South of Town: Notes and Scenes from Texas' Upper Gulf Coast

Good afternnon. Time to report on some of the interesting things I ran across in reading the papers this morning. I will do something I didn’t expect to ever do and that is to kick it off with the thing that caught my eye when I brought The Facts newspaper in from the rain this morning.

The Facts covers Brazoria County and does that very well. They leave most of the state and national news to the papers we read online offering just a few summary articles from wire services.

I used to cite their headlines in Facebook posts as confirmation of how boring life must seem to the younger folks from our area who go off to college, find life more exciting in the university towns and big cities, and only come back to Lake Jackson to bring the kids to visit their grandparents. It was just for fun.

I remember the front page story that Clute was getting a new car wash and another that Danbury was getting a new four-way stop at some corner – the kind of news that thrills the locals and leaves the young grads yawning. Here is an example from yesterday’s paper:  “BACH [a local nonprofit] to host rare Pearland fun day.” Fun in Pearland? Of course it’s rare.

But something very serious caught my eye today pertaining to the immigration fiasco and the role of an organization operating a site in Brazoria County – allegations that caretakers at the Shihloh Treatment Center were forcefully administering drugs to control the behavior of kids in their care, some of whom had been taken from their parents at the border.  The Facts had picked up the story from the Texas Tribune and run it since it pertained to the county.

That set the tone for the rest of my day and prepared me for the New York Times column by Charles Blow. He often helps me to deal with my own rage at the current administration because he expresses his own so well.

Maybe it was a coincidence but the First Lady visited the Texas border holding facilities this morning. She was graceful and caring in the comments I heard from her on television

Yet she caused quite a stir with the jacket she wore as she boarded the plane at Andrews AFB. She did not wear it when she got off the plane in El Paso. But by then social media had gone berserk about the fashion choice. Her office quickly tweeted that there was no hidden message in the jacket that said in big white letters across the back: “I don’t care. Do U?” The family, even at their compassionate best, seems to always come up with a Marie Antoinette moment for the public to feast on. Here are the thoughts of the Times fashion director and critic, Vanessa Friedman.

In another article, the New York Times offered an interesting demographic analysis relating to the changing race/ethnic patterns in the U.S. and the possible political implications. The article added data to my suspicion that the idea of a “blue wave” may be highly oversold.

There was, of course, much more in the news today, but these were a few of the things that caught my eye right away and accompanied my morning coffee – which was, by the way, Organic Congo Coffee from Equal Exchange. Buy some online. A dollar from every pound you buy goes to support the Panzi Hospital Project, one small thing you can do to make the world a little better.