Thumbs up, down
The eclipse, the bullet train and paying our deepest respects to Heather Heyer.
Let’s say you have to miss Monday’s eclipse (the subject of an editorial in this space tomorrow) because it’s cloudy, rainy or just too damn hot to walk outside. Fear not. Eclipsed by the news of this eclipse is the fact than another — even more dramatic — celestial show is coming in seven years to a place near you. Put April 8, 2024 on the Outlook calendar. That day a swath of Texas largely along Interstate 45 will be in the path of total blackness. By then, you may be able to ride the bullet train to a prime viewing area. Texas Central Partners this week signed another agreement — this one with the city of Houston — as it moves toward a 90-minute Houston-to-Dallas trip. We’re all for multimodal transportation. And we’re all for a fare war between Southwest and the choochoo train. One caveat: The high-speedrail terminal in Houston is planned for a little-used mall outside of Loop 610. The builders need to figure out a way to extend it to downtown. I’ll take “Houston” for $1,000, Alex. “The Houston metropolitan area is larger than eight states, name three of them.”* The answer to that, along with enough Houston trivia to keep your dinner party conversation going past midnight, can be had in the most recent update of “Houston Facts.” This is a wonderful compendium of data on our city and you can find it on the Greater Houston Partnership website, Houston.org.
“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what? You just magnified her.”
Those incredibly touching and brave words were from Susan Bro, who lost her daughter Heather Heyer in Charlottesville. Bro asked Americans to keep “a spark of accountability” alive and so we devote the rest of today’s items to her and Heather.
The nation poured out its heart to the family of Heyer. President Donald Trump waited until the day of the funeral to convey condolences to them.
Trump also might want to call Natalie Romero, the Bellaire High School graduate who fractured her skull in the melee. (See the neighboring op-ed written by a classmate). The University of Virginia student didn’t have health insurance and her family sought donations on the website, GoFundMe. There’s something wrong with America when the only way to pay medical bills is to pass the hat on the internet. Let’s not forget that Trump ran for president on a promise of health care for everyone. He can still make it happen.
Shame on Texas state Rep. Pat Fallon, a Dallas-area Republican. During the special session of the Legislature, he filed a bill that would give civil immunity to drivers who used their vehicle to hit demonstrators blocking the public right of way. The law never had a chance of passing, but you wonder what kind of message Patton was trying to send. He offered up a lame defense: His intention was to keep protesters safe. The ultimate guardians of protesters — the ACLU — were skeptical: “The flavor and tenor of this is to quell protest,” an ACLU spokesman said. “It is to essentially set up a structure where you protest at your own risk (and) there is a shield for motorists who choose, which happened just recently, to use their vehicle as a literal bludgeon.”
Twitter is like wine. When it’s good it’s great; when it’s bad it’s awful, and it reveals the truth about people. That makes Houston City Councilman Greg Travis two-buck Chuck. Defending our town’s Confederate statues, he asked where were critics “5 years ago? 20 years ago? Why now?” These pages for years have called for statues to be taken down, for streets to renamed as well as high schools. We’ve found publications dating to 1997 calling for Houston to remove its statues. Where’s the outrage? It’s been here for decades. The question is where has Greg Travis been?
Here’s a wall we can tolerate. Students at Texas A&M University promised a “maroon wall” to stop a proposed “White Lives Matter” rally at Rudder Plaza next month. They now can save the T-shirts for football games. The rally was canceled by administrators who were concerned about safety after one of the organizers issued a press release that was a portend of violence. “Today Charlottesville, Tomorrow Texas A&M,” the purveyors of hate wrote.
* Vermont, New Jersey and Hawaii are smaller than the Houston metropolitan area.