tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90029947566568825262024-03-13T12:30:52.769-05:00The Secret History"There is more than one history of the world..."
John Crowley<br><br>
<br>“The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.”<br>
Harry S. TrumanChristopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-9541698727770659692010-09-23T07:25:00.003-05:002010-09-23T07:30:39.818-05:00The Last Rolling Stones Record<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TJtH3FKQORI/AAAAAAAAAkg/ViazzQwhT7Y/s1600/Altamont.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 256px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TJtH3FKQORI/AAAAAAAAAkg/ViazzQwhT7Y/s400/Altamont.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520084779876235538" border="0" /></a><br /><img src="file:///C:/Users/Chris/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-2.png" alt="" /><p><strong><em>Exile On Main Street</em></strong></p><p><strong><em>The Rolling Stones</em></strong></p><p><strong><em><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /></em></strong></p><p><strong><em>cri·sis </em></strong><br /> <strong><em>1. a. </em></strong><em>A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point; ..from Greek </em><em>krinein</em><em> to decide.</em></p> <p>One of the things that make the Rolling Stones album, <em>Exile on Main Street</em>, interesting, and why so many people invest it with significance in the story of the Rolling Stones, is that it is a product of crisis<em>. </em>When the Stones collected themselves to begin assembling their first album of the 1970s, they were faced with a dilemma that everyone who had invested any sort of hope in the recently passed events of the late ‘60s was also facing. Like early Christians in A.D. 100 finally conceding that the Kingdom of Heaven wasn’t arriving any time soon, the vanguard of the cultural revolution had to figure out what to do now that the revolution hadn’t come. Just a couple of years before, rock and roll bands had been hierarchs working their magic to effect the great turning of the age that almost everyone who had anything to do with the “counterculture” was in one form or another anticipating. But <em>Exile</em> was recorded on the world’s great morning after, when everyone awoke and found themselves in the 1970s. The curtains were torn open to let in the glare of daylight, and for the first time you could see how pasty, bloodshot and unwell everyone really looked. </p> <p>And in that morning the Rolling Stones found themselves, like it or not, living out the question that the Beatles broke up rather than face—what meaning does mere rock and roll have when the energies that made you icons and avatars, that provided your music with half its meaning, have been turned off like a gas flame under a pot? How much of your greatness was your music, and how much was the moment? What is rock and roll supposed to do when it becomes merely music, and not a huge cultural signifier?<br /></p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Read the rest at</span> <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2010/july10/rolling-stones-exile-on-main-street.php">The Bluegrass Special</a>.<br /></p><p><br /></p>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-66623769630662130702010-06-22T06:54:00.023-05:002010-06-26T11:17:39.221-05:00This Week in the Secret History: The 4th of July's Pagan Roots<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TCNKZUdezyI/AAAAAAAAAj4/CMql8kFC6a0/s1600/Uncle_Sam-2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5486310569916944162" style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 250px; cursor: pointer; height: 336px;" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TCNKZUdezyI/AAAAAAAAAj4/CMql8kFC6a0/s400/Uncle_Sam-2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Uncle Sam: Patriotic icon...</span><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Or Gandalf in disguise?</span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;" ><br /></span></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TCNL347aLCI/AAAAAAAAAkI/YKFHyo2VzA8/s1600/Uncle+Sam+pagan.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5486312194613849122" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 262px; cursor: pointer; height: 400px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TCNL347aLCI/AAAAAAAAAkI/YKFHyo2VzA8/s400/Uncle+Sam+pagan.jpg" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TCNL347aLCI/AAAAAAAAAkI/YKFHyo2VzA8/s1600/Uncle+Sam+pagan.jpg"><br /></a>Some of the best-documented examples of the survival of pagan ritual into the modern era are the traditional bonfires on June 23, small-scale descendants from the great Celtic Fire Festival of Midsummer’s Eve, celebrating the summer solstice.<span style="font-size:0pt;"> </span>The midsummer festival lay exactly opposite the winter solstice in the cycle of the year, and the summer revelry was a mirror image of that in December, perhaps even more riotous in the more temperate weather. The focus of the festival was fire, used to bring the life-giving power of the sun god<span style="font-size:0pt;"> </span>down to earth.<span style="font-size:0pt;"> </span>There were huge bonfires on every hilltop. Some communities built a giant wooden wheel, wrapped it in tar-soaked rags, ignited it and set it rolling down the slope of the nearest hill. Men and women with blazing torches would run in huge clockwise circles around farm fields to ensure the health of the crop. After the fire rituals, the people would feast and drink long into the night. <p class="MsoNormal">Even after all of Britain was converted to Christianity, these customs survived. In rural communities, bonfires continued to be lit on Midsummer’s Eve. Later generations added fireworks to the festivities. According to historian Ronald Hutton, these customs have “a recorded history of almost two millennia, stretching back into the pagan past.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TCNMkei6qeI/AAAAAAAAAkQ/iTRaHL_c14c/s1600/pagans.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5486312960625912290" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 400px; cursor: pointer; height: 269px; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TCNMkei6qeI/AAAAAAAAAkQ/iTRaHL_c14c/s400/pagans.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Neolithic 4th of July</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br />In 1751, Britain adopted the new Gregorian calendar, the standard modern calendar we still use. By that time, the old Julian calendar had fallen eleven days out of synch with the annual solar cycle, and most European countries were adopting the newer, more accurate calendar. Parliament passed<span style="font-size:0pt;"> </span>an act in 1751 decreeing that the new calendar would go into effect<span style="font-size:0pt;"> </span>on September 2 of the next year and <span style="font-size:0pt;"></span>that September 2, 1752 would be followed by September 14, with the intervening eleven days omitted. This did some violence to the old calendar customs of Britain: What had been Christmas was now January 6<sup>th</sup>, with Christmas Eve on January 5<sup>th</sup>; the new Gregorian Christmas had previously been December 14. </p><p class="MsoNormal">It was a little confusing, and in more isolated districts, it was sometimes simply ignored. In such communities, a residue of magic lingered on the old dates. January 5<sup>th</sup> was known as Old Christmas Eve, and much of the magical and supernatural folklore associated with the solstice still clung to it.</p><p class="MsoNormal">The 18<sup>th</sup> century in Britain was also the time of the great emigrations to America. In particular it saw the emigration of Scottish,<span style="font-size:0pt;"> </span>northern English and northern Irish borderers to what was then the North American back country,<span style="font-size:0pt;"> </span>settling in the hollows and hills of Appalachia, the great mountain chain that stretches along America’s eastern rim. These were an independent, hard-headed people who believed in doing things their own way, and their own way meant, as often as not, the old way, the way they’d always done things. This was especially the case with matters of the seasons and the calendar. Many of them had arrived in America before the calendar change, and many districts in the mountains clung stubbornly to Old Christmas and to the calendar that, for everyone else in the Western world, was now eleven days late. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Meanwhile, the American colonies fought a war of independence, and when they had won it, they thought it fitting to designate a national day of celebration. They chose the fourth day of July, to commemorate, so they said, the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. <span style="font-size:0pt;"></span>But was that the only reason for their choice?</p><p class="MsoNormal">Back up in the hills, Old Christmas still hung on like mist in a hollow. <span style="font-size:0pt;"></span>And if Old Christmas lingered, what about its opposite number, the other great feast of pagan Europe, Midsummer’s Eve? Just as we look eleven days past Christmas to find Old Christmas, we would look eleven days past June 23—current Midsummer’s Eve—to find Old Midsummer’s Eve. Is it there, buried beneath the Gregorian calendar? Find a calendar and count for yourself,<span style="font-size:0pt;"> </span>eleven days past June 23<sup>rd</sup>. You’ll land neatly and definitively on… the 4<sup>th</sup> of July. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Two nights of fiery spectacle and festivity, layered right on top of each other. <span style="font-size:0pt;"></span>Is this coincidence? Or were the Founding Fathers a secret order of druids, dedicated to reviving the Old Religion in the New World? Was paganism a way to break free of the Church of England—a pillar of the English state-- just as constitutional democracy was a way to break free of the crown of England? Was Ben Franklin ever observed dancing around a bonfire with antlers on his head and a bellyful of mead? Was J.R.R. Tolkien trying to tell us something when he made Gandalf, the arch-Druid, the master of fireworks? We may never know, at least until the day that some historian unearths a hidden cache of correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and William Blake. <span style="font-size:0pt;"></span>But I have one idea. I think Old Midsummer’s Eve snuck into the American calendar via the mountains. Those old Celts up in the hills sent a lot of volunteers off to the Continental Army, and they provided the new nation with several presidents. When the federal government was casting about for suggestions vis a vis a national holiday, the representatives from the back country had just the thing. They knew that there were two great times for festivity in the year. One, Christmas, was already claimed by the church. <span style="font-size:0pt;"></span>But the other one was there for the taking.<span style="font-size:0pt;"> </span>No-one had celebrated Old Midsummer’s Eve for centuries—maybe a millennium.<span style="font-size:0pt;"> </span>No-one that is, except for the people of the mountains, who just might have slipped a rough shard of prehistoric Europe into the foundation of the republic. </p>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-48857451745881709942010-06-09T07:13:00.006-05:002010-06-09T07:26:24.509-05:00Conspicuous by Their Absence: Do New Live Tapes Confirm the Legend of Moby Grape?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TA-GRPAC2gI/AAAAAAAAAjo/J7cUzO10Sgg/s1600/Moby+Grape.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 311px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TA-GRPAC2gI/AAAAAAAAAjo/J7cUzO10Sgg/s400/Moby+Grape.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480746902175799810" border="0" /></a><blockquote></blockquote><blockquote style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:130%;">"The national folk-memory of psychedelia today might be less limp, with fewer images of blissed-out ring-dancers and bongos in the dirt, had we been given more full metal meltdowns like 'Omaha'.”</span></blockquote><br /><br /><strong style="font-style: italic;">Moby Grape Live</strong><br /> <strong>Moby Grape</strong><br /> <strong>(Sundazed)</strong> <p>"The monarchy's mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic," Walter Bagehot wrote in 1867. The same truth may be applied to great records. </p> <p>As with all tales of unfulfilled promise, a wistful air of what-if clings to Moby Grape, as if there is still a Moby Grape-shaped hole in the ‘60s <em>zeitgeist</em> that they were intended to fill. Here, says the legend, was a band meant to color their era. A lot of people will tell you that their first album, <em>Moby Grape</em>, is the best album to come out of San Francisco, maybe all California, in the ‘60s. And indeed, had the group stayed vital for even a few more albums, they might have leant some snap and crackle to a San Francisco scene that quickly became groggy and burned-out. The national folk-memory of psychedelia today might be less limp, with fewer images of blissed-out ring-dancers and bongos in the dirt, had we been given more full metal meltdowns like “Omaha.”</p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Read the rest in <a href="http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2010/june10/moby-grape-live.php">The Bluegrass Special</a>. </span></p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TA-GtJI9-yI/AAAAAAAAAjw/aZgBEvOG9Ro/s1600/moby-grape-omaha.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 398px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TA-GtJI9-yI/AAAAAAAAAjw/aZgBEvOG9Ro/s400/moby-grape-omaha.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480747381638953762" border="0" /></a></p><p><br /></p>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-42378532692761750262010-06-04T07:07:00.009-05:002010-06-05T09:05:22.348-05:00This Week in the Secrety History: Yeats, the Irish Prophet<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TAjs8BHc27I/AAAAAAAAAjI/o2ylp8UNg58/s1600/Yeats.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TAjs8BHc27I/AAAAAAAAAjI/o2ylp8UNg58/s400/Yeats.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5478889462532201394" border="0" /></a>William Butler Yeats, one of the greatest poets in the English language in the 20th Century, was born June 13, 1865. He was a passionate Irish nationalist, but his version of liberation was just as much about freeing the ancient spirits of the Irish land as with political revolution. Probably he saw the two aims as part of one phenomenon. His poetry shaped the Irish perception of their own country, to the present day.<br /><br />But let's let the Poetry do the talking...<span style="color: rgb(156, 156, 99);"><span style="font-size:2px;"><b><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: italic;"></span></b></span></span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr><td align="left"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The Song of Wandering Aengus</span><br /><br />I <span style="">WENT</span> out to the hazel wood,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="1"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">Because a fire was in my head,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="2"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">And cut and peeled a hazel wand,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="3"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">And hooked a berry to a thread;</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="4"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">And when white moths were on the wing,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="5"><i> </i></a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">And moth-like stars were flickering out,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="6"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">I dropped the berry in a stream</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="7"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">And caught a little silver trout.</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="8"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left"><br /></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">When I had laid it on the floor</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="9"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">I went to blow the fire a-flame,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="10"><i> </i></a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">But something rustled on the floor,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="11"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">And someone called me by my name:</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="12"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">It had become a glimmering girl</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="13"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">With apple blossom in her hair</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="14"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">Who called me by my name and ran</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="15"><i> </i></a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">And faded through the brightening air.</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="16"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left"><br /></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">Though I am old with wandering</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="17"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">Through hollow lands and hilly lands,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="18"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">I will find out where she has gone,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="19"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">And kiss her lips and take her hands;</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="20"><i> </i></a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">And walk among long dappled grass,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="21"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">And pluck till time and times are done,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="22"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">The silver apples of the moon,</td><td align="right" valign="top"><span style=""><a name="23"> </a></span></td></tr> <tr><td align="left">The golden apples of the sun.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TApZAjHLbeI/AAAAAAAAAjg/n12H-QqcfB4/s1600/Ireland.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TApZAjHLbeI/AAAAAAAAAjg/n12H-QqcfB4/s400/Ireland.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5479289762609851874" border="0" /></a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><b style="font-style: italic;">THE SECOND COMING</b><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/TApZAjHLbeI/AAAAAAAAAjg/n12H-QqcfB4/s1600/Ireland.jpg"></a><p> Turning and turning in the widening gyre<br />The falcon cannot hear the falconer;<br />Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;<br />Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,<br />The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere<br />The ceremony of innocence is drowned;<br />The best lack all conviction, while the worst<br />Are full of passionate intensity. </p><p> Surely some revelation is at hand;<br />Surely the Second Coming is at hand.<br /><br />The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out<br />When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi<br />Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;<br />A shape with lion body and the head of a man,<br />A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,<br />Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it<br />Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.<br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;">The darkness drops again but now I know<br />That twenty centuries of stony sleep<br />Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,<br />And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,<br />Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?<br /><br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/R0ZteCSYbU0&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/R0ZteCSYbU0&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br /><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Easter 1916</span> </span></span> (After the brutal suppression by the English of the Easter Rising in Dublin)<br /><br />I HAVE met them at close of day<br />Coming with vivid faces<br />From counter or desk among grey<br />Eighteenth-century houses.<br />I have passed with a nod of the head<br />Or polite meaningless words,<br />Or have lingered awhile and said<br />Polite meaningless words,<br />And thought before I had done<br />Of a mocking tale or a gibe<br />To please a companion<br />Around the fire at the club,<br />Being certain that they and I<br />But lived where motley is worn:<br />All changed, changed utterly:<br />A terrible beauty is born.<br /><br />That woman's days were spent<br />In ignorant good-will,<br />Her nights in argument<br />Until her voice grew shrill.<br />What voice more sweet than hers<br />When, young and beautiful,<br />She rode to harriers?<br />This man had kept a school<br />And rode our winged horse;<br />This other his helper and friend<br />Was coming into his force;<br />He might have won fame in the end,<br />So sensitive his nature seemed,<br />So daring and sweet his thought.<br />This other man I had dreamed<br />A drunken, vainglorious lout.<br />He had done most bitter wrong<br />To some who are near my heart,<br />Yet I number him in the song;<br />He, too, has resigned his part<br />In the casual comedy;<br />He, too, has been changed in his turn,<br />Transformed utterly:<br />A terrible beauty is born.<br /><br />Hearts with one purpose alone<br />Through summer and winter seem<br />Enchanted to a stone<br />To trouble the living stream.<br />The horse that comes from the road.<br />The rider, the birds that range<br />From cloud to tumbling cloud,<br />Minute by minute they change;<br />A shadow of cloud on the stream<br />Changes minute by minute;<br />A horse-hoof slides on the brim,<br />And a horse plashes within it;<br />The long-legged moor-hens dive,<br />And hens to moor-cocks call;<br />Minute by minute they live:<br />The stone's in the midst of all.<br /><br />Too long a sacrifice<br />Can make a stone of the heart.<br />O when may it suffice?<br />That is Heaven's part, our part<br />To murmur name upon name,<br />As a mother names her child<br />When sleep at last has come<br />On limbs that had run wild.<br />What is it but nightfall?<br />No, no, not night but death;<br />Was it needless death after all?<br />For England may keep faith<br />For all that is done and said.<br />We know their dream; enough<br />To know they dreamed and are dead;<br />And what if excess of love<br />Bewildered them till they died?<br />I write it out in a verse -<br />MacDonagh and MacBride<br />And Connolly and Pearse<br />Now and in time to be,<br />Wherever green is worn,<br />Are changed, changed utterly:<br />A terrible beauty is born.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-3328544604795321782010-05-15T11:12:00.005-05:002010-05-15T11:23:44.976-05:00Any Given Sunday: The Moment of Paul Revere & the Raiders<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S-7JO4pkTZI/AAAAAAAAAjA/-eRqOolA4Js/s1600/raiders1.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 260px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S-7JO4pkTZI/AAAAAAAAAjA/-eRqOolA4Js/s400/raiders1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471531854863814034" border="0" /></a><br /><strong style="font-style: italic;">Hungry for Kicks: Singles & Choice Cuts 1965-69</strong><strong><br />Paul Revere & the Raiders</strong><strong><br />(Rev-Ola Import)</strong> <p>Let us not talk falsely now, as the Joker said to the Thief, so here’s a granular bit of truth from the 1960s that you might not get from the Revised Standard Rolling Stone Hall of Fame Canonical History of Rock & Roll. The distinctions that are made, in retrospect, between serious and lightweight music from that era, between high pop and low pop, between history-making art and disposable kitsch, were not nearly so obvious at the time as they seem now. The icons of the era, the Beatles, Stones, Dylan, etc., did not occupy the heights alone. In the interstices between their slots on the charts, lots of other music thrived. And—here’s the important fact—that other music was listened to, and dug, and taken “seriously” by the same people, the same kids, who put the Beatles/Stones/Dylan, etc. on the charts. Which brings us to Paul Revere and the Raiders.</p> <p style="text-align: left;">The fact is that there were millions of real rockers who logged just as much time listening to Paul Revere and the Raiders between 1965 and 1967 as they did the Rolling Stones. That the kids who made “Like a Rolling Stone” a hit did the same with “Kicks” and “Good Thing.” That there was one point at which serious young men who might one day be rock critics could want to be both John Lennon <em>and</em> Mark Lindsay, the Raiders’ front man, at one and the same time.<strong><em><br /></em></strong></p> <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/V9UfD1Acl4M&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/V9UfD1Acl4M&rel=0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xd0d0d0&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br />Talking about the Raiders raises the larger topic of garage rock. Which runs the risk of turning the conversation serious, and if there’s one thing you shouldn’t be when talking about the Raiders, it’s serious...<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Read the rest at</span> <a href="http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2010/april10/paul-revere-raiders-hungry-for-kicks.php">The Bluegrassspecial.com</a>.Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-48016304733328393922010-02-21T12:20:00.013-06:002010-02-21T13:07:42.951-06:00This Week in the Secret History: Terrifying the Tots<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S4F8KMsUzeI/AAAAAAAAAhg/H-OWOA7Auks/s1600-h/HanselundGretel-large.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 392px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S4F8KMsUzeI/AAAAAAAAAhg/H-OWOA7Auks/s400/HanselundGretel-large.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440766339487944162" border="0" /></a><br />This week marks the birthdays of American illustrator Edward Gorey, and of pioneering German linguist and folklorist, Wilhelm Grimm, who, with his older brother Jacob, created the seminal folk and fairy tale collection, <span style="font-style: italic;">Kinder-und Hausmärchen</span>, better known to us as Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the source of such tales as "Rumpelstiltskin", "Snow White", "Sleeping Beauty", "Rapunzel", "Cinderella", "Hansel and Gretel", and "The Frog Prince.”<br /><br />Part of the revolutionary and romantic spirit of the early 19th Century was the notion that there could be wisdom and delight in the traditions of the rural poor, that such lore would tell you something you might not otherwise understand about your society, a knowledge that had heretofore been hidden from the literate urban elites.<br /><br />No-one had previously conceived of these tales as being of any value. Now, for the first time, intellectuals sat and listened respectfully to old story-telling peasant women. It was people like the Grimms, in their generation, who began to open urban society’s eyes to the treasurehouse in the imagination of the poor.<br /><br />Though more than a century separated the Grimm’s from Gorey, their work illustrates a shared insight—that childhood and terror go hand-in-hand.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S4GERz8fGbI/AAAAAAAAAi4/ZHeszi7IXR8/s1600-h/grimm3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 246px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S4GERz8fGbI/AAAAAAAAAi4/ZHeszi7IXR8/s320/grimm3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440775266376817074" border="0" /></a><br /><br />In the Grimm Brothers stories characters regularly meet grotesquely awful fates. And the evil entities seem to have bubbled up out of some unhealthy Mitteleuropean nightmare, the id of the dank forests and the festering inbred little hamlets. The target of their frequently cannibalistic desires, are almost always children. The Grimms peasant informants knew that in the visionary realm, beauty and horror live close together.<br /><br />But there’s a golden thread that runs through the darkness. Many of the stories in the Grimms' collection seem to resonate with some primal narrative that we were born knowing. Wilhelm Grimm said that the tales were <span style="font-style: italic;">“fragments of belief, dating back to most ancient times, in which spiritual things are expressed in a figurative manner. The mythic element resembles small pieces of a shattered jewel lying strewn on the ground all overgrown with grass and flowers, and can only be discovered by the most far-seeing eye…Their signification has been lost, but is still felt, and it imparts value to the story.”</span><br /><br />And here’s a story you should know about the brothers Grimm:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-style: italic;">In 1837, the Brothers Grimm joined five of their colleague professors at the University of Göttingen to protest against the abolition of the liberal constitution of the state of Hanover by the reactionary King Ernest Augustus I. This group came to be known as The Göttingen Seven. The professors were fired from their university posts and three were deported, including Jacob. Jacob settled in Kassel, and Wilhelm joined him there. Their last years were spent in writing a definitive dictionary, the Deutsches Wörterbuch, the first volume being published in 1854</span>.<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S4GDCC-ywUI/AAAAAAAAAiY/w_EAVTtIw_s/s1600-h/gorey.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 256px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S4GDCC-ywUI/AAAAAAAAAiY/w_EAVTtIw_s/s320/gorey.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440773896023490882" border="0" /></a>Edward Gorey's illustrated (and sometimes wordless) books, with their vaguely ominous air and ostensibly Victorian and Edwardian settings, have long had a cult following. Gorey became particularly well-known through his animated introduction to the PBS series Mystery! in 1980, as well as his designs for the 1977 Broadway production of Dracula, for which he won a Tony Award.<br /><br />Gorey’s imaginative backdrop is woven out of themes from mystery and horror fiction of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras in England. Because of the settings and style of his work, many people have assumed Gorey was British; in fact, this person who made a life’s work out of channeling the elegantly perverse dream life of pre-WWI Britain never actually so much as visited the place. Gorey classified his own work as literary nonsense, the genre made most famous by Englishmen Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S4GDq6qoqcI/AAAAAAAAAio/OcaFGavmgA8/s1600-h/gorey2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 198px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S4GDq6qoqcI/AAAAAAAAAio/OcaFGavmgA8/s200/gorey2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440774598166096322" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Gorey has become an iconic figure in the Goth subculture. Events themed on his works and decorated in his characteristic style are common in the more Victorian-styled elements of the subculture, notably the Edwardian costume balls held annually in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which include performances based on his works.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S4GECec8ChI/AAAAAAAAAiw/jjtPrXSXIQI/s1600-h/gorey4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 275px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S4GECec8ChI/AAAAAAAAAiw/jjtPrXSXIQI/s320/gorey4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440775002909313554" border="0" /></a>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-42495742568260518332010-01-20T07:22:00.013-06:002010-01-24T11:33:35.569-06:00This Week in the Secret History: The Strangest Day in Military History?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1cEZqYnP4I/AAAAAAAAAgo/ewH34R7l2Mk/s1600-h/zulu+last+shot.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 175px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1cEZqYnP4I/AAAAAAAAAgo/ewH34R7l2Mk/s400/zulu+last+shot.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428812714739187586" border="0" /></a>
<br /><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CChris%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceType"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="PlaceName"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="City"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"></o:smarttagtype><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Within the space of one day--January 22, 1879-- the British army, which had taken and held the largest empire in human history, suffered one of its most appalling defeats, and achieved, a few hours later, an astonishing triumph.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">At Isandlwana in Zululand, South Africa, the British suffered the worst defeat ever inflicted on a colonial army by a native population. 950 British soldiers and 850 Basuto auxiliaries were wiped out by the army of the Zulu king, Cetsewayo. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">A few hours later, and a few miles away at Rorke’s Drift, a temporary supply depot for the army’s invasion of Zululand, a force of about 80 British infantrymen, standing behind a low barrier made of hastily stacked grain-sacks, repelled continuous assaults, over the space of almost 12 hours, from a force of 4000 Zulu warriors. It is one of the freaks of military history—people are still trying to figure out how they did it.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The British had invaded Zululand to break up the Zulu nation, and in particular to destroy its huge (40,000-strong) army, eliminating what they perceived to be a threat to European settlers in Natal Colony, which bordered the Zulu kingdom. The British, looking diligently for a casus belli, had blown a few border incidents out of proportion, and responded with a series of ultimatums to Cetsewayo, with which they knew he would not or could not comply (e.g., disbanding the army, which formed the framework of the Zulu state). When Cetsewayo rejected the ultimatums, the British declared war.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Zulus had never shown any intention of mounting a general assault on British colonists in Natal. On the other hand, the Zulus had a long established history of ferocious aggression against their tribal neighbors in South Africa, many of whom had been displaced by Zulu expansion and who understandably feared and despised them. It was from these that the British recruited some of the native auxiliaries who accompanied them in their incursion.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">So the British invasion force crossed the Buffalo River into Zululand. The force was split into three columns, in order to converge in a pincers movement on the Zulu capital at Ulundi. The central column, under Lord Chelmsford, moved at an agonizing crawl, hampered by its huge supply train of hundreds of oxen-drive wagons which could only make a few miles each day. After several days marching, they made camp under the hill of Isandlwana (the Place of the Lion) a dramatic rocky outcropping with a sphinx-like profile, overlooking a broad plain bordered on the immediate north by the nQutu plateau.
<br /></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1sIqrJ5fBI/AAAAAAAAAhI/8u0YRby1qR4/s1600-h/Isandlwana+hill.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 269px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1sIqrJ5fBI/AAAAAAAAAhI/8u0YRby1qR4/s400/Isandlwana+hill.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5429943304957033490" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The hill of Isandlwana that anchored the British left, shortly after the battle</span>
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">On the morning of January 22, Lord Chelmsford divided his force in two and set off with half the central column to hunt for the main Zulu army to the west. He left behind about 950 Europeans, including regular British troops, wagoneers and sutlers, and colonial volunteers; and 850 Africans, mostly of the Basuto tribe, of the Natal Native Contingent.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The half of the column left at Isandlwana made breakfast and sent out scouts. One party of mounted scouts rode up on to the nQutu Plateau. There they saw some Zulu boys herding cattle. The scouts gave chase. They saw the Zulu boys disappear into what they assumed was a minor dip in the terrain. They rode up to the edge.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">It wasn’t a dip. It was a long, wide gully. And in it were Zulus. Tens of thousands of them, covering the landscape to the horizon.<span style=""> </span>Squatting on their haunches, tensely awating their orders, taking the stimulant/hallucinogenic snuff they used to prepare for battle. At the sight of the British riders, the Zulu host rose and started to run--the deadly, loping run that characterized all Zulu battlefield movement; the run that always surprised their enemies, as it surprised the British this very day, with how fast a mass of men could cover the South African grasslands; running toward the dumbfounded scouts, and then the British camp.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1sARK_rMpI/AAAAAAAAAg4/ra48Lho-qjM/s1600-h/zulu+warriors5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1sARK_rMpI/AAAAAAAAAg4/ra48Lho-qjM/s400/zulu+warriors5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5429934070734467730" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">It was not necessarily criminally stupid of Lord Chelmsford to split his forces in the vicinity of the enemy. The British knew from previous experience, and from the experience of other nations' colonial armies, that a formation of modern European infantry could hold off many times their number of indigenous warriors. This was the result of British infantry drill (at which they were the acknowledged masters in <st1:place st="on">Europe</st1:place>)--specifically the discipline of volley fire; and most lethal of all, volley fire by rank. If you have seen the movie <i style="">Zulu</i>, volley fire by rank is how the outnumbered British soldiers repel the final Zulu attack. It means that you have multiple lines of soldiers—two, three, four—one lined up closely behind the other, who fire in sequence, starting with the front rank. As the other ranks take their turn, the front rank reloads and prepares to fire again. So on through the succeeding ranks. <span style=""> </span>In this way, fire is continuous and massive, an unbroken sheet of lead, and the effect hideously, astonishingly lethal. The Gatling Gun, and later the machine gun, were attempts to mechanically reproduce the effect of volley fire by rank.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">In this way a relatively small number of disciplined riflemen could kill a remarkable number of native fighters, as long as those natives did not possess good rifles and European training.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Boers, the Dutch settlers of South Africa, had learned one other vital lesson in their many years of fighting with the Zulus, one theystrongly recommended to the British: Every time a Boer force made camp, they put their wagons into <i style="">laager</i>—in the argot of the American West, they circled their wagons. This gave them both protection, and more important, some kind of defensible perimeter.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">These things did not happen at Isandlwana. The British force encamped there was wiped out, almost to the man. Why? What happened to volley fire? The answer lies, for the most part, with the behavior of Lieutenant Colonels Athony Durnford and Henry Pulleine, who <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Chelmsford</st1:place></st1:city> had left in command of the camp. Durnford had gone with a troop of local volunteer horse, on a reckless sorty out across the plain and toward the Zulus. Pulleine, who had never commanded a force of this size and never been in combat, inexplicably ordered about 600 British regulars, the core of his force, to take up position in an arc about a mile long, well in front of the camp where their supplies and ammunition lay stacked. The individual soldiers were in one thin rank, not multiple ranks, and they were yards apart from each other. Meanwhile, Durford’s excursion had left the right end of the British line dangling in the air, just waiting for the Zulu left horn to race around it.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The classic Zulu attack, created by the great King Shaka who had founded the Zulu nation,<span style=""> </span>took it’s symbolic shape from the charging bull buffalo. The center of the Zulu force was the chest of the buffalo—they made an al-out massed frontal rush trying to come to grips with the enemy center. With the enemy center engaged and distracted,<span style=""> </span>the two horns of the buffalo, left and right, raced around the flanks of the enemy to attack the position from behind. The loins of the buffalo were the reserves behind the chest, who were thrown in to support the chest once it had become fully engaged, to add the final pressure that would overwhelm the enemy.<span style=""> </span></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1cHw2PbZCI/AAAAAAAAAgw/BD2YEo5SLr8/s1600-h/Isandl+map2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 302px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1cHw2PbZCI/AAAAAAAAAgw/BD2YEo5SLr8/s400/Isandl+map2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5428816411593761826" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The Zulu "horns" envelop the British position at Isandlwana</span></span>
<br /></div>
<br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Even thin as it was, the British firing line apparently held off the Zulu chest for about an hour. Then something happened to slow their rate of fire. The majority opinion among historians is that the flow of ammunition from the camp to the front line slowed. The slackening of the rate of fire was just enough to let the bravest of the Zulu warriors finally cross the killing ground and come to grips with the <span style=""> </span>soldiers. In colonial warfare, this was the nightmare, the situation to be avoided at all costs. When tribal warriors actually closed with European troops, when it got to hand-to-hand,<span style=""> </span>the end was near. As the individual soldiers struggled with the attackers,, the rest of the men of the chest swarmed between the wide gaps in the line, turned and attacked the line from behind.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">That was that.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">To put a cosmic seal on the mayhem below, the sun was eclipsed that afternoon over Isandlwana.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">At that point, one wing of the huge Zulu impi, about 4000 to 4500 strong, who had been held in reserve and did not see any fighting, got a wild hair. With their honor at stake, because they had not gotten to “wash their spears” in the blood of the enemy, they decided to go after the next closest group of British soldiers, even though King Cetsewayo had expressly forbidden to army to cross the river into Natal Colony. Nevertheless, there the British were, at the supply dump for the invasion force, using a commandeered two-building mission station called Rorke’s Drift.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Terrified refugees had brought news of the disaster at Isnadlwana to the force at Rorke’s Drift throughout the afternoon. The soldiers at the depot, B Company of the 24<sup>th</sup> Foot consisted of about 140 men. Of these, 35 were in the hospital. Excluding cooks, orderlies and teamsters, there were about 80 actual riflemen fit for duty. But they had been reinforced by about 200 colonial horsemen, and around 100 of the Natal Native Contingent. Lieutenant John Rouse Merriott Chard, an officer of the Royal Engineers with very limited combat experience, had been left in charge by the camp’s<span style=""> </span>commanding officer that morning. Chard had only recently arrived at the post to build a pontoon bridge acriss the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Buffalo</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">River</st1:placetype></st1:place>.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Chard ordered that a defensive perimeter be built linking the storehouse and the hospital with piles of hundred pound grain sacks and biscuit boxes. He judged that with about 450 rifles lined up behind even a token bit of shelter, they stood a chance.</span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1tOedIywmI/AAAAAAAAAhY/fVtDDyd1InA/s1600-h/Rorke%27s+Drift3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1tOedIywmI/AAAAAAAAAhY/fVtDDyd1InA/s400/Rorke%27s+Drift3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430020060849816162" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >The Defence of Rorke's Drift</span>
<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">by Alphonse de Neuville</span></span>
<br /></div><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">That was until the sentries Chard had placed on the surrounding hills came racing down to report the imminent arrival of the Zulus. At that point, with the enemy on top of them, both the colonial horse and the native levies broke, and disappeared down the road into Natal. One the of 24</span><sup style="font-family: times new roman;">th</sup><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> shot and killed one of the native’s European officers as he ran with his troops</span>.</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">At the last possible moment, the defending force had been reduced from around 450 to about 80 men. Quickly Chard ordered that another biscuit box wall be built, cutting their perimeter in roughly half. Then the Zulus appeared.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">For the next eight to ten hours, the fighting went on without a significant pause. But Chard had done three things that the commanders at Isandlwana had not.<span style=""> </span>He created a fortified, albeit haphazard perimeter to protect his men. When the colonial volunteers and the native troops left him, he made provisions for shrinking the perimeter and concentrating his fire; and he made sure that the men had a steady and adequate flow of ammunition.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1sGYghG-GI/AAAAAAAAAhA/HF6s-xnDbOg/s1600-h/zulu+dead.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1sGYghG-GI/AAAAAAAAAhA/HF6s-xnDbOg/s400/zulu+dead.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5429940793840695394" border="0" /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The sun of January 23, 1879 rose on a scene of terrible carnage. There were fifteen dead Englishmen, and hundreds of dead Zulus, piled everywhere around Rorke’s Drift. Around 7 am, a huge line of Zulus appeared on the hills around Rorke’s Drift. The defenders braced for the end. But the Zulus has been marching and fighting for days without rest or food. And they knew they were going to face the wrath of their king for disobeying his orders.<span style=""> </span>The Zulus disappeared. The Battle of Rorke’s Drift was over, an event without real parallel in military history.<span style=""> </span>The Western way of war had suffered one of its great rebukes, and one of it’s most astonishing affirmations, in one terrible day under the African sky.</span></p><p style="font-style: italic;" face="trebuchet ms" class="MsoNormal">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The most readable narrative of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, its causes and its aftermath, remains Donald Morris' classic, </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Washing-Spears-Rise-Fall-Nation/dp/0306808668/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264255584&sr=1-1">The Washing of the Spears</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. Victor Davis Hanson's </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Carnage-Culture-Landmark-Battles-Western/dp/0385720386/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264256168&sr=1-1">Carnage and Culture</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> incorporates the most recent research into his chapter on Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift as part of his larger analysis of war and culture. </span>
<br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S1cHw2PbZCI/AAAAAAAAAgw/BD2YEo5SLr8/s1600-h/Isandl+map2.jpg">
<br /></a>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-74821387449018161792010-01-08T13:28:00.007-06:002010-01-20T07:30:36.687-06:00All Hell Breaks Loose: The Jim Jones Revue Shows Them How It's Done<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S0eH0LMuaPI/AAAAAAAAAgg/_EMyTKKepjE/s1600-h/Jim+Jones+Revue.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 301px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/S0eH0LMuaPI/AAAAAAAAAgg/_EMyTKKepjE/s400/Jim+Jones+Revue.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424453606620162290" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><p>Most first year anthropology students learn about something called "cargo cults," a phenomenon observed during and after World War II among the remote Melanesian populations of the South Pacific islands. As Wikipedia tells us:</p> <p><em>During the war, large amounts of food and goods were flown in by the Japanese and American combatants, and this was observed by the natives of the islands. When the war ended, the flow of goods and materials ceased. In an attempt to attract further deliveries of goods, followers of the cults engaged in ritualistic practices such as building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and radio equipment, and mimicking the behavior that they had observed of the military personnel operating them. </em></p> <p>Go downtown this weekend to wherever the music clubs are. Odds are you won't have to stop in to more than two or three before you find a genuine 21st century cargo cult in action. Up there on the stage, whether it's a national touring act or someone from your local indie-alt-post-rock scene, you'll see the same hopeless ritual being enacted. There's the two-guitar, bass and drums configuration that hasn't changed since the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. Maybe there's a quirky frontman acting out his angst in front of his band. Obeying an inchoate impulse from the pop unconscious, they apparently feel that by arranging the externals the same way they once were when people experienced the collective ecstasy of rock and roll, the power may be induced to descend again and flow through them. But that's just a hope, only half conscious. Most of the time, like those Pacific Islanders, they seem to be going through motions that they don't really understand, their guitars as harmless as rifles made of sticks. </p> <p>And then, every once in an epoch, a real plane lands again.<br /></p><p><span style="font-style: italic;">Read the rest at</span> <a href="http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2010/jan10/jim-jones-revue-here-to-save-your-soul.php"><span style="font-style: italic;">TheBlueGrassSpecial.com</span></a>.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><br /><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/KX5O1aLO87k&hl=en_US&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/KX5O1aLO87k&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-83276977946976673822009-12-07T16:41:00.005-06:002009-12-08T07:10:05.129-06:00In the New Old Fashioned Way<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Sx5PZ_V_lNI/AAAAAAAAAgY/PdOrUJKe8vM/s1600-h/really+good+winter+trees.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Sx5PZ_V_lNI/AAAAAAAAAgY/PdOrUJKe8vM/s400/really+good+winter+trees.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412851110064919762" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />If On a Winter’s Night…</span><br />Sting<br />Deutsche Grammophon<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Through the Bitter Frost and Snow</span><br />Susan McKeown & Lindsey Horner<br />50-50 Music<br /><br />Over the years, the seasonal mood has been shotgunned into unions, more or less unnatural, with every known variety of popular music. You might think you’ve got to pretty much work yourself into contortions to do something distinct with a Christmas album at this point in time. But not necessarily. All you really need is the merest hint of feeling for the season, a dash of concept, and a few decent players willing to throw themselves into the spirit of things, and--able as you are to ride the momentum of centuries of sentiment and celebration--you can do pretty well without an especially visionary take on the season. And then every once in a while, an artist happens down the Xmas trail through whose senses we can feel the season freshly; combine that with those aforementioned centuries of festive associations, and you can really have something.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Read the rest at the</span> <a href="http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2009/december2009/sting-winters-night.php">BlueGrassSpecial.com</a>.Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-3389845377631734342009-11-07T16:19:00.003-06:002009-11-07T16:28:28.354-06:00Gilding the Lily: The Remastered Beatles<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SvXzGCulUPI/AAAAAAAAAgQ/HK4GpZuJy0c/s1600-h/beatles1965.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SvXzGCulUPI/AAAAAAAAAgQ/HK4GpZuJy0c/s400/beatles1965.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401490613237797106" border="0" /></a>
<br /><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CBoo%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p {mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">As with every mystery, literal and metaphorical camps battle over the interpretation of the Beatles. The literalists want there to be a literal, comprehensible, even if awful, solution to the mystery of the Beatles. The search for the pseudonymous bootleg, the lost killer outtake, the “Carnival of Light,” the Masked Marauders, the clues to the death of Paul, even, down at the abyssal end of the chain, the Manson family’s Helter-Skelter delirium--these are all at one end or the other of the literalist quest.
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<br /></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">But just as scriptures are richest when read metaphorically, so too with the Beatles.
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<br /><o:p></o:p></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Don’t look outside the work for miraculous validation, says the metaphorical view. Look deeper into it. The miracles are buried layer on layer in the work. Understand the puzzling, suggestive, evocative elements not as mysteries with a literal solution like a detective story, but metaphors designed to produce, as Owen Barfield said about poetry, “a felt change of consciousness.”</p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<br /></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">With its implied suggestion of a definitive revelation, of long-buried gold coming to the surface, the remastered Beatles catalog released this fall is in one sense a classic literalist project. The CDs come with a lot of fanfare and some inevitably excited expectations. “You’re going to be <em>knocked…out</em>,” my CD-store guy—normally cool as a cucumber in the face of hype—breathlessly assured me.
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<br /></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">To get a manageable handle on the remastered catalog, I’ve taken two albums, one from the early ‘60s beginnings—<em>With the Beatles</em>--and one late ‘60s high point—<em>Revolver</em>. I then picked a “good part” from each song—a hook, a chorus, a riff, a bass line, a drum fill, a noise, a shout, the bits of gratuitous inspiration that great performances throw off. At these isolated high water marks, I’ve compared the remastered version with the previous CD version. Here are the results. </p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<br /></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Read the rest at</span> <a href="http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2009/november2009/beatlesnov09.php">BlueGrassSpecial.com</a>
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<br /><o:p></o:p></p> Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-91373620752239906822009-10-18T06:58:00.005-05:002009-10-19T05:20:35.009-05:00This Week in the Secret History: The Gothic Novel Alters Western Consciousness<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/StsFp2ScM1I/AAAAAAAAAgI/yHEnavKNv3o/s1600-h/caspar+david+friedrich.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 250px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/StsFp2ScM1I/AAAAAAAAAgI/yHEnavKNv3o/s400/caspar+david+friedrich.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393911195211936594" border="0" /></a><br />Gothic fiction (sometimes referred to as Gothic horror) is a genre of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. As a genre, it is generally believed to have been invented by the English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto.<br /><br />Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.<br /><br />The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, angels, fallen angels, the beauty and the beast, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, and the Wandering Jew.<br /><br />The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Melodrama and parody (including self-parody) were other long-standing features of the Gothic initiated by Walpole. Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. In a way similar to the gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere. The ruins of gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations—thus the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals.Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-89845002577100824962009-09-29T07:24:00.024-05:002009-10-06T12:25:47.772-05:00This Week in the Secret History: The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels (September 29)<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SsjmTwqYwLI/AAAAAAAAAfw/ktG6OEhGsH8/s1600-h/michael.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388810181303386290" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 297px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 360px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SsjmTwqYwLI/AAAAAAAAAfw/ktG6OEhGsH8/s400/michael.jpg" border="0" /></a>
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<br />"Autumn is poignant. It belongs to the angel who carries a point,<b> </b>the Archangel<b> </b>Michael,<b> </b>who wields sword and spear for the people of God against the powers of darkness. The point of Michael’s spear is the poignancy of autumn that pierces our hearts and wakes us from drowsy summer, calling us away from our summer home with a sharp longing for something else. <?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 150%;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >
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<br />We humans see the spiritual beauty of a thing most clearly when its time is passing or past. Nothing becomes sacred or legendary until it dies. In autumn, nature’s time is passing. The world is at its most beautiful and poetic because it is passing away. The natural world lingers for a moment on the brink of </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">this transformation into legend or holiness. It has the bittersweet beauty of something that we are losing. The light turns from the clear, practical white light of summer into the mellow gold that we call antique—like the yellowed pages of an old book, the sepia of old photographs or tarnished brass. Old light; legends of the fall; Indian summer. Nature has one foot over the threshold of eternity and glows with a slant of light from the other side of the door.<o:p></o:p>
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<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SsIBoJyzYrI/AAAAAAAAAeY/-a9nTSk5-To/s1600-h/angelstandinginthesun.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386869893623931570" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 398px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SsIBoJyzYrI/AAAAAAAAAeY/-a9nTSk5-To/s400/angelstandinginthesun.jpg" border="0" /></a>Michael is the angel of this transition from time to eternity. The point of his spear is the point where eternity breaks into time and transforms it—both “now, and at the hour of our death,” as the Rosary says. The death of the year, beginning at Michaelmas, acts out this transformation sacramentally.</span><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 150%;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >
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<br />At the same time, there’s a new kind of life in the air. As dead leaves and withered plants shrivel back toward the ground, it’s as if their summer life is transformed into the tingling energy of the fall air. This combination of the beautifully dying and the bracingly awake is the unmistakable spiritual atmosphere of autumn. Michael is the patron </span><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 150%;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >of the process. The flaming trees say it all. They are a last flare up of gorgeousness before death and, at the same time, a signal fire, a wake-up call to the soul. Michael, whose feast is celebrated one week after the </span><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 150%;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >autumnal equinox, is the lord of autumn, the angel of the flaming trees.
<br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Ssc3sd6xXzI/AAAAAAAAAfY/-myFGVDS0SM/s1600-h/Libra+Michael.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388336716256993074" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 270px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 285px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Ssc3sd6xXzI/AAAAAAAAAfY/-myFGVDS0SM/s320/Libra+Michael.jpg" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 150%;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >"</span> <meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" equiv="Content-Type"><meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"><meta content="Microsoft Word 11" name="Generator"><meta content="Microsoft Word 11" name="Originator"><link style="FONT-FAMILY: arial" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CChris%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:.5in; margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:200%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-layout-grid-align:none; punctuation-wrap:simple; text-autospace:none; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%;font-family:';" >Michael presides over the equinox, the time of the equal night and day, when things hang in the balance. Medieval art often shows Michael holding a pair of balancing scales—just like the Egyptian god Anubis, </span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SsnSfxdUUbI/AAAAAAAAAf4/4uNUQVtw-RA/s1600-h/Anubis+scale.jpg"><span style="font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389069872419590578" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 198px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SsnSfxdUUbI/AAAAAAAAAf4/4uNUQVtw-RA/s320/Anubis+scale.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%;font-family:';font-size:85%;" >another lord of transitions and guide of the dead. Those balancing scales are the astrological sign of Libra, which begins a week before Michaelmas."</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SsnS-8XAatI/AAAAAAAAAgA/sHFssVOoKck/s1600-h/Libra.jpg"><span style="font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389070407921855186" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 108px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 108px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SsnS-8XAatI/AAAAAAAAAgA/sHFssVOoKck/s320/Libra.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="LINE-HEIGHT: 200%;font-family:';font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
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<br /></span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">from </span><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >Holidays and Holy Nights</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">
<br />by Christopher Hill
<br />copyright 2003
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<br />Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-80867501977200890872009-09-18T12:03:00.003-05:002009-09-18T12:14:23.856-05:00This Week in the Secret History: Carter Files Report of UFO Sighting<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SrO_qjiHhZI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/68-TyJwPnFk/s1600-h/ufo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SrO_qjiHhZI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/68-TyJwPnFk/s400/ufo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382856717451625874" border="0" /></a><br /><br />On September 18, 1973, future President Jimmy Carter files a report with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), claiming he had seen an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) in October 1969.<br /><br />During the presidential campaign of 1976, Democratic challenger Carter was forthcoming about his belief that he had seen a UFO. He described waiting outside for a Lion’s Club Meeting in Leary, Georgia, to begin, at about 7:30 p.m., when he spotted what he called "the darndest thing I’ve ever seen" in the sky. Carter, as well as 10 to 12 other people who witnessed the same event, described the object as "very bright [with] changing colors and about the size of the moon." Carter reported that "the object hovered about 30 degrees above the horizon and moved in toward the earth and away before disappearing into the distance." He later told a reporter that, after the experience, he vowed never again to ridicule anyone who claimed to have seen a UFO.<br /><br />During the presidential campaign of 1976, Carter promised that, if elected president, he would encourage the government release "every piece of information" about UFOs available to the public and to scientists. After winning the presidency, though, Carter backed away from this pledge, saying that the release of some information might have "defense implications" and pose a threat to national security.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">from </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">www.History.com</span>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-57477623265286009872009-09-18T11:33:00.006-05:002009-09-18T12:22:50.317-05:00This Week in the Secret History: Ken Kesey, the Indiana Jones of Consciousness<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CBoo%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:browserlevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p.date, li.date, div.date {mso-style-name:date; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:shapedefaults ext="edit" spidmax="1026"> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:shapelayout ext="edit"> <o:idmap ext="edit" data="1"> </o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--> <p style="text-align: center;font-family:trebuchet ms;" class="date"><span style="font-size:100%;">September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001</span></p><p style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" class="date"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Farmer, wrestler, author, Intrepid Traveler</span>
<br /></span></p><p style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" class="date"><span style="font-size:100%;">“To hell with facts! We need stories!”</span></p><p class="date">
<br /></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SrO6y5nqG_I/AAAAAAAAAeI/EkdzDNKsG3M/s1600-h/Kesey2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 270px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SrO6y5nqG_I/AAAAAAAAAeI/EkdzDNKsG3M/s400/Kesey2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382851363261258738" border="0" /></a> <p style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="date">“The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”
<br /></p><p style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" class="date"><span style="font-size:100%;">“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”</span></p> <p class="date"><o:p> </o:p></p> Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-6982787121660382362009-09-07T08:23:00.019-05:002009-09-11T18:40:13.271-05:00This Week in the Secret History: The Still-Smoking Gun<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqraDOGO0YI/AAAAAAAAAd8/PkPe7InuTsI/s1600-h/Helms.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 285px; height: 227px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqraDOGO0YI/AAAAAAAAAd8/PkPe7InuTsI/s320/Helms.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380352453706174850" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqrZ4v75uLI/AAAAAAAAAd0/KGiuqKG3lPw/s1600-h/nixon2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 292px; height: 219px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqrZ4v75uLI/AAAAAAAAAd0/KGiuqKG3lPw/s320/nixon2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380352273811093682" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><br /><div style="text-align: right;">Richard Helms, Director of the CIA<br /></div></div><p><br /></p><p>Richard Nixon, President of the United States<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Excerpts from the Nixon White House Tape dated June 23, 1972, subsequently known as "The Smoking Gun Tape" in which Nixon and his aide John Haldeman discussed blacmkailing the CIA into intervening in the FBI investigation of laundered Nixon campaign funds. Richard Nixon resigned the presidency within four days of this tape being made public in August 1974. </p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Haldeman:</b> ... they'll stop if we could, if we take this other step.</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Nixon:</b> All right. Fine.</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Haldeman:</b> And, and they seem to feel the thing to do is get them to stop?</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Nixon:</b> Right, fine.</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Haldeman:</b> They say the only way to do that is from White House instructions....</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Nixon:</b> All right, fine.</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Haldeman:</b> and say, ah...</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Nixon:</b> How do you call him in? I mean you just, well, we protected [CIA Director Richard] Helms from one hell of a lot of things.</p><span style="font-style: italic;">Of course, this is a, this is a hunt, you will--that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> [E. Howard Hunt, ex-CIA and Cuban exile case officer]</span><span style="font-style: italic;">, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves.</span> <p style="font-style: italic;">**********</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Nixon:</b> When you get these people in, say: "Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that" ah, without going into the details... don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, "The President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people are playing for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case", period!</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Haldeman:</b> OK</p><p style="font-style: italic;"><b>Nixon:</b> That's the way to put it, do it straight (Unintelligible)</p>In 1978, Haldeman published<span style="font-style: italic;"> The Ends of Power</span> , in which he explained Nixon's statement that Watergate could "open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing". Haldeman said that "Bay of Pigs" (the failed 1960 attempt by CIA-backed exiles to topple Castro) was Nixon's code for CIA/Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, as well as the CIA's general sponsorship of violent, ultra-right wing, heavily armed and virulently anti-Kennedy Cuban exile groups in the southern U<u>nited States. </u>The CIA had not revealed any of this to the Warren Commission, the commission that investigated the Kennedy assassination. Haldeman eventually speculated that the "Bay of Pigs" was Nixon's way of referring obliquely to the Kennedy assassination itself.<br /><p>When Haldeman did as his boss had ordered, and told CIA Director Helms that "the Bay of Pigs may be blown," according to Haldeman the reaction was galvanic. "Turmoil in the room, Helms gripping the arms of his chair, leaning forward and shouting, 'The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this. I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs.' " Recalls Haldeman: "I was absolutely shocked by Helms' violent reaction. Again I wondered, what was such dynamite in the Bay of Pigs story?"</p><p>In the wake of this meeting, CIA officials did, in fact, ask Acting FBI Director Pat Gray to slow the FBI's money tracing.<br /></p><p>The tape was damning for Nixon because it was clear evidence of the president ordering the obstruction of the government's Watergate investigation. But it was apparently considered a matter of secondary importance to pursue the question of just exactly what Nixon was talking about. And, after Gerald Ford's blanket pardon of Nixon, no-one would ever be able to question the president under oath. And so the matter rests to this day, with Nixon in his grave.<br /></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Watergate Burglars</span><br /></p><ul><li>Bernard L. Barker - Former Central Intelligence Agency operative. Said to have been involved in Cuban exile paramilitary action.</li><li>Virgilio R. Gonzales - Involved in Cuban exile politics.</li><li>James W. McCord - Former CIA agent.</li><li>Eugenio R. Martinez - CIA contract agent. Worked with militant anti-Castro Cuban groups</li><li>Frank A. Sturgis - Former CIA contract agent working with anti-Castro exile groups. </li><li>Howard Hunt - Former CIA case officer for the most radical Cuban exile paramilitary groups</li></ul><p></p><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-87695344113716512332009-09-04T13:01:00.007-05:002009-09-04T13:17:40.731-05:00In Music: Lords of the Highway<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqFWeRETlbI/AAAAAAAAAdM/NXpVINni7Uc/s1600-h/route66.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377674508034610610" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 478px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqFWeRETlbI/AAAAAAAAAdM/NXpVINni7Uc/s400/route66.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqFXSkCRJVI/AAAAAAAAAdc/cOPfP8yKHC4/s1600-h/losthighways.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377675406479533394" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 197px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqFXSkCRJVI/AAAAAAAAAdc/cOPfP8yKHC4/s200/losthighways.jpg" border="0" /></a><strong>Lost Highways: American Road Songs 1920's to 1950's</strong></div><div>Various Artists</div><div>Viper<br /><br /><br /><em>In Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the Kid, played by Kris Kristofferson, is preparing to leave the Lincoln County Jail, having just disposed of two of Pat Garret's deputies assigned to guard him. In his leg irons he's shuffling around the second story room where he's been held, gathering up guns, ammo and blankets. He starts to hum, then sing, a little tuneless song, a list of places he's been. The list grows, the song lengthens, getting louder as the Kid piles on towns, landmarks, rivers. People in the street outside stop to listen; and when Billy realizes it, he starts to shout his silly tuneless song out at them, until he's gathered a silent, watchful audience and we've temporarily left the land of narrative realism for the country of folklore and ritual. Billy the Kid's Song of the Open Road is an American incantation. Call it singing the travels-it is a stock device that American storytellers can use to touch base with the roots of their subject, highway being to American story what the sea is to Homer's.<br /></em></div><div></div><div><strong>Read the rest at</strong> <a href="http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2009/september2009/losthighwayseptember09.php"><em>The Bluegrassspecial.com</em></a>. </div><div><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqFW8MLHSOI/AAAAAAAAAdU/pCH7AHReGxI/s1600-h/losthighways.jpg"></a></div>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-3389747732290512542009-09-03T05:42:00.013-05:002009-09-04T19:14:04.456-05:00This Week in the Secret History: Do the Horn Dance<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqDyOmJ_0dI/AAAAAAAAAc0/5g7FZe8CVz8/s1600-h/Old+Horn+Dance.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377564287654941138" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 400px; cursor: pointer; height: 297px;" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqDyOmJ_0dI/AAAAAAAAAc0/5g7FZe8CVz8/s400/Old+Horn+Dance.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:verdana;">The Abbots <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Bromley</span> Horn Dance is generally accepted as the oldest continuously performed folk ritual in Britain, and one of the oldest in all of Europe. Six dancers in Elizabethan dress each carry on their shoulders an enormous set of reindeer antlers. Three of the sets are painted white; three are painted brown. They are accompanied by the Hobby Horse (a man with a small <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">effigy</span> of a horse resting around his waist, so he seems to be galloping); Maid Marian, a young man in women's clothing, and a traditional Fool. Musicians generally bring up the rear, in recent years being an accordion player and a young boy chiming in on the triangle. The dance involves the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">hornsmen</span> weaving in and out of each other in a figure eight pattern. They then split into two opposing lines --white vs brown-- and do mock battle with each other.</span> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqDyu6LTObI/AAAAAAAAAdE/WHHGYkKb5SM/s1600-h/Horn+Dance+Prehistory.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5377564842784930226" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; width: 182px; cursor: pointer; height: 149px;" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SqDyu6LTObI/AAAAAAAAAdE/WHHGYkKb5SM/s400/Horn+Dance+Prehistory.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span>There is documentary evidence that the Horn Dance goes back to the 16th Century--it was observed by contemporary diarists. But Abbot's Bromley locals have always said it was older than that. They were right. Chemical dating in the 1980's put the horns firmly on the heads of domesticated reindeer that lived in the 11th Century. So that the 21st Century marks at least the one thousandth birthday of the Horn Dance. (To make things more mysterious, reindeer were extinct in England at that time.) But there's some indication that these were not the original set of Horns used in the rite. Which, if the "old horns" were in use anything like as long as the "new" ones, sends us spinning back into the days of the Roman Invasion of Britain.<br /><br />Or, as Nigel Tufnel put it, "The Druids...who were they...and...what did they do?"<br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-size:0pt;"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-size:0pt;"><span style="font-size:0pt;"></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Horn Dance takes place on Wakes Monday, the day following Wakes Sunday, which is the first Sunday after September 4. In practice, this means that it is the Monday between between September 6 and September 12. It was originally a ritual of the Christmas season, but the date was shifted to autumn in the 18th Century.</span><br /><br /><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >Without further ado, England's longest running performance...<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/aJVC7ZocNjI&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/aJVC7ZocNjI&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">And here's the original Horn Dance tune...</span></span><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AgQ7fOmazGQ&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AgQ7fOmazGQ&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-32100860189663006652009-08-20T05:47:00.022-05:002009-08-31T05:43:35.936-05:00This Week in the Secret History: British Rockers & the Dream of Childhood; or Tragedy at Pooh Corner<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/So0rvHHvbfI/AAAAAAAAAcE/45NLWmFBC7k/s1600-h/christopher.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 185px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/So0rvHHvbfI/AAAAAAAAAcE/45NLWmFBC7k/s320/christopher.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371998018888232434" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/So0rDYBCOAI/AAAAAAAAAb8/1oX4lkMr_fg/s1600-h/JonesBrian+best.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 281px; height: 215px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/So0rDYBCOAI/AAAAAAAAAb8/1oX4lkMr_fg/s320/JonesBrian+best.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5371997267509262338" border="0" /></a>"The true subject of English psychedelia was neither love nor drugs but nostalgia for the innocent vision of the child. ...Pop's late-60's preoccupation with the lost domain of childhood [was]... initiated by Lennon and McCartney with the single, 'Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane'.<br /><br />"The revolutionary spirit then abroad in America and Europe was never reciprocated in Albion, where tradition, nature and the childlike view were the things that sprang most readily to the LSD-heightened Anglo-Saxon mind." Ian MacDonald <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SpALUzagG3I/AAAAAAAAAcU/t37ELL_BeKE/s1600-h/Hangman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 240px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SpALUzagG3I/AAAAAAAAAcU/t37ELL_BeKE/s400/Hangman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372806807479655282" border="0" /></a>From Pink Floyd's references to <span style="font-style: italic;">Wind in the Willows</span>, to John Lennon's unending fascination with Lewis Carroll, to the Small faces stoned-out fairy tale, <span style="font-style: italic;">Ogden's Nut Gone Flake</span>, British rockers were obsessed for a time with the vision of childhood. "Show me that I'm everywhere/Then get me home for tea," George Harrison sang. Most evocative of all were the Incredible String Band, for whom the eyes of a child were a lens for viewing the hidden beauty and strangeness of the world.<br /><br />Many of the great creators of English children's literature were people who felt themselves seriously, sometimes desperately out of place in their world. It's why they could create golden alternate worlds, tinged with palpable magic. The best of their work--like <span style="font-style: italic;">Wind in the Willows</span> or the Mary Poppins books-- aren't just works of the imagination--they're works of vision. When psychedelia hit Britain, it was as natural a source for artists to look to as the Anthology of American Folk Music was for American musicians.<br /><br />Cotchford farm in Sussex is where Christopher<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span>R</span><span>obin Milne grew up</span><span style="font-style: italic;">-- </span><span><span style="font-style: italic;">the</span> Christopher Robin, the inspiration and model for the central character in the Winnie the Pooh stories, which his father, A. A. Milne, wrote. The woods that stretch backward from the house are the 40 Acre Woods. The Enchanted Place on Top of the Forest is there. The bridge where Pooh and Eeyore invent Pooh Sticks is there. The garden of the house is maintained as a shrine to childhood, with rights of access </span><span>granted </span><span>in </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SpAUq7Yb02I/AAAAAAAAAcc/r10zr0M0qVo/s1600-h/Pooh+Corner.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 207px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SpAUq7Yb02I/AAAAAAAAAcc/r10zr0M0qVo/s320/Pooh+Corner.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372817083180241762" border="0" /></a><span>perpetuity </span><span>to the Winnie-the-Pooh Society, and so to all Pooh- lovers.<br /><br />It was here that Brian Jones, the most debauched and dangerous of the Rolling Stones and the band's founder, came in 1969 to try to pull his life back together, away from the mad Saturnalia that was pop star life in "Swinging London."<br /><br /></span>It was here that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards came to tell Brian he was no longer a Rolling Stone. The Stones wanted and needed to tour the United States, where they had not made a live appearance for several years. Brian, in his drug and booze raddled shape, could not possibly undertake the rigors of extended touring. He could barely play in the recording studio. Plus his two drug busts would effectively bar his entry to the States.<br /><br />This was the Stones tour that ended in the debacle at Altamont. Things were turning dark all over as the 60s began switching off the lights.<br /><br />Friends began to remark to each other that the benevolent atmosphere of Cotchford Farm was doing Brian good. Brian would allow no drugs in the house, (though he apparently still drank heavily from time to time). He talked about starting a roots rock band, what we would now call Americana--and was listening endlessly to Creedence. His housekeeper, Mary Hallett, who had worked at Cotchford Farm for decades, grew increasingly fond of him. She though he was a lost boy who needed a stable home. Sometimes, something in the way his hair fell over his forehead made her think of another golden-haired boy who had lived there long ago. Brian had wonderful, instinctive good manners that he could call on when needed and his relation with those younger and older than he were often very tender. It was with his peers, and himself, that the problems lay.<br /><br />On the night of Wednesday, July 2, 1969, Brian had a few friends around--a girl friend, the contractor who had been doing repairs at Cotchford, his girlfriend. Maybe one or two others. They were sitting around the pool at the back of the house. Late in the evening, Brian announed he was going for a swim. He went inside to change, came back out, and dove in. As it was getting dark, and cooling off, the rest of the group went inside. A moment later, one of the women went back outside to get Brian. She found him lying face down on the bottom of the pool.<br /><br />Brian was asthmatic. He was in terrible shape. He was probably drunk, and may have taken some sedative medication. There's nothing terribly mysterious about his death. Yet dark speculation--some of it verifiable--has swirled around the events ever since. There was some kind of bad blood between Brian and the contractors. Frank Thorogood, the head contractor, had apparently been trying to collect a debt from Brian for some time. He was the last person to see Brian alive. And someone was burning something in several small fires, in the small hours of that night, at Cotchford.<br /><br />Something called to Brian Jones from Cotchford Farm, as the world of childhood, remembered or imagined, called to British rock and rollers toward the end of the 60s. Many of them would visit that country. Few of them paid so high a price.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SpA2XICq8DI/AAAAAAAAAck/yaYGTvCPKjg/s1600-h/EnchantedPlace.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 296px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SpA2XICq8DI/AAAAAAAAAck/yaYGTvCPKjg/s400/EnchantedPlace.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5372854126376579122" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">"By-and-by they came to an </span><em style="font-style: italic;">enchanted place</em><span style="font-style: italic;"> on the very </span><em style="font-style: italic;">top</em><span style="font-style: italic;"> of the </span><em style="font-style: italic;">Forest</em>..."<br /></div><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-23995580550396997992009-08-08T08:56:00.002-05:002009-08-08T09:01:12.980-05:00In Music: Rhett Miller Bares His Heart to Someone<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Sn2FBvv5vwI/AAAAAAAAAb0/EbPU111j3-M/s1600-h/millerrhett.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Sn2FBvv5vwI/AAAAAAAAAb0/EbPU111j3-M/s320/millerrhett.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367592595939245826" border="0" /></a><br /><strong>RHETT MILLER<br /> Rhett Miller<br /> Shout Factory </strong><br /> <p style="font-style: italic;">"Indie" as a label for a band should be used in a strictly limited sense to refer to a band unaffiliated with the major labels. Used to suggest a sensibility, or a sound, the word is layered with unfortunate associations.</p> <p style="font-style: italic;">For instance, it's easy to say that Rhett Miller's band, the Old 97's of Dallas, Texas, have, for over a decade, been a beloved indie/alt-country fixture. And that's a shame. </p> <p style="font-style: italic;">Because the Old 97's aren't an indie/alt-anything band, but rather a near great rock & roll band within the broad river of tradition that flows from the Byrds. They practice certain lost arts, like the high-energy hook, that few know anymore They come on with a buzz and a whack and gorgeous melodic fillip. They command power chords and distortion as well as really from-the-heart sweet melodies and consistently diverting songwriting from frontman Rhett Miller--Miller, wearing his bleeding heart on his sleeve, love-obsessed, gangly, held together by twining strands of heartbreak and pugnacity. And there seems to be no reason for them not to sell large quantities of records. Except that their leader still seems to be a prisoner of the indie mind. </p> <p style="font-style: italic;">Indie cults are based on the myth of the beautiful loser, often personified in the pale ruined boy who fronts the band. As a band, the Old 97's don't seem interested in being beautiful losers. But Miller? If his new solo album is an indication, he sounds prepared to milk the personae of pale ruined boy for all it's worth.</p><p>Read the rest in the <a href="http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2009/august2009/millerrhettreviewaugust09.php">BlueGrassSpecial.com</a>.<br /></p>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-799686664912033412009-08-06T06:30:00.004-05:002009-08-11T05:59:02.811-05:00Secret History Readers: Choose Your Free One-of-a-Kind CD<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnwZm9WdBhI/AAAAAAAAAbs/DBOUId-9GAg/s1600-h/Parsons+cover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnwZm9WdBhI/AAAAAAAAAbs/DBOUId-9GAg/s200/Parsons+cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5367193013013251602" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmRLq4bapeI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/Hq2xsOVUZ2U/s1600-h/Faces+Cover.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360492656551699938" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; cursor: pointer; height: 200px;" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmRLq4bapeI/AAAAAAAAAZ0/Hq2xsOVUZ2U/s200/Faces+Cover.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmRGdCZOYHI/AAAAAAAAAZs/92P0dFSLvQI/s1600-h/Christmas+Day+label+new.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360486921150554226" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; cursor: pointer; height: 200px;" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmRGdCZOYHI/AAAAAAAAAZs/92P0dFSLvQI/s200/Christmas+Day+label+new.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;">These one-of- a-kind cd's are custom programmed, full of rarities and other artfully selected tracks, with original cover art. They are available only through the Secret History. Starting today, the first four readers to post comments on any story, current or archived, in the Secret History, will win the cd of their choice. </div><br />The first four readers who respond to any comments will also receive their choice of cd.<br />And finally the next four readers to sign up as followers will get a cd.<br /><br />Take Your Choice...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Sm-VSTriZ5I/AAAAAAAAAak/RU2y3uvMuro/s1600-h/country+cover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 199px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Sm-VSTriZ5I/AAAAAAAAAak/RU2y3uvMuro/s200/country+cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363669822974617490" border="0" /></a><p style="text-align: left;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmOz7hoa5lI/AAAAAAAAAYs/5Ze7IQOzAdE/s1600-h/Halloween+cd+label.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360325816722581074" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; cursor: pointer; height: 200px;" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmOz7hoa5lI/AAAAAAAAAYs/5Ze7IQOzAdE/s200/Halloween+cd+label.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmO1udgqmsI/AAAAAAAAAZU/wgYeU5qttt8/s1600-h/Easter+label2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360327791301270210" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; cursor: pointer; height: 200px;" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmO1udgqmsI/AAAAAAAAAZU/wgYeU5qttt8/s200/Easter+label2.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmRGHzWc9wI/AAAAAAAAAZc/fIBMb2-vB8E/s1600-h/christmas+label2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360486556335142658" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; cursor: pointer; height: 200px;" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmRGHzWc9wI/AAAAAAAAAZc/fIBMb2-vB8E/s200/christmas+label2.jpg" border="0" /></a><p style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmTxzeRJqgI/AAAAAAAAAZ8/u_SgVm3YQvk/s1600-h/Dolls+Live+3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360675323078355458" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; cursor: pointer; height: 200px;" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmTxzeRJqgI/AAAAAAAAAZ8/u_SgVm3YQvk/s200/Dolls+Live+3.jpg" border="0" /></a></p><p style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmRGQ6psT6I/AAAAAAAAAZk/346waxTgLP4/s1600-h/Elvis+label.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360486712913711010" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; cursor: pointer; height: 200px;" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmRGQ6psT6I/AAAAAAAAAZk/346waxTgLP4/s200/Elvis+label.jpg" border="0" /></a></p>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-33430795061057767832009-08-04T22:08:00.003-05:002009-08-04T22:17:03.460-05:00Happy Birthday, Percy Bysshe Shelley!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Snj5IHULmPI/AAAAAAAAAbc/qAFyk76zbOM/s1600-h/Shelley.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 272px; height: 400px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Snj5IHULmPI/AAAAAAAAAbc/qAFyk76zbOM/s400/Shelley.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5366312873809910002" border="0" /></a><br /><span class="sqq"><span style="font-style: italic;">“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”</span><br /><br />Percy Shelley </span>(4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822)Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-17761806977014958752009-07-30T22:34:00.016-05:002009-08-03T04:50:25.169-05:00This Week in the Secret History: The Secrets of the Green Dragon Tavern<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnWnIfgvbuI/AAAAAAAAAbU/pZoqMiB_nqc/s1600-h/dollar-bill-all-seeing-eye.png"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 221px; height: 236px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnWnIfgvbuI/AAAAAAAAAbU/pZoqMiB_nqc/s320/dollar-bill-all-seeing-eye.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365378295421431522" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Almost since the events themselves, people of a certain cast of mind have insisted that crucial events of the American and French Revolutions were guided, planned, instigated by occult orders who practiced advanced forms of spirituality not accessible to the masses. Depending on which side of the Revolution you were on, this was either a good thing--the spiritually advanced sharing their gifts to lift humanity to new levels of freedom and dignity--or a bad thing--hidden radical elites wielding a dangerous level of influence over the ignorant masses to tear down divinely ordained hierarchy. Both sides were sure that the Order in question was the Freemasons. It used to be a given that the Freemason's were active on the side of American freedom--a disproportionate number of Masons signed the </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Declaration of Independence and the </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Constitution. Some of the most important revolutionary leaders were Masons, including George Washington, Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams and possibly Thomas Jefferson. About half of the officer corps of Washington's army were Masons. But modern materialist historians, allergic to anything that smells of mystery, had to eradicate the notion that the Mason's were helping to act out a scenario for the spiritual development of the world. To which the only answer, it seems to me, is that if they weren't, they certainly thought they were.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnJn5WYR3CI/AAAAAAAAAa0/GyVG6KqD7o0/s1600-h/green+dragon.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 105px; height: 129px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnJn5WYR3CI/AAAAAAAAAa0/GyVG6KqD7o0/s400/green+dragon.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364464341109300258" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Which brings us to the door of the Green Dragon.<br /><br />Boston's Green Dragon Tavern was one of the oldest tavern's in the city,having been in operation since the 1670's. In 1736, it was purchased by the St. Andrew's Lodge of Freemasons to serve as their headquarters.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Not coincidentally, it came to be known as the "Headquarters of the Revolution." In its cozy confines, the Freemasons played host to most of the radical revolutionary groups of the time, including the Sons of Liberty and the Committee of Correspondence.</span><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnJnt8qp9MI/AAAAAAAAAas/s054UoEfyIM/s1600-h/Green_Dragon_Tavern1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 135px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnJnt8qp9MI/AAAAAAAAAas/s054UoEfyIM/s400/Green_Dragon_Tavern1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364464145228494018" border="0" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A group of men dressed as Indians set out from the Green Dragon to dump tea from British ships into Boston Harbor. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The British advance towards Lexington and Concord was monitored from the Green Dragon. Paul Revere set out on his ride from the Green Dragon.<br /><br />Here's how the Masons see it...<br /></span></span> <p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><blockquote>"...it can easily be shown that in many ways the revolutionary ideals of equality, freedom, and democracy were espoused by the Masonic fraternity long before the American colonies began to complain about<span style="font-size:100%;"><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnJoK6fVh0I/AAAAAAAAAa8/hfUDp_ozUOM/s1600-h/dollar-bill-all-seeing-eye.png"><br /></a></span>the injustices of British taxation. The revolutionary ideals expressed in the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the writings of Thomas Paine, were ideals that had come to fruition over a century before in the early speculative Masonic lodges of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where men sat as equals, governed themselves by a Constitution, and elected their own leaders from their midst. In many ways, the self-governing Masonic lodges of the previous centuries had been learning laboratories for the concept of self-government"(<a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.themasonictrowel.com/library_of_articles.htm">The Masonic Trowel</a>)</blockquote></span></p><p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnWIyUJ9SqI/AAAAAAAAAbM/LmEuCGvfb3c/s1600-h/cornerstone.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 246px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnWIyUJ9SqI/AAAAAAAAAbM/LmEuCGvfb3c/s400/cornerstone.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5365344929067125410" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">On September 18, 1793, President George Washington, dressed in his Masonic apron, leveled the cornerstone of the United States Capitol with the traditional Masonic ceremony. Historian Stephen Bullock in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Brotherhood-Freemasonry-Transformation-Williamsburg/dp/080784750X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249130607&sr=1-1"><span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Brotherhood</span>:</a></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" ><span id="btAsinTitle" style=""><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-Brotherhood-Freemasonry-Transformation-Williamsburg/dp/080784750X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249130607&sr=1-1"> Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order</a>, </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">notes the historic and symbolic significance of that ceremony. "The Masonic brethren, dressed in their fraternal regalia, had assembled in grand procession, and were formed for that occasion as representative of Freemasonry's new found place of honor in an independent American society. At that moment, the occasion of the laying of the new Republic's foundations, Freemasons assumed the mantles of 'high priests' of that 'first temple dedicated to the sovereignty of the people,' and they '“helped form the symbolic foundations of what the Great Seal called ‘the new order for the ages’.”</span><br /></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SnWIyUJ9SqI/AAAAAAAAAbM/LmEuCGvfb3c/s1600-h/cornerstone.jpg"><br /></a><p face="trebuchet ms"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-59219722861696401842009-07-25T08:49:00.014-05:002009-07-29T12:06:36.016-05:00This Week in the Secret History: The Avenging Angel of California<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmuTLkSPUmI/AAAAAAAAAaU/K631nWRY98g/s1600-h/sunzorro.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362541608242729570" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 260px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 174px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmuTLkSPUmI/AAAAAAAAAaU/K631nWRY98g/s320/sunzorro.jpg" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Smt3WvQnFwI/AAAAAAAAAaE/WRSh9436KFU/s1600-h/joaquin2.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5362511013841671938" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 266px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 400px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Smt3WvQnFwI/AAAAAAAAAaE/WRSh9436KFU/s400/joaquin2.JPG" border="0" /></a> <meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" equiv="Content-Type"><meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId"><meta content="Microsoft Word 11" name="Generator"><meta content="Microsoft Word 11" name="Originator"><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CChris%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"><style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style>
<br /><style>Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p {mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} span.mw-formatted-date {mso-style-name:mw-formatted-date;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style>
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<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Joaquin Murrieta</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> (1829–ca. 1853), also called the </span><span style="font-size:85%;">Mexican Robin Hood</span><span style="font-size:85%;">, was a semi- legendary figure in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> during the California Gold Rush of the 1850s. He was either an infamous bandit or a Mexican patriot, depending on one's point of view. Murrietta was partly the inspiration for the fictional character of Zorro. His name has, for some political activists, symbolized resistance against Anglo-American economic and cultural domination in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">California.</st1:place></st1:state></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">
<br /></st1:place></st1:state></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">There is little historical evidence for the tale of Joaquin Murrieta. The only written source is a highly romanticized biography written a year or two after his death. The book says that Murrieta and his family went to <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> in 1850 to seek their fortune in the California Gold Rush. Instead of opportunity, he encountered racism and discrimination. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 12pt;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><span style="font-size:85%;">In the same year as their arrival, a Foreign Miners Tax was imposed in <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> and their Anglo-Saxon neighbors tried to run them off by telling them that it was illegal for Mexicans to hold a claim. Reportedly, the Murrieta brothers tried to ignore the threats as long as they could until they were finally forced off their claim. While mining for gold, he and his wife supposedly were attacked by American miners jealous of his success. They allegedly raped Murrieta's wife, flogged him, and killed his brother. </span></p><p style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 12pt;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><span style="font-size:85%;">Angry and unable to find work, Joaquin turned to a life of crime, along with other disposed foreign miners, who began to prey upon those who had forced them from their claims.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">In the novel, Murrieta sought justice through the legal system but was informed by a friend who was also a constable that there was no way to prosecute the crime because of a <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state> law that prohibited Mexicans from testifying against Anglos. To avenge this injustice, Murrieta formed a gang from his family and friends to hunt down those that attacked his family. They killed at least six, and as they were then outlaws, they turned to a life of organized crime, stealing and using the money to help Californio's (Native Californians.)</span></p>
<br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">On </span><span class="mw-formatted-date" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">May 11, 1853</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">, Governor of California John Bigler signed a legislative act creating the "California State Rangers," led by Captain Harry Love (a former Texas Ranger). Their mission was to capture Murrieta and his gang. The California Rangers stood a chance to share a $5000 reward for the capture of Joaquin Murrieta. On </span><span class="mw-formatted-date" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">July 25, 1853</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">, a group of Rangers encountered a band of armed Mexican men near <st1:placename st="on">Panoche</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Pass</st1:placetype> in <st1:placename st="on">San Benito</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">County</st1:placetype>, 50 miles from <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Monterey</st1:place></st1:city>. A confrontation took place, and two of the Mexicans were killed. One was claimed to be Murrieta. </span>
<br /><p style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Rangers severed the alleged Murrieta's head as proof of their deaths and preserved it in a jar of brandy. The jar was displayed throughout <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">California</st1:place></st1:state>; spectators could pay $1 see the remains. Seventeen people, including a Catholic priest, signed affidavits identifying the remains as Murrieta's, and Love and his Rangers accordingly received the reward money. The preserved head was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.</span><span style="font-size:85%;">
<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">A plaque (California Historical Landmark #344) near the intersection of State Routes 33 and 198 now marks the approximate site of Murrieta's headquarters in Arroyo de Cantua, where he was presumably killed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;font-size:85%;"></span> </p><p><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">For more on Joaquin Murrieta, see...</span><span class="mw-formatted-date"><o:p></o:p></span></p><a href="http://http//www.amazon.com/Robin-Hood-Dorado-Californias-Historians/dp/0826321550/ref=pd_sim_b_2"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The Robin Hood of El Dorado: The Saga of Joaquin Murrieta</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, Famous Outlaw of California's Age of Gold by Walter Noble Burns</span>
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<br /><a href="http://http//www.amazon.com/Searching-Joaquin-Murieta-History-California/dp/1893554562/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248884449&sr=1-1"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Searching for Joaquin: Myth, Murieta and History in California</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> by Bruce Thornton </span>
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<br /><a href="http://http//www.amazon.com/Life-Adventures-Joaquin-Murieta-Celebrated/dp/0806114290/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248884449&sr=1-2"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:100%;"> by John Rollin Ridge
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<br />Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-80674508282360407342009-07-19T18:39:00.006-05:002009-07-20T15:14:33.374-05:00When Cowboys Get the Blues<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmOwT5F1vmI/AAAAAAAAAYk/Uc19WirzgQE/s1600-h/earleTownes.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5360321837290339938" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 188px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/SmOwT5F1vmI/AAAAAAAAAYk/Uc19WirzgQE/s320/earleTownes.jpg" border="0" /></a>
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<br /><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; COLOR: rgb(51,51,255); FONT-STYLE: italic; TEXT-ALIGN: left">Townes</p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; COLOR: rgb(51,51,255); FONT-STYLE: italic; TEXT-ALIGN: left">
<br /></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; COLOR: rgb(51,51,255); TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Steve Earle</p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; COLOR: rgb(51,51,255); TEXT-ALIGN: justify">
<br /></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; COLOR: rgb(51,51,255); TEXT-ALIGN: justify">New West Records</p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">
<br /></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: right"><o:p></o:p></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">"My wife and I were listening to the folk music show on our local public radio station the other Sunday night when we could no longer take one more brawny chanty about plying the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:place st="on">Great Lakes</st1:place> on the grand old steamships. So I plugged in my iPod and started to play one of my British folk music playlists. It did the job clearing the air of all the heave-away-haul-away with its astringent northerness. The last song was a majestic and mournful pipe duet called "Kintail" from the great Scottish pipe band the Tannahill Weavers, which sounded like watching your true love pass over the horizon on a ship bound for Amerikay, or Frodo leaving Middle Earth at the Grey Havens. About halfway into it, my wife said, "They're always so sad." She meant all of it, all the songs we had just been listening to, all "folk" music. She was right. The folks that folk music comes from, way back when, were by and large people who didn't have much buffer, if any, between them and life. And that also means, of course, between them and death. Folk music is sad all over the world.
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<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><o:p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span></o:p></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">As country music grew from its poor mountain roots, moved into the city and started getting a steady paycheck, and a dry summer didn't necessarily mean immediate destitution, country singers, if they were after greatness, still had to invite the ghost to the party. It's not an accident that the greatest country singer of all, Hank Williams, is among the most notably mournful.
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<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><o:p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span></o:p></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">The ghost became the blues. The blues were the old hard times, internalized."</span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">
<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></span></p><p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Read the full review at the </span><a href="http://www.thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2009/july2009/earlefeaturejuly09.php"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">bluegrassspecial.com.</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">
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<br />Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9002994756656882526.post-31009601405178790432009-07-16T04:47:00.011-05:002009-07-20T10:51:41.467-05:00This Week in the Secret History: Eisenhower Proposes Interstate Highway System<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:smarttagtype name="address" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="City" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="State" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="Street" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="place" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="PlaceType" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="PlaceName" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><o:smarttagtype name="country-region" namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"></o:smarttagtype><object id="ieooui" classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D"></object><style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style><br /><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Rockwell; panose-1:2 6 6 3 2 2 5 2 4 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:7 0 0 0 3 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:.5in; margin-bottom:0in; margin-left:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Rockwell; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Sl73iUhkzYI/AAAAAAAAAYM/5neXIpyZlNA/s1600-h/interstate2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358992775614614914" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 252px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 355px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Sl73iUhkzYI/AAAAAAAAAYM/5neXIpyZlNA/s400/interstate2.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:';"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';">There were rivers and paths in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> that once seemed to be the gate to all good adventure. The <st1:place st="on">Mississippi River</st1:place>, Route 66, all the blacktop two-lanes that led into the groves of <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">America</st1:country-region></st1:place>.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';">After the dolorous stroke in <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Dealey</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Plaza</st1:placetype></st1:place>, such arteries of possibility dried up. The men to whom fear and money were everything laid over the land a vast grid of concrete in the name of national security, whose purpose was to turn all the places into no-place, so that people no longer knew where they were or where they came from.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';">These concrete sluices drained the life off half the nation, created an unthinkable continent of ghost towns, and sure enough the ghosts come forth to disturb our sleep. Now the withered spirits blow up and down old Route 66, Timothy McVeigh and the patriots, they own that road.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';">The act of <st1:placename st="on">Dealey</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Plaza</st1:placetype> led to this <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> where the dry souls are stacked like kindling.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Sl73ufJGDVI/AAAAAAAAAYU/xSgdgWs-_Ak/s1600-h/Interstate.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358992984623156562" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 253px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_V4MjFcw9BoI/Sl73ufJGDVI/AAAAAAAAAYU/xSgdgWs-_Ak/s400/Interstate.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:';">The land was given over to the mundane light and the dry electric fever. “Save us from... the fever that strikes at mid-day” the psalmist prays. This was the same mundane light that fell on <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Dealey</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Plaza</st1:placetype></st1:place> at noon that Friday.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';">“It will be cool under the underpass”, Jackie thinks as the black car rolls with dreadful slowness down <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Elm Street</st1:address></st1:street>. In fact it never got cool again.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';">That mundane light of <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Dallas</st1:city></st1:place> which to the spiritual eye is dreadful darkness, the dunnest smoke of hell.<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>The light on <st1:placename st="on">Dealey</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Plaza</st1:placetype> is the light of Sunbelt gangsters, is the light on the parking lot of an <st1:state st="on">Arizona</st1:state> savings & loan, is the light of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Las Vegas</st1:place></st1:city> that burns off the top of people’s heads to desiccate the moist brain inside, is the light that evaporates the pools of mystery,<span style="font-size:+0;"> </span>the light that shone all over America and burned out every shadow, that makes every photograph from the 50’s black and white, the light that says you’re seeing all there is to see, which is the great lie, the lie of Hitler’s open hand.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:';"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Copyright 2009 Christopher Hill<br /><span style="font-family:';"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Christopher Hillhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17974384170959815496noreply@blogger.com1