Chicagoboyz appreciate safe, modern, comfortable and efficient modes of transportation.
Sgt. Mom
History Friday – One Little Cannon
It was small upon that, everyone agrees; a six pound cannon, most likely of Spanish make, very likely of bronze, or maybe iron, perhaps of brass. It was called a six-pound cannon because it fired a missile of that weight; pictures of an iron cannon of that type (and thought to have been the original) show a rather small bit of ordinance barely two feet long, from end to end, and hardly impressive piece, since it had been spiked and otherwise rendered nearly useless when fired for effect. It appears to have been intended mainly for show – to make a loud noise, or as one early chronicler observed in disgust, for signaling the start of a horse race. Nonetheless, this little cannon or perhaps another of similar size and made of bronze was issued to the settlers of Gonzales, Texas early in the 1830s, for defense of the infant settlement. Texas was wild and woolly plagued by raids from various Indian war parties Tonkawa, Apache and most especially, the feared horse-stealing, slave-trading Comanche. Anglo settlers newly come to an entrepreneur-founded settlement near the Guadalupe River, and their Tejano neighbors succeeded in making some kind of peace with all but the Comanche. Knowing this, the Mexican authorities in San Antonio de Bexar approved issuing that one small cannon to the settlers.
Kayaking On the San Antonio River
Chicagoboyz thrill to white-water adventure!
Chronicles of the Fed-Gov Shutdown
For all the times that this federal government shutdown repeated fiscal game of chicken has been played and I have been through this rodeo a number of times it’s the sheer, petty spitefulness of this iteration which has raised my hackles. Barrycading off the open-air monuments along the Mall including the WWII and Vietnam War monuments blocking off scenic overlooks and the parking lots at Mt. Vernon, and forcing the closure of a number of otherwise self-supporting attractions which have the ill-luck to be on federally-owned property. I am glad to know that the governor of Wisconsin is telling the feds to go pound sand, and suspect that the governor of Arizona may be coming close to doing so, likewise. Meanwhile, the commissary at Andrews AFB is closed, and the golf course is open. Yes, I know that they are under different funding organizations, but the optics of this are really, really bad. If this were a Republican administration, I suspect we’d be hearing all about it, with video and stills of tearful and hungry military dependents all over the news, but then if my aunt had testicles, she would be my uncle. For all I know the junior enlisted troops are happily shopping at Wally-world and the generic shelves at the local grocery stores and not missing the commissary very much at all … but knowing that President Barrycade likes to golf there and takes every opportunity to do so … really, as I said bad optics.
The Year of Wonder and Miracles
Another Texas author recently put a question up on one of those interminable LinkedIn author discussion forums; which, of all the years in the 19th century was the most exciting, the most pivotal, the year where everything happened, the most significant when it came to what America was and what it would be. There’s a case to be made and argued for at least a dozen or more, but I put up an argument for 1876. That was that Centennial year; the United (and occasionally dis-united) States observed a hundred years of existence. American citizens looked back on a hundred years and were generally pleased and satisfied with what had been accomplished; an independent country, a democratic republic, based on the active participation of engaged and responsible citizens; no hereditary ruling class, no established nobility or royalty, just a from-the-bottom-up administration drawn from the local and state level, feeding into a relatively restrained federal establishment! And it had managed to last a hundred years! It had succeeded politically, militarily, socially, and technologically, establishing dominion over a large swath of the American continent, from sea to shining sea. Much of the evidence of this was on proud display at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, America’s very first World’s Fair. It is estimated that visitors to the Exposition amounted to about a fifth of the U.S. population of the time. One exhibit, of an authentic colonial period kitchen, kicked off an enthusiasm for architecture and interior decorating in what had then been an archaic style.