Opus 2026-412: Prophets Hat: The Better Half

I’m thinking that maybe it’s time to put on my prophet hat about the coming election.  I am not a biblical prophet so please do not start finding stones to deal with me if I’m wrong.  The prophet here is tongue in cheek.

My forecast is twofold.  The first is that Paxton will win the Senate seat in Texas.  I have a hard time believing it could come out any other way in spite of all the liberals moving from Los Angeles to Austin.

The second part of my prophecy is that it will be one of the biggest blowouts in history, certainly in a free election.  I’m not including the 100% votes under communism that Stalin and Mao received.  I’m talking about free elections that expect voter ID.  In Texas I am required to present ID to vote.

If it’s anything but an incredible blowout it will simply reinforce the idea that George Carlin gave us that half the people are below average.

I tend to think that Texans are above average on the whole but in any population you’re going to have the lower half.  After all, we do need people to flip burgers, drive Ubers and campaign for Democrats.  The question is what percentage of Texans are total, unredeemable fools. We will know in November.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-409: Election 20-26: Payday

I recently watched a short video and the focus was that Ken Paxton, running for the Senate in Texas, has suddenly received a large donation from some Senate fund.  I think the amount mentioned is $50 million.  The same group of people backed his primary opponent and poured money into the campaign to defeat Paxton.  They’ve been holding out, acting like they weren’t going to support him.  He is not a Rino favorite.

Why the sudden change?

My cynical reasoning is that the rhinos in the Senate finally realized that Paxton could win without their help.  They realized that if they withheld the funds that were available, it would display a partisanship so that when he arrived in the Senate, he would be at the spearhead of defeating their agenda.

Since they believed he was going to win they decided to try and buy him off.  I’m glad he has the funds.  I hope his people use the money wisely.  And my prayer is that he will remain the maverick that he has been in the past.  That he will take the attitudes he has displayed in Texas and begin to advance them at the federal level.

Let’s pray that money does not corrupt always.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-395: New Laws: Tourist Warning

It’s not exactly a new law but I’m thinking that a new sign would be appropriate at least on one of the roads that I drive on regularly.  We have a local attraction and it has a very large entrance that is very well marked, but it requires paying attention and it’s almost invariable that you can tell the person in front of you is a tourist because they are driving so slow you can tell they don’t know where they’re going.  The second indication they are a tourist is that they drive past the exit and just kind of keep on cruising around the corner.  The third indication is when they try to make a U-turn on a blind corner where the speed limit is 60 miles an hour.  So I think we need to maybe put up a sign to warn locals and remind them that there are tourists in the area and to drive accordingly.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-349: Firsts: Debugging

Moving to Texas has been in some ways learning a new way of life.  When I was younger, I read through the western adventures of Louis L’Amour.  I enjoyed them immensely.  Certain pictures stuck in my mind.  One of them was how every morning when a cowboy would get up the first thing he would do, after putting on his hat of course, was to shake his boots so that any bugs or snakes who had taken up residence would be removed or shaken out.  Since moving to Texas, I have adopted this custom.

When we first moved here, I remember having to stomp a couple of centipedes which were five or 6 inches long.  This was in my bedroom.  They were at least long enough to stick out an inch on both sides of my foot and I have a very big foot.  They took a lot of stomping.  In addition to that you have scorpions who make their periodic appearances.  I remember one night I woke up with something crawling on me and somehow managed to slap it to the floor without getting stung and it turned out to be a scorpion.  I have several times found scorpions climbing up the shower curtain in the bathroom.  Such as the richness of living in Texas.

As a part of this, I have begun to shake out my shoes to make sure there are no bugs inside.  This week, for the first time, I actually found a bug that had gotten in.  It was not a scorpion or anything that looked dangerous, but it was a bug.

So now I join all those rugged frontiersmen who experienced the joy of finding bugs in their shoes.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-267: Texas Leadership

This past primary runoff day Texas bit a bullet for the country. We had a runoff between Ken Paxton and Senator John Cornyn.  The Talking Heads like to think that Cornyn had a chance but I’m glad to report that at least for this one time the citizens were paying attention.  Paxton won by over 20%.  Based on what I felt, I thought it was a forgone conclusion, but you never know who’s counting the ballots.

So now the media is moving on and trying to act like Paxton’s rival in the general election has a chance.  He probably has less a chance in the general population than Cornyn had with the Republican base.  The Democrat is a basket case.  The question is will Texans rest on their laurels and figure they’ve done enough or will they keep fighting to bring the country back to its roots.

Now that the primaries are over there’s really not much we can do to improve things.  In two more years when the elections come around we will have another chance to clean out some of the RINOs.  I’m hoping that even though Trump can’t run, he will be very vocal and who you will endorse.

I hope that we have an ongoing statement of don’t mess with Texas.  I would love to extend that to Don’t Mess with US.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-265: The Seasonal Tradeoff

Today, as I write, a glorious morning is developing.  It is one of those days where the entire visible spectrum is evolving in front of my eyes.

At the same time the mosquitoes are feeling their oats.

Is one worth the other?

Decisions. Decisions.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-252: Headlines: Texas Hope

I saw a brief note this morning that Trump had finally made an endorsement in the Texas runoff race for the US Senate between Ken Paxton and John Cornyn.  It is about time.  Early voting started Monday.  He went with Paxton which was the MAGA choice.  

I have lived in Texas about nine years now.  Cornyn has been in the Senate that entire time and I have watched him Rino his way through every issue.  I don’t know that I would say he never did something right but I noticed a pattern of uniparty loyalty.  

Paxton is just the opposite.  I am sure he has made some decisions I would disagree with but I can’t remember what they were.  On the other hand he has been consistently on the side of liberty and rejection of federal heavy handedness.

I think that in the general election Paxton will have no trouble with the basket case the Democrats has nominated.  It will be a Republican replacing a Republican so the states on all the charts will not change but, oh what a difference it will make in how things move forward.  It will be like a reduction for the Democrats of one vote.  The senate might start putting America first again.  Is it too much to hope for?  

Keep the faith, pray without ceasing and make your voice be heard.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-161: Hard Choices

In Texas we have a large number of animals that desire to become roadkill.  They especially love cloudy nights or foggy low spots.  In the daytime, they love to come bouncing out of bushes besides the road and the inevitable eventually happens.  As I cruise in Hill country, I find that I have to make a decision on which is the better course.

On one side, I want to set the cruise control.  That means that I don’t have to keep looking down at the speedometer to see how fast I’m going, and I can concentrate more on the road.  However, that means that there is that moment when I am still accelerating before I can get my foot over to the break.  On the other side, there is greater control when I’m not using the cruise control however, the animals love to take that moment when you’re checking your speedometer to come and stop right in front of you.  It’s a trade-off.

Life is full of very difficult decisions.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-159: Times Are a’ Changin’

I continue to worry about the children of Texas.  My wife got pulled over recently for not driving 20 miles an hour a half a mile away from a school.  You have to plan your trips to make sure that you don’t go by schools around here because with all the parents lined up to pick up their precious children, the school buses having control over the highway, and the speed limits that are absolutely ridiculous it’s hard to get around.  We have one place here where the road goes by a high school and in the middle of the day when children theoretically are all in the classes it’s still set at 20 mph.

I have a theory, which I think I mentioned before, that you can tell the intelligence level of the kids in a neighborhood by the speed limits they post outside their school.  We have a private Christian school that we drive-by on a regular basis the speed limit there is 40 miles an hour all the time and 35 miles an hour when the children are being picked up.  If you going to other towns by public schools and this speed limit again is often 20 miles an hour.  I shutter to think about how I used to walk home from school on a 4 lane road and cross that 4 lane road without crossing guards, flashing lights, signals or anything else like them.  I survived.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-063: Forgotten Blessings

We live in a privileged age and a privileged country. We tend to forget that, and many Americans who have never left the country unsupervised have no idea of how good we have it.

I say unsupervised because there are many people who might travel to other parts of the world in carefully sheltered bubbles designed to give them a false impression.  I think back to the journalists who were taken to the Soviet Union in the early days of communism.  They were taken to the Potemkin villages and thought they were seeing the real Russia when all they were seeing was a carefully constructed movie set.  Many of them returned, writing glowing approval of the Soviet system, totally unaware that reality was more displayed in the Gulag Archipelago than it was in the construct they visited.  You get the same effect when you go on a scheduled tour.

And thinking about our blessings, my mind went back to some of the things that stood out to me when I was on a tour of Vietnam.  It’s always strange what you remember.

I think the memory that comes back to be most often is the absence of the smell of diesel fuel.  It was pervasive in Vietnam.  There was a limit to personal cars, but lots of trucks and all of those trucks ran on diesel fuel.  Not having the dubious benefit of the EPA those trucks spewed out lots of fumes and clouds of black smoke.  But that was only part of the problem.  Today when I smell diesel fuel being burnt in a truck, I think of Vietnam, but what that brings back is the memory of using diesel fuel to burn the grass off of the berms around the camp.  The idea was to make it harder for terrorist to sneak up through the grass and take a pot shot at you.  You smelled it in your barracks.  You smelled it on guard duty.  You smelled it walking across the camp.  It was everywhere, but it is not here.

How about displaying your flag because you want to.  Several times I’ve read about how people from other countries are amazed at how many American flags they see flying from front porches, from businesses, even from car windows.  Americans tend to be patriotic, or at least we used to be.  Flag waving was a part of our life.  You could drive down the street on the Fourth of July and know that something was up because every porch would have a flag waving.  That means that overall we are glad to be living in a country where liberty is still in existence in parts of our lives.

I can load my rifle and not get an Article 15.  One of the totally retarded truths of being on guard duty on the outside edge of an American facility in Vietnam was that you were not allowed to load your weapon.  If you were caught with a loaded weapon, you’ll be written up.  Keep in mind this was a war zone.  It was a place full of hostile enemy out to get you.  That didn’t matter.  Some politician, back in Washington DC, surrounded by security who were armed decided that the soldiers in Vietnam should not be able to shoot back.  In Texas we don’t have that problem.

I remember the taste of the soda that we used to buy at the PX.  It had been sitting in the hold of a ship, on the back of a truck, in the hot sun for possibly months.  That brought a certain taste that was not necessarily fresh.  You couldn’t get away from it.  Well, you might’ve gotten away from it if you wanted to go into town and buy something from the black market that have been stolen from the American army.  It might still be somewhat fresh.  It always amazes me that if we couldn’t get a part to get our jeep going from the motor pool, it was available on the streets of the cities.

One of the great blessings we have that we don’t think about is the fact that we do not have a national ID card.  In many countries of the world, you can be stopped at any point and asked to produce your papers. I f you don’t have them with you you are in trouble.  I remember just checking into a hotel in Europe, I had to turn over my passport.  I remember traveling on trains and being asked to show my passport.  This is the normal procedure in much of the world.  Be careful what you wish for.  Now I can put on my pants and shoes, slip some second amendment into my pocket, and walk out the door without my wallet or any kind of identification and take a walk.  It’s called freedom.

This is one of the liberties we take for granted.  It is under attack by the underground fascists who are trying to make America a Gulag.  The problem of illegal aliens is multifaceted.  This is often overlooked.  People are calling for a national ID.  With that will come the habit of government officials stopping us and asking for ID.  So far we have mostly avoided that.

I intend to enjoy it and be grateful for it as long as possible.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-051: Where’s the Fire?

The euphoria of living in Texas starts to wear very thin when you get caught in the traffic.  I am sure that by this time I have commented on this before but I am in the middle of it again.   Getting past the interstate is almost grounds for returning to California.  Texas does not believe in underpasses that cross the interstate, and they all tend to be on major highways going the other way.  Add to that the fact that we have a very healthy percentage of the population that knows nothing about driving.  Think how I would drive a stagecoach.

Then they have what are called “frontage roads” that only go in one direction and what that means is if you don’t know exactly where to get off or if you miss the spot where you were going to get off you have to drive another mile to find another offramp, sometimes 2 miles, and then when you get off, you have to cross back underneath the interstate and drive a mile back on the one direction frontage road the other side.  If what you missed was on the original side you were on then you have to drive past it a mile, turn around and come back to where you wanted to go.  Not only does this make your trip longer, but it generates a lot more traffic instead of frequent underpasses and two way frontage roads.

Life is hard even in Texas.  I am sure you don’t want to move here.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-582: Different Worlds

I was reading another post and the author threw in a comment about the “lockdown”.  She was writing from Colorado.  That reminded me of a video interview I had recently watched where they made a big deal about the “lockdown”.  They were meeting in Virginia.  I find myself wondering, “What lockdown”?  I live in Texas.

When people bring it up I remind myself I now live in Texas and we tend to react differently here.  The only issue I remember was the inconvenience of having to change my shopping routines in an effort to avoid mask mandates.  I was mostly successful.  I think our church may have shut down for a couple of weeks but I was traveling at the time and didn’t notice much on the road between San Antonio and Yorktown.  Truck stops in Arkansas are not known for their slavish obedience to the Federal government.  I avoid doctors as much as possible and had no brushes with hospitals during the key time.  I remember being extremely irritated but I never felt like I was being isolated from humanity because I am surrounded by rational people who ignored it all as much as possible.

I have friends in California so I understand there are parts to the country that are brain dead.  I still see people who are wearing masks in their car, even in Texas but they usually generate looks of sympathy.  We have a lady in our church who wears a mask on Sunday but it because she is on heavy chemo and her immune system is bonkers.  She would be doing it before Covid.  I personally think that much of the nation ignored the lockdown mandates unless forced to comply by frantic neighbors.  

I can sense the dark forces trying to get us into another panic.  If they go public I think we will see the same pattern except there will be even fewer who will comply.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-667: Roadkill Is Up

I noticed this morning that in the middle of town on a four lane divided roadway there was a dead deer laying on the center divider.  It seems like there’s been a lot of roadkill lately.  I’m not sure why it would seem that way at this point.  Maybe the cold weather dulls their senses.  It could be rutting season.  It could be they heard they are giving out free donuts somewhere.  I don’t know.  All I know is I’m seeing more of these animals that didn’t make it across the road.

What’s really interesting to those of us who are in Texas, and I would imagine it’s that way and other parts of the world, is that many times the roadkill is right in the middle of town.  If you live in a metropolitan area in Southern California or in downtown New York or something like that, you probably would have no idea what I’m talking about, but in our town there are places where you can drive through and you have to constantly be on the lookout because these deer are just wandering around.  They know they can’t be hunted.  They know their lives are sacred.  And so they’re very bold.  What they don’t understand is that the car could kill them too.

So why so much roadkill?  It is one of those great unanswered questions of life.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-536: Blowing in the Wind

As I was sitting this morning in the dark on my porch, rejoicing in the presence of God in his magnificent creation, I noticed something I hadn’t heard in a long time, the approach of the wind.  If you live in the city you may have never actually heard this.  It’s often covered up even by such a quiet sound as a well muffled car driving on a road half a mile away.  It’s the rustling of leaves over a wide front as the air moves majestically through a forest covering.  It is a distinctive sound.  It’s a benevolent sound that embraces us in a sense of rightness in the world.

The place that stands out in my mind before this was a camp site we had in the high Sierras of California.  We had a small half acre lot in the middle of an old homestead that had been developed into half acre lots. We could be up there surrounded by the national forest on 160 acres with only a handful of people sharing that spot with us at the time.  I would take my guitar and a chair and go up where I could look out over the meadow and just sit sometimes and listen.  You could hear the wind approaching through the forest from mountains away.  I could just sit and listen to that for a long time.

The only other place that I can remember experiencing this was on the beach in Hawaii.  We used to own a condo there and in our best year we spent six weeks.  Usually it was only two weeks, but I had a habit of getting up, without an alarm, around 4 o’clock in the morning, making a big jug of coffee and waddling down to the shore where I sat in my folding chair with my guitar, my coffee and my Bible until the sun came up and the flies started biting.  It was also quiet.  There, I could hear the waves gently breaking on the shore and the wind blowing through the palm trees.

It’s good to have a moment in Texas that takes me back and reminds me of the history of blessings that I’ve had in my life. I hope the creator is reaching out to you today.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-401: What Year Is it?

I’m beginning to wonder what the natural cycles of the world are going to deliver this year.  I’m starting to think that this is going to be the Year of the Lizard.  They are everywhere.  It seems in the past you might see one occasionally, but now they just keep popping up everywhere.  And they are fast little boogers.

A couple of years ago we had the Year of the Cicadas.  I think that the explanation was that we had two of the different cycles of different varieties that coincided and so we had this constant barrage of noise coming from all directions.  It was rather awesome.  It never got to me.  Perhaps if it had gone on longer it would happen, but it was an interesting phenomenon.

A few years more back, we had the Year of the Inchworm.  They seem to be hanging from every tree and getting on the garage door so that we had almost a quilt of inch worms and their droppings.  That was irritating.  They were sticky and juicy and omnipresent.

Some years we have a cascade of wildflowers.  We have some every year, but there are occasional years where they just seem to cover everything and be blooming steadily for months.

Anyway, you look at it’s going to be a good year.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-370: Virtual Residency

My wife is still living in California, at least in her head.  She lives here in the house with me, in Texas.  She gets in her car and drives around Texas on a regular basis.  She loves being in Texas.  She thanks God on a regular basis for being in Texas.  She tells me so.

At the same time her mind is still in California.  She seems to think that there is going to be some simple little fix that is going to keep the scorpions from getting in the house.  Good luck with that.  Of course it’s my fault.  I leave doors open, or at least that’s the story.  I don’t fix the door so they can’t crawl under.  I bring in things from outside.  However it happens the scorpions get inside.

And the Texas drivers are a sight to behold.  You behold them if you’re fortunate enough to get out of their way.  They have places to go and people to see.  One would think the revolution had started and they didn’t want to be late.

And then there are the blue cities.

Life is not perfect, even in Texas.  It will never be perfect.  If it were perfect, they would send us back to California.  It’s still good to be here.  I rejoice in it and adjust to what I have to.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-260: Firsts: It’s Alive

One of the great joys of living in Texas hill country is the abundance of wildlife.  Of course that’s not such a good thing when a deer runs out in front of your car but it’s nice when they’re in your yard eating your weeds.  Roadkill is a reality.  Road runners are also around us.

This week I saw my first living armadillo.  Generally, we just see them as dead by the side of the road.  I’ve been here eight years now and this is the first one that I’ve actually seen alive.  I almost didn’t see it.  The car in front of me slammed on his brakes and managed to miss the animal.  That’s one reason I got to see it scampering off to the side.  The second reason is I was alert enough to sit my brakes and not run into the guy that stopped in front of me.

I guess you could call that a double blessing.

homo unius libri 

Opus 2025-259: On the road: Home on the Range

It almost seemed like Texas followed me up to Michigan.  The sun was coming up somewhere.  With the cloud cover I can’t tell which direction is east.  It’s 72° and there’s a nice breeze blowing.  Seems like what I left behind.

There are differences.  Everything is wet here in Michigan.  The grass is everywhere and is very green.  I can look between two houses across the street and see a lake.  Driving here I passed a couple other lakes. Gas costs an arm and a leg.  Of course, if you were coming from California, you might think it was cheap.

Travel broadens.  It shows possibilities.  It shows success and failure.  It reminds of how blessed we are.

Get out and take a trip while you still can.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-053: Experiments in Physics

As I write we are in the middle of a cold spell.  Some people just say, “Texas.”  Others start looking through Revelation, Ezekiel, Daniel, Matthew 24 or any other place where the end of the world is forecast and try to apply their fear to the real world.

Is it cold?  Yes.  Should we panic?  Guffaw.  I am willing to let the faucets drip to keep peace in the family.  It might even be a good idea.  I went on line to see what the “experts” had to say about how cold it needed to be to drip the faucets.  At one end they seemed to be saying 32º.  That is ridiculous even to this California refugee.  At the other end they said 20º which is reasonable if you keep the heat on in the house.  

It is simple physics but what does not make it simple is the location of your pipes, how long it is how cold and how hard the wind is blowing.  As an experiment I left a two liter bottle of water out on the porch all night and put one in the garage.  This morning they were both liquid.  I will leave them because it is supposed to get colder over the next two days.  

So we let it drip.  Better safe than sorry.  In the last cold spell we had a pipe burst in the garage but that was when the high for the day was 18º.

I love central heat.

homo unius libri

Opus 2024-304: The Fall of Texas

It’s that time of year. We don’t know if it will last a day or two, or a week or two. We are pretty sure that it won’t last beyond that but right now the evenings are cool, mornings are comfortable and the days seem to be somewhat reasonable.  That’s today.  I can’t guarantee tomorrow.

Welcome to fall in Texas.  I originally called this spring then realized I was six months off.

homo unius libri