Juneteenth Next Week In Texas & Most Of The Rest Of America

One week from today, on June, 19, the Juneteenth holiday takes place. I had not heard of the Juneteenth holiday until I moved to Texas. Now, less than a decade, later Juneteenth is celebrated in 31 of the United States, including my old home state of Washington and all the other west coast states, including Alaska.

For those who do not know what Juneteenth is, like I didn't a decade ago, it commemorates the abolition of slavery in America.

Since Juneteenth is also known as Emancipation Day one might think that June 19 was the day Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It is not. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on September 22, 1862, effective January 1, 1863.

In reality, the Emancipation Proclamation pretty much had no effect on those living in the areas under Confederate control.

What Juneteenth commemorates is June 19, 1865, that being the day that Union General Gordon Granger, along with 2,000 Federal troops, showed up in Galveston, Texas to take control of Texas and emancipate Texas slaves.

General Granger stood on the balcony of Galveston's Ashton Villa and read General Order #3.

"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."

The newly freed men and women erupted into happy celebrations on the streets of Galveston. The following June 19, Juneteenth celebrations happened all over Texas. The newly freed pooled their money to buy land for parks in which to hold their Juneteenth celebrations, including Mexia's Booker T. Washington Park, Austin's Emancipation Park and Houston's Emancipation Park.

It took well over a century for Juneteenth to spread to most of the rest of America.

In a week there will be a wide range of events, parades, street fairs, BBQs, block parties,with a lot of music and dancing.

Most Juneteenth events include a big feast that goes on all day in a park or other outdoor venue. It is usually a potluck type deal, with a lot of barbecue, greens, watermelon and pies. Along with the traditional red soda. And a lot of ice cream.

The original Juneteenth celebrants in Galveston feasted on fried chicken, watermelon and red soda. Hence the red soda tradition that continues to this day.

There are a several Juneteenth celebrations in Fort Worth. I don't know which one I'll be going to next Friday. I would think the celebrating will be especially happy this Juneteenth due to who is currently doing Abraham Lincoln's job.

Chesapeake Energy Drill Site Fluid Kills 19 Cattle In Louisiana

Deep in a surprisingly critical, full of surprising facts article published Monday, June 8, 2009 in the Fort Worth Business Press I was shocked to learned that the Shreveport Times, on April 29, reported that 19 Louisiana cattle died after exposure to a fluid that originated from a Chesapeake Energy drilling operation in Louisiana.

An entity calling itself Schlumberger Ltd. was doing a frac job when the cattle died.

The cattle poisoning is being investigated by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

Below is the first paragraph of the Fort Worth Business Press article titled "States or Feds: Who gets to regulate hydraulic fracturing?".....

A controversial process used in natural gas drilling, and crucial to the Barnett Shale’s development, is at the center of a tug-of-war dispute between the energy industry and some legislators over whether hydraulic fracturing should be regulated by the state or the federal government.

A recent push by federal legislators to repeal the Energy Policy Act of 2005 could mean companies that employ hydraulic fracturing, a means of stimulating and opening up a well, would have to answer to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Safe Drinking Water Act about the chemicals they use in the injection process.

A Wet Walk In Arlington At A Very Crowded Veterans Park

Around noon the rain sort of let up. A bit. I couldn't take being cooped up like a prisoner in a cage any longer.

I decided to head to Arlington, ready for a walk at Veterans Park, ready to skip that if the deluge resumed and head on to Chinatown for some good stuff.

It did not look promising when I left here. I-820 was backed up to I-30. Traffic was at a standstill on the flyover that connects 30 to 820 northbound. It looked like a big mess. Fortunately that was not the direction I was heading.

Driving by the entry to Village Creek Natural Historic Park I could see the gate had it closed due to flooding. I continued on to Veterans Park, where I figured I'd have the place all to myself.

Well, on the rainiest, stormiest day so far this year, Veterans Park was the busiest I've ever seen it. The north parking lot was completely full, with people parking on the street. I found one empty parking space at the south lot.

A school was having a graduation party. I thought it rather daring of them to go ahead with their party plans, what with the weather being in lightning, rain, hail, wind, tornado mode.

Though it was damp, the party goers seemed to be having fun playing games in the mud, like volleyball and some other team type game, I had not seen before, that involved a lot of yelling. A good time seemed to have been being had by all. Loud music played from the covered amphitheater.

I only unleashed my umbrella once, even though it was not raining, under the trees a deluge still fell, shaken off the leaves by the wind.

After the Veterans Park walk it was off to Chinatown, got my goods, and now brown basmati rice is cooking in the rice cooker. And I await it being done.

I am seeing some blue sky through the clouds. Hallelujah!

It Is Thursday And We Are Still Heavy Duty Storming In Texas

That's my closed in stormy view at 11 this morning. We have now been storming here in Fort Worth and North Texas for about 17 hours, give or take a few.

This is the worst Mother Nature behavior I can remember in a long time. The caretaker of the Haltom City creeks is having a lot of extra worrying being forced upon her today, due to Mother Nature and the inept local powers that be who have done nothing to fix the Haltom City creek flooding woes in all the time since their deadly flash flooding a couple years ago.

The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center has just issued a Severe Thunderstorm Watch until 6 pm.

I had planned to go to Veterans Park in Arlington and then to Arlington's Chinatown. I don't think that is going to work out.

This is the first good test of how all that new paved parking at the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium is going to affect runoff into Johnson Creek. Johnson Creek flooded into Six Flags, even before the Dallas Cowboys removed a lot of acreage of water absorbing land, replacing it with water repellers, like asphalt and a huge stadium. I'm guessing 6 inches in 2 hours and we'll be looking at a Dallas Cowboys Stadium caused massive flooding of Six Flags.

That'll be interesting. I suspect the Johnson Creek problem will get fixed before the flooding problem in Haltom City, that has killed people, gets fixed.

Rosa Discovers Reason Fort Worth's Santa Fe Rail Market Failed.

One of the real interesting aspects of getting comments to my blogs or my Eyes on Texas website is the extreme range in the quality of the thinking that goes in to making the comments.

Some are so inarticulate I can't fathom where they get the idea that they want to be expressing themselves. Some get themselves so upset, with no understanding that there can be all sorts of points of view on any given subject. Or that, maybe, they are having a comprehension problem.

The most amusing, of the worst of the comments, is the commenter will use insults to buttress their, well, non-existing argument. Because the low end of the spectrum commenters seem to be a bit on the dim side, I always think they must often be told the same type vitriol they are directing at whatever web thing they are upset about.

Like this morning I got a classic that should make all thinking Texans freshly concerned about the state of education in this fine state. The commenter is named Rosa. Apparently Rosa came upon the webpage I made regarding Fort Worth's long defunct Santa Fe Rail Market or as Rosa called it "Dante fe put mix market."

Rosa seems to think that me accurately describing Fort Worth's lame, little, overly hyped and falsely advertised attempt to have a public market modeled after Seattle's Pike Place Market, is what caused its demise.

Yeah, I'm sure me accurately describing that boondoggle caused its demise. The demise had nothing to do with the fact that there was no there there. That when locals visited they shook their heads and walked away, disgusted at the disconnect between how Fort Worth's propaganda mouthpiece, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, had irresponsibly misrepresented that travesty, and the reality they experienced when going to the time and bother of visiting the travesty.

Below is Rosa's comment about my disgraceful, tacky website and my moronic, idiotic thoughts. See if you can count how many spelling and grammar errors Rosa makes. I gave up, it was hurting my head, likely due to sleep deprivation...

What a disgraceful tacky website. I take it that you are not a happy fort worth person.your an idiot who cares if a town wants to say they are the best at sow Thing(yea it may not be true)but that where pride of The city comes from moron negativity also breaks things down like say Dante fe put mix market being constintley compare to pike but you obviously took point after point to tear it down no wonder it really never took off.I lived in tacoma for 2 years and visited Seattle on several occasions. I still missed my hometown one thing snobby liberal Seattle can't say they have is nice sweet people like fort worth does.

Texas Thunder Booming All Night & Insomnia

It's been a loud, rough night here in my Fort Worth zone of Texas.

I must have misunderstood the chattering TV weather guys. I thought I heard that yesterday's storm that rolled in to my location about 6, moved on east and was done, once it moved past ones location. I heard nothing about more incoming.

The worst of it did pass quickly, maybe an hour of heavy wind and rain and thunder. But, then a few hours later it started up again, not so much with the wind, but heavy rain and thunderstorming.

I didn't even try to go to bed til after midnight. Partly due to uploading a video of the storm to YouTube, which had some complications that took longer than normal. If I remember right it was almost quiet when I finally went to bed.

And then at some point after that the storming started up again, with everything but the wind worse than the first storm, I had 2 direct lightning hits. You know, where you see the lightning and hear the boom at the same time, with the boom hitting with a concussive force, like a bomb.

Which makes it really hard to try to get to sleep when you are in what amounts to a bomb shelter.

A tornado was confirmed to have touched down in Plano. Daylight needs to arrive before damage can be assessed. Thousands of people are without power. I am not one of them.

More storms are predicted for today. Right now it appears to be the calm before the next storm.

Well, ignore the previous sentence. I'd barely put the period on it when I saw a flash and a quick boom. It's starting up again. And another flash and boom followed that period.

I love this time of year in Texas.

June 10, 2009 Texas Tornado Thunderstorm

It's coming up on 11. I can see I am going to have another night of insomnia. Though the worst of tonight's storm has been over for a couple hours, lightning continues to strike and thunder continues to roll.

I took video during the worst of the storm with my new Canon camera. Trying to get that video off the camera failed a couple times. I had to do a re-start of the computer to get it to work. And even then it took a long long time. When it was done I saw why. The video was over half a gigabyte big.

After I'd made the video into a movie it was just a bit over 42 megabytes. YouTube is processing the video right now. In the video you'll be watching the storm from my balcony window. In the background you'll hear the nonstop TV weather guy chatter on channel 5. You'll hear mention made of a tornado being spotted.

Big Storm Hitting Knocking Power Out

Power has gone out 3 times. Very windy. Big hail. Picture taken at just before 7. Getting very stormy. TV out.

This is being the worst storm we've had for awhile here in Fort Worth.

I'm hitting the publish button and turning this off.

Wednesday Night Windy Lightning Hail Storm In Texas

I can hear thunder rumbling to the west. I'm seeing lightning flashes in the distance.

The National Weather Service issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning a few minutes ago. It should be here soon. I have already heeded the warning to be in a sturdy shelter and not near a window.

Below is the NWS Warning....

Bulletin - Eas Activation Requested Severe Thunderstorm Warning National Weather Service Fort Worth TX 608 PM CDT Wed Jun 10 2009

* Severe Thunderstorm Warning For, Denton County In North Central Texas, Parker County In North Central Texas, Tarrant County In North Central Texas, Wise County In North Central Texas

* Until 715 PM CDT

* At 608 PM CDT, National Weather Service Meteorologists Detected A Line Of Severe Thunderstorms Capable Of Producing Golf Ball Size Hail, And Destructive Winds In Excess Of 80 Mph. These Storms Were Located Along A Line Extending From 5 Miles East Of Bridgeport To 4 Miles South Of Springtown To 21 Miles Southwest Of Cool, And Moving East At 45 Mph.

* Severe Thunderstorms Will Be Near, Decatur, Weatherford, Reno And Briar By 615 PM Pelican Bay, Azle And Aurora By 620 PM Willow Park, Pecan Acres And Hudson Oaks By 625 PM

For Your Protection Move To A Sturdy Shelter And Stay Away From Windows Until The Storm Has Passed.

If You Are Caught Outside, Seek Shelter In A Strong Building And Stay Inside, Away From Windows Until The Storm Has Passed.

This Storm Has A History Of Producing Destructive Winds And Large Damaging Hail. Seek Shelter Now Inside A Sturdy Structure And Stay Away From Windows!

Insomnia & A Punch Drunk Drive In Texas

Night Two of my latest Insomnia Outbreak was not too bad. I went to bed well past 11 and got up a bit before 4 this morning.

My synapses seemed to be firing with some accuracy, so I was a blogging maniac this morning. I was even able to think clearly enough to figure out two words to play in my ongoing word game with the Scrabble Queen of the State of Washington.

I was a bit concerned to learn this morning that there had been 2 more earthquakes in my zone of Texas. Even though I was awake for a lot of the night, I did not feel the earth move.

My one longtime reader may remember that since it is Wednesday I probably went to Southlake and likely went to Sprouts Farmers Market. My one longtime reader would be right.

I tried to snap pictures of the bizarre "Air Pollution Alert" signs I see each week on Davis Boulevard. I don't quite get what one is supposed to do with these alerts. Right after the first alert that nitrogen tank with a warning sign, that I've mentioned previously, still sits about 5 feet from the road. I tried to snap a picture of the tank when I drove by, but my timing was off.

Due to that sleep deprivation thing, driving was fun, it felt like being punch drunk after 600 miles on a long Roadtrip. Speaking of which, my favorite nephew named CJ, was reading my Roadtripping Blog and a posting I wrote today about White Sands National Monument. I mentioned this was a stop on a trip that led to 4 days at the Luxor in Vegas. My nephew somehow misunderstood and thought I am currently on my way to Arizona and Vegas and asked if I'd pick him up on the way.

Maybe my nephew is being sleep deprived too, hence the confusion.