It was wonderful to celebrate Jan West at her recent retirement party at Rice, where a photo from her student days was prominently displayed. One of the true founders of the university we enjoy today.

Wistar Cotton: https://updates.wcaleb.org/2025/10/03/wistar-cotton.html

Only one more week to the start of the Second Foundings conference, which I and others have been working on for more than a year. I’m especially looking forward to this.

Yesterday on the free books cart in the library, I found a retired colleague’s undergraduate copy of Becker’s Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers (L). Then, in my office, I discovered that some 35 years later, I had underlined the same sentence in my undergraduate copy (R).

Updated some notes in my open research notebook: Juneteenth.

All of us at Rice are mourning the loss of historian and professor emeritus Ira Gruber, who died last week. I joined with many of my colleagues in remembering him for Rice News. May his memory be a blessing.

It was a good mail day. The book is here! And the cover design may well be the best part.

A brilliantly red vermillion flycatcher appeared briefly on campus this morning! Feeling lucky to have gotten a good look. Also glad to see the student birding club enjoying the aforementioned screech owls.

For class today, I’m cuing up Christia Adair’s account of her attempt to register to vote in Kingsville, Texas, in 1918, from the Black Women Oral History Project at Harvard. I wish the site were easier to navigate: This passage is in the third “Adair” link from the bottom on Reel 2.

Tomorrow I’m teaching Liette Gidlow’s great article, “The Sequel,” in my voting rights history class, so it’s time to revisit the video I hastily made to accompany it in March 2020, just as the pandemic was shuttering classes—and before it was known that hand sanitizer alone would not save us.

Updated some notes in my open research notebook: Houston Fire Festival, Juneteenth.

The two great-horned owls who live in the front of campus were out on the same limb this morning, a rare treat.

My day started by finding a very well-camouflaged screech owl in a tree on campus. I should probably quit while I’m ahead.

Well, that’s one way to measure … (From Flake’s Bulletin (Galveston, TX), June 1, 1866.)

Updated some notes in my open research notebook: Houston Evening Star, Juneteenth, Telegraph and Texas Register.

New semester vibes.

The Second Foundings conference in Houston is fast approaching, October 10-13, 2025. Registration & hotel rooms are still available! Come for keynotes by Ruth J. Simmons and Crystal R. Sanders, plus more than 25 sessions on slavery, universities, and struggles for justice. More info …

Congrats! Our 25th is this month, too!

This month my beloved and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary on the same day our firstborn heads off to college. Life comes at you fast!

Stephen H. Daniel (1950-2025): https://updates.wcaleb.org/2025/08/08/stephen-h-daniel.html

For some reason my second "here" link didn't come through: www.nytimes.com/1975/08/07/a...

Today while waiting for my coffee at Rice Coffeehouse, I noticed that the endpapers of the 2024 Campanile yearbook contain artists' interpretations of the redesigned academic quad.

Before (in the front):

After (in the back):
... https://updates.wcaleb.org/2025/08/06/today-while-waiting-for-my.html

Fifty years ago today, President Gerald Ford signed the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in the White House Rose Garden—one day after signing a resolution to restore citizenship to Confederate general Robert E. Lee at Arlington House. (Original NYT coverage <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/06/archives/ford-signs-bill-giving-citizenship-back-to-lee.html" class="hover:underline text-blue-600 dark:text-sky-400" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here and here.)

Blurry for me too. Must be the calendar.

Found an inscription by my late colleague Thomas Haskell to another of my dear colleagues on the library’s free books cart today, inside this volume. It asks a good question!