Texas live oak trees as you’ve probably never seen them

 

A year ago today we drove over to Johnson City, about an hour west of Austin, to check out the holiday lights that adorn the town each year from December through the first week in January. One center of illumination is the county courthouse. The other main one is the Pedernales Electric Cooperative, which bedecks its Texas live oaks, Quercus fusiformis, with a gazillion small lights. (That raises the profound question of whether a gazillion and a gajillion and a bazillion are larger than a mere zillion, and of how a gajillion and a gazillion and a bazillion compare to one other.)

 

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The U.S. southern border saw its highest rate of illegal migrant encounters last month, blowing away previous statistics.

Sources with Customs and Border Patrol told Fox News Digital that migrant encounters hit a staggering 300,000 incidents in the last month of 2023, reaching a level thought unimaginable just years ago.

Between Dec. 1 and December 31, more than 302,000 migrants were documented attempting to cross the U.S. southern border. 

It is the highest total for a single month ever recorded. It is also the first time migrant encounters have exceeded 300,000.

 

To give you a sense of how big that one-month number is, it’s about the same as the entire population of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It’s larger than the entire population of St. Louis, Missouri; or of Durham, North Carolina; or of Lincoln, Nebraska; or of Reno, Nevada; or of Chula Vista California; or of Buffalo, New York; or of Norfolk, Virginia. And our government allowed those 302 thousand people to cross our border illegally in just one month.

 

You can read the full story about the unchecked flood of illegal immigration.

 

 

 © 2024 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Two takes on a skeleton plant

 

From July 10th along US 290 a few miles south of Johnson City come this backlit take on Lygodesmia texana, known as the Texas skeleton plant because its stalks are almost leafless. The flower head was whiter than usual and had one damaged ray floret. The view below shows you what a seed head in this species looks like.

 

 

The resemblance to chicory and the common dandelion confirms that the skeleton plant is a native relative of those two Eurasian species. All are in the Cichorieae “tribe” within the vast sunflower family (just as botanists belong to the cram-as-many-consecutive-vowels-into-a-scientific-term-as-you-can tribe).

 

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In contrast to the accusatory, non-equal-treatment indoctrination taking place in some American schools, as described yesterday, consider the fairness of the education guidelines the Florida legislature has enacted into state law. Regarding the teaching of African American history, for example:

 

• The Legislature acknowledges the fundamental truth that all persons are equal before the law and have inalienable rights. Accordingly, instruction and supporting materials on the topics enumerated in this section must be consistent with the following principles of individual freedom:
  • No person is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex.
  • No race is inherently superior to another race.
  • No person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, disability, or sex.
  • Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are not racist but fundamental to the right to pursue happiness and be rewarded for industry.
  • A person, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.
  • A person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions, in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.

 

For years now there’s been a trope among some ideologues that certain deplorable Americans don’t want schools to teach about slavery. If there are any people who don’t want our schools to teach about slavery—and I’ve yet to have anyone point out a single example to me—the Florida legislature isn’t among them:  

 

• The following is in the required [emphasis mine] instruction statute, s. 1003.42(2)(f), F.S.
  • The history of the United States, including the period of discovery, early colonies, the War for Independence, the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the world wars, and the civil rights movement to the present. American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed, shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable, and shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based largely on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.
• The following is in the required [emphasis mine] instruction statute, s. 1003.42(2)(h), F.S.
  • The history of African Americans, including:
    • the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery;
    • the passage to America;
    • the enslavement experience;
    • abolition; and
    • the history and contributions of Americans of the African diaspora to society.

 

“Ah,” some might say, “that sounds pretty general and might not mean much in practice.” Well, Florida has posted a document with grade-by-grade specifics. Pages 3–21 are about the African American experience, with pages 5–15 delving into slavery in great detail.

Nevertheless, and in spite of all this evidence, racialists are claiming that Florida’s African American history curriculum is a whitewash. For example, a few days ago I saw a partisan on MSNBC glibly say that the people in charge of education in Florida don’t want to teach about Rosa Parks. It so happens Rosa Parks is mentioned on page 4 of the above document. Either the partisan hadn’t done his research—in which case he shouldn’t have made the claim—or he was deliberately saying something untrue for political purposes.

The latest brouhaha arose over a single sentence among the many in the Florida standards: “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Ideologues, including our country’s vice president, have taken that statement of historical fact and distorted it into the blanket claim that slavery was beneficial to slaves. On July 24th the Washington Free Beacon ran an article about this, the first two paragraphs of which are:

 

Vice President Kamala Harris’s claim that Florida’s new education standards whitewash slavery is “categorically false,” Florida Board of Education adviser William B. Allen said in an unaired ABC News interview.

Allen, a Michigan State University emeritus professor who is black, told ABC that the standards “never said that slavery was beneficial to Africans,” as Harris claimed. “What was said, and anyone who reads this will see this with clarity, [is that] Africans … were able to develop skills and aptitudes which served to their benefit, both while enslaved and after enslavement.”

 

You’re also welcome to watch a July 25th interview with Dr. Allen in which he explains in much more detail why the charges of a whitewash are a sham (and shameful, I would add). You can use the timeline at the bottom of the video to jump ahead to 3:20, where the segment begins; it ends at 21:35, and is therefore about 18 minutes long. One thing that endears Dr. Allen to language-loving me is his observation that even the grammar of the statement in question precludes the spin ideologues are trying to put on it.

 

© 2023 Steven Schwartzman