On July 28, 1917, a group of between 8,000 and 10,000 African-American men, women, and children began marching through the streets of midtown Manhattan in what became known as the first Civil Rights Protest in American history. On June 6, 2020, an estimated half million people of all races formed protest in 550 places across the country, due to the murder of George Floyd. Since Mr. Floyd's murder, many others, African-Americans and Latinos, have suffered or been killed due t

On Monday, August 24, 2020, Isaac Fanuiel IV stood and spoke in front of a Commissioners Court of Galveston County. He was slotted in between a number of speakers fighting for the removal of the confederate statue from the entry of the Galveston County Courthouse. This statue had bothered him since adolescence, and he was now speaking in front of the five men who could vote to remove it. After a Juneteenth march, numerous protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and app

On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordan Granger issued five general orders on Galveston island. One of those general orders was general order number three that freed the enslaved people of Texas. President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 to go into effect January 1, 1863, but southern states did not recognize President Lincoln as their President and ignored the proclamation. American slavery would not officially end until the ratificatio

As a young child, it did not take long to understand I was different from those around me. I remember being at Mall Of The Mainland, waiting for my mom to get her nails done, and she gave me money to play in the play area there. There was another girl of the Caucasian race with whom I tried to play. Her response was, “No, she is Black.” As a six-year-old, That was my first experience with understanding Black might not equal positivity for other. As a Black, female, Black Live

I sat and watched in disbelief as the numbers rolled across the bottom of the dayroom tv. It was a late night in November 2016, and the guard on duty that night let me stay up late to watch the presidential race results. The other inmates in my dorm slept so soundly around me as if it was just another day in prison. Donald Trump’s numbers rose as my spirits fell, and then all too quickly, it was over. We had a new president and four years of uncertainty ahead of us. The next

In 1858, two years before becoming President, Abraham Lincoln lost the race to become the Senator from Illinois. Still, in accepting his party’s nomination as their candidate, Lincoln spoke words that continue to resonate for us today: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Here, Lincoln was speaking about a nation on the verge of being rent asunder. Then, as now, there was a notion that our nation is a compendium of ideals, of values, of historical narrative. Th

In 1965 in Des Moines, Iowa, students at a local school sported armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The immediate response by the school district was to ban the armbands leading to the Supreme Court case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District, in which the ruling expressed that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Although the Court upheld that students are protected under the first amendment

This summer, with support from an Arts Respond project grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, the Galveston Arts Center developed a special workshop series for a deserving group of creative teens. The participants were five students in the youth art collective at Galveston Urban Ministries (G.U.M.) whose mission is to develop holistic relationships to transform Galveston’s North Broadway community. The end-product of this eight-week virtual/in-person course was to be a

2020 has been exhausting, hasn’t it? Protests and pandemics; Murder hornets and threats of war. Hell, we’re barely into hurricane season, and every time I see a breaking news alert on TV now I sigh and think to myself, “WTF now?” Certainly, it’s been incredible to see how these calls to act against injustice have mobilized the nation. But it’s upsetting and draining and I can’t even watch the news anymore. There’s that undeniable frustration when it feels like marching for a

It’s been a while since the president has come to town. Sure, George W. Bush surveyed the damage inflicted by Hurricane Ike in 2008, buzzing around the island in Marine One to get a first-hand look at the destruction left in the wake of the category 4 storm. But for the last time a sitting president actually, set foot on the island, we have to go all the way back to the 1930s. And even then it was a brief, fifty-minute-long visit before speeding away to our neighbor to the no

What’s going on? Do you understand the times? When can we go back to normalcy? Some say that will never happen. Should we be afraid? We are experiencing a breakdown in national and inter-personal civility. We are witnessing social unrest sweeping the country. We are shut down due to a worldwide pandemic, causing illness and death like we haven’t seen in over a century and causing our economy to falter with massive unemployment and business failures not seen since the Great D

Ancient Sumerian texts seem to hold the key to everything important in our lives, from the gods and demons in the movie Ghostbusters to the first record of beer in human history. While I have never claimed to be as civilized as the Sumerians, I can still party like it’s 1999… B.C. That wasn’t always the case. Texas as a whole, along with seven other states, held on to Prohibition well after it was federally ended in 1933. Many counties in these states are still “dry”. The no

In a 2018 article, Alcohol.org wrote that craft beer breweries, defined as relatively small and independent beer-makers, have seen higher production in recent years than ever before. Craft beer has become explosively popular, especially among Millenials. As a result, so has the trope of the beanie-wearing, man-bun sporting, hipster beer-snob. You’ll know you’ve encountered one if they ask something like, “Is this beer double hopped or triple hopped?” or declare, “This is grea

Small But Mighty - BeerFoot Brewery- Galveston Beerfoot Brewery, located at 28th & Seawall in Galveston, TX, is an artisan brewery that produces three half-barrel kegs per week. We are unique in that we never brew the same beer twice. There is always something new on tap to try. We are also the only craft brewery in Texas that has a full oceanview. Mark Dell'Osso, of Galveston Island Brewery, was our first brewer, which allowed Mark to test the market with many of those beer

When people think of beer, it’s normal to think of barley, malt, yeast, and hops. So what about that isn’t vegan? It’s surely not something I had ever thought about until I started to do my research. There is a lot that goes into the process of making beer; some of it may not be vegan. Some of the most popular non-vegan products that go into the filtration of beer are isinglass and gelatin. You have probably heard of gelatin and may know that it is derived from crushed anima

In no way am I an expert in the study of Zymology, or beer making. I like some types of beer, have sampled many, and am open to tasting almost all. Long ago I stopped purchasing and drinking commercially-produced domestic beer (e.g., Coors, Bud, Miller). I prefer to support local breweries and members in our community who work and volunteer for them. My favorite beer is made by a woman who lives in Galveston and works at a brewery I can bicycle to with my kids. The name of t

A bubbly brew is the potion we need to invoke the magic of island time in our busy lives. Mingling the meditative practice of deep breathing with deep imbibing of rich floral, fruity, sweet, and even savory brews brings us in tune with the nature of our island. Our breweries are built by friends and offer a place for the communities we love as much as a watering hole for our over-taxed agendas. I cannot keep up with the explosion of breweries on this island and in near-by Gal

As a 34-year-old native Austinite, I’ve seen the rise in acceptance of tattoos. I was a child who was appreciative of alternative culture. I adored the artistry of the vibrant colors and the cool designs. Growing up, it was impressed upon me that carrying a tattoo or having a piercing was somehow “bad,” or that these symbols marked a person who was untrustworthy (perhaps even criminal). This view seemed to be the overall consensus, but if you fast forward to the present— oh m

Tattoos are a manifestation of our identities; they represent our passions, life events, and communities. Librarians are trusted knowledge keepers and community experts; they connect us to information and to each other. And the rising sub-culture of tattooed librarians thrives in Galveston threatening to create connections among us, weave stories into our community, and bring a pestilence of literacy to all. Do tattoos on our librarians create confusion? Curiosity? Fear? How

I once thought it a fine act of marksmanship to fire a round down an empty bullet casing at close range. Don’t judge. I was drunk. I was rewarded with a spray of lead and powder to the face that was most embarrassing. I was able to dig the big chunk of lead out of my nose with a knife, and the shooting glasses saved my eyes. But I still have “gunpowder spots”. The name “gunpowder spots” is derived from the sailors’ practice of making shipboard tattoos with gunpowder, instead