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| Battle of Antietam Thure de Thulstrup (PD) |
Had a great birthday dinner at Julep Southern Kitchen & Bar, shrimp and grits with a side of corn bread. Chased down by two, count 'em, two, of these -
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Anyhoo, back to Chez Nuke et Tuttle for some cake then an early night. For Tuesday was a travel day (haven't done it yet, I need to look into the future while writing in the present).
We're off to spend the night in Hagerstown, then spend some time on the Antietam battlefield on Wednesday (today as you're reading this).
The Nuke asked me if there was any little trips I'd like for my birthday, Sharpsburg is not that far away, so a battlefield tour it is.
Yes, yes, an AAR (After Action Report) will follow. Don't know when, but sometime in the next fortnight for sure.
Keep your powder dry, see you soonest.
Ciao!
He who changed water into wine might not disapprove if said with the right spirit.
ReplyDeleteI'd like a 6 pack myself for "Testing Purposes". Where is it sold?
I need to track that down myself.
DeleteBut He who shingled your house would probably wonder why you're not drinking Modelo...
DeleteI'll see myself out.
When I'm eating Mexican food, believe me, I drink Modelo, usually Modelo Negra. In mass quantities.
Delete(Guy who shingled my house was Italian.)
That's the Spanish pronunciation.....Heh-soos.........:) Looking forward to that AAR Sarge, pics?
ReplyDeleteThere will be pics.
DeleteThe local Safeway every now and then has tastings to push a product. Nothing fancy, a rep from the vintner or distiller with a card table and a folding chair. One day the offering was 3 different flavored vodkas, one of which was peanut butter. The other two were fruity somethings. The PB was surprisingly tasty.
ReplyDeleteEnjoy your tour of Sharpsburg. Hallowed ground, that. As Nylon12 said, looking forward to your AAR. Your skill as a wordsmith should make it well worth reading.
Peanut butter. Whoda thunk it?
DeleteHallowed ground, aye.
Good vodka and Everclear are often used to make homemade flavoured liquours. Just plonk whatever into a mason jar full of said alcohol along with some sugar and leave it be for a while. Maybe give it an occasional shake or jiggle. Pour through cheese cloth or even a piece of sheeting into another jar to remove the chunky stuff, and, poof, et voila! you have homemade cordials.
DeleteWhooo.
But... peanut butter? Bleh.
I wouldn't mix PB with hard alcohol. OTOH, up in the Rockies four of us killed a tub of Everclear with a crap ton of fruit therein. Good stuff!
DeleteIn Korea we would take soju, put fruit or ginseng in it, let it soak for a month or so and, damn that taste good, goes down smooth.
Back in my college day we set a few pounds of potatoes 'fomenting' in our apartment closet, then got a small distillation apparatus from the chem dept (where we worked as work-study students [discretely actually checked out to us in case anybody asked]). On the kitchen stove, we distilled out about a pint of oily liquid with the distinct taste of rubber stoppers. We christened it "Autumn Leaves". You take a couple sips, turn colors, and fall.
DeleteHahaha!
DeleteWalking a battlefield of the war that settled states rights.
ReplyDeleteNot sure if that's really been settled yet. The Feds love to overreach.
DeleteTook away states rights and set the creature as greater than the creators. And changed the language. We went from "The United State are..." to "the United States is..." no longer an association of Free and Independent States.
DeleteEven Madison and Jefferson had words about a runaway federal government:
"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." --James Madison
"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect."
--Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on National Bank, 1791. ME 3:148
The post-war plans by Lincoln favored a friendly, hand to a brother approach. But that was ruined by yet another democrat with a gun. We don't have a gun problem, we have a Democrat problem...
DeleteJoe, all that took place before the Civil War. The War Between the States had more to do with the perceived potential loss of political power in DC on the South's part than anything else.
DeleteBeans - "let 'em up easy," was Lincoln's idea. But when has a vindictive political class ever been able to do that?
DeleteSarge, It was trending that way, but "Honest" Abe solidified it.
DeleteI still think it was the right move.
DeleteThat sounds like a delicious dinner (and delicious beer)! Enjoy your day of walking around. In what is probably a huge gap in my history, I cannot think of a Civil War Battlefield I have been to. I drove by Bull Run once, but that was because I was in town for other business.
ReplyDeleteWe're back at home base, pretty exhausted from walking the field. Need to get back there and spend a couple of full days on the ground. The two-and-a-half year old held up very well and found the whole thing fascinating. The three-month-old? Well, let's just say he protested quite a bit. Seems his idea of a good time doesn't involve being hauled all over in a carrier rig and/or a car seat. But all that being said, he did well enough.
DeleteI hurt my tongue trying to imagine what that brew would taste like. Sez the double IPA guzzler.
ReplyDeleteSurprisingly good actually.
DeleteI have/had a couple of Antietam related artifacts, and will try to write one up. Or maybe both.
ReplyDeleteHistory is a lot more significant and memorable when you have walked the ground, or have something tangible that is related to a place or event.
This is a nice time to visit Antietam, weatherwise, but for the full effect, you need to be there in September, near harvest time with fields full of crops. A welcome bounty for the farmers who planted, them but a damned nuisance for troops struggling to cross cornfields. Of course, when entire fields are pretty much cut down by rifle fire, the results on crops and men was devastating.
I would recommend a book, Dr. Jay Luvaas, "The U. S. Army War College Guide To The Battle Of Antietam The Maryland Campaign Of 1862" about 300 pages, available for way under $10 from the usual sources. Luvaas was a passionate Civil War scholar, deeply into first person accounts using the 128 Volume "Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies in the War of the Rebellion." He took his students on battlefield trips which were amazing. I vividly recall his taking us to the spot where "Jackson stod like a stone wall," and the route of Upton's attack at the Wilderness. Spending most of his career at a small college in western Pennsylvania, he was one of the first civilians invited to be history professors at USMA West Point. I later went on a War College "staff ride" at Antietam with a Colonel who relied heavily on Luvaas' book. There is much to be learned about the profession of arms from the study of history.
John Blackshoe.
I'll have to track that book down!
DeleteWalking the ground also gives one an idea of the how and why of human behavior on a battlefield.
One wonders how they endured it.