Hurricane Dean will prove exceedingly problematic for the international vacation destinations of Cancun and Kingston. Damage will probably be significant though Cancun has some of the better engineering for their hotels so often the resort hotels fair way way better than the town. The models are generally coming into a consensus that a ridge of high pressure…generally the one that has brought us all the hot weather…will re-establish itself quickly and squash out an upper low traveling from Florida across the Gulf. That will take away any reason for Dean to take a more northerly track and, in fact, the official forecast has it going a bit farther south, perhaps making landfall after it gets away from the Yucatan somewhere near Tampico, Mexico. Should that occur, affects even on South Texas would be minimal though the surf may be up at Port Isabel. There are oil rigs in the Bay of Campeche so I suspect that will be sufficient excuse for speculators to push up the price of oil, though I hope they take a bath in doing so. Around here, if you went to the state fair on Saturday you got the best weather of the week. From this point forth, humidity and temperatures will be on the rise. An isolated shower may pop up late Sunday but the better opportunity will be on Monday with moisture from what was Tropical Storm Erin works its way into the Midwest and may spill our way. The next chance for real rain shows up next weekend and its possible that will mark the beginning of the end for the hot streak we’ve been on that so far has produced 20 consecutive 90 degree days at the airport.On This Date in History: Toyota Motor Company was established as a division of Toyota Automatic Loom Works in 1937. Obviously, the loom business took a backseat. By the way, I had a text in computer class that claimed the first computer was the loom.
In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by Tennessee giving the amendment the required two-thirds of state legislature adoption necessary to make it a part of the Constitution. In 1890, Wyoming had been the first state to allow the women’s vote. Seems that the movement was more popular in the West because within a few years, Colorado, Idaho and Utah all allowed women to vote. Following the Civil War, the 15th Amendment gave African-American men the right to vote but women were left out. In 1869, the National Women’s Suffrage Association was founded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Somehow, Anthony got all the ink because later she found herself on the silver dollar and Stanton…well..I dunno what she got. Anyway, in spite of opposition from several men’s groups, women finally got the right to vote everywhere and have been making gains ever since. And rightfully so. Women make up a majority of the population. Besides that, my grandfather used to say that “if momma ain’t happy, ain’t no one happy” and if one believes that adage, then its absolutely amazing that men kept women from having a voice in the political process so valued by the nation. It took 133 years from the adoption of the Constitution in 1787 to give every adult the right to participate in our republican form of government and enjoy the light from the beacon on the hill beginning with white landholding males, to white males to all males and finally to all adults. One of the more perplexing aspects to our history…and the experiment began by the founding fathers continues to this date.
As always, enjoyed your little snapshots of history.
We have been taking advantage of this great weather we have been having and have been “making hay while the sun shines.” Well, not actually hay, you would be hard pressed to find that after this drought has parched things. If we don’t get some rain soon, there won’t be a Fall cutting either. But we did chop and ensile some of this years corn crop for winter feed for the cattle. It is a good feed for them. At least they won’t look like they have been eating lizards come Spring.