The Texas State Alumni Association wants to send our thoughts and Bobcat love to all those affected by the 2015 Memorial Day Weekend Flood. The floods severely impacted Hays County, including some members of the Texas State University community who suffered loss or damages because of the floodwaters. The University has established a special giving page to collect gifts in support of students, faculty and staff affected by the weather-related events. These funds will be used for clothing or personal-care items, food, study materials, pet boarding, or other immediate needs.
We were afraid that we would be right. The notion that we would have a reasonable treatment of the reality of the period surrounding the establishment of the Republic of Texas seemed laughable at the outset. It was laughable....save for being a sad commentary about what could be hidden behind the skirts of a place as Sacred as the Alamo and then trotted out as "entertainment" and "historical drama".
They fell into the trap that we suspected. No matter how good the grass was that they were smoking, or if the Tequila and/or Scotch that they were drinking was 100 years old / certified, it cannot make up for the fact that Emily West Morgan was never in the clutches of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. She was held in a stockade of Negroes for a while and it was assumed by some of the Mexican officers that she must be a slave, but such was not the case. She was, once again, a free-born mullata and could not have been part of Antonio's shenanigans. It is very possible that she never saw him nor he, her. Some can speculate that the listening to the songs of the Christy Minstrels of the 1850s (later resurrected as the New Christy Minstrels in the late 1960s and 1970s), about the Yellow Rose of Texas might give licence with a wink and a nod to some invention of a story without facts, but it takes away from the grandeur of the moment.
Next, showing Juan Seguin as a conflicted Latin, having to co-ordinate with people he hated and mistrusted (the Anglo-Saxons)only because he hated Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and the Centralist Forces of Mexico City more is a ridiculous assumption based in a falsity further based on a hope by those who think that Cesar Chavez was anything more than a hood ornament Kachina Doll to represent Alinsky's drive against normal America.
These are things that they do not know, but with which those of us who have spent much of our literate lives passively and actively studying the issues of that time and of that place are familiar. It would behove those who toy with the Truth about the Alamo and the events that succeed it, that after San Jacinto, and promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Army of the Republic of Texas, Juan Seguin came back to San Antonio as temporary mayor and Commandant of the military district (the largest in Texas during those times). This would have been in February, 1837. Only a person of Juan Seguin`s bruises, valour, and position could have accomplished such a thing as re-establishing true social and legal order in such a devastated place.
On the 25th of February, Juan Seguin, with much of the garrison under command, almost all veterans of close combat with the vanquished....but most powerful army at that time in North America....formed up and promptly at four o`clock, as the bells began to toll an entire Battalion carried and/or accompanied the special coffin in good order to the Church of San Fernando. Other troops, Texas Rangers, and civil guards, civil authorities, clergy, mourners, friends, family members all accompanied the Battalion and Juan Seguin with the coffin borne before them by a squad of pall bearers.
Arriving at the place where Seguin had extracted remains from the ashes and designated them as those of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett some days before, he stopped the huge column of military and civilian mourners and well-wishers of the quick and the dead.
Priests threw Holy Water around with abandon, a band played a familiar dirge...although there was and is debate about which one it was, and during an appropriate quiet interlude an officer called for a battalion rifle salute....almost unheard of....never in fact seen by any living American or Mexican before or since, I should believe.
A Battalion in those days could have been anywhere between 500 to 3,000 men. In the case of The Republic of Texas at that time and in that condition, it was probably 700 men. In deliberate and cadenced order all fired....once.....then twice......and then the third volley causing a roar to awaken those departed and those to come.
Seguin spoke in English, gesturing towards the coffin, saying "There are your brothers. Travis, Bowie, and Crockett and others whose valour places them in the rank of my heroes." And those were in fact the names inside the lid of the coffin which bore the sample of ashes from the same pile that Seguin had ordered engraved to the underside of the lid of the Coffin.
Supposedly, and this is contested, the remains were interred near the altar of the Church of San Fernando, perhaps the most revered of many churches of any denomination in the Republic of Texas. All notion by the clerics of lack of qualification, were they Romans? were they Protestants, were they any form of theist or Jew or anything? The priests did not ask or care.
Also, among the native population, principally of the White, upper-caste, Mexican/Spanish group there were those who had sincerely supported the Centralists and who opposed the concept of a Republican Government as envisioned by Zavala and Austin. They prayed to Seguin for safe-conduct to the Rio Bravo at Laredo, which was rendered to them, their effects, children, servants, and any relative who wished to depart. They were allowed to take their firearms, animals, and were given an escort to a point mid-way to Laredo, and when out of danger of attack by roving Kickapoo and/or their allies the Comanche' they were allowed to continue without escort. That number of Centralists and company numbered about 70 persons and 200 animals and 30 wagons and such conveyances.
The volley of the battalion can be heard still to this day by every Texian. Seguin had a motley history after around 1840...much of it caused by the arrogance of the newly arriving German immigrants who considered themselves to be more like Real Texans than people like Geronimo Navarro, the Gonzalez people, or the Sequins, Zaragozas, and their clan around Goliad who had suffered so much at the hands of Lopez de Santa Anna. We shall delve into this in coming days.
This is the snarling, bitter, Anglo-hating Seguin pictured in the silly film, Texas Rising.....? He was far more complicated. He lived in San Antonio where Latin gentlemen had Anglo wives and to a greater degree Anglo (and we use the identifier "Anglo" fairly loosely) men had Latin wives in considerable melting-pot order. He gained the confidence of the two most unfriendly-to-Latin men around...William Barrett Travis and Mirabeau Bonaparte Lamar.
The depiction of Juan Seguin in the film "Texas Rising" is laughable. The entire film is laughable....there was no "Texas Red-neck, Hill-Billy, White-trash accent" that would make Hollywood people feel comfortable...by assigning the Texans to their troglodyte status. Accents in English at the time of the period depicted were much more pronounced and came from British English, New England, Tidewater South, Wicklow Irish, Scottish, etc. It would have been difficult for various of the speakers of English to have understood one another unless the conversationalists were really ''plugged-in'' to each other's conversation. Consider Pygmalion/ My Fair Lady as an example.
We have joined even further into the notion that Texas must be allowed, or must take, an independent road to its destiny before Gabriel`s final call. We are a motley people, united by philosophy and not race, ethnicity, or even a rigid sect or belief. We see the face of the Great Yahweh and know him to be the controller at least of our Universe, but we are genuinely yielding to anyone`s posture before his/her Cosmic Source of Order.
The events of 1836 through 1846 should serve as the pattern of our cut. The Americans have failed by allowing the vote-buyers (money changers) to ruin an entire race of Americans. The Americans will not agree that spending more tax money than what is brought in is a sin against natural law and against posterity. They will not defend the walls that form good neighbours, even as they allow porous borders to permit bad neighbours to pillage and ruin.
We must gain the power to rule ourselves. And soon. Please stayed tuned to-morrow because El Zorro has forwarded some moving pictures of Germany shortly after the collapse during the Summer of 1945. It will stun a person about how intrepid the Germans are, and how those days foreshadowed the dour and oppressive regimes that would follow in Russian controlled Berlin and throughout eastern Germany.
This was a rough day for folks pretty much throughout the centre of the Republic of Texas. We are talking about from below the already flooded areas south of San Antonio, through two/thirds of the central core of the Country and beyond well into Oklahoma.
In Austin and Round Rock we had children in the middle of a four way tornado attack....not watches, but warnings so close together that they were overlapping. The water was rising again and small creeks appeared as rampaging medium-size rivers. Driving from here to there was no certain thing because even high bridges were closed, and some were washed away.
At this writing people are gone, mission, or preparing to attend funerals. Cd. Villa Acun~a, across from Del Rio, Texas on the Rio Grande had a tornado that managed to kill 10 people, while the death toll in Central Texas has passed a dozen....with many people unaccounted for in Hays County from Kyle, to Wimberly, and San Marcos where El Gringo Viejo, his daughter, his son, and his son-in-law attended and graduated from the University. Hays County is contiguous and to the south of Travis County, wherein Austin is located. On the north side is Williamson County and that this DELL Computer Country....Round Rock and Georgetown being the urbs of interest to outsiders. Our contributors who live in the middle of Extreme Central Texas went to visit friends this very morning, thinking that things would certainly start to stabilise by that point. They did stabilise, but to the way they had been for the past two weeks....and in some cases the past two months. To wit:
Today was a day of weather drama. We met up with our son and his family in Spicewood (1/2 way to Austin on 71 North) for lunch today. We had some light rain this morning, but nothing to cause concern. While at the restaurant, cell phone weather alerts started going off everywhere. That drew our attention to the t.v.'s that were displaying weather alert information. To our surprise, they were reporting a tornado event from our place back to the west a few miles all the way to Round Mountain. You know my man--there was no waiting it out at the restaurant--it was charge! We headed back to the ranch--skirted tornado areas, drove through hail storms, and were stopped and turned back by the Sheriff's Department on the Ranch to Market Road that leads to our place due to flooded low water crossings. We then headed to Johnson City so that we could approach the ranch through Stonewall. The bridge over the Pedernales at Stonewall is quite a bit higher than the low water crossing on the RR . When we got to the barn entrance, we started seeing tornado damage to the trees. You may recall that the Grape Creek crossing is about 100 yards from our barn gate. Fortunately, we did not encounter any water coming over that crossing. The next crossing, Spring Creek, had about 1 1/2' of water over the road. It was a sheet of water about 30' wide and running swiftly. Our truck is pretty high, so we proceeded across. At this point we began to see some pretty significant tree damage. Fortunately, no homes were damaged, including ours, and our ranch appears to have minimal tree damage, but we won't know for sure until we can get out and make a more thorough survey.
Our neighbours at the bottom of Grape Creek Road had a tree fall across their road, so my weather warrior got his backhoe and headed back to their ranch. After removing the tree, he decided to take the backhoe down to our barn entrance to clear the trees. It had been less than an hour since we had crossed Grape Creek with no water on the road, and now he found it impassable--the creek was like a raging river.
We love having all of the rain, but it has brought with it heartbreak and tragedy for some.
That gives a reasonable idea about what about 60 per cent of the population of Texas was putting up with to-day. Our son-in-law forwarded a couple of shots showing the normally placid creek almost adjacent to their home....almost at flood stage. This scene was repeated throughout the Central to-day as well as several other days during the months of April and May. The picture to the left was made by our daughter. It shows the "puppy-dog's feet" clouds that always mean severe weather is in the offing either there or very nearby. This time was no different. The "infrastructure" of almost all this area is A- to A+ so there have been relatively few calamities and casualties considering the severity and endurance of these episodes. All losses are, certainly, profoundly lamented. In Hayes County, for instance, there were 300 houses that within a few short hours, simply did not exist anymore; their pieces are probably 50 miles downstream in some nowhere somewhere. We shall have more commentary to-morrow. El Gringo Viejo
To-day. we especially remember Charles Newton, Sergeant, 96th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, mortally wounded at New Salem Church, Virginia on 3 May 1863 facing onslaught of CSA General Longstreet's advance towards a place in Pennsylvania that no one had ever heard of and would probably never remember, called Gettysburg. We also especially remember Isaac Edgar Newton, Corporal, 96th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, who was killed in action while harrassing the rear guard of the Army of Northern Virginia under the command of General Robert E. Lee. on or about the day of the first Sunday in August, 1863 as that Army withdrew from the place in Pennsylvania no one had ever heard of and continued its retreat into Virginia. Charles and Edgar Isaac were brothers and also my grandfather's brothers. My grandfather was three years old when he learned that his brothers had gone to be with the Angels.
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This is not "the Flag of the Confederacy" It is, in fact, the Battle Flag, taken in to bellicose encounter.
ALSO we remember and regret the loss of Asa Grant, Captain, 2 Tennessee Cavalry, wounded at Chickamauga and imprisoned at Camp Chase Ohio...died of his wounds and inhumane treatment while a POW five years after the end of the War Between the States. Also we lament the loss of 1st Lieutenant John Neal, Lieutenant H.H.Limbaugh, and others who gave their all for the Southern cause. They are, respectively a gggrandfather and two first cousins-twice removed who died in action or from wounds received in action serving the Confederate Cause. In all the Neal clan of Winchester, Lewisburg, Tullahoma, and Lynchburg and their blood collaterals and ancestry lost 11 to that Cause, and none ever bought a slave, and only two held slaves....old men who had been inherited and were cared for as family members during their old age until it was their time to dwell among the Angels.
El Gringo Viejo urges, as with The Anglican Curmudgeon, a following of the brief and pointed remarks and observations by Jim (El Zorro) will be well worth the few minutes every week it might take to "fill in the blanks" and to correct the misinformation about Islam as it was, as it is, and as it might become should ignorance prevail.
I am a dilettante student of the Abrahamic Religions and their interrelationships on the ancestral tree. The history, archaeology, philosophies of the Hebrews, Christians, Buddhists, and Ishmaelites have been something in which my eldest brother and I wasted great amounts of tobacco, time, conjecture, and study long ago. I have learned from El Zorro details and things about the religion and historical implications of that religion from both Dr. Milton (my brother) and the El Zorro known as Jim Bob from Forestburg, Texas.
We must arm ourselves with correct information. This is a valuable door being opened to all OROGs and their friends.
Below is more about basic Islam that I think is important for our people to know.
The better half and I have some very good friends who are Muslim and they seem to be very well assimilated into our western way of life. This is something of a contradiction to the definitions and history of Islam; however, there are Muslims here that actually do not know much about it just as there are Christians and Jews who are “part time” and claim to be one or the other even though they are not really. With this in mind I would be happy to engage with any of you who have actual experiences with Muslims.
Please do not hesitate to discuss the subject of Islam with me. It is interesting and at the same time potentially dangerous, not having any knowledge of Islam. Many people try to relate Islam to other religions. That is not doable as Islam is not a religion but a whole-cultural system that stealthily uses religion to mask aggressive political objectives.
If you belong to a particular religion or are agnostic or atheist it does no harm to listen and learn. I am not teaching or preaching. I am just relating information I have collected. I feel few too many people give little, if any deep thought concerning what is happening in the Middle East as well as that which is growing here in the U.S. (at considerable risk to us all).
The parts are available as they are posted online at mosinguy.com under the right side of the page “Important Issues”.
Please respond if you feel so inclined. Thanks for your attention and consideration!!
One might notice that NAFTA did not have anything to do with the movement of "jobs" from the United States to Mexico or anywhere else. Also, one might notice that, for this 1/3 of a year's summary, Canada and Mexico with a combined populations of fewer than 160,000,.000 population far exceed Red China both as sellers to the United States and as buyer from the United States.
Mexico in 1990 imported less than 9,000,000,000 USD in a year from the United States. Now, total exports to Mexico from the American industrial and commercial base is running at a 200,000,000.000 (two hundred billion per annum)....and no pinko, protectionist, or labourite wants to remind people that most of Mexico's advantage in terms of balance of trade comes from American owned farm exports out of Mexico to the United States of everything from mangoes, avocados, kiwi fruit, tomatoes, and things like Tuna. They also have become the fourth or fifth largest fabricator (not assembly, but total fabrication) of motor cars and trucks, some of which is exported to Canada and the United States. They also now import things like Cadillacs and Lincolns. Just recently, ground was broken for a 1,500,000,000 USD Kia Plant in Monterrey, bringing the total number of manufacturies of engines, autos, and automotive pertinences to well over 500. And unlike Red China, the Canadian and Mexican operators all comply with copyright and intellectual property rights understandings.
Finally, long before NAFTA, scores and scores of American operations had set up manufacturing facilities in Mexico, including but not limited to companies such as John Deere, General Electric, General Motors, Zenith, and many, many others. It just did not make sense to pay a dolt 43 dollars an hour in 1983 to bolt bumpers on crookedly to a boatcar. Zenith spun out a multi-million dollar ad-campaign about how they said "Phooey. The idea that the American worker is slothful and inefficient is wrong. We have the best employees in the world and blah, blah, blah....". Less than six months after that advertising campaign Zenith closed down and set up their operations principally in Reynosa, Tamaulipas. Main reason? They were truthful. About 40% of the reason was for wage differences and 60% was because of better quality work, quicker training time, and labour unions that had been set free from government control dating back to the 1920s.
None of this is really the absolute reason for this submission to the OROG community. It is actually to point out that the NAFTA agreement has been damned and kicked around by every demagogue group imaginable....especially labour unions. All of that is bilge. Red China is the only serious abuser of trade and copyright and level field understandings....even Viet Nam complies with 95% of its quality and copyright promises.
Almost all Americans and almost all Mexicans and Canadians have benefitted in concrete terms due to our three way free trade agreement. Our trade with the two partners with only 160 million people essentially dwarfs the amount of trade with the "Great Dragon Monster" with 1,300 million people. Check the graphs.
Check this....at the Toyota Plant in San Antonio, Republic of Texas. Do you all want the UAW or do you want to continue with an on-campus employee association? Overwhelming majority declares in favour of the employee association. In the maquiladoras in Mexico, the overwhelming majority of employees prefer employee associations, White Unions, and the like over the old once government required and sponsored Confederacion de Trabajadores Mexicanos (Confederation of Mexican Labourers - (CTM), once one-third of the government party...the Jurassic Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).
Free people must, of necessity, hate labour unions in these days. When they stopped being Artesan Masters' Guilds they began to lose social, cultural, and economic value for the common man.
One last thing is that the figures of visits, shopping, and short vacation stays (15 days or less), daily purchases by Mexicans and Americans on each other's side of the border, as in tourism or shopping, are not included in these figures....but it amounts to about 1,000,000,000 USD per day. Just this one figure dwarfs all the cartels put together by 100 times over.
THE SINGLE BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THIS NEW TRADE DEAL NEGOTIATED BY OBAMA IS THAT IT WAS APPARENTLY WRITTEN BY VALERIE JARRETT IN A CLOSET IN SOME CRACKHOUSE IN BALTIMORE. NO ONE KNOWS PRECISELY WHAT WAS IN THE OPUS. LIKE THE OBAMA SOCIALISED MEDICINE INTIATIVE (OSMI), WE SHALL HAVE TO VOTE FOR IT IN ORDER TO FIND OUT WHAT IS IN IT. HOW MANY DEALY-WEALIES ARE IN THE MIX THAT WERE NEGOTIATED BY THE CLINTON CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY PROGRAMME (CCCP)? WE MIGHT NEVER KNOW.
Please review these above figures. Remember that the stats represent only one-third of a year.....and they are fairly accurate. Once again thanks you for your time, patience, and patronage.
