As I write a storm is developing over the south plains and is due to dump some rain on Lubbock. One thing I like about this place is that people really love the rain and mention how much we need it. The whole water cycle is still somewhat of a mystery to me: I'm aware that it will sit in the playas in the parks for a few days, and most of it will evaporate, and presumably some of it will find its way down to the water table. I presume that they're aware roughly of how much we lose to evaporation and how we could get some of that water back down to the aquifer if we wanted to. I assume they know that we want them to, though I don't assume they care enough to actually do it. I'm curious how much they've actually worked on this.

My son has noticed that the ground is full of "stickers" instead of grass, and that you can't really walk on it barefoot. You also can't ride a bike on it. There does seem to be green stuff on its way though; spring is coming. People do grow stuff, and I have confidence that there will be a kind of green color arriving soon. I thought it was a cold winter: a hard wind, a dry cold air with a couple of snows, this is more than we used to get in Illinois half the time. Yet people say it was relatively mild. One can't tell after one winter, what's what. I'd be a fool to plant. But the moon is down to nothing (this is good for planting) and I'm feeling the time is close. So tell me - when's a good time to put onions in the ground?

It's spring break, so I said to my class, what, is everyone going to Padre? Back when I lived on the plains, people used to go to Padre Island for spring break; it was the place to go. No, they said, though one guy said, I might go there by accident, because I live near there, but it's not what you think, because it's not a spring break destination anymore. If people are flooding to the sea at spring break, maybe they're finding some inland cove to hide out in where they can shoot out to the beach days and then still be high and dry when the hurricanes come in. I didn't hear another destination, like Corpus, or Galveston, or whatever. One person said, people come to Lubbock for spring break. Think about it. The weather's nice, and there's lots more to do here than, say, Plainview, or Littlefield. Several said, I don't really want to leave, I like it here, it's better than most.

Texas Independence Day came and went. Across the street are three houses. #2 and #3 had Texas flags for a while though sporadically; on #2 they had an old one, a little worn with time. After Texas Independence Day, house #1 had a brand new Texas flag, but it hangs from only one hole. #2 has lost its flag. As far as I can tell, if anyone lives in #1, they're very old; the gate is still broken and hangs at an angle in front. Somebody stops by days, presumably to take care of the place or whoever is in there. Someone with Texas patriotism? I can't quite figure it out. Hanging from one hole, of all things.

I'm falling asleep as I write. The fresh air of this town, the blowing wind, the approaching storm, makes me tired. More later!

I'm beginning to put together a better understanding of Lubbock sports. Of course I know that it's complicated, there's a whole history, etc., and that Texas Tech plays a pivotal role since so many people in the area went to it and remain loyal.

So, I have a number of questions. First, what happened to the Crickets? Presumably a town of 230,000 is big enough to support a minor league baseball team. Presumably it did support the team for a little while. Of course, the questions are: was the team any good? Did any famous players play on it? But, even more important, was the town unable to support the team when it fell on hard times? Did people just become less interested in baseball? Would a minor-league team have trouble if we got another one? What division did the Crickets play in, and was that the appropriate division?

Then we have the Lubbock Cotton Kings. Now I have always loved hockey, and would love it even more if we had it in Lubbock. There is no better game to watch than hockey, and it's really fun to play too though it might cost you some teeth. But I can understand why a place which experiences +100 summers, weeks at a time, might not take a natural liking to the sport. It's an interesting story how Dallas scored Minnesota's team, and it made it in Dallas, and that, I think, set off a wave of popularity of hockey in the sun belt; Phoenix has a team too, and maybe Houston, or some of these other towns. It does well in LA.

We're on the plains, and we actually have some cold weather, but the ice doesn't stick around long, on account of the sun, and the generally southern latitude. But I'm not sure it's weather so much as just culture. Hockey seems to have pricey entrance tickets so it likes a town like Dallas where a culture of wealthy spectators can come to a nice cool ice rink for a few hours.

So what happened to the Cotton Kings? Same questions. I'd like to know. They say that, for a while, people could skate in the arena, then the Cotton Kings would take it over and play a game. Presumably they had a zamboni and all that stuff. I like that stuff. I'd trade Tuberville and Kingsbury both for a good zamboni. But we'll see. I'm 58 and not likely to go into the zamboni business.

Then, they say that originally this was a women's basketball town. The time of Martha Sharp, etc., now they were winners, and they filled the arena, or they used as an arena at that time, before the United Spirit. Then the team fell into hard times, and they thought, by pumping up the men's team, and getting that new arena, they figured they'd bring women's basketball back.

I'd like to know more. What can you do? A sports crazy town like this needs pro soccer too, I figure, but I'd be wiliing to start small. I'd be willing to support sports in all its iterations, as I'm already over my head in basketball support, football support, etc. It's natural here. People like sports and they love Lubbock. I'm sure I've missed stuff: Tech football, Tech volleyball, Tech baseball. I'd just like to know what really gets people, and if that can change or does, over time.

lubbock haiku

ok I'm coming out: I'm a poet. I have this haiku book (see right) and now, naturally, I'm making Lubbock haiku. If you make haiku about places, what better place? Lubbock is, as I would say, very real. So here goes:

loop lifts at quaker
geese call and circle their find
unfrozen water

bag o' 'spresso beans -
plane circles over frigid
fields, lubbock recedes

from bitter plains chill
scrub bush his only shelter
yellow house canyon
More to come!

It's a rainy night in Lubbock, and I'll say it again: this town doesn't handle the rain well. Lots of towns, you get a huge thunderstorm, it floods the streets for a while. Here, if it rains at all, it floods the streets for a while. What, does everyone get used to it? Cars are going through three feet of water here. I wouldn't want to live on a low part.

On the good side, I took a break, and, flying back to Lubbock, was happy to notice that everyone on the plane was in a good mood when we took off from Dallas, as if, it's all going to be ok now, Lubbock is a lot more relaxed, you can live your life here and enjoy yourself. I felt that feeling on a plane once leaving Miami and going to the Dominican Republic. It's like, we don't have to put on a show anymore.

In the new year I want to learn about a few people. Some are not in Lubbock anymore. For example, what happened to Meat Loaf when he was here? Flunked out/dropped out, maybe, from Lubbock Christian. Or Natalie Maines? I don't want to rub it in, but she's an excellent musician, hometown girl, but everyone's really mad at her, and it can't just be about Bush. But that's ok, if they don't want to tell me, I can handle it. It's not like I run a publicity blog or anything. I'm just curious. And I'm a musician.

Then you have Buddy Holly, who lived here, went to school here, and sooner or later I'll actually find the houses he occupied, etc. Now he has staying power, fifty or sixty years later, and people are still leaving flowers on his grave. I think there's more to him than meets the eye. I'd like to know a little more.

Bob Wills and Woody Guthrie both spent a fair bit of their lives in the Texas Panhandle, and though I know we can't claim we're the panhandle, we're still West Texas and I'd like to know a little more. To be specific, I'd like to know who's still playing music like Bob did, or what they do to celebrate Woody. We'll see.

Then there's a diversity of just Texans, though Texas is a huge state, I'd still like to know a bit more about some of these folks. This list includes Willie Nelson, Kinky Friedman, Jim Hightower, and a few more. Can't even remember some of the ones who have caught my eye. Some have written books about Texas, and I fully intend to get a few, and others just keep cranking out good music. I have a couple of dreams: one of these days, I might open up a Texas bookstore, or at any rate a place that sells Tex-arcana (you heard it first here)....and, one of these days, I want to play Austin. Now there are a couple of local dreams for ya. Time goes by, I become more of a Texan every minute. That could be bad for both of us!

They ask me how's Lubbock so far; I've been here only what, four months maybe, so I don't really know. People are nice. It's easy to get around, and has a small-town feel, everyone knows everyone more or less. It's got an economy, which is more than you can say for anything northeast of about St. Louis.

It's odd, though, that the town has developed so far out south and west, and more or less left the downtown empty. I went downtown to the library on Saturday, and once more, the streets were virtually empty. I saw an entire block, empty. No shops to speak of, no Christmas shopping going on, that I could tell. At the library, there was a policeman; the library, at least, had a lot of people. It was maybe the only place that had a lot of people. Ah, but then, it's worm in there, and it's cold out, and it's always open, I think that explains the policeman.

Then tonight I went out to a friends' house way out south, on the edge of development and cotton fields, a good nine miles from our house in town. Out there, he said, there's plenty of traffic, plenty of business, plenty going on all the time. There's water, he said, at the corner of Indiana and ninety-eighth, this water comes from local businesses that water their lawns all the time, but the lawns are red clay and the water doesn't seep back into it. It ends up on the street where people splash it around but it has nowhere to go until it evaporates. So I said, it's nice here, I'd like to invite my kids and my relatives to settle around here, but it seems, if the ogallala aquifer is on its way down, and everyone is just spraying water on red clay left and right until it's gone, then the place doesn't have that much of a future. OK so they're bringing in water from the nearby lake. Maybe that will help for what, a few years? But that water is from the Brazox. There's no infinite supply of natural water anywhere. Ten, twenty years from now people will start fighting over what's left. We'll blame the people with those green lawns and point fingers for wasting all that water for so many years, letting it run into the streets like that and evaporate away because it has nowhere to go.

Ah but in the meantime, people have these nice new cars; gas is below three; the sun shines and they keep building out into the cotton fields. The guy sells off his cotton field little by little to the developer and doesn't care how much cotton he gets off of it; some of it drops from the plants near the road and lines the fence along with paper and garbage strewn out in the country there, blown by the wind. I feel like getting out of the car and grabbing some of it if only because it has to be part of an era. Who can justify pulling up so much aquifer water for that cotton, so that the cotton can just blow around the plains getting in tumbleweeds? Cotton is prosperity and it keeps the banks and the new cars coming, but, does it take our future in the form of the water we'd need to stay here permanently? And those people who are serious about the cotton, growing it in huge bales, irrigating like crazy, what else do they have to do to the red clay to make it come forth with all this cotton? I'm not clear on how this works.

And another thing, the people just outside of town, have their own wells, no water restriction at all, they can draw up whatever they want. Is that because they have another source besides the ogallala? Or because it's just assumed they're using it only for themselves and not for bales of cotton? Not, for example, just leaving a hose running by a tree until the water shoots out and fills up the streetcorner?

A playa is a plains lake, just sits there until it evaporates; maybe in the old days the water had ways of getting down through the soil, back to from whence it came, the ogallala reservoir. These days, places like ninety-eighth and Indiana are playas, because they collect the water too, and everyone knows that, and takes University when it rains. If somebody can explain this to me, please do; one issue is that the city as we know it is so new, nobody has applied themselves to figuring out how to make it survive over time. Another issue is, there are really two cities. One, the old one, has been here a while, but is fading back into the plain. The other, new, aggressive, drill baby drill, get it while you still can, and then maybe if you have some money in a Swiss bank, when the water runs out, maybe you can head out to the south of France or some such place, because you'll be used to the warm dry sun, and you'll have a taste for the monied lifestyle. I feel like one of those old cowboys, squatting in the shadow of the saloon, weighing it back and forth, by the time he's made up his mind, the wagon's up and left town for better parts, the history it leaves behind, merely the suggestion that things could have been better.

Iconic Makeover: Repairs Completed on Historic Dairy Barn, TTU news.

I have loved this old barn since the moment I got here. It reminds me of my grandfather, who combined the love of old farms and the academic setting where you prove scientifically what works and what doesn't, then apply it so as to feed successfully 8 billion people worldwide, notwithstanding a little damage to the environment, or, making all varieties of corn into a single hybrid that is unvarying as far as the eye can see. I'm not sure if everything my grandpa did was good, or worked out as good in the end (for example I'm sure he would not have been opposed to genetic modification), but that's not the point of this post. My questions for this post are: What are they going to do with this barn? Is there a good reason it has to be in tip-top painted condition rather than look like an old barn (which students loved so much, they raised thousands to preserve)? What has happened to the ag school? Is it still thriving, but on the outskirts of campus, and if so, is it better off there?

My idea is simple: barn dances. Make it a social gathering point. I know it's possible, and it will work, and it will be cool. You heard it first here. You've got to do something with it.

I have no idea about the other questions. I'll find out about them sooner or later, I'm sure. I'm not an ag guy, or I'd know that last one. But I'm in international education, and there's lots in that area that I don't know either. One can live in ignorance (and that can be refreshing) but not forever. It's in everyone's best interest to use our resources to their best potential...