And now the cloak and dagger, tax spike begins.

This isn’t something that honors the dead nor even the river that rose up to take them from this world. It’s the odious affairs of humans, who are possessed by the idea that they are doing the right thing, without even consulting the people they’re supposedly doing it for.

Texas and taxes, particularly property taxes has been a quiet range war brewing on the horizon. With no state tax other than purchases, counties, cities and the state have to find someway of dislodging even more from an already struggling public.

When a disaster hits, the doors close and county commissioners meet. Under an emergency circumstance, they can raise the property tax rate to 8.0% of the valuation of the property. Prior to the Kerrville flood, it was at 3.5%. They did. They went all in. They’ve added a whopping 4.5% increase on taxes for homes still standing.

I wonder how the valuation for properties will look like on this end of the ledger sheet?

How many people just can’t wait to move to Kerrville?

Will they valuate homes based on the fact that this is not a desired destination for now, or the pre-flood, hey, I wouldn’t mind living there value?

Let me tell you something about Kerrville real estate. Even before the flood, it wasn’t moving. I’ve got four houses on my block that have been for sale for over four months. Prices are dropping as fast the water level in the Guadalupe now. So homeowners will be expected to pay 8.0% on properties that are sinking in value.

And how long will this property tax be enacted for? Is it a temporary stopgap to deal with the expenses of re-building the infrastructure? No one knows except come October, a sticker shock like no other will hit homeowners headed into the holidays.

When I ran for city council in Fredericksberg, I was part of a small group of rabble rousers who demanded accountability from our local government. We dominated the city council meetings. One after one, we took to the mic to address their egregious power grab during COVID. The city had set up a snitch line to report businesses who were letting people in without a mask. With enough pressure we shut it down.

What was remarkable, was that hardly anyone else opposed us and yet, we were labeled as “difficult,” “angry” and “ungrateful.”

One of the last stands we took was opposing the $10 million that the city took from the Biden admin as part of “The American Rescue Plan.” We had poured over the language of the contracts and there were stiff penalties if re-payment wasn’t made on time and that the city would have periods of self-auditing which would be reported back to the federal government. The City Manager scoffed at our claims and had to be reprimanded by the City Attorney in real time, to avoid any legal consequences.

He hadn’t fully read the contract.

Kerrville took it--well $7 million of it. And what did they do with that money? According to the Texas Tribune, “The county approved $7 million in ARPA dollars on a public safety radio communications system for the sheriff’s department and county fire services to meet the community’s needs for the next 10 years, although earlier estimates put that contract at $5 million. Another $1 million went to sheriff’s employees in the form of stipends and raises, and just over $600,000 went towards additional county positions. A new walking path was also created with the ARPA money.”

Gotta have that new walking path!

If the sheriff’s department had foregone their $1 million in stipends and raises, they could have purchased a $1 million early warning system that could have been deployed in Hunt, where cell service is spotty. Would it have defeated a twenty-six-foot wall of water that rose in fifteen minutes? Doubtful. But it would have alerted the sleepers on the banks of the Guadalupe much sooner. And in the aftermath of the disaster, there would be a lot less finger pointing that’s going on now.

This is the dirty part of the story that is just getting started. Once the shock and numbness wears off, people are going to want hard answers to tough questions.

Don’t ask the mayor. He’ll tell you he wasn’t around back then. That’s the only thing he has going for him and yet, when you look at his CV and all of the civic involvement, including being a former city councilman, a business owner whose printing shop rests on the bank of the Guadalupe, you’d think he’d have some accountability, some input.

Nope.

It was the people that were there before him.

So far $30 million has been raised from the general public. That’ll take care of some big machinery for thirty days or so, but it’s going to just be a drop in the river as they say.

Tom Brady apparently flew into town and met with the grieving parents of the Camp Mystic girls. This is a decidedly better look for him versus vying for Sydney Sweeney’s attention while Orlando Bloom did the same at Jeff Bezo’s garish and decadent nuptials in Venice.

He also managed to give $1.8 million to the families of the girls towards their funerals. Apparently Tom didn’t get the memo. The Camp Mystic girls come from the wealthiest families in Texas and can well afford the cost of their funerals.

Now the people who had the single-wides down by the river, whose lives were wiped out, they could have used some of Captain America’s generosity. But Tom didn’t seek them out.

Water finds it’s own level apparently.

We were hit with another squall today. Winds whipping around 25 mph, rain pelting sideways. But at least we’re not alone. New Jersey, Boston and even New York are struggling with floodwaters.

What’s really going on here?

Who has the controls to the weather machine and are we being punished for talking about certain people, places and religions that seem to be ever more scrutinized?

How long will it take for one of these pastors on the take, to blame these floods of biblical proportion as God’s wrath for people who disrespect and criticize a certain country in the Middle East?

I can hear it now; “And heaven rained down upon man, woman and beast, displacing them from the comfort of their shelter as a stern reminder, to never question the people of the holy land and their cherished place as God’s chosen ones.”

Get ready. It’s coming.

SCENES FROM FLOODLAND

The occasional thrum of the big copters can still be heard. The rampant sirens of the first responders have slowed to almost normal, but the presence of the Kerrville flood is everywhere. The mood is a strange mix of somber and grey with the occasional, “Hill Country Strong” sign popping up, random attempts at rallying morale.

Across the highway from where I live, the mega-church’s parking lot is still stocked with emergency vehicles, tractors, food trailers, and lots of cars belonging to volunteers and people staying there with no place to go. It seems to be a central point as Kerrville bleeds into Ingram, Ingram into Hunt. This stretch of the highway is like the last outpost before the going gets rough.

Just a bit down the highway and to the right, there’s a road that leads to the river. It’s where a trailer park “used to be.” It’s gone. Washed out. Wiped off the map. This was a travelers trailer park, not home to single or double wides. It was a destination for RV’ers on the river for years, hoping to soak in the Hill Country waters, grab some BBQ and watch the annual fireworks display at Louise Hay park, with country bands playing from a stage that’s no longer there. The temporary, aluminum and canvas theater of the night was found miles down the river.

Most people know someone who either survived or didn’t. Some of the stories are heartbreaking. The soccer coach from the local high school, his wife and four children, all gone. Perhaps in a most merciful way, if one of them survived, the guilt and pain would be unbearable but hopefully redemptive.

In 2013, Wimberly had a flood nearly as bad as this one. At one house, a family of four from Houston were visiting their relatives, again on the river. It rushed and rose, again too fast to escape the crushing torrent. It split the house in two. The father of four from Houston was ejected and shot like projectile into the dark rapids. The violence of the current slammed him into a tree and he lost consciousness. Somehow he managed to get washed onto the riverbank. When he came to, he set out in search of his family and the house that was no longer there. His wife and two young children perished. If that doesn’t bring you to Jesus, it’ll bring you to drink.

That man was here this week, helping out however he could.

My mind wanders into metaphysical spaces, as the fear and frenzy were matched only by the size of the supernatural wall of water. I imagine angels and archons, hovering above the rushing grey slosh, just waiting for that final breath and the severing of the silver cord, diving in for comfort or capture, a holy war to see who can be saved or recycled.

I think about the soccer coach and the family of four. Did they find each other? How did their transition manifest? How did they go from cold, choking, fear and confusion, frantically floating down the Guadalupe, now the River Styx, bodies floating above the water, looking down at the broken, rag dolls that used to be their life. Was it angels or was it archons?

The death toll keeps rising, the missing mount.

Texans are quick to respond. I’ve been here for thirteen years and my experience of most Texans are that they are polite and respectful, but not warm or inviting people. Treat them with respect and you’ll get it back, but not a whole lot more. Of course there are exceptions, but I can count the times I’ve been invited to someone’s home for dinner or a BBQ on both hands in thirteen years. It’s a double Capricorn state, Sun and Moon. It’s no nonsense. There’s still dry counties here and there’s always Jesus.

But when the shit hits the fan, that steely, leathery, reserve jumps into action. That Capricornian efficiency kicks in like clockwork. It was all hands on deck within hours. I’ve never seen mobilization happen this quickly, but then again, my experience with natural disasters of this nature is limited.

But contrast this with the lack of response to the LA fires and it’s not even close. If the Texans had been in Santa Monica that day of the fires, I guarantee you, houses and lives would have been saved.

Most men here can handle a chainsaw, bulldozer, jackhammer, blow torch, winches, you name it. A lot of women too. Those skills come in real handy in a crisis.

There were ATV’s, pontoon boats, horse patrols, copters, drones, amphibious vehicles. There was one marine, trained in sea and search rescue, who rescued 165 people alone, dropping down from a copter and snatching people out of the rapid ride to their early demise.

The churches showed up as well. A number of them put up people, fed them, took donations and all within the span of eight hours. By the evening of the fourth, churches became outposts and hospitality and hope.

The Wal-Mart parking lot accommodated the search and rescue as well, there was more food and Christian services.

While the flood has and will be devastating, the rapid and thorough response has oddly restored some of my faith in humanity. We are often at our best in a crisis and I refer to Americans as the “we.” Our Cancerian Sun shows out and we care for strangers like they are our own kin.

On a day that’s usually set aside for a gaudy display of fireworks, too much BBQ and beer, country songs that warble on about God, country, BBQ, broken hearts and beer, the usual ritual of re-upping our right to be free and celebrate, this disaster of a day, while certainly lacking the festive gusto and distended guts, was in many ways far more American than the faux reenactment of independence. In fact, moving forward for Kerrville, Ingram and Hunt, they should rename the fourth, “Dependence Day” because people had to depend on each other in a way they would have never expected, just days before.

For me, the lead up to the storm was strange. I kept looking at homes in other places, higher and drier than here. Zillow was the most visited site on my cell phone last week.

On Wednesday, I walked out of the gym and the sky felt strange. The best description I have was “heavy” and “dense.” There was an ominous feel in the air. I called Joan and told her about what I felt. I said it, “feels like something big is going to happen.”

We’ve had a relatively cool and wet spring, leading into summer. Most people were rejoicing because “we need the water.” You’ll hear that a lot in Texas; “Boy we really needed that water.” The heat can be unbearable for months, sometimes 100 for thirty-straight-days, so no one was complaining about the dark and damp skies. If you talked about too much, there was a feeling you might jinx it. Don’t complain and just enjoy the reprieve, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but I knew something BIG was coming.

At about 11:30 on the third, it started to come down, buckets of rain, thunder and lightning and it just kept coming. I was still up at 1:30 and the first emergency alert came through on my phone. Stay put. Shelter in place. No problem. I can do that.

Two more times before I got up around 8:30 there were two more emergency alerts. The final one around 5AM, just before the river rose 26 feet in fifteen minutes. There were warnings, but fifteen minutes is barely enough to get your clothes on, get a few things, get to the car and outrace the rising, raging currents. Even if you somehow managed to get to your vehicle, there was no guaranteeing that you could make it. Plenty of footage of people floating down the river in their SUVs with the lights still on. That’s how fast life and death happened.

Kerrville has become conspiracy central. Augustus Doricko was seeding the clouds and caused the flood. Trump cut NOAA funding. The Camp Mystic girls didn’t drown, they were trafficked. Kerrville passed an initiative to build a gas plant. Thiel and company want to turn it into a 15 minute city. Under a dark shroud of blame, someone has to be responsible for the death and destruction.

There’s a bogeyman for every flavor of disbelief.

Meanwhile, the milquetoast mayor just wants your prayers, lots of them, keep them coming. He’s a symbol of an over civilized man, replete with awards from the local Masonic lodge to the League of Women’s Voters, he’s served on more committees than people have had jobs. He’s got the resume of a civil administrator, writes a weekly column and owns a printing company. Of course church is in there somewhere. He’s the epitome of a Saturnian man, living and profiting off the local order. But when chaos hits, when Uranus cracks the sky, he cannot respond. He is as helpless as a child in the grip sudden destruction and disorder.

A few days after his request for prayers, he blamed Trump.

Of course he did.

In a time of crisis, he was enveloped by fear and then blame. Being chairman of the arts council wasn’t much preparation for Kerrville’s weak-mayor-of a man.

I’ll continue to give you updates and share stories as well as contribute more to Locals in general.

Thank you all for your love and support.

It began in the evening of August 16th, 1987 and stretched into the pre-dawn morning hours of the following day, August 17th. I sat with a group of friends in quiet meditation of the northern coast of California, all of us somehow connecting to others in this same state of hope, optimism, high strange and peak New Age. It was the Harmonic Convergence, an event that was loosely organized by Jose and Lloydene Arguelles. Jose was in shape-shifting mode, loosening his ties on academia to claim the identity of Pacal Votan, the Mayan “Lord of Time.” Arguelles would go onto to use Tony Shearer’s work and ultimately re-model the Mayan calendar in his own image, thus creating “The Dreamspell” a version of the Mayan calendar, reset with Aruguelles own personal day sign kicking off the calendar.

His re-working of the calendar and cosmology would attract as many detractors as adherents to his work, the foundation of which would culminate on 12/21/12. And while this story starts with Arguelles it certainly doesn’t need there and the ineffable middle is a riddle we are being called to solve.

As I groggily emerged from that state and place on the foggy shoreline, I was unsure what I had just been a part of or how it would effect my life.  In a years time, I would find find out.

WHY 8/16/87?

While Jose Arguelles was the person credited with the idea of the Harmonic Convergence, the idea actually started with a researcher named “Tony Shearer.”
Shearer had been a a respected journalist who became seduced by unraveling the mysteries of the world. His curiousity led him to Mess America, where he began studying Aztec and Mayan culture and lore. When diving into the Mayan calendar, Shearer uncovered some amazing cycles. From Wikipedia:

"In his 1971 book Lord of the Dawn. According to Shearer's interpretation of the Aztec calendar, the selected date marked the end of twenty-two cycles of 52 years each, or 1,144 years in all. The twenty-two cycles were divided into thirteen "heaven" cycles, which began in AD 843 and ended in 1519, when the nine "hell" cycles began, ending 468 years later in 1987. The very beginning of the nine "hell" cycles was precisely the day that Hernán Cortés landed in Mexico, April 22, 1519 (coinciding with "1 Reed" on the Aztec/Mayan calendar, the day sacred to Mesoamerican cultural hero Quetzalcoatl). The 9 hell cycles of 52 years each ended precisely on August 16–17, 1987."

Shearer would introduce the ideas to Arquelles who would co-opt them and out of them, the Harmonic Convergence was born.

So what was happening on 8/16/87 and what does it have to do with the 1988 timeline shift?

THE CHART

What made this chart noteworthy at the time wasn't just the correlation with the Aztec/Mayan cycles but the grand fire trine of Aries/Leo/Sag all happening within a nine degree orb, with Jupiter in Aries at 29 and Mercury in Leo at 20. Uranus in Sag at 22 in an exact trine with Venus and a tight trine to the Sun and Mercury. Mars also joins in the dance at 26 Leo.  Fire is an accelerant.  

But look at that Saturn/Uranus Trine. Saturn rules order and time and Uranus rules chaos the destruction of time. Aquarius heralds revolutions which bring an end to an established order and time.  Look at Ceres here as well, the staff herding the old time into the new time.

Turn your gaze towards the Second House, where Chiron in Gemini represents a split, a fractal of the mind, two possible paths to take.  Neptune and its fluidity, even out of the element of fire is part of this strange, cosmic, algorithm as once again, Capricorn/Saturn, rule time. It's ghostly and summons up energies that the collective doesn't know what it's playing with. The Sabian Symbol for CAPRICORN 6 summons up something out of David Lynch movie.

PHASE 276 (CAPRICORN 6°): TEN LOGS LIE UNDER AN ARCHWAY LEADING TO DARKER WOODS.

KEYNOTE: The need to complete any undertaking before seeking entrance to whatever is to be found beyond.

Number 10 is a symbol of completion; it symbolizes even more the revelation of a new series of activities just ahead. Yet unless the concluded series is brought to some degree of fulfillment, nothing truly significant is likely to be accomplished by a restless reaching out toward the as-yet-unknown. Number 10 is a symbol of germination, but the seed (Number 9) must have matured well. No natural process can be accelerated safely beyond certain limits.

This represents the first stage in the fifty-sixth five-fold sequence. It establishes a foundation for what will follow. Here man reaches a THRESHOLD in which he may have to pause in order to safeguard his further advance.

The Harmonic Convergence was a threshold moment powered by naïveté and hope.

FAST FORWARD

1988, literally heralds in a new time. If the Harmonic Convergence was the powder that primed the pistol, 1988 was the cosmic trigger. 

Saturn and Uranus danced back and forth between Sag and Capricorn, with the their final and fated meeting on 9/22/88. In in this chart, in the 7th House they are both conjunct the Galactic Center, remember we're dealing with time and the destroyer of time coalescing with the super black hole t the center of it all, the mind of God at 26 Sag, The Galactic Center.

This is the beginning of the great revolutions that are about to follow, from the Soviets and even the Chinese and the singing revolution of Estonia. Polish strikes occur and near the end of the year, the first proper internet connection between Princeton, NJ and Stockholm, Sweden takes place.

We were entering a new time.