On approaching the end of one's time on this planet, plus Davy Crockett

In less than two weeks I will be celebrating hope to be celebrating the seventy-sixth anniversary of my first appearance on planet Earth, ye olde Terra Firma, third rock from the sun, and so on, which to date has been both ongoing and uninterrupted. It occurred in the city of Pawtucket in the county of Providence in the smallest of all of the fifty states, Rhode Island, in a house on Merrick Street with a Dr. Ronne attending. Doctors still made house calls in those dear, dead, almost-beyond-recall days of 1941, the demise of which practice, though perhaps understandable, is to be lamented.

I have reached the point in life where one recognizes the fact that one does not know whether one has another twenty years or another twenty minutes but that either scenario is possible. I suppose this is true at every single moment along the continuum of everyone's life, but the difference that comes with age, I think, is the recognizing part, the recognizing that one's time breathing in and breathing out has an actual, unavoidable, and rapidly approaching end point.

The mortality rate, friends, is one per person.

100%.

Everyone dies. No one is exempted.

On that happy note, what should we do? Eat, drink, and be merry? Pour out our secret sins in a tell-all confessional novel? Retreat to a cloistered monastery for prayer and contemplation? Earn as much money as we can and send it to televangelists? Invest in gold and silver? Work in a soup kitchen in the inner city? Hoard our treasures so that our heirs can either enjoy or sell them? Waste our substance in riotous living? Complain about the current state of affairs? Get right with God? Stock up on freeze-dried food and move to an underground shelter? Be kind to our neighbors? Binge-watch The Walking Dead? Go dancing?

So many choices. So little time.

In other news, today is the 181st anniversary of the fall of the Alamo.

Part Three of the Texas Triumvirate of Very Important Days has arrived

April 21st.

First of all, let me say “Happy Birthday!” to Jerry Ragsdale, a guy I used to work with at AT&T who hails from Conyers, Georgia, and whom I haven’t seen or talked to in about 15 years but whose birthday it indeed is today.

The Texas Triumvirate of Very Important Days (patent pending) is how I refer to March 2nd, March 6th, and April 21st.

March 2nd is Texas Independence Day. If you have to ask “Independence from what?” you are pathetic indeed and obviously weren’t paying any attention in History class. Independence from what? Why, Mexico, of course! Mexico! I say it a third time: Mexico!

March 6th is Alamo Day. Every living, breathing American in my day (perhaps it is no longer so) had at least heard of Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie.

And finally we come to April 21st. The Battle of San Jacinto. Revenge for March 6th, big-time. Dear to every Texan’s heart.

I posted about it in 2009 with a post entitled “Rules to live by: (1) Always post a sentry during the afternoon siesta; (2) Choose your underwear very carefully." and if you want all the gory magnificent details, just read it again.

Here are two more things that are dear to every Texan’s heart:






(Field of Texas bluebonnets; photo by bombay2austin on Flickr. Noncommercial use permitted with attribution)


That’s right. The Lone Star flag and a field of bluebonnets.

And you thought I was going to say George W. Bush and Willie Nelson.

I may have to turn in my credentials as a Texan

Yesterday was March 6th and I did not blog a single word about the fall of the Alamo, which occurred 177 years ago on March 6th, 1836.

I forgot to remember the Alamo!



And four days before that, on March 2nd, I did not blog a single word about Texas Independence Day, which is more important in Texas than the 4th of July.

The big three Texas Dates of Historic Significance (and thus blogging opportunities) are only two-thirds done for this year, however.

There is still the battle of San Jacinto on April 21st, when General Antonio López de Santa Anna got his comeuppance.

In addition, there is Juneteenth if you happen to be African-American, which I am not, not that there’s anything wrong with that.



I have heard it said that the Roman Catholic Church used to claim, “Give us a child until he is six, and he will be a Catholic for life.” I do not know whether that particular alleged boast is true. My mother, a non-practicing Jew, and my dad, a lapsed Methodist, were not religious when I was very young, so I never went to church or synagogue or anyplace else except the Pawtucket (Rhode Island) Day Nursery. When I was around five, I did visit the Woodlawn Baptist Church in Pawtucket a time or two with my dad. We didn’t own an automobile and Woodlawn was within walking distance of where we lived in the third-floor apartment of the house at 61 Larch Street.

In August of 1947, though, when I was six and a half, something momentous happened. We moved lock, stock, and barrel from Rhode Island to Texas.



The Catholics or anybody else may have you until you’re six if they like, but if Texas gets you when you’re six and a half, you’re pretty much doomed very fortunate indeed a Texan for the rest of your life, like it or not.

This is true even if you move away when you are 20 and hardly ever go back. I speak from personal experience. Even if you try to put Texas out of your mind, you cannot. I think it has something to do with bluebonnets.


(Field of Texas bluebonnets; photo by bombay2austin on Flickr. Noncommercial use permitted with attribution)

I know I'm getting old, but next year I simply must remember to remember the Alamo.

I can't help it; I was raised in Texas.

One hundred seventy-five years ago today, this place became hallowed ground:

(Copyrighted photo by Daniel Schwen)

You can read all about it -- probably more than you care to -- here.

And if you do, you will know who this woman is:

If anyone cares,...

...yesterday (March 2nd) was Texas Independence Day.

I grew up in Tarrant County, Texas (home of the Fort Worth stockyards) and studied Texas History during my senior year of high school.

Here is the text of the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico and the signatures of all the men who signed it on March 2, 1836, in the town of Washington-on-the-Brazos.

And here is a transcript of an event held by The Texian Legacy Association on March 2, 1998, in Austin, and a speech entitled “The Myth and Meaning of Texas Independence” given by Dr. Stephen L. Hardin, Professor of History at Victoria College in Victoria, Texas. Careful readers of this blog will recognize Victoria as the birthplace of the mother of Pat - An Arkansas Stamper.

I am not really a Texan. I moved there when I was six and moved away when I was twenty. Think how insufferable I would be if I were a native.

Unlike every other state that entered the Union after the original thirteen, Texas was never a U.S. territory. After declaring independence from Mexico, Texas existed as an independent nation, the Republic of Texas, for nine years. It received diplomatic recognition as a sovereign nation from both Great Britain and France, and entered the United States in 1845 by an annexation agreement.

Here’s a little-known fact: Texas was considered to be so large at the time it was annexed into the United States as the 28th state that it retained the right in the annexation agreement to divide itself into as many as five states at any time it desired. But no one has ever been willing to give up the Alamo.


Alaska, of course, covers twice as much area as Texas, but when Alaska became the 49th state in 1959, no provision was made for splitting Alaska into ten states. If such provision had been made, we might today have the following:












Come to think of it, we seem to have that anyway.

So now you know all about yesterday. But some of you may be asking, “What about today?” I will now tell you about today.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, is the first day of the rest of your life.

Remember the Alamo! (and other events)

Having grown up in Texas, I know that I know that I know (as Kathryn Kuhlman used to say) that today is the anniversary of the day in 1836 when William B. Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett (yes, that Davy Crockett), along with almost two hundred others, were killed at the Alamo in San Antonio by the much larger army of Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna. Texas had declared its independence from Mexico on March 2nd. Just fifty days later, on April 21st, Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna at San Jacinto, a place near the present-day city of Houston. A structure taller than the Washington Monument now stands there as a memorial to Houston's victory and Santa Anna's surrender. Both the Alamo and San Jacinto are "hallowed ground" to every Texan. Texas won its independence from Mexico, but not before suffering major losses at the Alamo and at Goliad. Later, after nine years as a sovereign nation, Texas joined the United States in 1845 as the 28th state. It was annexed directly into the Union without ever having been a territory, and part of the annexation agreement was that Texas could divide into as many as five states any time it wanted to. That option has never been seriously considered, however, because no Texan would ever want to give up the Alamo.

Today is also the day that will be known in our family as Ellie's Second MRI. Back in October 2006, her first MRI revealed that the rotator cuff in her left shoulder was torn, and that's how we came to know Dr. D., orthopaedic surgeon extraordinaire, who repaired it on the day before Halloween of that year. Last year was surgery-free at our house, but 2008 seems to have turned into The Year Of The Knee. Dr. D. replaced Ellie's right knee on January 7th and he is scheduled to replace her left knee on March 31st. But she injured her right shoulder somehow while pulling herself up in the hospital bed in January, and the pain has become worse. So today she is having another MRI in Marietta at one o'clock. We will not know the results until next Thursday.