I protest.

Travel, travail, tribulation and challenge.

Visiting Texas has never been something I did for the sheer fun of it. Since I still have family there, though, I find myself returning there every few years, if only out of a sense of duty. That was the reason for this trip: My mother is 74 and while her health is generally good, shit happens. So far she has outlived both of her parents and, I suspect, her own expectations. She could live another ten years, but while she is here I will be a dutiful son to her.

As far as Texas goes, though, were it not for a few of the people there, I would be happy to see it slowly subside into the Gulf. The weather sucks and the people suck harder. As as far as D/FW airport goes, every time my wife complained about how big it is, or how badly it is laid out, I just responded that if that weren't the case, then DFW wouldn't suck so much, now would it? It is clear to me that the airport was built with the goal of making all our lives as difficult as possible.

There were also the unending seas of "I'm a mindless fucking idiot and I want everyone to know it" bumper stickers, as well. That is, the Bush 2004 "I believe the lies" bumper stickers. Everywhere. And that was in Dallas; the less said of East Texas, the better. With one exception: I have to say that our visit with the relatively conservative relatives went well. While they are still conservative, they haven't even tasted the Kool-aid and view the fundamentalist idiots pretty much the same way that I do. I'm going to hell as an atheist, they're going to hell because they're Methodists.

We returned a bit more than a week ago. I was emotionally exhausted, having spent the week with my mother in an environment that evoked my childhood everywhere. It was worth it, as Mom loved the visit, but I can't do it very often. The trip was, though, very enlightening in some ways. It shed light on some dark corners of my childhood and opened a path to understanding my past a little better. This is a good thing, although both difficult and painful.

At least now I'm back in "sunny" Southern California, where it was raining while we were gone, has been raining since we've been back and is due to continue to rain into the next week. Still, it could be lots worse.

I'll leave the politics for another time, when I have more energy (I'm still fighting a cold that seems to want to turn into something worse, either the flu or bronchitis), but I have been paying attention and am uniformly appalled at the actions of the Bush bunch. Barbara Boxer, though, made me very proud to have voted for her in November. I sent the obligatory email but I plan to call her office as well, sometime next week after the heat has died a bit. Now if we could only light a fire under Feinstein. Sigh.

Despite the rain of nastiness and the surge of the fascist tide, I do see some hopeful signs. When even Jonah Goldberg can't swallow it, you know the White House has gone too far. So it's time to keep fighting. I can't do much at the moment, my attention is held by personal issues, but I've continued to contribute to and support the various folks who are doing good work. We will win, even if things get awfully dark in the interim.