Poor Mexico, runs the saying usually attributed to long-time Mexican strongman Porfirio Diaz, So far from God, so close to the United States. I was thinking of this, when we went to see the movie For Greater Glory mostly because I had seen brief mention of it here and there on the libertarian-conservative side of the blogosphere, and the whole premise of it interested me, mostly because I had never heard of such a thing as the Cristero War. Never heard of it, and it happened in the lifetime of my grandparents, in the country right next door … and heck, in California we studied Mexico in the sixth grade. It appeared from casual conversation with the dozen or so people who caught the early matinee at a movie multiplex in San Antonio, only one of them had ever heard of it, either. Was there some cosmic cover-up, or did we have troubles enough of our own at the time … or was it just that Mexico was so constantly in turmoil that one more horrific civil struggle just blended seamlessly into the one before and the one after?
Sgt. Mom
Further Adventures in Book Marketing
Well, no one ever really considered our family or anyone in it as cutting-edge … although it might be fairly argued that we were mosying so slowly along behind everyone else in our practices and preferences that the cutting-edge, tres-up to the minute actually came around full circle in the last half-decade and caught up to us at last. Home-made everything, home vegetable garden, chores for children, no television, tidy small houses and abstention from debt of every sort, from student to credit-card … an enthusiasm for all such things are now apparently trendy and forward-thinking.
Black Beans and Boy Soldiers
(As a respite from current events this week – what about another history post? I did have a write up about the aftermath of the Scott Walker recall, but it looks like that topic has already been covered, so … a bit of a diversion.)
The movies and popular culture seems to have it that after Houston’s smashing victory over General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at San Jacinto in April, 1836, everyone signed a peace treaty, made nice and went home. Oh, there was a little dust-up of a war ten years later, upon the occasion of Texas formally joining the United States. Common knowledge of this is confined to the memories of trivia buffs who remember that US Grant and Robert E. Lee served in it together as junior officers, and Marine Corps veterans who are taught the historical origin of references in the Marine Corps Hymn to the halls of Montezuma and the shores of Tripoli. Alas, peace on the borderlands between Mexico and the Republic of Texas did not fall like a gentle rain from heaven upon the signing of the Peace of Velasco. In fact, quite the reverse; Mexican national pride had been severely affronted by the loss of Texas and Lopez de Santa Anna felt the sting most particularly. If he could not get Texas back, he would make things difficult.
This and That – Jubilee Edition
We were distracted Sunday morning by the Jubilee procession of the boats on the Thames, as covered by BBC America. Blondie noticed that none of her various friends in Britain were on-line Sunday morning; presumably they were all off at various street parties, celebrating Her Majesty’s sixtieth year on the throne. She turned on the television and we were glued to it for an hour and a half: yep, the Brits really do know how to pull off a spectacle, although the dogs were increasingly distraught because it was time for walkies, dammit, and we never watch TV during the day, so there was their tiny domestic universe being rocked. The various long shots did look like Canaletto’s views of the Thames; the parties, the people, the banners, the displays along the riverbank buildings … and above all, the boats. What a feat of organization that must have been to get them there at the start, to keep them together for the convoy up the river … and then, of course, to disperse them all afterwards.
The Marines Have Landed…
In Fredericksburg, Texas – the home of Admiral Chester Nimitz. Being an Annapolis man, he probably would have ripped them up one side and down the other for inability to assume the proper ‘shoulders-back,stand-up-straight, suck-yer-gut in! stances at the command of ‘Parade-Rest!’ Or maybe not … he always struck me as a commander who could make allowances. (His grandfather, CH Nimitz, is a reocurring character in my historical novels about the Germans in Texas.)
But they are reenactors, and doing their best for the mission of the National Museum of the Pacific War, in Fredericksburg, Texas. (They were also all pretty young, and geeky … probably heartbreakingly like the Marines that they were reenacting. So, who says that historical reenactors are all middle-aged and physically-less-than-fit guys?) This Saturday, they were working Main Street, and anding out cards with the schedule for reenactment events at the Pacific Combat Zone part of the museum.
Fredericksburg – a small town in the Hill Country – I love it extravagantly, and I think I know it as well as anybody.