Update

Your humble correspondent is alive and well. The relaunch of the Factual Dog, under a new moniker, is scheduled for July, 2006. The writers, staff and management promise a much more dynamic and provocative product than the previous incarnation. We are committed to seeing that you get your money's worth, and are planning big things. So come back and see us in July.

Factual Dog is on a Break

To our legions of loyal readers: The Factual Dog is on a brief break for the next several months due to time contraints. We will back in force, as there is tons of topicality to cover. However, it will be a little while before we can get to it. In the meantime, keep those cards and letters coming.

This is jumping off point of Union forces at 4:30 in the morning on May 12, 1864. General Hancock's 3rd Corp, and other elements of the Army of the Potomac, approximately 30,000 strong, charged across this field to the Confederate earthworks on the other side of this field. The point at the tree line in the middle of this picture, taken in September 2005, is known as the bloody angle.  

Standing on this exact spot, Maj. General John Sedgewick dismissed warnings from his staff to keep his head down. He was looking at the confederates line on the edge of the woods in the far distance, across the field. "They couldn't hit an elephant from this distance!" he replied, just before a .55 caliber bullet hit him below the eye and exited out the back of his head. He was the highest ranking Union officer to die in combat. 

Trenches comprising Lee's final line at Spotsyvania. It was on this spot that Lee began to realize things were going to be different from now on. Grant, two miles away, wired back to Washington his famous message that made headlines across the country: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer" 

Spotslyvania Virginia at the point of the Mule Shoe Salient. May, 1864 

142 years ago this weekend

Abraham Lincoln rose from his chair on a modest hill in Pennsylvania 142 years ago tomorrow and saved the world.

He was surrounded by a large crowd who had gathered to hear him give a few remarks after Edward Everest was done with his two hour dramatic recounting of the epic struggle that had occurred on that same spot the previous July. The people had to watch their step as they jostled for space among hundreds of freshly dug graves that were lined up in coecentric arcs, forming a giant half moon.

The President was in the midst of what had become an intensely unpopular war. The anti-war riots in New York four months earlier were more violent and deadly than any riots in America before or since. A Republican-majority Congress was starting to grow weary of the growing casualty lists. A Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War was holding daily hearings and calling officers from the field to testify. There was wide spread disagreement and confusion as to the purpose of the war.

The Democrats, at least the ones who had not joined the armed rebellion against the government, had grown so disenchanted with the conflict that they were backing a fast-growing anti-war movement. Called the Copperheads, they vigorously advocated an immediate withdrawal of troops from the war zone.

Foreign diplomats regarded the President as a rube from the American provinces, an embarrassment with no place among the great leaders of the world. His opponents, and some in his own party, thought he was inarticulate and undereducated, which he was, and did not appreciate "nuance". He was so insecure about giving impromtu speeches that he rarely spoke in public on important issues without a prepared speech.

Casualties, dead and wounded, on each of a dozen days in the previous 18 months, exceeded the total number of casualties to date in both Iraq wars combined. At the place he was to speak, Gettysburg, 53,000 Americans fell in three days. The U.S. population at the time was one-sixth of today's population. And no end was in sight.

The President would have to say something to prepare the country to fight it out no matter what the cost. He had to explain to the country and the world what they were fighting for, in a way that they could understand it. Otherwise, they would never stand for the hard work and sacrifice that was still in front of them.

In short, Linclon needed to say something to redefine and refocus the purpose of the war, or all would be lost. So he spoke the following 242 words:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

After he spoke these words, nobody seriously talked about the European powers intervening on behalf of the South again. This short speech - it's a poem, really - was read by every household in the country, at a time when the American public was far more literate than it is now. The war was now for freedom and self-government, and was no longer simplyt a territorial dispute to "preserve the Union". The speech gave the people the strength and purpose needed to carry on.
When Lincoln got back to town, one of his first acts was to call up General U.S. Grant to take command of all of the armies of the United States. In doing so, he sent a message loud and clear to Southerners, Northerners, and foreigners alike: we are going to win this war regardless of the cost. Grant was going to come east, tear into Lee's army, and grind away until the life drained out of it. This strategy cost another 350,000 lives, but it worked. And it would not have been possible if Lincoln had not made his "few appropriate remarks" on November 19, 1863.

Son Volt at the 9:30, October 21, 2005

The Son Volt show was one of those concerts that I really wanted to say was great, but in truth, enjoyed it only so-so.

First the good: Farrar & Co. played a tight set. They have an excellent lead guitarist with strong Dickie Betts/Jimmy Page bloodlines. Son Volt reached down and played a good old Tupelo song (Chickamauga), which I didn’t expect, but loved. They jammed some of the tunes off of their excellent album Trace, which was expected, but worth going to the show for nonetheless.

Now, about the things I found annoying: First, many of their songs sound too much alike. They start slow and mournful, then comes the predictable three beats of silence followed by crashing drums, bass and power chords simultaneously kicking in. That works for a few songs, but I wished they could have mixed it up a little.

The second thing that irritates me is Farrar himself. I like his singing well enough, but I can take it for about 45 minutes. After a while, he begins to sound – I’m searching for a word here – whiny. His singing resembles a low-pitched whine, if that is possible. He also comes off as kind of a prick. For all I know, he’s a chummy fellow to meet at the local pub. But on stage, he seemed wooden and aloof from the crowd. He spoke all of about seven words over two hours. Even Kurt Cobain at his most sardonic would interact with his audience between songs.

The newer stuff made by the reformed band was a little heavy and gratuitously loud for my delicate ears. It’s almost as if Farrar can’t think of a way to find new textures in his art, so he solves the problem by turning it up to eleven. Finally, his lyrics, much of which are of a political bent that we don’t subscribe to here, are obviously an important component of Farrar’s songs. He is an exceptionally strong lyricist. So would it kill him to make them audible? I’m not talking about early REM-style singing. Murmuring was their thing, and it worked. It’s just that Son Volt had the volume on their instruments turned up so loud, you couldn’t hear any vocals except the aforementioned whining.

The company was good, however. Old friend JM joined me, for probably our 50th concert over the past 25 years. So that was cool. We had a glass of bourbon with Hackmuth to start things off too (although I was still smarting from the chess debacle of the previous Wednesday). To cap off the night, we hit Mario’s for a 2:30 am steak and cheese. All in all, it was a good evening; but I will probably skip the Volt next time, and keep my eyes peeled for Wilco.

Liz Phair at the 9:30 Club, October 12, 2005

I saw Liz at the 9:30 Club last night, and it prompted a few thoughts about Liz, taste, and music critics.

First, I can unapologetically say that I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the show, and I do not categorize Liz as a “guilty pleasure”. To me, a guilty pleasure is when I crank up Soft Cell or Modern English when I hear them on the radio. I am guilty of that, and you might as well know that about me.

Liz, on the other hand, is a serious talent, and has written serious music. That is not to say that she is always being “serious” with her music these days. She is not. She is simply doing her best to cash in on her particular shtick: to wit, her ability pose as a wholesome Midwestern suburban girl (now a mom) who happens to write and sing catchy songs, often with overt, graphically sexual themes. She says she is into the “high-low” aesthetic, although I’m not exactly sure what that means.

She began the show in a drab gray, zip-up sweatshirt that apparently came from the Target five-dollar bin. She made a few statements about how scared she is to watch ghost documentaries on TV, a fear that causes her to constantly change the channel during the scary parts. Well, I do that too and – wait a minute! – I have some tee shirts from that same bin at Target! With her acoustic guitar in hand, freshly bleached wisps of blond hair loosely draping half of her face, and an unplugged set ready to begin, her message was clear: I’m the girl/soccer mom next door and I’m going to play some nice, relaxing music.

And that persona, of course, was a pose. It was part of the joke that everyone was enjoying. You could almost hear the audience thinking, “When’s the sweatshirt coming off Liz?” The calls for “Fuck and Run” started quite early in the show – coming almost exclusively from the women in the audience - and continued until she played a rousing, heavy metal-tinged rendition of the song. She has clearly gotten over her stage fright problems that, according to legend, plagued her early career.

Once she plugged in and, predictably, shed the sweatshirt, the real Liz took over. She played the part of the sex-goddess-rock-star-next-door to the hilt. And I don’t have a problem with that. She did it with confidence, and to really piss off the critics, she was clearly enjoying every minute of it. She smiled throughout the whole show. A lot of people don’t have time and patience for the faux angst that seems to be a prerequisite for admission into the Indie/Alternative music scene. There is a time and place for everything, and it’s nice to see a performer actually be comfortable in her own skin and having a good time.

Liz Phair knows that the audience is paying to see her play music they are familiar with (Anything from Guyville, most songs from Whip Smart and WhiteChocolateSpaceEgg, and the hits from her most recent two albums), and are OK with hearing a tolerable number of new songs that maybe they have not been exposed to. That is what we wanted, and that is what we got. If, on top of that, she wants to shake her moneymaker – figuratively of course – that’s fine too. She is a very good looking woman.

Many of my good friends, who fashion themselves as music purists (and whom I thank for originally turning me on to Liz), seem to have soured on Liz Phair. I’m quite sure it is because she has gone “pop” on them and they are turned off by her album cover poses. I almost expect to hear her called her a “traitor” when I talk to them about her. In this respect, I am reminded of Pete Seeger running around backstage at Newport in 1966 with an ax in his hands, looking for cables to cut after Dylan went electric at the famous folk festival.

Dylan pissed off a lot of purists then too. I’m not necessarily saying that Liz is going to put out this decade’s “Like a Rolling Stone”. My point is simply that we should leave her alone, let her take her talent where it will, and if the best thing she will ever do is that first album, then that is better than 99 percent of the other acts out there. For that alone, she deserves our continuing respect.

Read now. Weep later.

What follows is about the most intelligent piece I've seen in a newspaper in many years. Read it, print it, file it. In ten years, read it again and sadly say to yourself, "If they had only listened".

'They Are All So Wrong'

Four years after 9/11, Washington keeps courting strategic error.

BY MARK HELPRIN Friday, September 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

September 11 was not so much a discrete event as part of a continuum. It was the result of broad strategic failures that, preceding it by decades, continue to this day and are likely to continue on. It is as if the country has lost, as exemplified by the Left now out of power, a great deal of the will to self-preservation, and, as exemplified by the Right now in charge, not a little of its capacity for self-defense. Our politics and policies have somehow been parceled out to opportunists like Michael Moore--purveyor of conspiracy theories and hatreds, whose presentation, unclean in every respect, is honored nonetheless by the controlling rump of Democrats--and to Bushmen like "Kip" Hawley of Homeland Security, father of the proposal to allow carry-on ice-picks, bows and arrows, and knives with blades up to five-inches long.

For more than 20 years prior to September 11, Islamic terrorists imprisoned and murdered our diplomats and military personnel, destroyed our civil aviation, machine-gunned our civilians, razed our embassies, attacked an American warship and, in 1993, the U.S. itself. For varying reasons, none legitimate, we hesitated to mount an offensive against the terrorists' infrastructure, hunt them down, eliminate a single rogue regime that supported them, or properly disconcert our fatted allies whose robes they infested. This was comparable in its way to Munich. Only in 2001, when it became obvious to any rational being that we must, did we retaliate, but even then in the face of domestic pressure to judicialize the response, which was exactly what we had done all along.

The underlying corollary to this reflex of appeasement is the notion that our military options are constrained financially, as if we are not a nation of stupendous wealth and it has not been the American tradition since the Civil War to spend, in support of war, with the intensity of war itself. In 1945, we devoted 38.5% of GNP to defense, the equivalent of $4.76 trillion now. The current $400 billion defense budget is a twelfth of that and only 3.2% of GDP, as opposed to the average of 5.7% of GNP in the peacetime years between 1940 and 2000. A false sense of constraint has arisen in every quarter of society. It is the ethos of the administration, the press, the civilian side of the Pentagon, and many of the prominent uniformed military brought to high rank in recent years.

They are all so wrong. In violating established tradition and throwing aside advantage and elemental common sense, they waste American lives. And for what? What moral construction would allow anyone to spend more than 2,000 dead and tens of thousands of wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan--so far--while insisting without major exception that cutting costs is a virtue? When is holding back from one's troops at war the reinforcements, armor and basic equipment they need a virtue rather than a sin?

Is it not the duty of the secretary of defense, his chiefs, and the wide array of generals to press energetically--even to the point of resignation--for whatever is necessary (not the minimum, but a safe surplus) to support the armies in the field? If they do not, who will? Had the president gone to Congress on September 12 and asked for almost anything, he would have been granted it. But he never did. This was a fundamental strategic error. If you must go to war, do not do so hesitantly, with half a heart. And in answer to the rationale that the casualties of this war are relatively light, one does not decently measure casualties against those of previous wars, but in terms of whether they can be avoided.

Apart from the paucity of armored vehicles, body armor, and other staples of battle, the chief problem of prosecuting the Iraq war has been the size and scale of the force. Despite inaccurate claims of unprecedented speed in the advance to Baghdad, the three weeks of halting action it took to get there, with lines of supply that are to this day poorly protected, were both spur and instruction for the insurgency. In what is only apparently a paradox, the military objective should have been less the conquest of territory and echelons than of morale, and, to accomplish this, territory and echelons would have to have been subdued with the blinding speed, shock and awe of the Six-Day and Gulf wars. The instant the Arab world realized that the promised shock and awe had not materialized, the insurgency was born.

We then nurtured it by deploying a fraction of the ratio (10:1) long experience indicates is necessary for suppression; by dismissing the enemy as mere "thugs," when, although they are thugs and worse, they have the thousand-year motivation of their civilization defending its heartland from Persians, Mongols, Shiites, and now Christians; and by gratuitously elevating our aims from the purely defensive to the transcendental, while steadily diluting the little power we have in the hope of forcing the entire Arab and Muslim worlds to a new politics. From a country where they have been held down in their beleaguered enclaves for two-and-a-half years, how are 140,000 soldiers to transform the highly aggressive and deeply rooted political cultures of 1.2 billion people?

Ceaselessly, we court strategic error. At the end of the Cold War, assuming that history had concluded, we discarded too much military power. This continues through the present, rationalized by reference to transformation. But it is yet further error to believe that military-technical evolution can make up for the kind of deficiencies and poor strategic judgments from which no machine can save an army. Continual and remarkable innovation is both indispensable and expensive, but President Clinton required budgetary choice between innovation and everything else, and his successor has yet to disagree. The root of the error that offers transformation as a substitute for so much that is crucial is the conviction that having both would exceed reasonable military expenditures and somehow break the common weal.

Having made many wrong choices, we find ourselves at yet another strategic crossroads, where invisibly to the general public we are about to choose wrongly again. We are reshaping the military into a gendarmerie, configured for small wars, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping and nation-building, all at the expense of the type of force that could deter or defeat a rising China. Although we need a gendarmerie, we cannot do without heavy formations and the many additional ships required for a navy--now less than half the size of the Reagan fleet and shrinking--to exploit our natural advantage in the Pacific.

The U.S. will chase every terrorist mouse (which is good, unless it means also neglecting the core competencies of the armed forces), while lessening and dispersing its power, and moving from previous centers of gravity (Europe, the Western Pacific) to Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. This will create a long and open alley through which China will run. Among other things, by placing markers in every trouble spot, we will probably be tied down and distracted, taxingly and often, to our enemies' delight.

When China completes its run up the broad alley we have afforded it, it will much sooner be the other pole in a once-again bipolar world, which will create the opportunity for terrorists in the guise of liberation movements to gather under its wing, as they did with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Ironically, in reconfiguring the military to focus primarily on terrorism, we may not only give China a great opening, but create for the terrorists a new lease on life.

The war in Iraq has been poorly planned and executed from the beginning, and now, like a hurricane over warm water, the insurgency is in a position to take immense energy from the fundamental divisions in that nation. The rise of Chinese military power, although lately noted, has met with no response. America's borders are open, its cities vulnerable, its civil defense nonexistent, its armies stretched thin. We have taken only deeply inadequate steps to prepare for and forestall a viral pandemic that by the testimony of experts is a high probability and could kill scores of millions in this country alone. That we do not see relatively simple and necessary courses of action, and are not led and inspired to them, represents a catastrophic failure of leadership that bridges party lines.

Perhaps this and previous administrations have had an effective policy just too difficult to comprehend because they have ingeniously sheltered it under the pretense of their incompetence. But failing that, the legacy of this generation's presidents will be promiscuous declarations and alliances, badly defined war aims, opportunities inexplicably forgone, ill-supported troops sent into the field, a country at risk without adequate civil protections, and a military shaped to fight neither the last war nor this one nor the next.

Katrina and the Waves

No, this is not a nostalgia piece about 1980’s one-hit wonder bands. Rather, this posting represents my first dip back into the political realm, after a summer of book reviews and travel postings. I will make this quick.

If anyone is wondering about the difference between Democrats and Republicans, one need only look at the mismanagement of the Katrina disaster by Louisiana state and local politicians and compare with (a) Guiliani/Pataki after 9/11; and (b) Haley Barbour in Mississippi. Who would you rather be in charge of the first response if your community were devastated?

In New Orleans, the corrupt mayor did not even use the plan that had been developed and tested for the specific scenario that unfolded. Hundreds of city school buses were moved to the lowest lying area of the city, and were never used to evacuate people as called for in the plan. Those buses are under water now. Even though in previous hurricane, when 10,000 people were evacuated to the Superdome and security problems resulted, the mayor did nothing this time around to provide security there.

On Saturday, the President had to demand that the incompetent Democrat governor to order an evacuation. She did not ask for the National Guard and federal troops until after the storm, even though Bush had given her the authority to do so two days before the hurricane. The mayor did not even contact the National Hurricane Center when Katrina was bearing down on his city. To this day, the governor and the mayor are in a public dispute over whether to force people out of their homes. That probably won’t do much to instill confidence among their constituents.

Hillary Clinton, of course, is saying that FEMA should be taken out of the Department of Homeland Security. Never mind that Hillary voted to have FEMA a part of the Department in the first place! The Department itself was Joe Lieberman’s pet project. Bush agreed to create it in the spirit of bipartisanship, even though he opposed the concept from the beginning. So it’s Bush’s fault that FEMA is less effective as part of Homeland than it was when it was an independent agency?

As for the President, he should have returned from vacation a day earlier, if for no other reason than to avoid the bad PR. Does Bush want to make Michael Moore’s job easier? The federal response was about 24 hours behind where it should have been, so Bush doesn’t get a free ride from me either. He probably should fire the heads of Homeland and FEMA and replace them with professional executives, rather than lawyers. The guy at the head of FEMA is clearly way out of his element.

As for rebuilding New Orleans, I’m not sure why we should put tens of billions of dollars and thousands of lives in the path of another hurricane. The French Quarter and other areas on relatively higher, more valuable commerical and historic land, could be walled off with bigger, stronger levees. But perhaps much of the population that lives in the most vulnerable areas should be disbursed to safer locations. Tear down the Superdome and build a new stadium in Baton Rouge. Maybe then the Saints could actually have a winning season.

Turn of the Hoo

That would be a good title if Henry James collaborated with Dr. Suess. Having made that declaration, I thought it would be a good idea to read one of James' most famous "nouvelles", his 8,000 word The Turn of the Screw. This is a good length of a book to commit yourself to as you await the arrival of your next full length Civil War battle history, via Amazon's free standard shipping (3-5 busines days).

Reading James in the wake of Hemingway is like driving a school bus - albiet a very stylized one, with Victorian arm chairs instead of bench seats - after having just driven an Italian sports car. His writing is dense, slow, and plodding. The sentences go on, and on, and on. At the end, you are left wondering if he was actually mocking the circumspect way people approached sex and morality in his day. In fact, upon further consideration, he was.

This was no ghost story. Someone asked me if the book scared me. That person, a close relation of the older generation, grew up in an era that had its share of scary movies (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc). But after having seen The Sixth Sense and Signs, a few English spooks puttering about a country house in 1898 won't give me nightmares.

Rather than being about ghosts then, The Turn of the Screw is about how when people try too hard to shield children - and adults - from sin and temptation, they often end up causing more harm than good. I feel now like I just ate a big bowl of spinach salad. I really didn't enjoy it, but I feel better for it. I may read James' The American one of these days (I started it and put it down about 15 years ago); but only if Amazon is really, really late on a delivery.

The Sun Also Rises

Re-read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises this week after twenty-two years since the first time I read it. Re-reading a book like that is a great way to sensitize yourself to how much wisdom and experience you gain as you get older. It is a completely different - and better - book the second time around. On the first read, I viewed it as a great travelogue that gave me an intense desire to hang out in sleepy Spanish towns, drink the wine of the country, and fly fish. On this read, it fed the same compulsion, but also allowed for reflection on current and past friendships and the nature of women. Two of the most complicated and intriquing subjects known to man. Again, a strong book recommendation.

After two novels this month, I feel the Civil War jones coming back. Will read part two of Rhea's account of Grant's 1864 overland campaign next. The first part, read last fall, dealt with the Battle of the Wilderness. Now we are on to Spotsylvania, to be followed by North Anna River and finally Cold Harbor. Intend to have the whole series done by mid-2006.

Added Preposition

A missing preposition has been added to the description of this blog. Hat tip to the woman from the waterside compound.

Shantaram

I posted a review of two books I read earlier this summer on July 16, and the response was so underwhelming, that I thought I would post another. As loyal readers may recall when I wrote that review, I said that a friend had lent me a novel of almost 1,000 pages, and that the review would be posted long about November. So what am I doing here, on August 8, a mere three weeks later?

As it turned out, the book, Shantaram, By Gregory David Roberts, was only 933 pages long. Yet they were about the best 933 pages I’ve read in any novel for at least the past ten years. Every now and then in life, the perfect book comes along at the perfect time, and this was one of those cases. Shantaram was only recently released, and supposedly a movie of the same name is coming out next year. Much to my chagrin, Johnny Depp is slated to play the main character. As you might imagine, we are not big Johnny Depp fans, notwithstanding his half-decent Keith Richards impersonation.

Anyway, I don’t want to give much of the story line away. Basically, Shantaram is a semi-autobiographical account of a man who escaped from a maximum security prison in Australia, fled to Bombay in the early 1980s, and created a new life for himself working for the Bombay mafia as a counterfeiter and black market currency trader, living in the slums, operating a free clinic for the people who lived in the the slum, and fighting the Russians in Afganistan. As action-packed as all this sounds, and it is as action-packed as they get, the book has much more to do with the our purpose in life, the meanings of love, hate and forgiveness, and how people struggle with and overcome the very difficult challenges that we all inevitably face from time to time. It demands a fair amount of deep introspection and reflection – between detailed accounts of knife fights and all manner of intrigue.

The book was recommended by PH, and he’s never steered my wrong on a book before, nor I him, and I won’t steer you wrong either.

The next posting will deal with more mundane topicality. I still have that big backlog from June to deal with. It’s been a busy, busy summer. But some free time is coming up over the next three weekends, so expect lots of new stuff and a new name for the blog as well. We are still evaluating ideas, so keep those cards and letters coming.

Book Recommendations: Franklin and Washington

Just finished two books that I recommend to anyone interested in American History. The first, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson, is an excellent study of a complex man who many regard as the first modern American.

Franklin was a successful businessman who, by the time he was 42, had enough money to devote his life to the things he liked to do, without concern for money. He was a great believer that people, voluntarily cooperating in groups, can accomplish much good for society. For example, he started the American Philosophical Society, founded the country’s first volunteer fire department, municipal police force, and even a private militia during the French and Indian War, to defend Philadelphia during a time when the Quaker dominated assembly would provide no funds for the defense of the colony. The Philadelphia Associators, as they were called, played a key role in the revolution in 1776 and 1777 as well.

Franklin became one of the great applied scientists of the day as well. We all know about his flying the kite in the thunderstorm, but the practical benefit of that experiment was his invention of the lightning rod, which saved thousands of lives throughout the US and Europe. He was the first person to describe positive and negative charges of electricity, and first used the term “battery” to describe a device that could store electricity.

Franklin was also an incredibly successful diplomat, both in England before the Revolution, as the agent of Pennsylvania and later other colonies, and in France during and immediately following the Revolution. He was the only person to have signed all three of the most important documents of that era: The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and the Treaty of Paris. He was a master communicator and manipulator of the media, and was probably two centuries ahead of his time in that department. Franklin also seemed to have maintained an unhealthy obsession with teenage girls well into his old age, and treated his wife with indifference while he pursued love interests in three countries. His son, William, became estranged from him and died an unhappy man, after being exiled to England for siding with the British during the Revolution. When Franklin died, he put significant funds into trusts that were to be administered by the Cities of Philadelphia and Boston to promote scientific advancement. The final grants of money from his endowment were awarded to inner city kids for their science projects in 1990.

Washington’s Crossing, by David Fischer, is a magnificent account of one of the most dramatic times in the history of this country. If you have even a vague understanding the events leading up to Washington’s crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, the subsequent battles of Trenton and Princeton, and their critical role in the survival of this country, you should read this book. It will dispel many notions that have somehow made it into our popular mythology. Chief among these misconceptions are that the Hessians were all hung over from a night of Christmas celebrations when they were attacked – they weren’t; or that the battles were really minor skirmishes in the grand picture of the war. The winter campaign was a major military conflict and completely turned the war around from an almost certain defeat for the Americans to a decided advantage for the Americans, in many respects. It is one of the best page turners I’ve read in months. Washington emerges as the great leader of men and brilliant strategist that most people have lost sight of after two hundred years of his secular-patriotic sainthood.

Not sure what I’m going to read next. A friend lent me a novel so I think I am going to dive into that, but it is almost a thousand pages long so look for a review of that in, say, November.

Boom!!! Wintergreen Va, July 2, 2005  

Ooooh!! Aaaah!!, Wintergreen, Virginia July 2, 2005

Dad at Monocacy Battlefield, June 25, 2005 

Thank You Very Mulch

We spent the first weekend back home working on the house. The WB and I worked in the front yard. I mulched, and he helped by filling up his little wheel barrel with dirt, then dumping it out, and then repeating the process. He no doubt enjoyed the process, and I couldn’t have been happier. For the record, it takes about 51 cubic feet of mulch to take care of the average front yard. You have to first edge around the flower and tree beds with a flat handled shovel, which is dirty, tiresome work. The Dog spent both days perched in the front yard, watching the people and cars go by, chasing the occasional small animal, and contemplating our next posting, which will be on the judicial nomination controversy.

Since we were out in front of the house all weekend, everyone – and I mean every last person – in the neighborhood stopped by to say hi. So sometime about mid-afternoon Saturday, we invited one couple and their kids to come by Sunday evening to cook out hamburgers and hotdogs. We then felt that if we were going to invite them, we should invite some of the other neighbors and have a little cook out. To make a long story short, we ended up having 25 adults and 16 kids over Sunday evening and the party went on till the late hour of 9:30 pm. It was a great party and about a ton of food, beer, and soda was consumed. This ended up being our “thank you” party to let the folks in the neighborhood know how much we appreciated their help over the last few months. Our neighbors showed what the word community means over the last few months, and we are exceedingly grateful for their thoughts, help and prayers.