Accidental Blogger

The advent of the new year in Texas has brought wild fires, unseasonably warm temps (Houston is in the low 80’s and high 70’s – I turned on the AC today) and football, football, football.

The Texas football stories are running on two separate tracks, one going up and the other, way down. But both appear to bring glad tidings for football lovers. Southern California’s Reggie Bush figures in both stories. As I have mentioned before, the Houston Texans are the pathetic local pro team.  After staying tenaciously at the bottom in NFL rankings (2-14) throughout the season, at last the Texans are first !  How so?

"The Texans’ reward for losing more than any other team in the NFL is the right to draft Reggie Bush (USC Running Back, Heisman Trophy) … The Texans’ defeat gave them an NFL-worst 2-14 record. It guarantees they can select Bush, the Southern California running back who scouts regard as one of the best prospects ever — provided the junior enters the draft." Oh joy!  Meanwhile, the Texans’ coach, offensive and defensive co-ordinators, have all been handed pink slips.

The other football fever of course is about the Longhorns and the Rose Bowl  in Pasadena (it’s raining there!). UT will face USC (and Reggie Bush) for the national championship game on January 4th.

"…Across Austin, billboards and buses bear the image of a burnt-orange Longhorn, a rose in its teeth, and the words "Live the Dream 2006." Texas alumni and fans are pouring into stores along the row of shops across from UT called "the Drag" to pick up mugs, key chains, banners and T-shirts that read "Proving it again in Pasadena" and programs for the BCS title game against USC, at the Rose Bowl on Wednesday. … But Rose Bowl-mania radiated far beyond the UT tower. Texas Exes officials said alumni in places as far as London, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris and Mexico City were planning parties to watch the game live.  In Paris, a group of about 50 is expected to take over one of the city’s few sports bars that show American football for a watch party beginning at 1 a.m. The game starts at 2 a.m. there." 

Meanwhile, far from the football fields, the historic island of Galveston is slowly but surely sinking.

"GALVESTON – Geology has aligned its forces against this narrow strip of land, causing it to sink a few inches more every decade. Though subsidence has caused much of the sinking in recent decades, it’s not the only culprit. If oceans continue to warm as expected, sea-level rise could cripple much of the island by century’s end. And as the waters rise, waves, tides and especially tropical storms will wash ever more sand away.

As scientists wrestle with how to protect the island, they are finding matters may be worse than thought. Some think it’s time to sound a warning. Unlike in the days before the great hurricane of 1900, Rice University oceanographer John Anderson said recently, this storm’s gathering clouds are all too clear. "What I am afraid of is that people living there will one day look back and wonder why, if scientists knew changes were occurring to the island, they didn’t do anything about it," Anderson said.

"A lot of people think short term, they just want a nice house on the ocean," said Rusty Feagin, an ecologist at Texas A&M University. "But from a long-term perspective, however, that just doesn’t make sense."  "What more evidence do you need for a mad society," asked Orrin Pilkey, a Duke University geologist and one of the world’s foremost barrier-island researchers., "than building homes right next to that beach?"

In one of my earlier blog entries about interesting road signs and public postings, I had mentioned the attention getting anti-littering signs on Texas roads which read : Don’t Mess With Texas.  This stern message is associated closely with the Lone Star State and figures prominently on T-shirts, beach towels, coffee mugs and other Texas tourist memorabilia.  Now it appears that although most Texans are familiar with the slogan, many don’t realize that it is an anti-littering message! (They probably interpret it as an all-purpose macho warning from the big, tough, gun toting, cowboy state). So the Texas Dept. of Transportation is going to some lengths to clarify matters by adding more self-explanatory slogans to buttress the message. It is okay with me, as long as the new signs are in "addition to" and not "instead of" the old ones – I really like that menacing message.

"Real Texans don’t toss trash on roads. That’s the message the state Department of Transportation first gave residents 20 years ago with its "Don’t Mess with Texas" anti-litter campaign. To celebrate the campaign’s 20th anniversary this year, the department will re-emphasize its message with the slogan, "Real Texans Don’t Litter."

The new ads will feature Texas celebrities Lance Armstrong, Erykah Badu, Ray Benson, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Julius Jones, Los Lonely Boys, Matthew McConaughey, Chuck Norris, Janine Turner, Owen Wilson and Lee Ann Womack. Despite the decline in litter, however, recent studies reveal that about 55 percent of 1,200 Texans surveyed in October admitted to littering and most of them were under the age of 25, according to the department. The survey also revealed that though most Texans have heard the slogan "Don’t Mess with Texas," only 71 percent know that it means "don’t litter."