I. Back from San Antonio. The above is a photo of a señorita painted on the side of a small building on the outskirts of the German section of Old San Antonio during the King William Fair last Saturday.
From what I saw, Frederick Law Olmstead's notes from his 1854 trip to San Antonio still hold true to a large extent. (Olmstead was one of the architects of Central Park in Manhattan, the campus of what is now Michigan State University, and numerous other landscape projects). The following is a telling excerpt from his A Journey through Texas, or, a Saddle Trip on the Southwestern Frontier (1857):
We have no city, except, perhaps, New Orleans, that can vie, in point of the picturesque interest that attaches to odd and antiquated foreignness, with San Antonio. Its jumble of races, costumes, languages and buildings; its religious ruins, holding to an antiquity, for us, indistinct enough to breed an unaccustomed solemnity.
From the bridge we enter Commerce street, the narrow principal thoroughfare, and here are American houses, and the triple nationalities break out into the most amusing display, till we reach Main Plaza. The sauntering Mexicans prevail on the pavements, but the bearded Germans and the sallow Yankees furnish their proportion. The signs are German by all odds, and perhaps the houses, trim-built, with pink window-blinds. The American dwellings stand back, with galleries and jalousies and a garden picket-fence against the walk, or rise, next door, in three-story brick to respectable city fronts. The Mexican buildings are stronger than those we saw before, but still of all sorts, and now put to all sorts of new uses . . .
II. The latest flu outbreak, apparently centered in Mexico, reminds me of the Spanish Influenza of 1918. Hopefully it won't be anything like the 1918 pandemic, of course. In 1918, one of my great grandfathers died in his thirties because of that flu. Like the dude pictured above (courtesy of the US National Archives), he was a letter carrier. His daughter (my grandmother) was only four but she survived and is now 95.
Today's Rune: Flow.
7 comments:
whoa... i just posted a bit about the 1918 flu, and now i read this..
amazing
Yes, the flu outbreak is a bit worrisome. I've been worried, as many have, about a serious epidemic for some years.
Oy vay, my Grandpa has been talking non stop about this flu. He's tottally waiting for something to go down
Eric, you inspire me to visit San Antone. Remember when we used to get the flu for 24 hours and that was it? We seem to have no immunities or are just big wimps!
with a three-pronged...?
no flu shot's gonna prevent someone from catching this bug. hand-washing like you got OCD may help.
Just like one Jordanian blogger said, the oil and travel industry is suffering, the pharmaceutical companies are having a great time and we don't know what to. This flu is really scarry
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