Sunday, March 25, 2012
Does the End of the World Feature its Own Tee-Shirt?
Mack
Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Mhall46184@aol.com
Does the End of the
World Feature its Own Tee-Shirt?
When
we were young our parents taught us that we are all fallen beings, frail,
suffering, endeavoring to do our best for God and for others on this weary
planet, and again and again falling short.
We should always, then, be kind to each other, because we are all on the
same pilgrimage.
Surely,
though, we can make an exception for the people waiting for spaceships to come
and rescue them.
Yes,
fellow Muggles, the world is coming to an end yet again.
This
go-‘round the world is coming to an end in France, in December, so there’s
plenty of time to secure a passport (“Sir…sir, you’ll need to take off the
Phrygian helmet for your photograph.”) and beg for spare change for a one-way
ticket to eternal vegan bliss on another planet or parallel realm of existential
being-ness or something.
The
free-to-be-you-and-me lot are termite-swarming to the little town of Bugarach
in the French Pyrenees. They are
persuaded by The Voices that on the 21st of December a secret alien
spaceship hidden within a nearby mountain is going to appear (that must be one
heck of a garage-door opener), take all the soap-free granola-eaters aboard,
and transport them to a world safe from any form of work or thought.
The
first clue that something could be very, very wrong might come when the
in-flight movie is The Hunger Games
and the airline magazine is entitled To
Serve Man.
The
sort of people who think that milk comes from a store and that gasoline is
created by polar bear fairies waving magic wands are repeatedly preparing for
the end of the world. They are the
ear-budded non-readers who can manipulate the dials on little plastic boxes
made in China but who cannot split kindling, tie a knot, cook a simple meal,
wash clothes, set a table, change the oil, scan a line of iambic pentameter,
plow a furrow, get a job, or test an idea according to the Hegelian dialectic.
They
are like, y’know, spiritual, and, like stuff, and they know, like, stuff about vibrant,
esoteric, Meso-american magnetic waves, like, alignment of energies that are
like, y’know, totally eschatological, and, like, stuff.
Worse,
they play guitars.
The
Neo-Hale-Boppians are said to climb their holy mountain naked, which wouldn’t
be particularly pleasant for the fellow in the, um, rear, toking on his
reality-denying drug of choice and wondering about all the full moons in the
sky above him.
Jean-Pierre
Delord, the mayor of Bugarach, has communicated to Paris his fears of a mass suicide,
which is the sort of thing that can happen when geriatric hippies who spent
their formative years learning conversational Klingon come to realize that
Captain Kirk is a Canadian.
Those
who are prone to conspiracy theories might suspect M. Delord and his fellow
townsfolk of dreaming up the space-ship-hidden-in-a-mountain thing for the sake
of balancing the budget and re-paving the streets. For the next few months all those visiting,
um, mystics will want to beam up tons of fair trade coffee, hemp sandals,
vegetarian meals, and of course the official event tee-shirt: “Some Old People
Who Might or Might Not be my Parents Went to the End of the World and all They
Got me was this Lousy, Made-in-Indonesia Tee.”
There
might be a booth with folks offering to sell visitors gold because the dollar is
about to collapse, and then a booth next door offering to buy gold with dollars
so that the purchaser can be rich enough to buy a Mooncluck’s cup of coffee,
and next to that a booth selling Rich Radio Guy’s latest book about how The
World as We Know It is about to end, and help him build his big estate in
Florida in which he plans to live for a long, long time.
Whew.
On
the 22nd of December the faithful, disappointed at being alive, will
climb down from their rocks and their roofs, and beg the government of France ("Pardon-moi, senor, moi c'est est stupido, ja.") for
a plane ticket back to their earthly homes.
Before
a month has passed, another discount-store mystic leader will recalculate and
re-conjure on his weewee board or something, and propose a new date for the end
of the world, your credit card welcome, and the lemmings will again line up
obediently.
The
nonreader in our culture…wants to
believe…The world is so vastly confusing and baffling to him that he feels
there has to be some simple answer to
everything that troubles him. And so,
our of pure emptiness, he will eagerly embrace spiritualism, yoga, a banana diet,
or some…strange amalgam…masquerading under invented semiscientific terms, and
sold to the beginner at a nice profit.
- John D. MacDonald, Reading for Survival
-30-
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Presidio La Bahia
Mack
Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Soldiers’
Chapel
You
could spend a day at Presidio La Bahia outside Goliad and never come across the
fine old Irish name of O’Conner, and that’s pretty much how the O’Conner family
wants it. And yet if not for Kathryn
O’Connor there wouldn’t be much to see.
Presidio
La Bahia was established by Spain along the Gulf Coast in 1721, and after two
removes was permanently located in 1749 on a hill along the Rio San Antonio near
present-day Goliad.
The
Presidio was a royal fortress and administrative center. Its chapel, Nuestra Senora de Loreto de la
Bahia, served the soldiers and administration, their families, and the town. The Franciscan mission to the First Nations
peoples, Espiritu Sancto, was situated down the road and across the river
because, although church parade was mandatory, soldiers were still considered a
bad influence.
The
chapel was the first structure built, and except for five years in the early
Republic has served the faithful as a church since 1749.
The
fortress, although miles from the Gulf, was the center of coastal defense
against the French. Later, when Spain
was one of the first friends of the USA, soldiers from La Bahia went into
action against the British.
Economically,
La Bahia was the beginning of the Texas cattle industry. Mission herds and private herds were rounded
up here for cattle drives to other settlements, guarded by soldiers of the
local command.
According
to the pamphlet, La Bahia was involved in six revolutions and many raids, and
has been a fortress for the armies of Spain, Mexico, and Texas.
La
Bahia is, unfortunately, most famous for the mass murder of Colonel James
Fannin and some 350 of his men on Palm Sunday, 1836 on the orders of a
particularly nasty little man. What is
less known is that many of the Mexican soldiers and their wives, including
Francisca Alvarez, a true mother of Texas, managed to conceal some of the
Texians, and saved others by listing them, apparently some falsely, as doctors
and medical attendants so that they would be spared take care of the many
Mexican wounded from both the Alamo and Coleto Creek battles.
With
independence, La Bahia was no longer an economic and administrative center, and
although the chapel was still in use the little fortress became a source of
building materials, and by the 1960s little was left.
Then
came Mrs. Kathryn O’Connor, who inspired and funded a historically accurate
restoration of the fort through the research and work of San Augustine architect
Raiford Stripling and using mostly local labor and artists.
A
correspondent who once worked for the family remarks on their generosity and
industry. Each generation of young
O’Connors begins in the family businesses with a broom and a mop, not an
attitude, and while their contributions to numerous causes and charities are
great, of modesty they do not put their name on things.
La
Bahia and the area around it include the fortress and its chapel, the excellent
state reconstruction of Mission Espiritu Sancto, the site of the Battle of
Coleto Creek, the mass grave and memorial to the murdered soldiers, the
birthplace of General Ignacio Zaragoza, who defeated the French at the Battle
of Puebla on 5 May (hence Cinco de Mayo)1862, and the eminently shoppable town
of Goliad centered on its beautiful courthouse.
The three murder sites are all on private property, and perhaps that
peaceful isolation is best.
The
docents on site are very welcoming, and one of them, Jeremy, allowed an old man
to help raise the Goliad Flag one morning.
At
the State of Texas Parks sites the staffs are equally helpful, and the
springtime beauty of the woods and fields around the mission are a naturalist’s
happiest dream.
Useful
sites:
The
wars and raids have passed, and governments come and go, but on every Sunday a
priest of the Diocese of Victoria still offers Mass under the same roof raised
for the purpose in 1749.
A small red flame…relit before the…doors of
a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they
saw put out; that flame burns again…It could not have been lit but for the
builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew
among the old stones.
-Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
-30-
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Austin, Texas: The Capital of Preciousness
Mack
Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Austin, the Capital
of Preciousness
The
democratically-elected city council of Austin, Texas has inhaled the pixie
dust. Effective in March of 2013,
retailers who provide customers with a sack for their purchases will be in
violation of the awful majesty of the law and the dilated pupils of the Eyes of
Texas.
And
not a moment too soon, I say, for who, while visiting Austin, has not feared
being stalked by a drug-crazed grocery sack in the parking garage late at
night?
Grocery
sacks are increasingly notorious for their home invasions, and don’t even get
me started about the drunken grocery sacks staggering around 6th
Street.
Grocery
sacks gang up at intersections and at the entrances to stores holding out
buckets and demanding money “for the missions.”
You
can see grocery sacks lurking in dark alleys making drug deals, and more
grocery sacks luring children into lives of crime.
Grocery
sacks hang out in the parks playing loud music and smoking cigarettes and
stomping the flowers with their carbon feet-prints.
There are some who presume to defend the capitalist grocery sack. The humble grocery sack, they say, can be used
over and over (in AustinSpeak, “post-consumer recycling”). A grocery sack can cover the hot-dish for the
church luncheon. A grocery sack makes a
pretty good Halloween mask. The more
Occupy-ish among us can use a grocery sack for a facial disguise when holding
up a stop-and-rob in order to liberate The People’s goods from the belly of the
capitalist beast. A smaller sack can be
popped loudly in order to annoy big sister – maybe the Big Sisters on the
Austin City Roost. Paper bags carry
groceries, used dishes from a garage sale, good used clothes to Goodwill, ‘jammies
and a toothbrush for a sleepover, and magazines and books for the nursing
home.
And
in the end, the brave little grocery sack, its life of humble service at an
end, is easily composted with full military honors. If, for some reason, a beastly Republican
disposes of it improperly, the remains of the grocery sack simply fly away into
the country, there to biodegrade back into the natural world from whence it
came, into the Samsara of life and death, to be reborn as a majestic oak tree
or as a happy little petunia.
Well,
comrade, that’s reactionary thinking.
Grocery sacks are evil; the Austin city council acting in concert with
the will of The People and of the gods has decreed their banishment into the
desert. So let it be written; so let it
be done. Carry those carrots home in
your pocket, you fascist.
Someone’s
sister-in-law, and you know her, the unemployable thirty-something with the
jet-pilot glasses and a master’s degree in fashion design or hospitality, is to
be granted a $2 million dollar budget to persuade The People that nuisance and
humiliation are somehow good for them.
Thus, subjects of Austin will not only be punished for possession of an
illegal grocery sack, they will have to pay for the propaganda – um, teachable
moment.
“Keep
Austin Weird?” But Austin no longer
possesses a weird to be kept; Austin is now simply another dull, grey
provincial town of fearful subjects trudging their grim, grocery-bagless streets
with heads bowed in passive obedience to their heavy-handed soviet.
-30-
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