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To the Republic for which they stood

May 30, 2011 by Sue

My illustration for Memorial Day is a cross-stitch done, we are 90% sure, by my grandmother (known to me as “Mamma”). We know she did needlework, and I’ve seen other items she stitched on linen. This seems to me like it’s a kit or at least a pattern, and it resembles a kit from Bucilla, though lettering, layout, etc. differ. That kit, I’m guessing from Bucilla’s history, probably came out in the late ’60s or perhaps around the 1976 Bicentennial. I’d love to find out.

But as far as my own Mamma is concerned, she had plenty of reason to stitch it in the 1940s or 1950s, too, because her husband — my Pappa — was among the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and she was among the millions more who waited nervously at home for news. My Pappa came home, to a long life, love and family, so he is not numbered among those for whom today is specifically set aside.

So I post this in memory of his friends who did not come home, and their fellow service members, men and women, who did not come home in all our wars and actions, in peacetime, in training for combat, from jungles and beaches and motor pools and hospitals and dirt roads and blown-out towns, in ships and planes and helicopters and trucks, in the air, on land and sea.

thank you all.

Posted in Photos | Leave a Comment »

Nightfall at the Alamo, March 5: The tweets so far

March 6, 2011 by Sue

For the 175th anniversary of Texas’ independence, I decided to walk myself, day by day, through the events of the Alamo siege and battle in quick bursts on Twitter, a medium uniquely suited for short, timely updates.

Sometimes I was even able to tweet an event at the time of day it actually happened, which drew some shivers from readers (they were kind enough to tell me) as, for example, when a norther blew in after dark on Feb. 25, dropping the mild weather to nearly freezing.

My good friend and very funny coworker Ponch Garcia provided color commentary, which I’m also recording below. He tweets as @bourbonitis, a name derived from an Alejandro Escovedo song.

Stick around to see if I actually get up at 5 tomorrow morning to tweet the final assault! (Sources and Twitter-jargon help are at the bottom.)

Feb. 23

  • 175 years ago today: Santa Anna’s army reaches #Alamo, sends in a demand that Texians surrender. Travis answers with a single cannon shot.
  • RT @bourbonitis Santa Anna replies, “¡Ay caramba!”
  • At 3 p.m., Travis dispatches letter asking town of Gonzales to send provisions & troops. He & Bowie know #Alamo can’t hold out with 150 men.

Feb. 24

  • 175 years ago today: 24 hrs into #Alamo siege. Bowie falls ill; Travis takes full command. Weather: warm/cloudy, 100% chance of cannonballs.
  • Travis writes second call for backup, the famous letter stating #Alamo has not lost a man and he’ll fight to the death: http://bit.ly/hwDC4C
  • RT @bourbonitis: Little-known fact: In his famous letter, Travis dotted his “i’s” with smiley faces.

Feb. 25

  • 175 yrs ago today: Fannin leaves Goliad with 300 troops to aid #Alamo- a mission he never completes. Inside walls, water, firewood run low
  • Fannin barely gets on way to #Alamo before turning back, thus seriously reducing number of Texas high schools that will be named for him.
  • Although, put yourself in Fannin’s shoes with this summary of his predicament: Scroll down to “Fannin’s value” http://bit.ly/igIt0T #Alamo
  • 175 yrs ago today: Night falls at the #Alamo on 3rd day of siege. A norther blows in, and the “summer heat” drops to just above freezing.

Feb. 26

  • 175 yrs ago today: Day 4 of siege. Some #Alamo defenders slip outside walls for water/firewood, engaging in small battles w/surrounding army

Feb. 27

  • 175 yrs ago today: 5th day of siege. Sentries sleeping at their posts. Small group of fighters sets off from Gonzales to aid #Alamo troops.
  • The Gonzales Ranging Company has 32 men. They will have to get through a thousand Mexican soldiers just to reach the #Alamo.

Feb. 28

  • 175 years ago today: #Alamo still under continual bombardment, but morale inside is high: Not a single defender has been killed.
  • Davy Crockett part of why morale is high; prob. didn’t play fiddle, but “was seen at all points, animating the men to do their duty.”-Travis
  • Travis has written to Col. Fannin and Gen. Houston, confidently expecting they will send troops. None have come. He knows #Alamo will fall.
  • RT @bourbonitis: Davy Crockett was known to craft his hat into a motivational puppet named “Scrappy Cappy.”
  • From sickbed, Bowie looks at calendar, realizes 1836 is leap yr so thank God Sue will only tweet 12, but men still must fight all 13 days.

March 1

  • 175 yrs ago today: At 3 a.m. the Gonzales reinforcements (32 men) slip through the Mexican army; #Alamo gates swing open and they dash in
  • The #Alamo’s 12-pound cannon fires twice, and one shot strikes the house Santa Anna is using as headquarters (Photo – http://bit.ly/dUKY1R)
  • Rumors fly inside the #Alamo that Fannin is coming to their aid with 400 troops.

March 2

  • 175 yrs ago today: Delegates at Washington-on-the-Brazos issue Texas’ declaration of independence. (Broadside: http://bit.ly/gMcoP9 )
  • Day 9 of #Alamo siege: Troops unaware of declaration, but Travis is eager for it so “world will understand… what we are fighting for.”
  • 175 yrs ago today: Texas newspapers begin printing Travis’ plea for #Alamo reinforcements; printed “broadsides” of the letter also circulate
  • RT @bourbonitis Also in that day’s newspapers was the last “Garfield” strip that was actually funny.
  • Present day :) — The original Texas declaration of independence is on display right now in Austin at Lorenzo de Zavala State Archives

March 3

  • 175 yrs ago today: At 11 a.m. Bonham returns to #Alamo with news that aid is coming (it isn’t). Santa Anna, however, gets 1,000 more troops.
  • In 10 days of siege, no #Alamo defenders have been killed. Legend says this or March 5 is the day Travis draws his line in the sand.
  • One of Travis’ last letters, a brief note to a friend named David Ayers, begins, “Take care of my little boy.” #Alamo
  • Sunset: Frenchman named Rose either flees #Alamo & lives to be 65 http://bit.ly/f1d6GQ Or never existed http://bit.ly/enaNZH . Take yer pick

March 4

  • 175 yrs ago today: Santa Anna calls afternoon meeting with his officers to tell them he plans to overrun the #Alamo.
  • Some officers want to simply wait for the big artillery to arrive and blast the walls, rather than lose troops scaling the walls.

March 5

  • Day [12] of #Alamo siege: I am developing dorky crush on Lt Col Travis
  • Srsly though. OK, he’s overdramatic, a bit of a dandy, but while he was not eager to die for cause, he was ready to. End result: Texas.
  • 175 yrs ago today: At noon, Santa Anna tells his staff the assault on the #Alamo will be tomorrow morning.
  • RT @bourbonitis Officers suggest trying to drive them out of the #Alamo with conjunto versions of Guns N’ Roses songs.
  • Last courier leaves #Alamo: James Allen, a college kid with a fast horse, carrying yet another plea for help to Fannin. Guess how that goes.
  • 175 yrs ago today: At midnight, about 1,800 of Santa Anna’s troops begin moving quietly into place for the final assault on the #Alamo.

—

Photos at Alamo, March 4, 2011

As I happened to be in San Antonio on Friday on another matter, I was unable to stop myself from driving down to the Alamo in the afternoon!

Twitter jargon

For non-Twitter initiates: An @ usually precedes Twitter usernames; putting # before a word allows people to search for all tweets with that label in them; and RT means retweet, as when I’m forwarding Ponch’s comments to my readers. A link that begins with bit.ly is just a shortened version of a long web address.

Sources

I leaned most heavily on Randy Roberts and James S. Olson’s 2001 book, “A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory.” Also, Stephen L. Hardin’s “Texian Iliad”; the Handbook of Texas; the official Alamo web site; this transcription of Travis’ letters; and this chronology.

Posted in History, Ramblings, Texas | Leave a Comment »

Aggie ring under a digital microscope

February 19, 2011 by Sue

Out here visiting my folks, and we got to playing with Dad’s USB digital microscope. Here’s what the numbers on a 10K Aggie ring really look like after seventeen years of daily wear… (I got it when I was a junior, whooooop):

Fightin’ Texas Aggie Class of 1994!

Posted in Photos | 2 Comments »

You’re going to need to know about the brain-eating amoebas

February 12, 2011 by Sue

When you move to Austin, right after everybody tells you how much cooler Austin was X years ago, everybody tells you that if you don’t have allergies now, you’ll get them in X years.

Here is what you do about that. It is kinda gross, but you’ll live.

When you get desperate enough, and you’ve taken all the allergy meds you legally can, and a medieval blacksmith is still refereeing a step show in your skull, get a neti pot/plastic bottle and some saline mix. Lots of these are for sale out there, and lots of instructions too, so I’ll just give some advice my friends and family have confessed to, after we all confessed to doing this.

  • The saline packets are cheap at pharmacies, but you can mix your own (see below).
  • Don’t save time by using cold water. And really, go slow, and pour like they say to do. Squirting a bottle of cold salt up your snoot is unpleasant enough to deter you from trying this a second time. Don’t get deterred.
  • You can expect a small amount of relief right away. If your head clogs up again later, head back to the sink and repeat. And repeat.
  • In fact, there is sometimes a big benefit to repeating it several times. Yuck warning: On occasions when the headache was so awful it caused the person to get up and do this like six times during the night just to get any tiny bit of relief… a big clod of unnamed crud got loosened by all the washing and actually came out. Which resulted in a HUGE relief, and breathing, which then allowed sleeping to happen. I apologize for even describing this, but it’s happened more than once to family members whom I shall not name. Your mileage may vary.
  • You’re going to need to know about the brain-eating amoebas. My friend Mary Ann wrote ‘em up a while back. Bottom line: Use distilled water. (See below for one way to warm up the water.)

Saline mix

One part baking soda, one part kosher salt. For example, a cup of soda plus a cup of salt. Stir them up good, and Mom says maybe even whirl them in the blender real quick, which makes them more powdery and quick-dissolving. Mom history factoid: Kosher salt doesn’t have anti-caking ingredients, which apparently were the big advantage of Morton’s Salt back when they started using the slogan “When it rains, it pours.” Which is why the girl on the label is carrying an umbrella while salt rains down on her, which never made any sense at all to me till Mom said that just now.

Mom’s neat trick for warming the water

Since you are not using warm tap water because of the amoebas, and since you are probably not doing this in the kitchen because your family would disown you, here is one way to warm the water in the bathroom. If you are using a plastic bottle for your neti pot, that is.

  • Get one of your big plastic cups from the football concession stand. Or as I call it, the Aggie wedding registry.
  • While you’re in the shower, catch some hot water in the football cup.
  • Float your neti bottle (filled with water/saline) in the warm cup of tap water.
  • Test the saline solution’s temperature (on your wrist, baby-bottle-fashion) because it warms up pretty fast, and it can warm up too much.
  • When roommates ask what the eff you are doing, tell ‘em it’s a backwoods bain-marie.

Why do we have sinuses anyway? Is it a mammal thing? I never see deer with headaches.

Anyway, I hope this helps a few folks — please leave more tips or nice notes to my Mom in the comments if you want! :)

Posted in Workaround Sue | Leave a Comment »

A quick New Year’s how-to: Convert pierced earrings to clip

December 31, 2010 by Sue

Ladies like me who don’t have pierced ears but occasionally like to wear big sparkly earrings, I am about to share something I wish I’d known 20 years ago.

Look at the earrings you’re thinking of buying. If the main part of the earring dangles from a small ring, you’re in business. Like these dime-store lovelies:

When you are sure your earrings can be altered, buy them. Then hie yourself down to the craft store and buy, for a few dollars:

  • A cheap pair of round-nose jewelry pliers
  • A packet of cheap earring clip-backs in gold or silver-toned base metal (see note at bottom for real gold and silver)
  • A packet of open jump rings, medium-size, say 3.5 mm, in the same metal color

You might not need the jump rings, if the clip-backs you find have an open ring, like the one below. You need jump rings only if you’re hooking together two solid rings, or if you need an extra ring to make the front side of the earring dangle in the right direction (think of how a chain’s links alternate — straight, sideways, straight, sideways). But jump rings are cheap, so you might grab them anyway.

This is an open ring that is very conveniently integrated into the clip-back:

Use the pliers to get rid of the pierced part of your earrings. Here, I just had to open a ring on the French wire:

Next, attach the earring to the back. The metal is pretty easy to break with pliers, so be gentle. Here, all I had to do was hook the solid ring onto the open ring. Make sure the dangly part of your dime-store earring faces forward before you close the open ring with pliers.

You are done! Behold your new clip earrings.

Tools: Read about the different kinds of jewelry pliers here. If you’re gonna make jewelry, you might need expensive ones or several kinds. But if all you’re going to do is repair or alter a few earrings, I think a cheap pair of roundies will do you fine.

Real gold or silver: There is absolutely no reason why you can’t do this with real gold and silver jewelry. (Except that, as you already know, clip earrings fall off your ears much more easily than pierced.) The same pliers will work fine, and the craft store might have gold-filled or sterling parts right there in the beading section. But clip-backs in precious metals are much harder to find than that, usually.

Try sources such as Monsterslayer.com (the name’s a reference to a Navajo origin myth), Artbeads.com and Jewelrysupply.com. Shipping is often free. The parts will cost several dollars more — I find that a single sterling clip-back can cost $8 — and be careful when ordering because these expensive items are in fact sometimes sold singly, not in pairs. Ya don’t want to eagerly rip open your package to find you only have one earring back.

Posted in Crafty, Workaround Sue | Leave a Comment »

Bono and Ali are the sweetest thing

October 23, 2010 by Sue

Somehow, though I’ve loved U2 for decades, I’ve only just learned that U2′s song “The Sweetest Thing” (lyrics here) was written by Bono as an apology to his wife, Ali, for missing her birthday back when the band was in recording sessions for “The Joshua Tree” (first album I ever bought on CD).

Originally the B-side to “Where the Streets Have No Name,” the song was redone in 1998 for a new compilation, and they gave it a lovely video that seems to involve about half the city of Dublin. (Scroll down a bit to watch it.)

Ali is the lady who climbs into the carriage at the start of the video, putting on a suitably annoyed face, and during the ride down Fitzwilliam Place, various characters pop up to help Bono “apologize,” including Irish pop group Boyzone chiming in on the “Oh oh oh”s, Irish boxer Steve Collins, the “Massive Heeds” (dancers with giant fiberglass U2 heads from a Galway performance group), the Artane Boys Band, part of the cast of “Riverdance,” the rest of U2 appearing just in time for the Edge’s pretty guitar part, Chippendale dancers on a firetruck and some unnamed pilots assisting with the “blue skies ahead” line.

Thankfully, she had long since forgiven him (one hopes!), and she asked both in 1987 and 1998 for the song’s proceeds to go to charity.

Subtly, Bono is miming some of the actions in the song (e.g. “my love, she throws me like a rubber ball” at the opening; taking off his trademark shades to show the blue eyes Ali loves at “blue-eyed boy to brown-eyed girl,” etc.)

Ah, and that’s Bono’s big brother, Dublin restaurateur Norman Hewson, popping in as the chef at the end. (I don’t know about the dog. Anyone?)

Posted in Music, Ramblings | Leave a Comment »

The youngest photo ever seen of Mark Twain

October 9, 2010 by Sue

When Sam Clemens was 13, he left school and became a printer’s apprentice.

This image, a daguerreotype, was made in late 1850, right around his 15th birthday. The next year, he would start work at his brother Orion’s newspaper, the Hannibal Courier.

 

University of California Press; thisismarktwain.com

 

No mustache. No thought of a white suit. A smooth face with what might be freckles (his hair would have been red), the narrowed right eye adding an air of skepticism, as it would in his later portraits. (The photo is reversed – more on that in a minute.)

And if one is hesitant to seem fanciful by saying the boy’s eyes are windows into a clever and original mind, the literal proof is at the bottom of the image, where his hands clutch printer’s letters spelling out his own name: “SAM.”

He’s holding a compositor’s stick in which he has “set the letters in reverse so that they would read correctly when the daguerreotype produced a mirror image,” explains the Steamboat Times, which also says the hat is a printer’s cap.

Though his “splendid shock of red hair” is white in our collective consciousness, he was not only a redhead himself but surrounded all his life by red hair (his mother, his daughter), as well as cats, and so may be uniquely qualified to observe, as he did, that

“While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.”

The photo comes from Thisismarktwain.com, a web site built by the University of California Press in advance of its release of the unexpurgated version of his autobiography — he didn’t want it to be published until 100 years after his death, which came in 1910. So it’s time! The first volume will come out Nov. 15.

Posted in Photos, Ramblings | Leave a Comment »

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