Quote of the Day

"If we believe absurdities

we shall commit atrocities'

--Voltaire

Came across this the day before yesterday.

If I'd known Voltaire was this good, I'd have read more of him.

 

Poison Springs Confederate battleground

So, I've been reading lately James W. Loewen's LIES ACROSS AMERICA. I'd thought this would be a sort of road trip, with Loewen driving cross country, making frequent stops to read those little historical markers you see all over the place--Loewen's point being that there's little or no standard for what passes as history in such markers.

In fact, it turns out some such markers are fairly innocuous, while others have agendas we shd be wary of.  

As the son of a historian who was way ahead of the curve when it came to embracing what can be called the Dee Brown revolution,  and the grandson on the other side of an old-school Southerner who wrote a book denouncing Reconstruction, this is all in the family, so to speak.

Yesterday, though, a passing reference to to Poison Springs State Park really threw me. For one thing,  I was a long-time Scout (an Eagle Scout. with palms. in the Order of the Arrow).

For another, I've been to Poison Springs. It's less than forty miles from my home town. Our troup went over there once, to build wooden plank walkways, along with tall blue signposts, returning for hikes there later on.

It's one thing to know that there was a Civil War battle site near where I lived when I was growing up. 

It's quite another to learn, as I did yesterday, that there were war crimes here: captive Union soldiers executed after the battle by the victorious Confederates.

And learning that has been deeply unsettling.

 Over the years I've become more aware of the links between the Boy Scouts and Confederate history. 

But it's going to take more than carefully worded accounts on recently erected historical markers for me to process this.

--John R

--current reading on the Kindle: Loewen's LIES ACROSS AMERICA

Susanna Clarke's nod to Tolkien

So,  the following, taken from one of Susanna Clarke's inimitable footnotes, ought to sounds familliar to readers of J. R. R. T.:

"The truth is that the brugh [fairy-mound] 

was a hole of interconnecting holes that was  

dug into a barrow, very like a rabbit's warren 

or badger's set. To paraphrase a writer of fanciful 

stories for children, this was not a comfortable

hole, it was not even a dry, bare sandy hole; it 

was a nasty, dirty, wet hole.

--THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU .176

--John R.

current reading: LIES ACROSS AMERICA by James W. Loewen

current audiobook: John Garth's TOLKIEN'S GREAT WAR