Category Archives: de rebus texanis

Orange TX is not to blame for the Neo-Confederate monument there. A puny group of aging cosplay cowardly Neo-Confederates is.

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Thank you to everyone who has donated to our GoFundMe to raise an MLK billboard over the Neo-Confederate monument in Orange, Texas where Tracie grew up, where her family still lives, and where our family has deep roots.

The city of Orange in southeast Texas — located on the Louisiana border along I-10, the first stop in Texas heading west, the last heading east — is not to blame for the Neo-Confederate monument there. A puny group of aging cosplay cowardly Neo-Confederates is.

They are called the Sons of Confederate Veterans and they are notorious for similar campaigns across the country, mostly in the south, most often featuring the “Confederate flag.”

Don’t believe their lies when they tell you they are a benign group supporting the preservation of their “heritage.” In fact, they are an ideologically driven cult that deals in insidious racism, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy theories.

Just browse some of the titles published by the Sons’ Deputy Chief Heritage Promotions James Ronald Kennedy and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

The local yellow-bellied members behind the monument — Granvel Block and Hank Van Slyke — have made it clear to all involved that their conspicuous display of Neo-Confederate pageantry is intended to offend the city’s black community.

After all, they erected their puerile prank on MLK Dr., a main artery of the city.

The city of Orange fought tooth-and-nail to block the monument’s construction. They stymied the Sons by limiting the potential height of their flagpoles (so they are not entirely visible from the Interstate). A group of leading pastors pleaded with Block not to move forward with the site. The city attorney publicly condemned the site, calling it “repugnant.”

You can find an aggregate of mainstream media about the site and its origins at RepurposeMemorial.com. You’ll find detailed reports of the city’s efforts to block Block, the bird-brained architect behind the cheap-looking Greco-Roman atrium he built there. He’s been known as a prankster his whole life.

Nearly half the residents of Orange are black. The overwhelming number of people — black and white — who have reached out to us supporting our campaign have left me confident that we are doing the right thing. Nobody but Block and Van Slyke and their sad bunch of cosplayers want this aberration.

Image via Jimmy Emerson’s Flickr (Creative Commons).

Wim Wenders’ “Paris Texas” restoration had us swooning yesterday at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

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Tracie, the girls, and I had the immense pleasure yesterday of attending a screening of a newly restored version of Wim Wenders’ iconic 1984 full-length movie, Paris Texas. The movie was shown at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, in the same theater where Wenders would view the dailies during shooting.

Read about the film on Wenders’ website here.

It’s hard to explain the outsized role the film has played and continues to play in my life.

I was a junior in high school when it was released and did not see it then.

But by the time I was in grad school at U.C.L.A., it had become required viewing for all aspiring critical theorists on campus. (Yesterday, I learned that the movie had a U.C.L.A. connection by way of production assistant Allison Anders, who also attended U.C.L.A. while I was there although I did not know her.)

One of my professors, a famous Italian philosopher, devoted an entire lecture to the film.

During my grad years when I was living in Hollywood, I shared a water hole — the notorious Coach and Horses on Sunset — with Harry Dean Stanton and would see him there often. A band I played with opened for his band at the Roxbury one time. Man, what a Hollywood night that was!

During those same years, I often saw Ry Cooder, who created the unique score, at a club we used to play and hang out in, Fais Do Do. It was there that I first met his son Joachim, who, years later, thanks to a totally different connection, would make an album with my band Nous Non Plus and tour with us.

And just to make it a truly cosmic connection, Tracie’s long-time hairdresser not only appeared with her band Mydolls in the film. But she and her band also worked as part of the crew. Much of the film was made in Houston and other parts of Southeast Texas where we live.

The film has had such a huge impact on my intellectual arc. The story, the cinematography, the music… It was wonderful to see the gorgeously restored print and hear Mydolls, on hand for the occasion, share their anecdotes and insights into the production.

And this morning as I kissed Tracie before the work day began, it occurred to me: I followed a woman to Texas just like Harry Dean Stanton did. And she led me to Houston…

Check out the film, coming to a Texas town near you soon.

Happy Juneteenth! Browse the Portal to Texas History to see how the holiday has been celebrated over generations in Texas.

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Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

The main street of Houston’s historic Third Ward is known today as Emancipation Avenue. The name is inspired by the Emancipation Proclamation. But it is also owed to the fact that some of the earliest organized celebrations of Juneteenth were held in the Third Ward’s Emancipation Park, a public space created there by local business leaders in the late 19th century. It was intended to give residents a place to honor the date and occasion.

Extreme weather will be keeping most Houston residents indoors today. But our family will be celebrating the national holiday today by reading about its origins and how it was celebrated over the years since its inception.

Juneteenth became a national holiday in 2021 after members of congress from Houston lobbied for its recognition.

This morning, as we browsed the Portal to Texas History, we came across a number of TV news reporting on local gatherings, including one from Fort Worth dated 1989 (we noticed that the balloons in the video read “1987”; it’s possible that the archive date is incorrect). Use the link below to view.

KXAS-TV (Television station : Fort Worth, Tex.). [News Clip: Juneteenth], video, June 19, 1989, 5:00 p.m.; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc903774/m1/?q=juneteenth: accessed June 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.

Until recently, most Americans had no idea that such a celebration was regularly observed by communities across our nation.

Our family was thrilled when President Biden made it a national holiday (we are fortunate enough to live in the city represented in congress by the two congresspeople who proposed the legislation, including our district’s congressperson at the time).

Happy Juneteenth! Check out the Portal to Texas History here. And just enter the search term “Juneteenth.” I bet you’ll enjoy discovering how the holiday was celebrated in the state long before it became a national holiday.

Celebrate MLK Day: join Tracie and our family at the historic MLK March in Orange, Texas, and then stand up to white supremacy at our protest of the Neo-Confederate monument there.

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Happy MLK Day, everyone! Our protest will take place as planned, 2-4 p.m. at the site. The organizers of the march have also confirmed that the events are happening as planned. See you later today! Updated Monday, January 15, 8:40 a.m.

Please join Tracie and our family on MLK Day, January 15, as we take part in historic MLK Day March in Orange, Texas, where Tracie grew up and her family still lives.

The march will be followed by speeches by local leaders.

The march starts at 10 a.m. at Salem UMC Church. Click here for details.

And then, when all is said and done, Tracie and I will head over to the Neo-Confederate memorial (unveiled in 2017) on MLK Dr. at Interstate 10 for our protest of the site.

We will be there from 2-4 p.m. We will have waters and plenty of signs. Click here for location.

(The memorial was built by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the current-day Ku Klux Klan, and has been opposed by the local government and local pastors; the city of Orange has done everything in its power to stymie the Neo-Confederates but the monument stands on private land; for seven years now Tracie and I have been raising money to post an MLK billboard that looks out over the monument on MLK Day; read about our campaign to repurpose the site, now in its seventh year, here.)

Feel free to reach out to me if you have questions: jparzen@gmail.com, 917-405-3426.

Happy MLK Day! We hope to see you on Monday but wherever you are, please take time out to remember, celebrate, and share Dr. King’s teachings and legacy.

Thank you to everyone who donated to our MLK campaign: there is now an MLK billboard looking down over the Neo-Confederate monument in Orange, Texas.

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Tracie and I share our heartfelt thanks with everyone who contributed to our GoFundMe campaign to raise an MLK billboard over the Neo-Confederate memorial in Orange, Texas, where Tracie grew up and her family still lives.

We’ve worked with the billboard company for many years now and they were extra cool this time around: they put the billboard up a week or so ago and it will remain in place until March 5. We paid for eight weeks but they ended up giving us nearly 11 weeks, which is awesome.

It will be in place on MLK Day, Monday, January 15, and it will remain there throughout Black History Month (February).

In 2013 the Sons of Confederate Veterans began fund raising to build a Greek atrium and a series of flag poles to display Confederate battle flags (warning: link contains graphic material).

In 2017, the group — the contemporary incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan — completed construction and began displaying the flags. Despite Herculean efforts by the City of Orange to block them, nothing could be done because the monument stands on private land.

It’s located on MLK Dr., a major thoroughfare where thousands of cars pass every day to get to work, school, and church. The city passed a law limiting the height of new flagpoles in the city. But it can still be seen from Interstate 10.

As we do every year, Tracie and I will be organizing a protest of the site on MLK Day. Please stay tuned for details and please join us if you can.

Our goal is to repurpose the site so that it reflects the community (which is half Black) and community values. We recognize the Quixotic nature of our objective. But sometimes the battles you know you are going to lose are the ones that you need to fight.

It’s a cold stretch of road out there. But today it’s a little bit warmer.

Thanks to everyone who contributed. Please join us on MLK Day as we celebrate the legacy of Dr. King.

Read more about our efforts on our blog RepurposeMemorial.com.

Happy Juneteenth! Here’s a book that totally changed my perspective on the holiday and its meaning in Texas and beyond.

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Above: one of the earliest celebrations of Juneteenth at Emancipation Park in Houston in 1880. The park was created especially by local business leaders to serve as a gathering place for future Juneteenth celebrations. That tradition continues today in Houston. Image via the John Marshall Center (Creative Commons).

Happy Juneteenth, everyone!

It’s so awesome to see people celebrating this year, two years after it became an official U.S. holiday.

Houston has a deep connection to the holiday because it was first observed here in our city not long after the earliest celebrations in Galveston.

For anyone who wants to learn more about the holiday, I highly recommend Annette Gordon-Reed’s wonderful book, On Juneteenth, a memoir of her growing up in Texas (not far from where we live), published a few years ago. It’s a great read and it totally changed my perspective on the holiday and its meaning in Texas and beyond.

Happy Juneteenth! Enjoy the holiday!

“I am not my geography.” Thank you American Tributaries Podcast for having me on your show! Plus: a song I wrote about the experience.

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Big shout out and thanks today to my friend and fellow wine professional and activist Michael Whidden for asking me to join him on his American Tributaries Podcast.

Listen on YouTube here or below.

Michael contacted me after I published a post in March entitled “Stop telling me I’m a bad person because I live in Texas.”

After having an encounter with a now former friend who made some extreme, severe comments about our family’s life in Texas, I asked the two people who read my blog to consider that “state boundaries do not represent monolithic ethical, moral, and aesthetic divides. There are all kinds of people in [my adoptive state] Texas, just as there are all kinds of people in California (including plenty of ultraconservative racists, among others, in my home state).”

I was thrilled to get a chance to discuss the unfortunate episode. Thanks for checking it out.

I also wrote a song about my experience. Warning: it’s profanity laden. But it really captures the absurdity of those situations.

The only thing that mattered to the person in question was that I live in Texas. Nothing else about my persona interested them. As it turns out, there’s a lot more to me (and everyone) than just geography.

Thanks for checking out the song as well. Heartfelt thanks to Michael for having me on his show.

Protest neo-Confederate iconography with us on MLK Day in Orange, Texas. Help us keep our MLK billboard active for Black History Month.

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On Martin Luther King Day 2023, Monday, January 16, Tracie and I will be protesting the newly built Neo-Confederate memorial in Orange, Texas, where she grew up and where much of her family still lives.

We began organizing our events at the site in 2018 after the Sons of Confederate Veterans first began raising Confederate battle flags at the site — a conspicuous Greek-style atrium that sits at the intersection of Martin Luther King Dr. and Interstate 10. Yes, those pieces of shit built their eyesore on MLK Dr., one of the city’s major arteries, just a stone’s throw from an elementary school (!!!).

We will be there from 1-3 p.m. Please join us to show solidarity for the Black community there. Here are the Google coordinates.

Please feel free to contact me at jparzen@gmail.com if you have questions.

Some may remember that our campaign to repurpose the memorial was featured in a video on the news site NowThis. It will give you a taste of what we are up against (contains graphic language).

You can also read about the site and its impact on the community at our blog, RepurposeMemorial.com.

If you can’t join us on MLK Day, please help us keep our MLK billboard active through Black History Month. Every year since our campaign began, we have raised an MLK billboard across from the site featuring the image and words of Dr. King. The billboard is already active and we just need $200 more to reach our goal of $2,000. That will keep the billboard up through the month of February.

Please donate to our GoFundMe here. And if you can’t donate or attend, please share the info with your networks. Every share, every click counts.

Thank you for your support and solidarity. Hoping to see you on MLK Day! Celebrate the life and writings of Dr. King by standing up for what’s right. As Dr. King famously said, “the time is always right to do what is right.”

City of Houston declares June 2 “Italian National Day.”

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Above from left, Italian Consul General Federico Ciattaglia, Italian MP for North and Central America Fuscia Nissoli, and Houston Councilwoman Mary Nan Huffman.

At yesterday’s celebration of Italian Republic Day (June 2), the City of Houston proclaimed the day “Italian National Day” in the city. The proclamation was delivered on behalf of Mayor Sylvester Turner by Houston Councilwoman Mary Nan Huffman.

Hosted at the beautiful Cohen House on the campus of Rice University, the event included addresses by Ciattaglia, Nissoli, and Huffman, as well as a performance of “Fratelli d’Italia” (“Brothers of Italy”), the Italian national anthem, followed by the “Star Spangled Banner.”

Members of the Italian Air Force, stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, were also in attendance.

In one bittersweet note during the festivities, Italian Consul General Federico Ciattaglia shared the news that his mandate will end this fall and that he will be leaving Houston.

Please consider giving to Unicef’s Ukraine child refugee fund. This link takes you straight to the donation page.

Help us raise an MLK billboard over the neo-Confederate memorial in Orange, Texas where Tracie grew up.

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In 1969, the Houston-based art collectors and civil rights activists Dominique and John de Menil purchased the third “multiple” of “Broken Obelisk” (above), a sculpture by 20th-century American artist Barnett Newman. They planned to donate it to the city of Houston where it was to be displayed at City Hall. But when the city of Houston learned that the couple planned to dedicate the work to the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been assassinated by a White Supremacist the previous year, the city refused the gift. Rebuffed by the city government, they decided to install the sculpture on the grounds of the Rothko Chapel, designed by artist Mark Rothko and completed in what is now Houston’s museum district in 1971.

(Read about the legacy of this work in Houston here. Warning: the link contains graphic images of vandalism by White Supremacists.)

Our daughters, ages 8 and 10, have visited the site many times over the years. It’s always a magical visit for our family, although our girls are still too young to understand the sculpture’s historical and present-day significance.

Given the history of racist violence in southeast Texas, where Tracie was born and where we have lived for the last nine years, it was devastating to learn that White Supremacists planned to build a neo-Confederate memorial along Interstate 10 in Orange, Texas where Tracie grew up and where we spend a lot of time with our children.

In 2017, despite Herculean efforts by the Orange city government to stop them, the Sons of Confederate Veterans completed the “Memorial of the Wind,” featuring Lost Cause battle flags, including the Confederate flag — now a neo-Confederate flag.

The following year, Tracie and I began protesting the site regularly. And we also began raising money to display an MLK billboard across the road.

(Our efforts are documented on our site, RepurposeMemorial.com.)

Because of health concerns, we won’t be organizing a protest on MLK Day 2022, Monday, January 17. But we will be raising a billboard. And if we can raise enough funds, it will stay in place throughout Black History Month (February).

Please give to our GoFundMe here.

The City of Orange tried unsuccessfully to block the construction of the memorial, which lies on private property owned by the Sons. But they did manage to limit the height of the flagpoles so they can’t be seen from the freeway. It sits on MLK Dr., one of the town’s major arteries. For the people who have to drive by it every day, it is a reminder of the racist violence that has plagued the city since Reconstruction and beyond.

Our hopes that the site will be repurposed are dim. But we are committed to reminding the community, half of which is black, that the conspicuous public display of racist paraphernalia is unacceptable today. As a famous winemaker once said, sometimes the battles you know you will lose are the most important ones to wage. We will never abandon our efforts.

In recent weeks, I have been inspired by the words of critical theorist and activist bell hooks, who passed away this month.

In her 1994 essay “Love as the Practice of Freedom,” she wrote that “the moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”

Tracie and I continue to love Orange, Texas and the people who live there. They are our people and we know that love will ultimately triumph there.

In the meantime, we hope you will consider giving to our campaign. And if you cannot give, please share the link with your community.

Click here to donate.

May G-d bless Orange, Texas. May G-d bless the neo-Confederates. May G-d bless us all. Thank you for your support and solidarity.