Dear Texas,
I lived in Houston for 7 years, beginning of 1989 to end of 1995. I can't say I enjoyed it, but those years did have their high points, including meeting my husband. One thing I did learn is that Texas hospitality is not just a legend.
You're proving it again this week: housing 75,000 refugees from New Orleans, 25,000 each in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. Working to help refugees with Medicaid, foodstamps, and WIC. Helping place foste children and finding beds in nursing homes. Taking Louisiana's students into your schools, relaxing paperwork and immunization requirements in recognition that their paperwork is mostly now mud and most important, doling out the budget to make it real, and finding the money to buy them backpacks and school supplies.
Your companies are setting up phonebanks in the Astrodome. I hear one man is grilling ribs and burgers outside; he's issued New Orleans refugees a blanke invitation to come eat. The airport where my husband learned to fly is busy with aircraft transporting patients to your hospitals. Texas A&M's Galveston campus is finding room for 1000 displaced students, charging them the state minimum fee (if that's the normal in-state fee, it's way low). I may never tell an Aggie joke again.
Texas, I'm impressed. I'm proud of you. Your state heroes would be proud, I think. And by the way, you might want take some of New Orleans on a tour through Galveston, with special attention to how you raised the whole island after the hurricane of 1900.
Dichroic
Posted by dichroic at September 1, 2005 09:04 PM
So very well said and so needed at this time.
What a beautiful post. This makes me sniffly, and reminds me of what I love about the state where I was born and reared.
Posted by: Rachel at September 3, 2005 04:20 PM