México lindo y querido

An astonishing vid of a narco raid on Creel, Chih., a town up in the Sierra Tarahumara, a town with a rough reputation. It's jerky video, but you can tell what's going on, and it's nothing good. They're just having a good time tooting coke and killing people. Poor Mexico …

Amaryllis pic

Just wouldn't be spring without an amaryllis picture on the blog.

They're popping all over the place now … always a nice moment in the year.

The latest from Medicine Lodge

The Gyp Hill Premiere of Medicine Lodge, Kan., offers a likeable bit of writing on a local cemetery, drawing liberally on a journal published much earlier in the town: -

On March 4, 1887, The Chief reported:
On Thursday evening of last week a young man 19 years of age, named George Castine was shot by the postmaster, David Stewart, of Elm Mills. It is charged by the postmaster, that Castine was attempting to rob the office at the time of the shooting, and the circumstances surrounding the case, seem to bear him out in the charge. Young Castine died on Friday, from the effects of the wound and a coroner’s jury rendered a verdict of justifiable homicide. It is a sad affair and should be a warning, boys, that there is no safety except in honest, manly conduct.
This shooting caused an uproar that resulted in the arrest of George’s father and sister and a much debated subject of who was in the right and who was in the wrong.
George Castine is buried in the Highland Cemetery.

There's a lot more here, including a son of one of the original Siamese Twins and an ex-slave who prospered in the all-white Kansas town. Wandering around in newspapers is one of the joys of the Net.

Good obit

Paid obituaries are mostly dull recitations of imagined virtues of the deceased – how much she doted on her cat or how he loved sports – but occasionally one gets the flavor of the departed in a way that no staff-written obit could ever do. In illustration, I offer from the Chronicle the obit of Edward 'Coots' Matthews, half of the team of Boots and Coots, oil-well firefighters famous everywhere:

Upon his return home [after WWII], armed with the GI Bill, [Matthews] attended The University of Houston "for three days, until I found out how stupid I was." In truth, little money and no transportation sent him back into the work force. He opened a beer joint called "Cabin in the Pines" and he would tell you with great pride that he was the youngest person in the state of Texas to be issued a liquor license. While he was having a lot of fun, he was not making any money. In 1947, he sold his business and went to work for Halliburton. Coots worked for Halliburton for ten years as a roughneck, then cementer and finally a special tools operator. In 1957, Halliburton fired him over a dispute concerning his driving record. They said that he had wrecked seven cars in ten years, and they could no longer afford him. His version was that they worked him to death and he fell asleep at the wheel all seven times.

Read the rest here. Go on. It's worth the click. Edwards was a great American personality of a sort running short these days. It's a nice life and a nice piece of writing.

Shake, shake, shake Sonora

And Baja California, too. That would actually be Senora, not Sonora, nor señora

but no doubt some señoras were likewise shook up. A quake south of the line out there Baja California way is reported at 7.2 Richter magnitude, nothing against Chile's 8.8 of Feb, but nothing to sneeze at either. Here is a U.S. Geological Survey Web site with nice little squares you can click on to look at the various recent temblors in northern Mexico. Apparently no life lost, as that part of the country is sparsely populated mostly. [Later: Apparently a couple of people were killed, per late reports]. An earthquake will realign your thoughts on life's solidity. If the ground can move under you, nothing can be counted on. Been a lot of stuff going on this year out on the Ring of Fire around the Pacific.
I had a student whose family was caught in the big Mexico City quake in '85. She said her mother, a very pious woman, was praying aloud and the fervor of her prayer increased with the intensity of the shaking. My student said that finally her father shouted, "Carmen, quit praying! You're making it worse!"
Just threw that Beetlejuice video in because I love that movie, one of the world's perfect little things. [Later later - Got the Beetlejuice 'Shake Shake' vid. It's more fun than just the singing.]

Chaotic Mexico

Near-and-dear who sends me stuff sends this from the Austin American-Statesman to the effect that UT has asked exchange students in Northern Mexico to come home for their own safety.Read that story here.
In other chaotic news, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has called out state troops to guard the border after a rancher was apparently killed by a border-jumper just over the Arizona line. The bootheel of New Mexico is some pretty rugged territory and there's a lot of illegal crossing going on there and over to the Columbus/Palomas area. Remember that Columbus was the site of the famous Pancho Villa raid in 1916. That attack provoked the Punitive Expedition led by Black Jack Pershing. Mexicans like to nannyboo us because Pershing never caught Villa, but it's worth noting that the Centaur of the North was reduced to hiding in caves like an animal and never did anything much thereafter.
And from the Web site of the world's worst newspaper, a Dallas Morning News story on border fracases:

EL PASO – Texas law enforcement officials are bracing for a bloody weekend along the border, advising farmers to arm themselves as signs across northern Mexico point to a new escalation of violence after coordinated drug cartel attacks against the military this week.

Read all that story here. Just like the old frontier days, plowing with a musket across the plow handles in case the hostiles attack, except now I guess it'd be a Winchester behind the tractor seat.

Snicker

Headline in the Irish Independent online:
'Writer held after pot bust in Weed'
Really, the town is named Weed.