Texas public schools received more than $19 billion in pandemic relief funds over the last four years, but that pipeline of cash will largely end on Sept. 30, The Texas Tribune reported.

That means many Texas schools already struggling with budget deficits will begin the school year with even more serious deficits, especially since the Texas Legislature has not increased base per-student pay since 2019 — a year before the pandemic began.

Paralyzed and partially blind, Temple Lea Houston spent his forty-fifth birthday on Aug. 12, 1905 waiting for death to put an end to his suffering.

Sam Houston was 67 years old and fighting a losing battle to keep Texas in the Union, when his eighth and last child (and the first born in the governor’s mansion) came into the world. Driven from office by the secessionists seven months later, the hero of San Jacinto did not live to celebrate his son’s third birthday.

A Poem by H.H. Howze

These Perseid nights this perch upon the cistern tower is my bed Galactic shots come sizzling in from space Trace laser beams on retinas and erase themselves Overhead Aquila’s eye is bright As Cygnus makes a swan dive down the night