#odessa texas

[thatheathen]

Erin in the Morning | Erin Reed Substack | Odessa, TX Agenda

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

Texas has become ground zero for some of the nation’s most aggressive anti-trans legislation in recent years. In 2022, Attorney General Ken Paxton launched a statewide effort targeting transgender children, threatening their parents with child abuse charges. More recently, the state began rejecting driver’s license name and gender changes for transgender individuals and compiling this information in a database. Now, one Texas city is taking things even further: Odessa, a city of 116,000, has passed a transgender bathroom ban authorizing a $10,000 bounty on any transgender person using a restroom that aligns with their gender identity.

The bounty, echoing the anti-abortion bounties seen in Texas, would be imposed on any transgender person who “enters or uses a restroom in a public building designated for the exclusive use by persons that do not correspond to his or her biological sex.” The measure further specifies that “biological sex” is determined by the individual’s original birth certificate, meaning transgender individuals with updated birth certificates are still subject to the law. The ordinance’s enforcement mechanisms are among the most extreme of any bathroom ban in the United States. Notably, it creates a private right to sue transgender individuals found in designated bathrooms—an unusual provision for local ordinances, according to statewide advocates. City ordinances rarely authorize entirely new types of lawsuits, but in this case, such lawsuits could be used to scrutinize a transgender person’s gender identity and restroom use. If the challenger succeeds, the transgender individual would be required to pay the cisgender complainant “no less than $10,000,” with no cap on the potential bounty.

[...] While transgender bathroom bans targeting adults have been relatively uncommon, some advocates suggest this could signal a new wave of anti-trans legislation in 2025. Currently, only Florida and Utah have adult trans bathroom bans with explicit penalties for violations. A few other states, including North Dakota and Kansas, have similar bans but lack clear enforcement mechanisms. Odessa’s bathroom ban stands out by relying on civil action for enforcement—an approach readers may recognize from the legal strategies used to shield anti-abortion bounties from constitutional challenges. In states that have enacted bathroom bans, enforcement has been minimal. For instance, Florida has yet to report any arrests under its criminal bathroom ban. However, by authorizing civil action with substantial potential payouts, Odessa isn’t merely banning transgender people from bathrooms—it’s incentivizing citizens to serve as enforcers, with the promise of large monetary rewards. This could lead individuals to act as “bathroom police,” patrolling restrooms to target transgender individuals, potentially turning such actions into a lucrative endeavor.

Erin Reed’s Erin In The Morning blog has a report on the first Texas SB8-style bounty law applying to trans bathroom usage to be enacted anywhere in the USA, as Odessa, TX just enacted such a policy.

The $10,000 bounty serves as an incentive for anti-trans extremists to serve as bathroom police to nab trans people who use the bathrooms aligned with their gender identity instead of those aligned with their gender assigned at birth for financial gain.

[still-sleepless-in-texas]

où es-tu??

[archangelphotographs]

[mywifeleftme]

169: The Flatlanders // The Odessa Tapes

The Odessa Tapes The Flatlanders 2012, New West

A Cliff’s/Cole’s/Spark’s Notes on the Flatlanders: Texan trio of songwriter’s songwriters (Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, and a nascent Joe Ely) form combo, head to Nashville to record impossibly sublime album (All American Music) in November 1972 that is (barely) released on 8-track cassette after would-be single “Dallas” flops. The album is forgotten, the band splits, its three core members build respectable careers. As the Americana scene they’d somewhat presaged takes shape, the Nashville recordings are sporadically re-released (most notably on Rounder’s More a Legend Than a Band) and the Flatlanders retrospectively find themselves one of the most critically celebrated country acts of their era.

The Odessa Tapes are an even more forgotten batch of recordings than those Nashville sessions, cut in January of the same year as a demo for Plantation Records. The tapes were rediscovered in the 2000s and released by New West in 2012 and, despite the years of neglect, they sound astonishing—to the point you could make a case that they represent the band’s definitive statement. The material is largely the same as that found on the later sessions, though four songs appear here for the first time (“Number Sixteen,” “Shadow of the Moon,” “I Think Too Much of You,” “Story of You,” all superb). These renditions have a honeyed warmth unto themselves, like the feeling in your muscles when you sink into a good chair. All American Music was marketed as Jimmy Dale Gilmore & The Flatlanders, and to my ear at least it’s mixed and arranged to subtly emphasize him as ‘the star.’ Here, their trademark harmonies sound closer and more balanced, the pace a tad mellower, the guitars absent the Nashville sessions’ very slight commercial sheen. Reasonable people can differ as to whether All American Music’s accoutrements (e.g. Steve Wesson’s musical saw) add welcome variety to these simple, elegant songs, which admittedly are all pretty similar in structure, but you can’t go wrong with either set.

Speaking of structure, it occurs to me I’ve structured this review badly, gotten a little deep into the minutiae of comparing versions of songs there’s a good chance you’ve never heard before. So, let’s say this of the Flatlanders: they harkened back to pre-1950s country and bluegrass, had those singers been raised Buddhist rather than Baptist. In place of Christian melodrama (sin, shame, redemption), their songs have a wry philosophical resignation, gazing through the big Texas Panhandle sky over the fence line at the turning wheel of dharma. With the exception of the full-on spiritualism of “Bhagavan Decreed” (an extraordinarily poetic set of lyrics by Austin musician Ed Vizard), they don’t front with the cosmic stuff: it’s on your tenth or hundredth listen to these sentimental, homespun songs of steadfastness and fidelity that lines like “the universal law needs no revision” and “this world’s just not real to me” and “I guess I should be flyin’ ‘cause it’s killin’ me to run” start clicking together.

I’m sure I have a hundred top ten albums at this point. But if one of those sickos with a desert island / turntable situation put a cruise missile to my head, it’d be hard to imagine going a lifetime without hearing the Flatlanders again. And if I had to pick just one of theirs, it’d be The Odessa Tapes.

169/365

[acidsmooth]

We are graduating to better flyers at Eccentric Comedy! Come out Saturday! This Saturday! Tell all your friends!

[catherinesbeadazzledcharms]

Donors Choose - Expires Sunday - $156 needed. Help Give Curriculum to Mrs Huston’s Class.

Almost funded. Expires in Sunday. $156 needed to fund. Life skills teacher from Odessa Texas here. Help me give my students important resources and curriculum they need for the classroom through #donorschoose .

#teachers 

[moovingaroundtheusa]

Oil Pump between Odessa, TX & Andrews, TX

[angela-yuriko-smith]

Accidental Documentary on OmniPark

$486 away from the $5,000 goal with18 hours to go...

A few weeks ago I had Ben Thomas and Laird Barron for OmniPark Rumors—Fact or Fiction? OmniPark was a theme park located near Odessa, Texas from 1977 to 2003 divided into the Seven Realms. After that show I made a comment without thinking… “You know what we should do? Make a documentary on this fictional place called OmniPark.” Without getting into too many details, here it is. Thank you to…

[mantre]

ODESSA PERSONAL INJURY LAWYER

After an auto, car, bus, motorcycle, truck, or 18-wheeler accident in Odessa, Texas, are you searching for a lawyer nearby? Call a local Odessa Personal Injury Lawyer at the Reyna Law Firm without a doubt! In a nutshell, the Reyna Law Firm defends the rights of those wounded in Odessa accidents. Call now. For you, we want to battle!

[still-sleepless-in-texas]

[archangelphotographs]

West Texas in the evening

[deadmotelsusa]

The Sahara Motel of Odessa, Texas, 1950s, 2019 and 2022.

[unteriors]

Ann Street, Odessa, Texas.