Tea at Trianon: Mexico’s Pink Lagoon

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, June 20, 2022

Mexico’s Pink Lagoon

From El Pais:

Strange things began to happen a few years ago in La Escobilla lagoon, on the Mexican coast of Oaxaca. Stupefied snook and snappers swam around disoriented, and the locals could just stick their hands in the water to catch them. Then bloated mojarras and popoyotes (also known as the Chiapas killifish) began to wash up on shore smelling strongly of sulfur.
The biggest shock was yet to come. In early May, everyone who came to the lagoon did a double-take: the water had turned pink. Hericel Ramírez, a 28-year-old guide, went for his daily morning run and then headed to the lagoon, a 40-hectare (100 acres) stretch of water separated from the sea by a sand barrier. He got there and was stunned by what he saw. “Oh no! Why is it like this?” He couldn’t believe it. Ramírez, who works at a nearby sea turtle sanctuary, timidly stuck his hand in the water and noticed that it was warmer than normal. He decided not to taste it, thinking that maybe someone had spilled a toxic substance in the water. “The lagoon had never turned pink before. I took videos to send to some specialists,” he tells EL PAÍS by phone. (Read more.)