Sunday Morning

Coffee, bagels, and thick newspapers...

Sunday mornings go better with these things.  They combine to create an island in time where we can both relax and inform ourselves about the world around us.  Many years ago, I lived in northern Virginia and had the Washington Post and New York Times for weekend perusals.  These days, home is a remote stretch of dry country at the edge of the vast Chihuahuan Desert.  We are lucky to have one weekend paper delivered to our homes.  A trip into the city means an out-of-town paper can be had...

Lyside Sulphur (Kricogonia lyside) Butterfly: its pale, yellow-
green wings make it almost invisible against the leaves of many
desert plants 

While the San Angelo Standard Times and San Antonio Express News may not be quite the same thing as newspapers from the eastern seaboard's megalopolis, they do an OK job of complementing beverages and noshes.  Each paper usually covers the front page with stories of primarily local interest.  This trend in journalism runs against the grain of cantankerous old fools like myself.  We remember hometown newspapers that summed up important national and international news on Page One, Section One (or Section A).  State and city news made up the second page or section unless a story truly merited a front page headline.  Collapsing bridges, city halls in flames, gun battles between bank robbers and the state police-- these are events that people probably should know about without digging through the paper...

Soapbush (Guaiajacum angustifolium) grows in the arid and
semi-arid regions of the Rio Grande Plains, Trans-Pecos,
and western Concho Valley of Texas

Occasionally, the Sunday paper has a feature that proves somewhat useful.  There is a pale yellow butterfly that flits through our desert skies.  I did not know the name of this butterfly until this past weekend.  Glancing at the Science section in the San Antonio paper, I saw a picture of this little winged wonder.  The caption identified it as a Lyside Sulphur (Kricogonia lyside).  An accompanying article stated the butterfly was native to the southern part of Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico.  Its host plant is guayacan, also known as soapbush, which grows along the Rio Grande, across the Trans-Pecos, and in the western Concho Valley.  This link between bug and bush explains why I see so many little yellow butterflies here...

Distribution map for Soapbush which has been officially
documented as far north as Tom Green County

Distribution of Lyside Sulphur Butterfly overlaps that
of Soapbush, its host plant

Another Express News article talks about the changing demographics of public schools in Texas...

The concern for educators and politicians is not the increasing number of Hispanic students combined with a declining "Anglo" enrollment.  It is the fact that a lower percentage of Latinos in Texas complete high school or go on to earn a degree when compared to their white counterparts.  The explanation for this, experts agree, can be linked to a higher poverty rate which makes the immediate struggle for daily survival more important than intangible promises of a better life in the future thanks to higher education...

Farrah Fawcett during her school days at
W B Ray High in Corpus Christi, Texas

[By way of human interest reporting as an excuse to post photographs of two lovely women, your blogger mentions Farrah Fawcett and Eva Longoria.  Both were born in Corpus Christi.  Fawcett, a pop-culture poster icon and one of Charlie's original TV Angels, walked across the auditorium stage at W B Ray High School, a proud graduate in 1965.  Ray's Hispanic student enrollment during those days, I'm told by people who lived in Corpus at that time, was under 10%.  Latino enrollment now exceeds 60% and Anglo enrollment is slightly above 30%.

Longoria, also a pop-culture icon due to her television role as Desperate Housewives' vain Gabrielle Solis, drew her first breath ten years after Farrah began thinking about high school graduation parties.  She attended Roy Miller High School-- W B Ray's arch-rival on the football field and basketball court.  (One school took the State High School Football Championship in 1959, the other in 1960.  In Texas, where God is Our Coach Who Art In Heaven and prayers directed to Him generally include requests that He smite gridiron rivals mightily with a first-rate smiting, such matters are taken seriously.)  Student population demographics have mirrored the changes at its cross-town rivalry.  Today, Longoria personifies her high school's "success story."  In Longoria's student days, quintessentially "white" actor Dabney Coleman was the Roy Miller alumni who'd found fame and fortune in Hollywood.]   

Roy Miller High alumna Eva Longoria

In the long term, lower educational rates-- regardless of ethnicity--  translate into the probability that impoverished kids will share the poverty of their parents... 

The former Lone Star Republic ranks 39th in percentage of adults with an Associate Degree or higher.  A University of Pennsylvania Institute for Higher Education study found 43% of young Texas Anglos have a post-high school degree of some type.  But, among Hispanics, only 15% share that attainment.  Less educated workers perform tasks requiring fewer challenges to the intellect.  This equates to lower wages.  And lower wages become lower sales tax and property tax revenues.  Government services decline and a city, county, and state become less attractive to employers...

Fort Chadbourne, Texas: ruins and restoration

"West Texas," a weekly feature in the Sunday Standard-Times, touted the opening of a $2 million Visitor Center and Museum at the site of Fort Chadbourne, 45 miles or so south of Abilene.  Military men occupied the installation from 1852 until 1867.  Providing water to support the fort's detachment constantly challenged the Army since the fort lies many a mile from the nearest river or lake.  The cost of transporting water eventually became too prohibitive...

Fort Chadbourne, Texas

If I read the article correctly, the Visitor Center has a potential to not only attract tourists but benefit scholars as well.  A 7000 volume research library is part of the complex whose exhibits include Native American artifacts, frontier weapons, utensils and clothing used by early settlers, ranching equipment, and a stagecoach.  The center occupies 12,500 square feet...

The Visitor Center is named in honor of Roberta Cole Johnson, whose life spanned the years 1911 to 2008.  She was born in Ohio and a proud graduate of Vassar who came to live and ranch in the dry part of Texas when she seventy years old.  Mrs Johnson came to love the ruins of Fort Chadbourne which had been purchased for $500 in gold from the Army in 1874 by the widow of Sam Maverick who gave his name to stray cattle and politicians.  Roberta Johnson left several million dollars to be used for nonprofit causes such as preserving our history...

Entrance to Roberta Cole Johnson Visitor Center, Fort Chadbourne

But, of course, the most important part of the Sunday paper are the comics which not only provide a few chuckles to lighten the darkness of this grim world but can also be used as wrapping paper for holiday presents when you're on a tight budget...           

Gabrielle Solis spurs on the Spurs

Note: All photographs located through Google Images, without source information, except as noted: Lyside Sulphur (Kricogonia lyside) butterfly, photographed by Will Cook, from carolinanature.com; Soapbush (Guaiacum angustifolium) from desertflower.wordpress.com; Guaiacum angustifolium range map from Biota of North America Project (BONAP); Lyside Sulphur distribution from Butterflies of Houston and Southeast Texas, University of Texas; Fort Chadbourne Visitor Center by Joy Miller of the Abilene Reporter-News, Abilene, Texas; Fort Chadbourne ruins (color) from Bronte, Texas, Chamber of Commerce; Fort Chadbourne ruins (black and white) from True West magazine