I Read Books and Tour Old Forts...

I think I'll write book reports as a 2023 New Years thing. A good idea that will help me keep up with what I read and it will probably be fun until I read something totally trashy, escapist and embarrassing that I don't want you to know about. The first book is one I picked up in the museum store at Fort Pickens while on our recent travel trailer trip.  It's called The War Lovers. 

I like to tour the old forts that ring the coasts of the USA and I've also seen one in Puerto Rico. It's generally either free or I they waive all fees if you have a parks pass. Most of the forts began construction after the War of 1812 when we decided we did not want the British over here again. I think there are ruins in various states of repair over looking all the coasts. I am pretty sure that none of them ever fired a shot at another country's navy. Some of them, including Fort Pickens did their best work during the Civil War when Americans decided to shoot each other with the guns entrenched there. Here's a photo of me on the ramparts of Fort Pickens with a gun that was used by Union troops to great effect firing 300 pound shells that destroyed two Confederate forts across Pensacola Bay. From the looks of the emplacements I'd saw there were at least 9 of these in addition to smaller guns for close range targets. 

Leading up to the Spanish American War, which is the topic of The War Lovers, ships had become more armored so these guns capable of a 300 pound round were replaced with guns that fired shells in excess of 1000 pounds. If you check the Fort Travis link the industrial military complex pretty much began gun replacement projects, money making projects, at these forts as technology advanced up until the late 1940s when man tried his best to make war a push button affair. 

So all this brings us around to the book about loving war. Seems like in the 1890s you had a generation that held in great esteem the exploits of their forbearers during the Civil War and the genocide that subdued the Indigenous people of America. Only thing was there was no war for them. Men like Roosevelt and Lodge or the newspaper man Hearst who was busy setting the pattern for the modern news network by making up stories that divided the opinions of the everyday person. The upper class Angelo Saxons felt a certain anxiety and neurosis by not being able to charge into battle which was a nobel thing man should aspire to so they thought. Anyone who opposed this was called a mugwump which though they meant in in a bad way actually comes from an Indian word that means independent thinker. My dad was a mugwump because after he landed on Omaha Beach in WW2 he told me to never join the army. 

A little background to all this is that a few years before the Spanish American War these people tried to drum up a war with England over a border dispute between Venezuela and British Guyana. When they failed it was Spain's time in the barrel and they were more successful. 

More successful if you were Hearst and Roosevelt I guess. The triggering event of the war, the explosion of the battleship Maine has pretty much been proven an accident attributed to poor powder storage. It's estimated that combined there there were as many as 60,000 dead from the war of which 90% of these were from yellow fever. I did not look up causalities for the guerilla war in the Philippines that followed. 

Though Roosevelt might be a personality that would be what we would call toxic masculinity these days he was a fair president so like many men, myself included there's good with the bad. I really can't like Hearst at all. 

Here's Cathy with a gun at Castillo de San Marcos in St Augustine, Fl. It's the oldest masonry fort in the USA and construction was begun by the Spanish in 1672. It has actually been in a battle of the Spanish vs. the British undergoing a couple of sieges and much cannon bombardment that had little effect on the walls. 

 Read a book. Tour a historic site. See if what you believe adds up with history. Real history not something written by William Randolph Hearst. 

 

              

     

 

This Year...

 Now that I think about it 2019 was not all that good a year. There were things that happened including my mom passing away at 95 years old. Then 2020 came along and Cathy's dad declined, passed away at 88 years old all while the pandemic was hitting. 2021 has been off to a bumpy start with numerous people I know contracting covid, including myself and then this past week Texas was hit with a severe winter storm. It was not the worst thing that could have happened if you like camping but it knocked out power and water to many homes. Although some things made us sad there were also triumphs, births and other milestones and if you consider that in some parts of the world today a child starved to death and a village was strafed by a helicopter gunship things have not been all that bad this year. 

In fact all this brings me to a song by the band The Mountain Goats. If you don't know them and the central member is John Darnielle. I have seen the band twice. Once was in Chicago at the Riviera Theater and once at the old famous but now demolished for a parking lot Houston venue (I have also been to the famous FitzGerald's venue in Chicago) Fitzgerald's. If you are a fan of emotional, driving low-fi boom box (at least the early stuff was recorded this way) mostly acoustic songs about relationships and life this is the band for you. 

I have a zip drive plugged into my car. On that drive there are 19 Mountain Goats albums. They were downloaded from the old emusic service we used to subscribe to by Cathy. He's one of her guys and with 19 cds playing at random among the other 5000 songs stored on this medium you do not hardly make a trip anywhere without hearing some Mountain Goats. He's become one of my guys also. 

The song that has stuck in my head the past several years is called "This Year." The main line is "I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me." I picked this cut because it showcases the fine backing musicians that I have seen at each show. It's also the first I have seen of Darnielle with long hair. 

That's the way I feel, the way we all should feel. If you like the Mountain Goats I suggest the albums "All Hail West Texas" and Tallahassee." They just might get you through this year. 

 

 

All foot loose and fancy free this morning...

Man, I don't have to work, no school, what do I do now? Good thing my wife never reads this, she would want to make suggestions.

Really, I have things. I'll study for the board exam a little. I have been looking forward to some morning study time since I tend to fall asleep over a book in the evenings after about 30 minutes.

I have an eye doctor appointment. Got to catch up on some stuff like that. Got friends coming this weekend. Take CPR recertification next week. Got a lot of stuff like that to catch up on. Need to get the yard mowed this week. The pay checks start coming I need to put tires on my car, who would have thunk that.

This blog has reached the milestone of 515 posts today. I guess that's a lot, but somehow it seems there should be more. I have a blog goal for the summer and that is to work on the tags. The way they work if you have not clicked on the tags at the end of each posts is that you will be able o access each post that contains that word. This really has been my idea along for long time readers to have catch phrases that they would recognize from time to time. This project may take a while but hopefully in the near when you click on say, big screen or swimming in my belly ( I have been prompted that it is actually swimming in our bellies, I'll have to research which it is) each post where that occurs will be displayed.

This may take awhile. It's going to be strange looking over old blog posts. You know they say that sometimes when Bob Dylan walks into some place and hears himself on the muzak he will say, "who is that singing?" He does not always recognize himself, he has had so many songs, but he knows it's something he likes. May be I will recognize what I wrote and still like it, or at least know what I felt when I did write it.

Whoops here I am all crying and bawling again. Kind of like the school thing ending is a chapter of life closing and now we start chronicling something new. I get sad so easy. I am so going emo.

And everybody that buys that just won a big screen.