A good deal of today was spent looking around Brownsville’s highly assorted crew of web loggers* with some good results. On the Art of Brownsville, Gabriel Treviño has set up a weekly display for collaborative art. I sent him the cover art for a chapbook I made a couple of years ago and told him a little of it’s making. I had made a small blackboard for my shed/workshop area by painting about a three by four sheet of masonite with cheap black latex and curing it by chalking it until the pores in the latex had filled up. I use it for notes and figuring while I was making or repairing something and to keep score for the very serious dart throwing I some times engage in. It is nothing less than a Zen sport, dart throwing.

Five years or so later, Cris Soto and Joseph, my eldest son, found a box of pastels on the project shelf and began to fill up the blackboard. Over a two or three week period, a design grew out of the spare moment scratching between conversations and darts. I even contributed a shape and a color or two. The completed design stayed up for months and by the time I had to take it down, Joseph and Cristo had both gone their own ways, one to school in San Antonio and the other to work in Florida. I was building something and knew I would need calculation space. Even though it’s my place and I am the boss of me, I felt obliged to let them both know it was going. They happy with photos, which I promptly sent out.

Two years later I wanted an image for a poetry collection and that one popped up. Cool enough. I worked it into the cover design and credited the design to Joe and Cris.

Mr. Treviño wrote back fairly promptly and very charmingly said he would put them up next week on the Art of Brownsville site (which explains also why I am not putting them up here even though it would make sense as they are a topic–the graphic at the top of the story is mere decoration).

So there was a good thing I got done on an underslept day, a little something besides trotting off to the gym and making a quick stop at HEB.

Then I ran into Cafe Brownsville, another Brownsville web log, where Chris Davis posts videos of a good many public meetings with sparse commentary, including the Brownsville city council meeting from February 5th, last Tuesday, which I watched. more productive than yet another set of re-runs of Lawn Order or with the Biz Babes on CNBC (the only channel where one never discusses Brittney, OJ, or Doctor Phil and even politics is treated with a relatively objective perspective). I was taken by the fact that Mayor Ahumada stayed pretty well focused on the business of the meeting. He did have two outbursts that were out of line, but at least they seemed to be aimed at getting council members to follow the rules of order.

Later in the day, I found my little web log noted on another site, Bloggin’ All Things Brownsville kept by Melissa Zamora—a name I recognized from the Brownsville Herald—where a person identified only as Patricia A. commented that “before i got to the name of the blogger, a name popped into my mind as i was reading the entries– and sure enough, the hippie raines have arrived.” Grammar and spelling and capitalization aside, I was a little surprised to be identified as “the hippie raines.” It’s actually pretty correct although probably not in the way understood by Ms. A., but something in the tone was offensive, I thought. An apparent assumption of superiority. Most of the right wing hillbillies I’ve heard use the term hippy around here have not intended it very respectfully. But what can one expect? In any case, as hippy as I might be, I have spent twenty five years in classrooms where I developed a healthy respect for order in public meetings. Order allows all parties, hostile and friendly, to negotiate clearly and fairly, and helps to insure that something actually gets done.

Nevertheless, I was surprised by the Mayor’s discipline. For most of the hour and thirty-something minutes, he stuck to business. He did direct two over-the-top outbursts at fellow commissioners but in both instances, his topic was following the rules and keeping on task. He made it plain that, in his own opinion, he was obviously the smartest person in the room and his tone was condescending and seems to think the title Mayor gives him extraordinary powers as a council member, but he was on point. His rebuke of one of his fellows early in the meeting over, apparently, who was being disrespectful, went too far and he was both too angry and too unparliamentary when he cut off a line of questions by whoever it was sitting next to him–Councilman Atkinson, I believe–but all things considered, Ahumada raised his performance from the F acts I saw last fall and this performance. I’d give him a C+ this time. The outbursts were severe grade limiters.

Well, as both my regular readers will know, I had sent a letter to the editor of the Herald just yesterday chastising a fellow letter writer for disapproving of the effort to recall the Mayor. But my opinion had been formed by my experiences at council meetings last year, and I have to admit that everybody there, all the commissioners, were pulling in different directions and contributing to the disorder. Ahumada was merely one of the worst, nearly threatening violence, it seemed at times, and throwing names like “liar” around with finger jabs way to easily for the good of public order. One would have thought his concept of good manners had developed during a youthful period spent “defending his honor” in some of the rougher local bars.

So I wrote to Carlos Rodriguez, the editorial page editor, and asked him to withdraw my letter from consideration. When I had written a harsh ending to a letter about the animal shelter a few months ago, he was kind enough to swap it out for a more judicious version. I haven’t met him, but, at least by what I’ve seen, he seems a decent enough fellow, so I have hope on that point.

More importantly, I have resolved that if I have further serious thoughts about public officials, I will communicate it first to them. I have been transacting some business with the Cameron County Drainage District #1, but have kept it relatively quiet. Now we’ve been back and forth on the fate of a petition I submitted last year, and I wrote to the general manager this afternoon that it was time to move or would be going public, but the point is, I can act with fair discretion. Of course, eventually, I’ll report the communications here as well asany responses, but when I have a criticism or request for action, it’ll go first to the person for whom it is meant. Meaning, in this case, I’m going to write to Ahumada tomorrow to express the reservations in the letter I’d sent to the editor yesterday.

Fair enough?

*I am disenamoured of the term “blog.” The comics’ criticism is too precise: It is onomatopoetic and imitates the sound of wretching–it sounds like y’er throwing up.