The unknown American soldiers who perished in the battles of Saratoga, September 19 and October 7, 1777 and were here buried in unmarked graves helped to assure the triumph of the war of independence to create the Republic of the United States of America and to establish liberty throughout the world.

There's a lot of voters who owe these men--and one woman!--an apology.

More later.

September 11

As usual, I am spending the day angry. Partly angry at the attackers and their supporters/encouragers, but mostly angry at their American enablers/apologists. Eight years, and we can't even put a suitable memorial (one without whitewashing the Islamism of the hijackers or blaming America) up on the WTC site. And the Obama administration seems to be encouraging another attack on U.S. soil, by removing key pieces of intelligence and defense that could prevent it while sucking up to mullahs and terror states.

(Must avoid Facebook, lest I tell people who have spent the past several years bashing George Bush, the wars, our soldiers fighting those wars, America for "making people hate us", 'racial profiling', anyone who questions that 'jihad' has any meaning besides 'internal struggle', anyone who doesn't believe Islam is a beautiful religion and American Christianity is evil, etc--and yet today are inexplicably making "9/11, I'm so sad!" posts--what I really of think of them and their disgusting, suicidal, brain-dead ideologies.)

Wordless Wednesday

(Photo taken at Oriskany Battleground)

Boldt Castle

So last weekend I went to Canada, and Saturday's adventure was returning to the U.S. *heh* to see Boldt Castle. (I had to show my passport and explain where I met the foreign national...not sure why in 2009 it's hard to believe an Iowa-based corporation could have a Munich branch office...)

It's marketed as a "love story"--hotel magnate George Boldt started building a replica Rhineland castle for his wife, then abandoned construction when she died--but the more interesting story is that George Boldt(pdf) got to be a multimillionaire in the first place.

He started out as a 13-year-old immigrant dishwasher in New York. He learned English. He saved his wages, bought some land in Texas, failed at chicken farming, and returned to upstate NY to wash more dishes at a small hotel. He worked his way up to steward, met a guy who needed a steward at a businessman's club in Philadelphia, moved to the better job, impressed some patrons who invested in a hotel of his own, made it successful, caught the attention of William Waldolf Astor, became a manager of the Waldorf in NYC, revolutionized the hospitality industry, started investing his compensation in real estate, and took off from there.

Much more interesting than "rich guy loses wife, gives up."

It's a classic American story--hard work, a little luck meeting the right people, the willingness to take risks on better opportunity--and except for "investing in real estate" it seems really anachronistic now. Learning English? Moving to a new city to take advantage of an opportunity? (some degreed professionals still do this, but lesser-skilled workers collect government checks to stay put and unemployed...) Going back to washing dishes instead of expecting the government to bail out your failed venture and support your lifestyle?

Not to mention anyone who does these things in the 21st century is going to get kneecapped right around "became a manager of the Waldorf" as local, state, and federal governments combine to confiscate over half his compensation.

So much for feeling inspired.

I got a kick out of the unrestored rooms as much as anything. I love to see how stuff is put together.

Unrelated, spent the weekend drinking Steamwhistle, which is not available in the U.S. Claiming that their use of hops, malt, and yeast "save(s) the planet" strikes me as a ridiculous marketing conceit, but it was tasty.

Read the whole thing, as they say

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I'm bummed because I'll be going to a wedding this weekend instead of getting to go to a tea party, or even more forts and battlefields. The peach-fuzzed infantryman at Ft. Stanwix who spent a good half hour showing me assorted light and heavy weaponry (alas, not letting me try them out...) mentioned that for the Fourth they read out the Declaration twice, just like people used to do in civic celebrations of the past.

There had better be an open bar...

Well, I'm useless in a Revolution...

Went to Fort Ontario today. When greeted at the entrance by an English sentry with a bayonet and informed the fort was under the control and protection of the King and all who enter it declare their loyalty to His Majesty by doing so, first thing out of my mouth was, "Uh...sure..." Hey, I'd just paid four New York-issued dollars to the guy at the ticket table...I did not, at least, sign a paper pledging my loyalty to the crown, despite being offered a photocopy of a schilling for doing so.

The laugh of the day came right before the "demonstration of battle" (not a re-enactment of a specific battle). When a member of the British 24th Regiment was exhorting the crowd gathered on the ramparts to cheer for the "good guys" shouted--"We're here to protect you! We're trying to save you from that Congress!" a older guy in a red-white-and-blue tie-dyed shirt with five-pointed stars yelled back "You're too late!" Cheering all around.

I will upload pictures later, but this is too good not to share immediately:



Heh!

Biggest Hide Ever Tanned in Milwaukee

There was some good stuff at the postcard show.

Memorial Day

Photo taken last month at the Veteran's Memorial Park in Mansfield, PA.

Waterloo, NY is "sanctioned by the U.S. Government" as the birthplace of Memorial Day--apparently the Confederate ladies decorating graves during the war don't count 'cause they lost--and to pay tribute to those who gave their lives for our country, they're having a pizza-eating contest. (The solemn commemoration of the dead is on Decoration Day, May 30, which starts with a church service and looks kind of interesting, actually).

Memorial Day makes me miss my grandmother (the one with five brothers in the Pacific in WWII), who hauled us all out to the cemetery for the VFW ceremony every spring and bought paper poppies everytime she went to the grocery store. Which I realize is missing the whole point, but I think underscores the effects of family on people's values--most people my age and younger (at least, the ones I come in regular contact with) couldn't care less about American history or honoring veterans.

Starting tomorrow all the battlefields and other historic sites around New York are open for the summer; my inner American history nerd is like a kid with a $10 bill waiting for the candy store to open ("OK, I can get six of these and one of those...or five of those and three of these...").

Holocaust Rememberance Day

I've been listening to the Syracuse classical music station (don't ask, I don't know) in the car and at night. Tonight they've been playing songs from composers killed in concentration camps, including the premiere American performance of Marcel Tyberg's Symphony No. 3. Tyberg left all his hand-written scores with a student before he was carted off to be killed; this particular symphony had to be copied from the originals to be performed.

I don't know enough about symphonic music to give an informed opinion, but I'm enjoying it. And enjoying a beer, in anticipation of being dragged off to Right-Wing Extremist/Planet-Destroying Fattie Death Camp. Sigh.

Wig tucked behind the ears for the win...

Gary Varvel.

Metaphors

I believe it was Dogbert who said "Stupid people exist to amuse the rest of us."

That tattoo you think says "Hope"? It means "a period of time."

Yup.

Last night I finally watched Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary, a film of interviews in 2001 with Traudl Junge, who lived in his bunkers, took dictation from and ate meals with Hitler, and was present during his last week in Berlin.

He never had any sense that he was a criminal destroying a nation, he thought he was pursuing lofty ideals.

And I think it's also the case that if you value and respect someone you don't really want to destroy the image of that person...you don't want to know, in fact if disaster lies beyond the facade.

Iowa Civil War Battle Flags

Restored U.S. flag from the 15th Iowa Infantry is back on display at the Iowa Capitol.

The whole Iowa Capitol building is a monument dedicated to Iowa Civil War veterans; the battle flags were displayed hanging from poles in display cases on the ground floor for over a century. On the field trip when I was in fifth grade, the docent told us the reason was at the time, the prevailing sentiment was for the flags to decay over the years--the war was so terrible they didn't think future generations needed reminders of the horrors. About eight years ago they started taking them all down for conservation and restoration to preserve them for future future generations.

The flags were mostly made by the women in the communities where the volunteers were organized. I understand the need for standardization in the modern battlefield, but wouldn't the community involvement of the 19th century be good in our current wars?

My favorite flag design is the 30th Iowa, out of Keokuk:


...and back when I was in fifth grade, you could go up to the very top of the Capitol rotunda dome and even outside to see the view. Now it's authorized personnel only, so your survivors can't sue if you jump. The 21st century is not always an improvement.

(I tried to volunteer to help with the flag restoration project when I lived in Des Moines, but they only worked during business hours when I was out pressing buttons to keep a roof over my head. When I get laid off from the Obama business tax increase and go on the public dole like everyone else, I'd like to try something like this to fill my days--not necessarily battle flags but any pre-1960s historical textiles; no commercial value, but important so future generations might get a glimpse of what America used to be.)

Sullivan Brothers

The Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum is opening this weekend. Looks good--artifacts and exhibits from every war fought by Iowans. Video at the link. I'll have to stop by over the holidays, weather permitting.

The museum is named for the Sullivan Brothers, killed in action on the USS Juneau in November 1942. They joined the Navy together after a friend was killed at Pearl Harbor and the five of them insisted on serving together. The mental image of George spending three days searching for his brothers is haunting.

The Grout Museum had a permanent exhibit on the Sullivans when I lived in the area, complete with their parents' flag with five gold stars and letters that arrived after the Juneau was sunk. The docent reassured me I was not the first visitor to cry.

Within a year, a destroyer was renamed the USS The Sullivans; it was retired in 1965. A second destroyer with the name was launched in 1995 and still serves with the brothers' motto "We stick together."

(And yet, the Sullivan Brothers never came up in my Iowa history class in fifth grade, which disturbs me now.)

The first destroyer is parked in Buffalo. I took these photos in 2003, sadly out of season for the tour.

Nothing new under the sun, really

Obama's holding a rally in Iowa tomorrow. Algore held a rally> in Iowa the Friday before Election Day 2000, too. The snipers on the campanile as he told us to vote for him because he's smarter than any of us and knows how to run our lives better than anyone else were a nice touch, I thought. College students cheered his megalomania--YES!! Save us from having to make our own choices! And give us free stuff!!

Later that day I graded a paper that referred to the "fashion conches consumer" throughout--written by a native English speaker in her second year of kollij--and I wasn't allowed to mark down for "grammar", much less sheer bloody ignorance.

That's the day I realized Western Civilization is doomed.

Well here's something they never taught me in school.

Gah.

When the Rev. Martin Luther King was murdered, Jackson dipped his hands in King's blood and wiped them down the front of his shirt. Later, Jackson appeared on television and spoke to the Chicago City Council wearing the shirt. There are different interpretations of this gesture - including that Jackson was doing the Baptist thing and trying to absorb power from the slain leader's blood - but Mrs. Coretta Scott King didn't speak to Jackson for years. Her interpretation was the Jackson was trying to use her husband's assasination for his own aggrandizement. The widow King was a wise woman.

Learn something every day, although some days I wish I didn't.

(Jack$on's Obama-castration fantasy? Unsurprising, except I thought O's balls were already in his wife's purse. Learn something, etc.)

Happy Independence Day!

I miss Cox & Forkum. Here is their 2006 Indepedence Day cartoon:


This is kinda cool: You can sign the Declaration of Independence and print it out. I still have the oversize replicas of the Declaration and Constitution my third grade teacher gave to all her students (I think she babysat Grover Cleveland; the educational philosophies of the 60s and 70s and beyond never trickled down to her, and I am so much better for it).

I'm free to spend my day drinking crappy beer, eating bratwurst, and ogling outfielders--alone and with my hair and arms showing!--so this is clearly a great country. If you're sitting in the loge level and you see a fat woman with green shoes, reeking of SPF 180 sunblock and sniffling from the national anthem and the veteran tributes, please say hi. :)

D-Day

I thought the Internet had everything, but I can't find Charles Schulz's 50th anniversary tribute strips. I cut them out of the Des Moines paper when they first ran, but I can't blog a shoebox of clippings...

Neither the Library of Congress nor the National Archives have anything really good, except a picture of Eisenhower addressing troops before they left England.

Bah.

It's Friday night and I'm home alone browsing the LOC's collection of digitized 1887 to 1914 baseball cards. Maybe Yost should start this guy in place of Dave Bush.

Behold the power of beer.

I just finished Ambitious Brew: The story of American beer by Maureen Ogle. I understand Budweiser now (I won't drink it, but I understand it). They've been brewing it with rice for 140 years.

In the first chapter, she describes the Milwaukee discovered by German immigrants in the 1830s:

"In Mettenheim [birthplace of Phillip Best], the land's potential might have remained cocooned in a web of restraints, dominated by lords and princes and worked by peasants burdened by illiteracy, heavy taxes, and impossible rents. Not so in the United States."

*blink* Sounds like they were escaping the United States of today, if you substitute "environmentalist wackos and nanny-staters" for "lords and princes" and "endless government regulation" for "illiteracy"...

And she quotes a letter to family back home, written by one Nicholas Frest in 1841:

"One cannot describe how good it is in America. In America one knows nothing about taxes. Here one does not need to worry about beggars as we do in Germany. Here a man works for himself. Here the one is equal to the other."

Unbelievable that he was writing about Chicago! They'll charge you 10% sales tax on a brew, on top of the alcohol, property, and income taxes the pub has already paid and included in the price, and I won't even start on the modern equivalent of "beggars."

Then there were the 1855 anti-German Beer Riots, laws passed throughout the 19th century specifically to keep Germans from drinking beer (while English-Americans were free to swill spirits), and the beatings, rapes, and lynchings of Germans during the early 20th century, and not just during WWI. See how my people have been treated! Make that reparations check out to "Heather." [This paragraph may be satire. Or not, I haven't decided yet.]