When the Snakes Come Out of the Bayous

Houston and Galveston are places I care about. I went to university in Houston (Rice) and as practically starving students we drove to Galveston (day trips) for spring break, for flounder stuffed with shrimp, for cheap beer and the beach. To a girl from the high plains of Colorado, Galveston was another world, with its above ground cemeteries and the bishop's palace with the oldeanders, and the delightful southern sleaze.

Sorry, but I have a soft spot for sleaze, and Galveston had it in spades with the ramshakle old hotels (Galvez and Buccaneer), driving for miles on along the surf, the little beach shacks on stilts, the rank sea air, the Brahma cattle with the white cattle egrets perched on their flanks, the 100 % humidity, the Portugese Man-o-War, the very otherness of the place.

When I bought my first car I drove to Galveston on the Gulf-Tex freeway, enjoying the sensation of being one of the car and the car one with the road and the road one with the earth and so on ad infinitumm. My freshman year I bought musty books in a second-hand bookstore that had been through the first hurricane at the old seaman's library in Galveston. Those were my first ever used books.

When Houston has bad storms, the snakes come out of the bayous. Unfortunately, these aren't our friends the garter snake and the bull snake. These are water moccasins and coppermouths and ready scary critters. Probably happened in New Orleans too. After all, in Alabama after the last storm, someone noticed a shark swimming down the street.

It's time we face facts and do something about global warming, which apparently makes these gulf of Mexico storms worse than usual, when usual is bad enough.

So think good thoughts for Houston and Galveston. Must be scary, like the mouse in the snake's den. Just waiting. Even the Dali Lama left early.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/special/05/rita/3364573

In times of old, we would all have believed that someone had offended the gods to bring these storms to our shores. Well, all snakes don't live in the bayous, and maybe we have. I don't know.
Think about it.

Grapeshot