MARFA – Wall protesters gathered at the Paisano Hotel here Wednesday afternoon to let the US Border Patrol know exactly how they felt
about the Security Fence Act of 2006.
Signs, shouts, speeches and screams filled the air an hour prior to the formal Environmental
Assessment, which was designed to be a public forum to discuss the pros and cons of the “tactical infrastructure,” also known as the
wall at the international bridge at Presidio/Ojinaga.
“When you have truth on your side, you still stand a chance in this country,”
said Billy Addington of Sierra Blanca, the first speaker to address the crowd, crooning into a makeshift microphone set up on the
sidewalk in front of the hotel.
“They said it was a done deal at Sierra Blanca, too,” He said, referring to the nuclear waste site
that the federal government had hoped to create in Hudspeth County.
“But we worked hard for eight years and beat them,” he hollered.
“It can be done.”
The speakers rattled and the crowd of protesters cheered.
Meantime, the local police, state troopers and green-uniformed
Border Patrol agents hovered nearby.
“I’d estimate somewhere between 100 to 150 people,” Marfa Police Chief J.D. Wilbourn said.
“Big
group, exercising their rights,” State Trooper Jimmy Morris added.
A bouquet of black balloons floated above the crowd, dull against
the dark gray clouds in the sky.
“I don’t think Homeland Security knows what they’re in for,” Don Dowdy of Alpine said, as he turned
from the mike to the cheers of the crowd.
“When they look across the border they see potential terrorists, drug smugglers,” Robert
Halperin of Marfa said. “We see a beautiful culture, and friends.”
Homeland Security Secretary Michael “Cherkov? He ain’t never had
an enchilada. What’s he know about this country?” Harry Hudson of Marfa said, bending over the mike. “I’d like to fix him an enchilada,
a real hot one.
“Anybody who knows their history and hasn’t played too much football knows that walls don’t work – Troy, China, Germany, Palestine,”
he said.
Yellow, red, black and white signs waved above the heads of the crowd.
“Stop the Wall,” “Love thy Neighbor,” “Fear tactics
don’t work,” “Walls – antithesis of democracy,” the signs read.
More people arrived. Rod Ponton of Alpine spoke then Father Mel of
Redford.
“78 years ago I was born into a free country and today I am a casualty of a police state,” he said.
“The first thing
we do is get mad, get very angry,” Terlingua Justice of the Peace Jim Burr said.
“If the river could speak,” Adrienne Evans of Terlingua
said to the crowd. Her eyes filled with tears and then she walked away from the mike.
Singer/songwriter Mike Stevens of Alpine followed
with a wall song of his doing and then gave way to a trio of local guitarists.
People began to shuffle across the tiled floor of the
hotel’s patio, in small groups and singles, past the dry fountain and into the Buffalo Room where the official information – the public
forum was to begin.
Inside the room, the seats were full and a large standing crowd in the back of the room huddled, talking amongst
themselves.
A large white-haired man with a British accent addressed the crowd from the podium,
“I’m Loren Flausman of Customs and
Border Protection in Washington DC and we’re here today to find out if we’ve missed anything,” he said.
The crowd roared back, “Yes,” “Plenty,” “Are you kidding?” “Where would you like to begin?”
A series of questions barraged the speaker
from different parts of the room.
Some were addressed, few were answered.
Then the crowd was told to fill out a form with their questions
and comments and mail it, fax it, email it, or visit www.BorderFenceNEPA.com
More and more official speakers stood up in various parts
of the room trying to handle the stream of unanswered questions.
“If this is about terrorists and not immigration, then why aren’t
they building the wall on the Canadian border, because that’s where the only known terrorists have passed?” Barbara Baskin of Redford
asked.
Toward the end of the meeting Flausman’s voice broke through the rumble in answer to a question.
“This is nothing,” he said.
I’ve been shot, I’ve been mortared. I’ve been through a lot worse than this. Believe me, this is a cakewalk.”
John Smietana Jr., chief
of the Marfa Sector Border Patrol sat at a table near the back of the room, behind stacks of government information brochures.
“They
won’t build it until everything’s been put together, piece by piece, inch by inch,” Smietana said.
MARATHON – A letter writing party at Eve’s Garden here will join in spirit other letter writing parties designed to help oppose La
Entrada al Pacifico, the NAFTA truck route through the Big Bend.
Several area groups have opposed plans for truck routes through the
area to connect the Mexican port of Topolobampo, Sin., on the Gulf of California to the interior of the United States.
The letter-writing
event is scheduled for 1 to 3 p.m. tomorrow, Jan 26.
“There is power in everybody thinking about it at the same time,” said Kate Thayer,
proprietor of Eve’s Garden. “Everybody’s invited to come by and join us to help stop this insanity.”
There have been conflicting messages
from residents all along the proposed trade route through West Texas, some supporting and some opposing the plan.
For some, the US
Highway 67 routing is ideal for moving freight and connecting the central US to the growing markets in Asia in an economic development
master plan that includes improving highways in the region.
The highway would pass through Fort Stockton, Alpine and Marfa on the way
to the border crossing at Presidio.
From there it would connect to new roads from Ojinaga, Chih., to the west coast of Mexico.
For others,
mostly from the Big Bend communities of Alpine and Marfa, reinvigorating the old South Orient rail line from north of San Angelo to
Presidio is the only way to move freight through the region without damaging the environment.
They worry that increasing truck traffic
through their communities can create pollution and increased traffic hazards and destroy the rural atmosphere that attracts people
to the area.
For more information on the on the letter-writing project, contact Thayer at Eve’s Garden.
MARATHON – Marathon School Superintendent Conrad Arriola is urging taxpayers to rejoice in the reduction of property taxes for the
2007-2008 school year by donating to one of five scholarships set up to help pay tuition for graduating seniors who plan to enroll
in college.
“I’ve been very happy with the response so far,” Arriola said.
The five scholarship funds set up under Arriola’s tenure
include the Marathon Ex-Student Association Scholarship, the MISD School Board Scholarship, the Community of Marathon Scholarship,
Tony Aguilar, Jr., Memorial Scholarship and the David Thomas Aguilar Salutatorian Scholarship.
The Aguilar Scholarship requires the
student to qualify as salutatorian during the senior year to receive funds.
The other funds only require graduation from MISD and the
approval of the scholarship committee.
The scholarship funds are sent direct to the university once the student has enrolled.
“We’ve
collected over $2,000 since the invitation to donate went out Jan 4, 2008,” Arriola said.
For more information these tax-deductible
donations contact Arriola at the school, 432/386-4431.
By R.M. GLOVER
MARATHON – A hunter from Houston checked in at The Gage Hotel Saturday evening and asked who was playing
the violin.
“Nobody,” came the reply from night desk clerk Mandy Hernandez.
The man turned toward the first floor hallway.
“It sounds
beautiful,” he said. “Don’t you see her?”
“Mister I don’t see anybody or hear any violin,” Hernandez said.
The man described the fiddler.
“She’s a little girl with long black hair,” he said.
Over the years, other guests have reported seeing the little girl with long black
hair walking the hallway but this is the first time a violin was part of it.
“My sister [Mandy] checked the register – no violin players,”
Mellie Hernandez, the front desk day clerk, said. “She checked the speakers – turned off.
“The funny thing is the next day, I heard
the violin,” Hernandez said. “But I never saw the little girl.”
If anybody has further information, please contact the editor.
MARFA – The Greasewood Gallery at the Hotel Paisano will host a new exhibit, “Pepper Brown - Western Impressionism,” January 29 through
March 9.
George Edward “Pepper” Brown was a longtime resident of Brewster County.
He was born in 1926 at Cathedral Mountain and was
manager and part owner of the Brown Ranch south of Alpine.
Brown received a BS degree in Range Animal Science from Sul Ross State
University in 1948.
The next year, he became a founding member of the Intercollegiate Rodeo Association.
Brown’s art career began
while he was attending St. Edward’s High School in Austin and was commissioned to paint a mural at the prisoner of war camp.
As a
conscientious objector, Brown was assigned to paint murals at base theaters across the country.
His formal art studies included work
at the Art Studies League in New York, Instituto Allende in Mexico and Stanford University in California.
Notable art instructors
included Xavier Gonzalez in Wellfleet, MA, as well as Miltia Hill, Roy Dodson and Bob Hext at Sul Ross State University where Brown
received a Master’s in art in 1983.
In a career spanning more than 50 years, Brown’s paintings and small sculptures were shown
in numerous juried exhibitions nationwide, one-man gallery shows and at various institutions.
In 1992, at his last exhibition, the
late SRSU Art Professor Bob Hext said Brown’s works gave “evidence of Brown’s recognized expertise in color, his grace and ease in
line and form and his underlying sense of fun.”
A collection of original paintings, drawings and sketches will be available for individual
sale through Greasewood Gallery.
Other pieces, on loan from public and private collections, will be on display in the gallery and
hotel lobby.
A portion of the family continues to reside at Cathedral Mountain, maintaining the original ranch house and remaining
900 acres of the ranch.
Historic photographs of the ranch and family will accompany the exhibition.
Brown was also an award- winning poet.
Examples of his poetry, provided by Gloria Applegate of Marfa, will also be on display.
An opening reception for the exhibition will
be hosted at Greasewood Gallery at the Hotel Paisano from 6 to 8 p.m. Feb. 1. The public is welcome.
Family members and friends of
Pepper Brown will be on hand to visit and share anecdotes of Brown's colorful life.
The Hotel Paisano is located at 207 North Highland
in Marfa. The gallery is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 9 to 9 Thursday through Saturday.
For more information,
contact Vicki Lynn Barge, gallery director, at 432/729-4134.
SANDERSON – Tomorrow, Jan. 26, is a “red letter” day on the Terrell County calendar with the 29th Annual Terrell County Fair all day
at Fair Hall.
“Big things are about to happen to the 4H program,” Fair Board President Bobby Stegall said. “We have more kids involved
this year than in the years past.
As of press time this week, there were 38 animals that had been validated for the fair.
They included
four poultry entries, eight rabbits, 19 goats, six horses and one lamb.
Activities started yesterday, Jan. 24, with arts and crafts
entries accepted. This includes 4-H, school projects, food entries and displays.
Arts and crafts chair Lea Hawn said there will be
no final count until all the entries are in but shop teacher Jon Tom Lowrance said he will have “at least 13” projects from his students.
There were 30 entries to the photography contest from 4-H members at press time. There was no indication how many adult entries would
be received.
From 9 a.m. to noon today, booths and vendors can set up. The judging of the arts and crafts will be from 1 to 4 p.m.
Tomorrow
is the big day. From 8:30 to 10 a.m., livestock will be checked in for the show and judging will be from 10:30 a.m. to noon.
There
will be noon barbeque. Lunch plates are $6 each and include potato salad and desserts prepared by Terrell County 4-H members.
There
will also be barbeque sandwiches, dessert and drink for $4.
At 1 p.m., the auction of livestock and crafts begin at Fair Hall. The
pet show starts at 3 p.m.
A dance with music by DJ James Poe will end the fair’s events. This will begin at 9 p.m. and end at 1 a.m.
Sunday.
“Everyone is welcome,” he said. “Please come show your support of the kids.”
ALPINE – The end of the year yields many statistics and other vital data that a library uses to see where it has been and where
it would like to go.
Alpine Library Director Anitra Clausen said it is also appropriate to reflect on one statistic that may get overlooked
at times, volunteer hours.
She said overlooking this statistic is “easy to do, because a check isn’t written to volunteers.
They don’t receive social security or benefits, yet they show up regular as clockwork to the library and help keep it running.
“McNaughton,
our leased book collection, was maintained by a volunteer,” Clausen said. “Countless volunteer hours were donated to supplement
our children’s programs.”
She said volunteers often handle maintenance of the library, such as basic plumbing and changing light bulbs.
“And
who can forget Re-Reads [used book store]?” she asked. “Last year, a total of 3,078 volunteer hours were donated to the Alpine Public
Library.”
Doing the math, this is the equivalent of having three additional part-time employees for free, Clausen said.
She said independentsector.org estimated the dollar value of a volunteer hour in 2006 at $18.77.
“Using that figure, the total estimated
dollar value of the volunteer time donated last year would be a staggering $57,774.06, an amount far outside the library’s budget,”
Clausen said. “With that in mind, thank you is not enough.”
She said a square foot of the new library has been purchased
in honor of the volunteers of the Alpine Public Library.
Clausen said there is always a need for friendly people to help customers
at Re-Reads. The hours are flexible and the work has been described as “rewarding.”
She called for more volunteers
“Volunteering
is fun, rewarding and vital to keep the Alpine Public Library functioning,” she said.
Volunteers can pick up an application at the
Circulation Desk.
For more information, call 837-2621 or email the director at alpinepl@sbcglobal.net.
MARATHON – A First Responder Course will be this weekend here.
Greg Henington of Terlingua will teach the class from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday, Jan. 26 and 27, at the Community Building with an hour break for lunch, which is not provided.
Henington is a
paramedic who has been teaching first- responder courses for many years.
He has also instructed a “wilderness” course, where he has
been for eight to ten years.
Earlier, he taught courses for the American Red Cross for 20 years.
As it is, no one is “certified”
to be a first responder, which is normally the first person on the scene in a medical emergency.
With Alpine being the closest EMS
service and hospital, County Commissioner Ruben Ortega obtained a grant for the classes, which will be free of charge to all interested
in learning.
Ortega also plans to have an EMT course in the near future.
“This is the first step,” he said.
Ortega hopes at least 15
residents turn out.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Two weeks ago, we carried the Spanish language version of the following story, provided by Susanna Fuéntez of Marathon.
Because more than 60 percent of our readership is Hispanic, we did not provide a translation into English.
For those who asked, we
provide that translation here, courtesy of Maria Rodriguez of Sanderson.
Perhaps this version of “la llorona,” or the wailer,
is somewhat different from what some of you have heard, even though it carries the same subject.
All of us who have lived in Marathon
grew up hearing many beautiful legends, which were at the same time scary.
Almost all of these rich legends come from beyond Mexico
and, fortunately, as we are all Mexican descendants, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc., they passed them on to us and we
will pass them on to our kids and grandkids and that is our culture, rich in legends and favorite Mexican sayings.
Although my mom
and my dad became naturalized citizens of the United States through correspondence courses they took at the University of Texas, they
never forgot their people and their culture, rich in legends and sayings from Monterrey, Mexico.
They kept these legends and sayings
very close to their hearts and this is the way they would tell my brothers and me.
There was this woman who had no husband. The reason
that she had no husband has been a subject of much speculation for some decades. But she had three small kids.
However, she started
a relationship with a single man, very handsome, and she fell madly in love.
The relationship continued for some time, and she (not
he) insisted in marriage. Not being man enough, he rejected her.
Why? Well it seems he had a problem with her kids. They were not his;
therefore he did not like them.
She nearly went crazy when she heard this because she was madly in love with him, but what about her
kids?
In a horrible moment, she decided to take them to a lake or river, which was near the village, and there she threw them in the
water and there is where those innocent kids spent the last minutes of their lives.
When she realized what she had done, distraught,
the mother jumped into the river to rescue her kids but it was too late. The current had taken them and they never were found.
The
mother, hearing her babies cry, realized her horrible deed.
Distraught and full of guilt she jumped into the river and drowned.
Others
say that she died, that she turned crazy and, to this day, where there is a lake or river, you can hear an awful cry of a mother who
grieves for her dead children.
Another version says that her spirit (or ghost) is seen at many lakes and that she floats above water.
Some elderly also say that they have heard her cry and have seen her spirit at our own Peña Park.
My Mom would sometimes frighten
us by saying, “If you all don’t behave, La Llorona is going to come.” (Sometimes it worked.)
I hope that this legend has brought a
bit of happiness in your personal lives.
Until the next legend.
ALPINE – “Interior Journey,” a Master of Arts exhibition by Sul Ross State University student Maria Jose Leyva of Presidio opens Monday,
Jan. 28.
Leyva’s exhibit will be on display through Feb. 8 in the Main Gallery at the Francois Fine Arts Building.
“My art is influenced
by physical expression of the human spirit and spiritual iconography,” Leyva said. “In this exhibition, I portray the inner spirit
in each subject.
“My cultural heritage is one of the aspects that identifies my work and inspires the spirituality and emotion of
these paintings,” she said. “During our lives, we hear many stories we identify with and through this we experience an inner journey
in ourselves.
“My work has become a reflection of these tales,” Leyva said. “By blending traditional renaissance imagery with a contemporary
colors palette, I attempt to create a universal narrative about the inner journey we all take.”
By R.M. GLOVER
MNL Editor
MARATHON – Other than the banks, federal offices and the Montessori schools in Alpine and Marfa, most businesses
and institutions were open throughout the region on Monday, Martin Luther King day.
In honor of his and other people’s struggle against
oppression throughout the world we quote a small portion of his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” dated April 16, 1963.
“It is true that
the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the demonstrators,” King wrote. “In this sense they have conducted themselves
rather ‘nonviolently’ in public.
“But for what purpose?” he asked. “To preserve the evil system of segregation.
“Over the past few
years, I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek,” King wrote.
“I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.
“But now I must affirm that it is just as
wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends,” he wrote. “Perhaps Mr. Connor and his policemen have
been rather nonviolent in public, as was Chief Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, but they have used the moral means of nonviolence to
maintain the immoral end of racial injustice.
“As T. S. Eliot has said, ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right
deed for the wrong reason,’” King wrote.
ALPINE – A $10,000 gift from the Alvin A. & Roberta T. Klein Trust, also known as the Klein Foundation, will support botanical
research at Sul Ross State University here.
The gift was given at the request of trustee Sonja Rose Klein of Barksdale.
Funds will
be used entirely to support botanical research directed by Assistant Professor of Biology Dr. Martin Terry and will involve Sul Ross
graduate students.