Norma Zenteno 1953 - 2013

We attended the event originally planned as a benefit which became her tribute Sunday afternoon, and couldn't get in the door. There were a hundred people or more lined up outside at 4 o'clock, allowed to enter only as others left, as the fire marshal ruled the crowd was too large for the facility.

I listened to her music for years and was thrilled to meet her about two years ago as shared supporters of Barrio Dogs, the East End effort to help abandoned, abused, and neglected animals.

She could have easily reached national fame and fortune as a musician, but she didn't care about having those things. And as tremendous as her musical talents were, her warmth and grace and compassion exceeded even that.

There will be a service for her on Friday, March 1, from 10 to noon, at the Catholic Charismatic Center on Cullen Blvd.

There's just no getting accustomed to the loss of a soul like Norma Zenteno. The rest of us just get to hold our wonderful memories of her, and try a little harder to live our lives as she did hers.

Vaya con Dios, Norma.

This Week in Texans of Infamy

-- I am still holding out on posting anything at length about this miserable POS. As previously mentioned, I am trying. real. hard, Ringo... to be the shepherd. Or at least to not feed the trolls.

This wad craves the attention he is getting and I just don't want to give him any.

-- And the same goes for this douchebag. Even Ed Emmett has figured out that he's a moron. And yet, he makes an appeal to logic. Which of the two is more stupid, really?

-- I'm not cutting Phil Gramm any slack, though. He is precisely...

... the Forrest Gump of financial calamity. Time and again, his face appears at key moments in history. Unlike Gump, Gramm is usually planting the seeds of future disaster whenever he pops up. 

From Gramm, to Kay Bailey, to the current occupant of that Senate seat. It sure will be a beautiful day when Texas Republican voters wake up and smell the coffee, won't it?

-- This is a fellow we should all get to know better: Edward Blum, the godfather of the legal challenges to the Voting Rights Act. As the Supreme Court begins to decide whether or not to eviscerate it, just remember that if Craig Washington's personal financial difficulties had been publicly disclosed a little sooner, Blum might have made it to Congress for a two-year term... just like Steve Stockman.

Why is the VRA still necessary, you wonder? Because this. And this.

-- I would like to be more encouraged about this development, but until Texas Democrats stop advancing online petitions and start registering Latino voters in their neighborhoods -- and then going back and driving them to the polls during early voting periods and on Election Day -- I will remain skeptimistic. Similar to Socratic Gadfly.

Update: Jeremy Bird understands the scope of the challenge.

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Paraphrasing from the interview above: "1.5 million citizen Latinos in Texas, 500,000 African Americans, and 200,000 Asian Americans are not registered to vote. In 2008, 54% of Latinos were registered to vote, but only 35% turned out..."