.

Size: 9 inches.

When to look for it: Year-round.

Factoid: This bird extends from South Texas through most of Latin America, Its common name in Spanish (bien te veo) and in Portuguese (bem te vi) mean "I see you well" - and sound a lot like the bird's call.

More Weslaco birds: Chachalaca, green jay, olive sparrow, lesser goldfinch, red-crowned parrot, Altamira oriole, buff-bellied hummingbird, and a host of rare vagrants from Mexico if you are lucky.

Directions: www.weslaco.com/Visitors/Nature

GREEN JAY

Location: World Birding Center

The center is a network of nine Texas preserves with hundreds of bird species and a dedicated staff to help interpret it all. The headquarters is at Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park in Mission.

Look for: Green jay-type bird with a blue face and black around the eyes and throat.

Size: 11 inches.

When to look for it: Year-round.

Factoid: The green jay lives mainly in Mexico and points south. The only place it's found in the U.S. is South Texas.

More birding center birds: Altamira and Audubon's orioles, broad-winged hawk and hook-billed kite.

Directions: www.worldbirdingcenter.org

SOURCES:  Cecilia Riley, executive director, Gulf Coast Bird Observatory; Gary Clark, Nature columnist for the Houston Chronicle; Shelly Plante, nature tourism coordinator, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department;  Cornell University Bird Lab, www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds

Find this article at:  http://www.mysanantonio.com/life/travel/Birding_trail_includes_310_sites_on_the_Texas_Gulf_Coast.html

World Birding Center

The World Birding Center:

Mission, Texas

http://www.worldbirdingcenter.org/


Lake/Flato Architects of San Antonio have created a World Birding Center in Mission, Texas.

"This eco-tourism headquarters is located in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, one of the richest bird habitats in the world. The design approach was to do more with less. The architecture learned from the regional vernacular, responded to the harsh climate, and minimized disturbance of the adjacent 1700-acre native habitat preserve. Sustainable features included a 35% reduction in building program, outdoor circulation, a narrow floor plate for effective cross ventilation and daylighting, steel arch panels as both structure and roofing, efficient building systems, water conservation and re-use, and restorative landscapes."   Explore their very intriguing web site.

 http://www.lakeflato.com/projects/birding/01.asp

Hot Chilies - the Dorset Naga

South Texas is a great place for chili peppers. I am looking forward to trying this Dorset Naga pepper.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12792719

Oysters and the Chesapeake

I grew up in Baltimore and oysters were a fixture on the menu. A fascinating article about using oysters to clean water. We just need to stop overfishing the bay.http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795573

Music

This year I joined the Church Choir. Something I have wanted to do all my life. Always had a lot of excuses about why I couldn't join. Finally did, overcoming my anxiety about singing well enough to be in the choir. I have been enjoying it immensely. Singing has been one of the most challenging things I have ever done.
Another interesting, but disjointed article on music from the Economist. It has lots of ideas but none were developed well. Articles like this do give me many ways of jumping off in many directions though.http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795510

Angels we have heard on high!

In the first grade, I earned a glow in the dark Guardian Angel night light from selling the Catholic Review. This is an interesting article on Angels that I read in the Economist. http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12792800

Sasaki Takuya

We started hosting a Japanese student through a program at the Alamo Community College. There are about 80 students here for a 3-week English intensive. We have a 25 year old young man named Sasaki Takuya. He said to call him Takuya (ta-coo-YAH). He is very pleasant and loves American television. He watches more American television in Japan than I do in the states. He knows all the popular shows but they seem to be a season or so behind Japan. Perhaps they only release them after the shows air here. In any case, he can correct me on the characters of several TV series such as Grey's Anatomy (which I only watch sporadically). He has not seen House and says medical shows are difficult to watch in Japanese because of all the jargon. He really enjoyed Mexican food, loves Italian food and pretty much all things American.
I was very surprised that he did not know the word 'Gospel'. We were browsing his Japanese-English electronic dictionary. The Japanese characters were on the left and the English word on the right. I saw the word 'Gospel' and asked him to click on the Japanese for it. He had never heard the word even pronounced in Japanese! He clicked it several more times so he could understand the Japanese pronunciation. The definition in Japanese was not exactly what I expected either. It translated something like a 'great undertaking.' I explained to him it meant 'Good News.' The story of Jesus.

Around the Bloc

On Saturday, December 6th, I took a writing workshop with Stephanie Elizondo Griest on writing a memoir.  I learned that a memoir is not an autobiography, that it may cover just a short portion of one's life, such as Ms. Griest's which details her life in Moscow as a student, and later Bejing and Cuba.  Her book was entitled "Around the Bloc", meaning the communist bloc.  An enjoyable and very personal book, I recommend to any who are interested.   

New pug in the house

After the passing of our great companion friend, the Doberman named Dante, we needed to wait for awhile before getting another dog.  My son and his wife introduced us to the world of Pugs.  We found them to be delightful and a source of laughter.  'Multum in parvo' was the phrase applied to them centuries ago: "a lot of dog in a small package."   Indeed, the pug feels bigger than her current 10 pounds.  She is confident and quite willing to explore.

We contacted a breeder through the many friends my wife has in the dog world.  The breeder we contacted was way up in Odessa (Texas, not Russia).  From San Antonio, that's about 350 miles.  After many emails and phone conversations we met her at a house on Lake LBJ near Austin.  We spent about 4 hours there getting to know her and her dogs.  They were all great.  We took our pug home with us. 

Baltimore - Fireworks and Canton

Baltimore in June and July can be humid and sticky, as it was on my recent visit to family and friends. Seeing my parents was a primary objective of the visit and taking my dad to numerous doctors for tests for a carotid artery. He does not need the surgery. Thank you, Lord.

I saw my sisters, nieces and friends. My niece, Jesse, a struggling artist, showed me her sketches for some new art works. She does a type of impressionism based on family photos from the 50s, 60s and 70s. Close enough that family can enjoy them through recognition, abstract enough that they are universally appealing for composition and color.

Fourth of July was spent with family in daytime. That evening my son and I were invited to a party in Canton. Canton is the old packing and canning industrial section of Baltimore City. Once home to many Polish immigrants, it has now become gentrified. If you are young and single and like to party, this is a place for you.

From the rooftop deck, 40 feet above the street, atop a rennovated townhouse, I had a view of Fort McHenry, the inner harbor, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and many funky Baltimore scenes. As my niece quoted an artist friend, "Baltimore is like your grandmother's attic." You have no idea what is there, but you will find it funky and delightful. A native of the city and resident until age 41, I felt she struck it on the head. Despite its "Wired" reputation, it is a delightful city.

From this deck, which belonged to Joe, a 360 degree panorama displayed the city's funkiness. All about us were other Independence Day Revelers on other decktop roofs. Like the sailors in the ships in the harbor, these other denizens of the decks shared comraderie with us and the many other land-locked poop decks. We hailed and cheered each other and as twilight emerged from what had been a gloomy wet afternoon, fireworks errupted from many in a fantastic display of creativity and craziness. I am glad my host refrained from such dangerous activities.

There was an eeire sense of Gotterdammerung from the glow of the city lights, the childhood smells of gunpowder and sulpher released by the fireworks, the percussive explosions felt and heard as some rocket exploded near-by. Also reminiscent of one of the final scenes in Fight Club where Tyler and his alter ego are struggling over the destruction of TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it).

It was a great and unique evening for me. Plenty of alcohol, tobacco and fireworks, America's favorite vices. Canton is a definite place to see if you visit Baltimore.

Depopulation of the Great Plains

It seems the return to nature is happening in parts of the U.S. with no need of policies or laws.
The small farms that creatd the small towns all over the big stated of the Great Plains are disappearing. Along with them, are the towns and people. This article from The Economist sums up the situation. I have family in South Dakota so this is of interest to me. The first time I drove across the state was in 1973 with my future wife. She fell asleep in the car, we were on a state road, heading straight west. We didn't pass or encounter another car for over an hour. I was beginning to feel I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. She awoke and I expressed my concern. She said it's perfectly normal. That was 36 years ago. I can't imagine it less populated!

Depopulation The Great Plains drain
Jan 17th 2008 CHEYENNE WELLS From The Economist print edition
How the interior is learning to live with a shrinking population
IN EASTERN Colorado, the human tide ebbs. Cheyenne county, which had 3,700 inhabitants in 1930, now has just 1,900. And the drift away from the area seems to be speeding up. In the old county jail, which is now a museum, a photograph from 1910 shows a three-storey schoolhouse towering over the town of Cheyenne Wells. The new school is one storey high—yet it already seems too big.
America as a whole is growing briskly. Between 2000 and 2006 its population swelled by 6.4%, according to the Census Bureau. Yet the expansion has passed many areas by. Two-fifths of all counties are shrinking (see map). In general, people are moving to places that are warm, mountainous or suburban. They are leaving many rural areas, with the most relentless decline in a broad band stretching from western Texas to North Dakota. In parts, the Great Plains are more sparsely populated now than they were in the late 19th century, when the government declared them to be deserted.
A big reason is improvements in farming technology. Tractors in eastern Colorado do not resemble the vehicles that trundle around farms on the east coast and in Europe. They are many-wheeled monsters, sometimes driven by global positioning systems. Toby Johnson says his 40,000-acre (16,200-hectare) ranch in Cheyenne county employed between eight and ten workers in the 1950s. It now has two, including him. When old farmers retire, their plots tend to be swallowed up by larger, more efficient operators.
The population of the Great Plains teeters on this shrinking agricultural base. While much of Colorado grew, Cheyenne county shrank every year between 2000 and 2006, when it lost more than 300 people. Children are disappearing even more quickly. Ten years ago 495 pupils enrolled in the county's public schools; this year 320 did. In Kit Carson, the second-biggest settlement, the school enrolled just four teenagers in the tenth grade. Shops and houses nearby are already boarded up. If the school were to close, there would be little reason for the town to exist at all.
Rayetta Palmer, a councilwoman in Cheyenne Wells, can nonetheless cite a list of local strengths. The few children get lots of attention: Kit Carson's schools have a pupil-to-teacher ratio of seven to one, compared with 18 to one in Denver, the state capital. As a result, they do well in tests. Crime is rare. The community is strikingly cohesive: at the petrol stations that double as cafés, locals do not take empty tables but sit together, as in a school dining room.
The trouble is that such qualities are not the sort of thing that might persuade businesses to move to the area. Some are more likely to deter them. The strong community spirit sometimes morphs into a fierce resistance to change, particularly when it is advocated by newcomers. Cindy Perry, who has tried to revitalise Kit Carson by renovating buildings and starting a shop, woke one morning to find a newly-painted building covered with graffiti.
Fighting back
Optimists point to two likely developments that may slow the decline. Assuming a power line is built, wind farms will probably appear in the area in the next few years, as they have in western Texas. That will generate construction jobs and tax revenues. A more ambitious proposal involves building a “super-highway” between Mexico and Canada, which would pass through eastern Colorado. Backers say it would almost double traffic through Cheyenne county, leading to an increase in jobs and perhaps even in people. Yet the road is many years from being built.
Cheyenne county is not especially poor. Indeed, at the moment it is enjoying an agricultural boom. Heavy snow last winter, combined with a drought in Australia, means local wheat farmers have a large crop to sell at record prices, which touched $10 a bushel for the first time last month. In parts of north-east Colorado, corn farmers are profiting from a strong demand for ethanol. Yet the future of irrigated agriculture (the most profitable kind) is gloomy. In central Colorado, thirsty cities have been buying water rights from farmers. Elsewhere, farmers have been prevented from pumping groundwater by lawyers in Kansas, downriver. If the wells close, the corn boom will end.
There is a somewhat drastic alternative. In the 1980s two academics from Rutgers University suggested turning the plains into a “buffalo commons”, where the animals that grazed the area before white immigration would be encouraged to return. The idea was so unpopular that its authors occasionally had to be protected by police. But it is nonetheless coming to pass.
Buffalo meat is leaner than beef, and thus well suited to contemporary health worries. Partly as a result, the buffalo are coming back: some 62,000 were slaughtered between January and November last year, a 17% rise over a year earlier. Of the plains states, only North Dakota has openly mulled turning over large tracts of land to the furry megafauna. But other areas, including eastern Colorado, have preserved grasslands and are touting their natural resources and history—a vivid one of brutal treks and Indian massacres.
Jo Downey of the Plains Development Corporation reckons nothing can stop the drift away from places like Cheyenne county, and others agree. The challenge for the future is not to stem the tide, but to keep life as pleasant as possible for those who remain. This is not an easy task. Compared with the consequences of rapid growth, such as traffic jams and illegal immigration, to which so much political energy is devoted, the problems of depopulation can appear intractable.

Painted Churches of East Texas

It seems each group of visitors that come to SA come bearing their own agenda about what to see, where to go. My wife and I have found that by going with the flow we see many new things as well. After we adjust their perspectives, such as no we can't drive to El Paso and back this afternoon, we usually emerge with a do-able itinerary. Recently, some old friends declared they wanted to see the Painted Church. We had no idea what these were. Turns out they are churchs whose interiors are lavishyly painted with decorations, scenes, saints and symbols. The colors are bright and the visit on a Sunday afternoon was very quiet, almost eerie in how few people were around. We saw four churchs all near Schulenberg, TX, about half-way between San Antonio and Houston.
excellent link for more information: http://www.texasescapes.com/CentralTexasTownsSouth/PaintedChurchesTour.htm

WEIRD TEXAS

Ghost towns

my sister and niece recently visited me in San Antonio, TX. My niece wanted to see Texas Ghost Towns. Happily, most are in far west Texas, with most of the rattlesnakes. Her request casued me to take note of this article from the Economist. East coasters have a strange idea of what Texas is like. Ghost towns, tumbleweed, not around here.


History in a half-brick
Dec 19th 2007 THURBER, TEXAS From The Economist print edition
What ruins reveal about America

LINDSAY BAKER walks through the streets of Thurber carrying a hoe. It is handy for killing rattlesnakes, which lurk in the long grass that has all but swallowed the town. He also uses it to scrape in the dirt for what the people who once lived there left behind. He finds some shards of an old medicine bottle, the cap of a salt-shaker and a half-brick with markings that date it sometime between 1904 and 1936. If a brush fire clears the grass, you'll see artefacts like this everywhere, explains Mr Baker, a historian whose boyish enthusiasm for ghost towns belies his years.
America has a lot of ghost towns. There are 1,000 in Texas alone. Thurber was once home to 10,000 people. Now there are only five. In its busy days, Thurber was a coal town. Immigrants flocked there from Italy, Poland and Mexico to dig up fuel for steam trains. The coal was also used to fire bricks made from local clay. The town boasted churches, baseball teams and even an opera house.
But then someone found oil in Texas. Before long, the trains started burning oil instead of coal. Thurber's mine closed in 1926. And since cheap oil prompted Texans to start using asphalt instead of bricks to pave their roads, Thurber's brick kiln closed, too.
The workers left. Their homes were sold for $50 to anyone who could carry them off. You can still see them in the surrounding countryside, serving as barns or storehouses. Little is left in Thurber itself but a smokestack, the graveyard (divided into Catholic, Protestant and black areas) and a few company buildings.
The story is not all wretched, however. Many workers found jobs in the oil business. The company that built Thurber struck oil and prospered. The old boss's daughter-in-law donated money for a museum to preserve Thurber's memory, which Mr Baker runs. His qualifications are ideal: besides teaching industrial history at nearby Tarleton State University, he is the author of “Ghost Towns of Texas” and “More Ghost Towns of Texas”.
Something about ghost towns grips the American imagination. They provide an eerie backdrop for movies, children's books and theme-park rides. Ghost-town enthusiasts devote countless weekends to searching out remote examples, photographing them and posting their findings on websites such as www.ghosttowns.com. Typically, they give imprecise directions so that only the most committed ghost-towners can follow their footsteps.
Ghost towns are sad places, but also monuments to American dynamism. When work moves, so do Americans. With so much space, especially in the West, it can make sense to let a town die. But its memory may live on. Ghost towns give people a tangible connection to a mysterious past, says Mr Baker. Others treat history more playfully. On a hill near Thurber, someone has built a hunting lodge in the shape of a Scottish castle.
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

WEIRD Texas

The UFOs are moving east!

First, Roswell. Then Marfa. Now Fort Worth!

Stephenville, Texas has had multiple sightings of UFOs in recent weeks. All this flatland and big sky just makes us irresistable to the intersteller critters!


Stephenville rides wave of publicity after UFOs
Web Posted: 01/19/2008 12:10 AM CST
Lisa SandbergExpress-News
STEPHENVILLE — All hype aside, space aliens have not invaded the streets of this rodeo town southwest of Fort Worth — though nearly everyone here is keeping at least a playful eye out for them.
And maybe no one here has encountered any little green men in the week after dozens of residents reported seeing a strobe light-flashing object zipping through the night sky because they don't exist.
Sightings from around the country suggest extraterrestrial beings are actually gray, not green, says Dennis Balthaser, a UFO researcher and former investigator with the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, N.M.
"They're somewhat humanoid looking," Balthaser says of such accounts nationally. "They have a big head, a small-frame body, anywhere between three and five fingers, no hair ... no ears as such. A slit for the mouth."
But even if there's been no space invasion of Stephenville, the recent obsession with them has been out of this world in the town of 15,400 — and far beyond.
Ken Cherry, the Texas director of the Colorado-based Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, which describes itself as devoted to research on the topic, says the multiple sightings on the night of Jan. 8 could turn Stephenville into a mini-Roswell.
"Dozens of people are coming forward, responsible people, saying they saw something," Cherry said. "We're talking shop owners, ranch owners, oil field workers, just about every demographic imaginable."
Forget being the Cowboy Capital of the World. Folks in town are calling Stephenville the UFO Capital of the World.
Angela Joiner, the only full-time reporter at the Stephenville Empire-Tribune, can hardly put out a paper. Ever since breaking the story last week, she's been swamped with calls and e-mails from around the world — from people who either want to tell her about their UFO sightings or from international media types assigned to cover the story.
"I'm not accustomed to this. I don't do this!" Joiner, who's been on the job 18 months, said with a laugh.
Perhaps the only person who gets less work done these days is the local constable, LeeRoy Gaitan. He's in demand as the only elected official who can corroborate what dozens of others saw: something spooky in the sky over Erath County that evening.
He was on foot approaching his home when in the distance he saw a red glow, not as big as a hot air balloon but big. It didn't appear to be attached to anything. He watched it awhile before it burned itself out. Then it reappeared.
"I knew this wasn't right," he said. So he went inside to summon his family. His wife gave him this "get real" look, Gaitan said, but his young son came running.
Father and son saw what looked like really bright white strobe lights, nine or 10 of them. They flashed as the minutes passed. "All of a sudden, they shot off, they traveled northeast at a real high rate of speed," Gaitan said.
Though he doesn't believe it was a spaceship, he's had to answer calls from hundreds of people from around the country who do. His solution: "I've started screening my calls," he said.
Military officials have said they had no aircraft in the area at the time of the sightings.
And the military doesn't investigate UFO sightings. So that leaves Cherry's MUFON group. Five of its investigators will descend on the area today to begin interviewing witnesses.
It won't be a quick investigation, Cherry cautions. Interviews will be conducted one on one. And even after all the anecdotes have been gathered and sifted through — don't expect physical evidence — the researchers will hedge their bets.
"We could say we eliminated every other possibility. But we never say, 'This is alien technology' or 'This is a spacecraft,'" Cherry said.
For now, people around town are having a ball.
City Secretary Cindy Stafford wore a space alien mask to the City Council this week. It was fun, she said.
Because he hasn't done the research, Roswell's Balthaser isn't ready to make any educated guesses about what might have crossed the sky in Texas. But, if the lights were a mile long and half a mile across, as some have suggested, that would be the size of a "mother ship," which is much bigger than a flying saucer, he said.
Balthaser, a retired engineer with the Texas Department of Transportation, takes his research seriously and hates when other people don't.
He probably wouldn't appreciate the T-shirts produced by the high school science club here that proclaim: 'Erath County: The New Roswell' and depict a spaceship leaving earth and towing a dairy cow.
By Friday, the club had sold 400 of them.
lsandberg@express-news.net