Halloween Truth

It’s Halloween again. Cities, towns and villages across the country are braced for the onslaught of sweets-seeking spooks aged from 1 to 31.

Jack o’Lanterns are carved.

Spooky sounds fill the air.

Little brats are everywhere.

Truth to tell, Halloween is one of the last pagan holidays hijacked by the Catholic Church.

The first to go was Eostre (Easter).

Then went The Feast of Sol Invictus (Christmas).

Soon following was the Celtic celebration of Samuin, was Celtic New Year, in commemoration of the darker half of the year. On this day, Celts believed that the separation between the world of the living and the dead was especially thin. Thin enough, they thought, to have some cross visitations. Costumes were used to disguise oneself from harmful spirits.

The festival continued after the Christianization of Western Europe, much to the chagrin of the Catholic Church.

So they hijacked it.

The Church had special days set aside to honor individual saints. November 1st was vacant so it was designated as a day to honor all of the saints.

Or All Saints Day.

Or All Hallows Day.

The day before All Hallows Day, then became All Hallows Eve. And you can probably guess how the name became mangled to the present-day Halloween.

Halloween is celebrated throughout the Bible Belt, ironically, despite what Pat Robertson has tried to do to deter good Christians from participating this year.

I think he does miss the point though. After all, this is something that an entrepreneur like Pat Robertson should be well aware of. Halloween is a huge cash cow. Everyone but everyone cashes in.

Especially the Episcopalians.

County Judge Imposes Partial Ban on Fireworks Sales

After imposing a ban on the discharge of fireworks, and not imposing a ban on the sale of same, Fort Bend County Judge Bob Hebert began to have second thoughts, especially when he saw that Harris County Judge Ed Emmett went ahead and banned some fireworks sales. Making their inaction in Fort Bend County look a little weak.

Besides, not all fireworks were banned, just “stick rockets and missiles with fins.” Stick rockets are also known as bottle rockets. You launch them by putting the stick part in a bottle and lighting the fuse.

Supposedly, these kinds of rockets are highly unpredictable and may auger in back on Earth before all of the fuel is spent.

So this led to the “Disaster Declaration for Threat of Wildfires Proclamation for Fort Bend County.” Which was signed the next day by Judge Hebert. Unfortunately, for some reason, what is possible in Harris County is not possible in Fort Bend: the declaration only lasts 60 hours. The 4^th of July is 156 hours past the declaration’s expiration.

So Hebert had to send a request to the governor to extend the declaration, which he did do just today.

“A disaster declaration such as the one Hebert signed can only remain in effect for 60 hours. Hebert appealed to Gov. Perry, who has the power to extend such a ban, in order to prevent sale and discharge of aerial fireworks this July 4 holiday season.”

“‘My primary concern is the safety and welfare of our citizens, and I do not believe that the outdoor burn ban adopted by Commissioner’s Court earlier this week is sufficient to protect life and property as we enter the July 4th season under the current drought conditions and heat advisory,’ Hebert said Friday ‘I am glad that Gov. Perry supports this initiative and I appreciate the fast response we received from him extending the declaration.’”

So Fort Bend County is now safe. Maybe.

I don’t have much fun with bottle rockets. They don’t do much and you can’t really control them. The finned rockets supposedly have fins for stability in flight but they mainly ensure that somewhere along its flight it will turn and crash into someone’s parked car. So I usually stay away from them, too.

The ones I like are the mortar shells. The round finless, stickless rockets that are fired out of a cardboard tube. The sale of these, supposedly, is not banned. And used properly, they generally explode after a short flight straight upward, filling the air with smoke and sparks that harmlessly extinguish long before they return to Earth.

Except for the time that I saw one fired horizontally and it exploded just above a field of dry brush turning it into a 100 square foot inferno.

The point is, if the safety and welfare of the citizens of Fort Bend County is really and truly the primary concern here, why not err on the side of caution and issue an outright ban on the sale of all fireworks?

Or would that cause irreparable harm to fireworks manufacturers and sellers?

So maybe we know what is really the primary concern, here, and it isn’t public safety.

John Cornyn, Barbuda Still My Friend?

My friend Susan has a little piece on her not-a-blog today, Valentine’s Day 2009, on our favorite US Senator, John Cornyn. Susan says that Cornyn is stepping in to fill the empty shoes left by Tom Delay, who is busy these days being an icon of rightwing uberpartisanship.

In November of 2004, it seems, John Cornyn along with an undisclosed companion, took up an offer by Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford, Chairman of Stanford Financial Services to visit his operations on the Caribbean islands of Barbuda and Antiqua. As seen in the link provided by Susan, the 4-day trip was to conduct a

“Financial services industry fact-finding mission hosted by constituent company with substantial operations on site Notes Sen. Cornyn discloses expenses for himself and a companion, but does not disclose the identity of the companion. Total Cost $7,441.00”

Interesting and timely, I say, as Cornyn is certainly not hanging back staying hidden in the woodwork this time around. He finds himself in the news obstructing bills and visiting high roller contributors in New York rather than staying in DC to vote in this time of financial crisis.

But then I opened up today’s Chronicle and find that this is more interesting, and more timely, than I thought at first.

It seems that R. Allen Stanford has been under investigation by the SEC, the IRS and the FBI for awhile now. Investigators have been pretty closed mouth about what the matter is all about, other than to say that Stanford’s Caribbean banks are selling CDs that net the buyers higher than usual returns. From the Chron:

“The entire scope of the probe is unclear, but investigators are looking into the sale of certificates of deposit issued by the firm’s Stanford International Bank in the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. The CDs have yielded returns higher than the average.”

Wow. The very banks that Cornyn and a companion were asked to visit in 2004 as part of a “fact-finding mission” are being investigated for some questionable business practices by 3 federal agencies whose terrible combination of letters usually spell B-A-D N-E-W-S.

I also checked the FEC, and saw that Stanford had given $2000 to Cornyn’s campaign in 2007. Interesting, because Stanford and many of his highest ranking corporate officers at Stanford Financial Services had, for the most part, maxed out for Barack Obama in the last election.

Obviously, Stanford likes to win. And this is just okey-dokey as far as John Cornyn is concerned.

There is an Obama Store in Austin

So for no apparent reason I woke up early this Saturday morning. And for no apparent reason I showered and shaved even though the only thing I had planned for the day was to do the laundry.

And finish my TEC filing.

But then around 9:45 AM Susan called.

“We’re driving up to La Grange today to get some kolaches at Weikel’s and to meet my friend from Bastrop County who has 50 Obama wine glasses to sell us. Then we’re going up to Austin to the Obama Store and to eat some barbecue. Wanna come?”

“Well . . .ahh . . “

“…If you want to meet us at the house at 10:30.”

It’s hard to turn down barbecue, but to finally lay my eyes on the famous Obama Store in Austin, now that was too much to pass up. Besides, I was up, washed, shaved and dressed.

At 10:30 I was there.

The long ride to Austin is made much shorter with the tales of trials and tribulations we shared. How our families fared in the Great Depression. How Fort Bend County government is filled with cronies who have little to offer the taxpayers but their undying friendship with county bosses.

How we are going to have a great Inaugural Ball this coming January 20^th.

And we finally arrived at The Obama Store. The Obama Store in Austin is easy to miss but not if you are looking for it. And with this street address, 1111 11^th St., it is difficult to forget

Democratic activist Glen Maxey runs the store and sells all manner of things Obama. The Fort Bend Democrats’ Obama Boutique has nothing on Maxey’s setup.

Along with the requisite Obama T-shirts, buttons and bumper stickers he has mouse pads, Obama 2009 calendars, coffee mugs, plastic cups with Obama’s smiling face printed on it, Obama straws, Obama tote bags, Obama carpets and blankets, Obama posters and rally signs.

An Obama children’s book entitled “My Momma voted for Obama”.

An old Texas politics warhorse and former State Rep. from Austin, Maxey was asked not to participate or campaign for Democrats in Austin. It seems he opposed an African-American woman in the March primary for Travis County Tax Assessor-Collector, so his services were not required. This was manna from heaven for Maxey.

Instead of campaigning for Democrats, Maxey was free to sell Obama merchandise, an enterprise that has resulted in the settlement of all his political debts.

Now since its primary, Texas has not seen hide nor hair of Barack Obama. All of their numbers said that whatever they did, Texas was not yet ready to elect an African-American to the highest office, so there was nothing they could do – Texas was a write off.

So they wisely stayed away.

But this had a singular unexpected effect. There was a “campaign vacuum” in Texas. Obama supporters were everywhere, but no one could find a place to get a yard sign or a T-shirt. You could buy one online at the Obama store but there was a backlog of orders and the waiting time was long.

So some of us, Maxey in Austin, and the Fort Bend Democrats in Rosenberg and Stafford, took it upon ourselves to try and satisfy the growing market for Obama paraphernalia.

Face it, these things will be quite valuable one day – memorabilia from a truly historic event.

We were there for about a half hour. Never was there a lull in business. Now this is absolutely true: it is 3 months since the election, and 9 days before the Inauguration and the store was filled with customers looking for anything with Obama on it.

How long this will last, no one really knows.

But one thing I know for sure. Glen Maxey will be forever grateful to the local political machine for their unofficial blackballing.

It’s true what they say, you know. When one door closes, another one opens.