An interesting reception with a focus on Texas History

Tonight I went to a large reception honoring longtime friend Ron Tyler, former Executive Director of the Texas State Historical Association and Director of the Amon Carter Museum. Held at a local country club, it was a posh affair with a band, elegant hors d'oevres, and 250 people. I was glad to be there to honor Ron and his wife, Paula, but I don't much enjoy such affairs. I no longer have a need to schmooze with people, reminding them of the good work the press is doing, hoping for a contribution from one or two, congratulating authors, and, always, prowling for manuscripts. How quickly they forget--a couple of authors were there I'd worked with or at least corresponded with, but we didn't speak. I saw no need to introduce myself and was shy about it, which I wouldn't have been when I had a "position" and a reason to be there. Two of my close friends were there, but you can't really visit in a crowd like that, and I, with my challenged hearing, can't hear what the person next to me is saying, let alone the person across the table.
There was a 45-minute program, with too many acknowledgments and introductions, a witty and brief speech from the honoree, and a forceful talk about the importance of Texas history.
The speaker traced our history in terms of battles and heroics--until he got to the cattle drives and the oil industry. It struck me rather like the time I toured Edinburgh, the center of Scotland's intellectual history, one day and Stirling Castle, the site of so much of Scotland's bloody history, the next. I'd seen two sides of Scotland. Tonight I saw one side of Texas' history, though the speaker did praise Texas women at the end. His choices were strange to me: Jane Long, "the mother of Texas," Pamela Mann, who demanded her oxen back from Houston and got them at gunpoint, and another woman who drove 2500 head of cattle up the trail. For contemporary women, he cited Kay Bailey Hutchinson (who was in the room), while I would surely have added Ann Richards and Wendy Davis as examples of the fighting spirit of Texas. Much of it was material I'd studied and written about, and when he mentioned the cowboy, I wanted to stand up and shout that I am teaching a course in the myth of the cowboy right now. But I don't think he believes there's any myth to it. Still, he was a good speaker, and I enjoyed it.
Now I'm glad to be home, Sophie inside, and I'm back at my desk.

A powerful book

Reading Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time is like reading Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee--you keep waiting for the story with a happy ending, but it only gets worse and worse. I thought I knew about the Dust Storms--but my idea was simplistic. I had no idea about the wheat boom that preceded the storms, a boom that caused farmers, some of the suitcase type, to plow up the prairies to plant more and more wheat. When a wheat surplus caused them to stop planting, land lay exposed--and blew away with the winds of a great drought. I didn't know either about the dust pneumonia that killed so many people--and especially children. Dead cows, butchered, were found to have starved to death because their stomachs were full of dirt and couldn't process food. And the story got more and more grim for several years--yes, it finally got better, the storms abated, but the scars remain to this day. And whole towns disappeared, never to rise again. Timothy Egan focuses on a few towns, a few famlies to make the story come alive--and it really does. This is gripping reading, and I recommend it to everyone who lives in the West.
The book also speaks to the current concern for what man is doing to the environment. The Dust Bowl was man-made, proof that man's actions do indeed impact the universe. We ought to take it as a cautionary tale today--that global warming has happened before doesn't mean we can ignore it and go our merry way burning petroleum and increasing hothouse gases. I love the comment by one Congressman (whose name unfortunately I can't remember) that being a conservative doesn't mean you have to appear to be an idiot.
Now, I'm going from one happy note--the Dust Bowl--to another, reading more of The Omnivore's Dilemma which sent me to the range-fed livestock ranch. So far, the taste test isn't proving that a success, but I'll read what the book has to say about "organic" vegetables.
There is really a happier note--beside the fact that it's raining in Texas, at least my part--and that's that Jacob brought his mother for supper last night. At slightly over nine months, he's standing for a few seconds without holding on to anything and walking a good distance if you hold both his hands. He'll be running around before we know it. He is, as always, extraordinarily happy and cheerful. Now he has a new trick that drives his mom wild--he refuses to lie still while his diaper is changed, but twists and turns--and he's strong enough that it's a problem
Jordan and I began to plan a busy spring--Easter and then Jacob's dedicaton at the church on Mother's Day (followed by a luncheon at my house for all involved). And we even began to think about Christmas. Yeah, I plan ahead.