I’m looking at news reports of the devastation in Houston, and it’s making me really sad. Houston, of course, is where the Gauntlet was born. It’s a place where I made many terrific, lifelong friends. It’s a place where some of my favorite memories were made.
I’m sad and a little frustrated, too, because a lot of the social media chatter I’m seeing is very “well, global warming, duh!” with the implication that Houston is getting what it deserves because so much of its economy depends on the energy industry and because Houston is in a deep-red state.
Something I experience a lot as a Texan “living abroad” is talking to other liberals who have the most uninformed, bird’s-eye view of Texas imaginable. Texas is a big, culturally-complex state. Houston is one of the most diverse, reliably Democratic cities in the whole fucking country. Corpus Christi, also hit hard by the hurricane, is a majority-Hispanic city.
Anyway… It’s a scary time. If anyone reading this has been affected by the storm, please stay safe and let me know if there is anything I can do to help.
