A Year Later: The Hill Country Heads Into the Fourth

Dear neighbors,

This morning's Townie lands two days before the Fourth of July, and there is no way to say that plainly this year without feeling the weight of it.

The Hill Country is getting ready to gather. Brady's July Jubilee turns 100. Junction has its parade. Llano has fireworks. Mason Round Up is waiting for us next week with a rodeo, a parade, and a dance under the stars. All of that is true.

It is also the first Fourth since last July's catastrophic floods.

So this week's issue holds both things with both hands: the grief and the barbecue smoke, the empty chair and the parade route, the memory of what was lost and the stubborn beauty of neighbors still finding their way back to one another.

If this weekend feels complicated, let it be complicated. There is no right way to move through an anniversary like this. Some folks will need quiet. Some will need the comfort of being around people. Some will laugh harder than they expected and cry at a song they did not see coming. That is all part of being human.

Maybe the gentlest thing to do is stay close to what steadies you. Sit with people who love you. Step outside when the evening cools. Drink some water. Eat something that remembers you have a body. Give yourself a little grace.

And if you can, find four things to be grateful for and two things to look forward to. Not because gratitude fixes grief. It doesn't. But sometimes it opens a window.

Inside this issue, you'll find the weekend's gatherings, the regional briefing, a little garden mercy from Hazel Mae and Fern, and a featured piece I hope you'll read slowly. It is about what the Hill Country carries to the parade this year, and why being together still matters.

Take care of yourselves this weekend. Take care of each other, too.

Hill Country Venture Fest is back for Year 4 on October 1 in Mason — and this year, we want to hear from the young entrepreneurs in this region. If you're building something, launching something, or have been turning an idea over in your head long enough that it's time to do something about it, this is your event.

Venture Fest brings together Hill Country entrepreneurs, mentors, and community members for a day of pitches, conversation, and recognition. Young entrepreneurs are eligible to apply, present, and be recognized in front of the people who are building this region's future alongside them. Applications are open now.

In 1926, Brady held its first July Jubilee.

It would be romantic to say we know exactly what that first celebration looked like: who cooked what, who played what, how many people made their way into Richards Park on a hot McCulloch County afternoon. We do not know all the details. We know that they gathered. And we know they came back the next year, and the year after that, and every year since, for one hundred years running. This Saturday is the 100th.

There is something worth sitting with in that number. A hundred years of Brady deciding, on July 4th weekend, to come together. To cook. To bring the kids. To find out who else showed up and be glad they did. From the outside, a barbecue or a parade can look small and ordinary. But multiplied across a century, those ordinary things become something else. They become a community's memory of itself.

This year, that memory arrives carrying more than most.

Last July's catastrophic floods across Central Texas and the Hill Country took 139 lives, according to the reporting gathered by Leslie Marchand, LCSW, in her extraordinary essay, "The Whole Picture: Grief, Healing, and Hope One Year After the July 4th Texas Hill Country Floods." It is the most comprehensive and reverent piece we have found on the nuanced complexity of what our communities are still navigating. It deserves to be read slowly.

The loss was not one thing. It was families. Children. Camps. Homes. Businesses. Responders. Survivors. River towns. Rural places. People who went to sleep on July 3rd in one world and woke up, if they woke up, in another. Grief like that does not resolve itself in a calendar year.

And still, Saturday will come. Brady will hold its 100th July Jubilee. Junction will run its parade. Llano will light up the sky. Families will unfold lawn chairs, check on coolers, wave at pickup trucks, and clap for children riding past on decorated floats.

That does not mean everyone is okay. It means the Hill Country knows how to hold more than one thing at once.

There will be people at the parade this weekend with full hearts. There will be people with broken ones. There will be people laughing beside an empty chair. There will be people who need the noise and the barbecue smoke and the sight of neighbors standing shoulder to shoulder because quiet would feel too heavy. There will be people who stay home because that is what the day requires of them. All of it belongs.

Aundi Kolber, who writes about healing and being strong like water, has a way of naming strength that feels especially tender this year. Not strength as white-knuckling. Not strength as pretending pain is not there. But strength that can be soft and fierce at the same time. Water teaches that lesson, though the Hill Country learned it brutally last year. Water can carve limestone. Water can take what cannot be replaced. Water can also settle, nourish, reflect, and carry light.

This weekend may ask for that kind of strength. Not the kind that says, "Get over it." Not the kind that insists every gathering must be cheerful. The kind that makes room. The kind that leaves a light on for what hurts and still lets the evening air in.

Pat Green once wrote about keeping lights on and learning, somehow, to better understand the night. That line lands differently now. His own family was among those devastated by last July's floods. In a year like this, even the songs we thought we knew can gather new weight.

Maybe that is what anniversaries do. They change the light on everything. A parade is not just a parade this year. A picnic is not just a picnic. A fireworks show is not only a fireworks show. These things are still joyful, and they are also standing beside grief. That is not a contradiction. It is life.

The Junction parade has 26 local businesses in the line this year. Twenty-six. Hardware stores, dance studios, livestock associations, 4-H kids, decorated trucks, people who decided separately and then together that this year they were getting in line. That decision matters. It matters because grief can make people disappear from each other. It can pull the curtains closed. Sometimes that quiet is needed. Sometimes staying home is the most honest thing a person can do.

But sometimes healing begins by stepping back into the circle. Standing on the curb. Waving at somebody. Letting a neighbor hand over a plate. Letting the children run ahead. Letting oneself be useful in one small way.

There is no prescription for the first anniversary of a tragedy. Nobody gets to tell another person how to carry it. But there are old forms that help: shade, water, food, song, a hand on a shoulder, a table with room for one more, a little fresh air, a reason to look toward next week.

Gratitude does not erase grief. Looking forward does not dishonor what was lost. But grief has a way of narrowing the room, and sometimes a few small things can open a window. Four things worth being grateful for. Two things worth looking forward to. One neighbor close enough to tell. That may be enough for one weekend.

And then, next Thursday, Mason Round Up arrives. The 61st edition will bring the pro rodeo, the parade, the dance under the stars at Fort Mason City Park. Another year of it. Another gathering. Another chance for a community to remember itself in public. Not because everyone is fine. Because nobody was meant to carry the whole thing alone.

This is what the Hill Country does. It grieves. It gathers. It feeds people. It remembers. It keeps showing up with both hands: one for what hurts, one for what is still beautiful. And on a Thursday morning in July, that feels worth saying out loud.

First of all: the cucumber was probably not doing fine. Cucumbers are drama, and they put on a convincing show right up until they don't. You didn't miss it — they just go fast. That's the nature of the thing.

Here is what I want you to hear: July wins the garden. That is not a personal failure. It is a climate fact. What you're seeing — the surrender posture on the tomatoes, the squash dropping off, the cucumbers calling it — is the Hill Country growing season telling you that it ran its main course. You are now in the between season, which has its own rules. Water in the early morning, not at midday and not at night. Mulch everything you want to hold onto, deep — three to four inches over the roots. Cut back the tomatoes hard: remove a third to a half of the plant, give them some shade cloth if you have it, and let them rest. They may give you a fall flush if we get cooler nights in September.

The squash is done. The cucumbers are done. Let them go with gratitude. They gave what they had.

What Hazel Mae said. And one gentler thing: this time of year is actually when you plan. Walk your beds in the cool of the morning — before seven if you can stand it — and take notes on what worked, what didn't, and where there was too much shade or not enough. The fall garden starts in late August around here. Greens, carrots, beets, broccoli, the second round of herbs. You have more time than it feels like right now.

Also: being defeated before breakfast tells me you're out there before breakfast, caring. That is not a small thing. Gardeners who give up stop going out. You're still going out. The garden is not defeated. It's just resting, and so should you — at least until sundown.

You have been carrying something heavy and calling it fine. This week, put it down somewhere cool — a shaded porch, a trusted person, a quiet morning hour — and notice how the world looks from that angle. Lighter is not the same as smaller.

The instinct to stay home this weekend is not wrong and not laziness. Know what you need. That said, if a plate of food and a neighbor's company would help — accept both. You were made for the long table, Taurus. Let it have you for an afternoon.

You can hold two things at once — you always could. This week will ask you to. Let the joy be real. Let the grief be real. Neither cancels the other. That is not a contradiction. That is the whole point of being a person in a community that has been through something.

It is your season and it arrives weighted this year. Water carries everything — including you, Cancer. You know how to move around what you can't move through. Trust that knowledge. And if the fireworks feel like too much this year, it is all right to stay home with the lights on low.

The parade wants you in it — maybe literally. Leo does not sit on the sidelines easily, and this is not the week to start. Your presence on the curb, in the line, at the table, does someone near you more good than you know. Show up. Let yourself be seen.

You have already done the logistics for everyone in your orbit this weekend. Put the checklist down for one hour on Saturday and just be somewhere. The cooler will manage without you for sixty minutes. So will the bug spray inventory. Sit down, Virgo.

You have been weighing this decision longer than you need to. Pick the option that sounds most like a porch, a breeze, and someone whose company you don't have to earn. This weekend is not for pr