A Full Moon over New Mexico

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Full Moon over New Mexico

Part of the fascination with the San Antonio chain of missions (Nuestra Senora de la Purisma Concepcion de Acuna, San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, San Juan Capistrano, San Francisco de la Espada, and the very little that remains of San Antonio de Valero) is that they are old. Very few buildings or utilities in Texas are old or ever will be – our interstate highways are under constant repair, and the cinder-block and plywood construction now popular for public and private buildings is only slightly more durable than canvas. Texas is a land of campers who after seven changes of national governments (the United States twice) within only two centuries still marvel at anything that suggests permanence.

New Mexico features many more structures (I didn’t count ‘em) from the three-hundred-year Spanish era, but New Mexicans shouldn’t be smug about them since Texas was all the land east of the Rio Grande, all the way into Colorado. Some say that most of New Mexico and Colorado are still part of Texas. Most of New Mexico and Colorado say not. And that’s okay; Canada still can’t sort out the border between Quebec and Labrador.

An interesting feature of a city in New Mexico, a city which is Spanish in origin, is the plaza, an open area bounded by the parish church, shops, private houses, and whatever it is that Spain calls government house. This openness is important – you can see from one side of the plaza to the other. The space is open for social events, informal gatherings, elections, horse-trading, community meetings, liturgical processions, and mustering the local militia.

In the English part of the Americas there is the courthouse square, but the space is not open because the courthouse is in the middle of it, and you cannot see across. It is as if a courthouse square is not a place for people to meet as part of the social and political life of a city, but rather a place to be ruled from.

History, as Hilaire Belloc writes, is predicated on geography, and that would include architectural geography. On the east side of the Neches, an English town (let us call it Percivalville) places its church, businesses, and houses outside the square, and plops the courthouse in the middle. Across the river, a Spanish town (let us call it San Whatever) also features a church, government house, private houses, and businesses, but none of them is planted in the center of the plaza.

Why?

The plaza in Taos is still pretty much hometown, with a mix of dime stores, fine art galleries, junk art galleries, an elegant hotel, and a good chance of a parking spot except on weekends. There are a few shade trees and a bandstand, benches, a beautiful war memorial, and an big, ugly statue of a stunningly evil man, and why that is there eludes me. Often there are street vendors and bands, and the plaza is great fun.

The plaza in Santa Fe has been to finishing school and gives itself airs. The art galleries are Art-With-a-Capital-A, and the area is a little over-produced, close to Disney-fication. If Taos is where poor old hippies go to desiccate, Santa Fe is where rich old hippies go to desiccate. There is even a Santa Fe old-lady look, grey hair done up in a bun beneath Sergeant Garcia’s (cf Disney’s Zorro) flat-brimmed sombrero.

One of the really good things about Santa Fe’s Plaza is the art, especially the First Nations folks who sell jewelry, pottery, and fabrics from the porch of the Governor’s Palace. I don’t know if there is a city ordinance or if old Anglo dudes trying to peddle their derivative bling of suspect origins would be subject to some very old-fashioned rough justice, but you can’t go wrong in buying at the Governor’s Palace.

The new (1870) cathedral is up the street a block past many nice shops and neat little cafes, and the elegant French architecture and the newer but equally restrained Spanish reredos and Stations of the Cross work well together. The integrity of the small area before the beautiful bronze doors has recently been compromised by a lumpish statue of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, who deserves much better. The artist has portrayed (undoubtedly “from the heart”) The Lily of the Mohawks as a Sumo wrestler daubed with automobile paint in primary colors. You might expect this sort of amateur mashup in Taos, but not in Santa Fe.

But simply being in the center of at least 600 years of history is its own joy, and there is much genuine art in the area, including an excellent bronze of Saint Francis with a wolf. Not a bunny, but a wolf. Now that’s the stuff, artistically and theologically!

Another difference between the plaza in Taos and the plaza in Santa Fe is the nature of parking a car. When a driver parks near the plaza in Santa Fe, everyone exits the car, opens a door or the boot, and bends over, as if they were having a prayer meeting with heads inside the car while presenting a display of full moons to the street and sidewalk. Upon returning to the car, the driver and passengers repeat this curious liturgy.

Perhaps they are Moonies.

But one should not make fun; this may be a quaint local custom. In 1941 Ansel Adams took a famous photograph of a full moon over Hernandez, and so perhaps people in Santa Fe try in some way to replicate this artistic experience through creative parking.

New Mexico is an ancient land of rare beauty, more cultural diversity than the United Nations, and a deep history of the comings and goings of peoples and their works and arts from perhaps the beginning of humankind. To visit New Mexico is not only a joy, it is an honor.

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Honor the Dead - Buy Alamo Chewing Gum

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Honor the Dead – Buy Alamo Chewing Gum

Al, Harold, and Jim on KLVI Radio built an interesting conversation one morning last week on the selling of history.  The immediate topic was a legal dispute over some notes Martin Luther King made for a speech, and which were saved by his late secretary.  The question before a court is this – who owns those notes?

Who owns history?

And who owns the Alamo?

San Antonio de Valero was one of five Catholic missions along the San Antonio River, and what is left of it is best known for the 1836 battle which was a disaster for all concerned.  General-President Santa Anna betrayed the honor and bravery of the Mexican Army by ordering the murder of prisoners his soldiers risked their lives to save.  

The State of Texas, the General Land Office, and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas honor the dead of that terrible night by featuring a gift shop (http://store.thealamo.org/) at the Alamo, which is as tasteless as a gift shop at Bergen-Belsen or among the graves at Normandy. 

Pictures of the Alamo are used to sell motorcars and hamburgers so that a real Texan can drive his as-advertised-in-front-of-the-Alamo pickup truck to the as-advertised-in-front-of-the-Alamo cinder-block fast-foodery for an as-advertised-in-front-of-the-Alamo hamburger and french fries (which aren’t really from France or the Alamo).

Would ya like a refillable Anne Frank coffee mug with your order?

Many of us have known a beautiful image, in a hospital named for her, of kind and gentle Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, also known as Saint Elizabeth of Thuringen, to be blocked by display tables and exhibits.  Who has the authority to say yes or no to that?

Who owns history?

Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, a Marine and by repute a good man and a stand-tall Texan, spoke quite reasonably at a gun-rights rally within the Alamo last Saturday.

Commissioner Patterson, a sturdy advocate of freedom, also has a problem – should he have been there at all?  As Texas’ current defender of the Alamo, what will he do to maintain the integrity of a historical site whose ground is blessed with the blood of heroes?  The Alamo itself, although sometimes used for tellyvision commercials, has always been free from political demonstrations

A worse problem for Commissioner Patterson is that Alex Jones, haunted by Masonic-Jewish-Illuminati-NWO-Bildergerg-Weather Weapons conspiracies, also spoke – or, rather, emitted words at the same event.  If the Commissioner was ambushed (metaphorically, of course) in the matter, no blame can attach to him.  If, however, he knew he would be sharing the occasion with a man who embarrasses even Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, then he needs to withdraw his tinfoil hat from the political ring and himself to his Bunker of Solitude.

Lee Spencer White, president of the Alamo Defenders’ Descendants’ Association didn’t want this parody there.  She is against politics on site, maintaining, quite properly, that her group regards the Alamo as a family cemetery.

And, you know, there’s nothing that says family cemetery like a gift shop. 

Victoria Montgomery, spokeswoman for Open Carry Texas, argues that the history of the Alamo is predicated on politics, and that makes it a perfect place for a rally advocating personal freedom.

Both Ms. White and Ms. Montgomery make excellent points, but perhaps now the people of Texas should draw that line in the sand just like the one Colonel Travis may or may not have drawn:

The Alamo is sacred to the First Nations, to Spain, to Mexico, and to Texas.  The Alamo should be swept clean of made-in-China coonskin caps and of demonstrators; let the commerce and the look-at-me moments and filming for hamburger advertisements take place across the street, next to the Ghosts of the Alamo movin’ picture shows and fruit juice bars.

The Alamo began as a Christian church under the spiritual patronage of St. Anthony of Padua.  Unlike the other four San Antonio missions it will probably never be consecrated again as a church, but the theme remains – sacrifice and redemption.  As St. Thomas More might or might not have said, we have no windows to look into men’s souls, and so we must not presume to judge anyone who died on the walls of the Alamo; instead, we must remember our Christian obligation to respect them, “the dead with charity enclosed in clay,” as King Henry V might or might not have said. 

San Antonio is now a very large city, and for miles and miles in every direction people may buy, sell, and argue; what remains of the Alamo is such a tiny space that setting it aside as sacred ground where people will remove their made-in-China ball caps and be silent for a few minutes in the presence of a shared memory will do no harm to the State of Texas, the First Amendment to the American Constitution, or to cash registers.

Who owns history?  You do.  And so do the dead.

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