I’ve become strangely fond of this particular carol… I’ve actually visited the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. A lovely, airy place, sort of like an ecclesiastical green-house.
The Obamas. For the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. They weren’t at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding either.
Wonder if word has gotten around on the wedding-industrial complex circles that they give really crappy gifts.
Yeah, trivial, I know. Trying to keep my mind from worrying about Mom and Dad. No further word tonight. Will be updated by my sister Pip later.)
For a number of reasons – some to do with the general economy, and the fact that advance sales for Daughter of Texas are not quite to the degree that I hoped they would be, and that the Tiny Publishing Bidness lost a whopping good bid on publishing a book that would have set us up for a year, and the client I do office work can’t pay me until January when he has a big closing on a chunk of real estate . . . no, all that depressing enough, but relatively small potatoes next to family trouble.
Dad was being treated for walking pneumonia the last couple of weeks; he sounded chipper enough when I talked to him a week ago Friday – the regular Friday Nite call. The pneumonia made him tired, so he and Mom were dialing back on their regular mid-December Christmas reception at their house; their friends were going to handle a lot of it, so that Dad could take a rest. No plans for Blondie and I to make the trip out to California this year – can’t afford it, and my brothers and sister and their families all were making plans to be elsewhere, so no point, really. They sounded fine, otherwise.
So, not quite prepared for my sister Pip to call on Wednesday morning: Dad’s condition had gotten very bad, catastrophically bad, very, very suddenly, on Tuesday afternoon. He couldn’t walk, was only semi-conscious – and the upshot of it was that he was admitted to the hospital Friday night, to be operated on for bleeding into the brain. There’s apparently some congestive heart failure involved there too. My brothers and sister have been taking turns to be with them; Dad is fine – I guess the surgery has been a success so far, but Saturday night, Mom had a horrific nose-bleed, to the point where Pip called the ambulance. Mom’s blood pressure was through the roof from stress. She went into the hospital overnight, but was released on Sunday. Dad is still in the hospital, and will probably need a long convalescence . . . we’re all beginning to be afraid they’ve come to the end of their stretch of independence in their house. They’re both turning 80 next year, and the house they love is at the ass-end of nowhere, with a huge garden and grounds that they are less and less able to take care of. They may be able to get some kind of home-health care assistance – just have to see. Their insurance is adequate to this point, but Pip and Alex both have families with children.
The tentative plan is for me to go out to California after New Years, by train, when we can afford it. Going by train may actually be cheaper, since I refuse to fly; the TSA screening is just the final straw for me. Going by train, I can take along enough stuff that I can stay with Mom and Dad into late February or early March. If they get internet at their house, I’ll be able to keep up with the various projects and work that I have going on. I might even be able to interest Dad into the wonderful wacky world of the internet. He’s been reluctant, so far – but I’ll bet I can get him into blogging . . .
As for now, we’re sticking close to the phone. Not much interested in Christmas stuff. If I wind up going to California, there’s a ton of stuff I have to finish first; all this time, we’re hoping that Dad will recover enough that he can stay in the house; Mom can’t stay there alone, and there’s a million variables, and we don’t even know what half of them are at this point.
Moot point to me, actually – I retired from the Air Force in 1997, after DADT had been in place for about five years. The other female military NCOs and I actually rather welcomed it at the time as a solid compromise and a step up from the previous policy of discharging gay servicemen and women instanter. In actual practice this involved discharging the gay male service-member on an individual basis, but let a gay female service-member be discovered and all heck would break out – because all of her female co-workers, friends, roommates, associates and even casual acquaintances would also be suspected of being lesbians, and investigated so tirelessly and thoroughly by the CID/AFOSI/NCIS that many of them would indeed confess to being lesbians too, just to bring the inquisition to an end. This usually came as a great surprise to boyfriends and husbands.
Anyway, all it would take to kick off one of these witch-hunts would be a rumor or an accusation, no matter how unfounded . . . and there would go all of the women in some unit or base, kicked out of the service. It was as if there was something in the water. Really, it was healthier for your career to have a reputation as a slut. By the way, I didn’t think there were many lesbians among the military woman I knew in twenty years service in the Air Force; there are damn few secrets to be kept when living in a military dorm, and the object/intensity of sexual interest is one of them. I knew there were women who I thought might be lesbian; and ones that I found out afterwards were . . . but my semi-scientific wild-ass guess is maybe one or two in a hundred, or less. (That figure was probably much higher for career military women during the period from the end of World War II until the mid-1970s, once women were allowed to stay in service upon getting married and having children.) I actually am surprised that no one ever accused me of being one, being that I was unmarried, circumspect about my personal life and kept my hair cut very short. There were people who hated me enough to have done so. I suppose only my notorious lack of skill at and complete disinterest in women’s team sports saved me from a malicious accusation
Anyway, DADT was a ham-fisted and perhaps clumsy compromise; basically private life was off the table – as much as it could be, as long as long as the service-member kept his or her private live ..er .. private. Not much of a strain for the Air Force, actually – especially in peacetime – because of all of the services the chances for most AFSC’s (military code for ‘what do ya do for a living?’) to go on deployments for extensive periods of time and live in very, very close quarters were pretty small. And in my observation, the Air Force generally drew in more of a middle-class/skilled technician demographic anyway. The Navy does as well – but then they have sea duty; ships and submarines and all that, where a lack of personal privacy is epic. None the less, though – at the time that DADT was instituted, a lot of straight guys did have the heebie-jeebies about sharing close quarters with an un-straight guy. My female NCO friends all agreed, with a certain degree of gleeful humor that they were all apprehensive about being hit on, in the exact same way that a single unaccompanied woman would be hit on in the open NCO Club bar on ladies’ night . . . and that most guys were nervous about and lacked the skills to gracefully counter another guy pitching unwanted woo. Skills which we, as women had all acquired and polished since we were about 16 years old. Anyway, we were all universally relieved – no more witch-hunts.
But there is one element of dropping DADT which does worry me – because of the peculiar and authoritative nature of the military and the isolation that military members sometimes find themselves in – and that’s the matter of sexual predators. Generally, the rules about fraternization cover this: you may not socialize save in the most perfunctory way, with people in your chain of command. You certainly may not date them, drink with them, party with them, et cetera: enlisted, NCOs and officers must maintain a certain degree of separation. (In my own early career, some of this would be overlooked – I cheerfully dated officers – but outside my own assigned unit. The Air Force got much stricter about this in the 1990s and the Marines and Army always took a hard line about it.) One rationale for the rules about fraternization is that it’s unprofessional, leads to the perception of favoritism . . . and the unspoken other is because of the isolation, on deployment, in a remote location, or at sea, there has always been the potential for someone of a higher rank or in a command capacity to abuse that authority to gain access sexually to someone of a lower rank – and the rules about fraternization at least put some brakes on it. My take on the whole thing is that the military was just barely able to deal with the plain old-fashioned heterosexual predator – say, with a male officer or NCO using rank to force a sexual relationship with an unwilling lower-ranking female. Now . . . the military has potentially the other kind to deal with. Don’t tell me it won’t ever happen – it will, eventually if not sooner, and I hope the services are ready to enforce every jot and tittle of the fraternization statutes. Equally, I should add.
Or stuff too weird to believe, at first…
All righty then – what do you get when you mash-up Charles’ Dickens best-known work … and a Star Trek alien race?
You get A Christmas Carol performed in Klingon, with suitable cultural references and staging.
No, I am not making this up. Story is at the link above – and check out the comments.…
One of my favorite Christmas carol videos – candlelight service at Gloucester Cathedral.
. . . But definitely starting to get a little runny around the edges, with last Friday’s presser. I speak of our present chief executive, of course; the one so fond of all the perks and parties – not so much the hard grind of actually managing something. Well, he had to learn about it sometime, pity it’s been at our expense. I swear, there are times when I would like to go back in time to the campaign season of 2008, extend a hand to the major media . . . and grab them around one massive throat, shake them and scream – “Get up off your knees, you morons! Can’t you see that he’s a flashy, empty, affirmative action fast-burner, effortlessly hoisted higher and higher above his level of expertise? Just do your job!†And then I’d like to likewise grab that portion of the electorate who put him there (the non-dead, non-imaginary portion thereof) around the one massive throat and scream “What were you thinking! He’s never run a business, a military unit or municipal entity! He’s never done anything but run for office!†So he got the highest office in the land so a portion of the American electorate could feel good about themselves voting for the Ultimate Diversity Hire. I blow a subdued Bronx cheer in the direction of those fools who thought everything would turn out just peachy.
Ah, well – and just as well. I wrote about the Fresh Prince of Chicago often enough then, and take no particular joy in being proved more or less correct. Pity he wasn’t the least particle of what everyone in the rarefied intellectual and journalistic circles were convinced he would be – a fine intellect, well-tempered, a soaring public speaker. Alas, he’s a Chauncey Gardiner-type celebrity without the intellectual self-knowledge. Observing various public intellectuals and experts reluctantly come to that conclusion has been grimly delicious – for me, anyway. Experience is a valuable teacher, even if the learning of lessons acquired thusly tends to be painful. Why some of these people even have any credibility after going so coo-coo for the faintly cocoa-tinged community organizer is a mystery for the ages.
Do have to admit, some of the pratfalls have been as amusing as hell; giving the Queen an Ipod loaded with his own speeches was a particularly cringe-making move – but bailing on a Friday afternoon press conference to go to a party, and because Michelle Antoinette would be mad . . . and then leaving Bill Clinton in charge. That’s a trifecta of disengagement. I can hardly wait to see what happens next.
A lady of certain years by the time she became moderately famous, Angelina Belle Peyton was born in the last years of the 18th century in Sumner County, Tennessee. For a decade or so Tennessee would be the far western frontier, but by the time she was twenty and newly married to her first cousin, John Peyton, the frontier had moved west. Texas beckoned like a siren – and eventually, the Peytons settled in San Felipe-on-the-Brazos, the de facto capitol of the American settlements in Texas. They would open an inn, and raise three children, before John died in 1834. She would continue running the inn in San Felipe on her own for another two years, until history intervened.
By 1835, times were changing for the Anglo-American settlers in Texas, who began to refer to themselves as Texians. Having been invited specifically to come and settle in the most distant and dangerous of Mexican territories, the authorities were at first generous and tolerant. Newly freed from the rule of Spain, Mexico had organized into a federation of states, and adopted a Constitution patterned after the U.S. Constitution. Liberal and forward-thinking Mexicans, as well as the Texian settlers confidently expected that Mexico would eventually become a nation very much resembling the United States. Unfortunately, Mexico became torn between two factions – the Centralists, top-down authoritarians, strictly conservative in the old European sense who believed in a strong central authority, ruling from Mexico City – and the Federalists, who were more classically liberal in the early 19th century sense, democratically inclined and backing a Mexico as a loose federation of states. In the mid 1830’s Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, a leading Federalist hero, suddenly reversed course upon becoming president, essentially declaring himself dictator, and voided the Constitution. Rebellion against a suddenly-Centralist authority flared up across Mexico’s northern states and territories.
The Texian settlers, who had been accustomed to minding their own affairs, also went up in flames – overnight, and as it turned out, literally. Lopez de Santa Anna, at the head of a large and professionally officered army, methodically crushed those rebels within other Mexican states and turned his attention towards Texas in the spring of 1836. After the siege and fall of certain strong-points held by Texians and eager volunteers from the United States, Sam Houston, the one man who kept his head while all around him were becoming progressively more unglued, ordered that all the Anglo-Texian settlements be abandoned. All structures should be burnt and supplies that could not be carried along be destroyed, in order to deny them to Santa Anna’s advancing army. Houston commanded a relatively tiny force; for him, safety lay in movement rather than forting up, and in luring Santa Anna’s companies farther and farther into East Texas. This was done, with savage efficiency: as Houston gathered more volunteers to his armies, families evacuated their hard-won homes. Those established towns which were the heart of Anglo Texas were burned. For a little more than a month, the civilian refugees straggled east, towards the border with the United States, and some illusory safety. It was a miserable, rainy spring. San Felipe burned, either at Houston’s order, or by pursuing Mexicans; Angelina Peyton was now a homeless widow, trudging east with her family. Just when everything turned dark and hopeless, when it seemed sure that Sam Houston would never turn and fight, that the Lone Star had gone out for good; a miracle happened. Sam Houston’s ragged, ill-trained army did turn won a smashing victory – and better yet, they captured Lopez de Santa Anna. In return for his parole, he ceded Texas to the rebels. (Lopez de Santa Anna went back on that promise, but that’s another story.)
In the aftermath of the war, Angelina Peyton took her family to Columbia on the Brazos, which would for a time be the capitol of Texas. Late in 1836, she married again, to a widower named Jacob Eberly. Within three years, she and Jacob had moved to what was supposed to be the grand new capitol of Texas – Austin, on the banks of the Colorado River, on the western edge of the line of Anglo-Texas settlement, but square in the middle of the territory claimed by the new Republic of Texas. The place had been chosen by the new President of the Republic, Mirabeau Lamar. It was a beautiful, beautiful place, set on wooded hills above the river. Angelina and Jacob opened a boarding house – the Eberly House, catering to members of the new Legislature, and to those officers of Lamar’s administration. Everyone agreed that Austin had a fine and prosperous future: within the first year of being laid out, the population had gone from a handful of families to nearly 1,000. And the Eberly House was considered very fine: even Sam Houston, upon being elected President after Lamar, preferred living there, rather than the drafty and hastily-constructed presidential mansion. Angelina, now in her early forties, seemed tireless in her devotion to her business – and her community.
But still, disaster waited around every corner over the next years: Jacob died in 1841. In the following year, war with Mexico threatened again, and Sam Houston decreed that the legislature should meet . . . in Washington-on-the-Brazos. Not in Austin. It was too dangerous, and Houston had never been as enthusiastic about Austin as Lamar had been. Panic emptied Austin, as the population fell to around 200 souls. Government and private buildings stood empty, with leaves blowing in through empty rooms. A handful of die-hard residents carried on, hoping that when things calmed down, the Legislature would return, and meet there again. After all – the archives of the State of Texas were stored there, safely tucked up in the General Land Office Building. A committee of vigilance formed, to ensure that the records remained, after President Houston politely requested their removal to safety . . . in East Texas.
In the dead of night on December 29th, 1842, a party of men acting under Houston’s direction arrived, with orders to remove the archives – in secret and without shedding any blood. Unfortunately, they were rather noisy about loading the wagons. Angelina Eberly woke, looked out of a window and immediately realized what was going on. She ran outside, and fired off the six-pound cannon that the residents kept loaded with grapeshot in case of an Indian attack. The shot alerted the vigilance committee – and supposedly punched a hole in the side of the General Land Office Building. The men fled with three wagons full of documents, pursued within hours by the volunteers of the vigilance committee, who caught up with them the next day. The archives were returned – Sam Houston had specified no bloodshed; the following year, he was admonished by the Legislature for trying to relocate the capitol.
The Legislature would return to Austin in 1845 and after annexation by the United States, the state capitol would remain there. Angelina Eberly – who had fired the shot that ensured it would do so – moved her hotel business to the coast; to Indianola, the Queen City of the Gulf. She did not marry again, and ran a profitable and well-frequented hotel, until her death in 1860.
(Angelina Eberly will feature as a minor character in one of my upcoming books – and has served as a model for the character of Margaret Becker, in my soon-to-be-released novel “Daughter of Texas†– which is due out on April 21, 2011. This is the 175 anniversary of San Jacinto Day. Anyone who purchases a set of the “Adelsverein Trilogy†through my book website, or at a personal appearance in December will have their name put into a drawing for a free advance copy of “Daughter of Texasâ€. I’ll hold the drawing on New Years’ Day.)
Strange but true – General Lopez de Santa Anna’s invasion of Texas in 1836 was not to be the last time that a Mexican Army crossed the border into Texas in full battle array – artillery, infantry, military band and all. Santa Anna may have been defeated at San Jacinto – but for the Napoleon of the west, that was only a temporary setback. In March of 1842 a brief raid by General Rafael Vasquez and some 400 soldiers made a lightening-fast dash over the Rio Grande, while another 150 soldiers struck at Goliad and Refugio. They met little resistance – and departed at speed before Texan forces could assemble and retaliate. All seemed to have quieted down by late summer, though: Texas had ratified a treaty with England, and the United States requesting that Texas suspend all hostilities with Mexico.
It seemed a good time to get on with urgent civic business, such as the meeting of the District Court in San Antonio. There had not been the opportunity to try civil cases for many years; the town was full of visitors who had come for the court session: officials, lawyers and litigants. Court opened on September 5th – but within days rumors were flying of another Mexican incursion. Such rumors were cheerfully dismissed – not soldiers, just bandits and marauders. Just in case, though, local surveyor John Coffee Hays – who already had a peerless reputation as a ranger and Indian fighter – was sent out to scout with five of his men. They saw nothing, having stayed on the established roads; unknown to them, one of Santa Anna’s favorite generals, a French soldier of fortune named Adrian Woll was approaching through the deserted country to the west of San Antonio, with a column of more than 1,500 soldiers – as well as a considerable assortment of cannon.
Under cover of a dense fog bank on the morning of September 11th, Woll’s army marched into San Antonio, with banners flying and a band playing. Having blocked off all escape routes, the General had a cannon fired to announce his presence. There was some sharp, but futile resistance, before surrender was negotiated. General Woll announced that he would have to take all Anglo-Texian men in San Antonio as prisoners of war; this included the judge, district attorney, assistant district attorney, court clerk, court interpreter, every member of the San Antonio Bar save one, and a handful of litigants and residents, to a total of fifty-five. They were kept prisoner – after five days they were told they must walk all the way to the Rio Grande, but they would then be released. Sometime during this period, the-then Mayor of San Antonio, John William Smith, managed to escape and send word of what had happened to the nearest town, Gonzales.
John Coffee Hays and his scouts had also managed to elude capture upon their return to town. The word went out across Texas for volunteers to assemble; two hundred came quickly from Gonzales and Seguin, led by Mathew “Old Paint†Caldwell, and fought a sharp skirmish on Salado Creek. A company of 53 volunteers recruited by Nicolas Mosby Dawson in LaGrange or along the road to join Caldwell’s volunteers along the Salado Creek north of San Antonio, ran into the rear-guard of Woll’s army, a large contingent of cavalry and a single cannon as they were withdrawing to San Antonio. Dawson’s company was surrounded; in the confusion of surrendering, firing broke out again. Only fifteen of Dawson’s company survived, to join with the San Antonio prisoners on their long walk towards the Rio Grande.
Once there the prisoners were informed that they would be taken into Mexico. Some were paroled and permitted to leave as a personal favor to the US Consul in Mexico City. Others escaped, but most of the San Antonio prisoners were kept for two years at hard labor in Perote Prison, in the state of Vera Cruz, until an armistice was signed between Mexico and Texas in March of 1844.
The site of the Dawson Massacre is marked by a granite monument, where the present-day Austin Highway crosses Salado Creek. The first case to be heard at that momentous court session was never settled; Dr. Shields Booker brought suit against the former mayor of San Antonio, Juan Seguin, for a payment of a 50-peso fee. Dr. Booker died in Perote Prison. The lawyer representing him, Samuel Maverick, was paroled after six months in Perote, and returned to Texas.
(This incident will feature in the book currently being written – as the man who will become my heroine’s second husband is one of those taken prisoner to Mexico. “Daughter of Texas”, the story of her first marriage and her various experiences during the Texas War for Independence will be released April 21, 2011 – although I am taking advance orders here, for delivery the week before.) And anyone who orders a set of the Adelsverein Trilogy through the website will have their name put in a drawing for a free copy of “Daughter of Texas.”
The Pig War was not actually an honest-to-pete real shooting war. But it did involve a pair of international powers; the Republic of Texas, and the constitutional monarchy of France. And thereby hangs the story of a neighborhood squabble between a frontier innkeeper and a gentleman-dandy named Jean Pierre Isidore Dubois de Saligny who called himself the Comte de Saligny. He was the charge d’affaires, the representative of France to the Republic of Texas, arriving from a previous assignment the French Legation in Washington D.C. He had been instrumental in recommending that France extend diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Texas, but one might be forgiven for thinking that some kind of 19th Century Peter Principle was at play . . . for Dubois turned out to be terribly undiplomatic.
Perhaps it was just the shock of arriving in the new capitol city of Austin, a ramble of hastily built frame shacks and log cabins scattered along a series of muddy streets along the scenic and wooded shores of the upper Colorado River; a city planned with great hopes and nothing but insane optimism to base them on. Dubois arrived with two French servants, including a chef, a very fine collection of wines, elegant furniture and household goods. Here was a man of culture and refinement, perhaps acclimated to America, but ill-unprepared for the raw crudities of the Texas frontier.
Initially, Dubois took rooms at the only hotel in town, a crude inn of roughly-finished logs owned by Richard Bullock, located at the present intersection of 6th and Capitol. In the days before cattle was king, pork was much more favored; Richard Bullock kept a herd of pigs – pigs which were allowed to roam freely, and eat what they could scavenge, along the muddy streets and in back of the frame buildings and log cabins set up to do the business of the Republic. Undaunted, Dubois, rented a small building nearby to use as an office and residence while a fine new legation was being built. He entertained in fine style – was most especially plagued by Bullock’s pigs, which constantly broke through the fence around his garden, and helped themselves to the corn intended for his horses. The pigs even broke into the house, and consumed a quantity of bedclothes and papers.
That was the last straw: Dubois instructed one of his servants to kill any pigs found on the property that he had rented, which was done. Richard Bullock, outraged, demanded payment for his loss, which was indignantly refused on the grounds of diplomatic immunity. The matter escalated when Bullock encountered Dubois’ swine-killing servant one day in the street and thrashed him. An official protest was filed, and a hearing ordered by the Texas Secretary of State – but citing international law, Dubois refused to attend or allow his servant to testify. Richard Bullock was freed on bail – and when Dubois complained bitterly to Republic authorities he was told that he could collect his passport and depart at any time.
He left in a huff, and stayed away for a year – never having had the chance to actually live in the elegant residence which he had commissioned to become the official legation; a white frame house on a hill which is presently the only remaining structure from those early days. Richard Bullock became the toast of the town, and his pigs were celebrities, for of course the story got around. The fracas also put an end to a generous loan from France, and plans to bring 8,000 French settlers to settle on Texas lands – as well as a military alliance that would allow stationing of French garrisons in Texas to protect them.
What would Texas have been like, one wonders – if Richard Bullock hadn’t let his pigs roam and the French Legate had thought to hire someone to build a better fence
The food-court flash-mob, singing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Avery nicely planned and executed stunt, which took place last month in a mall in Ontario, Canada.
Friend sent me the link via email. I just thought it was so cool. I wonder how classical music enthusiasts will top this – maybe perform HMS Pinafore at half-time at a football game?
That would be so cool…
In the early 1990s, I did a tour in Korea; a year at Yongsan Garrison, working at HQ-AFKN, barely a stone’s throw from where my father had spent a couple of weeks at Camp Coiner in 1953. Camp Coiner was where new troops were processed for assignments in-country, and it was still a self-contained miniature garrison with a dining hall, movie theater, club, PX and chapel. Processing new arrivals takes only a day or two these days. When I was there, Camp Coiner housed soldiers assigned to Yongsan in a series of Quonset huts that had been covered in such a thick layer of foam insulation that they looked like nothing so much as a row of enormous Twinkies.
Camp Coiner to my father was a bunch of canvas tents in a field of mud, surrounded by deep rings of barbed wire and a deeper ring of hungry refugees, watching them intently. It quite took away one’s appetite, said my father, to have people watching you eat every bite of your C-rations; and it’s not as if C-rations were a gourmet treat to start with. The soldiers were forbidden to give away their food, but my father said a lot of them did anyway, tossing cans stealthily over the wire. Seoul was a wrecked place fifty years ago. While I was there at AKFN that year, I edited an interview which the late Col. David Hackworth had done for AFKN, where he described how he himself had first visited the place, retreating across the only bridge over the Han River. Nothing but rubble, and rats nibbling at corpses in the gutters, the only live people being his squad and the Chinese snipers shooting at them. What Colonel Hackworth and veterans like my father saw in the 1950ies and what they see when they visit Seoul now leaves them rubbing their eyes in astonishment.
I had the incredible good fortune to be put in the way of doing a lot of voice-over narration jobs while I was at Yongsan, as well as a regular part-time job copy-editing the English language simulcast of the regular Korea Broadcasting System evening TV newscast. Most evenings or Saturdays after I finished my day job, I was taking the subway or a bus to a production studio somewhere (a taxi if I was feeling extravagant), and reading an English-language script on practically anything that someone felt would go over really well if they did a version in English.Amonger other things, I did a script about the manufacture of soju (which put me off ever drinking the stuff), an assortment of company puff-pieces, some fiendishly complicated English lesson tapes, a kid’s storybook, unless they have re-done the whole thing since, I am the English-language version of the recorded information for Kimpo Airport. I was a skilled and experienced production technician, working with other skilled audio technicians, away from the post. I developed friendships with the people I worked with in the KBS newsroom, who laughed at me because I had never gone to any of the tourist things in Seoul. I had, I explained, gone close to them, or had seen them from the outside on my way to a job; just like a native does.
Modern Seoul is a sprawling city of high-rise buildings, eight-lane highways, a splendid subway system, a golden glass tower 63 stories tall close by one of the fifteen or twenty bridges spanning the Han, and the Namsan tower glittering like a Christmas tree topper on a green hilly island in the middle of the city. In the evening, coming back from KBS on the bus, I could smell the bakery smell of vanilla cake from a commercial bakery close by. Sometimes at KBS we talked about the North, wondering if the discipline of an invading army of North Koreans would last past the first big grocery store, or electronics shop. When the old Supreme Leader died, I sat in the newsroom and watched half an hour of newscast cobbled out of the same fifteen minutes of stock video of the North, plus new footage of the bereft Northerners mourning ostentatiously. It seemed to me the KBS technicians were horrified and embarrassed by the elaborate demonstration of grief; I and they could only wonder what sort of coercion could force such undignified displays from people.
I liked working in Seoul, I liked what Koreans have built in fifty years, these tough jolly people on the south side of the DMZ. Cosmopolitan and professional, possibly as a nation the sharpest-dressed people on the face of the earth, every salaryman or woman turned out fit to be on the cover of GQ; as different from their cousins and second cousins north of the DMZ and still be on the same planet.
OSer Don Rich poined out in a post yesterday that the North Koreans regularly perform what he called the Korean Motherland Unity Game of Repeated Chicken – every six months to two years, there is some kind of saber-rattling game, a bit of public theater intended to remind everyone that they are there and bellicose. The old-time Korea hands that I knew over there, as well as my Korean friends were relatively blase about it all, for several reasons. One of them was that – well, mostly it was a bit of theater; it would die down in a week or so. Another being that for all the sprockets and medals hung on Nork generals – they really haven’t fought a serious war, balls-to-the-wall-and-all-guns-blazing war since 1953. There’s been a lot of evolution since then. But – lest the South Koreans get too over-confident about calling the North Korean bluff; the city of Seoul is well within range of Nork artillery, and quite a lot of it, too. Which is a very good reason to keep a cool head. And the other great argument for the status quo being maintained – is that if the DMZ magically evaporated and the Koreas were united once again, the South would be carrying the burden of the North … pitiful, starving, traumatised and hermetically isolated for sixty years, a country-sized concentration camp with all the brutality and horror that implies. The North has been in such bad shape for so long that teenage refugees from there are actually physically stunted, in comparison to their Southern cousins. So – while everyone gives lip service to reunification, in actuality, not so much.
But this week the Norks opened fire, shelling civilian areas on Yeonpyeong Island – an action which will be a little harder to brush off on the part of the South, Japan, and the United States. That ratchets up the Korean Motherland Unity Game of Repeated Chicken to a whole new level. So – who acts first? At this point, any guess is as good as any other.
Having witnessed one form of American rebellion flame up from small individual local protests into a political movement that is about as unstoppable as a wild-fire with a Santa Anna wind behind it, now I am wondering if I am not seeing another, in the current ruckus kicked up about the TSA.
It has often seemed of late that just about every simple pleasure of air travel – and there used to be a good few, even when it just seemed as if flying by commuter air was just a Trailways bus with wings – has been precisely and surgically removed. Cram-jammed flights. A seat about the size of one of those chairs in a kindergarten – and about as comfortable. No meal service. No movies save on long-distance hauls. Fewer direct flights . . . And then, post 9-11 – security. No meeting someone at the gate upon arrival. No seeing someone away, by accompanying them to the departure gate. Emptying your luggage of nail-clippers, lighters, and any sort of liquid. Wearing shoes that can easily be slipped off. Getting to the airport at least two hours early to be sure to make it through the security line to start with. And now this: the unedifying choice between having to go through the stark-naked scanning machine, or a humiliatingly intrusive pat-down search.
Frankly, if I am to be seen in the altogether, or to be intimately groped by another person, I’d like it to be consensual and after a good dinner, a couple of drinks and a movie.
We put up with all of this in the name of “safety†– but my sense is that it has hit a wall of not only diminishing returns, but our own patience. The final straw, as it were. The far frozen limit. The TSA makes a great show of searching for things and of avoiding seeming to ‘profile’ those who might actually be terrorists intent on airborne mayhem. It’s not the tool, fools – it’s the person with the will, training and intent to use the tool – but oh, my – we can’t be caught singling out those specific persons. Might upset them, and then what might they do? So, in order to prove that we are not ‘profiling’ –screaming three year old kids, elderly nuns in full habit, semi-invalids in scooter-chairs, teenage girls, respectable middle-aged business persons with no record of brushes with the law whatsoever, get to be treated like convicted felons on intake to a long term in the state pen. There have been reports lately of terrorists smuggling explosives by stuffing them into body cavities; given how the TSA goes into full reaction mode to counter past terrorist tactics, I can only expect the next step is to administer colonoscopies and issue speculums. Complaints about unprofessional behavior by the TSA agents have become legion. I don’t have any myself – having only flown once in the last five years, but travelers who do have some real doozies to tell, and some of them even have video.
It’s going to be real interesting, seeing how this avoidance of air travel might go, in the next couple of weeks. With the economy the way it is, probably not as many can afford or want to fly, but I have a feeling that unhappiness over the back-scatter screening and intrusive pat-down searches have driven travelers to the limit of saying ‘heck with that, might as well drive.’ Interesting to see what the airlines may do, if travel falls off that far. Any bets?
All right then – for Proud Veteran and all the rest of my HF fans out there; the first chapter of the book after the next book – which got to be so substantial that I broke it into two parts. This is the first chapter of the book after the next – which will be out … well, about a year from now. No, I do not have a problem with writer’s block. Why do you ask?
Deep In the Heart: Chapter 1 – Widow’s Weeds
Early in the year of 1841, Margaret Becker Vining received condolence visits in the front parlor of the house she had long thought of as her own, since her father, Alois, had long yielded up the management of it to his formidable daughter. The front parlor was a room longer than wide, with tall windows on two sides, which allowed the winter sun to fill the room with the mellow golden light of afternoon. It was a plain room with clean and whitewashed walls, adorned with only the shelves of books that her late husband had prized, and yet set with comfortable chairs and a day-bed piled with pillow-cushions covered with blue and yellow patchwork. Margaret – tall and slender, with hair the color of ripe wheat done in a long braid wrapped coronet-wise around her head – was dressed in unrelieved black, the weeds of a new-made widow. Her first caller was likewise dressed all in somber black, but the color of deep mourning did not flatter her as well as it did Margaret.
“The Doc came to attend on Mr. Eberly in his final illness,†remarked Margaret’s visitor, by way of commencing her call, “And he told us you had received word that your man died in Boston. Sorry to hear of it, Miz Vining. He seemed like a real nice man. I reckon you miss him something turrible. Schoolteacher, was he?â€
“Yes, Mrs. Eberly,†Margaret answered. “We had been married more than ten years.â€
“I thought I recollect him from San Felipe, when he first started a school there.†Angelina Eberly sighed, reminiscently. She was dumpy, capable and shrewd, some twenty years older than Margaret, who rather liked her even though she was a rival of sorts in the business of keeping a boarding house in the tiny frontier capitol city of Texas. “My first husband and I, we had just started our place, too. Such a dashing feller, altogether too handsome to be teaching school . . . seemed to be a waste, that he didn’t have no ambition a’tall.â€
“My husband only wanted to teach school,†Margaret answered, showing no sign of the grief and resentment that still burned deep within her heart, like the coals of a fire left to smolder overnight. “He came to Texas for his health. He had a weak chest and his doctors told him that for his own sake he must live in a warm climate.†Race Vining had also been escaping a loveless marriage. That was not an uncommon thing among those young men who had rushed into Texas in the mid-1820s, seeking adventure, land and their fortunes in those American colonies in Mexican territories, those settlements set up by entrepreneurs like Stephen Austin and Green DeWitt. Unfortunately, Race Vining had omitted to obtain a divorce from his well-born and well-connected Boston wife before engaging Margaret in marriage. Margaret had loved him well and borne him four sons during all adversities – adversities of war, invasion, sickness and separation – before inadvertently discovering the nature of his existing marriage. It was for the purpose of seeking a divorce, which had finally impelled Race Vining to make that arduous return journey to the East – and he had died of his old malady before achieving that end. Margaret had received a settlement from his horrified family back east, and not yet decided what she would do with it. Her husband’s family appeared to have brought forth only daughters – no sons to carry on their name! But the Texas frontier was far removed from Boston, and Margaret was determined to keep the embarrassment of Race Vining’s bigamy a secret from all, even her sons. She assumed that his Boston family was determined to do the same.
Now Mrs. Eberly continued, “Now I had just five years, with Captain Eberly . . . he was my second husband, o’course. I was married to Mr. Peyton for sixteen year a’fore that, but we had known each other all our lives, bein’ that we were cousins. Like to have broke my heart when he died, but still . . .†She sighed, gustily. “I just cain’t see that I’ll marry again, Miz Vining. I’m set in my ways, an’ accustomed to running my establishment as I see fit. When you’re young an’ pretty, it helps to have a man around the place, stand up for ye, remind the boarders an’ customers to keep a civil tongue. It don’ much matter when yer as old as I am, Miz Vining. Then ye can do as yer pleases.â€
“I do not think I shall remarry.†Margaret answered – although the old black witch woman who had told Margaret her fortune on her twelfth birthday had promised that she would marry once for love and again for friendship. The utter humiliation of Race’s confession to her and the long silence after he had departed for Boston still hurt Margaret dreadfully. She had done with heartbreak, with lies told for love and for men who did things for convenience.
“A man about the place is handy to have, now and again,†Mrs. Eberly conceded generously, “And you’re young enough still – hain’t lost any of your looks – but as long as your old Pa is around, I don’t think you’d be too much bothered.â€
“I do not think I could endure the sorrow of love regained and then the loss of it . . . but I have considered taking up weaving, like Penelope,†Margaret answered; Mrs. Eberly looked blank and Margaret stifled a small sigh. “The wife of Ulysses, plagued by unwanted suitors in his absence; she promised to marry when her weaving was done, but she picked out at night all she had accomplished during the day.†Having had the allusion explained to her, Mrs. Eberly laughed in frank amusement, which gratified Margaret. She was becoming rather tired of being treated as if she were made of spun glass, as if she would dissolve into a welter of tears if anyone so much as cracked a smile.
Now Mrs. Eberly continued, “All that Penelope woman would have needed was to have your Pa sit in the corner and glower at them. I can’t help thinking now that he’s a man who might have done good to marry again! It would have improved his temper, at any rate.â€
“I don’t think so, Mrs. Eberly – he took the loss of my mother so very hard,†Margaret replied. “And the death of my brother Rudi with Colonel Fannin at the Goliad . . . Pa has never been the same since. But then he was always a difficult man.†What Margaret would not say was that her father, Alois Becker, had always been proud and hot-tempered. He doted on the older of his two sons while scorning the younger, and quarreled frequently with men who might otherwise have been his friends. Only his wife, Margaret’s mother, had been able to soften his harsh nature into some pretense of amity with his fellows. Her death of the bloody flux during the terrible ‘runaway scrape’ had removed that effective governance on Alois Becker’s ill-temper. Margaret coped by serenely ignoring his occasional bitter outburst, reasoning that Pa was what he was, and paying any mind to him was a fruitless exercise. In any case, she had the house to manage and her sons to bring up properly. Now Mrs. Eberly looked ready to settle in for a good enjoyable gossip.
“Have you many gentleman guests, now? There’s been so much talk now, about Meskin bandits raiding over the Nueces – can you believe they have the nerve – that people are frightened about staying in Austin because of the danger. I’ve lost all my boarders but a handful! I can’t wait until the Legislature comes back to town, and fills up my rooms good and proper. General Sam, he’s staying for a few days, but if it weren’t for him and the missus, I might as well turn over the mattresses and lock the doors.â€
“I can’t blame people for being frightened,†Margaret answered. “But I think it would take more than talk to drive me away. I know that it would! We left our home once before, I’d not be leaving again, and I know that my father wouldn’t.â€
“Oh, but he was up here when it was still Waterloo, wasn’t he?†Mrs. Eberly fanned herself. “Then he’s accustomed to living out and away from everything. But I tell you straight enough, Miz Vining, we’d be in mortal danger of loosing our livelihood altogether, if General Sam has his way. He never liked having the Legislature meet all the way out here – it was President Lamar who was dead-set upon building a new capitol city, instead of meeting at Columbia or Washington-on-the-Brazos. I have to say that I much preferred Mr. Lamar. He was ever so much a real gent, always polite, never going on a spree!â€
“I still have three boarders,†Margaret answered. “Mr. Hattersley the Englishman, Dr. Williamson . . . and Seamus O’Doyle, of course. He is contracted to build the French Legation. And that is still going ahead. I do not think General Sam would be able to move the capitol city away from here, even if he wanted to, now that he has been re-elected.â€
“Truth to tell, he’s a canny man,†Mrs. Eberly answered, with an air of dark warning. “Who knows what he really has his mind set on? Myself, I think his wife has something to do with it. She wishes to be settled nearest her kinfolk; she tole me her sister and husband have a big plantation on the Trinity River. Take my word on it – she’s the one who doesn’t wish to be always traveling around, and living all the way out here! Well, there’s no fool like an old fool.â€
“General Sam has married?†Margaret was startled. Now that she thought on it, she recalled there had been a bit of gossip floated at her supper-table last year, but as her guests were mostly men, they had very little interest in the marriage of a public figure like Sam Houston – or if they did, their remarks would have been prurient in nature and too unseemly to voice in Margaret’s presence. “I had heard mention of him courting a young lady whose family did not approve, but I thought there was an end to it.â€
“No, Mrs. Vining – she defied them, and they went ahead with marrying – last May, it was. Who would have thought it? A little slip of a girl and that drunken old goat, even if he is the hero of San Jacinto, but they seem happy enough.â€
“I am very glad for them, then,†Margaret replied with all honesty. “General Sam . . . always appeared to me as one who would be a most devoted husband. I think he is a man who likes the company of women as friends. When we had to leave Gonzales, during the war, General Sam gave orders that the Army wagons should be used to carry away the women . . . especially the widows of those Gonzales men who had gone to the Alamo. At that terrible time, he took the trouble to be kindly. He sat with Sue Dickinson as she told us of what had happened there, holding her hand and weeping openly. I have always had the most generous feelings towards him on that account.â€
“Ah,†Mrs. Eberly began drawing her shawl closer around herself, and setting her bonnet at a rakish angle, preparatory to taking her leave, “Well, General Sam can be charming when he wants to be, I’ll give him that. But what he does and says when he has a few drinks – I’d not want to endure being married to him, knowing what I know of life and the didoes he kicked up in Tennessee and among the Cherokee. Well, I’ll be taking my leave now, Mrs. Vining. I just wanted to tell you again, how sorry I was to hear about Mr. Vining and all – leaving you with the boys and all.â€
“Thank you, Mrs. Eberly – I appreciate your consideration more than I can say,†Margaret clasped her visitor’s hands briefly, feeling that it really was very kind of Mrs. Eberly to take this time from her unending daily rounds of cooking, cleaning and overseeing the care of her guests.
“That’s all right, my dear,†Mrs. Eberly embraced her fondly, adding, “Now you hear any rumors from your gentlemen about moving the Legislature to anywhere else – you must promise to pass them on to me! A whisper of such doings will affect your business no less than mine, and not for the better.â€
She walked with Mrs. Eberly to the front door, once again thinking how very kind everyone had been to her since hearing of Race Vining’s death. She was fortunate to have such friends. Well, that was one of the other things that the witch-woman had promised her; many friends and a large house, aside from the two husbands – but that very few of those friends would truly know her heart. These days, Margaret sometimes felt that she herself didn’t know it, either. She had mourned her husband and her marriage all of last year; now what she was doing was a pretense, a sop to proprieties. Just as she was emerging from the shadow of last year, like a butterfly from a chrysalis – she must make a quiet show of her grief because everyone expected it of her. She had just decided to go change out of her good black dress, and help Morag and Hetty with supper, when Morag put her head around the parlor door saying,
“Oh, Marm – it looks like there’s another visitor for ye; a trap just coming up to th’ door.†Morag was barely sixteen; she and her older sister Hetty worked in Margaret’s house, although Margaret valued them for their companionship almost more than the work that spared her, and gave time to spend with her sons . . . and to sit in the parlor of a winter afternoon and receive visitors. Really, Margaret thought with a pang of regret – Race would have been so proud of her. As she had seen to his needs and nursed him in sickness, he had schooled her in the social graces and in the contents of his books; he was an educated man, and had read widely.
“Is it anyone that you recognize?†Margaret asked, as she resettled the cushions that had been somewhat disarranged by Mrs. Eberly.
“Marm, I think it is General Houston,†Morag breathed, with eyes as wide as saucers. “And there is a lady with him.â€
“Oh, my!†Margaret peeped out of one of the parlor’s long windows: yes, there was a trap drawn up on the wagon-way out in front, and her father holding the bridle of the horse that drew it, as General Sam, climbed down from the seat. General Sam exchanged remarks with her father – remarks which sounded casually friendly – or as friendly as anyone could ever be with Alois Becker. It looked as if Alois Becker was about to begin spring plowing, for the team of oxen stood patiently behind him. Then the General turned to hand down a young lady; a young lady in a fashionable dark purple dress and a bonnet whose beribboned brim hid her face. Margaret drew in her breath – at least Papa appeared to be in a good mood, for he was speaking to the General and his lady with a lessening of his usual sour expression.
“It is indeed – well, Mrs. Eberly said that he and his wife were in Austin . . . don’t bother with showing them in, Morag, I’ll meet them at the door.â€
“You shall not, Marm,†Hetty popped her head out of the kitchen door as Margaret came from the parlor. “’Tis fitting that you should sit in the parlor an’ receive your guests there, so you should, for you are in mourning for the Young Sir.†Margaret could hear the men’s voices from outside, closer as General Sam approached the steps.
“Very well,†Margaret yielded. Morag was having so much fun, playing the part of a ‘proper maid’ as Hetty had called it, although neither one of the Moylan sisters had any idea of what that actually entailed, other than their long-dead mother’s stories of domestic service in a grand mansion in Ireland some three or four decades since. Margaret sat in the chair that had been her husband’s, her back straight and her hands folded in her lap, although she was aching to take up a piece of mending from the basket at her side.
“General and Mrs. Houston,†Morag announced from the parlor door, and Margaret rose from the chair. Before she had taken more than a few steps, General Sam was within the room, the force of his personality seeming to fill it entirely, at the expense of the woman in the fashionable purple dress clinging timidly to his arm. At once, the General enclosed Margaret’s hands in his, saying,
“Mrs. Vining, we had only just heard of your sad loss! What a tragedy that you would hear of it so late, and be unable to take some small crumbs of comfort in knowing that you ministered to him in his last hours. He must have longed for your loving presence as well.â€
“He was with his family,†Margaret answered, suddenly and unexpectedly overwhelmed with the intensity of General Sam’s concern. He was a tall man, with craggy features and a lion’s mane of hair, and possessed of such personal vitality and energy that people were drawn towards him, like iron-filings to a magnet. His charm was of such a powerful nature that it convinced anyone who held his regard – for that moment – that they were the most important person and fascinating person in the world. “And . . . he had been so often ill, that I was in part prepared for the end.â€
“None the less,†General Sam gave her hands a comforting squeeze, and without letting them go, turned to the lady at his side. “I can see that you would have grieved none-the-less, Mrs. Vining. My dear, may I present you to another Margaret? Her late husband, Mr. Vining was long-settled in Texas. He served as a scout all during our retreat to the East, and then in the line in the San Jacinto fight – a brave man and none nobler. I confess that I oft-envied him for the simple wealth of his possessions – his horse, his home and his family,†the General smiled impishly, “and his Margaret, as well – but then I found a very dear Margaret of my own.†He yielded Margaret’s hands and turned to the lady at his side, with a proud and fond expression, and Margaret thought – Oh, General Sam, what have you done? She looks hardly older than Morag and you are more than twice her age! The General’s Margaret was slender and very, very young, with tremulous dark eyes set in pale, regular features and lips that curved in a somber and rather hesitant smile. “May I present my wife, Margaret, to you?â€
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Vining.†Margaret Houston’s voice was low and gentle, like a dove – a dove that had been sipping southern honeysuckle, Margaret thought irreverently. “I think it is very sad to do so under the circumstances of a visit of condolence. But then my husband has made so many friends in Texas! I am always pleased to make their acquaintance for myself – but so many of them are men . . .â€
“Being in politics and having been the general of an army, he can scarcely avoid that,†Margaret answered, and added the unspoken thought – Besides good friends, he has at least as many enemies and ill-wishers, too – while General Sam chuckled, and remarked, “Never been one for sitting around the drawing room, flirting with the ladies.†“Save now and again,†Margaret Houston added, she and the General exchanged look of wry fondness, as she continued, “But I shall be so very glad to make friends of my own in Texas – but that there are rather more men then women here!â€
Margaret thought with some relief; Oh, good. She is not timid at all – merely reserved. Aloud, she said, “So many think of it as the far frontier, Mrs. Houston – a place more suited to men and dogs, than women and horses. I was so pleased to hear of your marriage from Mrs. Eberly. I have always thought that the General was one who well-deserved the reward of a loving marriage and a happy home – as loving and happy as my own with my husband was.â€
“Thank you for your good wishes,†General Sam looked inordinately pleased; he and Margaret Houston exchanged another of those fond looks, “I think we’re off to a good start – even if it took a good long time to find my own dear Maggie Lea. A house of our own a-building …â€
“I do envy yours,†Margaret Houston confided, as they sat down, “So many books – I had not expected to see so many in one house! Have you read them all, Mrs. Vining?â€
Margaret restrained herself from saying snappishly, “Of course I have!†since she had heard this question from practically every visitor that she had Race Vining had entertained from their first days of marriage in Gonzales. Instead, she answered, “I have indeed – my late husband was a schoolteacher. He needed books the way most other men require food and drink. He guided my education himself, even after our marriage.â€
“Marvelous,†Now Margaret Houston smiled a smile of genuine pleasure which brought out a pair of dimples. “May I examine your library, Mrs. Vining? I vow I have not seen such a wealth of books since my own schooldays at the Judson Female Institute!â€
“Of course,†Margaret answered, and Margaret Lea Houston went to the bookshelves in a rustle of purple silk, just as the door of the parlor opened again.
“I’ve brought the boys to see General Houston, Marm,†Morag said, “For they wouldn’t give us any peace, knowing that he was within the house.â€
Margaret’s three older sons stood slightly abashed within the parlor, each of their faces alight with hero-worship: ten year-old Horace, whose likeness and character was his father’s image, Johnny, who was seven and rather timid – and five-year old Jamie who wasn’t. Jamie was fair-haired and big for his age, a true Becker. He was as tall as Johnny and was as bold and brash as the man he had been named for, that James Bowie who had fallen in the Alamo siege, who had also been one of her husband’s good friends.
“Hello boys,†General Sam’s own face lit up, “I see you’ve brought your toy soldiers then,†for Jamie had an armful of his corn-husk toy soldiers. “What sort of game were you playing?â€
“We weren’t, sir,†Horace answered with touching dignity, “We were doing chores with Opa, and Miss Hetty said you had come to pay respects on account of Papa.â€
“Then I am very pleased to meet you, lad,†General Sam shook hands gravely with all three boys, even Johnny who looked as if he would like to go back to sucking his thumb again, “Your father was a gallant gentleman indeed. He was with us at San Jacinto – I am sure you have heard the story many times.â€
“Oh, yes, but not from you, sir!†Jamie spoke up, and Horace answered,
“I saw you then, sir – Johnny and I did. Mama and our friends, we were camped in a wagon close to Harrisburg, and Papa and Opa were gone with Captain Smith. We saw the whole Army march by, and you on a white horse, and Mrs. Kimball and Mrs. Darst told us to look well and remember that we saw the Army of Texas on it’s way to do battle – but we did not see Papa then…â€
“He was most likely on a proper scout,†General Sam rumbled, “Or flanking the column at a distance . . . here, let me show you…†In short order, he and the boys were down on the floor – the boys entranced as General Sam demonstrated the proper marching order across the rag-rug, with Jamie’s corn-husk soldiers and Johnny’s toy wooden horses. Margaret and Margaret Lea Houston exchanged amused glances.
“A good general,†Margaret remarked, “And very good with children. He took as good a care of his soldiers as if they were his sons – or so my husband said.â€
“I know,†Margaret Lea knelt in a pool of whispering silk, to examine the gilt-lettered backs of the books on the lower shelves. “And I think to myself sometimes, Mrs. Vining, that it is unfair that he will then take such little care of himself, and share his deepest confidence with so very few. Yet he has been my teacher, as much as your husband was yours.â€
“He is a great man,†Margaret said honestly, “Perhaps one of the greatest men in Texas. But not entirely without flaws – no man truly is. Even my husband had faults, and I confess that my father has many of them. I have come to think that a wife’s duty is to . . . either ameliorate such faults, or to encourage a husband to rise above them by bettering himself. â€
“I agree with you that the General . . . my husband,†Margaret Lea acknowledged, with earnest determination, “Is a great man – and that my task is to help him become greater still, as he is capable – but to do so humbly. For I do not think he would willingly accept a greater master, unless it was our Lord and Master of all.â€
“You have done very well so far,†Margaret observed; really, she did very much like the General’s Margaret. For looking so sweet and shy, she had a spine of steel under that silk, and perhaps they were better matched than appeared so at first. “You have tamed a wily, scarred old tom-cat, the veteran of many battles who has run through at least three or four of his own lives – into being a tame puss who wants nothing more than a bowl of milk and to curl up on a soft cushion before the parlor fire.â€
“You think?†Margaret Lea smiled sideways at her, “Oh, he is scarred – some of them dreadful, enough to break your heart to look at and think of the pain it costs him and still does – but he does have plenty of wildness left in him. You have not seen – and I pray you never do – the suit that he first wished to wear to be inaugurated in. All of green velveteen, with a hideous sort of flat Indian turban.â€
“All of it?†Margaret asked in disbelief and Margaret Lea nodded. “Oh, what you have spared us, my dear!†and they laughed companionably over the books. Meanwhile, the boys and General Sam were down on their knees on the rag rug; the General demonstrating how the thin line attacked Santa Anna’s Mexican army at San Jacinto – a single rank of corn-husk soldiers, with Johnny’s horses to one side to represent the cavalry, and a pair of thread-spools from Margaret’s mending basket for the two cannon; cast in Cincinnati by a subscription among sympathizers to the cause of Texas freedom and sent at great expense down the river to New Orleans and by sea to Velasco. The afternoon passed with remarkable swiftness, so swift and pleasurable that Margaret was hardly aware of it, until a beaming Morag came into the parlor bearing a tray with a china coffee-pot and cups and plates, and a plate of fresh-baked bread and jam and butter. She brought another plate of it for the boys, who were immediately distracted from their recreation of the great battle by the prospect of something to eat. General Sam dusted off the knees of his trousers and joined his wife and Margaret at the table.
“Fine boys,†he said, with admiration and approval, “This was another reason and cause, my dear, to envy Horace Vining.â€
“We shall have our own, in good time,†Margaret Lea answered, with serene confidence, “As they are given to us.â€
General Sam took a healthy bite of bread and butter. “And clever, too,†he added. “The youngest – Jamie is it? Now, he is the bold lad; a born soldier, if I ever saw one – and I know the breed well, for I was such a one myself.â€
“He is not the youngest,†Margaret said, “That is Peter – but he is only two years old. The saddest thing for me is that Peter was just a baby when my husband went back East. He will not remember his father at all. The other boys – oh, they recall him well and dearly. But Peter will have no recollection of him at all…â€
“Save in the hearts of those who thought well of him, and continue to burnish his memory,†General Sam affirmed stoutly, “And will speak of him and his qualities to those who cannot remember at first hand. Dear Mrs. Vining – that is our history, the best and finest of our people – and we must recall them and their noble deeds to those lately born and still unborn! How can we remember what we are, and what we may yet be called to become, if we lack the example and inspiration of our forbearers? Raise your sons with the memory of their noble father and those of his deeds which are most valorous always on your lips.â€
And leaving the memory of his most ignoble deed in my heart, Margaret thought. It was the General himself who counseled me in this, saying that scandal will eventually die when gossip has no purchase. He did not ask the reason for my distress, that day when he met me by the riverside, and I was weeping because I had just discovered that Race was married to another woman besides myself. He asked nothing, only listened, and advised that we settle it between ourselves, that it was no one’s business but our own. She met General Sam’s shrewd and sympathetic eye, and knew without a doubt that he also was also recollecting that day.
“Good lads,†General Sam remarked again, “For you, Mrs. Vining, they are an ornament better than any jewels, eh?â€
“They are everything to me,†Margaret answered. “My daily care is to see that they are educated well, and take up a profession that their father would have approved. He did not own much property in Texas – only a small town-lot in Gonzales.â€
“You should apply for a grant of land in your name, as the widow of a veteran,†The General suggested. Inwardly, Margaret cringed; she would have to file affidavits and statements regarding her status as her husband’s widow. She could not bear the thought of an investigation and what that might reveal.
“I will consider that, when the year is up,†she answered, calmly. “Truly, there is so much land that I fear it is not so much valued. If it were dear, I might value it altogether more. A good town-lot in a prosperous region – that is of more use to me than a thousand acres of wilderness, even if the land is rich and well-watered.â€
“You should consider it applying in any case,†General Sam advised. “Even in quantities, land has a value – if not for yourself, then for the boys. It is a pity though – that you must be living so far out at the edge of our settlements, though. Have you never considered moving to a more settled part of Texas, to Galveston or to Harrisburg? Even to Bexar, perhaps.â€
“I would not,†Margaret shook her head, “We lived in San Felipe for a time, and then Gonzales with my husband – but this is where we made our home and I have become so fond of it that I would never leave. And after the next Legislative session, I am planning to enlarge the house once again.â€
“I fear that it will take a long time for this place to be truly secure,†General Sam answered, and for a moment, Margaret thought that a shadow passed over his face – and that he would say something more, but he did not.
They talked a little while longer, the casual companionable talk of friends, with Margaret realizing with some surprise that General Sam and his Margaret were both well on the way to becoming her friends, friends of the heart. At last, with the afternoon sun dropping low and touching the edges of the trees with gold and silvering the reaches of the distant Colorado, General Sam and his Margaret took their leave. They could not stay to supper, having a previous invitation, and Margaret saw them to the door, thanking them again for their company.
“I think this must be a notable occasion,†she confessed, “A consolation visit – and I have actually been consoled by your presence!â€
“It was our profound pleasure,†General Sam answered, with a glint of amusement in his eyes, as he tipped his hat to her, and Margaret Lea’s smile once more revealed her dimples. The trap rolled away, down the long sweep of hillside, between the rows of Alois Becker’s treasured apple trees, with their bare branches holding up the swelling blossom buds to the sky.
Margaret straightened her shoulders, feeling at least a little guilty for having spent the afternoon in the parlor, when there was supper to be prepared. But oh – it had been so pleasant! She had spent the last year under a shadow, and now she felt as if she had come out of it, out into the sunshine again. There was only one small speck of disquiet in her mind – which she could not quite put her finger upon. Something in General Sam’s expression, when she had mentioned expanding the house, after the Legislature next met. He had looked . . . Margaret searched for a word, and could not find it – but his expression was so like Jamie’s, when he had been caught in some mischief and was considering an evasive answer. Yes, that was it; General Sam had some notion in mind, something he knew but did not want to say anything of. He was a man, as her husband had once acknowledged, who played his cards very close to his vest, taking no one into his confidence. And this very day, Mrs. Eberly had said something about rumors of the Legislature meeting elsewhere. Could General Sam – having been reelected as President – now change the capitol city of Texas once again? Just by ordering it? The thought made Margaret most uneasy; General Sam had never liked having the Legislature meet in Austin – too close to the frontier, too vulnerable to Comanche raids, or from Mexico. But she, and Mrs. Eberly, Seamus O’Doyle the carpenter, Mr. Cronican the printer, and so many others – they had invested, built businesses in the expectation of the town of Austin growing and growing well. Margaret frowned. This was something that she should have one of her ‘thinks’ about; one of those matters that she must contemplate quietly and at length.
As she turned to go back into the house, her father came around from the barn and stable-yard at the back of the house, a pair of his oxen clumping obediently after them; he had been at work all afternoon, plowing the first of the two cornfields he still kept in cultivation. He was scowling, as usual – a big man with thinning fair hair and an untidy beard, grubby and burned by the sun after a day working in the open.
“They gone yet?†he growled, in German – the language that Margaret and her brothers had grown up speaking. “If they had stayed much longer, I swear they would have spent the night.â€
“Yes, they have just departed,†Margaret answered. Her father grunted – he sounded neither pleased nor unhappy, and Margaret asked, on impulse, “Papa – would you ever consider leaving this place, and taking up a plot of land elsewhere.â€
“No, I would not,†he answered, gruffly. “This is where your mother and Rudi lived and were happy; not Mexicans, Indians nor your guests would ever make me leave the hearth that I built for them.â€
“That is what I thought, Papa.†Margaret said. She closed the door behind her; Papa might have built the hearth, she thought, but I have made it into our home – and neither of us will ever leave.
So, coming down the home stretch on the next book – which had the working title of Gone to Texas, which Blondie didn’t much like because she found a couple of others, fiction and non- with the same title. So, when released, it will be titled Daughter of Texas, subtitled “The prelude to the Adelsverein Trilogy.†My clever and artistic younger brother, Sander, who is a freelance graphic artist, did the cover design for me, and Watercress Press, the tiny publishing bidness in which I am a junior partner will edit and publish . . . and print it as a POD book, since we have set up an account with Lightning Source. We had wanted to do something of the sort along the POD line for our clients, after a couple of decades of taking bids from various traditional litho printers. It’s the same old tradeoff – traditional litho, large quantities at a time = large initial up-front cost, but small price per single copy. POD/Lightning source means small print run = relatively small up-front costs and slightly higher cost per single copy. So, Daughter of Texas will be the test run for Watercress Press.
It’s the prelude to the Trilogy, as it follows the life of Margaret, Carl Becker’s older sister, who married twice, and became an influential political hostess in Republic-era Texas – after experiencing the trials of the Texas war for independence from Mexico, to include the ‘Come and Take it’ fight, the fall-out from the siege of the Alamo, and the terrifying ‘Runaway Scrape’ . . . all that, and she has just gotten up to her first husband. (Also explained why the Becker family got to be dysfunctional in a special way . . . )
Anyway, I was set on finishing it in time for release on the anniversary of San Jacinto Day, April 21 2011, because this spring will mark the 175th anniversary of the Texas War for Independence – which, while loaded down with bags of drama – was over and done in a flash, relatively speaking. (Can you picture a lot of people picking themselves up off the ground in early 1836 and saying ‘Whoa! – What was that which just went by? A war? The hell you say – anyone see who won?)
Small problem – I was just coming up to writing the post-war picking-up-and-moving-on part, and hit a couple of problems: the first being that I had already clocked 300+ pages, and if I wanted to do true justice to the Republic of Texas-era shenanigans,(the Pig War, the Mexican raid on San Antonio which captured the entire district court and every Anglo man in town, the Archives War, etc,) that would mean another couple of hundred pages . . . in the next month. Plus all the necessary research – that being one of my marketing points, that I have researched all this to the nth degree. And I was out of time for all that. Another problem: writing out Margaret’s first husband – who dies of consumption – and her romance, such as it is, with her second husband. I was struck out of the blue by solutions to both those situations, a solution which would let me wrap up the first part of her story very tidily while allowing an interesting plot twist in a book to be worked out at a later date – and to make a second book of Margaret’s life; widowhood in the town that would (intermittently) be the capitol of the Republic of Texas and later the state capitol, participation in or witness to a whole series of gripping and exciting events, plus a new romance with a male character which I would have to flesh out a little more. The second book about Margaret will be called Deep in the Heart . . . to be available by next Christmas, perhaps.
Anyway, I will begin taking orders for Daughter of Texas starting about mid-December, autographed and delivered in mid-April, just before the official release date. Links and pricing will be posted then.
So that’s what has been going on with the book-thingy. Any questions?
Can’t stand the usual run of reality TV shoes, but for some reason, this particular show hits the spot for me. Eh, maybe I am a snob, but it is one of life’s small pleasures, enjoying the sight of horrible, tacky, manipulative people behaving badly. And there is always the fair chance of a harassed maid of honor – or maybe even a vendor – loosing it and administering a richly-deserved knuckle sandwich to the bride . . . or a long-suffering groom recovering his gonads and his sanity and ditching his intended at the altar. Seriously, we wonder how many of these featured brides even have friends and family even speaking to them, after some of these televised shenanigans. Some of them may in the ordinary course of things, be reasonable and well-adjusted people under a lot of stress, and some may be spoilt, delusional and egged on by the producers of the show . . . but airing all your wedding dirty laundry on broadcast television?
Besides schadenfreude, close attention to the various bridal-party meltdowns also serves another purpose: an education in what not to do when planning and executing a wedding. Seriously – avoiding anything that the Bridezilla of the moment is doing, purchasing, or generally having a cow over in planning for her particular nuptial celebration – might be a very good thing. Certainly the Daughter Unit is taking notes: sometimes knowing what not to do is every bit as valuable as knowing what to do.
So, in no particular order of importance, here are Sgt. Mom’s thoughts regarding the modern wedding – and how to have one without breaking the bank, alienating family and friends and generally becoming one massive cloud of appallingly tacky taste.
1. Don’t have a comic cake topper on the wedding cake. Please – not that one of the bride climbing up the groom, grabbing his ass, or installing a ball and chain on his ankle. Please, just don’t.
2. If you weigh more than 180 pounds, don’t choose a strapless gown, either for a bridal gown, or for the bridesmaids. Just please don’t. Especially if you have tats that will show.
3. It’s not necessary to arrive at the venue in a horse-drawn carriage, on a horse, carried by the groomsmen, a converted Brinks van or a stretch limo. Really, it isn’t. Plain black town-car is fine. Trust me.
4. Don’t, for the love of god, write your own vows. Stick to the traditional service, of whatever denomination that you belong to, even you only go to church on major holidays – it’s much more dignified. Seriously.
5. If an outdoor wedding, for the sake of your own sanity, ensure that there is a sheltered option available in case of inclement weather. And speaking of outdoor venues; early spring or late fall in most of the northern States is liable to be cold, rainy and stormy. I’m just saying here, that frostbite and pneumonia are not attractive elements, especially if you have chosen strapless gowns for yourself and attendants.
6. Accept the fact that your average VFW hall, conference center hotel ballroom or modern church parish hall cannot be temporarily made over into something which will be mistaken by your guests for the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Not going to happen. Adjust.
7. Don’t try and cut corners economically by forcing your bridesmaids/family/significant others to make your damn wedding favors and decorations. Either pay a professional, or skip it entirely. Don’t torture your bridesmaids, etc.
8. A buffet dinner is fine. So is substantial finger-food. Really, you don’t have to have table assignments for everyone: just the bridal party and your respective immediate family.
9. Rough rule of thumb here – tell no one among the vendors of relevant services that it is a wedding reception. Just tell them it’s a party, so many people, such and such a date, and you want this and such for noshes.
10. It’s supposed to be a celebration. For you and your friends and family. And treating said friends and family as if they were some kind of walking ATM is mega-tacky. And basically, the rest of the world doesn’t much care about your special day. Especially if you and the significant other have been living together for ____ years and already have ____ children.
OK – clear on the concepts. Good.
(Don’t have any liquid in your mouth while watching this … look, I warned you, I’m not paying for any new keyboards.)
This is making the rounds on facebook. I was hard put to name the authors, and in some cases had to resort to Google (to find the author of Hawk, I’m Your Brother, for one). I couldn’t find one book, but in high school I read a non-fiction work that I could swear was titled “Not Every German was a Nazi,” but the book might have been a collection of essays, and that might have been the title of one of the essays, instead.
It’s an eclectic mix. I had to keep stopping myself from just listing favorite authors, and focus on those who influenced. There’s a difference, although I think we are, or can be, influenced by everything we read. The names on my list are authors who helped shape my thoughts, or who changed my thoughts, or whose words I can never get out of my head. Some are recent, and some go back to childhood
The official instructions: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.
Madeleine L’Engle
Robert Frost
Elizabeth Moon
R.A. Heinlein
Altsheler
Sally Roth
Byrd Baylor (think of his book every time I see a hawk in the sky)
Thomas Jefferson, et al (“When in the course of human events…”)
James Madison, et al (“We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union…”)
Celia Hayes (not sucking up – constantly remembering scenes from the Trilogy, and when my local PBS recently aired a show about the Germans coming to TX, I compared their data with what I remembered from Celia’s books, trusting her to be accurate, and them to have errors)
Bess Streeter Aldrich
Sara Stein
Ayn Rand
Dr Seuss
Shel Silverstein
Feel free to add yours in the comments.
Cross-posted to In My Own Little Corner, with a plug to Sgt Mom’s Amazon page
Ok, so I can’t stop snickering at all those poor lefty-progressives at Open Salon, now that they have stopped whimpering and sucking their thumbs. Gosh, I wouldn’t be so cruel as to begin deriding them openly, for I have made a solemn vow not to be to terribly candid about my Tea Party sympathies over there. For several reasons – one being that OS is to promote my mad writing skilz, a second being that the Tea Party is a state of mind about fiscal responsibility-strict Constitutionalism-free markets, and thirdly, that the old axiom about teaching a pig to sing grand opera applies when trying to teach lefty-progs about the Tea Party. In that it’s a waste of your time and only annoys the pig. Intelligent people will eventually figure it out on their own, or when reality applies the clue-bat on a regular basis.
Hey, the radical libertarians are taking over . . . and they’re going to leave everyone alone!
It is refreshing though – that the frequency and use of the word “tea****er†seems to have fallen off markedly, though, although there are some interesting hissy fits going on over at Daily Kos. (Notably with this lefty-progg screamer – I’m posting the link as an example of the genre, but all you really have to know is that his screed is called An Open Letter To The White Right On the Occasion Of Your Recent Successful Temper Tantrum). I can only suppose that those most prone to brandish the “Raaaacist†stick at the Tea Party have only got around to noticing that candidates like Nikki Haley, Allen West and Quico Canseco were carried to victory on the shoulders of extensive Tea Party interest. Ah, yes – the reality clue-bat – fair and impartial.
Can’t help wondering if the various traditional news orgs haven’t been taking notice and pulling up their socks: OMG, those Tea Party people are successful! And coming close to being a majority! And perhaps we might rethink constantly denigrating them, ‘cause our ratings are tanking worse than the post-iceberg Titanic and selective appeal doesn’t sell the advertising. I’m amused as heck that Keith Olbermann has been given the sack from MSNBC – you suppose he and Juan Williams are going to get together for a drink?
See, it’s not the beginning of the end – it’s more the end of the beginning. What got overlooked perhaps, in the national election-night coverage, was how many state legislatures have turned from Dem to GOP, and how many of those GOP legislators are now more aligned with Tea Party sympathies, and how many local GOP caucuses have been also taken over by those with a taste for Tea and a new enthusiasm for political involvement. No more the go-along-to-get along career RINO squishes; they’re almost as disconcerted as the traditional mainstream media. That’s another part of the real story – and it wasn’t any big secret, it’s just that no one was looking. No wonder the senior GOP leadership cadre and strategists like Karl Rove look – and are acting – just like they have just discovered half a dead cockroach in their breakfast taco.
Just wait until 2012, people. It’s gonna be fun!
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women!
And the lamentations of their media creatures and commentators … although most of them over at Open Salon just seem to be sniveling and cringing in the corners. Life is good this morning. I think I’ll have another cuppa Tea. Tea Party tea, that is.
So, not a full sweep – Harry Reid still embedded in Nevada, and Our Witch didn’t make it far off the ground in Delaware. But Colonel West is in, and a good many other citizen-legislators, and it seems like the House is ours, and San Fran Nan will just have to climb onto her broomstick now, when she wants to fly back to California. A nice day’s work, being that the turnover at the state level was huge. That is where it counts; since hopefully, the states will be the counter-weight to the federal establishment in coming years.
Yeppers, thinking long-term, people. Long-term. And first on the agenda will be to remind all these newly elected legislators not to get cocky and thinking what a nice office they have and wouldn’t it be shiny to stay there forever’n’ever, amen. Not a chance. To paraphrase Bill Cosby “We put you there and we can take you out again.”
Not the beginning of the end – but maybe the end of the beginning.
This is a repost of the speech that I gave at the San Antonio Tea Party rally, April 15th, 2009, when all of this kicked off, and we were set on a new course. We vote today – but it is not the end of the long haul – only the beginning of the next leg.
Hullo – and thank you all for coming to our modest little tea party in the heart of San Antonio! (pause for laughter) First of all – are we having a wonderful time? Fiesta San Antonio begins tomorrow, so we have been telling everyone to come for the Tea Party and stay for Fiesta. First though, I would like to thank everyone who took that extra effort, and worked very hard to make this particular place – this very special place – available to us, on very short notice. We would like to thank the ladies and gentlemen of the various departments of the City of San Antonio, and acknowledge the graciousness shown us by the members of the Fiesta Commission! Thank you, City of San Antonio!
Yes, this is a very special and significant place for our Tea Party – although most visitors, upon seeing it for the first time are surprised, because it looks so very small – nothing like the way appears in all the movies. San Antonio de Valero… so called ‘the Alamo’ for the cottonwood trees that grow wherever there is plenty of water in otherwise dry country. And there were cottonwoods nearby then, enough that the soldiers of Spain who set up a garrison in this old mission called it so, after those trees. Imagine – if you can – how this place would have looked, then! Just… imagine.
Close your eyes, and if you can, banish the sight of all these tall modern glass buildings, and those rambling beaux-arts storefronts, while I paint a word-picture for you. Go back… go back a hundred and seventy three years. The actual town of San Antonio is now some little distance away, a huddle of adobe and stucco walls around the tower of San Fernando.
The air smells of wood-smoke and cooking, of sweat and horses, and spent black-power. We are in a sprawling compound of long low buildings, a single room deep, with tiny windows, and thick walls. Some of these have flat rooftops, others with shallow peaked roofs. Many buildings have their inside walls razed – others have been filled with rubble and dirt to make cannon-mounts. The gaps between them are filled by palisades of earth, tight-packed and reinforced with lengths of wood, and tangles made of sharpened tree branches. All of this work has been done painfully, by hand and with axes, picks, shovels and buckets. The chapel – of all of these the tallest, and the strongest – is also roofless. Another earth ramp has been built up, inside; to serve as yet one more cannon-mount. This place has become a fortress, and last defense, surrounded by an overwhelming enemy force, a large army of over two thousand men, outnumbering bare two hundred or so defenders by over 10 to 1. This enemy army…, trained…, hardened and disciplined, is well-equipped with cannon and ammunition, with cavalry and foot-soldiers alike. By the order of the enemy commander, a blood-red flag signifying no quarter to the defenders of this place has been flown from the tower of the San Fernando church.
The story is, that on the day that the last courier left the Alamo – a local man who knew the country well, mounted on a fast horse bearing away final letters and dispatches – one of the Texian commanders called together all his other officers and men. He was a relatively young man – William Barrett Travis, ambitious and to be honest, a bit full of himself. I rather think he might have struck some of his contemporaries as a bit insufferable – but he could write. He could write, write words that leap off the page in letters of fire and blood, which glow in the darkness like a distant bonfire.
He was in charge because of one of those turns which bedevil the plans of men. His co-commander, James Bowie was deathly ill… ironic, because he was the one with a reputation as a fighter and a leader. Bowie was seen by his enemies – of which there were many – as a violent scoundrel, with a reputation for bare-knuckle brawling, for land speculation and shady dealing. And of the third leader – one David Crockett, celebrity frontiersman and former Congressman, he did not claim any rank at all, although he led a party of Tennessee friends and comrades. He had arrived here, almost by accident. Of all of the leadership triad, I think he was perhaps the most amiable, the best and easiest-tempered of company. Of all those others, who had a stark choice put before them on that very last day, that day when it was still possible to leave and live… most of them were ordinary men, citizens of various communities and colonies in Texas, wanderers from farther afield – afterwards, it would become clear that only a bare half-dozen were born in Texas.
It is a vivid picture in my mind, of what happened when a young lawyer turned soldier stepped out in front of his rag-tag crew. Legends have that Colonel Travis drew his sword – that weapon which marked an officer, and marked a line in the dust at his feet and said “Who will follow me, over that line?†It was a stark choice put before them all. Here is the line; swear by stepping over it, that you will hold fast to your comrades and to Texas, all you volunteer amateur soldiers. Make a considered and rational choice – not in the heat of the fray, but in the calm before the siege tightens around these crumbling walls. No crazy-brave impulse in the thick of it, with no time to do anything but react. Stay put, and choose to live, or step over it and choose to go down fighting in the outpost you have claimed for your own.
The legend continues – all but perhaps one crossed the line, James Bowie being so ill that he had to be carried over it by his friends. It was a choice of cold courage, and that is why it stays with us. These men all chose to step across Colonel Travis’ line. Some had decided on their own to come here, others had been tasked by their superiors… and others were present by mere chance. They could have chosen freely to leave. But they all stayed, being convinced that they ought to take a stand … that something ought to be done.
Imagine. Imagine the men who came here, who made that choice, who had the cold courage to step over a line drawn in the dust at their feet.
They were animated by the conviction that they were citizens, that it was their right – and their responsibility to have a say in their own governance. They were not subjects, expected to submit without a murmur to the demands of a remote and arbitrary government. They did not bow to kings, aristocrats, or bureaucrats in fine-tailored coats, looking to impose taxes on this or that, and demanding interference in every aspect of their lives. They were citizens, ordinary people – with muddled and sometimes contradictory motives and causes, fractious and contentious, just as we are. But in the end, they were united in their determination to take a stand – a gallant stand against forces that seemed quite overwhelming.
This evening, we also have come to this place, this very place – as is our right as citizens and taxpayers, to speak of our unhappiness to our government in a voice that cannot be ignored any longer. This is our right. Our duty… and our stand.
The Daughter Unit and I were in Fredericksburg on Thursday last, running various errands to do with the books – and one of the more enjoyable interludes was lunch (at Rather Sweet) with Kenn Knopp. He is the local historian – nay, rather a walking encyclopedia when it comes to all things doing with the German settlement of Fredericksburg and the Hill Country. He very kindly read the Trilogy in draft manuscript, searching for historical and linguistic inaccuracies, beginning it as sort of a grim duty and turning into an enthusiastic fan by the last page. I was very grateful to him for doing this, and continue being grateful since he has continued singing their praises.
When we had been in Fredericksburg the week before, for a book-club meeting, and an interesting conversation with another long-time resident, who told us that during WWII it was illegal to speak German in public, which is why use of that language – (almost universal in Gillespie County in the 19th century) was no longer common, save among the very elderly. I had always understood that it was WWI which had really put a stake in the heart of German being the common usage in schools, churches and newspapers in the US; the extreme xenophobia of that time had mellowed somewhat with regards to ethnic Germans by the 1940s. Not so, apparently – and we asked Kenn to confirm. Oh yes, he said – and related the tale of a newly ordained minister, who arrived in Fredericksburg in the early 40s – from the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and could not speak English well enough to discuss theological and philosophical intricacies. He kept lapsing back into German, in spite of being repeatedly warned – and wound up interned in the Crystal City camp for those suspected of having enemy sympathies. The luckless pastor did not mind internment very much, according to Kenn; even though he did not have a speck of Nazi sympathies. He could practice his pastoral vocation to his hearts’ content, in the Crystal City camp. He had a captive congregation, in more ways than one.
And not to assume that everyone there was as innocent as the Swiss-German pastor; Kenn also told us of a contemporary of his mothers’ – who actually was a Nazi sympathizer, in the 1930s, and persisted in delusions that he could recruit like-minded sympathizers among the Fredericksburg locals – much to their embarrassment and dismay. And then when he fancied himself a spy and began trying to send information to Germany by short-wave . . . well, that was too much. The hapless would-be spy was turned in to the authorities, and sent to Crystal City.
And that reminded me of the story which I heard, when growing up in the Shadow Hills – Sunland suburbs of greater Los Angeles. Along Sunland Boulevard, which connected Sun Valley with Sunland, and wound through a narrow, steep-sided valley connecting the two, was a wonderful rustic old restaurant building. It was built in the Thirties, quaint beyond belief, and set about with terraces cut into the hillside, vine-grown pergolas, pavilions where you could sit outside and eat and drink, all connected with stone staircases and paths: it was called “Old Vienna†when I knew it – serving generically mittel-European cuisine. It was built originally as a restaurant and beer garden, and called Old Vienna Gardens – it still exists as the Villa Terraza (serving uninspired Italian cuisine, to judge from the restaurant reviews) – but it was always and still a landmark. But the legend was, that the family who built it (and their ornate family home on the tall hilltop behind it) were somehow associated with Nazi sympathizers – and they also were spying for the Third Reich. Only, their shortwave radio had an even shorter range, of approximately three and a half miles, and the local county sheriff’s department was listening attentively to every broadcast . . . so no one was ever arrested. At the time, I think they were more freaked out about Japanese spies, anyway. Just an amusing intersection of legends.
There were POW camps in Texas also – for German prisoners of war. The Daughter Unit and I wondered if there were ever any serious escape activity from them; hundreds and hundreds of miles from a neutral border, lots of desert and rough country . . . and a great many well-armed local citizens. It’s in the back of my mind that there were one or two successful escape runs by German POWs from camps in Canada and the US, but I’m thinking that generally there were too many obstacles in the way of a successful home run – like the whole Atlantic Ocean for one. (Note to self – exercise the google-fu and see what comes up.)
Read the article here.
It sounds like something our own Sgt Mom could have written (some of the comments do, as well).
From the article:
No, the Tea Party is that rare beast, a genuinely spontaneous popular movement. Its proximate cause is easily enough discerned: the US federal government is 30 per cent bigger than it was two years ago, a position both main parties would have considered unthinkable as recently as 2007.
From the comments:
What are the common characteristic of Tea Party supporters?
We pay our bills, we save for our retirement, we are responsible for ourselves, and we demand the same for the rest of the country. (snip)
We want to cut the government back to its constitutionally mandated limits, and progressives/libs can bray like the symbol of their party while we do it.
(snip)
Final characteristic of Tea Party supporters, is the ability to judge the results of policy, whether it’s welfare, tax, or foreign policy, on results of that policy, NOT on the intentions of those who passed and implemented the policy.
Thanks to my real-life and facebook buddy, Jerry Henry for the link.
Once there was a little town, a little oasis of civilization – as the early 20th century understood the term – in the deserts of New Mexico, a bare three miles from the international boarder. The town was named for Christopher Columbus – the nearest big town on the American side of the border with Mexico was the county seat of Deming, thirty miles or so to the north; half a day’s journey on horseback or in a Model T automobile in the desert country of the Southwest. It’s a mixed community of Anglo and Mexicans, some of whose families have been there nearly forever as the far West goes, eking out a living as ranchers and traders, never more than a population of about fifteen hundred. There’s a train station, a schoolhouse, a couple of general stores, a drug-store, some nice houses for the better-off Anglo residents, and a local newspaper – the Columbus Courier, where there is even a telephone switchboard. Although Columbus at this time is better than a decade and a half into the twentieth century, in most ways it looks back to the late 19th century, to the frontier, when men went armed as a matter of course. Although the Indian wars are thirty years over – no need to fear raids from Mimbreno and Jicarilla Apache, from the fearsome Geronimo, from Comanche and Kiowa, the Mexican and Anglo living in this place have long and bitter memories.
In this year of 1916, as a new and more horrible kind of war is being waged on the other side of the world, while a more present danger menaces the border; political unrest in Mexico has flamed into open civil war, once again. Once again, the fighting threatens to spill over the border; once again refugees from a war on one side of the border seek safety on the other, while those doing the fighting look for allies, supplies, arms. This has been going on for ten years. One man in particular, the revolutionary Doroteo Arango, better known as Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa had several good reasons for broadening the fight within Mexico to the other side of the border. Pancho Villa had (and still does) an enviable reputation as their champion among the poorest of the poor in Mexico, in spite of being a particularly ruthless killer. He also had been, at various times, a cattle rustler, bank robber, guerrilla fighter – and aspiring presidential candidate in the revolution that broke out following overthrow of more than three decades of dictatorship by Porfirio Diaz.
Once, he had counted on American support in his bid for the presidency of Mexico, but after bitter fighting his rival Carranza had been officially recognized by the American government – and Pancho Villa was enraged. The border was closed to him, as far as supplies and munitions were concerned. He began deliberately targeting Americans living and working along the border region, hoping to provoke a furious American reaction, and possibly even intervention in the still-simmering war in Northern Mexico. He believed that an American counter-strike against him would discredit Carranza. Such activities would renew support to his side, and revive his hopes for the presidency.
In this he may have been egged on by German interests, hoping to foment sufficient unrest along the border in order to keep the Americans from intervening in Europe. A US Army deployed along the Mexican border was a much more satisfactory situation to Germany than a US Army deployed along the Western Front along with the English and the French. Early in April, 1915, Brigadier General John “Black Jack†Pershing and an infantry brigade were deployed to Fort Bliss; by the next year, there was a garrison of about 600 soldiers stationed near Columbus, housed in flimsy quarters called Camp Furlong, although they were often deployed on patrols.
By March, 1916, Pancho Villa’s band was in desperate straits; short of shoes, beans and bullets. Something had to be done, both to re-supply his command – and to provoke a reaction from the Americans. The best place for both turned out to be . . . Columbus. After a decade of bitter civil war south of a border marked only with five slender strands of barbed-tire, that conflict was about to spill over. The US government, led by President Woodrow Wilson had laid down their bet on the apparent winner, Venustiano Carranza. Carranza’s sometime ally, now rival, Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa, who had once appeared to be a clear winner from north of the border – was cut off, from supplies and support, which now went to Carranza. Pancho Villa had been so admired for his military skills during the revolution which overthrew the Diaz dictatorship that he was invited personally to Fort Bliss in 1913 to meet with General Pershing. He appeared as himself in a handful of silent movies . . . but suddenly he was persona non grata north of the border, and one might be forgiven for wondering if Villa took it all as a personal insult; how much was the deliberate killing of Americans a calculation intended to produce a reaction, and how much was personal pique?
Villa and the last remnants of his army – about five-hundred, all told – were almost down to their last bean and bullet. In defeat, Villa’s men increasingly resembled bandits, rather than soldiers. The high desert of Sonora was all but empty of anything that could be used by the Villa’s foraging parties, having been pretty well looted, wrecked or expropriated previously. There were only a few struggling ranches and mining operations, from which very little in the way of supplies could be extracted, only a handful of American hostages – the wife of an American ranch manager, Maude Wright and a black American ranch hand known as Bunk Spencer. Some days later, on March 9, 1916, Villa’s column of horsemen departed from their camp and crossed the border into New Mexico. In the darkness before dawn, most residents and soldiers were asleep. At about 4:15, the Villistas stuck in two elements. Of those residents of Columbus awake at that hour, most were soldiers on guard, or Army cooks beginning preparations for breakfast, and the initial surprise was almost total. A few guards were surprised, knifed or clubbed to death – but a guard posted at the military headquarters challenged the shadowy intruders, and the first exchange of gunfire broke out – alerting townspeople and soldiers alike.
The aim of the well-organized Villistas was loot, of course – stocks of food, ammunition, clothing and boots from the civilian stores, and small arms, machine guns, mules and horses from the Army camp. To that end, Villa’s men first moved swiftly towards those general stores. Most of the structures in town and housing the garrison were wood-framed clapboard; in the dry climate, easy to set on fire, and even easier to break into, as well as offering practically no shelter from gunfire. But the citizens and soldiers quickly rallied – memories of frontier days were sufficiently fresh that most residents of Columbus kept arms and ammunition in their houses as a matter of course. Even the Army cooks defended themselves, with a kettle of boiling water, an ax used to cut kindling and a couple of shotguns used to hunt game for the soldiers.
Otherwise, most of the Army’s guns were secured in the armory, but a quick-thinking lieutenant, James Castleman, quickly rounded up about thirty soldiers who broke the locks in the armory and took to the field. Castleman had been alerted early on, having stepped out of his quarters to see what the ruckus was all about only to be shot at and narrowly missed by a Villista. Castleman, fortunately had his side-arm in hand, and returned fire. Another lieutenant, John Lucas, who commanded a machine-gun troop, set up his four 7-mm machine guns. The Villistas were caught in a cross-fire, silhouetted against the fiercely burning Commercial Hotel and the general stores. The fighting lasted about an hour and a half, with terribly one-sided results: eight soldiers and ten civilians, including a pregnant woman caught accidentally in the crossfire, against about a hundred of Villa’s raiding party. As the sun rose, Villa withdrew – allowing his two hostages to go free. He was pursued over the border by Major Frank Tompkins and two companies of cavalry, who harassed Villa’s rear-guard unmercifully, until a lack of ammunition and the realization they had chased Villa some fifteen miles into Mexico forced them to return.
Within a week, the outcry over Villa’s raid on Columbus would lead to the launching of a punitive expedition into Mexico, a force of 4,800 led by General Pershing – over the natural objections of the Carranza government. Pershing’s expedition would ultimately prove fruitless in it’s stated objective of capturing Pancho Villa and neutralizing his forces – however, it proved to be a useful experience for the US Army. Pershing’s force made heavy use of aerial reconnaissance, provided by the 1st Aero Squadron, flying Curtiss ‘Jenny’ biplanes, of long-range truck transport of supplies, and practice in tactics which would come in very handy, when America entered into WWI. Lt. Lucas would become a general and command troops on the Italian front in WWII. Lt. Castleman was decorated for valor, in organizing the defense of Columbus, and one of General Pershing’s aides on the Mexico expedition – then 2nd Lt. George Patton, would win his first promotion and be launched on a path to military glory.
Pancho Villa would, when the Revolution ended in 1920, settle down to the life of a rancher, on estates that he owned near Parral and Chihuahua. He would be assassinated in July, 1923; for what reason and by whom are still a matter of mystery and considerable debate.
So the canning of Juan Williams from NPR can be taken as yet another example of the hardening of attitudes in what commenters on various centrist/conservative and libertarian blogs began calling a ‘cold civil war’ some years ago. Pity, that – and I used to listen to, love, and support local public radio and TV outlets, the minute I got back to assignments Stateside where such things were available. Listened to NPR in the morning and in the afternoon for my required news fix, never missed a broadcast of Prairie Home Companion, loved Car Talk and public TV’s Masterpiece Theater. Sent in my pledges during the annual fund drives, scored the occasional mug, tee-shirt and souvenir cookbook – heck, I even worked part-time as a classical announcer for the local public radio classical station for better than a decade.
And then it all went sour, and I am hard-pressed to pin it down exactly when and for what reason; the pull of the internet, and the push of Garrison Keillor going gradually, frothingly, gibbering bonkers having a lot to do with it. Nothing quite so disconcerting as a humorist who made his reputation doing gentle, affectionate ribbing of small-town flyover-country foibles suddenly ripping off the folksy persona to reveal the viciously intolerant, hate-filled bigot within.
(Note to Garrison K. Ya know, ya really lost a large chunk of yer audience, there with the incessant Bush bashing. I know, easy target and all that, but would it have killed ya to take an equal number a shots at John Kerry, dere – almost kinda like ya did with Al Gore? Whattabout der current prez? Ya know, with dis political humor ting, ya gotta be ecumenical . . . less’n you want yer audience appeal to be more . . . selective. Ya, that’s it. Selective. Gotta tell ya, Mr. K – conservatives pledge, too, or dey did . . . Maybe yer serious about this-ere selective audience ting.)
Anyway, the news began to sour on me too, once I began to notice that certain stories and controversies – which I had already been made aware of on-line – just never seemed to percolate up to the attention of NPR. Or if it did, the attention paid would be pretty one-sided – and since I had already read the story from various aspects and angles online, it would be very, very obvious to me. Listening became a frustrating experience, rather than an informing one: why wasn’t this question asked, why hadn’t the reporter followed up on this aspect, and why, why, why were the same old experts always being pulled out of the Rolodex to give the same old canned response to the same old questions? It got to the point that I could predict the NPR stance on any particular controversy, story or event. So, why bother? I faded away from listening to NPR news around about the 2008 election, which is probably a good thing, since listening to their coverage of Tea Party developments would have sent my blood pressure into the stratosphere.
So, Juan Williams – on the outs, not for what he said, particularly, but for where he said it; on Fox TV, which appears to have sent certain NPR listeners frothing at the mouth. Sacked by the boss, through a telephone call – doesn’t get more graceless than that. And he always struck me as one of those people with whom you could disagree on certain things, but that he would be reasonable. Weirdly enough, it’s the left-hand side of the political spectrum which is going all ugly about this, as if he had suddenly turned into some kind of untouchable. Alas, now it seems that the name of NPR’s major daily news program, All Things Considered should be changed to Only Some Things Considered, Else Your Ass Is Grass and I’m the Lawnmower. Maybe too long to fit into those teeny little blocks on the schedule, though.
We were off to Fredericksburg on Monday; Fredericksburg, Texas – a medium-sized town large enough to contain two HEB supermarkets, a Walmart, four RV parks and two museums, one of which[ the National Museum of the Pacific War – draws considerable tourist interest and a marvelous kitchenware shop which might very well be the best one in the state of Texas. (It certainly makes Williams Sonoma look pretty feeble in comparison.) The town has begun to develop a little bit of suburban sprawl, but not excessively so. Most of the town is arranged along the original east-west axis of streets laid out by German immigrant surveyors in the mid-1840s, along a rise of land cradled between two creeks which fed into the Pedernales River. In a hundred and sixty years since then, houses and gardens spilled over Baron’s Creek and Town Creek. Log and fachwork houses were soon replaced by tall L-shaped houses of local stone, trimmed with modest amounts of Victorian fretwork lace, or frame and brick bungalows from every decade since. Main Street – which on either side of town turns into US Highway 290 – is still the main thoroughfare. A good few blocks of Main Street are lined with classic 19th century store-front buildings, or new construction built to match, storefronts with porches which overhang the sidewalk, and adorned with tubs of flowers and hanging baskets, with shops and restaurants and wine-tasting rooms catering to a substantial tourist trade. Fredericksburg is a lively place; and I have been visiting there frequently since I came to live in Texas.
I actually have a curious relationship with the place, having written a series of three historical novels about how it came to be founded and settled. Thanks to intensive research which involved reading practically every available scrap of nonfiction about the Hill Country and Fredericksburg written by historians and memoirists alike, I am in the curious position of knowing Fredericksburg at least as well as many long-time residents with a bent for local history do, and holding my own in discussions of such minutia as to how many people were killed in cold blood on Main Street. (Two, for those who count such things. It happened during the Civil War.) And for another, of having a mental map of 19th-century Fredericksburg laid over the present-day town, which makes for a slightly schizophrenic experience when I walk around the older parts. Eventually, I may have to do a sort of walking guide to significant locations, since so many readers have asked me exactly where did such-and-such an event take place, or where was Vati’s house on Market Square, and where in the valley of the Upper Guadalupe was the Becker ranch house?
Mike, the husband of one of Monday’s book-club members is a fan of the Trilogy, and although he couldn’t come to the meeting (being at work and all) he still wanted to meet me. He had actually contacted me through Facebook a couple of months ago, for a series of searching questions about where I had gotten some of the street names that I had used in the Trilogy; many of them are not the present-day names, but are what the original surveyors of Fredericksburg had laid out. I deduced that being stubborn and set in their ways, the old German residents would have gone on using those names, rather than the newer ones. After all, when I grew up in LA, there were still old-timers who insisted on referring to MacArthur Park as Westlake Park, even though the name had been changed decades ago. So, the book club organizer gave me Mike’s work number at the Nimitz Foundation (which runs the Museum of the Pacific War) and said we should call and his assistant would get us on the schedule for that afternoon. It was my understanding that this gentleman was a retired general; OK, I thought – eh, another general, met ’em by the bag-full . . . matter of fact, there was a general even carried my B-4 bag, once – (long story) but anyway, we had a block of time to meet Mike at his office and a lovely discussion we were having, too; he was full of questions over how much research I had done, and terribly complimentary on how well woven into the story.
Mike thought ever so highly about how I had made C.H. Nimitz, the grandfather of Admiral Chester Nimitz into such a strong and engaging character; although we had a discussion over how devoted a Confederate that C.H. Nimitz really was – probably not so much a Unionist as I made him seem to be, but I argued that C.H. was probably a lot more loyal to his local friends and community than he was to the Confederacy; so, nice discussion over that. It seems that the Mike was born and grew up in the area. He and his wife (who was German-born) had read the Trilogy, and loved it very much; they were even recommending it to everyone, and giving sets of it as presents. Well, that is way cool! I’m in regular touch with three or four fans doing just that; talking it up to friends, and giving copies as gifts. Local history buffs, or they know the Hill Country very well, they can’t wait to tell their friends about it; as Blondie says, I am building my fan base. So I had a question-packed half hour and a bit; me, answering the questions mostly, and Blondie backing me up. At the end of it as we were leaving, Blondie casually asked about a few relics on the sideboard, under an old photograph of C.H. Nimitz and Chester Nimitz as a very young junior officer; a very battered pair of glasses, and a covered Japanese rice bowl: they came from the tunnels on Iwo Jima. Blondie said. “Oh?” and raised her eyebrows. Yes, Mike had been allowed into the old Japanese tunnels; Rank hath it’s privileges – and Iwo is a shrine to Marines, after all.
After the book-club meeting – two hours, of talk and questions, and hardly a chance to nibble any of the traditional German finger-foods, an hour-long drive home, which seemed much longer. I fired up the computer and did a google-search, and found out the very coolest part. (Blondie had a suspicion, of course; being a Marine herself.) Mike was not just any general, but a Marine general, and commandant of the Marine Corps. How cool is that? One of my biggest fans is the former commandant of Marines, General Michael Hagee.
I’m actually kind of glad I didn’t know that, going in -“ I think we both would have been at least a little bit intimidated.
(Couldn’t resist G&S updated, and an Obama look-alike…)
Found through a comment here, at Protein Wisdom, where Jeff G. is having yet another go-around with She Who Must Not Be Mentioned, in whom the serious crayzee is in full flood.
