Rules for Readers, and The Fall of Rome

I read a tip once, I can't remember where: if you're traveling somewhere new to you, and you go to a restaurant and order x, and they ask you "do you want the y with that" (or something similar), just say yes. You'll be getting it the way the locals like it. Maybe you'll like it too, and at the least, you'll learn something.

If I were trying to collect useful tips for readers, and it looks like I am, my Rule #1 would be:

If you like what an author writes for money, seek out what he writes for love.

Or, less pithily but more accurately, if you like reading what an author is best known for, try to find things he's written out of love for the subject, or curiosity, or just for the hell of it. It doesn't always work, but sometimes you strike gold.

Like this nugget, with its dry title and dull dust jacket:

I recognized the author's name -- RA Lafferty, an idiosyncratic, not to say loopy, science fiction writer of the 60s and 70s, now mostly forgotten, whom I liked a lot. So I bought it (for $2.95 according to the bookseller's price penciled on the flyleaf) and read it.

Marilyn's Diary

I always admired my Aunt Lily. She was my role model. I mean she was 645 years old and didn't look a day over 345. She was always sexy and kept up her look. Of course that was until Uncle Herman left us to run off with Carole Herman.

Then Aunt Lily hit a rough patch. She drank a lot. Did a lot of drugs. Didn't eat all that much. Hung out with the Crazy guy Charlie and his girlfriends that lived out at the Ranch. She really got into the music scene. I mean she was hanging around with Mike Love and some of the Beach Boys. She once let Grace Slick do acid off of her tits. She had sex with both a Mama and Papa. She was all over the scene.

The one big benefit was she lost a lot of weight. She didn't eat much as a succubus got nourishment from the souls of the innocent. You never found any of them in Hollywood. So she really got thin. Everyone thought she was on coke but it was really from not feeding on virgin souls.
That's why she would occasionally take a toad trip to the small towns around California. To meet some of the locals. The way she dressed brought them all around.

That's why I do the  same thing now. Only at autograph shows. Those geeks have never touched a woman.

They are almost as big a bunch of virgins as at Star Wars convention.

I never had that problem. You see Uncle Herman took my cherry and we made hot dirty incestuous monster love every night.

I loved my Uncle Herman.

I was told there would be no Dylan

Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glow-worms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no frosting decks the bones.

A candle between the thighs
Warms youth with seed and burns the seeds of rage;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the donut shows its hairs.

I wrote it and then I deleted it

I wrote a whole post about how the stars of the show Glee were doomed but I deleted it. I thought about and I thought that some of my coauthors might not want to be associated with my thoughts.

I thought about the thought police who might find the post and try to destroy me and mine.

It is just not worth it anymore. You can't count on the First Amendment to protect you. You can't count on the government or the law to protect you.

You are on your own.

After the scandal the greatest star had to change his name. To both ask for forgiveness and make a problem:

Will B. Goode.

The Black What?

OK, we've all heard the news that, opening week of the NFL season, they will sing "Lift Every Voice", otherwise called the Black National Anthem.

I'm linking https://www.metrolyrics.com/the-black-national-anthem-lyrics-james-weldon-johnson.html the lyrics so you can see them. Wiki says the melody is supposed be the The National Anthem, although I think it scans a little more like My Country 'Tis Of Thee.

As you will see, the lyrics aren't unpatriotic and were written by a black Republican protesting Jim Crow, especially the lynchings. As we all know, Jim Crow was a Democrat institution and the Solid South was a Democrat mainstay in Congress as well as the White House.

So what's the deal? Make the Republicans look good? Make the Demos look bad?

Just another way of hating on America? Or are they really that ignorant of the origins of the song? Will players be kneeling?

Be interesting to see what the white, Hispanic, or Polynesian players do.

Ode to the Donut

I love donuts. I have always loved donuts. Jelly donuts. Boston creme. Bavarian creme. Bear claws. Glazed. Vanilla sprinkled. All of them.

I used to go every Sunday morning to Caputo's bakery and get a dozen jelly donuts for Sunday breakfast. Perfection. We had a few independent donut shops around that would make a much bigger variety. There was one on 9th St and 5th Avenue in Park Slope that I went to for forty years. In our drinking days we would go to the all night Burger King on Fourth Avenue and get a bunch of burgers when we were wasted. Then we would stop at the donut shop and get two dozen. One for the hangover and one to eat on the way home. Man those were delicious greasy donuts.

Sometime in the 1990's you started to see a bunch of Dunkin' Donuts come around. They were the first big chain to open on Court St. Everybody said it was the precursor of big chains coming in to push out the Mom and Pop. They were right. The joint on 9th St closed. Or more accurately became a falafel stand. They became ubiquitous and you saw them all over the place. Well not anymore. They are closing over 450 stores.

These stores are principally in gas stations. Now that sucks because when you are traveling it is always great to see a name you know and trust when you want to get something.  Lots of people out of work and a lot of people without donuts.

I call that a tragedy.

I blame Black Lives Matters. By defunding the police department they are destroying a huge part of the donut shops target demographic. Along with the communist governors closing businesses with the bogus Kung Flu bullshit how can the poor donut survive.

God bless the Donut. Please Jesus preserve it. I can give George Washington and protection from the criminals but please Jesus take the wheel and save our Donuts!

I beg you!

Little sister, don't you...

I'm sure you've all heard about how the Little Sisters of the Poor won their case against OCare's contraception mandate.

For details, they're available elsewhere, I'm sure.

 Only 2 dissenters (or is it dissentresses (or dissentrixes)?), Notorious and the Wise Latina.

So the Short Shortstop who, they said, was going to charm the Conservatives into coming over to the dark side and Breyer joined the other 5, including Roberts.

My question is this. Roberts?

He's supposed to be in Barry's hip pocket. Or nearby. How could this have happened?

Roberts is supposed to be Catholic, so did he get a warning from the Big Bad Boss With The Big Hot Sauce? After all, he tripped and cracked his head

Maybe it was Trump. Maybe Trump has something more on him than the Choom Gang. Maybe Trump leaned on him. He does have connections, the Lefties keep telling us.

Maybe it was a combination. Maybe The Donald and the Sucreme Bean, as my sister called Him when she was little, are on better terms than we think.

Maybe, maybe, They Are One. The God Emperor of the Cherry Blossom Throne.

It would explain a few things.

Updated.

Allies

Something that bewilders the rest of the world about Americans is the odd mixture of national pride, regional pride, and ethnic pride that we carry around. A mixture that is depicted brilliantly in this WWII cartoon by Bill Mauldin.

When this cartoon was published in the Army newspaper Stars & Stripes, the government of Ireland lodged a complaint with the US ambassador, protesting that Ireland was in fact neutral.

You never appreciate your family until you meet your In-Laws

One more story about a man getting no slack, Jefferson Davis.

Yeah, Davis wasn't a very good Confederacy President, but he was a better man than all the Visigoths, put together, with which we're faced today are.

He was, next to Elihu Root, one of the best Secretaries of War we ever had. Give him a hard time over the Ox-Bow Route, but he modernized the US Army to a point where it could fight and win the Civil War. He started the process of standardizing the cavalry by creating 2 regiments of what could be called light dragoons. No more mounted rifles, dragoons, hussars, or (dare I say?) lancers. He also began the process of modernizing the infantry by creating to new regiments armed with rifles and ordering light infantry tactics be taught to all foot soldiers.

Which leads me to this story.

When he graduated West Point, Davis married the daughter of Zachary Taylor, a marriage which the Taylor family violently opposed. When the girl died of malaria a few years later, they never forgave Davis.

Fast forward to the Mexican (no, not the Mexican-American, we're not Euros, you know) War and the last big fight on the northern front at Buena Vista. Davis had raised a regiment of foot soldiers, the Mississippi Rifles, back when the rifle was still a specialty weapon and led them into battle. They were posted on Zachary Taylor's flank as he faced Santa Anna's last big shot at winning the war.

Lookouts soon reported cavalry moving on the flank, a hot Mexican regiment known as the Jalisco Lancers. In them thar days SOP for infantry was to receive cavalry on their bayonets, as the Scots Guards had done at Waterloo (horses, being smarter than people, knew enough that they didn't want to charge a line of pointy things that would probably hurt like Hell). Unfortunately, the military rifles of the day could not be fitted with bayonets. All the Mississippi Rifles had was their Bowie knives.

Oooooppppssss.

Davis, nothing daunted, called to his men, "Stand Fast, Mississippians", and the line held (anybody who could say, "Mississippians", at a moment like that probably had something up his sleeve, the men probably figured). Davis let the lancers get within easy range and ordered his men to open fire, stopping the charge dead in its tracks. Also throwing the lancers into something of a tizzy.

No one had ever stopped horse troops by musket fire before.

As the lancers milled in confusion, Davis ordered the charge (yeah, the guys on foot charged the guys on horseback). The Rifles promptly pulled the lancers from their mounts and dispatched them with their Bowie knives. The flank was secured, the attack broken, the battle was won, the day was saved.

In the process, Davis had been wounded in the foot and, as he waited his turn in the hospital tent, in walks the army commander who said to his erstwhile son-in-law, "I am gratified to see, sir, that my daughter was a far better judge of character than I".

They don't make 'em like that no more.

WKRLEM TV: Congress explains who is in charge....

This is pretty much you get from every politician and political tv show these days.

A River of Money

Some years ago, I attended an informal reunion of high-school friends and acquaintances. (Baby Boom era, upper-middle-class suburb of Washington, DC.) Almost everyone there had wound up working in the Government/Nonprofit/Academia world. And almost without exception, when they told war stories about their challenges and achievements, the stories had to do with obtaining government grants.

These people live on the banks of a great, roiling river of money. They are aware intellectually, I'm sure, that there's a lot of productive work being done upstream. But they mostly don't see it being done, and they mostly don't know the people doing it. For them, the river is just part of the landscape, fixed and eternal.

They're sure it won't affect the river if they dip their little bucket down to fund this bike path, or that conference, or some "initiative." It will surely do some good. And anyway, look at all the people who are scooping it out by the barrelful and spending it on things we don't like.

These are not bad people, and though they live comfortably, they are not getting rich. But my Lord, there sure are a lot of them.

Which day is it?

OK, how many of you never heard of Juneteenth before a month ago, raise your hands.

(I see you guys in the back, waving)

Once unique to Texas, now the Lefties want it to be a national holiday.

Which is funny considering that should be the date the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, but that went into effect January 1, 1863.

So scratch New Year's. Also MLK's birthday because it's too close. Not to mention the fact it wasn't all that popular at the time. 50,000 Union soldiers deserted when the news was made public, I learned in history class.

Then there's the backstory. In our last exciting episode, we learned the protective tariff was the big source of revenue for the Feds, so Abe was short money to prosecute the war. This was the reason for the first income tax in the country's history and it flopped, mostly because it couldn't be collected.

So Abe went to the rich Abolitionists and asked for money, "What's in it for us?". "Name it". "Free the slaves".

So we have the Emancipation Proclamation, which only freed slaves already free, i.e., in Union-held territory. This was such a weasel, William Seward even criticized to Lincoln's face.So the war went on another 2 1/2 years and, no, it didn't end at Appomattox, either.

How many didn't know that one, either?

(yeah, I see you over there, mumbling "S'ter, S'ter", under your breath)

It was a whole lot more complicated than that. Jefferson Davis knew the war on the battlefield was lost, so he tried to convince Robert E Lee to move his men up into the mountains and drag the war out for another 20 years until the Union finally gave in. Uncle Robert, who detested bushwhackers like John Mosby, would have none of it, and made his decision to surrender.

Lincoln, ever the shrewd propagandist, ballyhooed this as the end of the war. John Wilkes Booth thought otherwise.

Davis then attempted to push his idea on Joe Johnston, still duelling in the Carolinas with Sherman. Like Lee, Joe's supply lines were gone, and he felt he had no choice but surrender, so he went to Sherman and proposed terms. Basically he asked for everything Grant gave Lee, but also a general peace proclaiming the war over in all theaters (Ford's, included). Sherman could make no promises on his own, but said he'd ask.

Although the Radical Republicans screamed, Sherman was able to give Johnston Grant's terms, for which Joe remained grateful the rest of his life.

That was April 26. Aprentieth doesn't have much of a ring, do it?

By then, Jefferson Davis had been captured. That left the theaters comprising the Deep South and Texas.

Richard Taylor, son of Zachary Taylor, held command of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana and was held in high regard by his contemporaries for his ability to hold his ground, as well as Arkansas and Texas against the Yankees, but, by the end of April, he also saw the writing on the wall.

Commander of the Union's Military Division of Western Mississippi. was Edward Canby, who had won the New Mexico campaign, but was now being roundly criticized for rebuilding infrastructure, rather than killing Johnny Rebs.

Taylor rode with Bedford Forrest (of all people) to Canby's camp to inquire about surrender terms, and were met with an offer to do lunch. Basically, Grant's terms were offered plus something only Canby, a Kentuckian, could offer. He would see that any of Taylor's men too far from home to get there by himself would get a free ride on one of his railroads.

Taylor agreed and formally surrendered on May 4. Doesn't exactly sing, either.

So now we are down to Texas, commanded by Edmond Kirby Smith. He had heard of all the other surrenders and was in the same straits, although he also wanted to put Davis' idea and fight a guerrilla war on the plains of Texas. He had already won what would be the last fight of the Civil War at Palmito Ranch and decided to see if he had the supply lines to do it.

In his absence, second in command Simon Buckner, hopped a train to New Orleans and did lunch with Canby. The surrender, unofficial, was on May 26, and Kirby Smith, returning to his HQ and learning he had been outmaneuvered, endorsed the surrender on June 2. And that was the real end of the war.

Junetooth?

It took 2 1/2 weeks to get the word out that the slaves of Texas were free. And so, in those areas of Texas with a Negro population, Juneteenth became an unofficial holiday.

Now, does that make it worthy of national recognition?

I mean good ol' Delaware, home of Gropin' Joe, the man who had a restrictive covenant on his house, didn't abolish slavery until December of 1865.

Sorry about the length, but I wanted to make a point. I'll try to do better.

WKRLEM: Didn't y'all ride with the James Boys?

The way the politically correct mob is acting is turning many of us into good old rebels.

From the best Jesse James movie I ever saw "The Long Riders."

With the great Pamela Reed as Belle Starr and famous onanist David Carradine in his best role ever as Cole Younger.

Highly reccomended.

It really was Mr Lincoln's War

With all the talk of BLM and such, the issue of the Civil War is (again) back in the headlines, yet how many people really know what it was about. Abraham Lincoln's correspondence with Horace Greeley is illuminating as are the many quotes that come from his many speeches and letters

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races

free all the slaves and send them to Liberia

Not exactly the Great Emancipator, as we know him.

The Civil War was over money as much as anything. The protective tariff imposed on the South had more to do with secession than slavery. The tariff imposed prohibitive duties on European goods to force Southerners to buy Northern and were the main source of revenue for the Federal government.

When the South talked secession, it meant impoverishing the Feds. So 7 states seceded after Lincoln's election. Why did VA, NC, TN, and AR not secede until Lincoln mustered troops to South back in the fold?

Because they tried to talk Lincoln out of a war. Try to arrange some kind of compromise. Lincoln would hear none of it. The lunatics firing on Fort Sumter, the provocation Lincoln needed, forced the remaining 4 states to secede in solidarity.

So Mr Lincoln got his war, although he would be one of its last casualties.

This is a part of American history that few people seem to know, As a kid, I was taught about the protective tariff and, of course, it went right past me.

If the US cavalry wasn't fighting Indians, who cared? The Civil War was all Scarlett O'Hara, hoopskirts and sissified Southern gentlemen proclaiming their undying love.

That was for girls.

Years later, as I heard people talking about Lincoln as the first statist President, those days in Mr Campbell's history class came back.

I'm going to do something about the new fad of Juneteenth in a bit.

Which may blow your minds even more.

PS Still learning how all this works, so bear with  me.