Fire and Smoke

Well, I was all raring to get home from Animefest in Dallas and get to work last week.

Yeah, that didn't happen. Not the work; the getting home. Instead I spent last week in various familial and friend-based emergency accommodations, frantically refreshing the local Weather Underground map and looking to see if my home had burned down.

For those who aren't in Texas and may not have been following the news, or known where to look for it: This is why I had to evacuate. My home is downwind of this:

http://2coolfishing.net/ttmbforum/showthread.php?t=367416

http://www.kutnews.org/post/view-bastrop-fire-space

and of several smaller fires.

My home now is safe, thanks again and always to the incredible work of volunteers fire workers and-frankly- some decent land management from old-timers around here who still know the right way to firebreak their property. I'm settling back in and bustling around tidying up and cringing every time I smell that sweet hit of woodsmoke that usually means barbecue and winter and good times. Right now, it means someone's life is burning.

Meanwhile, I'm ok. I'm unspeakably and undeservedly ok, and my house is ok, and I'm even beginning to think it may stay that way. I may be delayed in my studio work, because I have some housework to catch up on, and that is more than ok; that is fantastic. I have never loved dishes so much.

I'd like to offer some spine-strengthening fire safety tips or something,so people can take action and feel empowered. But in fact there's very little that laughs in the face of human preparedness like a raging wildfire. Always have a go-bag ready, support your local fire department, and if the day comes that news says go, just GO. There's not much else to be done, unless you're a firefighter yourself; and if you are, my most sincere thanks.

No, Seriously. SNOW.

I was going to share a post about TiLT, one of my Etsyblog buddies, today. But instead I opened the door and saw THIS:







And everything was canceled.

Seriously. There is snow on the ground, it's STICKING, and it's already thick enough to cover cat feet. I don't know if I'm excited or terrified, because this is deeply unnatural, but either way: this is what has my full attention, now.

So enjoy your day, and may your weather patterns be less alarming! I will be making emergency cocoa.

Snow? Snow?!? SNOW!

Holy CATS. I was up early, decorating the tree. And then this weird sound came from the outside, and if you're from colder places, you probably know what I'm talking about. But I'm from Central Texas, so I have a thousand words that fail to describe it utterly. And lo, I opened the door, and there it was, like a really gentle hailstorm.

SNOW!

So, like anyone who's lived in Southern Central Texas their whole life long, I lost all my sense and ran out in my total lack of proper clothing to take pictures. I got bunches, actually, but I don't think anything says "We did not expect this" on an environmental level like snow in blooming sunflowers.

So. Uh. Wow. Happy Holidays, with a vengeance!

Carapace Versus the Orange Gourds of Doooom

Time to bust out my ethnocentrism and wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving! Even if you don't live in the US. Happy..um..late November? Or you could join us in eating ourselves sick on big plates of food; it's really one of the easiest holidays to play along with. I'll join in yours!

I mean it. I love the holidays. Any holidays. All Arbor's Day of the Chrimukwanukah Solstivus Eve, whatever you got, I'll take it. Every Thanksgiving I can lay my hands on (did you know the first American Thanksgiving was actually in Texas? No? It's true!), Halloween and Day of the Dead, I don't care. Any excuse for strange foods and rituals is a good one!

But there is an element of the latter-month holidays that fills me with dread, one nasty nigh-inescapable blight on this shiniest of seasons. One nasty ORANGE blight.

See, I'm allergic to orange foods. It's not that I dislike them. I *dislike* canned peas. Canned peas do not make me throw the heck up, or break out in hives, or have trouble breathing. But pumpkin, sweet potatoes, even humble carrots, when cooked...they bring the doom upon me. And most of the year, they are easy to avoid. But today, on this festive holiday occasion, they are everywhere. And so I have learned earlier than most to cook my own holiday dinner, and hold Thanksgiving only with those close companions who have shown an understanding of concepts like "anaphylactic shock" and "next time the mess goes in YOUR shoes".

So today, armed with turkey and pecan pie, I go once more to brave the trials of Family Fun. I'm grateful to be able to go to a fairly safe place; and I'll be even more grateful to return home, if I can sneak by the well meaning relatives and stealth pies once again.

May your Thanksgivings be fun, and less full of danger!

Not Exaggerating Here

Yes, it's fall in my part of Texas, which means I need to have my entire wardrobe, from swimtrunks to longjohns, on call at all times. That little vignette above? That was last week. I had the heater and hot chocolate and iced tea and air conditioning in the same day. It's...invigorating.

So of course it's perfect traveling weather! This weekend I'll be goin' down to Ren-Town, visiting the great big Houston-area Texas Renaissance Festival. It's laughably enormous!I'll try to get ya'll one more post before I go-- but since I think the next weather change on the wheel o' climate is Locusts, no promises.

And to all the new blog followers-- Hi, welcome, afraid that posts sometimes lie skimpy on the ground. And aren't all essays. I like essays, but sometimes a gal's gotta go cartooning.

Hot Dog Time!

There are many things I would not know if not for the internet. Blogging, in particular, has brought me news of a great many things that anyone not desperate for material would find inconsequential to an almost staggering degree. I feel like a newspaper columnist!

For instance, did you know right now we're having some sort of hotdog..awareness...thing? It appears to be true! Now, I have nothing against hotdogs. I do not hold with the baffling snobbery that says it's great to eat the ass-end of a pig, but not the lips. And since I can actually read an ingredients list, I know that most hotdogs contain exactly what an average pork meal would anyway, i.e., pigmeat, spices, maybe a little starchy binder. The Jungle was a long time ago, folks, we get meat in our meat these days. At least in America.

In fact, hotdogs were an essential part of my path to culinary maturity. Tis true! Hotdogs, you see, are safe to trust to a young child who might not have entirely grasped the concept of heat-based hygiene yet. While most people eat them straight or on a bun, I was taught the wide legacy of hot-dog based white trash foods, like beans-n-wieners, hot dog pasta, and the never-again-to-be-spoken-of hot dog salad. Hot dogs broadened my horizons and kept me off the streets.

Yes, there are those who sneer at hot dogs--even those who would ban them-- because they're a cheap and commonly popular protein source, and we can't have that. But to heck with them--when they've eliminated the evils of school-lunch "salisbury steak", then perhaps we can talk. Until then, step away from the dogs. For without hot dogs, what would we eat at spectator sporting events? What could we grill on a moment's notice on sweltering hot summer days? What would be embedded in Jello Salad in old cookbooks, causing us all to have momentary but severe concerns about the existence of just and loving gods?

And most importantly, without hotdogs, how could the Texas State Fair have been the birthplace of that most perfect stick-food, the corndog? Answer: it couldn't. And then the Texas State Fair would not be maniacally devoted to promoting fried madness. And we would probably have had to cede the most lunatic food competition to Minnesota or some forsaken land where "lutefisk" is a concept. As it is, we can claim to deep fry Coke, so we're at least in the running. Thanks, hot dogs!

In Honor of Things that Should Be Honored

"When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.

When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.

When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.

When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.

Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind....."

I like that intro. I like it a whole great bunch. It's not quoted the way the the preamble to the American Declaration of Independence is, but it's got some great lines.

That, up there, is the opening to the Texas Declaration of Independence. The American revolution tends to be taught with an emphasis on the words and ideals of the patriots, and rightly so. For all the cost and drama of the combat, it was a war of ideals.

The Texas revolution? Well, it was a war of..well, battles. It was a gloriously stupid revolution. Yeah, I said stupid. The American revolt had been being planned for years by the time of the Declaration; there was a Congress ready to act (or at least debate acting) a serious start at a militia, all kinds of underlying social ideas. From "liberty and property" to "We hold these truths to be self evident", that was a revolution with some underpinnings.

You know the first Texan battle cry? The one on a flag that still hangs in a town not a full hour's drive from me?

"Come and Take It".

"It" was a cannon, and if you don't know the entire story, well, as Mark Trail says,more information can be found on the internet. But anyway. That was it; that was flag of the Revolution. A little black cannony silhouette, and "Come and Take It".

Now I think this is an awesome battle cry, right up there with such classics as "Yeah You Better Run!" and "So's Your Old Man!". And it would prove to be exactly the sort of rallying cry that inspired Texans to take up arms (other things that inspired Texans to take up arms: votes, not voting, slavery, whiskey, cattle, pigs, land rights, water rights, rights on red, proximity to things that can be punched, and the everlasting ideal that Hey There's Something Over There). But honest and clear as it is, it's not the sort of motto a new country can use to convince other countries that it's a real going concern. So the leaders of the --well, see, that' the problem right there, what exactly is this place? A nation? A state? A republic? Let's go with Republic--sat down and wrote out a proper declaration, overnight, while Santa Anna was hilariously throwing his entire giant army against a tiny insignificant barely manned fort.

And later they wrote the Constitution , a document so vital that even today, after multiple revisions and another two whole governing entities, it underlies much of the business of state government. By which I mean it's the size of a phonebook and we've been trying to rewrite it for over a hundred years.

For those who don't know-- and hey, if you aren't from here, no reason you should-- this is the anniversary of the signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence. If I've given you the impression in this article that the Texas Revolution was completely ludicrous--that a proper history of my state reads like a bad novel written by someone who knows nothing about how history works--well, that's about right. Really, this is an impossible state with improbable history and wonderful unreasonable people. I could never love another place half so much; I could never be happy living anywhere else.

So today I lift a hot bowl of bean-free chili in honor of the scribe who, in the finest tradition of academia, wrote his essay the night before it was due. Happy Independence Day, ya'll!

Go, Team Etsy!

That's Team Etsy Texas, for those who don't know (have I mentioned I'm Texan? What? Not in the last ten minutes? Scandalous!)

Every monthish, Etsy TX has a nifty design challenge. For this month, it was either back to school (which I ain't touchin' wiht a ten foot horse-killing compass needle) or decorations for the home of Our Fearless Leader, Thistlecraft. You've seen my work, you can guess how that went:



Go look at it! Tell me what I can do with five views on one wee painting.

But I pulled my act together and made something non-fay, too.


And I'm not the only one who got inspired. Go check it out!