Two Cool Things
The University of Texas (HookEm!) removed the confederate statues in the middle of the damn night.
University president Gregory L. Fenves announced the decision late Sunday night, saying the “horrific displays of hatred” in Virginia had made it clear that Confederate statues had become “symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism.”
Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, John Reagan and former Texas governor James Stephen Hogg were all removed. The Jefferson Davis statue was removed last year. They will all be placed in the Briscoe Center for the Study of American History in Austin.
A couple dozen people showed up. There were no problems.
Thing Two: if you wanna tell us about your experience with the solar eclipse, here’s the place to do it. I’ll get to see about 65% of it.
This morning, I called Momma – she’s 92 years old and lives in her own apartment with her own patio at an assisted living center. They serve breakfast and lunch every day. She fixes her own dinner. I called her this morning to remind her about the eclipse. I explained it would start about 11:45 and peak at 1:15.
“Well, I hate that,” she said, “because I go to lunch at 11:30 so I’ll miss it.”
“Well, Momma,” I replied, “lunch doesn’t last an hour and half.”
“Sometimes it does. None of us can hear so we have to repeat things a lot.”
“Well, Momma, I’ll call NASA and see if they can move it to 5:00.”
“No, that’s when I play dominoes so … you’re sassing me, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, Momma, I am.”
“Well, maybe they’ll have it at lunch.”
“Probably. They’re pretty much having it everywhere.”
Love momma, such a busy woman. Well statues, they are thinking about changing the name of the Street where Boston Red Sox play baseball. It is named after the last baseball owner to desegregate their team. One sports writer explained it best, “we are not changing history just not glorifying it. Well said. I am in a 65% area too.
1Good for your mama, and I hope she lives as long as she wants to. (My mother died at 96, and it was longer than she wanted to.)
Some people claim that removing CSA statues is “erasing history.” When I went to history class, they didn’t give me a bunch of statues; they gave me books. We still have books, but some of them ARE erasing history by saying that the Civil War was fought over “states’ rights” and not slavery. It was fought over states’ rights to keep and spread slavery. Read the secession proclamations by any of the state legislatures. They knew why they were seceding, and claiming otherwise is erasing history.
Get rid of the statues glorifying racist traitors to their country, and get rid of lying textbooks! Instead, glorify those who did good for people, and teach kids the truth!
2I strongly agree on UT’s approach. Move the statues from a place of honor to a place where history can be learned from. In the Holocaust museum (D.C.) they have pictures and Nazi artifacts – It’s not to honor the third Reich but to educate and to remind people that not too far ago MILLIONS of people were wiped out and that I if we turn a blind eye to that type of authoriantism and hatred it will happen again.
3We are in the path of totality, sadly we are also in the midst of a thunderstorm…. Fingers crossed.
It’s past time these things were removed and renamed, in Germany there are monuments and markers commemorating Holocaust Survivors, we can’t do that here because we so thoroughly obliterated the true names of slaves.
Place the monuments in a location where they can be viewed within the historical context of the enslavement of millions not on a street corner or campus where the history can be whitewashed and glorified as a rallying point for Nazis and “White Supremacists.”
4At Mount Vernon there are two memorials to the enslaved people who worked and are buried there, though the 1929 one refers to the “many faithful colored servants” as if they hired on voluntarily and were happy pickin’ and singin’. The larger 1983 one refers to “the Afro Americans who served as slaves.” Neither one has a statue.
http://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/the-slave-memorial-at-mount-vernon/
For some reason I remember a scene in the 1960s TV series “Bewitched” in which the witch Samantha had been transported to, or was dreaming about, being a lady on a southern plantation before the war. “Ah, listen to them singing– they love me,” said the plantation owner. Samantha replied, “Then why are they singing ‘Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground’?” No, not happy singers.
5LOL at mama
6JJ did you get spanked a lot as a kid?
7God bless your mama! She sounds like a total hoot!
I got to see the totality on the TV and we just have to work on getting a new definition for astounding.
As for the damn statues, hellspitanddamn, they are IDOLS commemorating treason. Course, the South will rise again crowd will never cop to that, will they!
8In a way, I feel sorry for The South. It just seems sad that when they want to build monuments to their “heroes” the only people they seem to find are dead Civil War generals who fought for the losing side. And Elvis.
9We just finished our eclipse watching, so time to catch up with news from the WMDBS. Regarding the UT statue removal, I love my daughter’s response yesterday. She went to UT for grad school, now works in Columbia at the U of SC.
“This is so great, but can we take a moment to appreciate that students have been fighting to take these statues down and re-name the res halls at UT for YEARS? I’m happy their hard work has paid off, but I can’t help but wonder if it was the death of a white ally that pushed the administration over the edge on this…”
I wonder, too.
10Guess this is about max (~61%) eclipse time. Was outside and it’s kind of dim, but nothing spectacular.
But it was soooo quiet compared to usual, I guess the birds and animals are picking some vibes up. The humans too, as I couldn’t hear the usual distant traffic, etc.
My weather station peaked at ~90 degrees, has seen a very slight drop in temperature, about 1-2 degrees, with a halt to the usual condition last hour, where at this ToD it would be rising relentlessly. No change in wind or whatever.
Check out the solar insolation graph on this Weatherunderground station.
Set the graph mode to “Custom”, Aug16 to Aug22 for best graph– the link has this setting built-in.
It’s partly cloudy around here, every day has been near identical for weeks.
But you can see the measured sunlight today just melted away with the eclipse, measured by an accurate instrument in “Watts per square meter, W/m2 ” (the IS standard measurement):
https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=KTXFLORE15#history/s20170816/e20170822/mcustom
Cool.
Saw one back around the early 1990’s in the Valley, which IIRC, was total. What was really weird is that I wanted our kids to ‘see’ it from outside (with a pinhole box). But my ex (quite educated too) reverted to a Mex-Am superstition and was almost terrified, and bundled the girls deep inside the house where they missed it.
11Just finished the peak (89%) here in Columbus. It was only through a haze of clouds we saw it at all. Like a fool I looked anyway and went completely deaf. That’s normal, though, right?
12daChipster,
13Sunlight, deaf? Get your brain wiring checked, may be serious.
Although the SOBOTUS’ is far worse, and millions jes lurv his sorry azz…
/s
Seems evident where your “attitude” comes from. Glad you still have her. Such a treasure!
14daChipster: What? Huh? Speak up, sonny, I can’t hear you.
15We drove south and spent the weekend with friends in St Louis. This morning, we went to Festus to be near the center of the path of totality. Spectacular viewing looking west, high above a river valley. The approach of the shadow and the instant change from want daylight to starry twilight was striking but then the Corona (around the sun, not the beer) captured our complete attention for the duration of totality. An undulating ring of fire with a circle of utter blackness as its center. So glad we were able to see it. The clear skies above us had clouds in the distance in all directions. Hope your viewing was good.
16I’m an Aggie! Both the Texas kind and now New Mexico State kind. I’m taking an astronomy class at NMSU and we were assigned to watch and write a report. This time I think the teasips got it right. I’m proud of them. By the way even an old guy like me can go back to school.
17Glad UT’s getting with the program.
I have two pairs of eclipse viewing glasses; got them mail order from Explore Scientific, which was one of the vendors recommended by AAS. It was $2.99 for two pair, free shipping.
Had to grocery shop (the refrigerator’s dead), and check out the eclipse (we got about 75% in NYC). I shared my glasses with a couple of friends, a couple of acquaintances, and a whole bunch of random strangers who were all THRILLED by the sight.
Next eclipse (2024), totality or bust!
18I drove 3 1/2 hours to get to a place with 2 1/2 minutes of totality…..at about 3/4-covered, a super cell rolled in and dumped a boatload of rain on us. It WAS real dark, though (she said sarcastically!)
19We were very fortunate to be able to drive just 28 miles south to get 1 minute 42 seconds of totality that seemed like about 10 seconds. Also fortunate to have clear skies. Was amazing. Wish you could have all been there!
20It got cold as heck, then the streetlamp went on and all the neighbors cheered! The “diamond ring” effect was cool (only lasted moments) then there was a red glow at about 1:00 to 3:00 that lasted for a few more moments, then the moon moved on. My cat yowled loudly as totality occurred.
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