The Truth About the Alamo

            

            On Monday I woke up at 5:25, not wanting to get up any more than usual, but feeling I could handle it. I got washed up, flipped my bed against the wall and started to get dressed. I turned on Radio Canada and heard classical music playing, which was odd, because after 5:30 a news program called Heure Du Monde comes on. I double checked the time and saw that it was 3:35, so I went back to bed.

I woke up at 5:22, feeling twice as groggy as I’d felt when I got up at 3:25.

At midday I worked at OCADU for the final week of my pose for Bob Berger’s class. While posing I read two stories by James Joyce on my laptop: “The Sisters” and “Araby”, both from his book “Dubliners”. I’d studied “Araby” in Academic Bridging back in 2008. The story of a boy in love for the first time is a lot easier to identify with than the story of the wake of an old priest. I also read a little of Soren Kierkegaard’s “Philosophical Fragments”. I still can’t think of any questions to ask about it though.

            I went home, spent some time on the internet, and then I took a shower followed by a siesta. I got up at 19:00. I cut up a squash and cooked it in a little water and then I added to that a Campbell’s asparagus and basil soup. I grilled some chicken in the oven and watched Walt Disney’s production of Davy Crockett at the Alamo. Now there’s a heavily mythologized story.

            The real story is that Mexico encouraged settlement of Texas by English Americans because it wanted them to farm cotton there and also for them to act as a buffer to hold the American aborigines at bay. The settlers were Southerners, and understood cotton, as did the slaves that they brought along to pick it. There was one slave for every five Texans. But Mexicans were moving toward slavery abolition and when Santa Anna banned slavery, the Texans declared themselves as the independent Republic of Texas. After the Alamo the Texans won their freedom and asked for statehood in the American union, as long as they could keep their slaves. Meanwhile a large number of their slaves escaped to live in freedom in Mexico.