Stephen Fuller Austin (November 3, 1793 – December 27, 1836) was an American empresario. Known as the “Father of Texas”, and the founder of Texas, he led the second, and ultimately, the successful colonization of the region by bringing 300 families from the United States to the region in 1825[.…]Numerous places and institutions are named in his honor, including the capital of Texas, Austin in Travis County, Austin County, Austin Bayou, Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Austin College in Sherman, and a number of K-12 schools. – Wikipedia, accessed 10/22/19.

The short-lived Republic of Texas [the Anglo settlers] created in 1836 provided as much protection for slavery as possible. Texas’ 1845 annexation by the United States was controversial in some parts of the country precisely because everyone knew the Republic had been constituted as a slaveholder’s republic and was full of people who were enthusiastic about chattel slavery. Bringing Texas into the Union would upset the balance of power between the Northern free states and Southern slave states. – Annette Gordon Reed, “The Real Texas”, New York Review of Books, 10/24/19

Texas must be a slave country. Circumstances and unavoidable necessity compel it. It is the wish of the people there, and it is my duty to do all I can, prudently, in favor of it. I will do so. – Stephen F. Austin, 1833

Down here in the capital of the great state of Texas, we like to say “Keep Austin Weird”. In practice that seems to mean maintaining a sense of innocuous, tourist-friendly, non-system-upsetting conformist nonconformity. More Big Lebowski than Timothy Leary. Restaurants with dog-friendly patios. Weird!

And in our mildly progressive, just a bit behind the curve way, we have done some symbolically meaningful stuff. Like removing the statues of Confederate generals and statesmen – you know, the guys who led hundreds of thousands of their countrymen to their deaths in a vain attempt to preserve the institution of slavery – from their places of honor on the University of Texas campus. And renaming some schools (or, more economically, scrambling to find a ‘safe’ personage with the same last name).

But we have been ignoring the slave-holding elephant in the room.

Wanna hear something really weird? This capital city of Texas is named after a guy from Virginia who bought and sold other human beings, and forced them to labor for his own profit. And he loved slavery so much that he came to the Mexican state of Texas in order expand his slave-powered operations, and to encourage others to do the same.

But, you say (if you are slavery apologist), he just happened to own slaves, like everyone else. And anyway he’s not being honored for his slavery, but for his heroic deeds in founding Texas and in freeing the its people from the despotic tyranny of Mexico.

And what was it about that Mexican tyranny that so upset Stephen F. Austin? Was it the restrictions on his freedom of speech? Was it taxation without representation? Was it blatant corruption in Mexico City?

No, no, and no. What really got Austin’s goat was the fact that slavery was outlawed in Mexico, which was trying to shut it down in Texas.

Funny, we never heard about that part of the story when we learned about the Texas fight for independence in Sam Houston elementary school.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m a little embarrassed about living in “Austin”, Texas. And a little ashamed that no one cares. My fellow Slaveholderians, we can do better! Why can’t we live in (Ann) Richards, TX, (Ornette) Coleman, TX, (Lightnin’) Hopkins, TX, (Janis) Joplin TX (that would be too cool!), or (Barbara) Jordan, TX?

And if we’re still hung up on dead white guys, how about Edmund Jackson Davis, the Webb County rancher who led the 1^st Texas Cavalry regiment – for the Union Army?

Because I’m tired of living in Slaveholder, Texas.

And after we’re all living in Edmund Jackson Davis, Texas, we can talk about Travis County.

WASHINGTON — President Trump has decided to host the Group of 7 meeting next June at the Trump National Doral near Miami, Mick Mulvaney, the president’s acting chief of staff, said Thursday, a decision that prompted immediate questions about whether it was a conflict of interest for him to choose one of his own properties for a diplomatic event. – N.Y. Times, 10/18/19

Dear World Leader,

Welcome to Trump National Doral!

Be sure to sign up for our referral program! If your friend, fellow leader or despotic tyrant reserves an entire floor any time in the next 6 months, you can earn a free night’s stay or a jumbo pack of anti-tank missiles to ward off that next Russian invasion!

Enjoy the bottles of natural spring water on your nightstand. The first bottle is free!

We feature a wide array of indoor and outdoor activities, including two 18-hole PGA golf courses, an Olympic-size pool, and deeply humiliating but absolutely obligatory photo-ops with The President!

And when you need to wind down from an anxious day of worrying about whether that peace treaty back home is still holding up, enjoy a perfectly grilled steak at The Trump Roast, or the zany entertainment at sTrumpets! We accept Euros, dollars, and unverified intelligence on our opponents.

Hi-speed Internet access is secure and free, provided in partnership with our friends at the GRU, so you can freely discuss anything you’ve seen, heard, read or just dreamed up about Hillary Clinton, the New York Times, or Hunter Biden! Get your creative juices flowing and go wild!

Tipping is optional here at Doral, but if you feel that our service meets your standards, a cash gratuity will help our cleaning staff feed their children or fix their car enough to pass state inspection. And rest assured that all our staff is completely legal, as far as we know!

On the other hand, let us know immediately if the mint is missing from your pillow.  Someone will be on a one-way flight to Honduras, whether they’re Honduran or not!

NOTICE: we strive to create an environment that is enjoyable for our guests while remaining respectful of our beautiful natural setting.  As you wander the grounds, for your own safety, be alert at all times and keep away from alligators, Burmese pythons, Rudy Giuliani, and massage-parlor madams who may have evaded our security systems.  

We know that a little part of you has died since November, 2016. Here at the Trump National Doral we know what that’s like – we’ve been dying since 2012!

(Reuters) – Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two foreign-born businessmen associated with U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, were arrested on federal charges they conspired to funnel foreign money to U.S. political candidates, prosecutors said on Thursday[….] Parnas and Fruman were arrested on Wednesday at an airport outside Washington carrying one-way tickets to Vienna. – “Factbox: The Criminal Charges Against Giuliani’s Associates”, N.Y. Times, Oct. 10 2019

Our advice to spies, saboteurs, double agents and finks of all stripes: once your cover gets blown and you need to get out of Dodge in a hurry, go ahead and splurge on a round-tripper. Nothing says “Arrest Me” like a one-way ticket to Vienna. Which is worse, 10-20 in Leavenworth or taking shit from the office manager about the expenses on your corporate Amex?

Steve Eaton, Oct. 6 2019

1. Glaciers

2. An intellectually (at least) independent Hong Kong

3. Birds, fish, honeybees and butterflies

4. Seasons. Like autumn. Autumn was nice.

5. Civility

6. Public discourse

7. Civility in public discourse

8. Letters. With paper and stamps. And words. Lovely, thoughtful words.

9. Complete, like, sentences? with subjects? and verbs? and shit like that?

10. Conservatives, of the old-fashioned optimistic, technology embracing, Chamber of Commerce type. If they every really existed.  It all seems so quaint now.

11. Immigrants. (Just look around.  Do you really want to be stuck with what we got?)

12. The feeling that, over the long haul, we can and will make this a greener, less violent, better educated, and fairer country and planet for everyone

And five things we DON’T miss

1. Statues of Robert E. Lee and schools named for Stonewall Jackson

2. Bad coffee

3. All-white-male space missions, Supreme Courts, and whatever else

4. Having to go to “the mall” to get anything

5. A world without recycling

We discourage simultaneous submissions. – The Sun literary magazine (and others)

Given acceptance rates and reading periods, it would take the average writer 250-500 years to publish a piece using exclusive submissions. – Erika Krouse, writer, from her website, http://www.erikakrousewriter.com

Dear Mr. Blankenship,

Thank you for allowing us the privilege of considering the short story, “Now or Never”, for publication by 26^th Century Review. After careful consideration, we have decided that this piece is not a good fit for our readers.

But don’t give up! We’re certain your great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather would not want you to! It would have been like totally exhausting for him to think of all those words!

While the story still resonates even after the Big Nuclear Misunderstanding of 2038, the Great Florida Submersion, the disappearance of the world’s lakes and rivers, Holocausts II-V, and the brutal repression, resurgence, and re-repression of science, we feel that the style is too early-third-millennium, though its language is remarkably authentic. Its many “words” and “phrases”, not to mention “complete sentences”, will confuse most of today’s readers, or possibly all three of them.

A professional editor can help you remove obstructive adjectives, adverbs and minor plot lines to create a more immediate literary micro-experience.  We encourage you to re-submit this story after making these improvements. If you’re no longer around, we look forward to hearing from your descendants!

Sncrly, the eds.

Steve Eaton, September 2, 2019

The Garden of Eaton is located here in the Great State of Texas, somewhere between Falfurrias and Pflugerville. And we love our Texas (meaning that we love its people, our neighbors) despite the fact that it has got to be the scariest and stupidest state in the Union.

Scary, because as horrible recent events demonstrate, you can’t go to the mall, or attend high school, or go to church, or drive down the highway without the very real possibility of taking a bullet. You see, down here in Texas, anyone with a fragile ego and dodgy mental health who’s been dumped by their wife or girlfriend (Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church, 26 dead, 20 wounded), or who has racist fantasies (El Paso Wal-Mart, 22 dead, 24 wounded), or who has been bullied in school (Santa Fe, Texas High School, 10 dead, 13 wounded), or who has just been fired for acting a little nutso on the job (Midland/Odessa highway, 8 dead, 24 wounded) is free to load up on semiautomatic assault rifles, pistols, and shotguns and as much ammo as they can carry, and go human-hunting to their sick little heart’s content. And goodness knows we have no end of racists, dumped boyfriends, bullied high school students, and fired employees, and no end of guns and ammo down here in the Lone Star State. At least I’m not worried about climate change anymore. I’m too worried about making it home from the grocery store. And more importantly, about the little kids next door making it home from school.

Stupid, because the people with any power to do anything to start mitigating the problem evidently lack the imagination and/or the desire to do anything except make guns and ammo more easily accessible. In fact, new laws making guns easier to get and harder to restrict were adopted the day after the Midland/Odessa massacre. Stupid, because the politicians who enacted those laws were freely elected by us, the people of Texas. (Though to be clear, “us” in this case does not actually include me.) Stupid, because we live in a state where gun store shelves were emptied of weapons and ammo by panicked buyers after Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election. Stupid, because our gun freaks love to parade around the state house carrying M16 rifles and flags picturing a cannon with the words daring some phantom enemy to “come and take it”. Stupid, because when the NRA paints any common-sense gun law as a threat to personal liberty and as a slippery slope that will end in outright gun confiscation, we simply believe them.

How’s this for stupid? One of the new laws means that landlords cannot prohibit their tenants from keeping guns on their rental properties.

Now, we have lived in Texas, on and off, since 1966, including many long stretches in apartments and rented homes. And we know, through press reports and personal experience, that there are many stupid reasons that a landlord will not rent to you. It may be because you are African-American, or Asian, or a full-time student. Or because you cannot prove that you make as much money as your would (not)-be landlord would like.

But we have never, ever heard of a landlord interested in even knowing whether a tenant owned a gun.

But, theoretically, I suppose it could happen. So now there is a happy Texas state legislator who can go back to his or her district at election time and proudly proclaim that they protected their constituency from those evil hordes of socialist intellectual big-government landlords who wouldn’t let them keep a Kalashnikov in the closet.

And our governor has defended these new laws as keeping communities safer.

It would all be very funny if it weren’t for actual blood pooling in the aisles of the church, the classrooms, the Wal-Mart, the highway. It would be hilarious if it were not for the two-month old baby boy in El Paso who will now grow up an orphan. It would be a riot if it were not for the 17-month baby girl now in a hospital after being shot in Midland-Odessa.

I predict our governor will mumble some hypocritical nonsense about helping those with mental health issues – hypocritical, because he manages a state that, according to two independent rankings, sits about 40^th in the nation in mental health services, a state whose government has shown a lot of enthusiasm in not spending public money on health services. And hypocritical also because mental health care and gun control are not mutually exclusive, as Abbott well knows.  

And Texas will remain a beautiful but scary and stupid place to live and raise a family in.

Hey, Denmark? Yeah, United States here, how ya doing? Got a minute? If you’re like in the middle of supper we can do this later, or whenever’s good for you!  OK, I know you’re busy, I’ll keep it short.

We just want to say we’re really really sorry about what happened last week.  And embarrassed. And ashamed. And actually a little angry! We have talked about this! He is not supposed to do that! No, we appreciate that, Denmark, but it’s not OK! He’s a big boy now!

You know how it is, you try to keep an eye on the kid but sometimes you get distracted by another mass shooting or Dancing with the Stars and when you turn around he’s playing with the grownups’ iPhone or talking to Alexa. And before you know it nuclear winter is raining down on the next-door NATO ally or you’re wondering why the UPS guy is dropping off Greenland at your front door! Hey, we don’t remember ordering that, ha ha! But seriously, he can be pretty hard to control! Mexico called the police on him a couple of times already! God, we’re tired.

Anyhoo, the plan is, he’ll be moving out in another 18 months or so, so it won’t be a problem any more. Fingers crossed, ha ha! Love the fjords, by the way, awesome! Or wait, is that only Norway?

Let us know if he causes you any more trouble, but I think you’ll be fine for the mo, he’s across the street in China’s yard now.  Oh Lord, what’s he doing to their cat? Sorry, gotta go!

Dear Mr. President Trump,

I wish to apologize to you, for myself and for all of us here in this once-great America. We have failed you. We keep saying mean things about you and drawing cartoons that make fun of your hair. We make up stories about how Russia meddled in your election even after Mr. Putin told you it wasn’t true!

When you saved little Mexican children from their illegal mothers and wrapped them in tinfoil to keep them warm, all we could do is criticize! We never want to talk about the great things you’ve done for us, the American people, like making Mexico pay for the wall and getting out of that stupid Climate Accord we agreed to when there wasn’t even a Climate Problem to begin with! And punishing China for laughing at us! And getting us out of that sucker Iran nuclear deal. And after we broke that agreement, what did those sneaky Iranians do? They went right back to what they were doing before! You were so right not to trust them!

And etcetera!

I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for you, a Great Genius who knows more than the generals, to get so much resistance when all you are trying to do is make us Great Again! What is wrong with us?

What is wrong with us, Mr. President Sir, is that we are not good enough for you. You probably don’t want to hear this, because you are such a Nice Guy, but you should fire us, the American People.

Except for the white parts of Michigan and Mississippi, where they love you.

I know the Democratics and other Losers will raise a stink and talk about Constitution This and Constitution That if you try to do the Right Thing and revoke our passports and our phony Birth Certificates and deport us all to whatever Shithole Country we deserve to live in—though with Your Supreme Court it might be worth a try! What I suggest…one moment, Mr. President Sir, if there are some splotches on this letter they are only the tears of a penitent Subject…is that you fire us all by resigning. You don’t need the aggravation.

Why not get a head start on the rest of your life as a Sour Old Rich Man living on his own golf course, passing the days by punching in angry tweets, calling into talk shows listened to mainly by other angry insecure White Men, and fending off lawsuits and criminal charges filed by stiffed contractors, groped women and federal prosecutors? After all, we do not deserve you. And I mean that!

Well, I don’t think he’s evil. But I think he dislikes the American people, and this depresses us. The President […] is in the position to be an extraordinarily effective teacher. […]He can influence our behavior for good and ill tremendously.[…] If he tells us about our neighbors in trouble, if he tells us to treat them better tomorrow, why, we’ll all try. But[…]he’s taught us to resent the poor for not solving their own problems. He’s taught us to like prosperous people better than unprosperous people. He could make us so humane and optimistic with a single television appearance.–Kurt Vonnegut on Richard Nixon, interviewed in Playboy Magazine, July 1973

The Constitution of the United States of America dictates that a president must be at least 35 years of age and a “natural born citizen”. Whether any other qualities are required and what those might be are left up to us, the voters.

So what should the required trait(s) of our president be? A minimum IQ level? A record of accomplishment in some field? A knack for leadership, whatever that is? A roster of policies lifted from column A rather than column B?

How about this: The one quality a president must have is a love for every single American.

He or she must love the rich and the poor, the middle class and the homeless, the white, black and brown, the bluebloods and the immigrants, the liberals and the conservatives, the moderates and the fanatics, the free and the imprisoned, the straight and the gay, male and female, young and old, healthy and sick, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Bahai, atheist, areligious, and Wiccan. The ones on billionaires’ row and the ones on death row. The yahoos in MAGA caps and the housewives in hijabs. The ones who voted for him and the ones who voted—and ran—against him. The president must be motivated first, last, and only by an unconditional love for every specimen of Homo Sapiens alive and breathing on American soil, and consider none of them as the enemy. Why does this even need to be said? And yet evidently it does.

I am not an expert in recent American history, and of course the human heart is not subject to an absolute analysis. But I would not be surprised if this quality has endowed every president since, say, Herbert Hoover onwards, with the probable exception of the alcoholic, resentful Richard Nixon. Even those presidents whose policies appalled me or whose intelligence I questioned didn’t cause me to think they actually disliked us.

Except, that is, for Nixon. And Donald Trump.

Our current president has contempt for large swaths of his fellow countrymen, including but not limited to American Muslims, women, Latinos, African-Americans, American P.O.W.s and immigrants. It makes one wonder who’s left. I’m not even sure that this man, who, according to the recently resigned U.K. ambassador to the U.S., “radiates insecurity”, loves himself.

It’s fine to be angry. There is no end of things to be angry about—global warming, murdered journalists, obscenely inequal incomes, to name just three. But our leader must be angry for us. This president is angry at us.

But don’t take it from me. Use your own eyes and ears.  Or take it from recent essays by the conservative intelligentsia, including Michael Gerson’s, titled “Republican leaders are shilling for a bigot”, or  Kathleen Parker’s “Those who don’t condemn Trump’s racism are complicit in his bigotry”. To quote Parker: “President Trump is a racist. And a sexist. And a xenophobic nationalist. Among other things.”

And it is very dangerous for a people to be led by someone who fundamentally hates them. Why would anyone with a choice allow that?

That is why we here in the Garden have moved from a “let the next election handle this” point of view to something more like “we must get rid of this guy by any constitutionally permitted means available”. We made a mistake in 2016, my fellow Americans, when we assumed that whatever this fellow was really like, at least he liked us.

After all, why else would the man want to be president? Just so he could be mean?

In which we volunteer our services for the betterment of public safety

Texas lawmakers thought they were clear: The bill they overwhelmingly passed allowing the growth and sale of hemp had nothing to do with legalizing pot[….] But since Gov. Greg Abbott signed the measure into law in June, county prosecutors around Texas have been dropping some marijuana possession charges and declining to file new ones, saying they do not have the time or the laboratory equipment needed to distinguish between legal hemp and illegal pot. – New York Times, July 19 2019

A CRIME LAB SOMEWHERE IN THE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS

SAMPLE 1: Hemp.

SAMPLE 2: Hemp.

SAMPLE 3: Okay, I just want to say 2 quick things.  First of all, this stuff is totally hemp. Secondly, I have awesome respect for you guys in uniform. And not just, like, the normal police you see driving around in their cars or even on bicycles sometimes? but also like the state troopers and the Texas Rangers.  Well, the law kind, not the baseball kind, cause they really suck this year. I don’t know what those idiots up in Arlington think they’re doing? but that trade was really messed up. Do you like baseball?

SAMPLE 4: Hemp.

SAMPLE 5: Y’all are doing a wonderful job, like every time I get in a car crash? But it wasn’t my fault cause there was a branch and stuff in front of the stop sign. Except the times where you shoot someone without a really really good reason. I’m sorry, okay, but that is like, totally unacceptable. Is there like a snack machine around here? What? Oh yeah, this is hemp, dude, like send it back to the rope factory!

SAMPLE 6: This is pot, I don’t care what the guy said, lock him up. No, I’m good. Next.

SAMPLE 7: I love whatever it is you’re playing over the sound system! Do you know the name of the band? It’s just the ventilation system? Well you should like record it and make a video! Like you could be in your uniforms but all friendly and stuff. Like, uh huh, uh huh, IT’S NOT ABOUT THE WEAPON, WE SERVIN’ AND PROTECTIN’. Right? I could really go for some cold cherry Kool Aid right now. Oh right, hemp, yeah, absolutely.

SAMPLE 8: Hey, you guys want a hit? It’s just hemp, but it’s still pretty awesome!

Once again, we perform a public service, free of charge.

1. Never drink Coke or other soft drink with dinner.  Acceptable beverages are: water, wine, beer, or iced tea.  Never drink a Coke with lunch unless you are a professional model, sitting outside, drinking from a glass bottle with a straw. Coke is never acceptable for breakfast unless your breakfast consists of a bearclaw, in which case I have nothing to say to you anyway.

2. Never place ketchup on a hot dog or mayonnaise on a hamburger. Have some respect for the food and for yourself.  If you are stranded on a desert island with only hamburgers and a jar of mayonnaise, carefully unscrew the jar and dump the mayonnaise in the sea, taking care not to poison any fish.  Rinse the jar (if it’s ‘Dijonnaise’ then also urinate into it to make absolutely certain no trace of toxic material remains), dry it thoroughly, and put a note in it asking someone for god’s sake to send you some mustard.

3. Only discuss art and politics with people who already agree with you. When it’s all over there will be fewer hard feelings and exactly the same number of changed minds as if you had actually argued with someone.

4. If you are dancing with a partner, do not chew gum. It makes you appear as though you wish you were somewhere else. I’m talking to you, ladies. Unless you actually wish you were somewhere else. Message received.

5. Do ask someone how they are. Do not under any circumstances ask anyone if they are having an awesome day.

6. If you really must tell a “how I got stuck at the airport” type story, keep it under 45 seconds. No, 30. I’m begging you.

7. Who are the coolest people, like, ever? People like Harry Belafonte, James Bond, Joan Baez, Gloria Steinem, Marlon Brando, maybe.  And can you imagine any one of them in public looking down at a tiny screen they’re holding with both hands and giggling like an idiot?

8. Never serve wine to guests that costs less than $10 or more than $25.  If more, guests will feel obliged to praise it. If you want to serve $100 wine, then buy a $5 bottle, dump it out (or drink it), and pour the good stuff into the cheap bottle. When your guests express astonishment at your oenological acumen, assume a slightly irritated expression and say, “I will never understand why people will pay a hundred dollars for swill.”

9. Phrases to forget: “Cool beans!” “It’s all good!” “We need to have a national conversation.”

10. Do not base your behavior on some idiot’s list.