Hi readers.
The cats and I watched the Royal Geographic Society 1953 production, the Conquest of Mount Everest. Not too bad, though it was all stuff from the actual expedition instead of some story and acters to pretend they were Bill and Hillary.
Fact is I never realized before that Bill and Hillary were the first conquerers of Mount Everest. Never knew the Royal Geographic Society sponsored them to hire about a hundred Mexicans fromn Nepal to tote all their equipment into those mountains, along with various white men to take care of matters inevitable involving intellect the Mexicans from Nepal weren’t equipped to deal with.
Anyway, it was informative, educational and interesting, partly because one of the Mexicans reached within 500 feet of the summit.
Afterward the cats and I watched Lassie. The only thing I remember about the last time I saw Lassie was my sister, Frances, sitting beside me in the Kiva, or Yam Theater in Portales, yowling, “Poor Lassie. Poooooor Lassie!”
Turned out it isn’t as bad a movie as you’re probably figuring it was. Edifying, educational and satisfying.
Then the cats and I watched Captain Scarface, a movie about a bunch of Rooskie spies trying to set off an atomic bomb in the hold of a ship to destroy the Panama Canal.
But that’s another story.
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 
Wow, it’s hard to imagine that anyone was able to find 100 Mexicans who would WANT to be on that terrain in that climate!
Christine
Garybuie01: Yeah, but there were all those white PHDs and aristocrats who needed to climb that mountain. Where educations and aristocrats need peasants to do the heavy lifting there are always little folks to do it. It’s the reason the award ceremonies always used to include someone letting the cat out of the bag by saying, “I’d just like to thank all the little people who made this possible.” In the US the generic little people are Mexicans these days. So I figures it was Mexicans carried all that stuff up Mount ‘because it was there’. “Need an ugly, hard job done cheap? A job you couldn’t find an anglo to do at any price? Hire a Mexican.” Then and now. Jack
Everyone has a roll to play in the world whether they’re big or little. I just thought that it would have been less complicated to hire some Nepalese ‘little’ people as they were local and used to that harsh climate.
Christine
Garybuie: Mostly figuring out what our role is to play isn’t our long suite. To folks who hire Mexicans for the dirty work the term Mexican covers a multitude of possibilities. Whatever’s available, in fact. Jack