Americas

Fire Country

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(This is a picture that my father took of the 2003 Paradise Mountain fire coming towards their house – the puff of black smoke is probably from a burning structure, maybe a vehicle. The rest of the pictures on that roll of film were of the house interior – to document for the insurance company.)

Reading the news about the fires burning near Colorado Springs revive memories of what it was like, when I was growing up in the hill country the hill country of Southern California. Then it would be hot and dry all summer long, the green grass of spring would turn gold, the chaparral the native brush would dry out . . . and then . . .

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So Far From God

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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?

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Roger Williams & the Ship of State

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Roger Williams, who represents America on the oversized Reformation Wall in Geneva, was not an easy man. Graduating from Cambridge in 1627, he was chaplain to Sir William Masham; by 1630 Archbishop Laud’s demand for oaths of loyalty reached even such clerics, and so Williams and his bride set off for New England. Fortuitously, John Wilson was just then returning to England to gather his family; that is, fortuitously for anyone but Williams. He declined the First Church of Boston post, for he “durst not officiate to an unseparated people.” In the cold winter of 1634-35, he was exiled from Salem, having already been sent from Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth. “Soul liberty” became the governing core of his Providence government – one he defended against Indian attack and the ambitions of other colonies, one he buttressed with authority from England, under both Cromwell and Charles II. He understood liberty because of his “separateness.”

At times he seems an early libertarian: he took Calvinism farther than even these steely New Englanders, having sacrificed much for their faith, were willing to go. If “moderation,” as Cotton Mather noted, characterized every page of Winthrop’s biography, “extremism” would of Williams’.

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The Marines Have Landed…

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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.

Such a Disagreeable Man

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I’m sure I’m no ascetic; I’m as pleasant as can be;
You’ll always find me ready with a crushing repartee,
I’ve an irritating chuckle, I’ve a celebrated sneer, I’ve an entertaining snigger, I’ve a fascinating leer.
To ev’rybody’s prejudice I know a thing or two;
I can tell a woman’s age in half a minute — and I do. But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can,
Yet ev’rybody says I’m such a disagreeable man!
And I can’t think why!

From Gilbert & Sullivan’s Princess Ida

I suppose that one of the most enjoyable things about romping in the halls of historical research is getting to know people, some of whom are famous and others notorious, all of them interesting and they tickle my interest to the point where I would have very much liked to have met some of them personally. Sam Houston is one of them in Texas history that I’d have loved to meet, Jack Hays another, Angelina Eberly a third. I would have loved to have met Queen Elizabeth I of England three of the four are complicated people, as nearly as I can judge from reading accounts of them. I just would have liked to have had the chance to form my own, independently-arrived at opinion, you see. About the only way that I can indulge this curiosity is to work them up as characters for various books walk-on parts, usually. Assemble the various views, take a look at some known writing of theirs, consult the grave and sober historians and come up with something that I hope will be revealing, true to the historical facts, and at least a jolly good read … but now and again, in the pages of history, I encounter those that I don’t like very much at all. Some of them are so immediately disagreeable, dislikeable and all-unpleasant that I marvel they lived long enough to make a mark in history at all.

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