Really enjoy your travel journal. Oh that decision on where to settle next. California and Texas do have one thing in common; both states are damn near impossible to govern, and have screwball politics.

"There are two types of folk music:
quiet folk music and loud folk music.
I play both."

Dave Alvin

I assume you're speaking here of its anglo whites. But while Texas politics is dominated by anglo white males, Texas is more than that. Texas is the only place where Mexican immigrants actually spoke to me about their OPINIONS. I was just a casual visitor there, not very outgoing and not knowing a word of Spanish.

Elsewhere in the USA there are Mexicans... they have strongholds in certain towns, you see them on the bus, etc, but I don't speak with them, don't know any of them as individuals, and don't know anything about them. They mostly stay behind an invisible cultural barrier. It's not that I couldn't cross this barrier if I made the effort. But in Texas that barrier seemed nonexistant, there's an openness.

We talked about my camera, about which parts of Texas they liked (the lower Rio Grande Valley), even about the USA presidential election.

then Mexico will get it back.

Wikipedia:

One of the motivations for annexation was that the Texas government had incurred huge debts which the United States agreed to assume upon annexation. In 1852, in return for this assumption of debt, a large portion of Texas-claimed territory, now parts of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Wyoming, was ceded to the Federal government.

They also own the oil rights, rather than the federal government and the money from it supposedly goes to education.

The resolution did not include any special exceptions to the provisions of the US Constitution regarding statehood. The right to create these possible new states was not "reserved" for Texas, as is sometimes stated.[8] Second, Texas did not have to surrender its public lands to the federal government. While Texas did cede all territory outside of its current area to the federal government in 1850, it did not cede any public lands within its current boundaries. This means that the only lands owned by the federal government within Texas have subsequently been purchased by the federal government. This also means that the state government has control over oil reserves which were later used to fund the state's public university system through the Permanent University Fund.[9] In addition, the state's control over offshore oil reserves in Texas runs out to 3 leagues (10.357 miles, 16.668 km) rather than three miles (4.828 km) as with other states.[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Texas

will be a third world country the day the rest of the world cancels our credit cards. Or better stated, a group of third world nations once we start casting blame at each other for the mess we all created.

Rick Perry is an opportunist, riding the wave of resentment being focused on the federal government now that a Democrat is in office
Nevermind that Obama's policies are almost indistinguishable from the last fraud in chief, who was a Texas carpetbagger.

I didn't go, but I was told most of the town of Gonzales showed up for the tea party yesterday.

Wait until people get their state and local property tax statements that don't reflect devaluation of property in the real world.

Who we going to secede from then?

I did inhale.

..should you get back to the US, I'd suggest checking out the little town of Alviso, wedged between the Bay, Milpitas, and San Jose.

After that, Milpitas or Fremont are decent places to live, that are accessible for getting around to any of the places you'd want to go...

Never been to Manhattan--yet. Pretty expensive to live there for me, and for the time being...but I've always liked cities over 'burbs...

-5.75,-4.05
"God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time." -- Robin Williams

trying new england. youll find plenty of thoughtful articulate liberals. great great used bookstores. the only part of america that is vaguely european, and in a very good way. decent wages. very few rethugs...
i used to live in boston. it was great.... i love new england and pretty much hate the rest of the US...

Istanbul, California ...

For retirement, check Luxembourg.

_{--Sell Alaska to China!}

You'll have to get a well-paying full-time job and go back to the rats race. No other way, I'm afraid, unless you are independently wealthy.

I must respectfully take issue with most of what you write here SP. Except that Rick Perry is an idiot, and an opportunist.

"Austin actually has well educated people, who can hold a conversation on something other than what was on TV last night, or what bar they drank at, or . . . well, you get the idea."

The idea that Austin is some sort of a "liberal oasis" is absurd and reveals a highly biased, White, middle class privilege. Forgive me because I've often said as much in the past. UT, high-tech, and "new urbanism" may dress up the town in liberal drag but its also a sprawling suburban nightmare. Alas, with neoliberalism's triumph in the 90's most of the good ole redneck hippies are gone. What's more, Austin has been and continues to be highly segregated both racially and economically. The double deck I35 provides a massive physical barrier, separating East Austin's poor, mostly Latino, population from "liberal" West Austin. Out of site out of mind. But isn't that the pattern in most US cities. It is particularly pronounced in Austin however.

"They aren't Mexicans in Texas. They're just there, a part of life and no one makes (much) of an issue about it. Even many 'Rednecks' don't have much bad to say about the Mexicans. Why? Well, ask Don. They respect them, they do shit white people would never do."

This is just downright difficult to digest. I am certain that this is mostly a case of a very poorly worded idea on your part. But who are the "they" exactly? Who makes an issue about "it." You've very unfortunately reduced both "Whites" and "Mexicans" into one dimensional caricatures while simultaneously revealing the narrow dominant White privileged lens for viewing the Texas cultural landscape. Furthermore, even the notion that, "they aren't Mexican in Texas" ignores a very long history of deeply institutionalized racism across the State which persists today.

I like Austin. I love San Antonio, (excluding the suburbs). It's surely not a "wealthy" city but the ethno-cultural tapestry is very rich indeed. I think you've way oversimplified the whole damn State and state of things. And it is a damned State politically. But just wait, I'm sure the rest of the US will catch up to our standards.

I think you have spent far, far too much time in the rarified world of European textual exegesis, far too much time actually parsing words and their hidden meanings.

I am smiling indeed as your sms suggested I would. That's not an inaccurate description at all of my own life these past three years. Though lately I spend most of my time building our small cottage (we can't afford to buy a house you know), tending our vegetable garden and potatoes, and trying to figure out how to raise a two year old and a one month old.

But even as an unemployed graduate student whose wife is a student on maternity leave, we enjoy the "comfort of your own 'oh-so-white-middle-class' Danish island."

No, comfort for my two brothers in Austin, working 60 hour weeks and just barely getting by, with no health care to boot.

I didn't set out to paint you personally as some sort of closed minded racist, nor as ignorant to Texas history. Clearly you are neither. But your comments, which I too have been guilty of, though not at all overt reveal an underlying insensitivity which is most often not deliberate.

Before going further, let me just reiterate that my intentions here were not to smack you down but rather your framework. And I do still reject some of your assumptions. For example:

As for the "deeply institutionalized racism across the State which persists today." Mind you, we are talking Mexican-Americans, not African-Americans, and in that situation as long standing and nasty institutionalized racism does exists. But I seriously, seriously dispute that there is any deeply institutionalized racism in South Texas, that belt of brush and mesquite stretching from San Antonio to Laredo, most especially in San Antonio. Even as you write, "but the ethno-cultural tapestry is very rich indeed." You simply can't have it both ways here brother.

First, yes, many African-Americans in Texas continue to suffer under a very "long standing and nasty institutionalized racism." This becomes even more problematic in places like South Texas where centuries of complex Mexican racialized socio-political identities and discrimination, a gift from the Spanish, are combined with the Southern inheritance of slavery and Jim Crow.

Why do you reject then that institutionalized racism does not exist in South Texas, or more specifically towards Mexicans? Based on what? I beg differ. Though Latinos have been successful taking the reigns of power at various levels of local government. But all politics in South Texas is racialized. In many cases, Mexicans are institutionalizing racism as well.

It's not either that I want to have it both ways as you wrote. I believe it is both ways. A rich and multi-ethnic culture can and often does exist within larger institutional and socio-economic frameworks that contradict such a culture. And you are correct about San Antonio possibly serving as a model city. There is a very markedly greater sense of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural identity and pride about that identity and cultural tolerance for a great many San Antonians. Myself included. San Antonio is very unique for a large Texas city, or for a city anywhere for that matter. But Post-Racial? Not by a long shot.

How deliciously that word must trip around the tongue among those who have a romantic fondness for the Southern "noble cause" during the Civil War.

These are, however, the only people for whom secession has any real meaning. It certainly doesn't have any practical meaning. It's not even as if Texas was like Quebec, where leaving the union would probably cause the whole thing to dissolve. People outside of Texas are not quaking in fear that Texas might secede - someone like Tom Tancredo might actually welcome it, since it would get rid of millions of illegal immigrants.

Gov. Perry is doing nothing more than pandering to racists by using racist code words, in the grand tradition of the Grand Old Party. While Lee Atwater and Richard Nixon aren't around to cheer him on, if we discover that someone like Pat Buchanan thinks Perry and his ilk have a "legitimate grievance" that's all we need to know.