The
Issue 569
Island Moon
The voice of The Island since 1996
March 12, 2015
Around The Island By Dale Rankin
editor@islandmoon.com We enter the second week of Spring Break 2015 with barely enough Spring Breakers to fill up a minivan in sight, so far. The rain kept the Breakers at bay last week but this weekend looks to be different with milder weather predicted and the big Texas schools starting their breaks; expect big crowds on beaches in Port Aransas and in the area north of Zahn Road. Most likely on Saturday and Sunday afternoons for the next two weekends State Highway 361 north of SPID will be a parking lot. Watch out for the Annual Spring Break Speed Checks on Thursday as bored officers set up radar on Whitecap and Aquarius. CCPD will also set up a temporary substation in the American Bank Parking lot, which has a tendency to empty Island night spots.
Fundraiser for Flour Bluff Youth Football League March 21
Free
Weekly
FREE
Photo by Kimberly McDonald
Getting Ready for Spring Break 2015
By Linda Walsh A fundraising dinner will be held on March 21 at 4:30 pm at the Flour Bluff High School cafeteria for the Flour Bluff Youth Football, Padre, Sharks Football, Flour Bluff Youth Cheer, and the Flour Bluff Little Dribblers Basketball teams. We need sponsors, and volunteers to cook and donate an Italian dish including lasagna, spaghetti, pizza, ravioli, garlic bread, salad or any other Italian dish you can come up with. The cost is $10.00 per adult, $5.00 per student and under 5 are free.
Crews preparing beach at Newport Pass for Spring Break 2015 Beach maintenance crews have been battling the elements for the past week as they get the beach north of Packery Channel ready for Spring Break 2015. The normal Spring Break configuration for the most contested area of the beach, around
Newport Pass, is two southbound traffic lanes and a center lane for law enforcement with the lanes divided by sand berms. The berms were well underway before recent rains reduced them to sand piles and crews had to begin anew.
SMA – Regional Science Olympiad Competition and Family Math and Science Night Up Port A way the Annual DPS Invasion has already begun as hundreds of agents swarm into town from points north and spill out into the city in the days before the crowds arrive. It’s a good time for the locals to stock up on groceries and hunker down.
Bigfoot sighting!
Featured speakers at the dinner will be Youth Athletes speaking on what this program has done for them and why you should help keep the program going. The youth participants will be serving and assisting tables and entertaining.
Football continued on A8
Police Calls
Texas A&M Shrimp Research Facility in Flour Bluff Closing Only months after closing of the Texas A&M Agrilife Research Lab in Port Aransas, the A&M University System has announced the closing of the shrimp production research facility at the Texas A&M Mariculture Laboratory in Flour Bluff in September.
Lack of police support on The Island has been an ongoing issue since 2007 when due to a complete lack of regular police presence on The Island we had 46 home burglaries in two months; some were actually home invasions when one resident confronted the burglars with a .45 pistol. Prior to that time we had Island Cop Chris Hooper, who carried a cell phone provided by PIBA, and that system worked fine. When he was reassigned it didn’t take long for the burglaries to start.
Shrimp continued on A6
Around continued on A3
By Brent Rourk Students touched the two rocks expecting magic to happen. It did. The two different Moon Rocks once adorned our Moon and were scraped up by NASA during one of the lunar missions. On Wednesday evening during the SMA Family Math and Science Night the two rocks had a different home for a few hours.
USA Wins CAN-AM! A2
SMA Science Teacher Katie Sykes shows student Dylan Trial Moon Rocks. Photo by Shannon Trial
It is one thing to say that you have touched a valuable rock or mineral, it is another thing to say that you have touched rocks that were once on the moon. It was magical. The Family Math and Science and Night was organized by SMA staffer Sharon Smith and the Moon Rocks
By Dale Rankin
In last week’s issue we ran an item about an Island family who had an intruder at the door and when they called CCPD were told no officers were available. After our story one of the local television stations picked up on the story and ran the tape of the police call, which is on our Facebook page, and took the story in a different direction by citing a lack of a sufficient number of officers as the cause. This is nonsense. The city is already struggling under nearly $300 million in debt to the public safety sector which eats up all of the property and sales tax collected each year and then some; hiring more officers at this point is a fiscal pipe dream.
Over the years the problem has ebbed and flowed as each six months CCPD goes through a reassignment of officers. In recent months the situation has stabilized somewhat, however, on the night this call came in CCPD dispatch was overwhelmed with a perfect storm of events happening all at once. The problem is not a lack of officers on the force but the way they are assigned, which is by a squeaky wheel system. Each time the question of police presence has been put to CCPD brass or city
Inside the Moon
NASA Loans Moon Rocks to SMA
Flour Bluff Youth Football League was founded to promote sports for the youth of Flour Bluff and Padre Island. This league includes Flour Bluff Youth Football, Flour Bluff
A giant offshore platform called Bigfoot is (as of this writing) scheduled to exit the Port Aransas Jetties around 8 a.m. on Friday. That is subject to change but when it heads out it will be hard to miss and is sure the scare the daylights out of some bleary-eyed Spring Breakers.
As in years past, traffic will be allowed to enter the beach through Access Road 3 and beach traffic will be southbound only with beach exit at Zahn Road, which will be one-way only off the beach. No dogs will be allowed on that area of beach; normal beach rules apply everywhere else.
“It is simply a business decision,” said Dr. Juan Landivar Research Director for the Corpus Christi A&M Agrilife Extension Center. “Commercial shrimp production in the United States has dropped from 14 million pounds per year to 3 million pounds and there simply isn’t enough funding from the industry to keep the Flour Bluff shrimp research facility open.”
SMA Director Barbara Beeler was very happy with the Family Math and Science Night offering, “Math and Science are cornerstones of our college prep program. This was a wonderful opportunity to provide hands on experiences to the entire community.”
Staff Organizer Sharon Smith worked hard to make it happen and clarified, “This is our third year and it was bigger and better than ever. Although the activities and booths seem geared towards students, many parents found themselves SMA Science Team enjoying the competition. engaged in the activities Photo by Melanie Ortiz as well. Working in collaboration with Texas A&M, Corpus Christi is important were on loan from NASA after SMA Science Teacher Katie Sykes to us. We are a collegiate prep school completed a week long training at and what better way to reinforce that NASA. She became ‘Moonstruck’ then with a university, student, and and qualified to request Moon Rock family experience.” samples for educational purposes.
Dee-Scoveries A6
Sports A8
Airtales A9
Seashore continued on A2
A little Island history By Dale Rankin
Jim Bowie’ Long Road to the Alamo
It was 179 years ago this month that our Texas forefathers forted themselves in the Alamo in what is now downtown San Antonio and secured their place in our history. Of the non-Hispanics in the Alamo – and there were many Hispanic Texians who died fighting for the Texas cause – Jim Bowie was the one who had been in the state the longest and risen the highest prior to the fight in the Alamo. Over the sweep of history, as the legend becomes fact and writers print the legend, there has been a shift in the roles of the iconic figures that died there and the role of the man who in some ways was the quintessential Texan – James Bowie is no exception.
Snake Island
The road that lead him to the Alamo began in the summer of 1819 when Bowie’s string had just about run out in Louisiana. A hurricane had gutted the southern part of the state for the past two years and Bowie was dodging court summons for payment on a mulatto slave woman. His solution was to take his brother Rezin Bowie and head for Snake Island near Galvestown (Galveston) where the pirate Jean Laffite had set up an operation where he preyed on Spanish shipping, often taking slaves which he had to dispose of since the Mexican Revolutionary government had taken a strong stance against slavery. Bowie and Laffite became instant friends. Laffite sold slaves like merchandize at one dollar per pound.
Spring Break Schedule A13
Texas was a wild place then and Bowie settled quickly into Laffite’s township of Galvestown where Lafitte had an over supply of slaves taken from passing ships. Bowie
History continued on A6
Live Music A16