Happy Texas Independency Day

 On March 2, 1836, the Consultation, as the delegates called themselves, passed a resolution declaring Texas independent. The Consultation chastised the government in Mexico City for its many failures. After winning independence, Texas’s governing class continued faithfully with many of those failures, though it did move the seat of government to Austin.

Though I’m in Georgia now, I’m planning to celebrate with a bowl of red. Margaret Cousins, who was an editor at Doubleday, provided me with an excuse:

Chili is not so much a food as a state of mind. Addictions to it are formed early in life, and the victims never recover.

• Source: Frank X. Tolbert, A Bowl of Red; Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1988, p. 10. Ms. Cousins, who was once Tolbert’s editor, was living in New York and was searching for a good bowl of chili when she came up with that line, which expatriates will take as universal truth.