Here is a photo I took a few hours ago at the water’s edge in Galveston, Texas. 

Very primordial.

You say that this blog and that many things as well began at the water’s edge.

At The Water’s Edge is a well-reviewed book by Carl Zimmer about—among other topics—sea creatures first walking on land.

Life–A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth by Richard Fortey is a very good book.

Prehistoric Life–A Definitive Visual History of Life On Earth by DK Publishing is enjoyable.

Things we see each day in life can spur us to think of the big picture. And of the fact that we all have a place in the big picture.

Here is a home decorated for Valentine’s Day that I saw a few hours ago in Galveston,Texas.

I thought this was friendly.

Here is a history of Valentine’s Day.

With more and more states allowing gay marriage, Valentine’s Day 2012 will be extra happy for folks able to live as they wish in a tough world.

Last night I saw the movie Contraband.

This movie was about people smuggling stuff aboard big ships.

Here is my review of this movie—

“Contraband was enjoyable. There was plenty of action and many interesting pictures of ships and of Panama City, Panama.”  

This covers my thoughts about Contraband.

Here are some facts on what it is like to visit Panama.

Last week I saw The Artist.

There were many more people in the theater to see Contraband than there were to see The Artist.

The Artist was quite enjoyable as well. It was a black-and-white mostly silent movie about the film industry back in black-and-white, silent film days.

Go see The Artist so that the big megaplexs will still show such type movies along with action-packed movies about people smuggling stuff on big ships.

Above is a picture I took in Galveston, Texas a few hours ago of ships passing in the day. These are the type of ships that were in Contraband.

This is because art echoes life.

Or is it the other way around?

Often I post some additional Texas related political or historical material with the round-up. However, I’m going to go to Galveston instead later this morning so that I can take walk along the sunny shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Galveston, Texas is always a great place to visit.

In terms of the round up–It serves as a reminder that every Texan and every American has the ability to attend a public meeting, attend or organize a protest, write or call an elected official, talk to friends and family, start a blog, donate money, write a letter to the editor, volunteer for candidates and causes, engage in acts of civil disobedience, and to run for public office.

The work of freedom is up to each of us.

Here is the round-up—

The big story last week was the SCOTUS ruling on interim redistricting maps. Off the Kuff has an initial look.

It turns out that PDiddie and Paula Deen have more in common than just their initials; there’s also a morality tale involved. Read “Paula Deen, diabetes, and Novo Nordisk” atBrains and Eggs.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme is tired of the media ignoring grossly untrue, inflammatory, and just plain disgusting things Republicans like Rick Perry say.

Perry’s run for the presidency is over! WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on it here:Good riddance for now; Perry drops out.

This was a big week of action culminating in the defeat (for the time being) of SOPA, including January 18 when many sites blacked themselves out. Darth Politico refused to go dark, and instead went dork – with a snark/irony blog supporting SOPA (or “Why Death Stars are a good thing”).

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw mourns for Texas in “Poor Texas: Forrest Homer Simpson is Coming Back”. An eloquent requiem for a candidate who brought untold levels of derision to our state when he revealed how truly shallow and narcissistic he is. Give it a read!

Neil at Texas Liberal wrote this week abour how Houston school board member Manuel Rodriguez got away with using anti-gay campaign materials in his recent re-election victory. Everyday citizens, civil rights groups and the Houston GLBT political caucus all gave Mr. Rodriguez a free pass despite his hateful words.

In bright sunshine, objects are all under the same light while also standing quite distinctly from one another.

Since metaphor gives form to solid things, this may be the case solely to show that we can acknowledge what we hold in common while existing quite clearly on our own.

To hell with all that rugged individualist propaganda we are fed to help make the powerful even more powerful.

As shown by no less an example than the skyline of the big sunbelt city of Houston, Texas, no conflict exists between being part of  something larger and being our own person.

Photo copyright 2012 Neil Aquino 

C-SPAN has a full archive of all its programming over the years.

One thing I find of value at the C-SPAN site is the Booknotes page. Booknotes was a weekly interview program that ran each week for a number of years.

The most recent interview I listened to was one from 1989 with Colonel David Hackworth. Colonel Hackworth was a decorated solider from Korea and Vietnam who came to oppose war and much about how the Army operated. This is programming you can listen to on your home computer while you are getting other stuff done.

Here is a Colonel Hackworth’s obituary from 2005. 

An interview on Booknotes I found of interest was one from 1998 of Iris Chang who wrote The Rape of Nanking–The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. This book is about the Japanese occupation of China. Here is an obituary of Iris Chang 

If you look on the top left on this link, you’ll find access to a full list of old C-SPAN series and programs about a great number of topics. There is a great deal of interest here on a wide variety of topics relating to American history and American authors.

Another great resource is the website of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

While there is a great deal of interest at this site, it is the new American wing that most holds my attention.

Here is a New York Times tour of some of the exhibits in the American wing.

You can look at and read a bit about every piece of art in each gallery of the American wing. You can do this for the art in the other galleries of the museum as well.

This works on a mobile device as well if you look it up that way.

Each work also has a link to its place the very good Heillbrunn Timeline of Art History.

This art is an insight to the political, cultural and personal lives of Americans.

If these resources don’t sail your ship, find something that does.

Everybody has the capacity to understand complex things. The resources are out there to learn all sorts of stuff.

Empowered with what we learn, we all have the ability to put forth our views and to act. Progress is up to each of us.

(Below–Enoch Wood Perry‘s Talking It Over from 1872.)

The United States Department of Agriculture has updated the map it issues to help gardeners across the nation determine what they can plant.

Because the nation is getting warmer, people are now able to plant various flowers and trees in parts of the country that before would have not been hospitable to such a wide range of plantings.

Above you see the map. Here is the link to the USDA site that has facts on how to use the map, and also has specific information for each of the states.

The Chicago Sun-Times has a story about how this warming is being acknowledged in the ways everyday people are planting their gardens.

From this story—-

“Vaughn Speer, an 87-year-old master gardener in Ames, Iowa, said he has seen redbud trees, one of the earliest blooming trees, a little farther north in recent years. “They always said redbuds don’t go beyond U.S. Highway 30,” he said, “but I’m seeing them near Roland,” 10 miles to the north….“It is great that the federal government is catching up with what the plants themselves have known for years now: The globe is warming and it is greatly influencing plants (and animals),” Stanford University biology professor Terry Root wrote in an email.”

Do folks who think global warming is a scam believe that these map changes are a government plot? Is it better to deny even the prospect of warming than to at least admit the possibility, and to prepare for what might be on the way?

Here is a synopsis of current warming facts from the co-conspirators at the New York Times.

Folks on the right can go on creating an alternate reality about just about everything. I’m certain that press bashing will by itself change the facts in just the same way the idea that the rain will follow the plow made arid places wet.

(Below–The Eastern Redbud Tree. You might be seeing more of them in Iowa before long.)

I just watched the State of the Union address.

Here is a brief history of the State of the Union address from the website of the U.S. House of Representatives.

(Above–1963 State of the Union. President Kennedy is addressing Congress. Behind Mr. Kennedy is Vice President Lyndon Johnson on the left and House Speaker John McCormack on the right. The Miller Center at the University of Virgina is a great non-ideological resource to learn about all the Presidents from Washington to Obama.)

Anything I write on the topic will be stale by tomorrow afternoon and I want to go watch Elizabeth Warren on The Daily Show. I suppose I can go as far to say that the speech was effective enough as the President seeks reelection and that the most wealthy should indeed pay a fair share of the taxes.

We should also recall that President Obama has raised a lot of money and that he has obligations to his large contributors. It is wishful thinking that the President is a socialist.

Here is a story on the speech from the New York Times.

Here is a transcript of the speech. 

Here is a take on the speech from the great liberal magazine The Nation. 

As a matter of general principle–Here is Occupy Wall Street.

Learn your history, keep up with the present, get involved in whatever way suits your life, take responsibility for the future of our nation and the world, and please forgive my preaching in this run-on sentence.

WHAT: Over 120 Representatives from 25 states and 52 organizations will meet in Houston this weekend to plan strategies to advance a single payer national health insurance plan in the USA. The best health care system plan for accessible, cost-effective, equitable and high quality health care is expanded and improved “Medicare for All”. Workshops and topics include:

*economic impact of the PPACA legislation, funding and affordability, the individual mandate, challenging electoral candidates to press forward for single payer during the election year

* defending attacks on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security

* health care inequities; exposing pharmaceutical and insurance industry corruption of government

* state plans for universal health care coverage

* building coalitions with faith-communities, professionals, peace, justice, consumer rights and labor groups

* shareholder “divestment” campaign from profit-making insurance companies

* connecting to the Occupy Wall Street movement and occupying the health care debate

* lessons from the southern states and the civil rights movement to achieve health care as a civil right

WHEN: Saturday, January 28, 2012 2pm-9pm and Sunday, January 29, 9:00am-5:00pm

WHERE: Hilton Hobby Hotel, 8181 Airport Blvd, Houston

Agenda here (.pdf). Conference info: http://www.healthcare-now.org/campaigns/strat-conf/ Co-sponsor host: Health Care for All Texaswww.healthcareforalltexas.org

WHO: Senior leaders from national and regional coalitions, academic, medical care, health policy analysts, movie producers, videographers, writers and activists. Speakers available for interview include:

• Dr. Claudia Fegan, Chief Medical Officer, Ambulatory & Community Health Network, Cook County
• Dr. Walter Tsou, past president, American Public Health Association; Physicians for a National Health Program
• Michael Lighty, Director of Public Policy, National Nurses United
• Mark Dudzic, Labor Campaign for Single Payer Health
• Dr. Margaret Flowers, Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care
• Dr. Jerry Frankel, Physicians for a National Health Program (Texas) www.pnhp.org
• Donna Smith, (“Sicko”) American Patients United; California Nurses Association
• Tim Carpenter, Nat’l Director, Progressive Democrats of America
• Catherine Tactaquin, Executive Director, Nat’l Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights
• Dr. Margaret Nosek, Executive Director, Center for Research on Women with Disabilities
• John Lozier, Nat’l Health Care for the Homeless Council
• Katie Robbins, Healthcare for the 99% -OccupyWallStreet-NY
• Laurie Simons & Terry Sterrenberg, producers, The Healthcare Movie http://healthcaremovie.net/

Contact: Colleen O’Brien, media representative, Health Care for All TX -Houston, www.hcfat.org

281-660-9765, cobrien1ster@yahoo.com, or Cathy Courtney, HealthcareNOW Conference Planning Committee -Houston 832-677-6766, houstonc3courtney@gmail.com

I watched the Republican debate this evening.

It was a very bad program—Lousy characters and an awful script.

I realize it was a poor use of my time to watch this debate.

Though this poor decision making on my part would only matter if folks trusted the judgment of bloggers in any case.

I’m hesitant to use my blog to attack these Republican candidates each day, as they are interchangeable with a thousand other race baiting, health care destroying, job killing, fear mongering politicians who could be up on that stage instead. There are so many more hopeful things in life to discuss.

The debate was like a game show where the contestants answer each question in the form of a hate speech.

The most important thing about Santourm, Romney, Gingrich & Paul is that they are up there, and they are saying for all to hear who they are and what they are about.

At that point it is up to each of us to make sure that one of these folks does not become President.

More significantly, it is up to each of us to help create a nation where people like these are not viable candidates for the highest office in the land.

The work of freedom and a more hopeful nation is up to each of us. The point of these Republican debates is to spur good people to action.

There they are up on the stage spewing hate and talking about making the rich richer.

What are you going to do about it?

I recently saw this old Dodge Swinger here in Houston.

Here is a Dodge Swinger commercial from 1971. 

This car remined me of the two Dodge Darts my family drove in the 1970′s.

The Swinger was apparently the Dart in most respects, with the exception of the fact that the Swinger was a two door car.

I looked inside the car, and the dash and radio were of the same design I recall from the Darts.

I looked at this car for a number of minutes and it brought back a number of personal memories.

It is interesting how an object can bring back the past.

Everyday objects often have a meaning beyond their acknowledged purpose.

Sojourner Truth said –“I sell the shadow to support the substance” 

Arguments can be made in which symbolism is employed, and day-to-day life can offer us a chance encounter with thoughts of one kind or another.

Everything is almost always something else as well.

Dodge is bringing back the Dart  for 2013 after many years of not making the car. I don’t find that very interesting. This new Dart will come without memories as an accessory.

A great book to learn about automobiles is Car–The Definitive Visual History of the Automobile.

My favorite television show is the Disney Channel cartoon Phineas & Ferb.

The show is intelligently written, the characters are kind, and a big theme of the show is that we are each responsible to get out and do something each day.

Yet this message of sieze the day is conveyed in a humane way and not with Ron Paul meanness and vindictiveness.

One of the main chacters in this show is Perry the Platypus. Perry is a family pet and also a secret agent.

Here are facts about the platypus.

I was out and about in Houston a few weeks ago and saw the Perry the Platypus graffiti that you see above. The water below the picture is Buffalo Bayou.

Here is some history of American graffiti. 

You see that Perry is holding a sign encouraging people to recycle. Here is a history of the recycling symbol. 

One of the best things you can do when you seize the day is to be of benefit to others.

Checking out the Occupy Wall Street website would be a good start to taking action on your own and being of service to others.

Here is  the weekly posting of the  Texas Progressive Alliance round-up. The TPA is a confederation of the best political bloggers in Texas.  TPA members are citizen-bloggers working for a better Texas.

It’s been a mixed week for freedom-loving Texans. The menacing prospect of Rick Perry winning the Republican nomination is gone. Yet now Rick Perry will be back in Texas with plenty of free time to do harm. There is rarely any hopeful scenario when Rick Perry is involved. At least though we have the satisfaction of having witnessed Mr. Perry’s terrible Presidential campaign.

In any case, Mr. Perry is back and he is still Governor. You can enjoy a brief laugh at his expense as you get back to the work of mitigating the evil Governor Perry will surely attempt  now that he is back in Austin. The moment you think you are smarter than your foes is the moment they get the best of you.

(Above–Governor Perry at the 2011 Iowa State Fair. This did not turn out to be time well spent. Photot by IowaPolitics.com)  

Every Texan and every American has the ability to attend a public meeting, attend or organize a protest, write or call an elected official, talk to friends and family, start a blog, donate money, write a letter to the editor, volunteer for candidates and causes, engage in acts of civil disobedience, and to run for public office.

The work of freedom is up to each of us.

Here is the round-up–

Off the Kuff takes a look at Democratic primary races as they now stand in Harris County and elsewhere in Texas.

Refinish69 at Doing My Part for the Left thinks sometimes you just have to say “What the Hell?”

Bay Area Houston says it is time for a Joe Driver law.

CouldBeTrue at South Texas Chisme wants you to know that Vermin Supreme almost beat Rick Perry in Vermont.

The Texas Tea Party had a rally and a straw poll in Houston, a few rich white bigots showed up, and Rick Perry got his ass whipped again. In other words, as PDiddie at Brains and Eggs observes, nothing has really changed for the TeaBaggers.

At TexasKaos, Libby Shaw gets us up to date on who is calling who a vulture capitialist, (or Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle. See her piece: Vulture Capitalist Supporters Perry, Gingrich Demonize Vulture Capitalism.

It’s been a little quiet on the issue of transportation funding lately, but that’s changed. WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the latest polling nonsense about how to pay for new roads, in Here we go again.

Neil at Texas Liberal offered the 5th annual posting of his Martin Luther King reading & reference list. There are 3 new additions for 2012. This list is the best starting point to learn about M.L.K. to be found on the web.

I count 79 people in this lecture hall. That is a pretty good crowd for a discussion of corporate personhood on a Friday night in Texas.

Day-by-day the Occupy Wall Street movement is showing it is around for the long haul. Day-by-day people are are waking up and fighting back.

The bottom line is that there are many who share the concern that big money is running this nation, and there are many who realize that they can act to take back power for everyday Americans.

Here is Move to Amend.

Here is Occupy Wall Street.

I took this picture in Houston a few days ago.

The sign says ”Proposed Tower Site.”

Yet there is already a tower at that site.

Ha!

Decsions people make and the hard work we do can make a big difference.

Yet sometimes in life stuff is already a done deal.

Here are some facts about cell phone towers.