Slavery Be Damned...
There's an Academy Award coming for the blue guy. They're going to put him on the big screen with Hollywood starlets. Actually, the video is a tad long, eight minutes and fourteen seconds. If you've got a slow connection, let it run and come back to it. Unless your into dramatic Classical Music, I'd turn the volume down. That's up to you.
There's a difference in belonging and being owned. There's a difference in persuasion and manipulation. Everyone's life is valuable, but, everyone determines they're self worth. You own your Self.
The Appalachianist
posted by Hill Billy Rave | Sunday, January 25, 2009
23 Comments:
Well, I'll comment on this later. I wanted to revisit a comment you made in an earlier posting. I apologize I didn't get to it earlier. When I visited the Dillard House in Dillard, Georgia, just west of Claton, Georgia, you had mentioned that up the road a piece towrd the North Carolina border lived your grandfather, Harley Thomas, and that he had been mentioned in Foxfire. I bought the book at the Dillard House for $16.95. Your comment was true, but it was an understatement. Harley Thomas had a remarkable reputation as a woodworker. He is mentioned in Foxfire 4, and a number of other writings and Foxfire books. He seens to have had expertise in a number of wookwoking skills . . . making things as diverse as building log cabins with their intricate notchings and fiddles and spinning wheels . . . that last interested me because my sister visiting my great grand mother's house after it had burned. She found a pair of carding combs in the remaining pump house. This means that as late as the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century someone in my family was still preparing cotton and spinning homespun . . . probably in the one color they knew best . . . confederate grey . . . on a spinning wheel of their own . . . possibly one made by a wood worker as skilled as Harley Thomas. Reading his story made me think again what I have often thought about mountain folk . . . that their intelligence and skills are under employed. They are smart folk. If you do not accept this, go to a tourist destination and try to do the puzzels that these folk figure out during the winter months . . . the puzzels are difficult to do as are many of the Harley Thomas' skills written about in Foxfire. As a P.S., I hope I got your grandfather's name right if not I apologize. Bill
I had a hard time finding all the search engine sites to submit my blog url. I have made a free list. Go to step #4.
Here is a great list of url submission sites.
Yes, Bill, Harley Thomas was my Great Grandfather. He was in North Carolina, in the Otto community. And, like I said, his old shop is still standing.
To my knowledge he made fiddles, spinning wheels, the kitchen table I grew up with, cabins, church pews, an alter (dedicated to my Great Grandmother, Fanny) caskets for the CCC and about anything else, I suppose.
Someone, most likely one of my relativesthat descend from him as well here in Brevard, did a Google Search for his work, and I turned up in their search.
A few of his daughters came to Transylvania County just prior to WWII, one being my Grandmother.
I'll come back and watch the video, I'm going to pull off my foxfire books and look up the Appalachianists great-grandddaddy!
I agree with the video 110%. If we followed Cicero's, St. Augustine of Hippo's and St. Thomas Aquinas's Just War Theory there would be a lot less armed conflict. If we became personally responsible for ourselves and our government we would have a lot more liberty and a lot less government.
I recently ran across this site (http://www.bornagainamerican.org/).
I haven't investigated it yet to see if it follows the model of "all true and lasting change happens from the grass roots up and not from the top down." Grass roots change is the only kind of change that I "can believe in!" May all others be relegated to the ash heap of history.
Sic semper tyrannis
WNCWU, you challenge me, I'm not familiar with the "Just War" theory. I'll check it out.
I checked the site, I agree with it, but a bit hoaky.
I've got one for you, www.faitax.org
Well, if you cnnot protect your very own property, you cannot protect your liberty or life or your very own pursuit of happiness, and, of course, it all must balance out with all the others doing the same until someone with a gun comes along and gains the political power to take it all away from you. and all of us working together need to try and keep that from happening. It is interesting, to my mind, that the person who made Virginia's state motto so well known, Sic Semper Tyrannis, was a tyrrant himself, and there is the difficulty of being human . . . knowing the limits of behavior and policy and leaving others alone and trying to get it all to work out in an acceptable way in spite of the fact that often we are just stressed, crazy as heck, and just plain stupid at least once a month and sometimes twice a month in my case. Bill
"knowing the limits of behavior and policy and leaving others alone"...Very true, Bill, it doesn't matter of it's a wife beater, politician or a dictator, much less ourselves.
As for WNCWU's link, it is a pledge, and that our representatives in DC answer to us. This last Saturday I was at a Gun Show in Asheville. Our Representative, Heath Shuler was there. Nice enough feller. Well, Twister went and got his autograph for his Mother. Yeah, Heath is "known", and it's Twister's Mother, But, as I told him...I be damned if I'm going to get someones autograph that works for me!
Your fallacy, AI, is in believing that they "work for us". I would step up to the line enough to say that they are elected by us, but that's it.
If they worked for us, as they claim, there would be a damn sight more equity in life and we would not feel constantly under attack by smiling dudes trying to assure us that they've got our back.
With that said, was Heath Schuler an NFL quarter back or something? The name rings a bell.
Ed, yes, Heath Shuler was a Quarterback, I believe. Redskins. He took a bad hit in the first or second season and that was the end of that.
My fallacy? Don't blame me, I voted Libertarian...LOL
Okay, I finally got around to watching the video--it's good but as a follower of Jesus, I think it puts way too much emphasis on the self... are we really free? or do we belong to him? and the world (the materials for our labor) also belong to him and the basics of ethics, in my opinion, comes not from our rights as an individual, but in our relationship to our Creator. Sorry if that's a bit sermon like.
A second thing, Appalachianist, do you have one of your great-granddaddy's violins? It was fun seeing him in Foxfire!
Hmm...Good point, Sage. Hard not to disagree, but, did he not give us our inalienable rights? Did he not give us our free will? Do we not have a choice? Something to ponder, I reckon. And, not not a sermon to me at all. I see it as debate and debate is healthy. I don't disagree with your point, it's a matter of which perspective we look at it.
Now for my Great Grand Daddy, no, I don't have one. I don't have anything of his. I once had the table, but, I had no room for it and my Dad now has it. I believe my Brother may have one.
There's a little Methodist Church on Mulberry Creek Road in Macon County, he (and others)built that Church. The pews, made of Chestnut, the alter (I believe to be Chestnut) he made all of those.
My Brother and my Cousin, formerly known as Jello Boy, inherited his skill, but, I didn't.
I keep geting "Under Construction" at: www.faitax.org
Ooops, I didn't hit the "R", Fairtax.org.
Sorry about that...
Did I not read something about your great grandfather building an altar or communinon table and dedicating it to your great grandmother in that church? It seems I did? By the way, free will is argued in church and in the secular at schools like Harvard. I just try to remember . . . well, I just try to remain humble . . . I just don't know a whole lot, and I have even less say so in the matter of others, but I am a pretty conservative go to church person . . . but I can't stand Amazin Grace 'cause it makes me cry . . . all of us have been buried with it, and in that way I am kinda southern . . . maybe southern Appalachian as in the Cherokee Babtist Church in Cherokee, NOrth Carolina, . . . they sing it in Cherokee . . . at least one verse . . . perhaps these comments do not make much sense to you . . . I am a back bencher, but I love God, and I love His Church, or I should say Churches and nobody loved them more than the generations like Harley Thomas. I think they understood a lot of things about a lot of things better than many . . . just a thought. Bill
The Fair tax seems interesting and theoretically might work. I'll betcha the Feds (most elected and unelected) don't want it 'cause of the possibilities, not the least of which, for massive tax disobedience through transactions such as barter. Of course barter is going on and will continue to go on no matter what the tax nazi does. Maybe the joe and jane six packs would see it as "fairer" and participate. The way I see it, for the feds, its not just about the money, its about the control. FTFG
FTFG? Are two of the words "the" and "Government?
Hey You'll, my lap top is baout to go in the garage, so, I'll not be around.
FTFG has got me puzzled too. That's only a tax on new goods.
Ooops! FTFG had my mind in the gutter. Kinda like FTW or FTN. Sorry.
Yeah. Two of the words are "the" and "Government."
Sic semper tyrannis!
Guess that explains that...
Again, unable to make it to the Huddle House in Brevard, I settled for the local Lizzard's Thicket in Columbia home to a distant cousin of the Geico geko, and eating breakfast with a group somewhat older than I am by a few years, observed that it was snowing . . . WOW! . . . we got as excited as children . . . and then it stopped and the sun came out and left some of the coldest weather of the year. I hope none of you are suffering in this weather, but it is COLD! Bill
I like Lizard Thicket. Plenty of ice in the forks of the French Broad this morning.
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