Manassas I

Today is the 150^th anniversary of the first battle of Manassas, the first major land engagement of the War Between the States.

In the summer of 1861, politicians and journalists were rabid about crushing the rebels; “On to Richmond!” was repeated frequently and fervently. Lincoln was under tremendous pressure to make a show of force and, of course, end the war at a single stroke. Forget “over by Christmas”; the expectation was pretty much “over by Independence Day”.

Keep in mind that the two enemy capital cities were about 100 miles apart. It’s like Miami being only 90 miles from Cuba, only with the armies being roughly the same and no Atlantic Ocean to act as a barrier. The perception on both sides was that if you took the other’s capital you’d basically win the war.

So on 21 July, Union forces under Brigadier General Irvin McDowell faced off against Confederates commanded by Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, about 30 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. (Yes, he’s known as P.G.T Beauregard; but I’ve got to get that full name in somewhere.)

Washington society were so certain that their troops would lick the Rebs that they drove out in carriages, ladies and gentlemen with picnic baskets and opera glasses, expecting an afternoon’s entertainment.

If you’ve never experienced a D.C. summer, you can’t imagine the kind of heat and humidity that struck the forces on both sides. Soldiers in those days wore wool uniforms & carried maybe 60 pounds of kit. On the march out towards the town of Manassas, many Union troops drank all their water just getting there.

The mostly inexperienced soldiers on both sides went back and forth, basically holding their own. At one point the Confederate line faltered & Brigadier General Barnard Bee urged his troops, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. Rally behind the Virginians!”

The Jackson he referred to was Colonel Thomas J. Jackson, a rather strange former instructor of philosophy at the Virginia Military Institute; his students called him “Tom Fool”. But that day his unit held.

(Although there is some thought that Bee was pissed off by the fact that Jackson was holding his position instead of moving forward to support him, and that what he actually said was, “There stands Jackson like a damned stone wall!” We’ll never know exactly because Bee was mortally wounded that day.)

Anyhow, as the afternoon wore on, Federal lines began to break, first in small units and then en masse. The soldiers threw away their rifles and equipment and began running to the rear. The society crowd was engulfed and had to fight for road space for their carriages against the retreating troops.

There was tremendous fear that the Confederates would chase everyone all the way back to D.C., but Beauregard wasn’t the pursuing kind of commander. The loss was a tremendous shock to people all over the North. And in both North and South, folks began to realize that the war was not going to be a short, victorious one.

McDowell was the scapegoat for the loss, although he’d been pressured heavily to go into battle with very green troops. He was replaced by Major General George B. McClellan, a commander who was much better at dressing up and drilling armies than using them in actual, you know, warfare. (Jackson, who was thereafter known as Stonewall, went on to wage a brilliant campaign against a variety of Union armies in the Shenandoah Valley. Beauregard was eventually replaced by General Robert E. Lee, of whom you may have heard.)

So we were seriously in for the long haul. A long, bloody, costly haul that we're still paying for.

And, in 13 months, the two armies would be back at Manassas.

News of the (Murdoch) world

You may have heard there’s a hoo-ha in Britain regarding Rupert Murdoch and the way his publications go about gathering (as opposed to manufacturing, which they also do well) information. Executives of News International are falling like old-growth timber under a Republican administration. They’re either being arrested or they’re “helping police with their inquiries.”

But the gendarmes themselves are not immune from the clear-cutting: two top cops in the Metropolitan Police have resigned under a cloud, as they say. (and both current and past Prime Ministers are backpedaling furiously trying to pretend they never heard of Murdoch or any of his minions, and never had them over to 10 Downing Street for cocktails and baksheesh.)

Murdoch and his son James, a senior satrap in the empire, haven’t been collared yet, but they did appear before a committee of Parliament yesterday afternoon, spinning like tops. But all the concentration was broken when some bloke in a plaid flannel shirt appeared and shoved a paper plate of foam in the Dark Lord’s face.

After Murdoch cleaned up, they resumed; but no one’s heart was in it. Better not to know the answers to the questions, anyhow.

What I’m wondering is: shouldn’t someone be investigating the Met’s ability to provide security for Parliament? How did this guy get through police checks—the shirt alone should have set off any number of alarm bells. Is anyone serious about this?

And how long will it be before TSA starts screening passengers for shaving cream foam?

Give me a bottle & a straw

Dunno about you, but this week is starting out to be really rough. And, what with moving house on Friday and realizing that I’m never going to get an actual, you know, answer out of anyone about anything at my current place of employment—well, the idea of retreating into the adult-world equivalent of a spiked watermelon is just really attractive right now.

Carpocalypse diem

As with pretty much everything to do with Los Angeles, Carmageddon was hyped to the max. Shutting down the 405 (’scuse me, Interstate 405) over the weekend to demolish the Mulholland Drive overpass was supposed to bring about The End of Civilization As We Know It.

You have to understand, the 405 is one of the arteries of LA traffic; and to Angelenos, traffic is life. It doesn’t occur to anyone in the county that you could do anything—grocery shop, go to school, consult your aromatherapist—without getting in your car. In the run-up to this weekend hundreds of thousands of people were doubling up on their Prozac, stocking the pantry with emergency rations of Grey Goose and kvetching that it was going to be the mother of all nightmares if they closed the 405.

I’m betting that local news teams have been fanning the pre-closure terror for weeks, predicting gridlock and offering a gazillion ways to cope. (Like, get your liposuctioned bum out of your BMW and take a freaking walk?) Jet Blue offered flights from Van Nuys to Long Beach for $5, although why anyone would want to go to either place I don’t know.


There was even the obligatory re-subtitling of Hitler ranting about Carmageddon:

Well, turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. The streets of Westwood, Inglewood, Brentwood, etc., did not run with blood, and  there were no reports of increased numbers of murders. (Bank robberies might have been down, though; no quick getaway.)

Same thing happened during the 1984 Olympics. There were dire predictions that the city would shut down on account of all the extra traffic—between the Olympians, the visitors and all the limos. But for once the city and county governments actually conceived and executed a cogent plan,and for two weeks, it was actually easier to get around town.

Of course, it went back to hell as soon as the Closing Ceremony wrapped.

As for Carmageddon, the contractor actually finished the work early, and traffic has resumed on the 405. I fully expect that hell followed immediately thereafter.  

My deepest apologies

I was in Target this morning, picking up drawer liners and cleaning stuff. I was whining to myself about the new place I’m moving to—the property manager didn’t paint it as he’d said he would, and his idea of “the place is clean” is certainly not mine (ergo the Lysol). I was also fretting over how I’m supposed to fit all my stuff into the new flat and thinking, rather pitifully, that I’m just going to have to learn to live with less.

I chose a checkout lane where a couple’s purchases had just been rung up; didn’t want to wait at the other lanes where the cashiers were still scanning. And then I realized that there was some hang-up with the transaction.

And being the utterly impatient person I am, I was beginning to fume. Then the nature of the hold-up became clear: the customers didn’t have enough money for all the merchandise. They were choosing what items to put back.

A box of cereal was first; but that wasn’t enough. So a package of chicken wings or thighs went. And then they had enough.

They were in their fifties, maybe, and the woman’s cotton knit top was torn at the armhole. All their purchases, a full cart totaling around $75, were food,and there was cat kibble among them. They chose to return their food, not the cat’s.

As she collected a couple of dollars in change, the woman apologized to the cashier and to me; “We didn’t realize we’d gone so wild.” I said nothing because I didn’t know what to say; and I was ramping down from toe tapping to embarrassment. I paid for my drawer liners and Lysol and went on to the next errand.

But I couldn’t let it go. It pisses me off that people have to choose between feeding their pet and feeding themselves.

But mostly I’m pissed off at myself. I'd been so full of self-pity about fitting all my stuff (including whatever food I choose to have) into my new flat; and here was a situation that was really worth spending some sympathy on. But I screwed the pooch completely. 

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to buy that couple’s chicken and cereal and then just hand a bag to them in the parking lot. Might have been $10, maybe $12. I can afford it, even though I whinge about the miserable pay I'm getting. But I didn’t come up with that right response until I was miles away. Way too late.

I was so busy getting from impatience to shock that I never made it to compassionate action. And that’s an opportunity I’ll never get back.

So to the couple with a happy cat but maybe not such a great supper: I apologize for being slow and stupid. I’m truly ashamed of myself. I can’t help you now, but I’ll try my best to be quicker to catch on in future.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

In honor of Bastille Day, which was yesterday, I give you this report: the French are more productive than we are.

Okay, the report and the study are two years old, but still.

I know American employers will never consider a way of working that doesn’t demand that employees devote all the hours God sends to serving the corporate profit, but a girl can dream.

Vive la République!

P.S. Désolée about the soccer loss.

Ferreting out the, er, ferrets

Further to the ongoing story of the Dark Lord of Yellow Journalism (Rupert Murdoch, in case you’re in some sort of paperless, broadcast-free Internet void), we have something positive that has emerged, a new phrase to seize upon and use on every conceivable occasion: “reverse ferret!”

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Kelvin Mackenzie, while editor of The Sun (a News Corp rag most famous for photos of bare-breasted women on Page 3 of every issue), goaded his reporters to “put a ferret up the trousers” of personages of high station—meaning, take actions that caused the sort of consternation you might experience were a small, long, wiggly weasel turned loose in your knickers. You know what I mean.

Once the target started sputtering and doing that ferrety dance, then there was well and truly something to report.

However, Mackenzie was apparently sensitive to the reactions of the tab’s audience. Whenever the ferret-induced story caused a ruction amongst the readers (or threatened to land the paper in court), he would order reporters to “reverse ferret”.

As the Monitor reports, this was “a signal to his furry troops to exit the victim’s pants-leg, post-haste.”

Okay, you just can’t make this stuff up. But you certainly can exploit the hell out of it. So I fully intend to find ways to insert the phrase “reverse ferret” into every conversation I can.

Join the revolution, folks. Weasels of the world unite! Charge the chinos!

Who's your daddy?

One thing that strikes me about the latest on News Corp. No, not the allegations of “illegal phone hacking” (implying there’s legal hacking) against The News of the World. Or the spread of scandal to other NC rags in Britain.

It’s Rupert Murdoch himself.

Take a look at any recent photo of the spiritual heir to William Randolph Hearst. Then compare to any pic of the Emperor Palpatine, ruler of the Evil Empire.

If they are not one and the same person then they were at the very least separated at birth.

Curiouser & curiouser

The economic news last week was mixed. Reuters swore that things are swell because hiring improved in June—157,000 new jobs, as opposed to 36,000 in May. Meanwhile the WSJ claimed that only 18,000 jobs were added last month, and things are pretty much a mess.

I tend to believe the Journal. Even if Reuters’ numbers are accurate, they don’t take into account the fact that governments at every level are dumping employees like toxic waste. Moreover, as the WSJ reports, both hours and wages for those actually working are headed south.

That was borne out to me when I came across this job posting. Minimum of a bachelor’s degree to clean toilets for $10/hour…part time.

Now, I understand that working around historical artifacts, even with a mop and dustcloth, is not the same as swabbing out a McDonald’s. Ergo the degree. (Although I doubt that my fellow master’s students in the history department at William & Mary who spent two years getting an MA in Museum Studies had this kind of thing in mind.)

But that being the case, what’s up with the barely-more-than-minimum-wage?

The economy is just whacked, that’s all. When hotshot hedge-fund managers rake in millions for bogus deals that result in ruining individuals and institutions alike, and the folks at McDonald’s and the Woodrow Wilson House make $10/hour part-time and without benefits. Then we’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole.

And Reuters has definitely tippled at the Drink Me bottle.

Cause for hope

This past weekend gave major cause for celebrating humankind. Space Shuttle Atlantis launched after only a minor hesitation—the final shuttle mission of a program that began nearly 30 years ago. And the Republic of South Sudan has joined the comity of nations.

I listened to the launch process Friday morning. My breath caught when the countdown was halted at just over 30 seconds. In the brief moments they took to resume, I flashed to a morning in January, 1986. I’d just got home from a run on the beach and was getting ready to do laundry when my friend Katherine called me and told me to turn on the TV.

Challenger had just exploded on launch. By 1986 shuttle launches were so “common” that a lot of news outlets didn’t cover them. But KNBC’s Kent Shocknek did, every one, and I recall him commenting on the burst of flame, “This isn’t right.” I was transfixed by the images (the way I would be 15 years later, watching the fall of the Twin Towers on British television) and felt gutted.

So I was relieved when NASA resumed the countdown Friday, even though I was thinking O-rings.

It’s sad that this is the last mission—we’re not stopping the space program, but for the foreseeable future our astronauts will be passengers on Russian space craft.

The thing about shuttle missions is how joyful their crews are—look at any photograph of any shuttle crew and their smiles will power a small city. It’s not that they don’t work extraordinarily hard to get on the mission and then to execute it; it’s that they clearly love what they’re doing. Think about your own job and compare.

(A shuttle sidebar: I watched Columbia land at Edwards Air Force Base in November 1982. It was a first date—a colleague of mine had spent the entire week informing me that he was going to drive up to Palmdale to watch the shuttle land. I kept telling him to enjoy it. Finally, around Thursday, he plaintively asked, “Don’t you want to come, too?” “I’ve not been invited.” Well, he did invite me, and we did watch the landing from about a different time zone. But it was fabulous to watch it kind of drift in for the approach. We also went to a desert wildlife center, where I was hugged by a reticulated python; but that’s another story.)

Atlantis has docked at the international space station and will head back to earth shortly. & we’ll move on to other modes of exploration. But this was a beautiful thing.

And so was the independence of South Sudan. Listen to Saturday’s NPR interview with Scott Simon and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton—she was in Juba covering the public celebration. Quist-Arcton has reported on so many stories from Africa that are truly dreadful; it’s a joy to listen to the laughter in her voice as she tells Simon about the newest nation.

It’s when she describes the flag that I really caught my breath: green for the fertile land, red for blood (more than two million killed in 20 years of civil war), black and “a golden star of freedom leading the nation.”

South Sudan has been one of the horror stories Quist-Arcton has covered over the years, and it certainly has a tough row to hoe moving forward. But on Saturday, for one brief day, there was nothing but joy.

So, well done, Atlantis and well done, South Sudan.