Category: Mexico

Please leave my friend Phil out of the ongoing Battle over the Alamo

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There we were, sitting beside each other. Phil and I. I’m talking about Phil Collins. But I just call him Phil now. Because I sat beside him for about one minute. As you can tell this is leading to one of celebrities’ worst curses: people who don’t know them writing about them.

2013 post on this blog following that year’s San Antonio Conservation Society Publication Awards

Okay. I admit it. Phil and I scarcely could be called friends. But someone needs to rise to his defense.

In Forget the Alamo, authors Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford lay bare major flaws of men many Texans have elevated to heroic heights for their roles at the Alamo. They also illuminate less-than-noble reasons Texians were revolting against Mexico, including the preservation of slavery. This has so angered some of Texas’ leaders that their rhetoric against the book has helped it skyrocket up the bestseller list.

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Postcard from Guanajuato, Mexico: Times call for pulling this holy card out of the deck

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Having spent the past week a stone’s throw away from Templo de San Roque in the heart of Guanajuato, it seemed imperative to discover more about the saint. He definitely falls into my category of “saintly stories nuns never taught me.”

Hard for a boy born with his breast emblazoned with a red birthmark in the form of a cross to avoid his calling. Following the death of both of his wealthy parents by the time he was 20, San Roque (1295-1327) (although “San” was not what Saint Roch, or Rock, was named until more than a century later) sold his inherited worldly goods and distributed the proceeds amongst the poor in his native home of Montpelier, France. Joining the Third Order of Saint Francis (Does this mean he was married?), he headed out to Italy with an eye to visit the tombs of the apostles.

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An Ostrich-Plumed Hat: Chapter Eighty-Seven

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Above, “Still Coming,” Lute Pease, Library of Congress

an ostrich-plumed hat

Begin with Chapter One ~ Return to Chapter Eighty-Six

Former Governor Thomas Mitchell Campbell, August 1916

“Our son Mitchell and I might as well have spent the past five months on the punitive expedition with General Pershing galloping around Mexico. General Pershing has enlisted motorized vehicles, even airplanes, yet his cavalry is no closer to ensnaring the elusive Pancho Villa than when they started. But we still would’ve accomplished more on that wild goose chase than we did on the campaign trail.”

“Thomas, that’s not true,” says Fannie. “Eight candidates splintered the vote. A pie can be cut only into so many pieces, and Doctor Brooks split the prohibition voters.”

“Even he received more votes than I.”

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