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Bolivar and the Coast – To Be Continued
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Bolivar and the Coast – To Be Continued
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn!
- Wordsworth
In a dark September, sadly unnoticed by many Americans outside the killing zone, the historic Bolivar peninsula, its houses and stores, its schools and roads and parks, its little set-‘em-up-Joe beach bars, its thousands of acres of wildlife refuge, were blown and blasted to sand and wreckage and death.
Along the rest of the coast, from Sabine Pass to Galveston’s West Isle, the stories are of a dreary and despairing sameness, disaster followed by federal indifference, indifference to the point of cruelty. When spring comes again to Sabine Pass and Bridge City and the empty spaces that were once little beach towns on Bolivar, the United States government will faithfully send tax notices to homeless people who worked and dutifully paid taxes all their lives, but who are given nothing back because the coastal people of Texas are not as dear to the hearts of the northeastern leader class as are the expensive puppets in Kabul and Bagdad.
Our uncounted coastal dead must be given over to the sea and the marshes, which in the end turn out to be no more cruel than the distant and unfeeling government which takes from displaced people money to build the infrastructures of this nation’s enemies but which will apparently never return some of the people’s money to the people so that they may rebuild something of their lives.
Some unfortunates without a sense or proportion or history have said that Bolivar, named for the liberator of South America, must be abandoned, and that people who choose to live there are selfish and stupid. Well, yeah, just as selfish and stupid as those of us who live in earthquake zones (which is all of us), tornado alleys, beneath snow-groaning mountains, and in the harsh, killing climate of the deserts.
Bolivar is more than just a really big sandbar where getting arrested on spring break is almost a rite of passage. Bolivar is geologically ancient, and history teaches us that people have occupied the peninsula and the islands almost as long as humans have occupied any part of North America. Indians, explorers, pirates, villains, fishermen, entrepreneurs, and holiday-makers have lived, worked, and sometimes died there. As with the First Nations and the Spanish missions and the Big Thicket, Bolivar is a core reality of the history of Texas. Bolivar is not simply a geographic foot-note to be deemed unworthy by someone in some office somewhere.
Bolivar will be back, and so will the people of the sea.
The peninsula’s newspaper, The Triton Beach Times, is in exile, as are most of the people of the seacoast. Times will be thin for the Times, as they will be for the exiles, and instead of ads for beach rentals and groceries stories there will for a time be casualty lists and pleas for knowledge of the missing. Like the Triton of Greek mythology, The Triton Beach Times is a messenger, a messenger who blows his horn calling the people of the sea back to the sea. Bolivar will be back, as will its newspaper; editor Jan Kent will not have it any other way.
For now you can reach The Triton Beach Times via email at beachtriton@att.net, or by mermaidmail at 1015 Hughmont Drive, Pflugerville, Texas 78660. Subscriptions are $18 a year. If you have ever built sand castles along Crystal Beach on a dreamy summer day, subscribing to The Triton Beach Times is a small way of helping make sure your children and grandchildren can someday build their own summer dreams there.
- Wordsworth
In a dark September, sadly unnoticed by many Americans outside the killing zone, the historic Bolivar peninsula, its houses and stores, its schools and roads and parks, its little set-‘em-up-Joe beach bars, its thousands of acres of wildlife refuge, were blown and blasted to sand and wreckage and death.
Along the rest of the coast, from Sabine Pass to Galveston’s West Isle, the stories are of a dreary and despairing sameness, disaster followed by federal indifference, indifference to the point of cruelty. When spring comes again to Sabine Pass and Bridge City and the empty spaces that were once little beach towns on Bolivar, the United States government will faithfully send tax notices to homeless people who worked and dutifully paid taxes all their lives, but who are given nothing back because the coastal people of Texas are not as dear to the hearts of the northeastern leader class as are the expensive puppets in Kabul and Bagdad.
Our uncounted coastal dead must be given over to the sea and the marshes, which in the end turn out to be no more cruel than the distant and unfeeling government which takes from displaced people money to build the infrastructures of this nation’s enemies but which will apparently never return some of the people’s money to the people so that they may rebuild something of their lives.
Some unfortunates without a sense or proportion or history have said that Bolivar, named for the liberator of South America, must be abandoned, and that people who choose to live there are selfish and stupid. Well, yeah, just as selfish and stupid as those of us who live in earthquake zones (which is all of us), tornado alleys, beneath snow-groaning mountains, and in the harsh, killing climate of the deserts.
Bolivar is more than just a really big sandbar where getting arrested on spring break is almost a rite of passage. Bolivar is geologically ancient, and history teaches us that people have occupied the peninsula and the islands almost as long as humans have occupied any part of North America. Indians, explorers, pirates, villains, fishermen, entrepreneurs, and holiday-makers have lived, worked, and sometimes died there. As with the First Nations and the Spanish missions and the Big Thicket, Bolivar is a core reality of the history of Texas. Bolivar is not simply a geographic foot-note to be deemed unworthy by someone in some office somewhere.
Bolivar will be back, and so will the people of the sea.
The peninsula’s newspaper, The Triton Beach Times, is in exile, as are most of the people of the seacoast. Times will be thin for the Times, as they will be for the exiles, and instead of ads for beach rentals and groceries stories there will for a time be casualty lists and pleas for knowledge of the missing. Like the Triton of Greek mythology, The Triton Beach Times is a messenger, a messenger who blows his horn calling the people of the sea back to the sea. Bolivar will be back, as will its newspaper; editor Jan Kent will not have it any other way.
For now you can reach The Triton Beach Times via email at beachtriton@att.net, or by mermaidmail at 1015 Hughmont Drive, Pflugerville, Texas 78660. Subscriptions are $18 a year. If you have ever built sand castles along Crystal Beach on a dreamy summer day, subscribing to The Triton Beach Times is a small way of helping make sure your children and grandchildren can someday build their own summer dreams there.
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