Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Surprise!

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Many of you were no doubt expecting one of those thoughtful, articulate, content heavy and well organized columns that CSTMS puts up on Wednesday. Well neener, neener, neener, I got Wednesdays now.

I don't know what these are going to be yet. When I first started doing OTs, I decided to eschew current events because:

West Coast -- anything really cool will be covered by the time I hear of it
Frequent camping, travel, and road trips -- I need to write and queue up well in advance.
That led to the evolving formats of my Monday and Sunday posts, but one of those is enough, I think. Among other things, I've never been a big fan of structure and formalism. It is nice, useful and efficient to have and use templates but it is still self-imposed regimentation.

I considered "WTF Wednesdays", covering some of the week's multitudinous WTF events, but, as above, travel and such, plus structure. Also maybe Wonton Wednesdays for discussing noodles and such, but that's still structure and alliteration is overrated anyway, so I decided to go free form, damn, there it is again. Alliteration sneaks into my work and brain even when I avidly try to actively avoid alliteration. I also contemplated just doing something on the evolution of my frame of reference to be titled Inside the Asylum just to ring a change on what has gone before, but realized that I don't have decades in which to do and redo it.

Ok, before I bore you further, I should take cognizance of the fact that it is morning, at least here in California, and, as an old school Californian, I give you:

OK, everybody awake yet?

Before I veer off on some date related tangent, I thought that I'd toss out a tiny bit of food for thought, something to consider when you have nothing better to do, and something that might lead to a new idle time pastime.

Once there was a proliferation of purported self help books on vocabulary building. Usually, when all was said and done they consisted of a daily word of the day, learn it and use 3 times in ordinary conversation, often given for xmas or back to school presents, and for the rest of the day everybody in town struggled to work ennui or fellatio or somesuch into their conversations. The idea was to appear erudite and profound and thereby enhance your employability and earnings potential, or at least get your GED. There was, nonetheless, the kernal of a good idea hidden in this phenomena, obscured by the seeming random choice of words, learning things by learning words.

Were I to toss out a list of words and phrases from almost any art or discipline, after some number of words, most folks could probably eventually identify the discipline or family of disciplines from which they come. For example, asset, deferred asset, liability, balance sheet, earnings, indirect cost, period cost, debit, credit, wasting asset, cost-of-sales, depreciation, SAS, FASB, LIFO, mark-to-market, etc. would eventually lead most folks to say "accounting". Similarly, force, mass, acceleration, gravity, electrons, photons, hadrons, quarks, quanta, centrepital force, momentum, torque, planck's constant, Newton's laws, relativity and such leads us to "physics". There is, I would like to suggest, something of a perverse obverse. If one learns the full, comprehensive, detailed meaning of every term and concept in a discipline, one will understand and know that discipline.

Think about how you learn and how knowledge evolves. At some young point you discern that the red apple, red ball, red triangle, red dress and red lollipop all have one thing in common, and that common thing must be what red means. If you go down one road you eventually learn about hue, tint, value, saturation, shade, tone, warm and cool colors, complementary colors and all that. Another road leads to a chunk of the electro magnetic spectrum between 625 and 740 nanometers in the frequency range of 400 to 480 terahertz, and even further that it is the color corresponding to radiation from a certain temperature black body, or the color of steel heated to somewhere in the range of around 550 to 900 degrees centigrade. Each drib of knowledge about "red" is also a drib or knowledge about reality.

As we discovered and learned the world, we formulated ideas and concepts with which to understand, analyze and communicate it. We used words to stand for those ideas and concepts. Myself and some of my childhood friends were, in our early teens, sent to sit in a room for an hour a day where we were told things like "force is mass times acceleration". That's not what force is, everybody grokked force, it is pulling and pushing and lifting and that, f=ma tells us how it is computed or measured, and how it relate to acceleration, oh year, like put the pedal all the way down, and mass, a bit less clear, not weight but what makes things weigh. Really gravity is a force and that is why stuff weighs, things way out in space don't weigh anything because no gravity. Later you learn how and why that is wrong, but it is a good start. Velocity is distance divided by time, and velocity is also acceleration times time and you tie a bunch of stuff together. But wait, isn't that speed? Ah, with a vector, it has a direction, oh oh, here comes momentum, conservation thereof and Newton's laws, and angular momentum to boot. Later, calculus really ties that group together. We were told and shown for there were demonstrations and experiments. As one learned more and more, it took two forms, new terms, ideas or concepts, and refinements and broader and deeper understanding of the ones already learned. Looking back, what it was, was vocabulary. We were learning the language of physics, especially if you treat equations as vocabulary, which you might as well do since most have names. Shit like acceleration, mass, torque and all that have to be grokked independently of learning the vocabulary, though it helps.

Arguably, if you have the fullest possible understanding of each and every term in the physics vocabulary, you will know physics. Chemistry? Same same. An idea that may or may not be worth worth exploring, if nothing more. I mean, like, what is a Red Shift? YOu could look it up, and a deep dive into that subject might (or might not) reveal a great deal. I guarantee that time dilation or frame dragging will take you on a ride.

We actually have a somewhat easy time of this because we speak English:

Meanwhile, what is the relationship between the "Coriolis Force" and the L.A. Dodgers' sweep of the Yankees in the '63 world series? Be specific.

OK, today is a somewhat odd day for me to start a new series. This is a special day in Mexico, moreso in some parts than in others. The U.S. started a war with Mexico in order to steal some territory. The US army was a hodge podge of draftees, those enlisted and or conned into it, those bribed to take the place of draftees, and many who were outright shanghied. Many were citizens, many weren't, it didn't matter. The US troops often behaved abominably, raping (including nuns) and pillaging (including missions, monestaries, and convents). Some of the soldiery, largely non-citizen immigrants of Irish descent, decided that they were clearly on the wrong side and defected to go fight for Mexico. They were El Batallon de San Patricio and did a bang up job of fighting being largely the source of the toughest battles the US forces faced. US Grant claimed that Churubusco was the severest battle in "the Valley of Mexico", a battle the US won. In the aftermath of that battle, the San Patricios who didn't die in the battle, minus a few who escaped, were hung as traitors by the US Army in a mass hanging on September 12. On September 12 Mexico celebarates and honors Los San Patricios, in many places with bagpipes no less. As an anti-imperialist old school California of predominantly Irish descent, I do too.

There is a really cool album by Ry Cooder and the Chieftans with folks from one or more bandas titled San Patricio but which appears to be largely blocked on You Tube in the US. However, for some reason the following track isn't blocked.

This is the Mexican Banda de gaitas del Batallon de San Patricio out of Churubusco, who celebrate on September 12, August 20 (Battle of Churrubusco), St. Pat's Day, and every Sunday at the rebuilt Convent of Churubusco.

And, for grins:

Picture is public domain: By John Patrick O'Riley (Brevet Major) - The Flag Book of the United States by Whitney Smith; Page 272 ("Other American Flags") March 1976; William Morrow & Co; Edition: Revised; ISBN-10: 0688029779; ISBN-13: 978-0688029777 https://www.amazon.com/Flag-Book-United-States/dp/0688029779This W3C-unspecified vector image was created with Inkscape., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17322346

So there we go compadres. The thread is open and the floor is yours. Whazzup?

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Makes this a real holiday! Going out for a Guinness and burrito later. First I have to vote. It's primary day in Rhode Island and I'm running! Interesting side note from Intercept about our governor race...

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/10/matt-brown-gina-raimondo-democratic-...

Very much enjoy the randomness of your OT, thanks!

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enhydra lutris's picture

@QMS
for reading. Have a great burrito and beer. My wife and I generally have Negra Modelo with our Mexican food, especially if dining out, but I can see Guiness. Glad you enjoyed the column and glad you found it with the tags all screwed up. Gotta fix my template before I do that again.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

smiley7's picture

@QMS

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enhydra lutris's picture

@smiley7
great day.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Buenos dias, I didn't find you under the Open Thread menu. Maybe 'cause I'm browser hopping it is chaotic and kinda funny on this end. Sad to see Mozilla jump the shark, it was inevitable. My Get Firefox button is the biggest one. oh well Menlo Park, keep flushing.

Who needs batteries: pumped storage ‘lake battery’ planned for Baja California

“Mexico,” he told me, “is the Saudi Arabia of solar energy. It has one of the biggest solar resources in the world and someday it could be all solar. Right now they are planning to put in almost three gigawatts of solar, which is enough for say 20 million people and one of the solar farms is already up and running 700 megawatts. A megawatt is enough energy to power 4,000 homes in Mexico.

Now, remember... huh! I is learning muchos factos todayos. Thanks for physics links and that latin gibberish guy made me cry from laughing so hard. silly silly silly. I am trying to not think about elephants.

Now, remember, the northern Baja grid is tied to California in the U.S.A: they are actually part of the California market. So we can market Mexican power to California.

Lake storage sounds interesting.

Richard Gresham is a member of Ramm Power Group, which has found an ideal site for a PHES facility at Cañon Cascada in the Rumorosa area of Baja California, just 12 kilometers south of the U.S. border. “Rumorosa,” says Gresham, “is situated 1,200 meters above sea level and at the bottom of the mountain, just off from the town, you go to minus five meters.

Nothing in between? I don't know.
---
Here’s what you need to know about Ramm Power Group

Our preliminary permit application to the Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) for the Sacaton Energy Storage Project has been approved. The project is for a 150 megawatt closed-loop pumped storage facility and 100 megawatt solar plant. Both are located at an existing open pit mine for the lower reservoir and an adjacent waste-rock dump for the upper reservoir.

Nothing says clean energy like an open pit mine. I guess that is considered remediation, what say ye?

peace

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enhydra lutris's picture

@eyo
reading it. I screwed up the tags. After I swapped days with CSTMS, I copied chunks of my Monday template and put in a line at the bottom for tags, labeled "TAGS:". Sure enough, I posted the whole damn line, starting with "TAGS: Open Thread", all one "tag" and hence wrong.

Glad you enjoyed the column. Try not to think of Elephants, hah. That's rally good news about the Baja solar facility, I think. I especially like the idea that they're not tearing up prisine turf for it like they do and plan to do here, but are using a site that's already trashed for at least a chunk of it.

I pretty much have FF back, though the recovery lost me a lot of the tags that I keep perpetually open. God only knows what was in some of them, but, at lest some was stuff to incorporate in OTs here. Ah well. Still having a lot of teething problems after the upgrade. Chrome decided I was a new user and is still screwing with me too. It's a long sorry tale having to do with my default e-mail address having been changed by the provider a year or so ago and rippling through every app I use and own.

Have a good one.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris thanks and LOL! you just made me think of a way Mexico can pay for Trump's Wall, just build it with solar panels why not?

30 feet tall and 30 feet wide, from Baja all the way through Texas.
Build The Solar Wall!
heh

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divineorder's picture

@eyo

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Raggedy Ann's picture

A wide open OT? Cool!
A word of the day OT? Cool!

I usually stop by. I would use a word of the day. In fact, I used to belong to dictionary.com’s word of the day and would send out a sentence to a co-worker of mine - making fun of the administration creatively using the word. It was always good for a laugh.

Enjoy your day! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

enhydra lutris's picture

@Raggedy Ann
a weekly "word of the day", because this is still evolving, and "free form" would sort of counter any "weekly whatever" feature, but one never knows. I already have them queued up through 10/03 for personal reasons, but there might be some new words buried in them all the same. I like your idea of trying out new termnology by finding creative ways to to make fun of the administration, a viable exercise for any administration in this country, heh.

Have a good one.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

divineorder's picture

Reading your OT. Funny stuff, thanks. We are avid followers of Evening Blues and that is heavy duty, nice to consume a bit lighter fare.

I am of TX Irish ancestry but had not heard of that incursion into Mexico and the amazing celebration!

We had barely got back from CA/Zambia/South Africa/Slovenia/Croatia/Venice trip, visited Docs and relatives in Austin/Houstin, then fled the 109 degree temps and came back to Santa Fe. Almost immediately started prepping for road trip to Grand Teton Yellowstone. Kayaked, hiked, wolf watched, good stuff. Got down in 40s in our camper most nights, smoke hid peaks on some days .

Now Looking foward to being in one place for several months, getting back into our exercise and yoga classes, volunteer work, etc here in Santa Fe.

Have a good Wednesday all.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

enhydra lutris's picture

@divineorder
enjoy the column. So, stationary for a bit, that must be quite a change from your constant change of venues. I envy you two, especially since my wife and I really loved Kenya, Costa Rica, Belize, Panama, Ecuador and like that, and your travels always take me back.

Enjoy your routine and have a great day, both of you.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Here is a link to an interesting bio on him.
Johnny Cash Bio link
I've been watching re-runs of his late 60's TV show on Sunday nights.
He had an impressive array of musical guests on every show.
Here are a couple of examples:

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@jbob

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enhydra lutris's picture

@jbob
time, but have found and enjoyed many a you tube snipped from those shows, including the ones you posted of Dylan and Derek and the Dominos while browsing around looking for material for my OTs and just browsing. A lot of good stuff there, maybe some day I need to take the time to just search on Johnny Cash Show.

Thanks for reading and for adding those videos.

Have a great day.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/8726468-181/growers-try-carbon-farmin...

The world’s farmers must feed a human population that will reach 10 billion in the next three decades, but they also may be asked to help combat climate change by putting more carbon into the soil than they take out of it.

As an example, Jackson Family Wines is running a five-year experiment to try to increase the carbon held in its soils at a Russian River vineyard and a group of advocates of climate-smart farming toured the area on Tuesday. The Jackson winery, the county’s largest vintner, and the Sonoma Resource Conservation District received a $100,000 state grant to conduct the research on a 22-acre section of vineyard, said Julien Gervreau, the company’s director of sustainability.

Jackson Family Wines are big donors around here. It could be worse, but not much.

The invitation-only gathering here was one of many smaller events held in conjunction with the global summit, which runs through Friday at the Moscone Center. With the governor as a co-chair, the summit’s 4,000 attendees are expected to include former Vice President Al Gore, astronaut Mae Jemison, actor Alex Baldwin, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson.

Bam! "gathering" sounds so innocuous. Tell me how much wealth that big club has accrued since The PowerPoint(TM) Presentation paralyzed every brain? Apple products are still made in Chinese factories as far as I know, wassup with that Albert Gore? Who pumped all that CO2 in to the atmosphere for twenty years after you gave up? Are you still dragging around a MacBook and chatting on your iDevice? Made with slave labor, slave hours, slave wages. U.S. customers can't even replace a battery in some products, they must upgrade the whole assembly. wtf are you still on their board? PU

do or do not - there is no try

San Francisco hosts global climate summit — will it make a difference?

The event at Moscone Center, dubbed the “Global Climate Action Summit,” is something of a swan song for outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown. He leaves office in January, having led California to major gains in renewable energy and cuts in greenhouse gas emissions — all amid a backdrop of record drought, floods and massive wildfires that brought the issue into stark focus.

Alviso Canyon methane leak cancelled a whole year of "cuts" in other areas. California is stall fracking crazy.
Thousands of New Oil Wells Placed Next to Homes and Schools

Most Oil Wells Approved Under Jerry Brown in Low Income Areas, Communities of Color
Thousands of New Oil Wells Placed Next to Homes and Schools

Despite California’s image as a “green” and “progressive” leader, there has been a massive expansion of oil and gas drilling in the state under Governor Jerry Brown. The state’s Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources approved 21,397 new wells between Jan. 1, 2011 and April 14, 2018, according to a new analysis from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). The total number of wells includes the hundreds of offshore wells approved under the Brown administration.

“Of the 16,554 of those wells with available geographic information, 76 percent are located in communities with above-average poverty rates for California, while 67 percent are located in communities of color,” said CBD in a press release. Thousands of wells operate dangerously close to homes and schools in vulnerable communities.

http://globalclimateactionsummit.org/

good luck

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enhydra lutris's picture

@eyo
as well as plenty to think about.

Over the years the Jackson group gobbled up a lot of small wineries that I liked, mostly they left the operations alone, so maybe it was good as it kept them going when they arguably might have failed, I dunno. It did always drive me crazy because it changed availability.

I've never owned any apple products, never will. Increasing the carbon in the soils is good for the soils and the crops as well as the atmosphere and climate, but not sure how easy it is to do with vineyards. There should be something there. Every year they burn that year's prunings, which should be pyrolized and used as biochar, but how to get it into the soil at the right depth and all that where you have permanent plantings?

Ah well.

Thanks again.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

This morning at NC: If You Read This Book, It’ll Make You a Radical: A Conversation with Thomas Frank

His answer to the final question:

The answer is understanding experts not as individual geniuses but as members of a class. This is the great missing link in all of our talk about expertise. Experts aren’t just experts: They are members of a class. And they act like a class. They have loyalty to one another; they have a disdain for others, people who aren’t like them, who they perceive as being lower than them, and there’s this whole hierarchy of status that they are at the pinnacle of.

And once you understand this, then everything falls into place! So why did they let the Wall Street bankers off the hook? Because these people were them. These people are their peers. Why did they refuse to do what obviously needed to be done with the health care system? Because they didn’t want to do that to their friends in Big Pharma. Why didn’t Obama get tough with Google and Facebook? They obviously have this kind of scary monopoly power that we haven’t seen in a long time. Instead, he brought them into the White House, he identified with them. Again, it’s the same thing. Once you understand this, you say: Wait a minute — so the Democratic Party is a vehicle of this particular social class! It all makes sense. And all of a sudden all of these screw-ups [sic] make sense. And, you know, all of their rhetoric makes sense. And the way they treat working class people makes sense. And they way they treat so many other demographic groups makes sense — all of the old-time elements of the Democratic Party: unions, minorities, et cetera. They all get to ride in back. It’s the professionals — you know, the professional class — that sits up front and has its hands on the steering wheel.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@PhilK
quotation. My only quibble would be with the single word "experts". It should, imho, be in scare quotes, especially as to economists, banksters and the like.

Thanks a ton and have a great day.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

lotlizard's picture

@PhilK  
only makes working class people identify with him all the more . . .

Trump may have all the money in the world, it doesn’t matter — working class folk just know that the same Kool Kidz and Mean Girls (elites, professionals, “the experts”) who look down on them, also look down on him. So, he’s their guy.

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magiamma's picture

A lot of Germans came over to Mexico to work in the copper mines. Influenced their music. There were some mines in Batopilas way down in one of the canyons of the Barrancas del Cubre. Donkeys, mules? had to carry the copper up, crazy far up. Poor things.

No bagpipes though Smile

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Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation

Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook

enhydra lutris's picture

@magiamma
cool music, including a few conversations with Chris Strachwitz of Arhoolie, I have stumbled across the migration of Germans into Tejas and Mexico, and their influence on the music, the brass, the accordion, though they are not the only source of either, and the oom pah band echoes scattered throughout the Mexican folk genres from mariachi to the string bands to conjunto and tha bandas. It is a wonderful thing that it happened, because the result is really good music.

Have a good day.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

TheOtherMaven's picture

@enhydra lutris

an adaptation of German sauerbraten. Have no idea if it's true, but it makes a good story. (Might possibly explain why chili is best when made with leftover pot roast, though.)

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Azazello's picture

@TheOtherMaven
Chili con Carne is of Mexican origin. It's a version of Chile Colorado only the Texans put in too much cumin.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

enhydra lutris's picture

@TheOtherMaven
"information", if information it be. Whatever, it is a good tale, that I will try to keep in mind whenever chili is under discussion or, better yet, on my menu schedule.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Azazello's picture

Good Morning e.l.
Contested Ground is the title of an essay I've been meaning to write for years and just never got around to it. My understanding of the Mexican War has evolved. Did the big, bad US imperialists steal innocent Mexico's land ? That's the common understanding and, certainly, every Mexican kid is taught that in school. If they learn nothing else, they learn that "the US stole our land". But it ain't that simple. We might wonder, how was it Mexico's land ? Can a country claim land that it does not occupy ? What about the Native Americans, wasn't it actually their land ? They usually get left out of the story.
So some explorers "discover" the Western Hemisphere. The exploration was financed by the King of Spain in return for the "Royal Fifth", i.e. 20% of everything the conquistadors could loot. The King claims the land for his own and convinces the other crowned heads of Europe and the Pope that his claim is valid. Here is what Spain claimed:

Now just a damned minute, we might say, how could all that possibly be a legitimate claim ?
What about all the people who already lived there, did they all agree that their land actually belonged to the King of Spain ?
So they conquered the Aztec Empire and occupied Mexico City. They began moving north and south from there, conquering the native inhabitants and occupying the territory.
These claims are a little more valid since they had a physical presence and a colonial government. Possession, as they say, is 9/10 of the law.
Fast forward to 1821. After a 10-year struggle, Mexico achieves its independence. The Spanish had already taken all the gold and silver they could and maintaining overseas possessions was getting expensive. They had conquered as far north as Santa Fe in New Mexico. In the Sonoran Desert, Tucson was as far north as they got. They had the chain of missions and presidios on the California coast but the Californios, so far from Mexico City, had evolved their own culture and some of them were clamoring for independence.
The new Mexican government, bankrupt after its long struggle, would now try to defend the land claims that they had inherited from their colonial masters.
Enter the Native Americans. Here's where it gets interesting. The Comanches, who had been driven south into Tejas by the Sioux, were raiding northern Mexico with impunity. Mexican settlers were actually being driven off "their" land by the Comanches and Apaches during the 1830s and 40s. The Mexican government was having great difficulty holding on to their claims in the north. So by the time we get to the Mexican War there were actually three claimants involved, not just the Mexicans and the Gringos. The Manifest Destiny folks, seeing that the Mexicans were vulnerable, were emboldened to grab those lands that were so weakly defended. If the Mexicans couldn't conquer the "savages" of North America, maybe the US could.
We still argue about this stuff in the Southwest, as I'm sure you know, and I find myself saying, it ain't that simple. Don't look for heroes and villains in history because there are no good guys and there are no bad guys. It was contested ground.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

enhydra lutris's picture

@Azazello
might guess, I am fully in agreement and accord with all you say. My first sympathies are with the indios, all of them. It is not that I think the Spanish/Mexicans were so wonderful, but the US so totally out of hand (ab initio, from all that I can see). OTOH, people are people, as opposed to governments.

An old, close friend of me, of "mexican descent" and raised in the fields of SoCal and the central valley used to bristle and get argumentative upon hearing the word "hispanic". He argued that, no matter how much his compadres hated and despised the term, all but a very few Mexicans and other Central and South Americans were essentially nothing other than indios. Has every conqustadore spent all of his waking hours procreating, the percentage of Spanish DNA in the average Mexican would still be negligible.

In that sense, the dust-ups between the indians and the Mexicans, especially the peasantry, was quasi inter-familial, just like the dust-ups between the Comanches and the Sioux. The gringos, however, were another matter, the latest arrivals with no connection to the land at all, nor to the original inhabitants, which most Mexicans could claim.

The Spanish claims were ludicrous, though those of all invaders, of course, were, it was all a matter of degree. We tend to forget that legitimacy comes from the consent of the governed, or occupied, as the case may be, especially as to long established states. But from that perspective, I think that Mexico had the edge in the southwest vis-a-vis the US, excluding California, which, as you pointed out, was getting restless and uppity, and if not to be returned to the indians, surely should have belonged to the Californios and some of the splinter governments in formation, not the US.

Thanks again for a fabulous post and have a great day.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Azazello's picture

@enhydra lutris
and ready to come forth at your mention of the San Patricios, is that some of us just had a similar argument a week or so ago at a political meeting. The president of the organization is Tohono O'odham and the guest speaker was a Mexican woman representing the Abolish ICE movement. I agreed, we all did, abolish ICE or a least stop the Pima County Sheriff's Office from co-operating with them. But the historical stuff came up, "after all, you stole our land, this used to be Mexico." So I say, "not the Gadsden Purchase, the US bought it fair and square from Mexican Generalissimo Santa Anna." Someone asks, "how did Mexico get the land ?" Someone else, "they stole it from the Tohono O'odham." It was not a productive discussion, it just degenerated when we started talking about the history. It does no good to look for good guys and bad guys in the past. It doesn't really help us address the issues we face today. Here's one of my old pieces from TOP. Who are the heroes and who are the villains in this one ? April 30, 1871 - The Camp Grant Massacre

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

enhydra lutris's picture

@Azazello
when I tipped & Rec'd it too.;-)

Your story about the meeting indirectly highlights one real source of the trouble, of many if not most such troubles, borders and nation state boundaries. IIRC, the Tohono O'odham land is on both sides of the border, which cuts through it. The whole idea of whether it belongs to the US or to Mexico is a bit laughable, were it not so devastating, debilitsting and dangerous to the Tohono O'odham and others who venture into their territory.

Years ago I went to Kenya, the Kenya - Tanzania border, where not part of a river, cannot be discerned. The two nations have agreed, at least informally, that the Masai belong to no nation, but are a nomadic people not needing passports to wander where they will.

That example should be adopted much more widely, imho. I remember a time when, except for US customs, parts of the Mexican border were really no big deal. So when we look back we find nation states, not people, seeking to own territory, newcomers lacking a prior connection to the places they seek to own. Imperialism, as it were, and in the case of Spain,abetted by a Papal demand for more converts or corpses, as the case may be. "Nobody's right if everybody's wrong", but the people, the "little people" always pay a high price when some nation state decides that it must expand its borders to include new lands, territories and persons never previously connected to it.

Have a good one and thanks for the follow-up.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

smiley7's picture

free-flowing thoughts of yours as they are music to our ears.

Been on phone and email all morning with friends dealing with hurricane; with it's latest turn, not expecting much impact here in the High Country except rain; but, i've family and friends with homes on the coast in NC, and down to Charelston, SC.

All i've talked with have boarded up, removed valuables and headed inland; doesn't look good for Wilmington and the Myrtle beach area of my youth. Mom sold our beach place several years ago, so I've no property to worry about.

I do worry about those not able to vacate the coastal area and the damage this storm will do to an inland area of mostly poor people in Eastern NC. And the hog farms will flood spreading it's detriments all over that area.

And it is important to note that our misguided NC general assembly voted to outlaw beach communities from using climate change, sea-level-rise science in planning and development; greedy idiots.

Back to your OT, a mixed pup here: Irish, Welsh, Scottish, French and Cherokee.

Have enjoyed and written extensively for and about our Grandfather Mountain annual Scottish Games; a pleasure to be there in early morning or at sunset when the pipes catch the high mountain breezes in majestic grandeur.

Very enjoyable OT; looking forward to more. Cheers to having a good day.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@smiley7
secondary effects.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

mhagle's picture

@smiley7

I was going to ask if you would be affected. My dad's youngest sister married a doctor in York, SC (she was a nurse). They had six kids, so I have lots of cousins in the area. Thinking about them and you. Glad you will be in higher ground.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

mhagle's picture

Enjoyed your essay and the comments!

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

enhydra lutris's picture

@mhagle

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

I really expected Arrow to pop in and answer this question:

Meanwhile, what is the relationship between the "Coriolis Force" and the L.A. Dodgers' sweep of the Yankees in the '63 world series? Be specific.

,
but since I blew the tags, she probably saw no morning OT and went about other things.

The answer is Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, two of baseball's all-time top 25 curveball pitchers, Sandy being numero uno, on the same team.

You're welcome.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

smiley7's picture

@enhydra lutris

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

looking forward to seeing which theme you decide on, especially, since by November, I expect a change in schedule, and an opportunity to more regularly participate in the morning OTs. A freeform format can have its strengths.

One thing, though--hope you don't change the format of your numbers/data-driven OT. Always enjoy them, even if I mostly read, and rec 'em.

Wink

Blue Onyx

"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong."
~~W. R. Purche

“At the end of the day, people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”
~~Maya Angelou

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

enhydra lutris's picture

@Unabashed Liberal
to keep Mondays somewhat the same, while also trying to dodge undue repetitiveness. I think I may have hit on something, time will tell.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --