Thursday, May 5, 2011
Cinco de Mayo
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Today is not Mexican Independance Day, though. That's in September. Today celebrates the Mexican army's victory over the French army in 1862. I have no idea what they were fighting about. But let's forget about the military conflict and read Octavio Paz or Carlos Fuentes and eat spicy food while drinking tequila. As a literary activity.
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I've yet to read Paz or Fuentes. I've had a lot of tequila and I'm never happy about it the following day. My friends claim that that's because I've never had GOOD tequila. For dinner tonight, I'm planning on finding something vegetarian at a Japanese restaurant, which sounds just a bit tough. Tempura vegetables and soup maybe. And then it's off to the ballet, which should be a fairly vegetarian event.
ReplyDeleteWe're having vegetarian stir fry for dinner, possibly with red wine. I am going for a 5.5 mile run first. No ballet later, (though "Giselle" is coming soon), but tomorrow night we're going to "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Dinner afterwards will likely be the traditional pizza and beer at the neighborhood Pagliacci's. I like to think that Falstaff would approve.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, "S'prasnikum!" as Tolstoy would've said.
While the United States was preoccupied with the Civil War, and thus unable to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, France decided they would take Mexico for their own. They even set up their own Emperor of Mexico, Maximilian. This was all the more odd, given that he was Australian. After the Civil War ended, the United States suggested nicely to France to back the hell off, and the French promptly dropped Max like a hot potato. Mexican rebels hanged him. HIs wife Carlota escaped, but went quite mad, and insisted on being called "Empress" until her death in 1927.
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