Out and About the Texas State Capitol Building

A few more snapshots from my trip to Austin.

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Here we have a monument, I thought it said "volunteer firemen," but my uncle said it was a monument to the first gay Texan to adopt a child.

Of course. Just look at the mustache.

Across from that monument was the first monument to confederate soldiers that I have ever seen in person. (I've read about many of them, since I read Lies Across America).

Can you see that? It reads:

Died For State Rights. Guaranteed Under the Constitution. The People of the South, animated by the spirit of 1776, to preserve their rights, withdrew from the federal compact in 1861. The North resorted to coercion. The South, against overwelming numbers and resources, fought until exhausted. During the war, there were twenty two hundred and forty seven engagements; in eighteen hundred and eighty two of these, at least one regiment took part. Number of men enlisted: Confederate armies: 600,000; Federal Armies, 2,859,132. Losses from all causes: Confederate, 437, 000; Federal 485, 216.

So much is said here implicitly: The North didn't defeat the South, the South just got tired. The North has better bookkeepers. The South was out-numbered, but we whupped your asses.

These are the emblems of the Six Flags over Texas. I had forgotten that one of the six flags was the Confederate one.



Inside the capitol we find the structure that Uncle Bill called "The Conundrum."

You see that five-pointed star everwhere in Austin. I had to keep translating it into "Lone Star" instead of "Pentangle."

A geek entrepreneur was renting Segway rides.



According to my uncles, this gay bar around the corner from the Capitol is where the Senators meet.




Elsewhere in Austin:

I felt proud of this truck owner.


The ugliest apartment building ever. Doesn't it look like a three-story double-wide trailer that got put on the lot backwards?



Here is my favorite photo of my uncles.