Not Too Pretty to Burn

On Good Friday, me and The Boy took a trip to Grand Gulf State Park. Grad Gulf is right on the river...maybe 20 miles south of Vicksburg. When I say on the river...I mean nervously close to the River. The water on Friday was up to the little two lane road opposite the park.

It won't surprise you to hear that my arch enemy took his most gruesome form on this lane a few years ago. I was in the car when Satan's House Pet crossed my path...the blackest, fattest, most ghoulish, ugggh...and it still gives me shivers.

There's not really a town here anymore. The first one was burned down by David Farrugut...Furragut, whatever, David Yankee, as part of the U.S. invasion of Mississippi during Lincoln's war.

It was burned in 1862...cause that's what they did. Then in May of 1863, they came back to seize the charred remains in order to use the gulf as a supply point for the invading army. Unfortunately for him and his...Georgia born, Gen John S. Bowen

had prepared the hills around what was left of the town. There Hoskins' Light Artillery, from Brookhaven, MS were splint between two small "forts."  Hoskins' gunners with 13 light pieces fought off seven US gunships, firing some 2,500 rounds into the Confederate positions...they even disabled one of the ships.

Sadly, it was barely a setback for grant. They just moved down river and landed unopposed and marched on Port Gibson ("Too Beautiful To Burn" - U.S. Grant. How cute.) where Bowen, severely outnumbered, was forced to retreat after a day's fighting.  Grand Gulf was evacuated.

I have to tell you...reading Bowen's CV is an exercise in excruciation for an unreconstructed Southron. He had predicted where the Yankees would attack and had repeatedly requested reinforcements from Pemberton in Vicksburg...DENIED. They weren't run out of Port Gibson...they were in an untenable position because of sheer numbers and had to withdraw. At the Battle of Corinth, MS...he had overrun a significant US position. Instead of exploiting the advantage...his commander Van &*&^&ing Dorn called a halt. At Champions Hill...Bowen led an attack that was on the verge of breaking the Yankee center but, AGAIN, he was not supported!

Taken prisoner after the fall of Vicksburg, Bowen died of dysentery after being paroled...32 years old. Did I mention that this Jedi was a Georgian?  Damn right I did...you want me to tell you again? :)

While we're here...let's hear from Robbie Robertson. A Canadian who has gifted The South with genuine treasure. About the song...he said he wanted to express the dignified sadness he often encountered in Southerners. He had Levon there for guidance I'm sure but, it's Robertson's song and it is cherished.*



Up on the hill behind the "forts" is an old cemetery.

It's my favorite place on the park.

As an aside for C...we saw the most outrageously yellow little bird I've ever seen in my life there.

Not far from Grand Gulf...just off the Natchez Trace is the site of Rocky Springs. At one time there were 1,500 souls there...between the war and disease the town was abandoned by 1930. There is a church there...built in the 1830's. That's a rare specimen in these parts. It has a fabulous old cemetery. There are a couple of Confederate Veterans buried there but they very recent additions compared to the others. It's in the same style but possessed of a more grand decay. I was gonna take the Boy by there on the way home but he was passed out by then.

There's an old Dog Trot or Cracker House on the property. We have fantasies of building one of these on a sandy piece of property, shaded by Live Oaks, somewhere along the gulf coast one day.

This picture has global significance. Those are azaleas....they are swarming with Bumble Bees. I've read that bumble bees are disappearing around the world. Well, it turns out, they are disappearing to Grand Gulf, MS. There must have been 100 of these fat stingers buzzing around the various buildings. The Boy finally couldn't take it anymore despite my insistence that they weren't going to sting him. I think he was just sleepy.

Halfway there he had generously offered to let me listen to my "disc." Big Star Third.

"Does he sing like this for every song?"
"Yep."
"This the worst singing ever."
By the time we got to Jesus Christ he had settled in to it. Ha.




See Charity Chic  for an interesting post on that other Canadian. :)

More on Grand Gulf to come....

Warrior's Shadow

It doesn't come up much on here but, I was high-ish-ly trained in history...the work of it...the craft I reckon. My studies focused on the British Empire in the 19th century. It was just a good piece of luck that William Storey was at Millsaps College when I enrolled. Thanks to him and his encouragement I was able to turn my own interests into a legitimate pursuit.  One that eventually led and allowed me to study under people like Mridu Rai*, Jonathan Spence, Paul Kennedy, etc.

One of the biggest advantages I had though...was speaking English.

I don't speak Japanese. So another keen interest of mine, Sengoku era Japan, has gleefully remained a hobby. There comes a point where if you don't speak or read a language...you hit a ceiling. So instead of learning Japanese...I just watch samurai movies.

 

My historical interests are not particularly sophisticated. I have no interest in how people used to wash up after supper or how their traditions for washing up were actually invented by their oppressors and therefore aren't really Real traditions. I like battles. I want WAR!...not anthropology and political studies. Just as in the heyday of British Imperialism...Sengoku Japan's got plenty of that.

One of Lincoln's more enthusiastic thugs, who freely talked about the need to exterminate Southerners and then Indians, famously described war as Hell. Which, as Clyde Wilson points out, is a sly dodge of responsibility for burning people out of their homes. Wilson contrasts this with a quote from Nathan Bedford Forest..."war is fighting and fighting means killing." No dodge...no outside force that dictates or excuses the most extreme behavior.

Lee got closer to our looming point, when he said, after another fantastic victory at Fredricksburg, where he was outnumbered by 40,000 men, "it is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it." Lee, like so many of the Confederate generals, was a throwback, a true warrior...not a thug, a murderer, an annihilationist. Without losing sight of its cost, I think Lee did love aspects of war...and what it required...sacrifice, honour, courage...selflessness.

Of course there's also the spectacle. It's the masculine drama...the stakes are ultimate and you get to put your pecker on the table while waving a flag. 

Nobody's ever done it with more style than the Samurai.



There's an outstanding book by Joanna Bourke called an Intimate History of Killing: Face to Face Killing in the Twentieth Century. One of the things she demonstrates through interviews, letters, diaries, etc is that combat veterans are often reluctant to talk about their experiences not because they are horrified by them but because they enjoyed it. They power was seductive but so was the aesthetic experience.**

 

The actual Battle of Nagashino was not directed by Kurosawa and was probably not so stylishly metaphorical. The Samurai rode these little pony's that could barely carry their weight...and they were surrounded by retainers jogging along with them in a charge. There would have been thousands of foot soldiers at the palisades with the hand gunners...who would have come out to finish it off by hand.

Still he hasn't made it up from whole cloth. If you've ever seen the old screens you know there were high style elements to the chaos. Perhaps more importantly it's closer to how these events persist in the imagination. In the film, the shadow warrior, the Kagemusha, demonstrates the highest qualities of a warrior. It's an act that is utterly futile...on every conceivable level. If only we could mount up and ride with him.

Who doesn't love Samurai movies...oh yeaaaaah.



*One of my favorite recurring scenes from graduate school was her pulling a pack of Marlboro Reds out of her sari. She's obviously razor sharp but, she was just a fun lady.

**I recently listened to a podcast on Greek Hoplites...the issue of post-traumatic-stress-disorder came up. I thought I was gonna eat my car keys. It's the worst kind of anachronism because you can see the legs on it. By the time they were done...it was probably on psychopaths that thrived in war.

No Constitutional Right to Smoke

This is what happens in an actual Democracy...which we are increasingly becoming...your daily activities are subject to the wants and desires of people named LaToya.

                                             LaToya Bans Smoking in New Orleans

According to this new Edict of the People, there is no Constitutional right to smoke. Far be it from me to question the Constitutional expertise of LaToya but, it's my understanding that the Constitution is not a set of permissions granted to subjects...a list of things the State will allow you to do. Instead, again with all due respect to LafuckingToya, it is a list of powers that the citizenry refuses to grant the State. It's a collection of Negative Rights...this is what the State cannot do.

This is the understanding of the Constitution that another community organizer, Barack Hussein Obama, finds so troubling. According to Barack, that's the great flaw of the Constitution...it's a collection of negative rights that says a lot about what the government can't do and nothing about what the State should do for people. In other words, the flaw of the U.S. Constitution, as Barack sees it, is its essence. This point, even as a bone of contention is, obviously and completely, lost on....dear God...LaToya.

Of course, I'm the fool...who cares about negative rights and the crucial role they play in protecting Liberty (Liberty? HA!)...who cares about the, small c, constitutional legitimacy of law. To the extent that legitimacy matters...desire is sufficient. Majority rules...authority is found in numbers.

That's how we get to the point where you do not have a right to allow smoking on your own property...but, you do have the right to seize the property of others so you can go to Junior College. The precious people, that seething mass of avarice and stupidity, want something and the vapid politicians are happy to provide it...fully justified because they are doing the bidding of that most sacred body..."the people." Amazing that we have laws at all...when the instincts of the people are so trustworthy and virtuous.

My concerns here are not only esoteric but, increasingly, nonsensical. So, let's come down out of the clouds...get down on the ground and have a closer look at the city for whose benefit this decree has been issued. New Orleans is a city...a real object. So comforting that we can measure it, touch it....smell it.

If you've never been to New Orleans and would like to experience it...you can do so in your own home. First, have a bloody piss in a carton of milk and leave it open to sour on the counter. Once the milk is ripe...two, empty your trashcan on the living room floor. Three, get blind drunk and pass out in the trash. Four, have your significant other...doesn't matter if it's a wife, girlfriend, husband, boyfriend or, even better, a stranger from the park...dress in an edible bikini and thigh high go-go boots. They should stand over you while barking for a strip club or hooking. Five, for a truly authentic experience, have some friends come by to vomit on you and urinate in the corner.

Whatever you do, however far you get carried away, for God's sake, do not let anybody fire up a square. We're not trying to get anybody killed here.

We've been down this road before....

No Smoking at Old Absinthe House

we've gotten so far down now that lighting up anywhere along it will get you a 100 dollar fine.
It should be fun watching the enforcement...expensive but, fun. Food and beverage people smoke...even in Quarter bars where it's already banned you can watch them early in the morning stumbling out into the daylight...cigarettes dangling from their squinting faces.

Never mind the droves of tourists who may or may not be aware of the Decree. A person standing on a sidewalk smoking is exactly the kind of mushy target that cops love. Good times...Good times...or Bon Temps I reckon.

I'll close with a question. Let's set aside the issue of legitimacy for such Decrees. What kind of people ban smoking in bars, jukes, taverns...we're talking about a bar...a BAR. What concept of a juke and the purpose it serves must those people have? I know many don't like to be around smoke...but that's hardly the issue. That market can be served without a total ban. What kind of human being would support a ban on smoking cigarettes in a juke...a honkey tonk? It's a bar...you get dunk, dance, fight and smoke cigarettes.



It's not really a place that figures into a program for adding a few years to your stank carcass.

Indignity

My Dignity.

Twinkle, Twinkle...Blah, Blah, Blah...EE. TEE. CEE.

Many of you have expressed your anxiousness to hear what else happened in Birmingham...and it makes me happy to know that y'all read. We will get to it, but first...

this.

There stands Jackson like a Stonewall

Every year around this time, for reasons known only to him, God abandons us and the atmosphere takes on a strange quality. I don't know how to describe it really...it's sharp and penetrating...kinda like when you reach for something in the ice box. The sky goes dirty grey. It goes on forever...like a month. Turrible.

This week was particularly bad. It got down to 14 degrees (-10c)...low enough to freeze water in pipes and blow the pressure valve on your hot water heater. I can't express how much I hate winter...hate the cold...hate coats, jackets, jumpers, sweat shirts...how I despise it busting in on my room in the garage.

Fortunately the previous owners left a big box of tiles under the heater...there were these fabulous high pitched accents to the crashing thud of dry wall.

So, that was fun.

Obviously it was very upsetting for The Boy and Herschel-Walker.

Speaking of upsetting...and I'm loath to even bring it up, but none of your Christmas presents to me have shown up. I know they're coming...I'm not brining this up to shame anybody. It's just I know y'all are anxious to hear what I think. Please know that I'm already appreciative but, I'm a little ashamed to say, it was with increasing anxiety that I've rushed to the mailbox every day the last few weeks...only to be disappointed. I know they're coming...I'm not complaining...my silence has not meant a lack of appreciation...they just haven't shown up yet.

While I'm complaining...that crap in France. It wasn't actually a distraction from blogging but, I'm so sick of these dickheads.

I've only gotten a glimpse of this nonsense once. It was at Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park. There was an American evangelist and a black fella that I think was British. As far as I can recall, it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Yeah...somebody was going to hell but I don't remember it being anti-Muslim or anything. Just the usual turn-so-you-don't-burn stuff.

Whatever it was...was too much for the swarthy fella next to me. I could see him gritting his teeth and sorta swaying...like pacing from the waste up...until he couldn't take it anymore...

"What do you expect from an American and nigger!"

There was some verbal rustling at that...no intelligible boos or shut ups...but that was the audible gist. This poor American girl next to me, when he said nigger, she caught a case of the vapors. I thought she was gonna pass out.

Then he was completely incensed. He started that pacing thing again and then snapped. He lunged for the black dude...burst right through the crowd in a rage but the crowd was having non of it. He was literally thrown back on to a walkway and escorted out of the park by a few biguns.

He just couldn't tolerate hearing what he didn't want to hear. Dick.

...

 



The final distraction came this weekend when me and the Big Man got in to a discussion about the punk rock...which led to me spending two days downloading Minutemen songs instead of writing.



Throw you lighters up for D.




Alright...back to our regularly scheduled reading and writing then.

Cherubs...Cherub

Some of you may have noticed the increased volume and level of noise around here lately. I go through periods like this...where I don't want to hear anything that could comfortably be described as a song. Something with a lead bottom and lots of squealing feedback is what I want. I don't want yer verses...I don't want your choruses...and bridges?!  For the love of kittens...no bridges. Nothing, in these time, does my head in worse than a bridge. I want to blow yer bridge up worse than USNC Shears.



I don't even want to hear songs I like right now. So you can maybe imagine how pleased I was for these a***holes...

...to show up on my phone. The shit's just there...hit shuffle it's comin'. It takes a hot second to realize what it is...that manufactured, formulaic, market tested, ray-ban, phony cool bull**** they've been peddling for 30 years.

 

Smash yer face on it bonos...

 (Listen...but watch Molly while you do...OUTSTANDING! ha)

 

While trying to crack my skull open at the ears...I've been obsessing over Chagall. I found a little cheap paper back with probably 20 postcard sized reproductions of his works.

 



 

 The only approach I have to painting is to rip off paintings I like to produce more paintings I like...

 

 



 

Maybe a sleeping pill or two.



Where Were You

Watch me sweat and complain.

It's like an oven out in that damn room this time of year. It's supposed to be fall but...the late August and early September are stupid hot around here. Don't fret for me though...I love it. It feels so good under the fan right now...beer's so cold. It's the one thing, between Sunday and Friday, that isn't on my nerves right now.



Watch it or don't. Up to you...but, miss it and you'll miss one of the greatest games ever played.



Is it sick that my favorite game is a win that ruined the season of FSU and not one of the numerous SEC and National Championships they've won? :)

Next up...maybe we can get to the bottom of something that has always mystified me...how sports became separated from the higher pursuits like Art, Literature and Music, Dance.

The Stupidity...It Burns!

I'm tryin to mind my business and drank a cup of coffee...but the T.V. 's on in here. The Weather Channel. People love to watch the weather on TV...anyway I've got my headphones on so I can't hear it but I can read a blurb under a woman being interviewed.

 "Female Named Storms Are Not Taken As Seriously as Male Named Storms."

 

You all that don't live in hurricane territory may not be aware of this but, years ago all storms were given female names. All of you, steeped, stewed and brewed in the insanity of identity politics as we are, will immediately see this for the vicious sexist slur that it was. Women are given to raging destructive passions...they are to be feared...just like hurricanes. Well we couldn't have that. So, in 1979 we got hurricane....Bob.

 

Now, 35 years later we have a study which shows that female named storms cause more destruction. People don't take them seriously because they've got girly names.

 

You know where this is headed.

 

"Well Suzanne...does this mean we should name all storms after men. So people will take them more seriously and be better prepared...cutting down on the damage, cost and possibly even deaths associated with these storms."

 

"No, of course not. Chuck the problem is society's attitudes toward women. We are still seen as weak and powerless...and obviously not to be taken seriously."

 

"What's the answer then...what should be done? We have the stats in front of us...if we can mitigate the damage caused by these storms...I mean, isn't that something  we should try to do?"

 

"Of course Chuck...we all want to see the damage and suffering caused by hurricanes minimized but, the damage and suffering caused by stereotypes is also real. What we are proposing is that all Hurricanes be given female names."  

 I also have never been to New Guinea or..uh built an igloo ;).*

Any of you who think I may be overestimating the potential for stupidity here need only remember Shelia Jackson Lee's call for all races to be represented in the naming of storms.

*You may not know this but if you don't own a copy of Double Wide and Live...your ears hate you and long for the silence of your demise rather than carrying on in denial.