All along the water tower

The water tower mid-island on SPI has grown a queen's crown and yes there are three dudes messing with the rigging again, getting the tower ready for sandblasting and painting. I missed the fellow on top standing up on that pointy thing in the middle, whatever it is. Oh, and here's the lyrics to 'All along the watch tower.'

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief, "There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief. Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth, None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke, "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate, So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl'

A Nasty but Pretty Picture

Image source: Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife

Those dark red streaks indicate very high concentrations of Red Tide. It was still offshore between Mustang Island to Mexico like this on October 27-28th. It has become a quite popular picture, and could win some prizes.

Be nice to see some sandy blue-green there instead, eh?

Thinks Assyrian

Check out this Assyrian babe Linda George while I write a spot here. Yeah, some Michael Jackson schtick at first but then she gets into her groove with the local stuff.

Anyway, I just happened to get interested in the Assyrian language, and bopped around the Inter-Web as is my usual style. Assyrian pre-dates Arabic, Semitic, and Greek languages by a wide margin, thousands of years, and might just be what the "babel of Babylon" was about in the Bible, although I don't understand that rant either.

So anyway, there's the map and the dark green areas show where you might find a few Assyrians still living, at least the ones that haven't been exterminated yet. It was once a huge empire encompassing parts of Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Their religion is similar to Greek Orthodox, which is why they're constantly being exterminated - because they're not Muslim.

Maybe a feel for the music before we get too wild here, OK?

I duly plan to take mental journeys to other places such as the Mayans in Mexico, and see if I can find some of their native music which (haha) ought to have at least one imitation of a Michael Jackson song. Oceania? Mali? The mind reels.

Rock Balancing Rocks

Wow, look at all those rocks ... we don't have a real native rock within a 50 miles down here on our SPI sandbar. A fellow named Mark Bailey gets his kicks by balancing rocks in odd positions and photographing them - quite an art I should say. When I lived up there by Block Island, we'd stack flat rocks for trail markers. This dude is tippy-trippy. I find it rather pleasing...

Bad Truck, Bad Truck!

My poor truck is sulking because I offended it again today, but for good cause. I don't mind the rust or fixing the 11 year-old Ford wonder of technology, but this has been the pits. Several island car shops have totally screwed me too - I know, not the truck's fault but she has to put up with the abuse all the same. But today she "ran out of fuel" with nearly a full tank of gasoline and I about kicked the **** out of her.

Well that would be the latest rip-off car shop that installed a fuel pump inside the fuel tank (why God, why do you allow humans do put fuel pumps inside a fuel tank?). I'm having Charlie B of Beach Services look at her tomorrow, and try to say some nice things to the old gal.

And a good girl she has been, only 67 thousand miles on her and a strong engine. We've been all over Texas in it, and way up the wild end of the island by Mansfield Pass on the beach. We've hauled I don't know how many tons of stuff for our home and our friends. She has a special sixth sense in case I've had a beer or two, which is especially endearing.

I can handle the A/C needing to be redone, or the horn needing something to make it work, or that rusty hood latch that makes me think I need a tetanus shot when I touch it. But it can be unnerving to have repeated failures when I only burn a tank of gas every month, and barely get 80 miles in between breakdowns.

Sell her off into slavery? Cash for Clunkers? No way. I swore this would be my last car, and while I might be proven wrong, have faith in the old gal. But maybe I've worked on too many 1950 and 1960 Fords that you could actually rebuild. If I bought another pickup, it would only rot just as fast in the salt air, and I'd probably get something used anyway. We'll see how it goes; I think she'll be able to be a dependable ride again after we fix her all up. Charlie can do the easy stuff and Danny over in Port Isabel can do the rough stuff.

And as a compliment to my truck, it always breaks down right in my parking lot. Now that's a classy girl.

A Cool Bird Cam

That's right, these are real pictures taken from a bird cam!

One of the more interesting scientific studies I've read was about how pelagic birds such as the Albatross hunt in the open ocean. The images and study are found in this link.

From picture A to F, the bird cam shows nothing, an iceberg, a killer whale, some other albatross, a ship on the horizon, and the moon.

The big finding was many bird cam pictures near the killer whale, which became a major finding because that's where the albatross found dinner! Yes, they did lots of diving there, the 3 birds that were equipped with miniature cameras taped to their back feathers.

That confirms my earlier supposition (see older blog post) that these birds can find fish very well. But this study says they won't forage and dive into the ocean for a meal unless something really big is there, such as a killer whale, pod of large tuna, marlin, or whatever.

Anyway I thought that in this age of computerized cams everywhere, the bird cam was pretty darn cool.

Eric's Wedding

A lovely bride indeed!


That's my son Eric and my daughter Samantha, all gussied up for Eric's wedding to Cari. Yes, I need some pictures of Cari because she's quite a looker, nice gal. A few pictures are rolling in, after yours truly (me) forgot the camera at home. It was a beautiful day after a week of the rainy stuff.


Here is Lori and I, trying to act solemn.



Now who on Earth would that be?

20 Million Dollar Boondoggle?

The Town of South Padre has about 17,000 tax paying accounts for property taxes, about 6,000 inhabitants on average, something like 2,500 legal residents, and about 900 voters. Yet we want to vote yes or no about a tax bond this Election Day in the amount of 20 million dollars. Whoa, that's a lot of debt per capita there.

The reason for the bonds is three-fold. One would be to do something on Padre Boulevard, the main drag, although we're not sure what. Another would be to redesign Gulf Boulevard, the street by the ocean of course. And the third would be for a "town square" concept with an old church and maybe a new fire station.

There is no information that I could find on the town website, not anything in the "document center." Not even a notice about upcoming elections in the November Election Day polls, which includes a constitutional amendment for preserving the Texas Open Beaches Act and adopting Home Rule. I still can't find anything about a bond election. What happened? This is big stuff.

According to what I can tell, some bond attorney or consultant said we could safely borrow up to 16 million on the "muni" bond market, and then raised it to 18 and then 20 million dollars. So I guess we're borrowing money just because we can. But what the heck are we going to spend it on? We are paying interest on that money, possibly 3 percent or so, which comes out to ... hundreds of thousands of dollars over 15 years.

The feeling I get is that of the three options to vote for, the Gulf Boulevard option is a lame duck and might fail. It was half-baked, no real plan, and definitely work in progress by a consultant and committee.

The town square idea might pass, but if it does not, we'll have to find a place to build a new fire station with that grant money and "Obama stim." Really, the concept of a town square is pretty stupid, it's just a large, shabby deconsecreated church and parking lot, not something that could become a cool town square like up in New England, or even Georgetown, Texas (a nice one).

Then there's the Big One, Padre Boulevard. I can't figure out what the heck the Aldermen intend to do there. One thing I heard was to replace all the wooden electric poles with concrete ones. Does that sound silly to you too? Maybe there's some big vision with lots of money from Texas Department of Transportation, but I'm clueless here. Yes it's true, we don't even own the roadway and only control slivers of land where the sidewalks are. Amazing. I'd like to see exactly where I'm spending all my money.

Being how it is the third week in September, not too long until November Election Day in the first week, I can only wonder what is going on. In comparison, the last bond elections for the municipal center and birding center were 5 to 7 million each, and widely spaced apart; the taxpayers didn't even have to repay the birding center, which was funded by a local sales tax for the Economic Development Board. May I add that the bond for the muni center became outright war, and there are bad feeling to this very day because of it. So here we have 20 million dollars on the table to be voted up or down ... and there's nothing there.

It's like people want this to fail, or perhaps the bond election is languishing for lack or attention. But I don't understand it. If I can't be convinced, I am behooved to vot "No" because lack of a vote cold mean "Yes." Remember, there are only 900 voters and I suspect only 700 or so will even show up, at best, since there are no local board of aldermen elections.

I have an open mind, so if anybody has a clue please let us know.