(Originally sent to the City of San Benito’s Public Relations Office.) I am so glad that you sent me the information for the weekend. Several of us were able to make it up to watch the re-enactments of the battles of Gonzales, the Alamo and San Jacinto.

The $3 I spent for parking was the best $3 I have spent in my life. The re-enactments were so well choreographed and executed. Every actor appeared enthusiastic in playing out his role. The costumes looked so authentic and the expert narration of Jack Ayoub brought history to life on that fairground field.

The actor playing Gen. Santa Anna did an outstanding job with his performance. It was too bad his mic didn’t always work. However his actions while planning the battle and the manner in which he presented the threats to the defenders made it very clear what was happening.

I was also impressed by the actor playing Col. Travis and greatly admired his heroic efforts to encourage his men to defend the Alamo to the last man.

The action was so realistic I actually caught myself holding my breath as the defenders valiantly attempted to fend off the overwhelming forces pitted against them. My emotions were mixed with sorrow and pride as I watched until the last defenders fell under a hail of bullets. My heart ached as I watched the few surviving wounded heros being shot and butchered. Then I felt the sorrow and misery of the women and children when they exited the Alamo to view the carnage displayed before them.

If more of the on field performers had microphones it would have enhanced the activities immensely. As it was, the large crowd sat spellbound during the entire performance watching as Jack Ayoub described the action unfolding on the field.

Afterward I was impressed by the way the actors stayed in character and were more than obliging in answering any questions I asked and gladly accommodated me with my request to have many pictures taken with them. For a short time last Saturday I was able to step back in time and witness three of the most important battles for Texas Independence. Kudos to everyone who was involved in these re-enactments.

I hope you realize that you are sitting on a gold mine. In my opinion, with the proper sponsorship and advertising San Benito would most definitely be able to show case an event that could easily achieve national acclaim.

I went home totally impressed and satisfied after watching these reenactments and couldn’t stop talking about what I had seen to other members of my Park (Palm Resaca in Brownsville).

I will definitely be back next year and from the enthusiasm I was able to muster from my fellow park residents there will be a huge gang from my park accompanying me as well.

Thank you, Alden Moore Brownsville

A search that began last night for missing Spring Breaker Justin Kirby Walker, 18, of Kendall Texas, continues this morning authorities said.

Sergeant Richard Hernandez of the Cameron County Park Police Department said patrols are searching for Walker who was last seen Saturday night at the Ultimate Music Fest held at the Schlitterbahn Beach Waterpark.

Authorities said Walker was reported missing by his mother.

Hernandez said the department is working with multiple local law enforcement agencies including, the South Padre Island police department, the Cameron County Sheriff’s office, Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Coast Guard.

1 of 3

“We may have a cadaver dog out here furnished by the U.S. Border Patrol,” Hernandez said.

Walker is 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs 175 pounds. He was last seen wearing a black hat with the word “Primitive “ written on it, a navy blue and black tribal shirt from Zumiez, dark or khaki colored shorts and Nike Janoski shoes.

Anyone with information regarding Walker is urged to call the Cameron County Park Police Department at (956)761-5283.

MERCEDES — What a difference the weather makes.

Sam Magee, general manager of the Rio Grande Valley Livestock Show, expressed as much yesterday as he and the RGVLS staff worked to wrap up the 77th annual event.

Pointing to the relatively dry conditions and cool breezes that created an ideal climate for the weeklong festivities, Magee said, “It’s amazing how weather can change things,” in reference to last year’s downpours creating muddied grounds that may have affected attendance.

That was not the case this year, he said, as Saturday’s PRCA Rodeo and accompanying bull riding, barrel racing and mutton bustin’ events attracted a sold-out crowd. Wednesday’s Xtreme Bull Riding also proved to be a popular attraction, according to Magee.

Though final attendance numbers are still being calculated, Magee expressed confidence in this year’s event drawing more people to the show grounds, where as many as 300,000 have attended in the past. And livestock entries may have exceeded the 5,600 that have participated in recent years, he said.

For the rest of this story and many other EXTRAS, go to our premium site, www.MyValleyStar.com.

Subscribe to it for only $6.99 per month or purchase a print subscription and receive the online version free, which includes an electronic version of the full newspaper and extra photo galleries, links and other information you can’t find anywhere else.

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND — Nearly every seat was taken inside a small courtroom at City Hall on Thursday morning. None of the 32 people waiting to be arraigned by Judge Edmund Cyganiewicz were older than 25.

The majority of the day’s suspects were charged with public intoxication and most of them pleaded guilty, resulting in a $270 fine per person.

This charge is by far the most common crime resulting in arrests here during Spring Break, according to Gary Ainsworth, the city’s public information officer.

“Drinking in public is lawful, but becoming so intoxicated that you become a danger to yourself or others, then that’s when we take action, placing the individual in custody for the subject’s own protection,” Police Chief Randy Smith said.

In 2015 — excluding March — 294 people were arrested for public intoxication, Ainsworth said. Spring Break season alone — March 2015 — saw 273 such arrests.

“Everything else, if you look at the stats of arrests, they really fall in line,” he said. “They’re all about the same consistency each month, but that’s the biggest one.”

That number may rise substantially this year. Ainsworth said business owners and authorities are reporting a higher number of Spring Break visitors this year than in the past few years. It is unclear if the uptick is due to Panama City Beach banning alcohol consumption on beaches during March 2016. The famed Spring Break city’s council unanimously approved the ban last year following years of discussion, according to AL.com.

College students looking to let loose over the weeklong holiday may have decided to flock here instead.

Thursday, some holiday visitors waited to plead their case to Cyganiewicz in the cramped courtroom. Additional jailers had to be brought over from inland Cameron County on Thursday to assist with individuals in police custody, the court clerk mentioned before the proceedings.

A few students were there for more serious offenses, including felonies like possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance. The man charged with that crime, a 20-year-old Harlingen resident, was found with cocaine and pills, Cyganiewicz said.

Other crimes of the day included unlawful possession of a firearm, driving while intoxicated and fighting in public. A young woman named Angel was charged with the latter crime. She pled no contest and defended her actions to the judge by sighting the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

“It was like Pearl Harbor in 1942, sir. It was in self-defense,” the 5-foot-3-inch woman said, wearing an orange jumpsuit. “We are longhorns; we are Texans, and we fight.”

Hushed scoffs and rolling eyes filled the room before Cyganiewicz found her guilty.

Ainsworth said some of the most memorable Spring Break crimes he knows of include someone trespassing after passing out underneath a house. One man was once charged with breaking and entering after he mistook another condo for his, which was located down the street.

“I mean, how drunk do you have to be to sit there and swear to yourself that you’re in the right place and your key is not working?” Ainsworth asked.

About half of those facing charges were Rio Grande Valley residents, while others hailed from around the state and country. The city prepared for the uptick in visitors by hiring “from one to 1,000” security personnel, Ainsworth said. He didn’t divulge an exact number for security reasons. He did indicate that it was a substantial amount.

As for other proposed security measures, several media outlets had previously reported the city was going to implement flying drones to survey the beaches this Spring Break. Ainsworth said that was false. Though the city plans to make that practice a reality, Spring Break preparations come first.

“The time that we need to train everybody, to get our paperwork back and everything, we expected it to be done by last Friday or possibly this Monday,” Ainsworth said. “It didn’t happen as fast as we wanted to, so we put that on hold so we could focus on this week.”

He said this month’s goal is to keep people safe.

“Public safety is our No. 1 priority,” Ainsworth said.

BROWNSVILLE — The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy played an integral role in an historic scientific discovery announced just last month.

That’s a big deal for the center, the physics department, UTRGV and the Valley as a whole, according to Dr. Soma Mukherjee, professor of physics and the department’s interim chair.

The discovery of gravitational waves, announced at a National Science Foundation press conference in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 11, proves Einstein’s century-old gravitational wave theory and promises to revolutionize the field of astronomy.

With the news still fresh, Mukherjee thinks now is a good time to shine a light on something few Valley residents know exists right in their own backyard: one of the nation’s top physics programs — which is already attracting new students thanks to its part in the recent discovery.

Mukherjee said UTRGV’s gravitational wave team is the largest in the state and among the biggest in the country.

“The discovery, it’s an historical event,” she said. “But at the same time, the community needs to know that the people who directly contributed to this, they are right here.”

In fact, the algorithm that enabled the first gravitational-wave detection — at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana, in September — grew out of a master’s thesis by William Robert Johnston, a former physics graduate student at Brownsville.

UTRGV professor of physics Dr. Soumya Mohanty and associate professor of physics Dr. Malik Rakhmanov collaborated on developing the algorithm with two Florida professors. Before coming to Brownsville, Rakhmanov was part of the team that built the LIGO facility in Louisiana and another one like it Hanford, Washington — the only two such facilities in the United States.

Mohanty, Mukherjee and Rakhmanov have a close bond, having worked together early in their careers.

“When we were post-docs, before we became professors — even after we joined as young assistant professors — we were working at the Livingston observatory, even on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day,” Mukherjee said. “Because you have to constantly sit there and monitor, right there in the control room.”

Rakhmanov said talented scientists are drawn to work together, which is how UTRGV wound up with its crack physics department, including the gravitational wave center’s roughly dozen core faculty members.

“That’s what happened here in the Valley,” he said. “In some ways, it makes UTRGV a very special campus of the UT System. Of course, Austin is so much bigger and more powerful, but in this particular aspect we’re unique to the system.”

Rakhmanov said Valley students with a talent for physics should know they don’t have to leave home to work in a top department. His own journey to UTRGV is thanks to Mohanty and Mukherjee, who convinced him to come to Brownsville and do experimental research. Before Rakhmanov’s arrival in 2008, the gravitational wave center was almost entirely devoted to theoretical research, he said.

The trio’s efforts resulted in a National Science Foundation grant totaling $1 million a year for five years. Rakhmanov got started by building the center’s first lab.

“It’s full of LIGO optics,” he said. “It’s very nice. That was a nice starting point, because almost right away we hired Dr. (Volker) Quetschke and several others. Now we have five or six labs that are on par with what Austin would have.”

“We now have instrumentation in our labs that other universities are coming to use,” Mohanty said.

For the rest of this story and many other EXTRAS, go to our premium site, www.MyValleyStar.com.

Subscribe to it for only $6.99 per month or purchase a print subscription and receive the online version free, which includes an electronic version of the full newspaper and extra photo galleries, links and other information you can’t find anywhere else.

HARLINGEN — Ladies and gentlemen, abandon your engines.

A proposal for a bike-share program in the city has been approved by the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and now awaits an up-or-down vote from the City Commission.

The plan is to lease 20 commuter bicycles in partnership with the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and place bike racks at two locations — the Regional Academic Health Center on campus and McKelvey Park.

Bike-sharing is a rapidly growing innovation in urban transportation. It allows people who have an account to use utility bikes to get from Point A to Point B. The bikes are short-term rentals, and time with a bike can range from one hour to several hours before the bikes have to be checked in at an official rack station.

Since a credit card is required to set up an account, if a bike user goes over the allotted time, he or she gets dinged on the card. If the bike goes missing, it could be up to an $850 charge, which has proved a pretty good deterrent to theft or loss.

The cost for the UTRGV-Harlingen bike-share partnership is going to be, if the commission approves, about $17,000 annually. The first year already is covered by a grant from the UT Health Science Center in Houston.

Most companies that lease bikes insist on a two-year deal, however. The city may have to come up with $17,000 or so for the second year if it isn’t covered by a funding grant.

“Based on the population of Harlingen (about 65,000), if only 1 percent of the people used this, 667 people, we’re looking at $20 yearly,” said J. Joel Garza Jr., director of the Harlingen-San Benito Metropolitan Planning Organization.

“That’s about $13,000 in revenue that the city would get back,” Garza added.

The $20 annual fee would entitle anybody in the bike-share program to use bikes for up to four hours a day, he said.

“That’s very, very affordable for a student, or anybody for that matter,” Garza said.

Bike-share programs are popular in many U.S. states, and Texas isn’t an exception. Bike-share programs are in place in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Fort Worth and El Paso.

In McAllen, the bike-share program has been operating since October, said Mari o Delgado, transit director for Metro McAllen.

“We’ve been very happy with the response,” he said. “There have been about 12,500 memberships sold through the end of February.”

For the rest of this story and many other EXTRAS, go to our premium site, www.MyValleyStar.com.

Subscribe to it for only $6.99 per month or purchase a print subscription and receive the online version free, which includes an electronic version of the full newspaper and extra photo galleries, links and other information you can’t find anywhere else.

Matthew Garcia arrives at his main campus after an off-sight orchestra class with a black viola case in one hand and his backpack hooked over the opposite shoulder.

The talented freshman from the Harlingen High School of Health Professions is pursuing his dream of having a medical career but also makes time for his love of music by perfecting his skills on the viola. His musical efforts have paid off in a big way.

For the past two years, Garcia has been a member of the International Youth Middle School Orchestra where he led a viola section and was featured as a soloist at Carnegie Hall.

This year Carnegie Hall and its Weill Music Institute have invited him to play the “music of the masters” in the NYO2 (National Youth Orchestra 2), which grew out of the success of the original National Youth Orchestra program.

Taking place June 18-July 4, the two-week intensive summer training program will give musicians ages 14-17 the opportunity to play alongside exceptionally talented peers and learn from a world-class faculty.

“The NYO2 is kind of the little brother program to the National Youth Orchestra. It’s a training residency in preparation for NYO. I would have been in that, but I am a year too young,” says Garcia.

As part of NYO2, participants will work with conductor Giancarlo Guerrero and players from The Philadelphia Orchestra, among other prodigious faculty. Lessons, coaching, and orchestra rehearsals, as well as other educational and recreational activities, will take place at Purchase College in Purchase, NY, just outside of New York City.

“It’s just an honor to be chosen alongside all of these talented musicians from across the nation that have mastered their instrument. I can learn from them and become a better artist,” says Garcia.

The NYO2 experience will culminate in Philadelphia with a side-by-side performance alongside The Philadelphia Orchestra on July 2 at Verizon Hall.

He is excited to take part in the National Youth Orchestra 2 Program but looks forward to applying and being able to participate in the National Youth Orchestra tour next year once he turns sixteen.

In the meantime, he takes advantage of the experience and the networking opportunities he receives from the Carnegie Hall programs.

“I still communicate with people from the last two years that have been in my previous programs,” says Garcia. “I’ll text them, and they’ll give me feedback. So it’s really a community where we get to learn from each other and help each other out.”

As he thinks about the future, Garcia has big dreams and has even considered pursuing both his medical and musical interests once he gets to college.

“At Columbia you can enroll in a dual program with Julliard at the same time, says Garcia. “So maybe if I get a little more interested in music later down the road I could do that.”

At fifteen years old, Garcia already seems to have his goals set out for the future.

“Once I retire from being a doctor, I could be part of a symphony somewhere,” says Garcia.

NYO2 aims to expand the pool of young musicians across the country equipped with the tools to succeed at the highest level, particularly those who will bring greater diversity to classical orchestral music and/or those who have not had access to highly selective training opportunities via major youth orchestra programs, summer festivals and camps, or similar experiences outside of their local community.

NYO2 is free for all participants, including room and board, and all rehearsal, teaching, and performance activities.

I have always supported the Humane Society of Harlingen because of their many good and kind works and because of the seemingly tireless, and unpaid, dedication of their CEO.

However this new policy of “TNR,” trapping, neutering and then releasing feral cats back into city neighborhoods as a means of population control is a woefully misbegotten idea not based on any scientific study I know of.

Cats are not like tsetse flies or the zika virus. They do not breed once and die. If a male alley cat occasionally encounters a sterile female, I’m sure he can find a receptive female nearby – often in my back yard.

Neutering a few cats will never control cat populations, and might actually have the opposite effect by reducing their competition for food.

I believe many feral kittens starve to death. Twice in the last year, I found abandoned kittens crying for their mama in a field on East Harrison, but when they saw me, they hid and fell silent. One desperate little guy made it a block to South 17th Street, but was still not approachable.

Though I wasn’t certain he was even weaned, I put out food and water for him, but he apparently starved before taking any.

No responsible parent would allow his children to run free in traffic, but this is what ‘cat lovers’ see as a solution. Not surprisingly, feral cats have greatly reduced life spans, not just from car strikes, but from other injuries and common curable diseases like mange.

In fact, cats are the only domesticated species that is allowed to roam freely. Chickens are kept in coops, cattle and horses behind barb wire, pigs in sties and dogs behind fences or on leashes.

The National Audubon Society reports that feral, free-ranging cats are the main cause of the extinction of 33 species of birds in North America and in the reduction by 68 percent of some of the birds the Society has tracked since 1967.

I have seen feral cats in my yard swat hummingbirds from midair and climb to the top of a thorny ebony tree to kill white wings still in their nest. And most sadly, kill a chachalaca I had been feeding for years, only moments after I turned by back. Their panicked shrieks brought me running back outside, but it was too late.

Chachalacas were here before my neighborhood was built in 1952, but we are now down to a single pair, and it is highly unlikely they will manage to raise another chick successfully. That means that feral cats will have extirpated a species that has been in this neighborhood for over 64 years!

Incidentally, that wretched cat had no interest in eating the chachalaca it maimed in my front yard. It is simply in a cat’s unalterable nature to kill, whether hungry or not, and uneaten kills are proof that even well-fed cats cannot resist their primal urge to kill.

In the fractured environment of the Valley, cities serve as islands of refuge for a number of species which have no other place to light. During this mild winter, our neighborhood has served as home to eleven American Cardinals, mainly because we have managed to keep feral cats in check. During fall migration, we often see a dozen species of warblers darting through.

Making Harlingen a ‘Sanctuary City’ for feral cats ignores the plight of a number of dwindling species still found here. The success of predatory species like starlings and grackles, and newly-arrived tree ducks is no measure of a safe environment for other birds.

Wildlife concerns aside, we all have the right to be free from the nuisance of feral cats, whether ambushing native species drawn to the water and cover of our South Texas yards, or tracking filth across our cars on a nightly basis.

The solution to the problem is incredibly simple, yet it is never addressed: Keep cats inside where they can’t breed!

Only when supposed ‘cat lovers’ recognize they are responsible for feral cats’ miserable existence will the problem be addressed. In the meantime, concerned voices like mine are dismissed out-of-hand, and a local birding group with no affiliation with the National Audubon Society, even when queried by the Star, refused to address the killing of a mama Mockingbird and then her nestlings for trying to shoo someone away from her nest.

M. Dailey Harlingen