Conjunto Music

Since I live in San Antonio, Texas and I do have a Hispanic background a lot of the music that I heard when I was young was conjunto music. Conjunto music is very popular in the southern part of Texas, and San Antonio is the capital of the conjunto music industry. This last Friday in my humanity class we were shown a video about conjunto music and the history of this style of music. The video gave me some insight to things that I didn’t know before about this style of music. One of the main instruments used in this style of music is the accordion, which is a handheld squeezebox that generates air to flow across reeds inside of the accordion. The accordion comes from Europe and was brought to this land by the European immigrants. The conjunto music before never use to have words and was just the melody played by the people, but the man credited to bring words to this music goes by the name Valerio Longoria. In the video he said, “All I would do is try and see what words would go along with the music I was playing.” Now a day the sound can still be heard around my town on the radio station KEDA, and you can listen to some of the men and women who make this music still popular to this day. Like Flaco Jimenez, Eva Ybarra, Mingo Saldivar and Little Joe & La Familla are just to name a few.

St. Mark’s beauty

For this entry I was told to find a piece of art that I thought was really nice. I’m not really interested in paintings, sculptures, or murals. To me I find those things really nice to look at, but house designs and building structures are what really catch my attention! I like looking at old buildings and find historical places to be fascinating. I really didn’t have to search around for that long to find a building that I thought was stunning. Being that I work at St. Mark’s Episcopal church I have grown to admire and appreciate the beauty, and history that this building holds within itself. For starters this church was established during the Civil War era with the help from General Robert E. Lee. Also this church is where President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife “Lady Bird” got married! Another thing that I like about this place is that it has a very rare nostalgic look to it. Also since this church is located downtown at the intersection of Jefferson and E. Pecan St. you would think that there wouldn’t be that much foliage on its grounds. This church however has lots of beautiful plants and trees located through out its premises. The building itself is amazing to have still remained intact after all of these years, and even though time has past around this place the beauty of it has remained unchanged over the years.

My views on “Losing Ground”

For the past week or so, in my class, we have been discussing over a series of articles on the MySA.com website called “Losing Ground”! These articles inform its readers on a law written for developers that has cost the city millions of dollars, and the protection of the regions water supply! The law is called “Vested Rights” and it stops the city from putting any kind of new restrictions on real estate that developers have plans for. Yeah I know it seems like no big deal right, but the thing that is making many people upset is that some developers are building over the Edwards Aquifers recharge zones. Some times there are times when the developers are denied the vested rights that they were hoping for, but all they do is find away around it to get their way. For example in the article it stated that in 2001 the H.E. Butt Grocery Co. had plans to build a new store on Hildebrand Avenue. Although the company wanted to build the store in 2001 they found plans for that area filed close to a century before that! Even some people from the H.E.B company themselves said,” There wasn’t even H.E.B stores back then?” Finding those plans allowed the company to follow the ordinances in that time! Some times when the developers do get to build on the land they have to make sure that there is at lease some grasslands to allow the water to travel through the ground and in to the aquifer. Reading this article gave me a little more insight on how well the government really works and cares for the environment. In my opinion it seems that there will always be a way for people who have money to get what they want! Also from a presentation done in my class from a member of AGUA, Elisabeth Earnley, she lets all of us know that if we have some things to say against these actions that are taking place we should go and let city council hear our concerns. Even though there are meetings to go to the only time to attend them are during the day when every body is either at work or at school. I think that the articles on the website really do give a lot of information that people should know about. The only thing is that not too many people have any idea that these articles are even out. So I think that all of the information gathered should really be put out to the public eye. Allowing for others to know just how bad things are now before things get any worse for the aquifer!