War Games

I have found it interesting when both sides of a war call on the almighty to prevail on their behalf. In the Civil War both sides were convinced that God himself was on their side and you couldn't have told any of them any different.
 
It's also interesting that the Mason's would regularly call off the war on Lodge night and have their solumn services without mention of differences and battle, with the bible open during the entire meeting, both Rebels and Yankees participating peacefully. Only to be shooting at each other the next day. 
 
 
When someone said War is Hell, I think they were prophesying.

I have a distant-ish relative who is one of those re-enactors (the non-farby kind ). When he found out I live in Virginia, I thought he was going to hop in the car and come home with me. Don't get him started on anything remotely Civil War related (which he likes to call the War of Northern Agression). I do find it interesting the re-enactor thing. I live less than an hour from Williamsburg which has made gobs of money from immersion history. They dress in period garb and do all things colonial. No battles though. Speaking as a Renn Faire geek, it's fun to put on the clothes and imagine what it would be like to have lived during that time period, especially with the option of coming back to the 21st century with running water and electricity.  Not to suggest that Civil War re-enactors aren't courageous folks, but I have to wonder how many of them, if faced with the real Civil War, would feel the need to keep rehashing it.
  

I'm thinking that if Dilbert Horatio Farb sees the Article above, his own Monthly Column will be filled with objections .......

My current battle dress is a rather grubby white dressing gown & some strange pink & purple crocheted slippers that my niece made for me. I'm off to the kitchen to do battle with yesterday's bread. The War Cry is "You're toast!" With lots of Welsh butter. And a mega-cup of coffee to the victor.

Ivan, do you ever sleep?

HAZEL.........toast sounds really delicious about now, I think I will have peanut butter toast for breakfast...................enjoy yours!
 
I went to my first re-enactment last year w/ a friend & it was really incredible. These people are serious about what they do & they put on an amazing spectacle...........horseback, cannons............I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
 
Great day all.............

Since I live in Northern Virginia, there are many Civil War battlefields, the most prominent being Manassas.  And there are many Civil War enactors.  When my son, now 35, was about 9 I took him to an enactors' encampment at Cabell's Mill, an authentic late 18th Century mill.  It was fascinating.  These were hardcore enactors, with authentic handmade boots, uniforms, etc. about which they could go on at length.  I asked one how far and how accurately the .50 caliber rifles would fire.  He said that if they could see you, they could shoot you.  These guys even had tents, tent lamps, field bedding, etc.  While it looked like it could be fun, I couldn't see the financial investment or doing essentially the same thing over and over.  My daughter is a student at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.  As S.Blume noted, they have made an industry of re-enactment of the colonial and Revolutionary War era.  Lots of tourists and lots of money.  The passes to get into the buildings in the colonial town are not cheap.  It does provide employment for a lot of college students.

I found some footage of Iott's recent reenactments.

I hope it is not too Camp.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3ed5fBHHVU

Shall we play a game?....Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.

Terrorist toast: Crumbs in bed. Gotta Nuke them in the washing machine. Hand to hand duvet combat, pillowcase wrestling, discovery of insurgent missing sock at bottom of bed - in cahoots with 2 biros & a missing notebook. The plot thickens.
 
Both my Grandpas & my Dad could not talk about their war(s) without getting "something in their eye" remembering lost comrades & horrible experiences. They would be insulted by some sanitized, glamourised, Disney-fied version of their reality. What the hell does it matter if your flies have zips or buttons when you are wetting yourself with fear & still carry on fighting for what you believe in?

Tommy, Global Thermonuclear Warfare sounds about right.  You do not hear of re-enactors dressing up as the Japanese Army.  Nor are there re-enactors for the Korean War or the Vietnam War.  Wouldn't that be something?  Half the folks running around in black peasant outfits (the "black pajamas") and conical straw hats.  Certainly be a cheap uniform.  And for the Korean War re-enactment, would they do human wave assaults?  It helps to either have a cool uniform (German or Civil War) or be somehow engaged in the war (e.g., those who still call the Civil War "the War of Northern Aggression").  No offense to any Southerners, but folks from the North are usually not that emotionally invested in it.  The Cabell's Mill re-enactment I mentioned earlier had a Southern contingent with a real mix of uniforms, quasi-uniforms and non-uniforms.  The South was not so consistent in providing uniforms - budget constraints as we say nowadays.  But the re-enactors were as proud of their garb as the folks with blue uniforms.

Yeah, paolos~ camp as a set of flashing Christmas Tree Lights. Loved it.

Tommy Typical~ Is that one of those old-fashioned games where you have to throw a 6 on the dice to get first shot?

Doing the same thing over and over? Like pushing a ball around a golf course? Or back and forth across the same white lined cow pasture? And let's not get too smug about other peope's obsessions in this world of 24 hour news, 24 hour blog postings, fantasy football leagues, etc.  My own tastes and interests run in a different direction, but I figure a man who can make something starting with rocks as his peak technology will be interesting to know, if not practically useful.  It was General Sherman who declared war was Hell and he was among the first who refused to be gentlemen about it.  By  Korea and Viet Nam nobody expected polite truces and talk of shared values.  I think I will sit this one out.

Tommy - that's one of my favorite movies.  It was one of the ones I saw over and over when we first got HBO.  That was high living - HBO.
 
So yeah, Lynn and Willie, doing something over and over does seem kindof pointless when you really think about it and yet, we engage in it all the time. 
 
What makes one thing worth doing over and over and another not?  The re-enactment does seem pointless to me - we all know how it ends.  Yet, I watch The Usual Suspects at least once or twice a year.  Playing golf or football or racing sailboats could seem pointless to the uninterested but it's never the same thing twice.
 
By the way, Stoney's glimpse of life in Wisconsin was much appreciated.  My husband, the compulsive manual saver, got a kick out of the microwave story. 
 
 
 

Over the years, I have known alot of vets who came back from war and never spoke a word about it. They had no external evidence of "damage", so they were "just fine". They stashed their uniforms in the back recesses of the closet along with the horrors they had experienced.

Years later when the posttraumatic stress got out of hand, they got "weird" and drank, ALOT, and their families got scared because they could not figure out what was happening. Every once in a while, one of them got bold enough to go off to the VA and ask for help. But until recently, they frequently did not get the help they needed.

Finally, during the last 2 years, there has been increased funding for the VA and a long overdue realization that more mental health professionals were needed in the VA system. One of my friends has finally gone to get help after 35 years and is very slowly and painfully working through the horrendous memories that he has tried to bury for all those years.

The problem with re-enactments is that the participants are not actually re-enacting; they are play acting, Re-enacting and play acting have NOTHING in common.

In defense of re-enactors, I am not sure any event for them is exactly the same.  And there is the gradual accumulation of uniform parts and equipment.  The rifles are phenomenally expensive.  I also had a sense of a lot of camaraderie; these folks (there were some women playing Civil War era women) knew each other.  And certainly playing golf or football or whatever is never the same twice.  Otherwise we would tape one game and just replay it.
Movies and books can be like old friends.  I too have movies I've watched many times.  And books I've re-read dozens of times.  So, to each his own.

Andy, as a Korean war vet and speaking just for myself I agree wirh you and find "playing war" to be disgusting and something I am not going to do.
If these participants are that interested in a combat setting why don't they just join the military and try the real thing?

One mo'thing... I was around a movie once- to say that I was in it may not be entirely right or wrong, as I haven't seen the finished product...    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0339743/ ; .  Stoney, you would be pleased to know that a couple of my guns were in it.  It may have been my last great back-of-the-classroom experience. You know, when you sit and sit and generally undermine the authority of  someone.  As an extra, I was treated like the cow or sheep I was standing in for- fed, ordered around, generally disdained until needed.  I think I got to menace Robert Redford's daughter, though I signed an amazingly detailed non-disclosure agreement (without consideration, you lawyers) that may prohibit me from saying so.  When it got to be nitty gritty, the guys who came through and saved more than one scene were, REENACTORS with their own cannon, uniforms, everything.   The director and the star were great  folks and they did very well with a limited budget. ( Let's not get started on what it means to have a low budget for a movie- it would still probably kick the sh*t out of  Rhode Island in a war, to borrow a phrase from Dudley Moore.)  But the movie bureaucrats- the middle management types were no different from bureaucrats everywhere- except slightly better looking, I guess.   My experience would probably have made a good Jim Varney movie Willie Goes to Hollywood. Sort Of.

I remember being a young boy living on a street full of kids my age, us all watching the Vietnam War on TV, it being a daily reminder that peace was a blessing. I remember a guy up the street from us named Chris, the only kid with an older brother, Steve, on our street, long haired and friendly to us young bucks. Steve was always willing to be an anchor in our massive, in the street, Friday night dodge ball matches encompassing every kid for blocks in our suburban Atlanta neighborhood. The Dads on our street all liked Steve, despite of his longer hair, unusual back in our day but a sign of changes to come. Steve was a dude with a quick smile, hansome, great athlete, friendly, a better than average mechanic with a 65 Chevelle Super Sport, and most of us worshipped him as boys.

He was suddenly gone, we heard he signed up for the Army and was off to boot camp. We saw him one more time after boot camp, hair cut off and his youthful friendliness replaced with a seriousness none of us could figure out.

I remember when Steve left and all the kids on our street, all on our bikes, stopped to watch as his parents drove him off to where ever they took young men prepared for war. I looked for Steve on TV every night on the news.

I also remember when his Chevelle was sitting in his parents front yard with a "For Sale" sign in the window.
The moving truck in his yard a month later. We thought Steve's parents were moving closer to wherever Steve was living at the time. We were still too young to figure out the truth. We thought Steve's parents were mad at him and sold his car, still too young to figure out the truth.

We never saw Steve again.

[crawling out from my studying-for-finals cubbyhole] I am not an American Civil War re-enactor but I do participate in medieval life re-enactment in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Like the Civil War groups, the level of participation and autheniticity vary from "it-looks-sort-of-like-it-Renn-Faire-style" outfits to hand-spun, hand-woven, hand-dyed with period dyes, hand sewn down to the skin ensembles. I concentrate my energy on researching the making of medieval manuscripts and books and my clothing is middle of the road as far as authenticity goes. Authenticity is very expensive and I can't afford it--time-wise or dollar-wise. As far the Civil War re-enactors go, I have a couple of friends in North Carolina who do it. His current persona is a surgeon (though he started out as a backwoods "grunt") and his wife has occassionally disguised herself as a man in order to participate in the battles. BTW: Did you know that there is historical evidence for far more women participating in battles as combatants throughout history (western history anyway) than we thought?  Anyway, my friend has collected a period surgeon's kit and researched battlefield surgery techniques (He said it makes him very appreciative of modern painkillers, anesthesia, and medical research. Me too.). He also goes to schools, social clubs, libraries and retirement homes to give lectures on various aspects of the war (His last talk was on the Confederate submarine that was salvaged a few years ago off the coast of the Carolinas). He says that many of the members of his group join for the "romance" but he does it as a form of "practical archeology". Which is what I do as well as I try to re-create methods used to make ink, pens, paint and so forth to make my medieval books (when I'm not studying algebra and personal finance).  Regarding the former Congressman, since I don't really know anything about his group I can't say whether he should or shouldn't have participated. But if you're going to perform a scenario involving war someone has to play the bad guys (remember playing cops and robbers as kids?).  And as a USAF vet of the first Gulf War, I'm not bothered by these play-actors armies. In fact, some members of the local Civil War group are real-life combat veterans. The ones I've spoken to say that they find their participation in a battle to which they know the results to be therapeutic. However, I think it's a therapy that I personally don't want to try.  

Argh! Sorry folks. the carriage returns I typed didn't show up in my previous message.

Years later, I had an opportunity to be in our nations capitol, at a massive Christian men's gathering on the mall by the Washington Monument. My business partner and I rode a bus all night with 65 other men as a sign of unity in the Christian community.

I remember wandering about the area, happening upon the Vietnam War memorial. It's like that, a war so criticized by so many and a country that has all but forgotten the human toll and those that served and died there.

I was overwhelmed by the items left at the wall and the emotions very much on display there. It was sad and inspirational at the same time.

I remember finding Steve's name on the wall, as a man, and how I wept over Steve and innocence lost, by us both. Touching his name on that massive wall made it real for me, finally knowing Steves fate.

(Lets try this using a different computer than before. Maybe the carriage returns will work this time.)
 
Ummgawa: I remember seeing "Welcome Home" banners on the houses in my Baltimore, MD neighborhood as a little kid and asking my mom what they were for. She tried to explain about the war but I couldn't understand it. Unitl I was 11 I wasn't allowed to watch much TV (The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, one hour of after-school cartoons and three hours of Saturday morning cartoons was all I'd get to watch except for the Apollo launches and landings) so I wasn't exposed to the footage from Vietnam until right before the war ended.
 
But I do remember the day that a schoolmate's house had its front porch draped in black and my mom told me that his Dad had died in the war. I never really made the mental connection that people I knew were being killed until much later; back then I just knew that my schoolmate didn't come to school for a week and was very sad for a long time afterwards, and Mr. C-- didn't come ot cook hot dogs athe little league games any more. When I went to see the mobile Vietnam Memorial the last time it was in the Dayton, Ohio area, I looked for my schoolmate's Dad's name. I found it and I still can't equate the memory of him cooking hot dogs on the grill with the proof that he lost his life so tragically so long ago.
 
I sometimes think that it hurts more to find out what really happened far after the fact because you no longer have the community who also experienced hte loss to help you bear the grief. Innocence lost, indeed.

rwh -- Five of my uncles were in WWII, one (lying about his age and changing his name, in WWI), cousins were in Korea and one died there, my father-in-law WWII, son-in-law a Marine in Desert Storm and his father in Viet Nam.   My husband and brother were in the Army Reserves during Korea and sweated out being called.  Without exception, none of them found this to be an experience worth reliving.  It was a hard, hard time, especially if you were a family man.  These were people of the middle class at a time in our lives where television violence was unheard of so the shock to their systems of this carnage, as yet never beheld, must have been horrendous.  And also without exception, even when specifically asked, they do not discuss this; they do not wish to relive it or have it inflicted on their loved ones.

Well said Andy.

Dancingkatz- it's important to know that we weren't TV heads, we were outside playing when the sun was up, reluctantly coming indoors for the sustinance (my mom was/is a fantastic cook). We weren't force fed the Vietnam War ala "Clockwork Orange", but it was there, sometimes screaming, sometimes background noise, wispered in our school hallways, but always there.

It's the first time I recall a televised war with station breaks and commercials. It was the sixties.

Ummgawa: I have very fond memories of running around all day long playing outside from the second I got out of school/done iwth homework unless the weather didn't permit it (and sometimes even then). I currently live in a neighborhood with lots of families with kids under twelve and I hardly ever see them playing outside. They are all inside either playing video games or surfing the web, and unless their parents put them in Little League or an afterschool sports or dance program they're pretty much all all overweight.
 
I know that the desire to keep their kids safe lead parents to keep their kids indoors these days and some kids don't have really anywhere safe to play (and any parent that allowed their kid to play in-the-street dodge ball or stickball is liable to be arrested for child endangering) but I think that it's a shame that entire generations have missed out on the fun we had.
 
Would you believe that there is a club at the university I work at/attend specifically for teaching and playing sidewalk/playground games we grew up on? A large majority of the 18-19 year-olds here don't seem to have ever learned to pay four-quare (box-ball), hopscotch, red rover, jump rope, or the like as kids so they are learning and playing them now.
 
My nieces and nephews are the only kids I know who spend more time outdoors playing than inside watching TV and that's because my sisters and I taught them to play outside safely.
 
How many fireflies did you catch on a typical Friday night?

I was called on to do a minor electrical repair at the National Viet Nam Veterans Museum,in Chicago.   It was on the second floor,to a lighting system that seemed to illuminate a silver cloud,that hung over the short hallway into the ground floor display area.   From the ground floor,it was a shimmering cloud.   When I reached that mezzanine level, my heart stopped,as if just by some force field.  The shimmering silver cloud parts were dog tags.  58,000+   .   It makes me breath laboriously even now.   .All gave some, some gave all

War re-enactment, really? How ridiculous can a human possible be? It is bad enough we have not seen fit to "lose" the very idea of war in this 21st Century. Re-enactment? What would possess someone to do this sort of thing. It's horrfic!

HAZEL:  I go to bed at 5AM, get up at 930AM, and do it all again ... Only Change occurs between 4PM Friday, and Sundown Saturday ... Sometimes a workday may run a little long, when there is only a small amount of time left to finish a Project, and Moentum need not be interrupted ....... Been on this Schedule for Seventy years ... Hardest thing in the world on me was, Elementary School ... I was expected to be in my place with brite, shiny face at 8AM ... When my Brain and Body KNEW I was supposed to be asleep ... Never got a Break until Junior High School, and the advent of Distributive Education Classes, that allowed me to take off from School at Noon to go to my Job ... I "Tested Out" of most everything that didn't actually require me to be there, and Scheduled all the "Have To" Classes for the Morning ... Went to Summer School every Year to get thru with all the really unnecessary crap ... and started doing College Level work by Correspondence by my Sophomore Year in High School (Even Harvard has a Correspondence School) and continued as I entered Active Duty, until I got the Letters that I wanted ... All from Fully Accredited Schools, while engaged in the end of one War and the begining of another ... If God had not made me a Night Person, I'd never have been able to do it all ... There are myriad Theories about Circadian Rhythms, and Nite People as opposed to Day People as opposed to Mid-Day People etdc. etc. etc.  ... But those are only simplistic ways that mortal man tries to  explain, or explain away, Almighty God ... God told us once, "Do Not Sleep As Others Sleep, But Keep Ye a Watch in The Night ..."  ... so naturally, He had to make people who were Best Suited to that Task ... and of course, it was another Jew who complained loudly enough and long enough, until we finally got a Pay Differential for working the Overnite Shift .......

http://www.nvvam.org/

Oops...I meant to write "possibly be" not possible be in my first post on PE. One thing for certain, my hands will always move faster than my brain! (Shame, really.) ;*}

Almost everybody in the UK is wearing a hand-made red poppy in the run-up to rememberance day. The money for these poppies is used for charitable funding for ex-servicemen & women. The Queen will lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in London, along with he great & the good. In every town and village, wreaths will be laid at War Memorials in simple ceremonies at 11/11. There will be a nationwide two minute silence. Interestingly, the younger generation who were disengaged with this old fogies activity are now engaged as boys & girls (God, they are so young!) from our communities die in war "arenas" around the world. We lost a young man from our village in Afghanistan last year. The teenagers in the village have asked for a place in the War Memorial ceremony, to lay a wreath for their friend. The manner of his death would not be entertaining re-enactment material.

Fireflies were an endangered species back then, we'd catch so many in one jar you could use it as a lantern on summer nights.

AlexandraBrooks~ Typos are a way of saying you are human. I do them all the time. Don't be shy, welcome to somebody else who doesn't spell rite!

Greetings: Speeking of the Civil War, my friend Bullwinkle Moose said, "There was nothing civil about it".

alexandra -- welcome and well said -- typos?  I think I must have read it right, I didn't see any :)
 
Hazel -- I remember wearing the poppies when I was a child - didn't know it was still done.
 
Ummgawa - and were the fireflies there in the morning?  Mine never were, but I would keep trying -- now I don't see them as much even though we live in the burbs and there isn't that much lighting around.

We didn't have fireflies. It being the South and all, we had to make do with lightning bugs.

Willie -- ha ha ha ha ha  -- made the laugh of the day

Surely SOMEONE on here knows this guy, or was the basis for his character...           http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI58wj4b4g0&feature=email

Willie Trask- I stand corrected! For a dude born on Peachtree Street in Atlanta Georgia not to call the critters with the flashy tails by it's true and correct name, lightnin bug (that's Genus-flying bug, Phylum-lightning), well, it's like ordering tea at a Bar-b-que joint (or any decent eating establishment in the deep south for that matter) and it not come automatically sweet. Or not callin' every carbonated beverage on the planet a Coke, or God Forbid, watching Hockey instead of College Football.

Thirty lashes with a Pic-Ric drum stick for me! Self imposed of course.

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
Kurt Vonnegut

Perhaps one reason why people do medival and American Civil War re-enactment is because the conflicts happened so long ago. There  no one still alive that knew someone involved in them and the separation of having no living memory of the events makes it psychologically "acceptable". Your elderly next-door neighbor didn't have his leg amputated without anesthesia because a minnie ball shattered his thighbone.
 
WWII (and other, more recent conflict) re-enactment is a different kettle of fish. That era is far too close for comfort. I remember seeing tatooed numbers on the forearm of an elderly Jewish neighbor when I was 14 years old and having to excuse myself to go and be sick in private once he explained what they meant. I'm sure other people in this community have similar recollections.
 
Even seeing the films Schindler's List, Sophie's Choice, and Saving Private Ryan were too difficult to watch in a theater.  I admit that I had to walk out because I couldn't handle the heavy-duty emotions that the images and sounds and words called up.
 
Probably in another century or two people will be re-enacting the current conflicts as they won't have the emotional connection to the actual events. Then again, maybe not. Warfare today is either guerilla [spelling?] style or drop a bomb from on high. I doubt that a hobbyist re-enactor could afford to build his or her own F-22 or B-1.

Willie Trask: LOL! Lightning bugs work just as well! In fact, my Mom's family (from Maryland) called them lightning bugs while my Dad's family (from Pennsylvania) called them fireflies.
 
And those jars sure made great lights for camping out in the backyard.  My Dad made me a special screened lid for the mason jar that was reserved for bug-catching so they wouldn't suffocate.

When I was just an ankle biter, we kids in the neighborhood would often be ‘shooting it out' with cap guns in the alley ways, gang ways, and courtyards of our neighborhood. The huge cathedral on the next block always provided a most excellent backdrop for our medieval sword fights which would usually end up with the occasional cuts, bruises and worse of all.... slivers. 

Meanwhile and far away, I found I just could not bring myself to even consider buying my young grandson any such toy weapon. The violence of war and crime that happened during my youth was certainly not less senseless and horrific than what takes place in today's world. I suppose we, who were not directly affected by it back then were more insulated from the graphic reality of it. One example of this is that my early images of war and violence were viewed on a small, black and white television that had only three channels to choose from as opposed to today's 50" HD-3D TVs that enable one to be able to count frog hairs from across the room; and then be able to pause and replay a scene over and over again... with hundreds of channels available.

Many of the filters that softened the violence before are gone and it is now so much closer to home... I think my folks would have reconsidered allowing me to have such toys in today's world.

Now as far as the folks who are so deeply invested and involved in reenacting famous battles..... well..... I guess I just don't get it.

I've often thought I would have better fit in had I lived during different periods in the past...... but I've never longed for the horrors of whatever violence that was being committed during those times.

There are many worse hobbies and passions that these War Re-enactors could otherwise be involved in (like robbing gas stations and convenient stores and such), and as long as they don't really hurt anyone.... ....well I guess it falls under the category of ‘to each his own'.

I bet they end up getting a lot of slivers doing this sort of thing....... and I sure wouldn't want to see some guy with a musket and bayonet walking down a dark alley either....

Peace out

WILLIE TRASK:  Think back to a fellow named, PORFIRIO RUBIROSA ....... He was the guy that Gilbert Roland and Ricardo Montalban both tried to emulate ... Fernando Lamas tried awfully hard, but his accent was too muffled to be clear enough to understand what he was saying, unless he was yelling, ... and Yelling would never have made the "Jose Kool"  image of the World's Most Interesting Man, who was actually born in NYC .......

Spenser- I heard it was 1493, give or take a year.

Oops, SpenCer, my bad.

Let's all make sure to remember Remembrance Day or Armistice Day or whatever you want to call it.  However, it WAS The War of Northern Aggression and nobody will ever be able to persuade me otherwise.  DEO VINDICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TIMTAM1958:   You have definitely got my Vote !!!!!!!

That's three votes TIMTAM1958.

Rewriting history doesn't change it.

Speaking as a still proud menber of the organization which will in a few gays unofficially celebrate "235 years oif making sure hell never fails to make its qouta" these sobering words from an old song come to mind:
 
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing.
Where have all the flowers gonw?
Long time ago.
Where have all the flowers gone?
They've to graveyards everyone.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

They've GONE!?@%*#@!! Sorry

DancingKatz, you raise a very interesting point.  Not to disagree, but think about this:  I knew my grandmother as well as most children know adults.  Her father, whom she did not know well, (died before she was 10) fought in the war- the one we can't agree on the name of, in 1861.                                  I like to think of myself as being in midlife- the other night I was at a meeting where the recent lapse of the health of a 95 year old was discussed.  I am not counting on 90, but as I say, you got me thinking.  Some of my father's classmates, born in the teens, might have known a few Confederate veterans, mightn't they?  If you had been born in 1840 and been lucky you might have lived into the 1920s (and I can cite you some great great great aunts who were and did) you might have  been friends with people born in the teens.  By the skin of their teeth, some of  those people might have known CSA vets and be alive today.  Of course, chances are, they also lived through WWII and maybe fought in it.

Jalopkin, a very funny writer named Kyril Bonfiglioli claimed that waiters referred to the oversized pepper mills you  sometimes see as "Rubis" after Rubirosa.

Willie Trask: You make an excellent point yourself, sir. I suppose that I come from a less long-lived demographic and tend to not know anyone graced to have such a long life, it didn't occur to me that other people might still know someone (or have known someone) who either experienced it or heard first hand from a veteran of that 1861-1864 conflict.

Maybe I'll be lucky and be one of those people who exceed the average life span indicated by their genetics. I know that I do feel privileged to have spoken with veterans of WWI, WWII, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars while I've waited for my appointment or prescriptions at the VA medical center. Thinking about what I heard as they talked to me and each other, I know that I was incredibly lucky with my experiences in the first Gulf War compared to what these men and women went through.

I am going to be attending the Veterans Day commemoration at the National Museum of the Air Force on November 11th. There are number of local restaurants that are offering free lunches and dinners to veterans and currently serving members of the U.S. military and my twin (who is a retired Chief Petty Officer) and I are planning to go and have dinner together at one of these establishments after the events at the museum have concluded. I'm definitely going to be raising a toast to all members of the military as well as say a prayer for all the men and women who are serving in harm's way.

DK,  you may be interested by this site:         http://www.honorflight.org/ ;                       I do not know how wide its reach is, but local efforts have been spearheaded by a restauranteur in my town.  As I understand it, each veteran is accompanied by a friend and they fly up and get the royal treatment. There is no cost to the vets, but the friend may be asked to pay- I don't know. Anyway, I join with Will Rogers and stand on the curb and clap for you... 

On a different topic, the NBC Nghtly news reported that Paul Newman's charity, Newman's Own, just surpassed $300 million dollars in charitable contributions. What a legacy he left behind.

That's a lot of salad dressing- and a lot of lettuce.

I've known too many people in my life who I hugged, then waved "good bye" to them as they marched (flew, sailed) off to someplace unfriendly and I never saw them again -- way too many to appreciate the glamourization of war -- there's nothing glamourous about it, boys don't become men, they become wounded human beings whose scars aren't always visible but you better believe it, they're there.  I know you all know a Johnny or two who went marching off to war, and even if he came home, even if he took up life as he left it, you can see if you look at him (or her) when they're not aware of being watched -- that Johnny's not the same boy, won't ever be the same man he would have been had he not had to go fight a war.  "Johnny I hardly knew ye."  In more ways than anyone else can know.// That said, I can't take issue with reinactors -- I don't see the harm.  And true, the northern states aren't as active in reinactment as are the southern states, but so what?  It doesn't mean one has a better handle on history than the other.  The South has a history of loving history, their history, and a gift for telling the stories of their history in a way that we don't here in the North (except for Stoney) -- Civil War reinactment in the south is as extension, as I see it, of the stories and writings and sensibilities that are so distinctly southern and that the south holds so close to their hearts.  And before anybody gets all over me for being biased and a  southerner -- I'm from WISCONSIN.  And I'm just sayin' there's no harm, to my mind, in reinactments.  The god-awful unspeakable harm comes from those real-life right-now damn wars that get reinacted.  Crazy stuff.  .....................And to my nephew, my hardly a man yet 20 year old Marine, who landed in Afghanistan sometime last night, I'm going to borrow from PeterLake:  Be well, be very well.  And we'll see you in the summer when you come home.

What's the difference between a good Yankee and a bad Yankee?  A good Yankee is one who goes down south to visit and then goes back home again.  A bad yankee is one who comes down south and stays.....................................That was my greeting from a not real funny South Carolinian woman who let her manners slip one night after a little too much of what juleps are made of and I don't mean mint.   Good grief.  Next time I visit, like Hester Prynne, I'm wear a red letter on my jacket:  A Y for Yankee, rather than poor Hester's A for being one of two guilty parties....jest sayin' up there to TIMTAM who's all excited about getting the name right for the war of northern agression --give me a break.  I took the insults, I smiled, I wore the scarlet "Y" - and then I went back home like the good Yankee I am.   I defend the south because I love its passion, but when you go all CAPS and bold print and !!!!! I wonder...well, let's just say I wonder.

WT:  Never heard that before, but I am not the least bit surprised .......  Rubirosa was the only guy on the Planet married more times than Mickey Rooney ....... Somehow, terribly fitting that they would name a,  "Grinder" ... after him .......

Beautifully said, Park4.
 
I am so embarrassed by the one word typo in my "Where Have all the Flowers Gone" post its "...will in a few DAYS...".  Nothing Freudian (sp?) or anything of the sort... just an embarrassing typo. 

Thanks, PARK4, I feel much better knowing that you are the good kind... There was a time when relations between the various regions of the country were less polarized.  We could wonder all day what happened there...I do not really think the war had that much to do with it.  But I do know it is difficult to explain to my dear friend who grew up in Orchard Park, NY and now lives in mid-South Carolina that she is different in a way that sometimes gets in the way. Sure, I am different in a way that sometimes gets in the way, but my perspective is that she is the different one.  Somehow, I would expect, whether or not you stay, that you will always be one of the good ones.  Give a holler when you come back down...

Not to be embarrassed by the typo, George Hall.  It's a lovely sad lovely song, that's what I took from your comment, not the typo.  And Mr. Willie Trask:  I will gladly give you a holler, I will indeed.  Trust me, I'll go home, but while I'm there, I'll happily immerse myself in everything low country.//// I sat one beautiful and warm January afternoon on the front lawn of Drayton Hall which I love because it's empty, raw, as it was -- and had the best time just dreaming about the souls that were most likely still wandering the house and the grounds, having to step around me.  It was wonderful -- the second story was closed because of work being done on the center hallway, but lucky me, I got to go on up with a very friendly girl from the University of Charleston, and she gave me the tour of a lifetime.  I got to see places and corners and hear stories not usually told...oh it was great.  This Yankee woman was thrilled and enchanted.  You live in a beautiful place, WT. and you have every right to be proud of it.

Just stopped off at the Shiloh Battlefield exit on my way back from Memphis. You can feel the history karma oozing here. For some reason I started singing Johnny Yuma was a rebel he rode through the West...

Just stopped off at the Shiloh Battlefield exit on my way back from Memphis. You can feel the history karma oozing here. For some reason I started singing Johnny Yuma was a rebel he rode through the West...

Park, you're one my top three yankees, maybe top two. Articulate, smart, self aware, yep, top two.

I'm not even going to ask...but thanks Ummgawa.  I do try.  Sometimes I'm just trying, ask anybody, but mostly I just try. ;)

On here....

I like your style of northern agression. Kick butt when you need too, any southerners gotta appreciate that trait. Plus, we agree 223/236 times, slow to start, but purdy copacetic from then on.

PARK4, May goodness and mercy watch over your nephew and bring him home safely and unscarred.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Paolo...just what I needed. Hilarious!!! I love Harry Enfield. ...though no one can goose-step like John Cleese ( see Fawlty Towers, The Germans episode).
 
 

My last job, from which I have since retired, was creating conflict scenarios for military computer simulations.  One of the scenarios I was asked to recreate was the Little Big Horn disaster.  From which we learn...? "Don't do stupid maneuvers."  If Custer had had machine guns and a tank, there would have been far different outcomes.  But, Custer was arrogant and stupid.  Analyze battles, yes.  Fight them again, in the computer.  Learn from mistakes, certainly.  But to repeat the failures is idiocy and insanity.  How many times can you beat your head against a wall before you figure out it ain't gonna move?  And I suggest giving the Farbys a break.  Not everyone is as passionate about a given subject as to subjugate themselves to everything else.

Thank you so much paolos.  Thank you for that.  It means more than I can tell you.  Very kind...very much appreciated. p.

223/236 times!  I like you too, Ummgawa.  And I really admire anybody who can spell copacetic! It's an excellent word, much underused.  Which isn't a word at all...oh well.  ;)