June The 25th In History
This is the day the 7th Cavalry got their ass handed to them on the Little Big Horn in 1876. Mainly, from what we know, their Commanders arrogance. But, history is a funny thing, if Cheyenne scouts had spotted the 7th trying to slip out instead of going directly on into the Indain encampment, there could have been a slaughter just the same.
As well, a little over a hundred years before it was a British General named Montgomery that was beaten by the Cheerokee on The Little Tennesse near the present Tesintee Farms. He marched head long into an ambush and had his Supply Train vulnerable in his rear.
It was this time of year a little over a hundred years before that that King Phillips War was being fought in 1675 in New England.
I learned this morning on Writers Almanac that it is George Orwell's birthday. I don't know much about the man. Garrison Keillor said: "At a time when most British intellectuals still supported Communism, Orwell became one of the first leftist writers to speak out against Stalin." I had heard he had gone to the Spanish Revelution. Being the writing of his nature, I wouldn't think him a leftist, I always tended to think of him as a Libertarian. He warned us with Animal Farm (which we read in Middle School)and 1984, which, I remember the movie well. 1984 became something of a realisation to me. A perpetual struggle was needed to keep the people in line and in a fervor. Governments and people will create problems to do just that.I didn't kow no one would publish Animal Farm until after the Second World War.
I've always thought of Orwell as a freedom fighter. Now I want to read his books again.
Keillor also reminded that, and I knew, it was the day the Koren War began in 1950. As he said: "The Korean War was the first war the United States had concluded without success. There were no celebrations when it ended. About 37,000 Americans and more than a million Koreans lost their lives."
How do I feel today? Like A Vibration...
The Appalachianist
As well, a little over a hundred years before it was a British General named Montgomery that was beaten by the Cheerokee on The Little Tennesse near the present Tesintee Farms. He marched head long into an ambush and had his Supply Train vulnerable in his rear.
It was this time of year a little over a hundred years before that that King Phillips War was being fought in 1675 in New England.
I learned this morning on Writers Almanac that it is George Orwell's birthday. I don't know much about the man. Garrison Keillor said: "At a time when most British intellectuals still supported Communism, Orwell became one of the first leftist writers to speak out against Stalin." I had heard he had gone to the Spanish Revelution. Being the writing of his nature, I wouldn't think him a leftist, I always tended to think of him as a Libertarian. He warned us with Animal Farm (which we read in Middle School)and 1984, which, I remember the movie well. 1984 became something of a realisation to me. A perpetual struggle was needed to keep the people in line and in a fervor. Governments and people will create problems to do just that.I didn't kow no one would publish Animal Farm until after the Second World War.
I've always thought of Orwell as a freedom fighter. Now I want to read his books again.
Keillor also reminded that, and I knew, it was the day the Koren War began in 1950. As he said: "The Korean War was the first war the United States had concluded without success. There were no celebrations when it ended. About 37,000 Americans and more than a million Koreans lost their lives."
How do I feel today? Like A Vibration...
The Appalachianist
posted by Hill Billy Rave | Wednesday, June 25, 2008
7 Comments:
I Goggled Montgomery and came up with an excerpt from Indian Wars in the Appalachians . . . Chapter 8 entitled "Under the Smoke" . . . possibly a reference to the Smokies . . . one thing that struck me about the article was how the tribes had met and married many of the white settlers and it struck me about something I watched on the History Channel that the Cree wars involving Andrew Jackson were civil wars among the Cree as many of the tribe were intermarried with or related to white settlers . . . I have mentioned before that my grandchildren blond and blue eyed as they are qualify for the Choctaw tribal roll. These Indians along with the Cherokee were sent west by Jackson to Okalahoma and a descendent returned East in recent times. What struck me was the movement of people up and down the mountains and trails and rivers of the Appalachians . . . I have taken to calling the Broad River that comes to Columbia as the "English" Broad as the "French" Broad was called to distinguish between the two rivers. It was all part of a long ago struggle to control a continent whose mountains have lasted all through the human struggles that swarmed over its hillsides . . . . Orwell was speaking to human nature wasn't he . . . . and Hussein killed his million or more too. Bill
I listen to Prairie Home Companion on radio occasionally and he can be funny. Also, he has some excellent musicians on with him. But I cannot take his politics.
I STAND TO BE CORRECTED on the Little Tennessee fight, it was today, June 27th. I posted about that before.
Bill, you know what was ironic? A couple of weeks ago I went down to the river and a French lady had just kayaked down it and wanted to borrow my cell phone to call for someone to come and get her. I talked with a French woman and the French Broad. Irony. Nice lady though. She had met her husband while vacationing in Florida.
I laughed and laughed . . . a pun for sure . . . a French Broad . . . the river or the woman . . . my luck I would not have gotten my cell phone back . . . she would have dropped it in the water . . . I would have been asked to drive her back to town sixty miles away with gasoline at four dollars a gallon or she would have wanted to borrow twenty dollars . . . my canoe would have sunk . . . didn't mean to write such a serious post . . . but the movement of peoples on and through the mountains is interesting . . . even movement on the French broad. Bill
Gunner, I missed you this morning with my getting ready for work and commenting.
I've never paid attention to Prarie Home Companion. I catch Writers Almanac. Before I would turn it down most of the time, use the time to say my morning prayers, But, I started to pay closer attention and things would inspire me. I've enjoyed it more over the last year. As for Garrison Keillor, I don't know that much about the man. Being on NPR is a good way to get penned to the left, but, I've not heard anything to say either way to me. I did get disowned a couple of posts back over his opion of "Rolling Thunder", the big Biker ride on Washington DC.
It can be argued, but from what I know at the close of the Korean war it wasn't...A war without success.
On Writers Almanac he seems so drab.
I did like something Keillor qouted from a British writer, James Patrick Hogan:
"I like playing with ideas that invite people to think. I also like old-fashioned, upbeat themes and happy endings. Although life doesn't always seem that way, I believe that in the long term things get better. I don't think we're about to overpopulate the planet, blow ourselves into oblivion, poison ourselves into extinction, degenerate into Nazis, or disappear under our own garbage. For ten thousand years the power of human reason and creativity has continued to build better tomorrows, and nothing says it has to change now."
Well, the Nazi part scares me...
Gotcha Bill.
Work time
I think Orwell considered himself a socialist... his problem with Communism as it was being protrayed in the Soviet Union, along with it's counterpart on the right, facism in Germany and Spain, is that they're both totalaterian systems.
He has a classic essay titled "Politics and the English Language" that should be required reading.
I often listen to Prairie Home Companion. Sure, Kellior's politics maybe a bit left, but as a good comic, he can be an equal opportunity offender.
Sage, I can see Keillor being an equal opportunity offender. Sometimes that does everyone some good. Makes us take honest looks at ourselves. And, everyone is titled to an opinion, it's better than just adopting on. That's a cop out.
I can't agree with Socialism, but, Orwell was honest. Socialism, with more governmental power is an opportunity for tyranny. Maybe he saw that?
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