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I took my second trip to the LBJ Library on the University of Texas campus yesterday. There were a lot of great exhibits as usual, and especially the one on the Electrification of Rural Texas. If you get a chance to go to Austin, don't miss this place. Hero or monster, or both, LBJ was a key president, and probably did more for African-Americans than any President since Lincoln.
On campus, you can also see the Tower. The tower is where the first mass shooting of innocents occurred in America—a harbinger of what was to come, really. It is where the first American parallel killer went bananas. Charles Whitman went up in the tower in 1966, and killed fourteen people and injured dozens more in a little over ninety minutes. They closed the tower for over 20 years, but it reopened a few years ago. To get up there you have to pass through metal detectors, and there are armed guards on the observation deck.

I went to Stubb's BBQ in Austin for the Old 97's/Small Stars show. Maybe twenty minutes after the last Small Stars tune, the skies opened with some fantastic Texas thunder & lightning and win and rain. The ticket-taker earlier told me no, it won't start raining until midnight. Now, I have some Seattle rain cred. and am, in fact, a rain fan. There was water in the air. It was about 80, with humidity in the high-90s. . .in other words a couple percentage points from being an actual mist. I was not shocked to see the rain.

