THE UNCIVIL WAR

Today marks the symbolic end, 161 years ago, of the Slaveowners’ Revolt that tore our country apart for four long years. It had cost the lives of some 750,000 soldiers on the two sides, roughly two percent of the population. That would equate to six million deaths today. It left cities in ruins and farms in ashes awaiting the return of the armless, the legless, and those suffering from “soldier’s heart” as they called it back then.

Though it officially ended slavery it did not end the vicious cruelty imposed upon those who arrived in our country in chains, a sin still visited upon their descendants.

Now we are engaged in a great, but differently fought, civil war to determine whether the imbedded promises of April 9, 1865 will prevail. How long, we wonder, must the battle for human decency last?

We can hope, but the monetary resources of a great international cabal face us as the murderous artillery faced American soldiers from Missionary Ridge and the cliffs of Omaha Beach. Their power flourishes within from the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Even the purchase of a chicken sandwich or hobby tool bolsters their power. What we need more than ever is the will to prevail against monstrous odds.

We could use a man like Ulysses S. Grant again.

THE SLAVEHOLDER REVOLT

For some reason I have these weird flights of thought. Oh yes. I know you do too, but I have this horrible habit of writing them down and posting them. For example: At my age one thinks a lot about heart attacks. I take it to extremes.

Consider this. If Ulysses S. Grant had succumbed to a heart attack on November 6, 1860, one could find his name on the West Point class of 1843. With effort one might find mention of First Lieutenant, then Brevet Captain Grant’s performance in the Mexican American War. That’s about it. Maybe an obscure obituary in some Missouri or Illinois newspaper might appear. Then no mention of him in the files of either of the Americas.

Had, on the other hand, Robert E. Lee succumbed likewise on that date, he would rate mention as an ideal army officer and West Point Superintendent—overall the very picture of a modern Regular Army Colonel. Writing a glowing biography would be a simple task.

There we have it.

From failure to savior.

From paragon to traitor.

Isn’t it remarkable what the effects of a couple of bouts of good health will have upon a country? Is it fate that is granting us longevity?

Certified Non-AI generated

LONG MAY SHE WAVE

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Today we continue to honor an event of 162 years ago, one which did much to save America from an insurrectionist invasion. On a hot July day, in a small crossroads town in Pennsylvania, some 13,000 men trudged up a one-mile ascent of open land with the intent of doing enough damage to our country to preserve the institution of slavery.

At the top of the rise, near a spot immortalized as “the copse of trees,” a bloodied American army waited, its center containing the Second Corps of the Army of the Potomac led by Major General John Gibbon and under the overall command of Major General George Gordon Meade. As mentioned in an earlier post, General Meade had commanded the army for six days, or the equivalent today of since last Saturday.

The assault involved three Confederate divisions Pickett's, Pettigrew's, (formerly Heth's division) and Trimble's (formerly Pender's division).

Up until, and including, this war, battles featured heroic charges by massed men against unreliable weaponry. Improvements to rifles and artillery would make such charges insanely horrible to imagine. Defensive warfare would become the strategy of choice until air power rained destruction far and wide and mobile tanks replaced horse-drawn warfare.

No, children, neither side had air power back then. The president was wrong.

Let us pause and imagine the carnage before us after the assault as the remnants of the insurrectionist army retreated down the hill back to their beloved general who, despite his masterful attempt at preserving slavery, would become one of, if not the, most revered, warriors for many Americans, even some so-called historians.

Because Pickett’s division consisted of mostly Virginian’s, and because Virginians contributed substantially to writing the immediate history of our Civil War, the assault, commanded by General John Longstreet, has come to us in history as “Pickett’s Charge,” a shameful moniker to the other divisions and a lesson to us that history is a complex affair which can’t be learned from watching “Gone With The Wind.”

DEFEAT FASCISM

 Sometimes I catch myself wondering just what America is all about. It changes over the years. It was once a bountiful land for stone-age tribes who sometimes lived in harmony, sometimes fought, sometimes traded but respected the land and left no great scars upon it.

Sometimes it was about a place where one could practice religion without government guidance or interference or the threat of being burned at the stake for one's beliefs.

Sometimes it was place where land was so plentiful that a family could not harvest its share without the help of slave labor.

Sometimes where men who had never owned a slave were willing to die in a war that meant the end of slavery.

Sometimes it was a place where opportunity was unbounded for some, restricted for others, and prohibited for others.

Sometimes it was a place from which brave men would storm beaches in the face of death to defeat fascism.

Sometimes it was a place where good people struggled to make the opportunities of this great place available for all.

For long periods, it was a land of opportunity and progress for many, a light that attracted people from all over the world who sought its promises.

Sometimes it took great steps forward to extend its promises for all.

Every once in a while, it seems to take a step backwards.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

DUTY

 In high school I was taught that the most famous general of the American army in our Civil War, the army that fought to end slavery, owned slaves. I was taught that the most famous general in the insurrectionist army, the army that fought to preserve slavery, never owned slaves.

That was partly true and partly false.

General Ulysses S. Grant was given a slave by his father-in-law. He freed him before the Civil War.

Robert E. Lee actually did own slaves. Most famously though, he managed over 200 that his wife inherited from her father. His “management” included the whipping of recalcitrant humans under his care.

One can research all of this further if one chooses. My state doesn’t allow it to be taught.

For today, let us consider a comment I read once. Lee confided to someone that slaves would encounter no problems if they simply did their duty.

Their duty.

Now what exactly was the duty of a person who was worked, for minimal sustenance, often less, from when “it was light enough to see until it was too dark to see?”

What was the duty of a person who was not allowed to learn to read or write for fear by the owner that the slave might “become like one of us?”

What was the duty of the person whose children were torn away, sold to strangers, and carried to a faraway place by the omnipotent owner?

I would say that the duty of that person would be to take every opportunity, despite every danger, and despite the myth of “The Lost Cause” to run as far away from that evil owner as possible.

Duty.

Bullshit.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

BACK DOORS

It was the evening watch and I had only been sailor in the United States Navy for a few months. It was a small but important base located on a former hotel complex. The fleet admiral housed there. I served with a young Ensign on quarterdeck duty in what once been the hotel lobby. My job was to assist and run errands. That’s when it happened.

A message came in for the Admiral. The ensign took it, folded it into an envelope, wrote the proper note, and told me to take it to the admiral’s quarters.

I did. Right up to the door I went and knocked on the door respectfully. A steward answered and I delivered my assignment.

He took it, looked at me as if I had just crawled from under a kitchen cabinet and said, “In the future, you should use the back door.”

No big deal but I took my time walking back to headquarters thinking. I was a grown man, a white one from a middle-class family. In my entire life, I had never been told to go to the back door of any home.

No big deal, but it made me feel small and think of people I had known, including shipmates, whose parents and grandparents had been told this for their entire lives.

I guess that’s why I don’t hold the town of Savanah, Georgia with such religious ecstasy as my friends and colleagues do.

Oh, I think it must be quite a beautiful place in its central core. I can see why some people make their friends and families travel there for a wedding. It must contain a plethora of significant homes.

But I would always wonder, as I worshipped, if the slaves who made the bricks, produced the lumber for those homes, and built them for whatever pay their owner saw fit had ever been allowed, socially, to use the front doors. 

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 CIVIL WAR

Was rereading parts of the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant last evening concerning the Battle of Missionary Ridge. In the midst of describing preparations for this great American victory, Grant suddenly stops and delivers this reflection:

"There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class.

With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor allowed to become so. The whites could not toil without becoming degraded, and those who did were denominated "poor white trash." The system of labor would have soon exhausted the soil and left the people poor. The non-slaveholders would have left the country, and the small slaveholder must have sold out to his more fortunate neighbor. Soon the slaves would have outnumbered the masters, and, not being in sympathy with them, would have risen in their might and exterminated them. The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all it cost. The enemy was surprised"

What an interesting concept. He would go on from there to defeat Robert E. Lee and help restore our country. It is gratifying to note that his reputation has enjoyed a major refurbishing in recent years. I recommend, for those wanted to know him better, the reading of the memoirs, considered one of the best personal reflections of war ever penned.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 HONOR

In the final assault at the Battle of Gettysburg, the extreme left of the rebel force comprised men of North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi who had been heavily engaged in the first day’s fighting. They made it to the farm and barn of a family named Brian. The image below features their house as it stands today. (For some reason, the sign features an alternative spelling of the family name.)

Abraham Brian, his wife Elizabeth, and their five children were not living in the house at the time of the battle. The family fled the Gettysburg area upon news of the Confederate invasion.

Why? Well, you see, they were members of the local African American community. Yes, as free as you or I are today. The trouble was that Robert E. Lee’s army, as it marched north into Maryland and Pennsylvania, captured free black American families and transported them south to be sold as slaves.

In most of my adult life, which I have spent in Arkansas, a statewide newspaper ran an editorial each year on Lee’s birthday (a state holiday) dedicated to the proposition that he was the embodiment of honor and decency, the most model American figure to emerge from the Civil War, save the one who removed the shackles of slavery from the families that Lee’s army captured.

Odd that the editorials never mentioned Abraham Brian or the collateral damage done to free Americans by the Confederate insurrectionist on their way to Gettysburg.

Fiction Friday

 

ARTIFACTS

By Jimmie vonTungeln

 The fierce August heat poured from the sky without mercy upon the solemn fields. Below, nothing moved or showed any signs of life except the efforts of a small boy darting like an atom below the cruel sun. He hopped along a turn-row from one stalk of cotton to the next. The loose soil burned hot enough to scorch the soles of his feet, but at row’s end, the cotton threw a small circle of shade, providing relief for the traveler. He rested in each shadow for a moment before hopping to the next and, with this strange rhythm, reached the trees along the edge of the bayou where the dark forest promised relief. He reached into the pocket of his overalls to make sure his prize was still there, that it hadn’t bounced out or found a hole and escaped. Feeling its cool, polished form, he smiled and entered the woods, safe from his ordeal by heat. The woods enveloped him like a mother’s arms might wrap around a young child and the vast fields of cotton again lay unmarked by human activity.

            Inside, giant, brooding trees shut out most of the sun’s light so that the boy felt the cool damp soil against his bare feet. He eased to his right and found a familiar trail, then struck for the bayou. The forest was quiet like the world on a frost-covered morning and the boy shivered at its majesty. He moved with a knowing assuredness among the vines and bushes. Before long, he spotted his target. He approached without making a sound on the soggy leaves.

            The old man sat in his place, like a piece of the ancient vegetation itself. A rusted five-gallon bucket provided a seat. He held a long bamboo fishing pole over the water and a white flour sack on the ground held, the boy knew, both bait for fishing and food for the old man. The man sensed, rather than saw, the boy and he spoke without turning his head or removing a battered pipe from his mouth. “Marse Robert,” he said.

            “Hey,” the boy replied. “They bitin’?” He found a spot to the old man’s right and sat.

            “Mostly slow, today,” the man said. “How you doin’?”

            “I’m almost six years old. My birthday’s day after tomorrow—August 21.”

            “Well now isn’t that something?” The old man eased the fishing pole forward until the baited hook emerged. Then he swung the line toward him, grabbed it and inspected the bait. A mangle of worms dangled in several directions and he found no sign of molestation. He adjusted the cork—a relic that had long ago been retrieved from the top of an empty snuff jar—then slid his hand along the line towards the hook. Turning away from the boy, he spat on the bait and tossed it back into the bayou. Late summer rains had flooded the banks and the dark, sluggish water pulled the cork toward some unseen destination until the line went taut and stopped it.

            “I was born in 1920,” the boy continued when he saw that the man was no longer occupied.

            “You don’t say,” the man said, pulling the pipe from his mouth and exhaling a puff of smoke which floated across the bayou like ghost seeking a companion. “You be grown before we know it.”

            “How old are you?” the boy asked.

            The old man looked at his pipe. “The ‘chidren’ says I must be pushin’ on the door of 90 years or so,” he said. “I don’t rightly know.”

            The enormity of the number stunned the boy and he drew is knees up and stared at the meandering water. Then he remembered. He stood up in that single, fluid movement that only the young can accomplish and thrust his hand into his pocked. He retrieved his prize and thrust it toward the old man. “I fount an indian ‘arrerhead,’” he said. He held a perfectly formed artifact of pure black stone, contrasting against his small, white hand. The stone approached five inches in length and still held the sharp edges and fine point that its maker had first chipped into it.

It was too large to fit an arrow’s shaft. It doubtless had formed the head of a small spear. The old man regarded it, admiring its symmetry and the perfection of the creator’s art. “You shore fount a beauty there. Wherebout’s did you get it.?”

“Up the bayou aways, on the edge of the field the day after it rained. Hit was just a layin’ there. Poppa said Indians used to live here before we did.”

“They did indeed,” the old man said. He took the pipe from his mouth again and looked at the boy, bent toward him slightly to increase the importance of the moment. “Would you like to know something?”

“Sure,” the boy said, infected by the old man’s solemnity.

            “I remember when there were Indians here, at least one family. I remember when that last family left.”

            “You never…,” the boy started. The man’s look stopped him. “How could you remember indians? Ain’t that been long time ago?”

            “It has for a fact,” the man said. “But I’m an old man and I wasn’t much older than you when the last ones left.”

            “Where were they at?”

            “Right down on this very bayou. This land wasn’t all cleared then and they lived in a lean-to right down near the edge of the water.”

            “Did you ever talk to them?”

            “Never did,” he said. “They kept to ‘theyselves’ and nobody ever went near them far as I knows.”

            “What happened to them?”

            “They just disappeared one night. Somebody noticed they left and nobody ever knew a thing about where they went.”

            “Did they leave anything?”

            “Not that I ever saw. When folks disappear like that, ain’t usually much left of them, ‘cept something like that there thing you holdin’. Folks finds things like that ever now and then.” He nodded for emphasis.

            They boy stood without moving, absorbing this information and turning it around in his mind. The man returned to his fishing and his pipe. After a time, the boy closed his fist and returned the artifact to his pocket. “See you around,” he said and started walking upstream.

            “Yassuh,” the old man said and moved to inspect his bait again.

            The boy found a trail and followed the water as it edged sullenly toward its destination. From time to time, he felt in his pocket for his prize. It seemed to grow larger, he thought, the farther he went upstream. He thought about what the man had told him, and he thought about how the old man’s eyes had seemed to sparkle as he talked, almost as if a mist settled on them. He seemed to see the mist again and he felt as if he could see through it right into his own existence until he could almost see the very essence of what made him himself. He shuddered, “Indians,” he said to himself. Then he stopped. He had made a decision.

            The bayou was about to make a bend and he knew the trail would end. This was the perfect place. He searched among the trees until he found what he needed—the stump of a large tree left when a storm had taken its top. He scooped up a double handful of the soft mud at the water’s edge and carried it to the stump.

            He formed the mud into a small, smooth base. Then he went back to the water and washed the mud from his hands and wiped them dry on the legs of his overalls. He walked back to the stump, and looked at it, examined the small mud bed he had formed, and evaluated the worthiness of his handiwork. Then he took the artifact from his pocket and examined it as if he were seeing it for the first time. He held it in both hands, aiming the point upstream and into the impenetrable forest ahead. He slowly, and with as much respect as he could muster, laid the object on the bed of mud, pointing into the unknown. Then he backed away and stood still until he felt himself merging with the woods, the bayou, the artifact, and even the old man still fishing downstream. Maybe even, he felt, with the vanished ancients themselves. He felt himself becoming dizzy and then he felt a shaft of light coming from beyond the trees. He turned towards it and started from the forest.

            He whistled now as he walked.

Grand Visions

Some sights stay with you forever, just as real as the moment they happened. For me, one was the first time I saw Brenda. I know. I know. I’ve described many times how she sashayed by and grabbed my heart as she passed, never letting it go.

Another was the time I was enjoying a brief dalliance with the “sport” of scuba diving. My friend Doug Sisco and I booked a trip to the Cayman Islands where, on one dive, we traversed a short, winding cave to exit directly over the “Great Cayman Wall,” staring down into tree miles of darkening blue water, suspended above it like cosmic interlopers. Oh my.

Oh, and speaking of blue ocean water, I can’t forget the sight of the South China Sea from the airplane window as I left another place. I only mention it because I dreamed last night that they sent me back, the first reoccurrence of that dream in a long time. I think that’s a compensating dream after an aggravating day, my mind saying, “It could be worse.”

There was, going back a bit further, my first glimpse of Old Main, soaring above the “Mother of Mothers” as viewed from my family’s car on old Highway 71 coming into Fayetteville.

I can’t forbear mentioning one other sight that never fails to stir my blood. It was back in the 1980s I think. My old friend, running buddy, and legal mentor Argumento deMinimus, the Harvard-Bred lawyer was spending two weeks of Army Reserve training at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Brenda and I flew up to visit ere he left. At some point, someone said, “Hey kids, let’s go to the Gettysburg Battlefield.”

Off we went. Arriving there, we found ourselves a little disoriented by the traffic and disorder. It’s a big place, the battlefield park. It is immaculately preserved, due largely to the initial efforts of one of the battles’ self-aggrandizing jerks, Union General Daniel Edgar Sickles. Sickles nearly blew the victory and then spent the rest of his life trying to destroy the career of General George Meade who whipped Robert E. Lee to a standstill at the three-day battle and was never forgiven for the insult, either by Abraham Lincoln or the writers of history.

Anyway, we decided to advantage ourselves of the first available parking place and then become oriented. This we started to do, wandering through a small entryway and heading up a slight incline toward the visitor center. As we walked, a small white building appeared on our right. “Hey,” I said, “that looks familiar.” Nobody listened. They just walked on up the hill. “Hey,” I said, “isn’t that General Meade’s Head … ?”

I didn’t finish, for I reached the top of the ridge where the other two already stood, transfixed. I froze as well. There we stood, at what they call “The high-water mark of the Confederacy," where from a line of battle a mile away, three divisions of Confederate troops had marched inexorably to doom against a Union force of men and cannons arrayed along the ridge where we stood.

I tell you it was really something. It makes chills run up my spine just to recall it. I have no truck with either the Confederacy or the cause for which it stood. I must admit, however, to recalling, at that very moment, the immortal words of William Faulkner, penned in his last novel, Intruder in the Dust. Remember what he wrote?

“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.”

Neither a charge, nor Pickett's...
His widow promulgated that myth.
It was an assault, an insane one,
by nearly 15,000 brave, but
misguided, men and stopped
by other brave men in epic battle.

Day Two: January 2,

Back in graduate school, I read an article that I can’t find again. Seems that years ago, someone did a piece on slavery in America. Not one of the modern works being put out in schools during the Betsy DeVoss, era, the ones concluding that slavery was simply a matter of guest workers migrating to America in search of jobs. We may survive her and her supporters (some of which our state produced) and we may not. Stay tuned.

No, this was a serious look. It tried, without trivializing the horrors of “that peculiar institution” to present it in terms with which someone who was not of African-American heritage could, at least to a minimal degree, empathize. Of course the search was futile. Although there were those of European descent who came to America as indentured servants or who volunteered once they were here, the comparisons are miniscule. There was no compelling comparison.

The nearest the author(s) could find that approached the lack of human rights, loss of individual freedom, death or corporal punishment without representation, complete control over every waking moment, was … . Are you ready?

The life of a sailor aboard a military ship in the days of sail.

Please, again, don’t take this as a comparison in fact. It is a comparison for contemplation. The most interesting thing was the implication that slavery was a forced, brutal, and closely guarded affair requiring arms and the aid of government to enforce. Oddly, some, not all, sailors chose the life willingly refusing all others. They were the ones Joseph Conrad described as staying at sea for fear that the earth would scorch their feet.” (paraphrase)

I only bring this up because of an article I ran across yesterday that examined the animosity that the working white-class has in America for the working black-class, despite the fact that they have so much in common.

I live in rural state that “thinks poor” as much as it “is poor.” For the last dozen or so statewide elections, the prevalent campaign strategy for some candidates is simply to mail out campaign ads with a picture of Barack Obama on once side and a picture of their opponent on the other. If the opponent was male, the implications were merely designed to appeal to embedded racism. If the candidate was female, the implications were more more horrifyingly meaningful.

Did it work?

Oh yes. Hordes of voters who enjoy 40-hour weeks, social security, unemployment protection, fair labor standards, and, now, health care, flocked to the poles to vote for candidates who support not one of those benefits.

It’s a strange country we live in, and I worry that it’s about to get stranger.

Just thinking …

Morning Thoughts: December 17, 2017

Writing ability does not always follow genius like a boxcar follows a locomotive engine. It is refreshing when it does occur, as in Charles Darwin’s case. I had avoided reading The Voyage of the Beagle for decades, fearing that the observations might be too scientifically described for me. Welcome to another surprise.

Long an admirer of Darwin for his monumental contribution to our understanding of the Universe, I’m now addicted to his ability as a writer as well. I had previously found On The Origin Of Species and The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex both quite readable. Now I can add “Beagle” to the list. I’ve been listening to an audio version while driving, and even in that format it permits ease of understanding. I can always review particularly interesting passages in free on-line versions.

One passage in particular caught my ear this past week in light of comments made by the candidate of our president’s political party in a U.S. Senate race a week ago. It seems the candidate thought America was “great” during the slavery era.

Yes. You heard right.

Contrast this with a passage from Voyage of the Beagle. Darwin was on the five-year voyage as a companion to Captain Robert FitzRoy, not as the ship’s naturalist as is often, and erroneously, maintained. It seems that captains on British warships were not permitted to interact with the crew on a personal level and often paid someone to accompany them as a companion to counteract the long periods of tedium while at sea. Darwin did engage in almost constant study of the natural world on the cruise, however, and we are all the better for it.

Back to the passage: during a stopover in Rio de Janeiro, Darwin accepted an invitation to travel to an inland estate of a man who had befriended him. Following is a passage from his description of that trip.

"As the moon rose early, we determined to start the same evening for our sleeping-place at the Lagoa Marica. As it was growing dark we passed under one of the massive, bare, and steep hills of granite which are so common in this country. This spot is notorious from having been, for a long time, the residence of some runaway slaves, who, by cultivating a little ground near the top, contrived to eke out a subsistence. At length they were discovered, and a party of soldiers being sent, the whole were seized with the exception of one old woman, who, sooner than again be led into slavery, dashed herself to pieces from the summit of the mountain. In a Roman matron this would have been called the noble love of freedom: in a poor negress it is mere brutal obstinacy."

Perhaps it might enlighten Roy Moore to read Darwin.

Probably not, but we can always hope for redemption.

No, Mr. Moore, no country was truly
great when it practiced slavery. 

Sailing To Oblivium: July 18, 2017

They call them “the dog days of summer.” I always wondered why. The dogs don’t seem to like them anymore than I do. Interspecies commonality?

Down here in the south, the heat is partnered with the humidity, doubling the misery. A walk to the garden and back makes your shirt wet. Further effort than that can make you curse your parents for birthing you in this location.

On the worst of days, you don’t even see any mad dogs or Englishmen out and about.

The old folks used to describe it in typical earthy phrases like “It’s hotter than hell’s pepper patch.”

A shipmate from Southern Missouri used the analogy of a pregnant prostitute in church, but I would never stoop so low as to repeat it. Those wild and obscene days ended long ago. Sort of.

I just say that it’s hotter than Donald Trump at a “truth or dare” party.

Why do we call them “dog days?” A trip to a favorite website, Wonderopolis, enlightens.

The ancient Romans called the hottest, most humid days of summer “diēs caniculārēs" or “dog days." The name came about because they associated the hottest days of summer with the star Sirius. Sirius was known as the “Dog Star" because it was the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major (Large Dog). Sirius also happens to be the brightest star in the night sky.

Sirius is so bright that the ancient Romans thought it radiated extra heat toward Earth. During the summer, when Sirius rises and sets with the Sun, they thought Sirius added heat to the Sun's heat to cause hotter summer temperatures.

Those old Romans were a real hoot, weren’t they?

When exactly are dog days? The Old Farmer's Almanac lists the traditional timing as being July 3 until August 11. Since any questioning of the efficacy of that revered source would threaten my marriage, we’ll accept it. Thus, we are smack dab in the middle of them.

I do know one thing. Having raised a couple of fine rows of corn in our garden, I decided, post-harvest, to chop down the stalks and feed them to a friend’s cows. Took me about an hour. As I finished, without a dry thread of clothing on me, I couldn’t help but thinking about the book Twelve Years a Slave.

In it, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. He tells about being forced to along with other slaves, to cut sugar cane from daylight to dark on a Louisiana plantation. I try but I can’t imagine it.

I just hope that our plan to “make America great again,” doesn’t refer to those dog days of a different type.

I don't know. They seem happy enough.

Reconciliation: 18

Lyndon Johnson told the story of a Texas schoolteacher who, faced with a school board divided on whether the world was round or flat, concluded, “I can teach it both ways.” That’s how I feel about the current controversy about removing confederate statutes. That may not be surprising for someone who had great-grandfathers who fought on opposite sides or our Civil War.

On the one hand, I worry that, when we start removing history, we lose more than we gain. Remember how the Taliban blasted ancient monuments away as target practice? In the more distant past, after her death in 1457 BC, Hatshepsut's monuments were attacked, her statues dragged down and smashed, and her image and titles defaced, information lost—we regret—to future scholars for all times.

On the other hand, those who find themselves apoplectic over the removal of statues of Robert E. Lee should read a good history of the United States and its civil war. Consider then, that there are no statues of Benedict Arnold in the courthouse squares of America, and no controversy attached to their absence. Sadly, Robert E. Lee was as dedicated to, and capable of, destroying our country as it existed in his day as Arnold was in preventing its creation in his.

Both, as loathe as we may be to admit it, abandoned their oath to America in order to support her enemies.

I know that Lee is considered by many to be “an honorable man.” When I first gazed upon the mile of open fields that his troops were ordered into in the tragic three-division assault on Cemetery Ridge on July 3, 1863, I  was no longer sure exactly how he merited that praise, but so be it. Let us simply try to understand those whose ancestors were owned by Lee’s wife and over whom he held total authority of life, punishment, or death. Let us further consider how, according to historian and author Elizabeth Brown Pryor, he referred to the family’s slave children as “my ebony-mites.” Is this an American badge of honor?

Were our ancestries different, so might be our feelings.

As a final thought, I primarily regret seeing another divisive movement settle upon our country like a primal, festering sore. Surely there is a need: poverty, the abandoned American Delta, collapsing infrastructure, and the need for decent healthcare for all, that could occupy our attention more productively.

Back to sending 15,000 men toward Cemetery Ridge for the purpose of preserving the institution of slavery, there have been moments when much of America wasn’t that great when we recall them. No matter how we may feel, couldn’t we, instead, recall the beaches of Normandy, and other times when she was?

Perhaps it's an institution
that isn't worthy of
monuments to its supporters.

Old Souls

I'm ashamed to say I'd never gotten around to reading "Dead Souls" by Nikolai Gogol. So ... I'm listening to it on audio as I drive. Today, I'm travelling overland from Lonoke, AR to Pine Bluff, my home town, so I'll be listening. I'll travel mostly through flat, desolate land farmed by absentee owners. I’ll also pass near a maximum-security prison where we have always housed "death-row" inmates, or those for whom we deemed "social-death" was not sufficient. Farm-land, waste-land, or dead-land, take your pick. Its identity disappeared long ago.

I'll pass through land where long-dead souls toiled under the lash in brutal weather and inhumane conditions as what conservatives now want to call "guest workers." Later, they were called "sharecroppers," a term that bespoke a partnership that hardly existed in the harsh economy of the Arkansas Delta. The main things they shared were poverty and indignity. Today, those workers are gone, replaced by behemoth machines with multiple tires and implements as wide as a hobby-farm barn. The inhabitants are gone and the land won't even support the skeletal remains of what years ago were towns of value.

When I get to Gethsemane, once a community with two small groceries but now just an empty gash in the land—pronounced locally as "Gessymane,” I'll turn off the Bluetooth, slow, listen, and see if any souls will speak to me.

She left years ago. We can only
hope it was for a better place.