Nothing is as sweet as fruit of the earth, risen unlooked for, gracing the small spaces between sun and shadow, a gift of life that cannot help but remind us of the small joys that come and go heedless of our greater travails.
Purity…the feminist in me has issues with the term, but still, it’s nice to know that such beauty and yes, purity, can be created by even the blackest thumbs. I grew these from seed, and they are so bountiful now.
Blue is often used to describe unhappiness, but in nature, blue leaps up and shouts nothing but joy. If I am blue about my country, blue is also the color of hope, and the unceasing belief that things can change, against all odds, in the face of adversity. I’m only sorry they were out of blueberry bushes at the nursery this spring. If you don’t know, blueberries grow in really crappy soil and can be kept in pots if you don’t have a lot of space. But in the meantime, my delphinium will do.
The Grey Lord reminds me that I should say “Thank you!” to all our readers, and I really mean that. You are the Best. As far as “success” in the blogging world goes, we’ve achieved it at Corrente, and that’s because of you. Even our trolls are amusing (so neener neener, Mr. “Stupidest Trolls on the Interwebs!”) and I have learned so much from our more intelligent commenters. If there is any pride to be found in being American, I have only to come here to know it.
In the spirit of times past and present, I watched Gettysburg recently (which was fought during this time of this month). Proving that TV doesn’t have to suck, and reminding us of how close we really are to chaos, rent it soon if you’ve not seen it. If there’s anything I regret about our times, it’s that by comparison, we’re so much less elegant, honorable and articulate. But we don’t have to remain so.
Going back a little further, I picked up Founding Mothers and Fathers, which while not exactly about the Revolutionary period, is still insightful and informative. Crossdressing colonists are Teh Kewl.
Happy Birthday, America. You’ve never really been entirely free or fair, and certainly you’re in a dark place this day, but we’re still fighting for your soul, and the outcome has yet to be determined. I’m going to have some tea this morning, and maybe a Sam Adams later tonight, and think of other times and other people who labored under and fought against a despotic monarchy. And won.
Front page
What won was our best side.
People come in all sorts of descriptive terms, and I just came back from a trip thru a lot of the West, meeting all sorts. The best kind of people are thoughtful and caring, and they had the concept of public service that the founders counted on. The kind of person supposed to run the country was upstanding, cared about his country and his fellow citizens. Over the course of our history, sometimes crooks win control. The popular vote is the controlling force. I do believe it will overturn the present criminals and we will be a healthy country again.
Prettiest thing I saw, in CO, a field of chollo cactus in (purple) bloom, with an antelope herd wandering through it.
Surprising; the amount of land I saw that is not under any sort of cultivation at all.
Ruth
Turning the Great plains into the great plains
Ruth, you write:
Isn’t there a plan to let the great plains return to prairie? I think that could be beautiful (and perhaps even profitable — certainly better business than trying to farm land that wasn’t meant to be farmed…) IIRC, lots of the settlers were lured out there by promises of the railroads —- “Rain follows the plow” was brilliant marketing, and in a stroke of some sort of luck, it was unnaturally rainy for the first few years. Then the natural cycle reasserted itself, but by then the thin topsoil had been destroyed…
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
Same Wave length.
Hi, Lambert, you and I were posting at the same time. And you have a good point. See Amber Waves (another pun, yep) above. (Ruth waves.)
Ruth
Gettysburg ended yesterday in fact
July 1-3 1863.
And the movie isn’t bad if you keep a few things in mind:
1)Gen. Longstreet did not in fact wear a dead possum tied to his chin. (The beards in that flick are a never-ending source of amusement in crowds like the Gettysburg Discussion Group et al.)
2) Joshua Chamberlain, while a remarkable man in many ways, did not win the battle singlehandedly with that bayonet charge on Little Round Top. Up until 1989 the LRT fight was of interest only to obsessives about the overall battle and rarely visited by tourists. After The Movie came out it suddenly became the Mecca and focal point of the field. The right flank marker of 20th Maine’s* had gotten lost somehow when the park put the car road through. People raised so much hell about this that the NPS had to track down the records from the Monumentation Period (late 19th/early 20th century), figure out about where it used to be, and put in a replacement.
(Little Round Top was of great use to the Union artillery because the west side of the slope had been logged off a year or two earlier by its owner who needed the money for the wood. It would have been semi useless for Confederate artillery because they would have had to shoot north, which had not been logged. Additionally the hill top itself runs largely north-to-south so you could put a lot of cannon there facing west but not so many facing north. But back to the movie….)
3) The most interesting character in the movie, Sgt. Buster Kilrain, is entirely fictional. Michael Shaara called him a “composite”. To this day the question most often asked of rangers and battlefield guides is for directions to his burial site. :)
Harrison the spy on the other hand is entirely real. Rough job, that…doomed to be hanged by one side if caught and very likely to be shot by the other when trying to report in. And the standards of honor made skulking around out of uniform emotionally painful as well. They got that part right.
3) Martin Sheen’s portrayal of Lee during Gettysburg is unquestionably the most accurate depiction every done. For which he has gotten unmitigated and unceasing abuse to this day. “He played Lee as a feeble, indecisive, sick old man” they bitch. Which is precisely what he was that summer.
4) Oh, and the 20th ME did not get relieved and sent to the center of the field just in time to get smacked with Pickett’s Charge the next day. Made up for dramatic purposes. We could discuss the unreality of wagons, horses and persons getting hurled dozens of feet into the air when hit with 19th century cannon fire, but this is getting a bit long as it is. :)
5) Civil War soldiers, particularly Confederate ones, were not nearly either as old or as fat as the ones in the movie. This started the trend of “hiring” (actually most of them worked unpaid!) Civil War reenactors as extras since they had their own costumes and props ready at hand. “Cold Mountain”s producers wanted more realism so they shot the battle scenes in….Romania.
That said, the music makes that movie. You will hear it pop up in a remarkable number of commercials as well as promotions for other films for which the actual music hasn’t been completed yet. As far as Civil War movies go it’s probably No. 3—“Glory” is far and away the best ever made, and Ang Lee’s “Ride With the Devil” is surprisingly good although it got little or no attention at the time.
*This is ungrammatical but I could not figure out how to write “The 20th Maine’s right flank marker” without the first part of it coming up as a Biblical citation of Thessalonians 20. Sometimes Drupal is too thorough for its own good, a phenomenon with which I am familiar.
Oh dear...
I should fix that pattern. In the meantime, Xan, check the source on this comment for how to defeat the pattern matcher:
The 20th Maine’s…
The idea:
The 20th Maine’s....should print as a space, but isn’t, while:
Of course, the throttles just kicked in, so now I can’t see that what I’m recommended is, in fact, working
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
Feh, no biggie
Like I’m gonna remember “ *^%$#” or whatever it is. If you didn’t have the “< =! breaker one nine!=” >* whatever command at the top of the Post To My Blog page so I can copy and paste it I would never have a post over 3 lines long.
Which come to think of it would no doubt please some people. :)
*this is my payback to SteveAudio for his “where oh where can my baby be” headline the other day. I apologize to the other six people who get the joke and are now stuck with awful earworms of Ceti eel proportions. Consider yourselves victims of friendly fire.
ON the other hand having just listened to it for the first time in probably four score and twenty years it strikes me that with a slight lyrical rewrite it would make a great theme for the March On Washington/Pitchforks & Torches Parade. (date tba.)
At the risk of getting it
What earworm?
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
Um, click the "listen to it" link
in the last graf. The one with the bizarre expression “four score and twenty years” in it, which expression I just now noticed since it was clearly not what I intended to write but now it’s been up so long that it would be even more embarassing to change it even if I could remember what I originally meant it to say.
Oh just go listen to the song. It was a thought inspired by the “breaker one nine” if that isn’t enough of a clue. ;)
Hope Blooms
that was really beautiful.
good to read ya again!
___________________________
.delusions of un mundo mejor.