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all lived in San Antonio. My sister was an Aggie. I only lived in SA for a year, as a baby, but I've spent a lot of time there during holidays. I grew up in Saudi Arabia and St. Louis, New Orleans, Toledo, Tempe -- everwhere but Texas.
I live in Davis, California. It's like a liberal paradise, sort-of-most-times, was-cool (some say), but I love it dearly. My kids love the schools -- no Intelligent Design here. Just Jupiter and Algebra and How To Be A Person. The City of Bicycles. The right wingers are few and bitter. They never stop trying, though.
I have a love/fear thing going with Texas. I can't stand much direct right-wing display without losing my temper. The guards at the Alamo ("Remove your hat, Sir!!"), the guy at the Chevron at the end of Nash ("No, you cain't us the ay-rr if yuu don't buy gay-usss." "But I always buy gas here." "Not this time, you didn't.") are all directly in opposition to the nice things -- the Riverwalk, the physical beauty of the area, the kindness shown by most people.
My aunt and cousin still live there. She's had a tough life, and her son is a tough man, a Budweiser-drinkin' meth-head hard-workin' concrete man, who sometimes cruises around bars looking for fights. My uncle is a former SA police officer who's a nice guy -- but his job at times involved cruising for gay men, and then beating them up and dumping them out of town. He joined a weird christ-cult church for his current wife, who works for the corrections department. It's very speaking-in-tongues, book-burning-stuff. He once threw his teenage daughter out of the trailer when her stepmother caught her with some pot -- she was shot in the head a year later by her boyfriend. That kind of stuff. Now, I don't think badly about these people -- I love them, though I don't talk to them much. But I have a good picture of how hard life has been for some people there. There is a bitter quality to the way they view life, very self-focused, self-defeating -- they commit many unwise acts. There seems to be little room for information, or innovation. No I can see how liberal ideas would have a hard time taking root among various cultural groups in Bexar. However -- there are so many different types of people there -- and many are just waking up to find that the man they voted for was a terrible mistake. You might be the best grief counselor available, as a pre-enlightened one. Show kindness.
PS: I love that incredible rain in San Antonio. Where it's like a world made out of warm sheets of water.
PPS: In beautiful Kalifornia -- Arnold is Toast.
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