Friday 26 January 2018

Notice Alert to all OROGs: A couple of projects coming down the pike

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     We have had a considerable reaction from the OROG community (Official Readers of the Old Gringo) with reference to our adoption as a life-mission the person and works of Lorenzo de Zavala.   We announce herewith that a fourth instalment of this opus will be started and completed shortly...within the next three to four days.
     We shall delve specifically into the person of Stephen Fuller Austin and his almost fraternal connection to Lorenzo.  We shall compare and contrast the two men whose brilliance and willingness to slog through the day-to-day, dull, legal, and political morass is amazing.
     Our next submission concerning this theatre of interest will plumb  that which dismally awaits those who truly only wish to serve and project good upon the populace they represent.

     Further, we are going to revise and extend our previous three "Volumes"  concerning Lorenzo de Zavala and the events surrounding him, his friends, and his enemies.   The entire matter is one which repulses, inspires, perplexes, and certainly interests the reasonable history addict.

Federalist and Hero of Texas
JUAN NEPUMUSENO
SEGUIN BECERRA

      And, we shall further throw this matter into deeper and wider understanding of the entire Texian matter of the decades of the 1830s through the 1840s.  This will be done by gently folding the person and personality of one Juan Seguin, he who played Joan d'Arc, the Man of La Mancha, and Gen. MacArthur, and perhaps a bit of an honourable Benedict Arnold in real life, into this peculiar mix.   The truth shall make you free, and the truth will astound even those with the most imaginative imagination concerning this remarkable, (and in my opinion, honourable) man.
The tomb of Juan Seguin
 Becerra,
 Hero of the Texas
Revolution...victim of those
who thought naught and who
had ill motive.  
Buried with honours in Texas
 soil.  Long may his
 memory survive.
   This anthology - analysis will include everything from Comonfort and Santa Anna to the likes of the brilliant and patient Texas General Somerville, Col. Tom Green, and a correct description of the Battle of Mier - Christmas, 1842 with well-remembered instructives from Agustin Salinas who was schooled in the battle by his uncles who participated in that event.  Agustin was also my father's mayordomo and exectutive officer during our days as grove-care operators and farmers.  His words, our ears...including my father, eldest brother, and your humble servant were shared by a man who had dealt with men who were actual family and combatants.
   He, therewith, instructed the Newton boys about his understanding concerning what really happened during that cold, snowy, freezing rain, and otherwise  miserable episode which resulted in a Custeresque disaster for the Texians.

     It will be neither favourable nor disadvantageous to the person of Samuel Houston, David Crockett, James Bowie nor his brother Resin Bowie, who is the actual developer of the famed "Bowie Knife".   It will point out various and many good points concerning the chorus of excellent and patriotic Mexican officers and then ask "Why?" of such obvious gentlemen and officers that they would allow themselves to be commanded by a madman.


Also, we find very open space for conjecture about the idea that James Bowie could fit this identifier, to wit: 

Bowie and Booze -

Jim Bowie had a penchant for alcohol to the extent of what we now call, "alcohol abuse." Anson Jones, a physician who would later become the fourth and final President of the Republic of Texas, had the experience of meeting Bowie and Sam Houston while the two were in consultation at San Felipe. Jones found Houston to be the rowdy leader while he found Bowie “dead drunk”.[6] The reasons for Bowie’s alcohol abuses have yet to be determined. He undoubtedly suffered from physical pain resulting from him skirmishes and battles that included gunshot wounds. Depression is another possible explanation for his over-indulgences due to the loss of his wife and child to cholera in 1833. Regardless of why he drank, he continued to do so at an accelerated rate.

     El Gringo Viejo submits that there is substantial reason to attribute all such influences cited above to Bowie's seeking relief in a bottle.   He actually lost a profoundly beautiful, industrious, and high-born wife and TWO daughters to the cholera, ironically because he felt it best that they leave the lowlands and the coastal areas to the east of San Antonio, and travel to the higher elevations and lower humidities of Saltillo, Monclova, and such. There the "...evenings and nighttimes were always fresh and cool, and the days always a bit too warm...resulting in a wondrous effect upon a person's soul and sentiment". There, the lowlands, in the early 1830s, would not reach them.  Such was the stated observation by one traveller passing through the very Sephardic (Jewish-Spanish colonist lands in and around aforementioned Monclova and Saltillo) desert-like highlands of Coahuila's north.

We shall try to shed wider and deeper light upon the processes and acts of:

   (1)   The period of the formation of Texian Governance...the Presidents and figures of the upper and lower house of the Texian Congress, the personalities, the problem with the Germans, Indians, and the late arrivals who felt empowered, although they lacked credential. 
     
   (2)    Sam  Houston's pro, and the con, and then pro, and then con, foreign and domestic policy concerning relations with the hostile Indians, the Mexican formal central government, his own Congress, and his associates, and society, and his own affection for the various Indian nations.

   (3)     Why many regretted and a famous Mexican Army Officer said, that the Texians would lament having joined a Union of States that ultimately would wish to destroy the Texians.

     All of the afore-included is perhaps a tickler.  I am searching my couch and recliner to find loose change to make a proper book, published, and within the reach of sixth-grade up to university level students (are there still 'students', or only snowflakes?), and beyond.   Any and all  advice will be appreciated.

El Gringo Viejo
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