Pearl Lois Bell (1916 - 2012)

(mexiadailynews.com) Pearl Lois Bell, 96, of Fairfield, formerly of Mexia, passed away May 20, 2012, in Fairfield. Graveside services were held Tuesday, May 22, in the Cotton Gin Cemetery with the Rev. Bryan Hallmark officiating.

Lois was born March 14, 1916, in Kopperl, to Robert English and Dora Hardin Campbell. She lived in Mexia for many years and later, with her daughter in Tucumcari, N.M., for a number of years. Continued

Memorial Day

(LoC via Falmanac) In 1868, Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued General Order Number 11 designating May 30 as a memorial day "for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land."
The first national celebration of the holiday took place May 30, 1868, at Arlington National Cemetery, where both Confederate and Union soldiers were buried. Originally known as Decoration Day, at the turn of the century it was designated as Memorial Day. In many American towns, the day is celebrated with a parade.
Southern women decorated the graves of soldiers even before the Civil War's end. Records show that by 1865, Mississippi, Virginia, and South Carolina all had precedents for Memorial Day. Songs in the Duke University collection Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920 include hymns published in the South such as these two from 1867: "Kneel Where Our Loves are Sleeping," dedicated to "The Ladies of the South Who are Decorating the Graves of the Confederate Dead " and "Memorial Flowers," dedicated "To the Memory of Our Dead Heroes." Continued

The Big Eclipse

I was gonna photograph the big eclipse, but I took a nap instead. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak," says the good book. Fortunately, my friend Kim, who just started an interesting photoblog called 99 Views of Mount Tucumcari, got some great shots and lent me this one. She, of course, also got the eclipse and Tucumcari Mountain in the same picture, you can see it here.

150 Years Ago Today: The Homestead Act

(Library of Congress) President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. The act provided settlers with 160 acres of surveyed public land after payment of a filing fee and five years of continuous residence. Designed to spur Western migration, the Homestead Act culminated a twenty-year battle to distribute public lands to citizens willing to farm. Concerned that free land would lower property values and reduce the cheap labor supply, Northern businessmen opposed the act. Unlikely allies, Southerners feared homesteaders would add their voices to the call for abolition of slavery. With Southerners out of the picture in 1862, the legislation finally passed. Continued

Photo: My great-grandparents' homestead near Tucumcari, New Mexico, circa 1905.

New Mexico a global hotspot for 'Ring of Fire' eclipse viewing Sunday

(KOB/AP) ... The solar spectacle is first seen in eastern Asia at dawn Monday, local time. Weather permitting, millions of early risers in southern China, northern Taiwan and southeast Japan will be able to catch the ring eclipse.
Then it creeps across the Pacific with the western U.S. viewing the tail end.
The late day sun will transform into a glowing ring in southwest Oregon, Northern California, central Nevada, southern Utah, northern Arizona and New Mexico and finally the Texas Panhandle where it will occur at sunset on Sunday. Continued

Big Kmart

Erosion

Eroded canyons are beautiful, eroded highways can be deadly.

Muddy road to the mesa

Everything's dry as a bone and bam!, mud. Must of been one tiny rain cloud. The road leads near the Llano Estacado (staked plains) which is either the world's largest mesa or world's smallest continent, but it's flat as a pancake up there. Some people think it's thrilling, some think it's dull, and some find it disturbing. I rather like it myself.

It's always sunny in Hobbs

KENW, eastern New Mexico's Public Television station, reports the weather forecast every hour on the hour, and it's usually up to date, except Hobbs. No matter what time of day or night and no matter what the weather, it always says that it's sunny and 91 in Hobbs. It's become quite the joke in our house, but not KENW itself, because KENW is the only station we can get. While many of the big Amarillo and Albuquerque stations have repeaters set up on Tucumcari Mountain, none of them seem to reach all the way into town. Seems like a waste to me, and it certainly seems like they don't care about us, but KENW does and we're grateful.

Cinco de Mayo

(LoC) Mexican troops under General Ignacio Zaragoza successfully defended the town of Puebla on May 5, 1862, temporarily halting France's efforts to establish a puppet regime in Mexico. With the U.S. absorbed by the Civil War, Emperor Napoleon III hoped to create a French sphere of influence in Latin America. The victory is commemorated as a national holiday in Mexico.

The Mexican victory at Puebla was short-lived. French reinforcements seized the town in March 1863. The following June, Maximilian, younger brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria and a member of the Hapsburg dynasty, was crowned emperor of Mexico. He remained in power until 1867, when Napoleon III abandoned his Mexican adventure and withdrew his troops.

In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has become an occasion to celebrate Hispanic culture. Fairs commemorating the day feature singing, dancing, food, and other amusements, and provide a means of sharing a rich and diverse culture. More

Lost Boxcars

San Jon, NM

The Cotton Kings of Texas

(Disunion) As the reality of the war and the grip of the Union blockade settled upon the South, two brothers who had been among the most successful plantation owners in Texas decided to diversify their holdings — by taking up the dicey new business of blockade-running.
Compared to other Deep South states, Texas has comparatively few plantations standing as historical beacons of the Civil War. Robert Mills and his younger brother, David, epitomized the enormous wealth that slavery and plantation agriculture had brought to the southeastern corner of Texas in the few decades before the Civil War. Most of Texas knew little firsthand about slavery and nothing about plantation farming; the land was too arid to support it. Continued

Photo: Rebel look-out, Bolivar Point (Galveston), Texas (Library of Congress)

Finally, an honest tombstone

Findagrave.com via boingboing

Amid Rural Decay, Trees Take Root in Silos

(NYTimes) The sight is a familiar one along the dusty back roads of the Great Plains: an old roofless silo left to the elements along with decaying barns, chicken coops and stone homesteads.

This is the landscape of rural abandonment that defines a region that has struggled with generations of exodus.

But increasingly there are unexpected signs of rebirth. Many of these decrepit silos, once used to store feed for livestock, now just hollow columns of cinder blocks, have through happenstance transformed into unlikely nurseries for trees. Continued 

Clouds Coming In

Bard, New Mexico (vicinity).