Skip to main content

Meandering Bob Marshall Chinese Wall

Speaking of the Bob, here's a view of the meandering Bob Marshall wilderness. Meander where you may.....

Comments

  1. The Bob Marshall Wilderness (or the Bob as it's called around here) was named for this man:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Marshall_(wilderness_activist)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for dropping a comment in Vilnius Daze. Will try to do more with it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautiful site. It seems like another world from mine.

    Someone posted a link to the State of Jones earlier. I watched an interesting discussion yesterday on BookTV with the authors. Got to see some of the controversy surrounding the writing of history to support an upcoming (maybe) movie, using a historian from Harvard and a journalist. Funny mix.

    Still, sounds like a fascinating story -- union soldiers and sympathizers living deep in the heart of the South. They did give a sense of how, after the "20 negro rule," the Civil War in the South became a rich man's war in defense of their livelihood, sending poor men to die like the "hero" of the book Newton Knight (much like Roosevelt's father paid someone to fight for him).

    They argue that the South in the end won the war because they were able to maintain their "way of life" and they controlled the history of why the war was fought.

    Here's the book: http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780385525930.html

    And a link to the video:

    http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&products_id=288250-1

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sounds like a very interesting book, av. Blight also came to the conclusion that the South won the peace because it was better able to shape the national consensus of the events. Reunion won out over Race. One can't help reading of that period with a sense of sadness at how the Republicans let their gains slip away. It must have been a very bitter pill for the Radicals to swallow, not to mention the Freedmen, who found themselves once again in a state of indentured servitude.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have mixed feelings about reading it since it so clearly tracks a movie script and apparently counters at least some of the scholarly work originally written about this county (although they do a pretty good job countering that in the BookTV discussion).

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/movies/30jones.html

    Still, interesting period of history.

    And yes, that's the lasting impression I have of Blight -- about how the South controlled the nation's memory of why the war was fought.

    I also think that's why historians have gone out of their way to emphasize the other side of the story -- to counter that "winning of the peace." But that's a discussion we've had before.....

    ReplyDelete
  6. This is a great introduction to Obama's mother.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11dove.html

    ReplyDelete
  7. I see this is the anniversary of Cortez' victory over Montezuma. I well remember the great discussion we had on "The Conquest."

    ReplyDelete
  8. And in a total meander, NY -- and Rick -- I finished season 2 of slings and arrows, which focused on Macbeth. If you are at all interested in theater and Shakespeare, what a great series.

    In each series they try to integrate some of the play into the day-to-day story. The argument on stage about whether or not to bring an actual bloody ghost to the table while the director argues with a real (invisible) ghost is brilliant.

    I have found season 3 on youtube as well so it's on to Lear in 10 minute increments. It's worth it. I may even buy the series again if I can't find the first one I bought...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!