The Feel of India in the RGV

On a weekend morning when the wind isn’t up, Tracy hits the local university to bird.

No one’s around because there’s no on-student housing, but don’t let that fool you.

This Brownsville campus of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is part of, according to Wikipedia, “the ninth-largest university in the state of Texas and the fourth largest (student enrollment) academic institution in the University of Texas system. [It’s] also one of the largest universities in the U.S. to have a majority Hispanic student population; 89.2% of its students are […] Mexican Americans. It is classified under R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity.”

All I knew when I walked alone on the grounds is what striking architecture it has. According to an article in The Architect’s Newspaper, the buildings are based on some famous guy’s “work in Ahmedabad, India, and Dacca, Bangladesh: heavily walled and well-detailed brick buildings with arched apertures that sit comfortably in the sultry climate of South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.”

I walked through these arched apertures …

into hidden, lush courtyards.

With towering tropical trees.

And water fountains among giant fauna that my pictures can’t rightly capture.

Intricate iron work is everywhere: seating, gates, balconies, and these balustrades along the upper parts of columns.

Step under a minaret-like dome and you’ll find a painted, arched pillar.

set on beautiful tile.

A resaca runs in the middle of the campus, with white pelicans soaring above.

I walked through a botanical garden and over a long, winding bridge, and I sat down among giant fig trees. I peered through windows at the medical school with the motto, “Health without Boundaries.”

Fitting, because the border wall runs right beside the campus. I didn’t take many photos because of all the homeland security, county sheriff, city police, and school security vehicles patrolling. (Once, Tracy saw someone get arrested as they tried to hide in the resaca.) I avoided them, thinking, Today, just let me think about hard-working students, studying in the cool courtyards in the heat of summer.

I wrote all this instead of what I’d felt like wiring at the time, a post slamming the core group of socializers here in the RV park because they’re hypocritical Tr*mpers who advertise their “charity work” while condemning fellow humans with their vote. I was going to lambaste all the RVers who think basic park rules are not for them, who say they care but won’t lend a hand in the slightest, who—and this is the bottom line—think about themselves only and have no clue that that ignorant, selfish attitude will bring us all down. These people, amazingly, think that they get to live in a democratic society without supporting anyone but themselves. That’s not how society works. They are worse than ignorant. They are entirely selfish, and they do not deserve this country they’re idiotically destroying, much less my mere politeness. I can barely leave the trailer some days for fear I will say something rude, and then how will we live the three weeks we have left here? Or in any RV park?

I was going to write about all of this in detail, and then I went with Tracy on his morning of birding. I’d much rather share these photos with you than be another angry voice on the internet saying everything you already know.