Texas on Fire

While the East Coast has been experiencing severe weather, and Louisiana has been grappling with a tropical storm, since the 4th of July, most of Texas has been dealing with record breaking heat by standards of both intensity and duration.  Add in the fact that it simply will not seem to rain here, and the Central Texas region, which is home to Austin has become a wildfire waiting to happen.

Fires of various sizes have been cropping up all summer, and its a credit to the firefighters that while we've definitely lost homes and property, by and large the disasters have not spread completely out of control.  Until now.

I'm afraid its gotten pretty bad out there.  My folks bought a house in North Austin they're retiring to before Thanksgiving, and were in town for the weekend for the UT/ Rice game.  Unfortunately, wildfires caught out in their area, and right now they're evacuated to my... sofa, actually.  Its fairly nerve-wracking watching the news and seeing the devestation.  And the crazy part is that Steiner Ranch isn't even the part of town hardest hit.  Bastrop, a former small town - now a bedroom community, is getting hit really hard.

Anyhow, I may be distracted for a while dealing with my folks' situation and real life, so I ask that you bear with us.

Here's The Statesman, our local paper, and their coverage.

FNL Wrap-Up: The Many "Y'all's" of Tami Taylor

Nobody fakes a Texas accent like Connie Britton. Maxwell posted this, and I'm stealing it.



I know "y'all" has taken off in the national lexicon thanks to the adoption in hip-hop, but it was a Southern thing. At that, when I was a kid and everyone was a transplant, we were being taught not to say "y'all" in school as it supposedly made us look a bit hill-billyish. It did not stick.

"Y'all" is a highly functional word, and anyone who lives in Texas knows the many, many meanings of the word (as demonstrated above by Ms. Tami Taylor). Yup, it's from "You all", which up north, I guess is "You guys". But it tends to pepper the conversation quite a bit more as a friendly, informal manner of address, and is used to warm up formal situations.

By the way, you hear people imitating Texans saying "y'all" to a single individual. This is incorrect. If "y'all" is said to an individual, say, over the phone, you should assume they have just asked about either everyone in your immediate vicinity ("Are y'all about to leave?") or your entire family or household ("what are y'all up to this weekend?"). It's a form of address to large crowds ("Y'all, I need your attention.") and a way of expressing despair ("Aw, y'all...").

A warning to those not from below the Mason-Dixon line: if you ever hear the phrase "f-bomb all y'all", something has gone very wrong, indeed, with the Texan with whom you are conversing. You can assume the famous Southern hospitality has just been dropped for that famous Southern hostility.