Laura Field 🌵

[Laura Field 🌵 @Lsmithtoo22]

@BJSymons And boy what a game it was!! Nothing better than stomping A&M and being there in person to hear their fans whine and cry! ❤️🖤

[Barry Cunningham @barrycunningham]

This is AWESOME...wish I could play it on YouTube...but we can't

[Laura Field 🌵 @Lsmithtoo22]

@CodyC64 @brettyormark @Big12Conference DC

[𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀 @Old_But_Gold50s]

Some melodies aren’t just meant to be heard, they can be experienced visually, too. Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” offers a captivating blend of music and visual beauty.

[Laura Field 🌵 @Lsmithtoo22]

@GrantHarryF @IfindRetards Crazy

[Traces of Texas @TracesofTexas]

Oh, man ... did I ever go down a rabbit hole this morning. Today is the 126th anniversary of the murder of William Marsh Rice, namesake of Rice University in Houston. The story is a Hollywood movie waiting to be written. It has everything a Texas murder story needs: a millionaire, a forged will, slow poisoning, chloroform, a crooked lawyer, a murderous valet and a suspicious bank clerk. Hanging in the balance was the fortune that eventually created Rice University.

Rice was 84 years old in 1900 and enormously wealthy. Born in Massachusetts, he came to Texas as a young man and made his fortune in Houston through cotton, real estate, railroads and other investments. In 1891 he chartered the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science, Art, Philosophy and Letters, intending that much of his estate eventually support the school. He was truly a self-made man.

The trouble began after the death of Rice's second wife, Elizabeth, in 1896. A dispute over her estate brought New York attorney Albert T. Patrick (shown in the photo below) into the picture. Patrick became acquainted with Rice's valet and secretary, Charles F. Jones, and the two eventually entered into a conspiracy.

Patrick prepared a forged will, dated June 30, 1900, supposedly signed by Rice. Under it, Patrick stood to receive the bulk of Rice's estate. Meanwhile, Jones later confessed that he had secretly been giving the elderly Rice mercury pills in an effort to hasten his death.

There was only one hitch in their whole giddyup: Rice refused to die.

Then the Galveston hurricane struck on September 8, 1900. One of Rice's Texas businesses, the Merchants and Planters Oil Company, was badly damaged and needed money for repairs. Rice intended to send funds to Texas, which threatened to reduce the cash Patrick hoped to steal. According to newspaper accounts, Patrick pressed Jones to use something faster than poison.

On September 23, 1900, Jones saturated a cloth or sponge with chloroform and held it over Rice's face as the old man lay in his New York apartment. Marsh died.

Patrick and Jones might have gotten away with it except for an almost absurdly small mistake.

They immediately attempted to get at Rice's money using forged checks. One was made payable to Patrick, but his first name was misspelled: "Abert Patrick."

The suspicious check caught the bank's attention. Officials tried to verify it and discovered that Rice had just died. They contacted Rice's longtime Houston attorney, Captain James A. Baker. When Patrick produced a supposed new will leaving him most of Rice's fortune, Baker knew something was badly wrong. Rice had never told him about replacing the 1896 will Baker knew to exist.

An investigation followed. Handwriting comparisons exposed forged signatures, while an autopsy found evidence consistent with earlier poisoning. Then Charles Jones confessed. He described the poisoning, the forged documents and the chloroform killing, and agreed to testify against Patrick.

Patrick was convicted of murder and forgery in 1902 and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Remarkably, he never did. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and in 1912 New York Governor John A. Dix granted him a full pardon after years of controversy over the evidence used to convict him.

Captain Baker and the trustees ultimately defeated Patrick's forged will and secured Rice's fortune for the institution Rice had intended to create --- now Rice University.

And there is one final, almost cinematic detail.

The Rice Institute opened to students on September 23, 1912, exactly twelve years to the day after William Marsh Rice was murdered.

So one of America's great universities owes its existence to a remarkable chain of events: an old millionaire who refused to die quickly, the Galveston hurricane, a murderous valet, an alert bank clerk, a determined Texas attorney and a missing letter in the name "Albert."

Charles Jones, the man who admitted actually killing Rice, was never prosecuted for the murder because of his cooperation against Patrick. He eventually returned to Texas and lived for decades. In 1954, at the age of 79, he died by suicide in Baytown.

Shown here: Albert T. Patrick, center, leaves prison in 1913.

How was THAT for a trace of Texas? Sheesh!

[Laura Field 🌵 @Lsmithtoo22]

@kenzezt With all the money spent on the ingredients to clean, she could’ve bought a new pan cheaper! 🫪

[Mark Lambert @sitsio]

Does anyone remember this amazing story? On July 2, 1982, a truck driver from California flew 16,000 feet into the sky in a lawn chair. Larry Walters, 33, from San Pedro, had dreamed of flying his whole life. He bought 42 eight-foot helium weather balloons, tied them to a regular Sears lawn chair, strapped on a parachute, packed a BB gun to pop balloons to descend, a CB radio, sandwiches, and a six-pack of beer.
He expected to float a few hundred feet above his backyard. He cut the rope and shot up like a rocket — to 16,000 feet. He drifted directly into the main approach path for LAX. Two airline pilots radioed the tower: they had just passed a man in a lawn chair holding a gun at 16,000 feet. For 45 minutes, he floated over Los Angeles, freezing cold, too scared to shoot balloons because he might fall. Finally, he started popping balloons one by one and slowly descended.
He landed tangled in power lines in Long Beach, California, causing a blackout. When police arrested him, they asked why he did it. He said, "A man can't just sit around." The FAA fined him $4,000. He became a national folk hero — Lawnchair Larry — and inspired the movie Up.

[Selene Mariposa @Selene_Mariposa]

The World Cup ends today. One game left. By tomorrow most of you visitors will be packing up, heading to the airport, going home.

So before you go, let me say the thing I actually want to say.

A few weeks ago I wrote a silly post about all the things you were discovering here. Free refills. Free water. Ice like civilized people. Chips and salsa before you even order. Air conditioning that is a fact and not a moral debate. Drive-throughs. Ranch by the gallon. The Germans standing in the HEB meat aisle in reverent silence, finally understanding why we do not have trains. Buc-ee’s, for which there are still no words.

It blew up, because it was true, and because you were so delightfully stunned by all of it.

Even the Wall Street Journal caught on. Their headline this week: how the US lost the World Cup and won over the world. We did not lift the trophy. But apparently we lifted something else.

We even learned a few things about ourselves along the way. Like the fact that Elon Musk, the single richest man on the planet, shops at HEB. Just rolls in and queues up for fresh tortillas with everybody else. The man could buy the tortilla company, the state it is in, and the moon it sits under, and instead he is standing in line at the hot-tortilla counter like the rest of us, because that is where the good ones are. Only in America is the wealthiest human alive elbow to elbow with a mom of four at the salsa bar. That is the whole country in one aisle.

And here is the part I want every one of you to hear on your way out the door.

None of it was a show.

We did not roll all this out because you were coming. The ice was always there. The refills were always free. The grocery stores were always the size of aircraft hangars at ten on a Tuesday. The stranger who adopted your whole section, the guy who gave you a ride, the waitress who remembered your order, the family that invited you to the cookout, that is not World Cup America. That is just America. That is Tuesday.

We are exactly like this when nobody is visiting. Loud, generous, ridiculous, overfed, and genuinely thrilled you came. We will still be exactly like this tomorrow when the stands are empty and the flags come down.

So thank you. To everyone who came, who sang in our streets, who cleaned our stadiums, who turned our cities orange and filled our bars and taught us your chants. You were wonderful guests, and you made a country that just turned 250 feel young and seen and loved.

And to everyone who could not make it this time, the door does not close today. We meant all of it. Come whenever. The porch light stays on, the fridge stays full, and there is always room for one more at the table.

You found out who we are these last few weeks.

Good news. We are like this all the time.

Safe travels home.

Y’all come back now, you hear. 🦋

[Laura Field 🌵 @Lsmithtoo22]

I love this!

[Laura Field 🌵 @Lsmithtoo22]

Love this!

[Laura Field 🌵 @Lsmithtoo22]

@MagmaPainter @TMZ And they didn’t set up a donation site to help them bury their son or move to a new location.

[Nate Longshore @mrlongshore]

I understand why people are uncomfortable with the Brendan Sorsby situation. Betting on sports as a college athlete is serious. Betting connected to your own team creates an obvious integrity concern. Nobody has to minimize that.

But there is another side to this that college football people should at least be honest enough to acknowledge.

When a player becomes part of your program, he becomes part of your football family. That does not mean you excuse everything. It does not mean accountability disappears. It means you do not abandon him the second the situation becomes difficult, public, or uncomfortable.

There is a difference between defending the person and defending the mistake.

Texas Tech is in an impossible spot. Deep down, they may have hoped the final ruling would remove the decision from their hands. Exhaust every option, support the player, let the process play out, and if he is ruled ineligible, accept it. That is the cleanest outcome for a program trying to balance loyalty, discipline, public pressure, and competitive integrity.

But now the court has ruled that he is legally allowed to play. That changes the structure of the decision.

If Texas Tech turns its back on him now, what message does that send to every player and family they recruit? That we will fight for you until the pressure gets too loud? That we will call you family when you are producing, but distance ourselves when standing beside you becomes inconvenient?

If I were recruiting against Texas Tech and they abandoned him after he was legally cleared to play, I would use that every time. Not because the mistake does not matter, but because trust matters. Families want to know what happens when their son is injured, struggling, accused, embarrassed, or sitting in the middle of a situation nobody wants attached to the program.

Accountability and loyalty are not opposites.

You can believe justice should be served. You can believe the integrity of the game matters. You can believe gambling violations deserve real consequence. You can also believe that a program should stand by its people through the full process, not just through the easy parts.

That is the hard part of family.

You do not only fight for your people when the optics are clean. You fight for them through the good and the bad, while still demanding accountability, treatment, discipline, and truth.

Texas Tech may not like the position it is in. Most programs would not. But once he is legally allowed to play and remains part of the Red Raider family, abandoning him strictly because of social pressure would send its own message.

And that message may be harder to overcome than the controversy itself.

[Road Raiders @road_raiders]

You tell’em Coach. Welcome back, Brendan. Thank God for 2nd Chances.

[Laura Field 🌵 @Lsmithtoo22]

@TulsiGabbard Prayers for you all. 🙏🏼

[KCBD NewsChannel11 @KCBD11]

Gerry Glasco's response when asked about the interaction with NiJa Canady in the dugout during game one: