The Rogue States of Texas

 In 1836, after the loss at the Alamo, American settlers regrouped to drive the Mexican army under Santa Ana out, then established the independent Republic of Texas.  Two years later, Texas president Mirabeau Lamar was envisioning a western empire to rival the United States.  That proved to beyond their resources, and the republic joined the Union by annexation in 1845.  By 1861 they had changed course again, seceding to join the Confederacy.  

But there were several previous attempts to free Texas from Mexico, and the instigators were rascals all, whom Fess Parker would never have portrayed in a heroic film retelling.

The James Long Expedition flag

 

It starts in 1819, after the Adams-Onis Treaty between Spain and the U.S. defined the previously vague border of the Louisiana Purchase, ceding Florida to the latter and most of Texas to the former.  This did not suit Dr. James Long, a plantation owner from Vicksburg or other Mississippians at all.  He led an expedition of 300 men into Texas to declare a slave-holding republic independent of both nations.  But to no avail.  They had to soon surrender, Dr. Long being taken to Mexico City as a prisoner.  He was later shot by a guard.

Galveston rebel state's flag

With no higher ideals than those slavery proponents, French privateer Louis-Michel Aury set himself up as the ruler of Galveston Island, claiming to be a "republican," on the shaky authority of Mexican independence rebel Jose de Herrera who appointed Aury commissioner.  What he was actually about was, however, establishing a smuggling and piracy base under that   cover.   There was a skeleton government, but while he was away in 1817 pirate Jean Laffite moved  and Aury had to find a new occupatuion harassing the Spanish Empire around Florida.

After three years lobbying the Mexican government, another American planter, Haden Edwards,  secured a land grant in 1825 to bring settlers in and establish some going concerns.  What he really set about doing immediately was expelling the settlers already there, Spanish and American, in order to bring in slave-holding planters like himself.  Edwards along with his brother declared the Republic of Fredonia, raising its flag in Nacodoches.  His uprising did not last long after Steven Austin's Texans and a Mexican force arrived in 1827; Edwards fled back to Louisiana, his new state only lasting 40 days.

  
Fredonia's odd flag

  

As if all this were not absurd enough, Groucho Marx played Rufus T. Firefly, the president of the small, bankrupt country of Freedonia in the movie Duck Soup, which ends with a fruit fight.  Almost as crazy as what history records.

The Real El Dorado

 

                  

 No, not this one, but it is fabulous in a different sense.  We remember the Coronado  Expedition's search through the Southwest for the wealthy Seven Cities of Cibola, and DeSoto's likewise for precious metals to the east in North America.  The persistent legend of El Dorado brought Sir Walter Raleigh to Guiana in South America twice, with, similarly, no results.  In an age when the maps showed many imaginary lands, one of which was supposed to be inhabited by people whose heads protruded from their stomachs, there was a lot more belief than factual knowledge.  Sadly for the ill-fated plunderers, there was truly an El Dorado, but they missed it.  We would get lost, too, as the phrase really means "the golden one," not the name of a place.

It was far away and long ago (as all good stories should begin).  Conquistador Don Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada, conquerer of New Granada for the Spanish empire in South America, was said to have found so much gold in his searches through the forbidding interior that the pile in his Bogota courtyard was so high it could obscure a horse and rider behind it. But tales themselves grow ever taller with time and distance.

Don Quesada had heard from captured natives of the gold- and jewel- rich kingdom of the Muiscas, where the golden one himself ruled.  In 1536 he took an army of 800 to the plains and valleys of central Columbia to find Tisquesusa, the Zipa of Bagata (only 166 reached the end of the journey alive). The Muisca, speakers of the Chibcha language family, were numerous and advanced (considered one of the four such societies along with the Aztec, Maya and Inca), possessing salt mines, farms, skilled artisans and a thriving trade in gold and emeralds.  The Zipa was killed, his successor was boiled with burning fat, and their Sun Temple at Sogamoso was looted and burned.  Other than the rulers' ornaments and the contents of the temple, however, there was not a whole lot of gold, as most of it was beaten into paper-thin sheets for ceremonial uses.

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                                                      Reconstruction of the Sun Temple

They were successful in finding El Dorado, as it was Tisquesusa himself! Annually, he was covered in gold dust by his people before entering Lake Guatavita just to wash it off as an offering to its goddess.  This became the legend which traveled so far and wide.

                                                           Tisquesusa imagined

"And then you came with sword held high

You did not conquer, only die."

"Just Sayin' " Post No. 400: The Coolest

 

If you plan to motor West...

...You might find yourself at 5871 Hollister Avenue in front of the Mercury Lounge, the coolest bar in Goleta, California.  It's cozy and retro, filled with vintage Midcentury furniture and featuring an extensive beer list and fine local wines.  There's a pool table, live music, a new outdoor patio tucked in the back and even a little parking (that much sought-after amenity in Southern California).

The Mercury began its long run in 1957 as Gus' Cocktail Lounge, said to have been a real dive bar.  In 1995, new owners transformed it, and it's been a hit with nearby University of California Santa Barbara students and faculty ever since.  You're as likely to have a UCSB grad student serving you as an actor would be in Los Angeles.  The local residents are still fans, too, as in Gus' day.

Goleta is both a university town and a solidly small business and working class one.  Although the cachet and elegance of nearby Santa Barbara are lacking, the town exhibits easy charm and funkiness, epitomized by the Mercury.

You can visit, but you probably can't stay.  The median home listing price is around $840,000. How that works for students, cooks and auto parts counter employees, I can't figure.  But the area does have good schools (Katy Perry is an alum).

(Geography factoid: Although its name sounds made up (like "Nolita" or " Tribeca") goleta means schooner in Spanish.   A ship was wrecked at the mouth of the lagoon in the late 18th century, and was still visible for a long while; it even shows up on an 1840 map.)

  

There Is No Cure

 

                                           "I was born this way". --Lady Gaga

We will (half of us, anyway) be puzzled for a long time about what led such a large group of people to storm the Capitol on January 6, trash it, try to assassinate elected officials and cause a half dozen deaths.  This in spite of the fact that everything they were violently riled up about had been proven over and over not to be true. How could those believers in "we support our police" and "law and order" and the Constitution hypocritically make such a savage attack  on the police and try to stop Congress from carrying out its Constitutional duties?

A study in the U.K. showed that the amygdala, the evolutionarily early part of the human brain (also referred to as the reptile or lizard brain) is larger and more active in those with a conservative orientation than a liberal one.  In addition, the anterior cingulate cortex, the region associated with managing information, decision making, ethics and dealing with uncertainty is favored by people with a liberal personality. The left insula area, which is also larger in conservatives, is associated with an emotional sense of disgust or repellence.  One can guess this faculty was pretty essential for our distant ancestors, who had to learn to avoid bad smells caused by dangerous pathogens, and on a larger scale, social threats, such as almost all outsiders.  Counterintuitively, it seems larger amounts of grey matter in some brain areas indicate a less mature brain.  One that can rather easily be manipulated through an unrelenting focus on the negative and playing on the anxiety over perceived scarcity ("they're taking our jobs!") and an obsession with self-protection.  

So it looks like our political bent derives more from  DNA than from our environment.  Take a look at the life of the person pictured above, Eileen Garrett (1893 - 1970).  Her parents committed suicide when she was an infant, and her angry, unloving, abusive aunt had to take her in.  At age four Eileen, disassociating and escaping into her own world in order to survive, developed three imaginary companions who she said taught her to observe adults' tones and cadences of speech and interpret facial expressions.

 Things did not get better for her after a miserable childhood, unfortunately, as she had three marriages and lost three of her four children.   Later in life she became known as a psychic who channeled four distinct exotic personalities, speaking in their voices during a trance state.  Studied by several psychologists in the 1930s, Eileen came to realize these did not have an objective existence but rather came from her subconscious, and that her supposedly psychic predictions were no more accurate than guessing.  The point is that Mrs. Garrett, despite everything,  did not shatter and undergo a psychotic break like the January 6 mob, but had a saving balance between the higher-functioning right side of the brain (intuition, imagination and inspiration) and the complementary left side (reading, writing and arithmetic).  Had she been driven by a predisposition for the primitive reptilian brain area instead, Eileen would probably have become a serial killer rather than the successful writer, publisher and executive that she did.

But, "If you're dumb enough to fall for a conspiracy theory, you're dumb enough to fall for another."  -- Mark Evanier