I see, from a brief news release, and the subsequent minor bloggerly hyperventilating about it, that the story of the 60 Minutes-Dan Rather-faked TANG memo is going to be made into a movie, starring Robert Redford as Dan Rather and Cate Blanchette as Mary Mapes, his producer. If it were a cautionary tale about what happens when those who report our news content so desperately desire items of dubious provenance to be the genuine article and so skip merrily past every warning signal in their hurry to broadcast a nakedly partisan political hit piece on the eve of an election … well, I might be tempted to watch it. No, not in a theater – are you insane? I might opt to pay a couple of bucks to stream it through Amazon and watch it at home … but alas, likely I will give it a miss, altogether. It’s going to be based on Ms Mapes’ own account and defense of the indefensible, and frankly I am not all that interested in someone engaged in a lengthy justification of their own gullibility and/or willingness to wink at obvious forgery in service to a partisan political cause.
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We wanted a bit of a holiday, and to get away from the house and the usual jobs for a bit. My daughter wanted to hit up Herweck’s in downtown for some specialty paper for her origami projects. Herweck’s has a lovely stock of interesting papers; in large sheets, which may be cut to size for her origami art projects. I wanted to take some pictures downtown, and we both thought positively of a late lunch at Schilo’s Delicatessen and then … well, to whatever curiosity took us. We were tempted at the outset by a ere was a huge anime convention going on at the HBG convention center, which counted for the large numbers of … interestingly dressed people wandering around. As my daughter somewhat cuttingly remarked, after observing a herd of costumed anime fans, “Too many freaks, not enough circus.†Still, having acquired a taste for this sort of thing when we used to go to the science fiction convention in Salt Lake City when I was stationed in Utah, we thought we might check out the convention, if the price of entry was not too much out of budget. It was too much, as it eventually turned out, and neither of us was into anime sufficiently to properly appreciate the experience … But after walking back from Shilo’s along Market Street, we happened upon the Briscoe Western Art Museum, which was housed in what used to be – so we were assured by the young woman manning the desk – the old downtown public library building.
This was a wonderful construction of 1920s Moderne, newly spiffed up, and the foyer was marvelous. This was a two-story confection with a deeply coffered carved wood ceiling and a band of designs resembling the buffalo and Indian-head nickels around the walls just below the ceiling – all marvelous and detailed. A visit to a building like this once again reminded me of how much I detest and despise the horrid brutality of modern design for public buildings – lean and spare and square, with windows that can’t be opened, no ornamentation of any sort at all, save a stark open square with a concrete turd in a fountain in the middle of it. No, my detestation of modern architectural design of the Bauhaus steel-and-glass-box or concrete-n-glass variety remains undimmed and burns with the white-hot passion of a thousand burning suns … and as it turned out, the entry fee to the Briscoe was a relative pittance, and further reduced by a veteran discount. So – there was a far more economical use of funds and time.
The art on display is of course oriented to the west – lots of scenic vistas, longhorns, cowboys and the like, but leavened with a series of Curtis photographic portraits of Indians, some scenic vistas of border towns, and of the construction of Boulder Dam. As for big-name Western artists, the Briscoe has a small C. M. Russell bronze, and a couple of minor pieces by Frederick Remington, which to my mind is not very much at all, as far as the classic Western artists go. Most of what is there is in the way of art seems to be on loan from local donors and collectors – and it is a rather newish museum after all. Many exhibits are – not strictly speaking – art, but rather historical relics; a classic Concord stagecoach in one gallery – and a renovated chuck-wagon in another. The third-floor galleries had the most interesting items – antique saddles, including one adorned with silver rattlesnakes; once the property of Pancho Villa, and another which once belonged to the Spanish Viceroy in Mexico City. There is also a gallery dedicated to the Alamo – which is only to be expected. It is dominated by one of those elaborate models of the moment when the Alamo was overwhelmed by General Lopez de Santa Anna’s forces – about which I had a small quibble, and another item which raised more questions than the duty guard could answer. (The poor chap is probably curled up in a corner somewhere, quivering.)
This item is a Victorian hair brooch, one of those peculiarly Victorian things – a small lock of hair, made unto a piece of jewelry – usually woven into a pleasing pattern, and preserved under glass in a small setting. They were most often done in order to memorialize a deceased loved one … and this one was supposed to have been … well, the card next to it was singularly uninformative. OK, first of all – was it James Fannin’s hair? Several different alternatives; yes, his – a brooch left with a dear one, after his taking up the position of commander of the Goliad in late 1835. Likely. But his, post-mortem, after the massacre of his company and done after his body lying where it had been left for weeks and weeks? Ooooh – no, don’t think so.
Anyway, we had an interesting time discussing this with the duty guard; it’s true that docents and guards often know rather interesting things about the galleries where they are stationed, often because everyone is always asking them, and being able to give a good answer must be a kind of self-defense. Apparently, he and some of the other guards believe that the Alamo exhibit room is haunted. My daughter says that if any object in that room has the ability to haunt, it would be the gigantic iron 18th century cannon, which was supposed to have been in the Alamo, although if it had any part in the siege, no one knows. It looks like an 18-pounder, and was found buried on private property sometime in this century, so the guard says; the man whose property it was just set it up pointing at his mailbox. We speculated for a while on how it could have finished up buried in the ground, a thing which would have taken at least three ox-teams to move. At the time that the Alamo was the main Spanish presidio in Texas, it was supposed to have had the largest collection of artillery west of the Mississippi and north of the Rio Grande. After Santa Anna’s defeat at San Jacinto, likely the Mexican garrison left to hold the place bugged out with everything they could carry with them. We thought it likely that this particular cannon was dumped, either immediately or after a short distance. The information card at the exhibit offered very little detail – so we had our amusement from speculation.
And that was my bit of a summer holiday – yours?
This weekend marks the hundredth anniversary of the incident which was the spark that set off the cataclysm of the First World War. Which wasn’t, strictly speaking, the first world-wide war; it could be argued that the Napoleonic Wars were, and the interminable European war between France and England which spilled over into those colonies in the North American continent could also be considered a world war.
The spark was seemingly a simple thing – almost a non-story as it appeared in the English and American newspapers; the assassination of an Austrian noble and his wife by a barely competent yet very lucky Serbian amateur terrorist. This was an appalling tragedy for the family of the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and his beloved spouse, Sophie, the Countess Hohenberg, who left three living children to be raised by the Archduke’s best friend. The assassination was perhaps an inconvenience more than a tragedy to the the court and administration of Franz-Ferdinand’s uncle, the Emperor Franz Joseph. The Archduke, who but for the accident of birth would have been a rather quiet and dutiful nonentity, devoted to gardening, architecture and the hunt – was not a particularly popular man at the time of his death, either with his uncle, his fellow aristocrats or the Viennese public. He replaced the popular but suicidal Crown Prince Rudolph as heir, and had insisted on marrying for love, instead of merely making Sophie his mistress. They were eventually permitted to marry with the assurance that Sophie and her children would not have the standing or rights of succession. Sophie – lovely and well-tempered, conventionally pious, and well-educated – was usually treated pretty shabbily by Viennese society and by the imperial establishment on those official occasions at which the Archduke was expected to be present. Franz Ferdinand did play his part dutifully in official ceremonies and events, without any particular appearance of enjoyment. What started as a personal tragedy, and a national crisis for Austria-Hungary was merely the first fall in a train of dominoes.
The war which raged between 1914 and 1918 unleashed a whole cornucopia of horrors, being that they were waged between powers that had been fully or almost fully industrialized. It came after a hundred years of relative peace, prosperity and progress in the Western world. With the exception of the Franco-Prussian War, and the American Civil War, such wars as there had been were colonial wars, fought by small professional Western armies against relatively primitive foes. Many, especially in the educated classes in the late 19th century firmly believed that total, all-out, balls-to-the-wall war was something that the advanced nations of the West had moved away from, that the economic consequences would be so dire that the powers-that-be just wouldn’t allow it to happen. Meanwhile, European military planners moved briskly ahead, paying little attention to the main lesson to have been drawn from the American Civil War – that technology had moved far ahead of established tactics. The pump had also been primed by a series of little-recollected international crises at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th, which flamed up regularly in a sort of international patch of eczema, usually involving France, or Germany, England, Russia or Austria-Hungary or any combination. The crisis would be soothed by the hastily-applied salve of diplomacy … until the next time.
The one thing in common was that the great powers were jockeying for position, sometimes straight out, and sometimes through proxies. The author of the War That Ended Peace outlined how England and Germany came to stand against each other, having been allies more often than not in their previous history. Great Britain, a navy/sea power if there ever was one, gradually began a policy of more engagement in Europe among the great powers. Germany, a quintessential army/land power (and only unified into a single nation within living memory) developed the intention of having a serious deep-water navy.
And so they drifted into enmity. Once that first domino toppled, then all the rest came as a matter of course over the next four blood-soaked years. Treaty obligations and mobilization of the reserves imposed an iron rule. When the dominoes finished falling in 1918, three noble ruling houses had been cast down and a whole generation of of German, French, British and Russian men were gutted. The unwieldy empire to which the archduke had been heir-presumptive broke into its’ constituent parts, and all the bright promise of the modern world as seen by Europeans at the turn of the century before the last was reduced to a nightmare … and left us with wreckage that we are still sorting out, even after a hundred years. The past isn’t dead. It’s not even over.
We have carried on with watching Upstairs, Downstairs – warming up to it every evening with a half-hour palate cleanser of Blandings … which reminds me, I must steer my daughter towards those copies of PG Wodehouse which I have on the shelves, and my volume of the collected works of Saki, otherwise HH Munro … a writer of short stories only equal in my estimation to Rudyard Kipling … whose collections I also have on the shelves. Yes, HH Munro died in WWI, and so did Kipling’s only son, John. One was in his forties and over-aged for the military combat duties, the other seventeen and a trifle young for it … but they both rushed to join the forces, such was the tone of the time. (Munro turned down a commission and served in the ranks, John Kipling’s influential father wrangled his near-sighted son a commission in the Irish Guards.)
This once-proud and forward-thinking world and it’s brutal disillusion is reflected in the current series of Upstairs, Downstairs – first, the tenor of the time, of optimistic patriotism, outrage at German brutality in Belgium and France, the honestly-felt obligation to serve King and country … and then shading into war-weariness and despair, as the casualties mounted, up and up and up. England, France, Germany and Russia were gutted of a whole generation of men – some time in college (or maybe it was a grad school course) there was reason in one of my textbooks for a couple of tables of statistics for males by age in certain Western European countries. There was a considerable divot when it came to the male population of certain countries who would have been of an age to serve in WWI. That was statistics on a page; brought home now and again by the local war memorials in various towns all across Britain, France and Germany – a small stone obelisk in a corner of the town square, or a panel let into the side of a wall, with fifteen or twenty names on it. Heartbreakingly – especially in smaller places – there would be a couple or three identical surnames. Brothers, fathers and sons, cousins … the only wartime losses in the US to equal the English toll in WWI had happened fifty years before, in the Civil War, when local companies went down in sheaves like wheat under the scythe, in a storm of shot where the minie balls came down like hail, and there went just all about the fit men of age from some small town in Illinois, or Virginia, Vermont or Ohio, in some contested field – a sunken road, a wheat-field, a peach orchard or an angle of trench.
In Upstairs, Downstairs, this carnage all happens off-stage. It was a television program after all – and even if by Season Four it was a winner in the popularity stakes, additional budget largess went to more scenes set on location, rather than the studio set, and rather better costuming for the female characters. I have not noticed so many eye-blindingly awful selections with obvious zippers up the back as there were in the first two seasons. It is telling, though – that the fashion for rather more practical and shorter skirts for every-day wear is quite obvious, although the older generation, exemplified by Lady Pru resolutely keeps to toe-length, and Mrs. Bridges holds on to the old-style of dress, apron and cap. The sun will never set on Mrs. Bridges in a hair-net and a knee-length dress.
James is a total and self-centered jerk … but there must have been something to him, else why would Hazel ever have seen something to him, and stuck around? Perhaps she was just out of her mind for a couple of months in 1912 or so. Poor Rose missed her chance of domestic happiness – kick and scream as she must, she’ll be the rest of her life in service. Hudson still holds up his end – although as blind as a bat himself, he had a go at volunteering for the Army. And there we stand, with four or five more episodes and the final season – the one which I never actually saw, since I was in the military myself and overseas when it aired on PBS the first time around.
Found through Insty – had to watch it several times, giggling.
This would appear to be the new theme song for the Fed-Gov’s Bureau of Land Management – that bane of ranchers like Cliven Bundy – as well as a whole lot of other ranchers, farmers, loggers, small landowners, and owners of tiny bits of property on the edge of or in areas of spectacular natural beauty, west of the Mississippi and between the Mexican and Canadian borders.
Yes, indeedy, folks – the maw of the Fed-Gov appears to be insatiable, although it is veiled over with the rationale of wanting to protect endangered species – many of which do not seem to be endangered so much any more – and miles and miles of unique old-growth Western forest. Some of these old-growth forests are so well-protected that they have burned down to the roots in catastrophic fires of late, as local environmental groups went into fits of spastic pearl-clutching, at the very suggestion that … well, pine-bark-beetle and drought-killed trees needed to be cleared away, and so did the duff and accumulation of flammable trash-brush. (The nature of many Western ecologies meant that being burned over every couple of decades was required for the good health of the ecology generally. Well-meant intervention seems to have made the situation worse. But never mind, say the environmentalists…)
This raises the natural suspicion among those of us who have been paying attention, as well as those who have had to make a living in parts of the West lately, that quite a lot of the endangered-species, famously-unique-old-growth-forest, and spectacular-unique-bit-of-landscape legislation which was passed a good three decades ago are now being used for other than their stated purposes. That they are being misused in the service of some international plot (Hello, Agenda 21!) to move us all into urban concrete Stack-a-prole apartment blocks where we can be observed and controlled by the functionaries of the Outer Party, 24-7 … well, I am not quite ready to order my tinfoil chapeau … but I am to the point of becoming concerned, shading to somewhat worried. I can see – rather clearly – that the ostensible care of establishment environmentalists has been used – and the degree of knowledge and malice aforesaid may be debated – in order to close off public lands to any economic use at all, even recreational use, if it is the wrong sort of recreation and by the wrong people. This has all has the whiff of a royal forest being established, for the use and recreation of the small numbers of the anointed, and the lesser orders – the ranchers, hunters, hikers and campers (or cabin-owners) being strictly forbidden on pain of death.
I cannot begin to guess how serious this latest threat to land along the Texas side of the Red River from the BLM is. Likely it will not go very far, now that the Texas AG has drawn a line in the sand. Maybe it is just a feint or even a campaign strategy by Mr. Abbott … but given recent history, and the resentments of all kinds of small-property ranchers and land-owners it’s a shrewd one. The state of Texas, in a handy turn of fate retained ownership of public lands upon becoming a state, instead of the Fed-Gov taking over and retaining vast tracts of wilderness. To this day there are only a couple of national parks within Texas, plus military bases – and for the BLM to even think of appropriating privately-owned lands on the Texas side of the Red River – is breathtakingly ill-conceived. If the BLM is serious in doing so, I guarantee that they will be resisted, furiously. It would make the brouhaha at the Bundy ranch look like a kindergarten playground squabble. It appears at this point, though, that the BLM has backed away, piously disavowing any such intent. For now, anyway, say I, cynically. Five years ago I might have written such a step up to ignorance rather than malice. Five years ago I wouldn’t have thought the IRS would be turned loose to harass political opponents of the Dem Party machine, either.
(Crossposted at www.chicagoboyz.net)
Just for fun, and because I am thrashing out a review of The Birdmen, for Amazon Vine – a song from a movie about the early days of aviation, which became a British hit…
OK – so, since we are now almost a year into giving the heave-ho to cable TV, and busily exploring the delights available through Hulu/Amazon Prime/Acorn, I took it into my head that I should like to watch the original Upstairs, Downstairs series. The very first season of this, which aired on Masterpiece Theater when it was hosted by Alistair Cooke, was seriously truncated when it showed on PBS … which was when I was in college, umpty-umph years ago. Not only did I miss seeing most of the first season, but I also missed absolutely all of the last season, through having enlisted in the Air Force and promptly been assigned overseas. That was the season which romped through the post WWI decade. Very likely I missed other episodes throughout the run of the program. Although I regretted this, I have always declined to spend however much it would cost to buy the entire series of Upstairs, Downstairs, no matter how much I wanted to watch it and no matter how much it is marked down through Amazon specials, or considered in comparison to How Much It Would Have Cost When First Made Available. (Yes, I laid out an ungodly sum of money for the VHS set of Jewel In The Crown, which I watched again and again and thoroughly enjoyed, but never again shall I spend more than I did then for a costume mini-series. So, bite me, vendors of classic TV series – I will wait and wait and wait until the ones that I want are available in slightly-used DVD editions. Or on streaming internet … yes, where was I? Oh – Upstairs, Downstairs.)
First off, my daughter says that she hopes that producers, writers and show-runners for Downton Abbey are paying a mint, or at least giving the original producers miles and miles of artistic credit and acknowledgements. Downton has re-used sooooo many characters and situations. They’re probably in public domain these days, though – so never mind.
Yes, it is screamingly obvious that the first season was produced on the cheap – and very obviously on a set; outdoor shots were at a bare, bare, bare and almost daily soap-opera minimum. My daughter even noticed the walls shivering slightly, whenever a door slams. Outdoor scenes only begin occurring in the second season, wherein Miss Lizzie’s marriage is turning to dust and ashes. There’s a lot more indoor-to-outdoor scenes at that point; obviously there’s more in the budget, and the producers pretty much established the cast below-stairs that would carry on for the next four.
But dear god – what they had to do for the female leads’ costumes. Not so much for downstairs; plain black or pastel-colored long-sleeved dresses with elaborate aprons – hard to mess up the working costumes of the female working class way back then. Their get-up was obviously uniform and practical. But for Upstairs, they obviously, went into some vast internal closet for long dresses that at a squint appeared vaguely Edwardian. A good few of Lady Marjorie’s costumes look as if the costume department had cornered a herd of wild 1960s upholstered furniture, slaughtered them whole-sale, skinned them, and made her dresses from their pelts. It’s bad. How bad? I frequently spotted my own particular bête noir when it comes to period pieces; obvious zippers up the back. No – in my admittedly less than expert study of female costume, circa 18th-19th-early 20th centuries … zippers did most emphatically not figure. They fastened in just about every other way and in every other place than a zipper up the center-back seam. Trust me, when I tell you this. Let this particular book – Nancy Bradfield’s Costume in Detail be a guide, should you wish further enlightenment. I leaned on it rather heavily, in working out Lady Isobel’s wardrobe in Quivera Trail; my own take on the perils and challenges of Upstairs and Downstairs. Otherwise – I am enjoying renewing my acquaintance with the series, and if memory serves, the latter seasons did get very much better as popularity of the series grew.
The present-day Plaza Mayor, with San Fernando Cathedral
That is what they were called in towns and cities in Spain – the main plaza or town square, which served as the center of civic life, around which were ranged the important civic buildings, the biggest church; this the regular market place, the assembly area for every kind of public spectacle imaginable over the centuries. Every plaza mayor in every Spanish town is alike and yet different; different in size and shape, and in the confirmation of the buildings around it. Some are bare and paved in cobbles, and some have trees and gardens in them now. This custom carried over into the New World, and San Antonio is no exception. The town as originally laid out early in the 18th century was more or less in the shape of a cross, outlined by four intersecting streets, incorporating a large square with the church (later cathedral) of San Fernando in the center of it. This essentially split the plaza into equal halves – Main and Military plazas. The oldest streets in town – Soledad and Lasoya, Navarro, Dolorosa and the road which led out past the mission across the river, the Alameda – now East Commerce – are the heart of historic San Antonio. Well, that and the old mission, out at the then-edge of town and over a loop of the San Antonio River. The house belonging to the commander of the Spanish presidio’s garrison – which may have been the largest of the early dwellings – occupied part of the western boundary of Military Plaza. Late in the 19th century, San Antonio’s city hall would take up much of the center, where once soldiers had drilled, and General Lopez de Santa Anna’s soldiers had bivouacked. The Bexar county courthouse would take up another side of Main Plaza – but not until the Plaza had been the center of life for San Antonio de Bexar for more than a century.
It is a curiously restful place, these days, considering that invading and resident armies fought over San Antonio and around the Plaza several times. A momentous peace treaty between the residents of Spanish Texas and the eastern Apache was marked by a formal (and one assumes eventually rather raucous) ceremony in the Plaza involving the ritual burial of weapons of war … including a live horse, while the Apaches and the Bexarenos danced in celebratory circles. The catastrophic failure of 1842 peace negotiations with the Comanche at the Council House – a civic building on the Plaza set aside for that sort of thing – led to a running bloody fight in the streets and gardens of San Antonio and more than three decades of bitter warfare with the Comanche. The first stagecoach to arrive from the east stopped in the Plaza – the first commercial hotel was there. At the very beginning of the Civil War, according to some stories, a senior U.S. Army officer commanding the Department of Texas was unceremoniously hustled from his residence on the Plaza by Confederate sympathizers, taken to the edge of town and told in no uncertain terms to leave at once. As the story has it, the officer had voiced it as his opinion that assisting in a Texas withdrawal from the Union would betray the principles of the Founding Fathers. In a private letter, the officer had condemned the so-called Cotton States for a selfish and dictatorial bearing, and for wanting to re-establish the commerce in slaves from Africa. Kidnapped or not, Colonel Robert E. Lee went to spend some quiet quality time at the cavalry post at Fort Mason, before returning back East and withdrawing his services from the U.S. Army upon the secession of his home state of Virginia from the Union.
Everything happening in San Antonio until the arrival of the railway tended to happen in the Plaza Mayor; a lively and eccentric community split into three different ethnicities by the mid-19th century, as Frederick Law Olmsted realized during his visit to Texas in the mid-1850s.
One of the local peculiarities which Olmsted and other visitors noted were the numbers of open-air restaurants – moveable feasts in various public squares, beginning with the most august of them – the ancient Military Plaza – local cooks, most but not all Hispanic – set up tables and benches, and cook-kettles full of chili simmering over mesquite-wood fires. Local musicians played – often hired by the proprietresses to entice patrons … as if the taste of peppery meat and bean stew for hungry patrons wasn’t enough. The picturesque spectacle of the ‘Chili Queens’ tables – as they would come to be known – enchanted locals and travelers well into the 20th century. Imagine – good, simple – and tasty food – all eaten in the open air. The after-sundown breeze rustles the leaves of the trees fringing the swift-flowing San Antonio River, oil and kerosene lanterns flicker, the musicians play, while stars sparkle in the sky overhead and the evening business of certain establishments spill out into the relative cool of a South Texas evening …yes – that would be a draw, especially to people accustomed to cooler and less highly-spiced localities. The popularity of things like canned chili and specialty chili seasonings came about when an enterprising cook and owner of a saloon and beer garden in New Braunfels – Willie Gebhardt – developed a process for making and packaging a dried seasoning powder – chili powder. Up until then, the chili had been a local and seasonal specialty, but Gebhardt’s process, which preserved the flavor of the chili peppers, and which he sold himself from the back of a wagon, grew into a million-dollar business and inadvertently popularized Mexican food … including chili … when his company published a small cookbook instructing cooks who were unfamiliar with Tex-Mex cuisine in how to use his product.
From civic architecture – to chili powder; how eccentric is that?
Just this week and thanks to gaining a new book-publishing client, I was able to complete the purchase of a new refrigerator-freezer. Oh, the old one was staggering along OK, still keeping the refrigerated foods cold and the frozen food frozen … but there were so many dissatisfactions with it, including the fact that it had such deep shelves that in cleaning it out we discovered an embarrassingly large number of jars of condiments whose best-if-sold-by-date were well into the previous decade … not to mention a couple of Rubbermaid containers with leftovers in them that we had quite forgotten about. Well, out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. Truly, I don’t like to waste leftovers, but in this case, we had a good clean-out and as of now are resolved to do better, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die. The new and larger refrigerator-freezer has relatively shallow and many adjustable shelves in its various compartments; so that we dearly hope that the buried-at-the-back-of-a-deep-shelf-and-totally-forgotten-about syndrome will be banished entirely.
Anyway – enough of my failings as a thrifty housekeeper; the thing that I was marveling on this afternoon was that the new refrigerator-freezer has an automatic ice-maker. Better than that – an automatic ice-maker and ice-water dispenser in the door, and a small light which winks on when depressing the lever which administers ice (in cubes or crushed) and ice-water and then gradually dims once released. And if all that is a small luxury compared to the previous refrigerator-freezer, it is a huge luxury compared to the electric ice-box that made my Granny Jessie’s work and food-storage capabilities somewhat lighter than those of her own mother. It’s monumental, even – and no one thinks anything of it today, unless the electricity goes off.
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Found through a comment at Neo-Neocon.
A reminder of what Britain used to be.
If World War One were a bar fight …
(found on Facehook and on PJ Media. Enjoy.)
And also just for fun – World War Two as if it were played out on a Facebook news feed.
To put it in simple terms, that’s what I call it when a whole group, or sub-set of people are deemed the Emmanuel Goldstein of the moment by a dominant group, and set up as a focus for free-wheeling hate. In practice, this hate may range all the way from a mild disinclination to associate professionally or socially, all the way to 11 in marking the object of that hate as a suitable target for murder, either singly or in wholesale lots – and sometimes with the cooperation and blessing of the state. It’s more something that I have read about – either in the pages of history books, or in the newspapers – and increasingly on-line. Still, it is no end distressing to see it developing here in these United States in this century. Am I paranoid about this current bout of ‘otherizing’? Perhaps – but don’t tell me that it cannot happen here.
Some hundred and fifty years ago, the ‘otherizing’ reached such a pitch that young men marched against their countrymen – they were clad in blue and grey, and fell on battlefields so contested that lead shot fell like a hailstorm, and swept away a large portion of men recruited by regional-based units. Passionate feelings, words and small deeds, public and private regarding slavery were balanced against states’ rights. The pressure built up and up, like steam in a boiler – and finally there was no means for them to be expressed but in death wished upon the ‘other’. By the end of twenty years of editorials, speeches, and political campaigns had been worked to a fever pitch. Civil war became not only possible – but in the eyes of the editorialists, the speech-makers and the politicians – a wholly desirable outcome. And a goodly portion of a generation lay dead, as if a scythe had swept over a wheat-field. Everyone was very sorry afterwards, but the words could not be unspoken, the hatred and resentment re-bottled in a flask, or the dead re-animated, to go about their ordinary lives as if the great divisive issue of mid-19th century America had never been.
Words eventually lead to deeds – especially hot, angry words spoken or expressed by those in cultural authority. Which in this West of the World means politicians and intellectuals, and the popular media; even the not-so-pop media, come to think on it – like NPR, or lesser organs like CNN or MSNBC. (Which is my private jest to call PMS-NBC. See, two can play at this denigration game.) They used to say that sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurt me. But it’s the words, you see; eventually the tide of insult and slander takes a toll. The trouble is that words used with deliberation and intent will lead to application of the sticks and stones. It will also lead, as history demonstrates, to the misuse of the law to criminalize political opposition, to encourage mob actions to retaliate against the ‘other’ for perceived offenses, and at the very least to shun the ‘other’ socially.
Are we at the point of 1861 again, with a divide so deep, and the words spoken so incendiary that they might only be erased in blood? I don’t think so, not quite yet. But we are certainly closer today to 1861 then we have been in the last few decades. And that prospect scares the heck out of me – but it doesn’t seem like many of those in cultural authority, in the media, the commentariat or in politics quite feel the same fear. Just possibly they knew recent history about as well as Andrea Mitchell does … which is cause for even more alarm, if possible.
(crossposted at chicagoboyz.net)
Always loved Mark Knopfler’s music, with and without Dire Straits. Enjoy
This is not so much a compendium of the experiences of those Americans present in Germany when the Third Reich began it’s ascent to power, but a character study of a particular family. There were a fair number Americans resident in Germany at that time, or just passing through; diplomatic personnel and their families, scholars, newspaper and radio reporters, travelers, businessmen, expatriates of all sorts, or even German-Americans paying extended visits to kin. The family of Ambassador William Dodd falls into the first category and Dodd himself into the second as well. He was an academic, a historian who earned his PhD at the University of Leipzig at the turn of the turn of the century, where he picked up fluency in the language and a deep affection for the country. He was a friend of Woodrow Wilson and when FDR’s administration was stuck to name an ambassador (when their first two choices declined) Dodd was tasked with the honor, which he took up from 1933-1937. Dodd was not a professional diplomat, and it soon emerged that those whom he had to work with at State Department didn’t think all that much of him. For one – he was not particularly wealthy and vowed to live in modest fashion while carrying out his assignment, which lasted from 1933 to 1937. This was rather a strike against him in the circles that he was expected to move; if the professionals had to put up with a patronage appointment, a rich one who would spend lavishly from his or her own purse while in pursuit of diplomatic objectives would make up in some fashion for the bother of conducting business with the host nation through an amateur.
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The feud between the Suttons and the Taylors was one of those epic Texas feuds which convulsed DeWitt County in the decade following the Civil War. It might even have begun earlier in a somewhat more restrained way, but there is nothing besides speculation on the part of contemporary journalists by way of evidence. Both families originated in South Carolina, both settled in DeWitt County … and in the hard times which followed on the humiliating defeat of the South and the even more humiliating Reconstruction, they squared off against each other. The feud lasted nearly a decade, at a cost of at least 35 lives. Participants in it included the notorious John Wesley Hardin, who was related by marriage to the Taylors. Some historians have described the feud as a bitter continuation of the Civil War, between die-hard Confederate partisans and those roughly aligned with the forces of Reconstruction law and order.
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Yes, it is that time of year again – and for a wonder, the weather has finally decided to cooperate. One day we were running the AC because the temperature was in the 80s … and then the next morning, a chilly wind was blowing through the neighborhood – and we turned around on the doorstep to put on coats before we walked the doggies … because we had not expected it to be so suddenly cold!
So we were in the mood for Weihnachtsmarkt at the New Braunfels Civic center, and happy, happy, joy, joyful that it was an indoors venue! I don’t think we could have endured outdoors, as we did two weeks ago in Boerne, where it was cool and rainy, not ice-cold and windy. The author book tables are set up in the tall main hallway of the Civic Center, which runs from the front to the back of the building. There are three entrances from the front foyer and the hall into the rooms fitted out as for the market – and Santa is set up in the rear foyer. I am pretty certain it must be a tradition in New Braunfels to come and see Santa at Weihnachtsmarkt. Anyway, this is the third year they have had the author tables, and it’s just a short skip from home, it’s indoors, and most importantly, it draws people with money and the urge to shop, bit-time. I have lots of readers and fans in that area, too. And did I mention that it was indoors?
My daughter says, though – that if I write any more books, I will have to get another table, or at least a larger one. There’s only room for the seven, hardly any space for the various table-top attention-getting items or the little dish of candy that we like to put out … and it turned out that we had eaten all the dark chocolate and peanut-butter M&Ms anyway. This was supposed to be the official-official roll-out for The Quivera Trail – as I just knew that everyone who had read and loved the Trilogy would want to know what happened next!
All worked out as I had forseen – and we had much better results than at the Boerne Market; we came with three tubs and two boxes packed full of books, and brought home only two tubs. This recovered the table fee and the cost of the books themselves. One amusing sidelight was that on Friday afternoon, I realized that the author at the table next to us had a familiar name – and that I had used one of his books about the early history of Austin in researching Deep in the Heart – and that a good few of the incidents he included in his book I worked into mine. I even gave a credit in the notes at the back of Deep in the Heart. Jeffrey Kerr – The Republic of Austin. This is not quite the first time this has happened to me; that was at the West Texas Book and Music Festival in Abilene a couple of years ago, when Scott Zesch was one of the headline guest speakers. I had read The Captured, and was moved to include a story-line in the Trilogy about the tragedy of a white child taken captive by the Comanche and returned – too late – as a young man, never able to re-assimilate to life outside the People again.
The gratifying thing is that the other vendors that my daughter talked to all reported having goodly sales – which is a relief after lackluster sales in Boerne. With this, we have hope that the economy will revive here, at least a little for Christmas. My daughter is already making lists for our own Christmas gift-giving, although some of that will involve going through the ‘gift closet’ to see what there is, and who it would be suitable for. In between the next Christmas Market – at Goliad’s Christmas on the Square, we have Thanksgiving to consider… a roast turkey breast and at least some of the traditional fixings. All good wishes to you – and thanks to everyone who bought books from me, or who will buy them this holiday season!
(I spent Friday and Saturday at a book event – the Christmas Market, or Weihnachtsmarkt, at the conference center in New Braunfels, for the launch of The Quivera Trail. So – barely time to post this thrilling frontier adventure until now. The details and the quotes are taken from Walter Prescott Webb’s history of the Rangers, which is so powerfully testosterone-laden that I have to keep it sectioned between a couple of … milder-themed books which have a sedating effect.)
After the debacle of the Civil War, the Texas Rangers barely existed as an entity – either in Indian-fighting, or law-enforcing. The Federal government would not countenance the organization of armed bodies of volunteers for any purpose. Combating Indians or cross-border bandits was the business of the regular Army; interested semi-amateurs need not apply. But a Reconstruction-Republican governor, E. J. Davis, did institute a state police force in 1870, the existence of which was lauded as necessary for the preservation of law and order – such as it was. The state police under Davis was relatively short-lived and unadorned by laurels during its brief term, being dissolved at the end of his administration – but one of their officers had such a sterling reputation that when the Texas Rangers were formally reorganized, he was charged with heading one of the two divisions. One was the Frontier Battalion, dedicated to the Ranger’s traditional mission of fighting hostile Indians. The other – the Special Force – was charged with generally upholding law and order, shortly to become the Ranger’s modern raison d’être. Leander Harvey McNelly served for only a brief time in the interim of the change from Indian fighting to upholding law and order – but his leadership inspired many of those Rangers who took note of his personal example to heart.
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So – coming up on another one of those Very Significant Anniversaries, I see – being reminded by the perfect flood of stories reflecting back on Jack and Jackie and that fateful swing through Texas in 1963. My – fifty years, a whole half-century … yes, it’s time again to go back to those heartbreaking days of yesteryear and recall the blighted promise, the towering intellectual and romantic splendor of the Kennedy White House, the space race to the moon, Jackie’s unerring sense of style and taste … also little things like Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, eyeball to eyeball with the Soviets, immanent thermonuclear war, speedball injections from Dr. Feelgood, and the Kennedy men porking anything female who was unwary enough to stand still for a moment. Why, yes – I was never really a Kennedy fan, per se. Nor were my family, since Mom and Dad were your basic steady Eisenhower Republicans, and maintained a faint and Puritan distrust of anything smacking of glamor, or media-generated BS. Which they were correct in, as it eventually emerged in small discrete dribbles and decades later, that practically everything about the Kennedys was fake, except for Jackie’s taste in fashion and interior decoration.
I didn’t know anything about all that – at the time. I had just started at a new school since Mom and Dad had just moved during the summer from the White Cottage to Redwood House; Miss Gibson’s class, at Sunland Elementary School – a slightly larger school than Vinedale Elementary, about half a mile up La Tuna Canyon Road from the White Cottage. There were some friends which I missed seeing every day, but I was settling in OK. We were all looking forward to Thanksgiving, and the leaves on the big old sycamore trees around the pink classroom bungalows were shedding their leaves. I liked Miss Gibson – she had hit on the notion of reading aloud to us for about half an hour after lunchtime, every afternoon; there had been a long book about the life and adventures of an otter, an Agatha Christie country-house murder mystery which had us enthralled for weeks; and if memory serves, even a few stories from The Illustrated Man. One of the other treats for her class was a radio series of dramatized biographies; about half an hour long, I think, and broadcast in late morning, after recess. That program was supposed to be broadcast, that November day; Miss Gibson dismissed us all to recess, and went to turn on the radio and turn it to the correct station in advance. Another girl and I stayed behind; some question that we had to ask of her, as she fiddled with the radio. But the first thing that we heard was a news bulletin; the President had been shot, was dead. I think the announcer repeated the announcement at least once, but we didn’t need any more confirmation, because Miss Gibson began crying. This was huge news, of course; the only other presidents being assassinated that we knew of, had all been a long time ago. We ran to tell our classmates; I suppose there would have been some official announcement later, but I can’t recall it. Certainly by the time we were dismissed at the end of the day, everyone knew. This was long before Mom and Dad had a television, but there was non-stop coverage on the radio. I rather think we listened to as much of the funeral as we could bear; my friends who did have TV said there was nothing on but coverage of it all. For a long while, we had a copy of that Life Magazine issue with all the classic pictures; arriving at Love Field, the Connellys and the Kennedys smiling from the open limo, of Oswald grimacing in pain as Jack Ruby shot him, Jackie in her blood-stained suit standing as LBJ was sworn in on board AF-1 on the way back to Washington, veiled in black with the two children in pale blue coats on either side … I might still have that issue, somewhere in a box in the garage.
They’re just about all gone now – the Kennedys. Robert was assassinated five years later, and the rest of them fell away, one by one. Only Caroline survives, and the luster of Camelot has pretty well faded. Glamor always does – in the archaic sense of something wrought by magic and illusion to disguise something otherwise rather tawdry. But while that glamor worked, they looked good, the whole clan of them; handsome, fashionable, intelligent and able – the good PR on them was impeccable. They had the best press that money could buy; just as the Obamas would be treated like precious pearls, lightly buffed with a soft lint-free cloth and displayed on a velvet backdrop, so were the Kennedys.
And just as with the Obamas in 2008 and 2009, I would swear that the mainstream media and the intellectual establishment then were just as deeply in love. How heartbroken they were over the assassination, the loss of their precious, their Golden One. Really, I believe that at least some of the resulting vicious treatment of LBJ throughout the rest of the 1960s must have stemmed from a feeling of pique – that that ill-spoken, uncouth Texas pol would dare follow in the footsteps of their idol. To be fair, LBJ richly deserved much critical comment which came his way, especially when it came to foreign policy.
(Since The Quivera Trail
Louise Amelia – better known by her pen-name, Dame Shirley – was an irreproachably Victorian lady, possessing a lively intellect and observant eye, which the education typically given to girls at that time did nothing to impair. Conventional expectations for upper-class women of her day seem hardly to have made a dent in her either. She was born around 1819 in Elizabeth New Jersey and orphaned by the deaths of both parents before out of her teens. She had a talent for writing, encouraged by an unexpected mentor – Alexander H. Everett, then famed in a mild way as a diplomat, writer and public speaker. He was twice her age, and seems to have fallen at least a little but in love with her. She did not see him as a suitor, but they remained friends and devoted correspondents. Eventually she was courted by and consented to marry a young doctor, Fayette Clappe – who even before the ink was dry on the registry, caught the gold fever. Fayette and Louise Amelia were off on the months-long voyage around the Horn to fabled California. The gold rush was almost overwhelmingly a male enterprise – wives and sweethearts usually remained waiting at home, but not the indomitable Louise, who confessed in one of her letters to her sister Molly, “I fancy that nature intended me for an Arab or some other nomadic barbarian, and by mistake my soul got packed up in a Christianized set of bones and muscles.â€
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It was said to me so long ago that I really can’t remember who or when they said it – that being a writer is like drawing words from a cistern; you have to keep replenishing the store in the cistern by reading – and reading even more than you write. Was it Mr. Terranova, the whirlwind 6th grade teacher, or maybe the elderly gentleman who came to speak to a school assembly at Vineland Elementary when I was in about the 2nd or 3rd grade? He was blind, with a seeing-eye dog named Rosie whom he let off duty long enough for her to run down the center aisle in the auditorium for a good petting. Our teachers told us that he was an Enormously Famous Published Author – for some reason I thought for years that he was William Prescott, the author of The Conquest of Mexico and the Conquest of Peru, never mind that William Prescott would have been dead for a little over a hundred years by then. Yes – Mr. Terranova had us read excerpts of The Conquest of Mexico and Peru, which should give an idea of how eccentric and bloody brilliant he was as a teacher. The Enormously Famous Published Author with the seeing-eye dog named Rosie did give us one bit of authorly good advice, using ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill’ as his example; telling us to show them going up the hill, describe the hill, and why Jack and Jill did so, and what they saw and felt. Show, not tell, in other words. But enough of my early influences in writing, such as they were.
I have to limit myself when working on a book project; nothing by other fiction-scribblers working in the same area or time-period. This is because there is a danger for me of inadvertently taking an idea for a character, or an incident or accident of plot from someone else’s visualization, so at this time, all fictional accounts of Gold Rush-era California or the various trails and journeys towards the Ophir of the far west are strictly off the table. I have this totally bird-witted habit of seizing on certain things as I read about them, as if they were bright and shiny objects, and thinking, “Ah-ha! This has to be in The Book!†Other things just grab at me, and I come back to them again and again. In Adelsverein – to give just two small examples – it was the concept of the children, taken by Comanche Indians, who were returned, but never returned in spirit, and the massacre of the Texians at Goliad.
So, now I am faced with doing the episodic and picaresque Gold Rush adventure that I have always wanted to write. I grew up with this, because it was the event that I think made California what it was, for better or worse – and in the brief blink of an eye, as far as time goes. It was a sleepy agrarian backwater with a wonderful climate and spectacular scenery, a paradise to those who lived there at that time, a lost Eden to which they looked back on later with considerable nostalgia. And in the space of two or three years – the whole world piled in. The sleepy port of Yerba Buena became the muddy, lawless, brawling town of San Francisco, from hundreds of residents to thousands in mere months. The empty bay was suddenly forested with the masts of hundreds of abandoned ships. The properties of entrepreneur John Sutter were swamped with squatters, rogues and gold-seekers, the pristine rivers and streams in the foothills all alive with more men, looking for gold. Gold from the mines of California – and from just over the border in Nevada – kept the Union from going under entirely, so say some … and I have always wanted to write about it.
The next book, (after the bagatelle of Jim Reade and Toby Shaw, in the days of the Republic of Texas) will follow the adventures of Fredi Steinmetz, the younger brother of Magda Steinmetz-Becker, from the Trilogy. I’ve noted in other books that he went out to California as a cattle drover in the 1850s … and he returned, thinking not very much of the place, for a variety of reasons.
So, that’s why I am reading, and not writing and posting quite so much. I know the main character, one or two of the secondaries, and the rest will suggest themselves in time. The overall and relatively episodic plot will come out of what I am reading now; Maryat’s Mountains and Molehills, Dame Shirley Clappe’s Letters, Captain Gunnison’s history of the Mormons in Salt Lake City, Randolph Marcy’s 1859 advice to transcontinental travelers, William Manly’s account of his journey through Death Valley … and at least a score or more of others as they take my butterfly interest. Some of them are on my own bookshelves, some as eBooks or PDFs stashed away in my computer file … but shusssh … I am reading now.
Did you know that William Tecumseh Sherman and Edwin Booth were in California at the very time of the window for Fredi Steinmetz’ adventures there?
So, I have been fiddling around with the next book – well, the next two, anyway. The joking suggestion regarding re-booting a certain popular western serial adventure as a straight historical, after filing off a number of readily-identifiable and no-doubt-ferociously-protected-by-cast-iron-copyrights elements … well, it started to have considerable appeal, especially after Blondie suggested making it a YA adventure and focused toward boys – tweens and teens. Look, it works for Harry Potter, so … why not?
I’ve had a go with four chapters so far; relocating the time-frame to Republic-era Texas, and drawing on a number of historical characters. It’ll be more of a light-hearted romp than the Trilogy and the other books set in that period … which have gotten rather dramatic of late.
Without further ado – Chapter One, and Chapter Two, in which a young volunteer Texas Ranger is the only survivor of a treacherous encounter with a handful of renegades and a mysterious wagon …
And Chapters Three and Four, wherein young James Reade, Esquire and the Delaware Indian Scout Toby Shaw attempt to forestall a famous Texas feud before it even gets started …
Enjoy. I’ll be doing that Sarah Hoyt does – that is, posting the first draft of chapters as I write them. The finished adventures will be edited, polished, added-to and re-written for eventual publication as a print and eBook.
From a blog Pointman’s, some interesting notes on True Believers, past and present…
The activists swallowed the dream whole. As the apparent success of National Socialism became visible with improving times, it became more reasonable to actively pursue the elements who’d caused the bad times. The denunciations in the mainstream media became gradually more vile. Suitably qualified scientists wrote erudite papers proving Aryans were a superior breed and Jews were the human equivalent to vermin. The first easy step on the road to the Final Solution is to dehumanise the opposition.
All Jewish professors were removed from universities on the flimsiest pretexts without a peep from their colleagues and shortly after the Rassenregeln or race rules legislation was passed. Soon, not only was university entrance barred to them but any position of authority or any decent profession. All they owned was confiscated, which actually meant looted. They became an extensible threat. Anyone else in a position of influence who didn’t bend the knee to the regime was deemed to have been infected by Jewish ideas and could therefore be dealt with similarly.
The pseudo science of Eugenics melded with a deliberate and perverted interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution and the Nazi sympathisers in academia and science, swung right behind the ideas of that bastard mutant and lent it a spurious authority for the common person. State approved scientists are always well rewarded. It was now settled science and whatever happened to the Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, disabled, mentally handicapped and other inferior races or defective types was just natural selection in action.
Children were sucked into political education organisations like the Hitler Youth, so they too could embrace the dream. They grew up to blow up half of Europe.
Every single organ of the mainstream media blasted the same message at the populace. Any dissenting journalists were soon weeded out and a lot of them fled their own country. They had lots of company in doing that, not least talented scientists who went on to work on the Manhattan Project, which they knew was always intended to deliver a nuclear bomb on Germany, their homeland.
By the end of the thirties, the nightmare subtext of national socialism had gradually split society into two factions; the true believers and everyone else.
The true believers had thrived and were in ruthless control of every organ of state, from the Reich’s chancellery right down to the local parish organisations. They just knew they were a part of something new and glorious. The young middling educated class was fatally susceptible to the dream because it provided a way out of all those slick, articulate but conflicting viewpoints by all those other clever people. It means no more sorting through which one is right, no more doubts about which side of the question they have to be on, an end to uncertainty.
Suddenly it’s been simplified. It’s all about reducing the complication, boiling it down to one thing, perhaps even a few simple phrases. Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer – one people, one empire, one leader. Shout it loud brothers and sisters, shout it proud, the more you shout it, the truer it becomes. Join us children of a higher destiny on our great crusade to bring about the thousand-year Aryan Reich. All that’s left is to get the faint hearts amongst us on our side, and we’re going to do that, whether they want it or not. Sacrifices to achieve the dream will have to be made.
(Read the whole thing – found through Classical Values.)
(So, I know the suggestion started as a joke on my part – about the only hope for the Lone Ranger being a complete and total reboot, defaulting back to a more or less historically correct version, set in pre-Civil War Texas… but when Blondie suggested that I make it also a sort of YA chronicle and aimed for boys … well, I liked the idea. So without further ado – the set-up chapter. I don’t have a title yet, so any suggestions are welcome.)
Chapter 1
A dark winged shadow sailed on motionless wings. Jim Reade lay on his back in the desert dust, incuriously watching that ominous shadow circle, lower and lower until every finger-like dark feather became distinct against the burning sky, aware in a tiny corner of his mind that he should do something, should move. But he hurt in every bone, from his head down to his fingertips, and all the way to his booted toes. There was something flint-hard under his shoulder, unyielding, the sun had blazed on his exposed face and hands for many hours, and there was a slow crawl of blood oozing from his forehead, running back into his sweat-matted hair. It took a great deal of concentration and will to move his right hand, dropping the object clenched in it with a brief metallic clatter. The dark-winged shadow veered abruptly away. That sight recalled him to a sense of danger. Turkey vulture. Dropping down on something freshly – or not so freshly dead. What had happened? Jim willed his eyes and his memory to focus.
There … within sight and reach – a dapple-grey form which loomed as tall as a cliff not a hand-reach beyond, as still as death, it’s neck and head laid out at an unnatural angle, nostrils already being crawled over by a trail of industrious ants; Jim felt a twinge of regret and remorse – his horse, that he had paid twenty American dollars and the task of writing out a proper deed of sale for fifteen acres of land on Salado Creek for to the man who sold him the horse. Well, that was a waste of a good horse and a small part of his time … but Daniel had insisted. If he was to ride with Daniel’s Ranger company, he had to have a good horse, a good Sharps and a pair of good Colts. That tall and tow-headed sergeant of rangers – Captain Jack Hay’s right-hand man – had looked over Jim’s equipment and horse presented for inspection and nodded a silent assent. Daniel had clapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Thanks, Dutch. Now, let’s ride, little brother!’
But I’m a lawyer, Jim had said to Daniel, when they met at Daniel’s little house in Bastrop, after Jim came hastening all the way from Galveston in answer to Daniel’s message. The Mexes have taken Bexar, Daniel had said in his message. They took every white man prisoner there, including Daddy – and dragged them back to Mexico in chains. Captain Hays, he’s already gone to follow them, with every man he could muster.
So is Daddy a lawyer, Daniel answered, white with suppressed fury. And those bastards took him with all the others there for the district court. The judge, the recorder, the district attorney – all the defense attorneys, the clerk and every one of those who had suits to be judged or came as witnesses. They brought their whole damned army to invade … again – and took them prisoner just for doing their civil duty. You’re a lawyer, little brother – but what happens when the law don’t do you no good at all? You put down your law books and you pick up a Colt. Else the law don’t mean anything at all. Join my company, pick up your trash – that which you can hitch to your saddle, and let’s you and I go rescue Daddy.
And that’s what Jim had done. Packed all four duodecimo volumes of Blackstone’s Commentaries in his saddle-bags, bought a pair of patent Colt revolving pistols – and the horse to carry them, since they made a not-inconsiderable burden, taken together with his Sharps rifle, the necessary tools and bullet-mold and metal powder-flask, and swore into Daniel’s company of ragged and ill-dressed Rangers … they did it in the plaza in front of the crumbling old chapel and the ruined presidio which surrounded it on the outskirts of the old town of Bexar. It didn’t look like the brief occupation of General Woll’s Mexican army had done any good to the old place. But they hadn’t done much harm, either. Colonel Caldwell and Captain Hays had lured the invaders away to the banks of the Salado, a piece a good bit north of town. And there had been a battle, and General Woll had gathered up his troops and skedaddled … stealthily, of course. For the Texas militia and mounted Ranger companies were assembling…
Jim Reade gathered up his scattered thoughts again. What had happened to him? Where was Daniel, and the other four Rangers who had gone out on long scout at Cap’n Hay’s orders? He couldn’t remember, which worried him. It cost him some pain to turn his head – the blue sky, the turkey-vulture floating lazily in it, the dappled body of his dead horse – all swam together. He pressed his eyelids tight together, waiting until the pounding of his heart stopped sending scorching patterns of light against them. Now Jim squinted against the blinding sun, falling almost parallel across the rolling desert scrubland and flat-topped hills along the Nueces. There were shadows, stretching out … and the tumbled still forms of men, laying in the unnatural positions in which sudden death had found them. They sprawled like rag dolls, and horribly splotched with blood already gone the color of dark red morocco leather, at throat, back or breast. The nearest to him wore a dark blue hunting coat, just like his brother – his hair the same light brown, and that was Daniel’s plain straw planter’s hat, hanging from a branch of mesquite shrub, tossing in the light breeze.
“Dan! Dan’l … Cap’n Reade!†Jim croaked. He attempted to rise, by rolling onto one side and levering his elbow against the ground, but unbearable, searing pain exploded in his shoulder and the black darkness descended again. After a time, that darkness receded. Jim blinked, hardly believing what he saw. The shadowy form of a man loomed over him, a young and weather-burnt face with a quizzical expression on it. Dark Indian braids hung over the young man’s naked shoulders, and three lines in red ocher painted across his cheeks. Comanche – he was done for, surely, Jim decided in despair. The shape he was in, he wouldn’t last long, under whatever torture the Comanche had in mind – and with any luck at all he should be unconscious almost at once. The other Rangers – and every settler in Texas, Anglo and Mexican alike – they all had stories of the sickening tortures which the Comanche inflicted on their live captives.
“Sorry … to deprive …you of … your fun,†Jim whispered, with the last of his wavering strength, and he almost thought he heard a reply in perfect English. “Wait until I set your arm, Ranger. That is all the amusement that I will need…â€
The next time Jim swam up to the surface of life, he was in a place that was dark, but dimly lit with moving shadows – a fire, a little distance from him. The sharp object under his shoulder was gone. It seemed that he lay on something relatively soft, inside the shelter of a shallow cave. He still hurt all over, but the pain was a lesser thing now, in his shoulder and arm, and in his head, which ached fiercely when he turned it to look in the direction of the fire. There was someone sitting beyond it, in the mouth of the small cave, silhouetted against a darkly-starry sky above, and a thicket of those spiny, thick-leaved cactus plants – the ripe red fruit and tender young leaves of which the Mexicans in Bexar relished very much. Jim struggled to focus his eyes and attention. He must have made some involuntary movement or a noise, for that someone stood, swift and almost noiseless, and padded around the fire with a plain tin cup in hand – the young Indian.
“You are aware,†he remarked, in good humor. “Good. This is sage and willow-bark tea. Very healing properties.†The young Indian knelt next to the rough pallet of blankets on which Jim lay, raised his head and held the cup to his lips so that he might drink easily.
“Who are you?†Jim gasped, when he could speak. “Where am I? And where is … where are the others? What have you savages done with them?â€
The young Indian gently laid Jim back upon the blanket, and sat back on his moccasined heels. “They are all dead,†he answered without heat. “You speak rashly, Ranger. I – my people – did not kill them. I am of the Lenni Lenape, the True People, whom your folk call the Delaware. My mother’s Eldest Brother is known to them as James Shaw. I am called Toby Shaw, but my friends among the Tonkawa call me the Long Walker – the Tireless One.â€
“I am sorry. I spoke rashly,†Jim answered, abashed. “I am James Reade, Esquire. I am pleased by your acquaintance, Mr. Shaw… and also grateful for the consideration.†Jim realized belatedly that his arm – the one which had pained him with especial agony – was splinted and bound. And that his head was roughly bound up – the blood from that wound washed away from where it had crusted over his eyes. “I did not intend insult, Mr. Shaw.†He swallowed painfully against his grief, wondering why he was moved to speak with such odd formality. Before he was ten years old, he had lost two little brothers and and older sister – and now Daniel – Daniel, his oldest brother, stubborn, fearless and daring, who had fought with Houston on the field at San Jacinto, not six years ago. Daniel left a wife and three little children in Bastrop. The Reades would never leave Rebecca, the boys and their little sister to beggary – but if Jim survived this mad affray into the wilderness, he would be the one to bring the news to Rebecca. His heart sank at the prospect of that errand.
“I have buried them,†Toby Shaw answered simply. “I marked each with a pile of stones and a cross of saplings. I was taught well your customs. And because I did not know who killed them … or why they died … I made six graves. There was a man of the Eye-Rish I knew, who used to say in jest that the soul of a fortunate man should be safely in the Fortunate Place some time before the Evil Spirit who ruled in the underworld of the souls of the wicked and condemned even knew of his death. So,†he shrugged. “I thought to confound the Evil Spirit and make him think you were dead. The bones of a deer is all they should find in the sixth grave. It was a lot of work,†he added, with a grimace. “I think you should avoid venison, James Reade Esquire – lest you offend its spirit, gone ahead of you in decoy.â€
“There is something wrong,†Jim answered helplessly. “I cannot recall … but there is something wrong. Daniel … that is my older brother, among the dead.â€
“I am sorry,†Toby Shaw arranged himself more comfortably at the side of where Jim lay, crossing his legs and setting the tin cup aside. He leaned forward, looking at Jim with a most earnest expression. The firelight at the mouth of the cave now fell sideways across his face and shoulders. Jim realized that Toby was quite young, not much above his own age, for all the weathering of his face; a wiry, long-faced youth with the high-cheekbones and straight line of lips so often seen among the tribes of people which Jim had knowledge of. Toby wore a tattered black frock coat against the coolness of early evening, a coat which pulled across his shoulders and left his brown wrists bare, for lack of shirt-cuffs. “There is indeed something wrong. I do not know why, not in words you would understand. My uncle said I should follow the setting sun, where the men of General Somervell’s army were going. It was a test, I think. There are tests among the People. He said I should wait for dreams … a vision given to me by the Elder Spirits who would guide me.†His expression was totally without guile, honest, open, and puzzled.
“A vision?†Jim coughed, rackingly. It hurt his broken arm and broken head. Toby Shaw gravely proffered the tin cup again and waited with all courtesy for him to continue. “Why did you stop where you did? Come to find me, bury my … bury my brother and the others?â€
“I was waiting,†Toby Shaw answered. He settled back with the unmistakable air of someone about to tell a very long story to an appreciative audience. “I made my camp here, four nights ago. Uncle said that I should neither eat nor drink, but wait for … something to find me. On the third night – six days ago, I saw a white flame in the sky, as if something fell to earth from the sky overhead. I thought – maybe one of the stars came loose, like a shining pebble or a spark, glued to the sky at night. But I was told by a teacher in the white school that was not possible. The stars that shine in our sky are like the sun, only many times farther away, so that they are dim and small as a speck of dust. But I still saw it fall to earth … so I marked exactly where it might land, and at sunrise I went to look for it. I wanted to know who was right, my people or the white school – and to know what a star fallen from the sky would really look like.â€
“Did you find it?†Jim asked, drawn into Toby’s tale, in spite of himself. “How did you know where to look?â€
“I have a very good memory, James Reade Esquire. I need only to close my eyes and call up to mind anything that I have ever seen. I marked where it fell among the distant hills … and in the morning I went out from here in a straight line, and found it. A small thing, the size of a pecan nut on the tree, yet heavy like iron, but looking as if a child had made thumb-prints in clay … it fell into a small bowl in the earth and set some small bushes on fire.†Toby drew out from the front of the ragged coat a dark globular stone hanging on a buckskin thong around his neck. There was a natural hole in the dark stone, which served to thread the buckskin through. “Which is how I found it without trouble. I took this as my … talisman,†he spoke the word as if it were something which tasted unfamiliar in his mouth. “I thought – this star-iron must be what I was supposed to see. But I saw dust rising from the valley beyond. Being alone, I hid myself and watched. I saw six men – your comrades, I think – in the valley below me. Following a trail made by a wagon track, six days ago, I think.†Toby frowned, obviously deeply puzzled. “It was an old trail and a small wagon, but the ruts were very deep. Also – someone had tried to hide them, by brushing the dirt with a branch. But not very well,†Toby appeared rather smug. “A puzzle, but nothing to me.â€
“It was a baggage cart, from Woll’s train,†Jim coughed, and coughed again, rackingly. He was beginning to recover his memory. Yes. That was it; the puzzle of a single cart, deviating from the churned trail of General Woll’s extensive baggage train. “We … we saw the track, too. Capn’ Hays, he would have thought nothing of it, save that maybe some of the Mexes had decided to desert an’ go home their own way, but Bigfoot Wallace an’ some of his, they caught up to and tangled with a dozen Mexican cavalry troopers, a fair distance off the trail. They were heading west by north … not towards Mexico. It looked to ol’; Bigfoot as if they were following the wagon trail.†Toby Shaw held the tin cup to his lips and Jim drank again.
The memory of it came clear, sharp around the edges as a shard of glass, the one thing he could recall of the last few days. Bigfoot Bill Wallace, a mountain among Hays’ Rangers, exuberant about returning victorious in the clash with the Mexican troopers – he and Captain Hays, Daniel and some others, gathered around the evening fire, listening to Bigfoot tell the tale, of pursuit and clash, and leaving the surviving Mexican troopers dispirited and on foot in the harsh desert, limping south toward the Rio Grande.
“What were they doing, Bill – so far from the baggage train an’ Woll’s company?†Captain Hays asked. In the firelight he looked as untried as a mere boy, gentle-spoken and modest, but Jim had already learned not to underestimate the Ranger captain. He might have looked as if he were hardly older than Jim himself, but Jack Hays had the heart of a lion, an iron will and a sense of daring which stopped the heart of other men – but inspired them to follow him wherever he led. Bigfoot, Daniel, Chief Placido of the Tonkawa, and proven fighters twice his age – all followed where Captain Hays led, without question.
“They wouldn’t say … but they were serious about that wagon. The sargento, he scowled something fierce at the others, when we asked. I think he was the only one with a clue.†Bigfoot scratched his bristly cheek thoughtfully. “He said he was following the Gen’ral’s orders. Me, I think there was something valuable in it, even if only ol’ Woll’s winter drawers and extry boots.â€
“There’s something queer about that wagon,†Captain Hays mused. He looked into the fire, and said, “Dan’l – you take five of your men in the morning at sun-rise. Follow the tracks of that wagon – I want to know what was in it worth sending a squad after.â€
“What do you think, Jack?†Daniel had asked, and no one thought it the least insubordinate in seeming to question an order – or as near to an order as Jack Hays ever gave.
“That wagon – or cart – had something heavy in it,†Jack Hays put a small twig into the fire, and used it to light his pipe. Drawing on it, he looked directly at Daniel. “A mighty lot of gunpowder, guns, and lead, is what I think. Ol’ Santy-Anna, he has no love for Texians, and you couldn’t go wrong betting that he won’t pass up a chance to do us dirt. Pass off weapons to the Comanche, tell them they have a free hand in killing us? In a heart-beat. Bribe the Cherokee into making war instead of walking the path of peace? Santy-Anna hisself, he’d smile and smile, all the while waiting to slip a knife into your back, like he walked back on the Velasco treaty the minute we let him go. I b’lieve there’s devilment in that wagon, and I don’t want any but us to have it.â€
“And did you find that devilment?†Toby Shaw asked. Jim shook his head, an involuntary gesture which redoubled the pain in it, almost to the point of vomiting up the herb-tea.
“No … at least, I do not remember if we did.†He thought, very carefully, rummaging through that errant memory of the morning when he and Daniel had ridden out, following Bigfoot’s directions on where they could pick up the trail left by Woll’s stray wagon. “The last thing that I remember was the wagon-tracks were clearer, as if they were in haste and didn’t want to bother with trying to hide them any more. We were following at a good rate, since the trail was so plain…†Yes, that was it. The tracks were pain, Jim recalled now. Gouged deep into the soft sand, leaving a line of broken brush between and on either side. The hoof-prints of mules – at least three teams of them, and pulling hard. Jim racked his memory. Nothing came, save the ghost of a memory of Dan’l shouting, his voice cut off abruptly. “What did you see, then,†he asked. “What manner of men ambushed us, and how many?â€
“It was hard to see from where I watched,†Toby answered, without hesitation. “But I think … three or four. I think they were white men … not of the Enemy, or of the Other Enemy. They would have done … things. Counted coup, taken scalps. Made certain of you, James Reade Esquire, before fleeing. Instead – they hit hard, and having done that, rode fast, taking all the live horses but one. I am not certain it was an ambush at all, James Reade Esquire … three of your friends were knifed, two shot at close range, so close that they were burned. Your horse fell, I think … they left you, thinking you were dead or would soon be.â€
“They did for us, I expect,†Jim answered, in a tone as bitter as alkali dust. “But I cannot understand how they could have caught Dan’l by surprise … unless …â€
A tiny seed of memory, a mere thread, took root. Now Jim could see in the crystal of memory a brief and tiny picture, the place where they stopped for a rest, and a mouthful of cold bacon and hard-tack. They had picketed their horses … and yes, built up a small fire. Dan, hunkering on his heels, drawing a map in the dirt with a stick, and saying with a smile, as Jim impatiently saddled his own horse. “Don’t worry, little brother. They may have a lead on us, but they can only have gotten a hundred miles or so in four days. We can catch them up in another day…†Dan stopped, suddenly alert. “Someone coming,†Jim answered. From the saddle of his horse he had a better view of their back-trail. “Looks like some old friends,†he added. “I guess Capn’ Hays thought we needed reinforcements…â€
“You knew them?†Toby demanded, suddenly alert.
“I recognized them,†Jim answered, racking his memory again. “They were rangers, all four of them, but in another company. I saw them in Capn’ Hays’ camp. Their leader is a man named Gallatin, J. J. Gallatin. Dan’l knew him from the war, when we took Bexar the first time. He was at the fire, when Bigfoot talked about the wagon. I think he wanted to come with us at the start … but Cap’n Hays gave the order to Dan’l. They came up to us, laughing … they were chaffing Dan’l for lagging behind. They came up on us and dismounted and then … I can’t remember.†Try as he could, Jim could bring up nothing from that memory crystal but the sound of a gun-shot going off like a cannon. Toby nodded, with the look of a man who had solved a puzzle.
“Not an ambush,†he said. “They came among you as friends and turned as a snake strikes, swiftly. They killed your horse, lest you escape and bear witness, and thought they had killed you as it fell, James Reade Esquire. Then they killed your other Rangers and took their horses – all but one, which I found wandering before I found you.â€
“Damn them,†Jim whispered, sick at heart, grieving and horrified. He, and Daniel and the others – they had been betrayed, betrayed unto death by someone they thought a friend and a comrade. “They will pay for this, Toby Shaw. I swear it. I will bring them to justice before the law … even if only to Capn’ Hays. He would not countenance this, I swear…â€
“The law?†Toby shrugged, “What does it matter, the law, James Reade Esquire? Why not just follow the trail of this … Gallatin and his friends, and pay them back in kind?â€
“Because that is not the rule of law,†Jim answered, as a feeling of great weariness fell over him. “To take vengeance personally for a wrong … that is the rule of men, which varies among men according to ability and whim, and so falls unevenly. But the rule of law … the rule of law falls across the shoulders of all men, alike. Rich or poor, no matter their education or property. I live by the law, Toby … I can’t countenance private vengeance, no matter how justified it is.â€
“You are a fool, James Reade Esquire,†Toby Shaw answered, in mild exasperation. “But I think that I will follow you … even if only to know that devilment is in that wagon.â€
“Thank you,†Jim said, strangely grateful. And then the dark sleep took him under again, somewhat broken by uncomfortably vivid dreams.
…the wide wide world of sports is going on here? The IRS trolling for specific information on members of individual American Legion posts, requiring proof of the individual member’s veteran status as a way of pinning local American Legion posts to the wall, for some kind of purpose besides vulgar curiosity … hmm, that’s just what they did to various Tea Party organizations applying for certain exemptions. Asked for terribly specific information … my, who doesn’t think that isn’t going into some enormous database somewhere? Military veterans and retirees, in my humble opinion and experience tend to be rather more to the libertarian-conservative side of the political scale, for a number of reasons, chief of them being that we spent a certain number of years living in a fairly conformist and regimented life …in which most of us (save those initially drafted before the advent of the all-volunteer force) freely volunteered for. But the military experience doesn’t necessarily leave us with a lifetime fondness for living under the watchful eye of a higher authority and having every teeny little jot and tittle of personal lives and conduct scrutinized and counseled over… oh, no, my chickadees. It does not.
Quite often, it inculcates a dislike of all-encompassing chicken-sh*t authority exercised over the minutiae of daily living and a wide streak of defiant independence. Looking back on my service life, I suppose that for me the breaking point came when one of my troops – blessed with living in base housing at a base which shall be unnamed – was called at about mid-morning of an extremely busy work-day by a representative of the base housing office. He had inadvertently left his back door porch light on. Nothing would content the minions who ruled base accommodations but that he drop everything that he was doing, rush home, and turn off the back porch light. Apparently, the housing office felt that a 20-or-so watt bulb burning for another five hours was an insupportable burden. And yes – it is true that the power bill for such did come to the base housing office – but still. I took away from the experience that I would never want to live in base housing, ever. And if I chose to leave a damned 20 watt bulb burning, I would, as long as I was paying for it myself.
The other things that the military experience leaves indelibly imprinted on those who have served is a sense of responsibility, a sense of obligation which runs both ways – what you are obligated to society for, and what, if anything, society owes you – and of possibility. The military veteran’s interpretation of responsibility, obligation and possibility are all, I suspect, anathema to the current administration; I also suspect that their world-view inclines them to believe that getting something changed consists merely of making a great and stinking fuss about that which does not please them – rather like test animals working out the right way to pull the right lever. Eventually the powers that be grumble and randomly or purposefully disgorge a meager pellet of solution.
Veterans are used to getting things done and seeing things through. They are often accustomed to working together in coordinated fashion, able to see the possibilities and to work toward a viable solution, who bring solid experience in real-world planning and coping with unexpected contingencies … well, such people are not much inclined to waste time randomly pulling a lever, but are more interested in direct action … and not playing games of the sort that Thomas Wolfe described as ‘mau-mauing the flack-catchers.’ It must appear to the current administration that organizations formed around veterans – the Legion and the VFW, not to mention any number of smaller and informal groups, or even just groups with a large veteran component, like local Tea Parties, or even the post-WWII Battle of Athens, where a number of veterans coordinated a political response to a viciously corrupt local machine. The DHS appears to consider military veterans as possible potential future terrorist, too – so, one might be forgiven for assuming that this current administration entertains lively fears regarding veterans as a group in opposition, or in at least, potential opposition.
(Crossposted at www.chicagoboyz.net)
And I did notice certain musical trends, and many of them for the worst. Enjoy
For no good reason that I have ever been able to figure out – the figure of the cowboy remains about the most dominant figure in our mental landscape of the Wild West – the version of the 19th century American frontier that the public usually knows best, through novels, movies and television. The version of the Wild West which most people have in mind when they consider that period is post-Civil War as to time frame and available technology, and most often centered on aspects of cattle ranches, cow-towns, and long-trail cattle drives – and the hired men who performed the grunt work involved – or those various forces arrayed against them; homesteaders, rustlers and assorted other stock baddies. The long-trail drives actually took place over a fairly limited time; about ten or fifteen years, but those few years established an undying legend, especially in the minds of people anywhere else or at any other time. The realities of it all, of course, are a bit more nuanced, a bit more complicated, and perhaps a bit more interesting.
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