Scaled Quail (Callipepla squamata), Christmas Mountains Oasis, Brewster County, Texas.

This map?

Yep!!! Couldn't remember if it had been posted before or not, lol. Can definitely attest to New Mexico hating Texas, personally 😅 Our drivers are not good and the Panhandle/northern part of West Texas does not... well, I'll just say they don't always put our best foot forward, and leave it at that.

Trans-Pecos Copperhead

Agkistrodon contortrix pictigaster - Texas.

By Frank Portillo

Inspired by a photo I had taken of the Stardust Motel sign leaving Marfa, TX - commissioned/ illustrated by St. Narcissa for the visual component to my audio poem James Dean - I wanted the listener to be transported to desert highways late at night coming across all the imagery explored in the spoken prose.

Only the Wind Kept Me Company That Morning by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: At a roadside pullout along Texas State Highway 54 with a view looking across the Chihuahuan Desert to the northwest. My thought on composing this image was to use some Highground that I was located on next to this fence line and capture a sweeping view across this desert landscape with the small shrubs and wild grasses leading up to the Sierra Diablo Mountains off in the distance. I decided to keep the horizon more or less centered with the image so that I could include some of the clouds in the skies above. I liked how that was a color contrast to the earth-tones in the lower portion of the image. The rest of the composition was exposing the image to get a correct lighting, given the morning sunshine that was coming from behind and still low in the skies above.

H. Texas - Reeves - Calera - 2023 by Charles Henry Via Flickr: Title: Chapel, Calera, Texas, 2023 Medium: digital, color, 5D, EF 135mm Subjects: Calera Chapel, west Texas, building, church, Trans-Pecos, Balmorhea, Toyahvalle

Trans-Pecos Rat Snake (Bogertophis subocularis), family Colubridae, from West Texas and northern Mexico

photograph by Dick Bartlett

Stede the Trans Pecos ratsnake? Congrats on your snake’s gender

Trans-Pecos is a region in Texas where Trans-Pecos ratsnakes live! I get this comment like fifty times every time I bring Stede up but I promise, hand on my heart, that's just what these snakes are called and unfortunately they are not all transgender.

Though it would be cool if Stede was trans, snakes seem to have no concept of gender (every snake's gender is "snake").

Celebrating Black Queer Icons:

Lucy Hicks Anderson

Lucy Hicks Anderson was born in 1886 in Waddy, Kentucky. Anderson is known as a socialite and chef that became well known in Oxnard, California from 1920 to 1946. She became the first black trans woman to defend her identity in a US courts. From an early age Anderson identified as a girl. On advice from doctors, Anderson's parents accepted and supported this. Anderson would attend school in gender affirming clothing, such as dresses, under a name of her own choosing, Lucy. At the age of 15 Anderson left school and began supporting herself through domestic work. At 20 Anderson moved to Pecos, Texas where she worked in a hotel. Anderson next moved to New Mexico, where she met her first husband, Clarence Hicks, in 1920. At age 34 Anderson, and her then husband, moved to Oxnard, California. Anderson proved herself a skilled chef and baker, winning some contests. Anderson's marriage to Hicks eventually ended in divorce. After which Anderson used money she had saved during the marriage to purchase a boarding house. The boarding house served as a front for a brothel, and the sale of alcohol during prohibition. Outside her time as a Madame and managing a boarding house, Anderson also became a well known socialite and hostess. Connections made during this time would prove fruitful during Anderson's subsequent legal troubles. It is said that Charles Donlon, a prominent banker, helped get her out of jail, after her initial arrest, on the grounds that he was hosting a significant dinner party that would have fallen apart without Anderson's involvement. In 1944 Anderson married her second husband, Reuben Anderson. About a year later, in 1945, a sailor claimed to have received a sexually transmitted infection from one of the women working in Anderson's brothel. This led to all women working there being subject to medical examination, including Anderson. When the Ventura County DA was informed that Anderson was assigned male at birth he chose to charge her with perjury on her marriage license. During this trial Anderson would utter the famous lines "I defy any doctor in the world to prove that I am not a woman." and "I have lived, dressed, acted just what I am, a woman". Anderson was ultimately convicted of perjury and sentenced to 10 years probation and her marriage license was deemed invalid. This also led to the Federal Government to charge Anderson with fraud, based on her receiving spousal rights from the GI Bill. Lucy and Reuben Anderson where both found guilty and sentenced to a men's prison. Anderson was forbidden by the court to wear women's clothing during this time. After their release Lucy and Reuben Anderson moved to Los Angeles, California where they lived quietly until her death in 1954, at the age of 68. Debra A Harley and Pamela B Teaster's (editors) Handbook of LGBT Elders (link to Archive.org copy of text) notes Anderson as "one of the earliest documented cases of an African-American transgender person". Anderson is the subject of the 2nd episode of HBO's Equal, where she is portrayed by actress Alexandra Grey.

This was definitely one of the more informative of these write ups, for me. I was familiar with both the quotes Anderson made during her trial, but didnt know anything about the woman. Wilmer "Little Axe" Broadnax has been mentioned in several of these end notes, so he is definitely next. I think i pretty much have the rest of these planned out, but as always, corrections and suggestions are welcome and desired.

The Sierra del Carmen, just across the Rio Grande from Big Bend in Mexico, rise to over 9,000 feet

Horse Crippler (Echinocactus texensis), Dugout Wells, Big Bend National Park, Texas.

Trans-Pecos Striped Whiptail, Big Bend National Park, Texas, USA

photograph by CA Hoyt | National Park Service

Detail of Downy Indian Paintbrush, Texas Bluebonnet, Prickly Pear Cactus, Ozona and Marfa, Texas (Specific Objects No. 2), March 2023; Sotol Leaf and Paintbrush, Trans-Pecos, Marfa, West Texas, March 2023; Wild Persimmon and Eryngo, Cross Timbers, Thomsen Prairie, Montague County, Texas, November 2022; and New England Blazing Star, Chinkapin Oak, Fen Grass of Parnassus, Bethel, Connecticut, August 2023 Art by James Prosek.

Only the Wind Kept Me Company That Morning by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: At a roadside pullout along Texas State Highway 54 with a view looking across the Chihuahuan Desert to the northwest. My thought on composing this image was to use some Highground that I was located on next to this fence line and capture a sweeping view across this desert landscape with the small shrubs and wild grasses leading up to the Sierra Diablo Mountains off in the distance. I decided to keep the horizon more or less centered with the image so that I could include some of the clouds in the skies above. I liked how that was a color contrast to the earth-tones in the lower portion of the image. The rest of the composition was exposing the image to get a correct lighting, given the morning sunshine that was coming from behind and still low in the skies above.