A Gringo in Rural Mexico: Catechism - All Lives Matter - and then a dose of (Sir Edmund) Hillary

Tuesday 1 September 2015

Catechism - All Lives Matter - and then a dose of (Sir Edmund) Hillary

____________________________________________

BUT FIRST, A PICTURE of OUR REHAB OF THE PARRILLA

(grill) ALSO KNOWN AS AN ASADOR (ah - sah - DOR).

OUR MAYORDOMO RESTORED IT LAST WEEK.

It is a little difficult to tailgate with it, but heck,
getting there is half the fun, right?

In seriousness, any finca, quinta, hacienda, or similar in a rural area, especially in Northern Mexico that does not have a simple, straight-up, parrilla, is a nowhere place.

We also have a true, real live, seven-foot deep"pozo de barbacoa" (pit barbecue) of the true classical style. Some soon day we may be putting it back to work now that we have a bit of predictable guest-arrival starting up again.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Catechism and All Lives Matter:

We are subjected to the analysis of causation of the prolonged affliction of bad schools, bad neighbourhoods, bad life outcomes, bad health, illegitimacy, drug addiction and marketting, and all such ills on a daily, almost hourly, basis. Democrats have the best analysis and the best solution. Racism and money. They describe the source of the problem and then the solution. Et Voila! Fait Accompli!!
Republicans wring their hands and identify the symptoms but never quite make it to the cause of the socio-cultural disease.

(1) FACT
  Six trillion dollars after the beginning of the War on Poverty (tax,tax - spend, spend - elect, elect), forty-five years of denying social gravity and pushing young girls into marrying their Uncle Sam.

(2) FACT
Incessant driving of the presence of Yahweh from the corridors, classrooms, and auditoriums of public and even private schools.
  Most at fault among the private schools? The Orthodox, including the Roman Catholic and Anglican sects of the Christian Church. Protestants have some blame for abandoning their snake-handling, river-side baptisms, foot washing, and Hell's Fire and Brimstone sermons.
   The Orthodox have been completely absorbed by liberation theology, also known as Communism with a Cross....an impossibility on the face of it.

What has not been absorbed by liberation theology has succumbed to the notion of moral relativism, Utopianism, and the secular progressive agenda. The entire Christian Church has more and more absentees, and more and more people who can figure out different ways to say, "Well everyone should have his/her own standards of right and wrong. All this God stuff is silly, and besides that I don't believe in any God, and God is dead anyway, 'cause I saw that on television. And Sunday, I'm tired, and I have a lot of things to catch up on and everything."

It is interesting to go through the old programmes from the ancient days here in McAllen, Texas. The Commencement of 1954, where a Roman Catholic priest, the pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows, along with our priest, Father Rollo Rilliing of Saint John's Church - Episcopal, and the Rabbi of Temple Emanuel Louis Herman all prayed over the coming in, the going forth, and the being there, for and on behalf of the soon-to-be graduates of McAllen High School.

At our Easter Vacation Assembly, before dismissal in 1959, I remember very clearly the priest from Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in McAllen giving the students a pleasant send-off by carefully describing, on a blow-by-blow basis the nature of the sledging of nails the size of railroad spikes into the lower arms and legs of the Nazarene, and what the physiological effect of such an exercise might be. Three girls fainted. It was quiet all over Lamar Junior High School as 1,200 urchins and adolescents departed for a week's "vacation".

(3) FACT
Public Assistance always reverts to paying off those who are feared to be capable of burning down the bakery if there is no free bread. Private charity is always....always....preferable when done sincerely.

When the purpose of bearing young becomes gaining additional dispensations from a government programme....food stamps, housing, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, free Medical....then Satan has won.

The fact will always be that a child's heart is given by his/her mother. A child's soul is installed by his/her father. Violation of this rule results in ruin. We recognise that there are exceptions (Dr. Carson, for instance) and we recognise that a good bench can and does frequently make up for the absence of a father....uncles and grandfathers who are responsible and who have the time and disposition to nurture and to provide a positive male example.

SOLUTION:

Begin the immediate reduction of benefits to the consumer group by 10% per year. AFCD and Food Stamps must be completely phased out, no matter how much the liquor stores, lottery vendors, casinos, and grocery store chains howl and moan. School lunches (60% wasted food - Farm Bureau loves it and ethanol to save the planet), and FEMA (what sense does it make to take money out of an area so as to come in and "save" everyone when that should be a task of the locale? It is strictly crony-capitalist, pea-and-walnut shell game.)

Immediately privatise the Social Security System, abolishing the disability part by taking no further applications. Immediately privatise the Medicare system, and abolish the Medicaid programme. Most of the American population now never knew nor heard of Charity Hospitals. Such facilities could be resuscitated because they were no worse than what Medicaid is now, and they were substantially less expensive because they were locally controlled and financed.

The Social Security disability and SSI programmes are overwhelmingly corrupt and heavily abused. It is long past time that the institution be "fundamentally transformed".

We must eliminate the engines of corruption that have turned many of our businesses and business people into vassals and beggars. We must destroy those agencies that have enslaved millions into a prison of perpetual poverty of purse and soul. We must release the eagles and let them soar!!!

So long as the corridors and classrooms are devoid of those reminders of a greater Cosmic Presence and a basic Catechism of life conduct....the Golden Rule, the Beatitudes, and a sense of propriety....then all the money and social work in the world will only make matters steadily worse.

All lives matter.

__________________________________________________

(SIR EDMUND) HILLARY - The Odyssey of Hubris and Deceit

She delivered an insulting, arrogant commencement harangue as she left Wellesley. She gained a position as a cub on the Senate Watergate Special Investigation Committee. At a page-turning point in the life of that committee, she was fired, with the added comment by the Special Counsel in charge of the investigation that he would never give Hillary a recommendation because she was lazy, did poor work, was untrustworthy, and she was a liar.

She persistently (three times) over-rode the orders, agreed to by all the personnel, save for one, to consent to the notion that Richard Nixon should have right to counsel during the proceedings of Impeachment and the subsequent trial in the Senate. She was caught leaking confidential material repeatedly, and she was caught blabbing confidential proceedings and meeting conversations to friends, radical Democrat operatives, and the press.

There is no way she could have helped but know that that white-trash hillbilly over there was the guy who was the most famous draft dodger and woman beater circulating in Washington, D.C. He had managed to beat the rap, by the intervention of Clinton's political godfather, of the sexual assault of an English Lord's granddaughter.

(From Politico magazine)

Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton allegedly raped 19-year-old Eileen Wellstone at Oxford in 1969. Wellstone says she was sexually assaulted by Bill after she met him at a pub. A retired State Department employee later anonymously told Capitol Hill Blue in 1999 “There was no doubt in my mind that this young woman had suffered severe emotional trauma…But we were under tremendous pressure to avoid the embarrassment of having a Rhodes scholar charged with rape.”
Bill left Oxford with no degree (96% of Rhodes Scholars get degrees).

It is thought that Billy Jeff Blythe's get-out-of-jail card was the quick intervention of Senator J. William Fulbright, the Chairman of the very powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Billy Jeff's political godfather. Her Majesty, the Queen determined in her wisdom to allow the wayward boy to leave so as to avoid an international incident with the Colonies across the pond.
Eileen Wellstone was left with a ripped and torn lower lip, requiring many stitches, a dislocated shoulder, and a broken jaw. Nothing serious....move on along....nothing to see here. Her grandfather was a respected elder of the House of Lords.

Since that union, between a narcissistic young hag who espoused marxism as the solution for all the little peoples' problems and money for the solution to her problems....and a narcissistic white-trash coward, woman-beating bully and draft-dodger, proven liar under oath (at the sacrifice of his law license), and well-practiced shyster and fraudulent operator....we have America's couple. Why? Because they will forward bolshevik and national socialism and abortion on demand, anytime, any place favored by the effete and elite who control the popular media and popular culture.

Makes you proud to be a member of an electorate that could vote for this pair and for another dolt who could read "Hope and Change" on a teleprompter. Elective democracy, anyone?
El Gringo Viejo

_____________________________________________

Click to visit our little Adobe Hideaway…

This is our rustic, but very comfortable place, out in the rural area to the northwest of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas…the State's Capital. From a bustling city of 400,000, we placed our domicile a bit more than 20 miles into the scenes of mountains, citrus groves, spring-fed creeks and rivers with crystal clear waters, and an abundance of bird species that make veteran birders shake their heads in wonder.

We are all but adjacent to the venerable Hacienda de Santa Engracia (about 500 yards away), which dates to the 1720s and has ancient structures still in use, very elegant, and mystical in many ways. It has operated as a guest hotel since the 1970s.

Our little place rests on three and a fraction acres, fronting on the Rio Corona, which is lined with over-1,000 year old cypress trees. The nearby Sierra del Cautivo…a major segment of the overall Sierra Madre Oriental that dominate most of eastern Mexico, lies to the west by about three miles. guards the many springs that maintain the almost perpetual flow from those heights (up to 12,000 fasl) while our place is situated right at 1,000 feet above sea level.

Give us a call, come by and visit…it is truly a different venture in the most positive sense. We can be reached by our email - privatouring@gmail.com - which is our preferred method of communicating.

______________

What is an OROG?

Once a person lands on our page, that individual becomes a member of the Order of Readers of the Old Gringo, (OROG). There are no dues or assessments to pay, no meetings, no requirements. We are not associated with the KKK, the WCTU, the French Masons, or the Global Warming Glacier

Protection Committee.

We do have a distant connection with the Knights of the Golden Circle and hold the maps to the internment sites of 34 tonnes of Confederate Gold, and 1,000 tonnes of Mexican Imperial Silver (bar and coinage) derived from the collapse of the Reign of Maximillian von Hapsburg, Emperor of Mexico (1863 - 1867). I think we can remember where we put it.

All kidding aside, we are acerbic, but we do not bite. We do believe in our antiquated philosophy, but we try to not impose our quirks and beliefs so far as to be disrespectful.

El Gringo Viejo

__________________________

Wise Words

Communism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill

oooooooooo

Be sure you are right, then go ahead.

I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, fetch and carry, at the whistle of the Great Man in the White House, no matter who he is.

I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done. But, if such was not to be, then you may all go to Hell, and I shall go to Texas!

David Crockett

oooooooooo

And on and on it goes. The more the Government gives away, the more it takes, and the less Americans do for themselves, until finally, like Europe, there is nobody left to do anything, and there is nobody left to pay for, the nothing that is not done.

And, yes, Virginia, there truly is a Santa Clause, and he and Mrs. Clause and their helpers care greatly for the good children of the Planet. So long as there is happiness, kindness, charity, generosity, and the Spirit of Fellowship, Santa Clause will be there, representing those noble things, and he will always move in a spiritual way so as to provoke humankind to goodness.

El Gringo Viejo

oooooooooo

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker Tallaferro Washington

oooooooooo

It is impossible to make a poor man rich by making a rich man poor.

Abraham Lincoln

oooooooooo

El Gringo Viejo: a fair description

Life for El Gringo Viejo began on the Texas-Mexico frontier, near McAllen, Texas literally on a real, live farm. The farmer, as one might imagine, was his father, who had moved with his parents from Gwinner, Sargent County, North Dakota in 1915 - 1916 period, down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. (And yes, Virginia, that is the way Sargent County is spelled.)

His parents farmed in an area close to the new community named after its founder, called Ed Couch, in Hidalgo County of Texas. My grandfather is buried in the Weslaco Municipal Cemetery about 10 feet away from his friend, Ed Couch.

After studies, and a stint in the 1st Cavalry, 12th Regiment (mounted), Headquarters Squadron of the United States Army...riding warhorses back and forth along the Rio Grande from the late 1920s and early 1930s. He did not speak much about his service, but we determined that he apparently made rank of 1st Lieutenant.

El Gringo Viejo's Father established his farming and citrus grove-care operation just north of McAllen, Texas. Mother was a housewife and a professional woman....a learned, eloquent, well-read woman.

They were educated people, my father winding up as a Superintendent of a major school/facility of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation in Austin, Texas after a twenty year career in education at the secondary level. He had degrees in History, Psychology, and Education Administration.

El Gringo Viejo is the last of three children, all males. Number one was Milton Birchard, Jr. who was born in 1936 and died in a vehicular incident in 1988. He was narcoleptic. He held a doctorate in geography from Louisiana State University and was head of the Department there for a good while.

Number two is Norman Francis, who was born during the WWII situation in 1942 and became an important Republican political engineer and fundraiser. He served as Executive Director of the Republican Party of Texas during the late 1960s and early 1970s and as Senator John G. Tower's immediate Executive Assistant. The Senator is the Godfather of Norman's first son.

Norman died at age 77 in Austin, Texas and I was one of four eulogists who was chosen to speak at his en memoriam at the Austin Club in downtown most Austin…within sight of the State Capitol.

It was a personal duty and very rewarding

in every way.

My arrival was in 1947, and I was destined to confound my parents and all those around me. Educated entirely in public schools in McAllen, skipping the third grade, and stumbling out of my high school in the upper 90% of a class of 606. I

attended and graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now named Texas State University, unfortunately), being one of the few conservatives to graduate out of the School of Sociology, although my treatment at the hands of my tormentor-professors was not so unpleasant in those days. Emphasis of studies were social demography, and Latin American Affairs with a concentration on Mexico's history and current political evolution, with a minors in History, Geography, and Political Science.

El Gringo Viejo is one of the old, unreconstructed high-church Episcopalians. Politically, he is very fundamentally conservative. He prefers Baseball to football, and considers that baseball with a designated hitter for the pitcher should be called "poofy-ball". Favourite major league team of all times? The Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. It will never be the same again.
El Gringo Viejo's father was born to a Hudson Valley-type girl and a man who had lost two older brothers who served in the Pennsylvania 96th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry during the War Between the States.

The surnamed line (Newton) originated from East Anglia, not far from a place called Washington in northeastern England. They came into Boston Harbour, Massachusetts in 1642 (the 1st voyage of the Mayflower had overbooked), and settled there and in Maine as well as spreading out to Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, over the generations for the first 220 years.
Another batch of folks, mainly Anglo, settled in the middle Hudson Valley. There was another group of Celto-Teutonics types from Saxony and Prussia, establishing and settling along the Hudson River from around what is Catskill County northward to Duchess and Rennselaer Counties around a place named Red Hook. The main group came in during the early 1650s.

My mother's people were another English line of long-term Southern and Tennessee people, from the Eastern part of that State, who originally came in during the 1660s through Virginia and North Carolina, and finally into Eastern Tennessee, settling in and around a county to be named Franklin, and helping to establish the city of Winchester. Almost all of these people originated from southwestern England, near the frontier with Wales.

Only recently did we verify that she had many people involved in the service of the Confederacy. One died in northern Mississippi, another Captain Asa Grant, 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, was severely wounded and succumbed to his wounds finally in 1869, and another hung around in an Ohio POW camp (Camp Chase) for about 13 months, while three others were either wounded or died in action, including David Limbaugh, Lieutenant, 42 Tennessee Infantry. Another five made it through relatively unscathed.

Almost all were, oddly enough, related to the great-grand uncles and gggg-grandfathers down to gg-grandfathers of Rush Limbaugh. The gggg-grandfather came into the Colonies in the early 1740s from a Prussia and Saxony background, and served in both civilian and military capacities to the Continental government and Army. He was the XO of a Militia Battalion of 3,000 Pennsylvania effectives. They honed their military readiness under the supervision of Gen. von Steuben and someone named Washington at some place called Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

A grandson of his, Isaac, settled in Tennessee after the War for Independence against King George III. So Rush and I share grandfathers, four generations deep on the American Continent.

It should be stated here that were I to be called to declare, my allegiance would still be with the Southern Cause, although I bear no rancor against those who feel the same about their instinct to maintain the Union. Oddly enough, both my mother (a Southerner) and my father (a true Yankee by blood) believed that we would have remained closer if we had separated, and each side gone the ways of their own yearning, but amicably.

The last of the English (El Gringo Viejo's) line came during the time between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They left County Wicklow, where they had been involved, apparently, in that peculiar Anglo - Scots/Irish practice of making whiskey by the use of peat for fuel. They were also involved in the business of production and processing of various types of grains as well as the production of whiskey, gin, and beer. By their surnames one would know that, while coming out of Ireland, they were actually English, one with the surname of Christian and the wife, Webster. They had, in fact, married in Christ's Church Cathedral, Anglican, in downtown Dublin in 1796. They landed in New York, set up shop in the City among previously arrived relatives, and then in Albany. We have some record that this Christian who married the Webster had actually lived in the colonies, but travelled several times back and forth between the Spirits businesses in England and Ireland and the New World. They wound up as the generations progressed in and around Minneapolis (St. Anthony) & Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Racine, Wisconsin. My particular line went from New York to Alabama, then North Carolina, and then Wisconsin to join up with the rest of the extended family, finally in Minnesota, before the War Between the States.

The Time Line of entry of all lines of my children's blood ancestry on their mother's side in the New World begins in 1578, when Spaniards of mixed Hebraic and Iberian peoples, and others of ancestry from Portugal, Galicia, and southern Spain entered into what was to become Monclova and Saltillo, Coahuila. They are brought under the auspices of the Explorer, Conquistador, and Colonizer Jose Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva, with elements settling in Lampazos and Cerralvo (Nuevo Leon), in Palofox (Texas), and Revilla (Tamaulipas) on the Rio Bravo.
Also, the Count of the Sierra Gorda, Col. Jose de Escandon brought another group of mainly Spanish, Portuguese, and Azoreans in the early 175os, settling along the Rio Bravo (Grande), and then on the north (Texas) side, spreading up to what is now Yorktown, Texas (near and southeast of San Antonio de Bexar, more or less) before and during the Texas Republican period.

My children and theirs are qualified to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty, The Sons of the Grand Army of the Union, The Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Daughters of the Confederacy. By my side they are 16th generation English Colonial - American and 6th generation Texian. By my wife's side, my children are 23rd generation northernmost New Spain, Texian, and American. Isolating Texas alone, my grandchildren are 15th generation Texian.

LIKE?

Cats, and then dogs.

Fishing, even a bit of bird watching, now and then.

Really good music..antique, old, 1950s and early 1960s rock and roll, classical - Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, both Strauses, and many others, African tribal sounds en chorus, Mexican bolero...mariachis when they play out-of-doors, some country and quite a bit of the old western (Sons of the Pioneers, the Texas Ploughboys, Marty Robbins "Gunfighter Ballads, for instance.), even some of my own piano works, bagpipes, Enya, marimba, Caribe.

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess always seemed to me to have been, and remains, a true masterpiece of Americana.

Well maintained Firearms, smooth running small equipment, old autos that respond to repair and upkeep and keep going. Used to have BMWs and so forth, but being old helps tone things down a bit.

Antiques, and antiquities...Meso-American archeology...and religious history. Formal religious services among the Orthodox..as in Anglican, Roman, Orthodox and Conservative Jewish services and celebrations. Hard to find, now.

Overnight radio, rightwing talk radio until it becomes overly tedious and repetitive.

Weather and climate.

And strangely during the past few years,cooking. Not just barbequeing...but actually dishing up gourmet-type stuff...and gardening to a purpose.

We grow a lot of our own spices for our little bed and breakfast and we specialise in flowerng plants, bushes, and trees that attract bees and literally hundreds of species of common to extremely rare birds to our place.

Lifelong Republican, honourably discharged - United States Army (conscripted).

Now drifted into the position of favouring the amicable withdrawal of Texas from the American Union. My grandchildren are 15th generation Coahuila/Texas by my wife and 8th generation Texas by me and my will is to have them answer for the debt of Texas and not for the debts incurred by the National Socialists who have taken possession of the central government in Washington, D.C.

DISLIKES?
Any kind of socialism...bolshevik, national, marxist, social democratic, Trotskyite, progressive, ....and any kind of socialist.

The Ku Klux Klan and such types who figure that they have to hate somebody because of how he/she was born. They are just role players, resucitated by the Communist Party USA in the 1920s, whose members are fueled by a well deserved sense of inferiority.

And almost all social activism.

Almost all labour union officers and almost all labour unions. (There are some exceptions.)

Public assistance of any kind. All welfare and/or charity should and must be privately handled in order to avoid the trap wherein we have fallen, that being the multigenerational slide into the abyss of forlorn hopelessness that is government slavery and dependence. That slide is cheerfully supported by politicians who love to buy votes with other peoples' money.

Lotteries operated by governments.

Litter, filth, graffiti, gangs, and waiting in line for people using food stamps whil'st they argue with the cashier about how they "need" this or that to be covered...when they have three carts with 450 USD of snacks and things we cannot afford because we are in an 'upper income" category.

Church reformers who want to change my church instead of them going to another church and just leaving me alone.

Medications for boys who are over-active, and medications in general.

Lite beer, lite Coca Cola, fat-free, lo-cal, artificial sugars and sweeteners, anything marked "healthy" on food packages, sugar-free, margarine, and driving 23 miles to buy gasoline over there because it is 2 cents per gallon cheaper.

Any government programme designed to help anybody; 94% of the time the programme winds up morphing into some kind of monster. Then liberals and do-gooders will propose another programme, twice as costly, to cure the ills caused by the first cure-all.

Officiousness, and the term "non-profit", as if there is some kind of moral superiority in the failure to produce wealth.

Physical abuse of an animal, an extraterrestrial, a child, slave, woman, or anything like a tractor or power tool, firearm, sewing machine, or an auto, etc.
Loud and/or sharp noises, especially when such noises have no particular purpose.

Wasting anything, from paper towels to Clorox to cake and cookie batter...anything. And....waiting in a line.