Civil War

Do You Believe In Ghosts?

Back in 1997 our Historical Society received a gift. It was probably the most Historical piece of property in the whole area. It was the old Cheney Mansion that no one had lived in for a few years and the owner, who lived away from here, put it up for auction.

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You've all either heard it or said it, you ask someone if they've seen the movie "Titanic" and what do they say? "What for I already know the ship sinks!" In my experience, mainly men give me that response, and ironically most of these men enjoy watching war movies. My fiance for instance, pearl harbor, WWII, Civil War, Vietnam the list goes on, he likes war movies. So what's the difference? We all know how the civil war ended, we know what happened at pearl harbor-what makes these historical fiction movies more valid than the "Titanic"?

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No, I haven’t seen the movie An Inconvenient Truth. The one about global warming starring Al Gore, in case you’ve been spending all your time lately reading “Flavor Flav and Hoopz Don’t Last". Why haven’t I seen it? ‘Cause I’m a marine biologist, working in an oceanography laboratory. Check the sidebar. We do this for a living. Greenhouse Gas Effects R Us. We could have told you all this years ago. Lord knows we tried. Hell, I even tried here, on this blog. That entry got fewer hits in nine months than Flavor Flav gets in a day. The NOAA guys have tried. They got muzzled for it. Remember?

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Some time ago, back when the Iraq war was new, I entered the following triptych into my laptop’s “personal journal" folder:

Desert Storm
Desert Shield
Desert Vietnam

The reactions of the few people who saw or heard about this were unanimous. “No way this is Vietnam! We are Right and we’re going to go in and sock it to those A-Rabs NOW. Bang! Done! What’s the matter with you? Aren’t you a patriot?"

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My sister-and-law and I are both fans of Ambrose Bierce (he of the original Devil’s Dictionary). We were i-chatting about this yesterday, and she mentioned that she had been reading Bierce’s Civil War story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. A story of a military hanging, of a would-be Confederate saboteur. Bierce was a veteran of the Civil War, an officer, and would have seen, perhaps directed, several such episodes. Which got me to thinking …

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A month ago, I spent some time with my mother and sister on Cape Cod. I didn’t get to see them over Christmas, but business took me back East in January, so I grabbed a couple of days. My mother - well, you never know when the next visit will be the last. Both are shopaholics, and I was wandering through a mall humoring their addiction when I chanced to notice a Samsonite outlet store. Everything half off. I checked with my resident experts, who gave the thumbs up, and I walked off with a new suitcase. Which is good, because, as is usual when I pass through home sweet home, I had a lot more stuff to lug back than I originally lugged out.

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Seven score and five years ago, We the People embarked on our bloodiest and most ironic armed conflict. A bid for independence, this time unsuccessful, that some knew as the Second American Revolution, but Ken Burns, and hence the known world, now call "the" Civil War. For what it's worth, the decision to start the war by firing on Fort Sumter, and the decision to end it by surrendering the Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant, both happened on my birthday.

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