Well, I have to go South about 135 miles to get to Houston. Here in the Piney Woods, its 100+ foot pine trees.

After what they went through a week or so ago, I have great sympathy for the people of Texas. They really suffered during the snow/ice storms and doing without power doesn't seem too much fun, either. Must be hardy people.

If I were forced to live in Texas, I'd prefer El Paso and the Trans-Pecos. I hate heat, but I hate humidity-with-heat more.

I am used to humidity since East TN is horribly humid in the summer. I also dislike winter so I can put up with the humidity for the heat. I just crank up the air conditioning.

There is considerable wealth in Texas and they have some superb pipe organs that make me envious. I could put up with many things to have access to those fine instruments.

Yes, Charles - there are many fine organs in Texas, and many of them, the work of the finest builders, are in Houston. If it weren't for its organs, its symphony, ballet, and theatre, and quite a number of chamber and early music groups (not to mention Walsingham), there would be no conceivable reason to live here and suffer through this climate. But then, there are as many cultural amenities to be found elsewhere.

@bhcordova

Agreed. I live in College Station, mid-way (more or less) between Houston and the Piney Woods.

Interesting. all our forum members here in Texas, College Station in particular.
Fr James T Moore, the founding pastor of Walsingham, was the chaplain of the Canterbury Club (the Episcopal campus ministry) at Texas A&M back in the seventies. It was in the late seventies and early eighties that we formed OLW as a 'parish in waiting' for John Paul II's blessing of an 'Anglican Use' under his 'Pastoral Provision'. Hardly anyone other than myself believed from the start that we would grow eventually to have our own bishop of what became the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter.

^^^^

LIAM -
I'm sure it's lovely.
Are you surrounded by, or have nearby, a mountainous topography with lush green forests that turn gold in autumn, and a few pebble-strew rivers, streams or lakes here and there. I know that you get at least some snow every year. If this is accurate, you live in a paradise. Since you live on the coast so you go sailing out from a rocky or bouldery beach/

I'm envious.
A real civilisation - with deep roots, yet!
What glory to be surrounded by 499 year old architecture.
In Houston, 'old' is fifty years - if it lasts that long.

Point granted and applauded, Elmar.

I've always thought it curious that we over here build monuments in Washington to the German Holocaust. Well, nothing really wrong with that. But we do no build memorials to our own Holocaust and savagery to the Amerind. The Gauchos in Argentina even used to go on hunting parties, hunting Indians, that is, and seeing how many they could kill.

Too, I was particularly offended during the Falkland's War back in the eighties, when Britain retook the islands form the Argentines who had invaded them.
It wasn't as if these islands hadn't been British for near 300 years now Yet the Argentines screamed 'colonialism', seeking help from around the globe. This was odd, to say the least, because the Argentines themselves are Spanish colonists and have a very large German contingent. Everyone on these continents who is White, Yello, Bronze, Brown, etc. is a colonist, mostly European colonists, but also oriental, Indian, and others from around the world, including some modern Africans, is a colonost. Otherwise, it maight be put that the only people here who aren't colonists are the Amerind and the Blacks. What an absurd joke it is for anyone over here to cry 'colonialism'!

China nowadays regularly puts a finger in the eye of 'The West' by yelling 'colonialism' over this or that. Well, my friends, the world may be about to find out that there never has been colonialism like that which China is about to unleash upon the world. How they muzzle their own people and what they do to Tibet, the Uyghurs, other ethnic minorities should be a lesson that China is no benign power and will impose itself on the rest of the world at its earliest opportunity. China today is the living fulfillment of George Orwell's 1984. And it will do that to any and everyone on the planet that it can get its hands on.
These are really very nasty and disrespectful people. Do you know of any other sovereign nation who presumes to tell other sovereign nations who they can and cannot entertain at state or non-state level. It is an outrage that we don't host the Dalai Lama and others because the Chinese would be displeased. So let them be displeased.

Money, money, money is the only reason we keep coddling them. Our mega-corporations are making billions if not trillion a week there, so please don't upset the apple cart - we wouldn't at all costs want to make China mad and lose money. At a recent turnover at a UN agency the German's tenure was ending, to be replaced by someone else. Here is how diplomatic the Chinese are - as the German diplomat left the Chinese 'diplomat' stood up and shouted 'good riddance'. They are really mean, and they mean to be. It's their way or not at all.

Several years ago at an evensong at Walsingham I met a young oriental priest. We spoke for a few moments and I made the cheery observation 'oh, you must be from Taiwan'. Within the blink of an eye and to my astonishment and fury he said with a cute smile, 'no, I'm from the mainland', as if to assert that Taiwan wasn't Taiwan. I could have pinched his impudent head off.

A plague on all their houses. Only the strong survive - I remember a song by that title. The strongest do survive and win the day if their technology is superior and more advanced. Toughen up, buttercups. It's the real world.

Success has never been measured by morality, at least where political entities are concerned. All the great civilizations grew strong, then weaker, and eventually someone stronger arrived and conquered them. In this hemisphere, however, more natives died as a result of smallpox and measles brought by the Europeans than were ever killed by direct action. We forget, I suppose because we don't live in agricultural societies, that disease and drought weakened many civilizations including even Rome.

to my astonishment and fury he said with a cute smile, 'no, I'm from the mainland', as if to assert that Taiwan wasn't Taiwan.

Having been treated abroad 'as if' I represented the US government's policies, I wonder if he wasn't a bit astonished himself.

Ha! Charles - they not only sacrificed them but dined on them afterwards. In their constant warfare with other tribes the Aztec's purpose was not to kill the enemy, but to disable as many as they could, taking them back home in order to sacrifice them. It is said that, invaded by the Spanish, the Aztecs in desperation sacrificed thousands of people a day.

smallpox and measles

And people strangely refer to that as genocide. As though these people had the wherewithal to think, "let's bring along those with the most prevalent viral cases, just in case we meet with someone whom we can infect. Bwahaha!"

I'm sure a good number of "colonists" also got sick and died from this new interaction.

This discussion and its claim that only some are allowed to be called oppressors and only some are allowed to be seen as oppressed is old and tired.

The only people still attempting to commit genocide are the ones who set up their own little chop shops in low-income neighborhoods and deceive those therein into believing that the only way to free themselves from those racist, proverbial chains is by ridding themselves of their own offspring and possibility of parenthood.

Ah, this all started out with Mr Cordova wishing us a happy Texas independence day (which I call Texas theft day and don't at all view the stand at the Alamo as heroic, but the preposterous defiance of lawful authority).

At any rate, we have gone quite astray.. So this day, today, doesn't have a feast or a saint on it on my Ordinariate kalendar, but I notice that the approaching Monday is reserved for St John of God, religious. What does anyone know about him?

And, Charles - Psalm XCV is a good one, but even better as far as heathen gods go, is Psalm CXXXV, Laudate nomen Domini, the second half, which has it that
As for the images of the heathen they are but silver and gold, the work of men's hands.
They have mouths and speak not * eyes have they but they see not.
They have ears and hear not * neither is there any breath in their mouths.
They that make them are like unto them * and so are all they that put their trust in them.

As much, of course, could be said for all the things of our world after which we vainly crave, be it clothes, houses, cars, computers, fine food (my weakness), the de riguer this and that, or any of the other things that we must have to be content - but never are.