Book Review: Pickett's Charge: A microhistory

Pickett’s Charge: A microhistory of the final attack at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863

© 1959 by George R. Stewart (1895-1980)

First off, I like that term: microhistory. I’ve read history off and on for over twenty years now, and I don’t think I’ve ever read a “microhistory.” It appeals to me. Think of it: to know so much about a certain, limited period of time – an event suspended in the amber of time – to be an expert. That is what the author of this book, George Stewart, was. An expert. An authority.

The book chronicles “Pickett’s Charge,” the final assault on the union line on Day Three of the battle at Gettysburg. Robert E. Lee, aggressively invading the North for a second time in nine months, is seeking to destroy the Army of the Potomac, newly led by George Meade for all of three days. A victory for the South could very well lead to independence via foreign recognition or, not an unreasonable possibility, the utter destruction of Northern forces in the northeast. Harrisburg, Philadelphia – even Washington – would lay open undefended and at the rebels’ mercy.

On days one and two of the surprise confrontation, Lee attacked either flank of the Northern army. Picture two ridges, each running north-south, with about a mile between them, and a diagonal road running southwest to northeast within this plain. That’s the Gettysburg battlefield. The Union, holed up on the eastern ridge, is anchored at the north by Culp’s Hill, and in the south by Round Top and Little Round Top. Prior rebel attacks on both positions failed. Normally unpredictable, Lee now decides to attack the middle.

10,500 men in three divisions formed in several lines will march across the mile-long open plain for a timeless 20 minutes, braving artillery and rifle fire, to assault the Northern position. Though it was not distinctly Pickett’s to command (he was one of three commanders), history has labeled it “Pickett’s Charge.” It is the “high-water mark” of the South, for ultimately it failed, and the Rebellion was forced to fight a long, drawn-out, losing battle over the next 21 months.

Stewart divides the book into several large chapters:

Early Morning – Mostly Confederate

Later Morning – Mostly Union

Noon-day Lull

Between the Signal-shots

Cannonade

Second Lull

Advance

High-Water Mark

Repulse

Afterwards

Each takes a segment of the day and details, in short digestible bites, who was where with what: Generals, colonels, regiments, artillery batteries, defenses, headquarters. Then we enter the minds of the men, the leaders and the grunts behind the two-foot-high stone walls, those selected to “charge” into fire with fixed bayonets, the war councils, the dispatches between Longstreet (who had misgivings about the attack) and his various underlings. Meade’s correct guess where Lee’d attack. There’s lots of humor (a hog steals bread earmarked for the general’s lunch), lots of interesting tidbits and factoids (there was a Private George Stewart, no relation to the author, in the heat of the action). I found it page-turning, immensely intriguing, and the “microhistory” truly brings the battle to life in ways that larger works, for me, failed to do.

This book will stay on the shelf for a re-reading in the future. I may check out Stewart’s other diverse works as well. For instance, he wrote a post-apocalyptic novel in 1949 (before post-apocalyptic everything was done to death) that won the first International Fantasy Award. The novel, Earth Abides, was said by Stephen King to be an inspiration for The Stand.

Much as my previous Civil War read, If the South Won at Gettysburg, had something of substance to learn in its appendix, so does Pickett’s Charge. In the first, it was Civil War battlefield tactics, which I summarized in my review of that work. In Stewart’s microhistory, in the last chapter he details the grim “butcher’s bill,” which answers the question that had commonly popped into my mind, how do historians and the military quantify battlefield casualties?

Well, Stewart informs us of the following:

* Wounded should equal about four times the dead

* Killed / Total Casualties is approximately 17 percent (for the Civil War)

* In close fighting, the killed-to-total-casualty ratio is closer to 20 percent

* About 1 wounded man in 7 died later of his wounds

* Rule of thumb: 1 casualty in 12 credited to artillery fire

and not quite a statistical item, but one I found interesting due to other stuff I’ve read regarding the Civil War – at Gettysburg, there was not a single recorded instance of a man killed or wounded by a bayonet.

Grade: A-plus.

N.B. Numbered among the Confederate dead on the evening of July 3, 1863, was Private George Stewart of the 1st Tennessee.

Imagine X written by Y with a plot by Z

While listening to the radio during my commute the other morning, I heard the DJ do a live commercial for some new techno-thriller novel. This struck me as unusual. Though I’ve heard books promoted via commercial on the AM radio waves before, it hasn’t been too frequent. Part of the copy near the end read something like: “Imagine Catch-22 written by Hunter S. Thompson with a plot by Tom Clancy!”

Wow.

That’s “wow” in a “hmmmm” sense.

Seems to me the publisher is trying to gin up interest in the somewhat generically-titled book by making us think that THIS IS SOMETHING DIFFERENT. I don’t begrudge them that. I found the variables Catch-22, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Clancy to be intriguing, in fact, though I also, in fact, doubt the book is entirely a mashup of the three.

Anyway, that got me thinking.

See that book there to the right? My toe-dip into the waters of Kindle entitled Oncewhere Walked the Whale? How could I describe my magnum opus? How would a mythical publisher do so in a radio commercial?

How ’bout …

“Imagine The Iliad written by Jorge Luis Borges with a plot by J.R.R. Tolkien!”

“Imagine Breaking Bad written by Walt Whitman with a plot by Franz Kafka!”

“Imagine Atlas Shrugged written by Norman Vincent Peale with a plot by Dr. Seuss!”

“Imagine Moby Dick written by Kurt Vonnegut with a plot by George Orwell!”

or even

“Imagine The New Testament written by Robert Heinlein with a plot by John Le Carre!”

OK, confession time. I wrote down the first distinctive authors and books (and a TV show) that came to my mind and randomly paired them all up. It took about three minutes. Kinda fun. And, startlingly enough, they either describe my book perfectly to a T or have absolutely entirely nothing to do with it. It’s all up to you. In your mind.

Or is it?

The Starter Wage

I’m just gonna float this on out. Haven’t heard it out there in that Matrix-like level of reality known as the Mainstream Media. Or any media, for that matter. If it’s been addressed or proposed somewhere by someone else some time ago and it’s flown straight by me, forgive my lapse of attention.

Anyway, I was thinking about all this “raise-the-minimum-wage-to-$15-an-hour” nonsense and came up with an idea. Now, please don’t get offended, but it seems to me that logical, rational thinking people can understand that when costs go up, demand goes down. The more expensive something is, the fewer people will want to pay for it. Labor is a cost to business. When government mandates a minimum cost and then raises it, businesses will look for other means to fulfill the demand they once had for that labor when that labor was at a lower cost. Such as automation, as we’re seeing some fast food restaurants experiment with.

Common sense. Or, better yet, self-interest. It has nothing to do with “fairness”, if one defines “fairness” as equality of results. A market of buyers and sellers all looking out for their own self-interests yields an efficient marketplace. “Efficiency” as defined as equality of opportunity. Yet a third of the general public out there won’t understand that line of reasoning and another third will actively endorse and promote contrary ideas. So, thus, we have the government interfering in the marketplace in the holy name of Fairness.

Now, if – and it’s a huuuuuuuge if – IF government absolutely must get involved in the private sector by mandating a minimum wage, a minimum cost of labor, fine and good. Continue as planned, amateur Keynesians, and keep marching toward utopia and try not to get too many people unemployed, or at least blame business for acting in their own self-interest for increased-minimum-wage-related unemployment.

But I have two young daughters. One will be looking for work in two or three years. Part-time, first-time, summer job type work. In order to have her find a job (mostly for the experience), since no employer will pay an inexperienced teen $15/hour, why not create a new category of employee: the starter worker, with a starter worker wage.

We can even capitalize the words in the title. The Starter Worker, with the Starter Worker Wage. We can also super-complicate it, over-define and over-regulate it as government is wont to do. We can set limits, such as: the Starter Worker must be currently attending a secondary school full-time. Or the Starter Worker must not work more than 500 hours a year. Or the Starter Worker must be under the age of 18 by December 31st of the current year. You know, give businesses a lot of tracking busywork to do since government is generously allowing them to hire an inexperienced kid living with mom and dad at $8 an hour.

The Starter Worker Wage.

Has it been proposed, and I missed it? If it hasn’t, why not?

Signed,

Hopper

Armchair Economist

Blooded Egg-Heads

Describing the makeup of the Union line at Seminary Ridge in Gettysburg, upon which Confederate forces led in part by Major General George Pickett would charge:

“The 151st [Pennsylvanian] was an interesting regiment, containing several companies that had been recruited from academics. More than a hundred schoolteachers had enlisted in it, and its commander had been a principal. To the honor of all egg-heads be it known that this schoolmaster colonel took 466 of his unblooded regiment into the first day’s battle. He himself fell wounded, and the schoolboys fought so desperately that next morning they mustered only 121, under a captain.”

- Pickett’s Charge: A microhistory of the final attack at Gettysburg, July 3, 1863, Part II, Section 6, by George R. Stewart

The Patterson Gimlin Filn

50 years ago today, Roger Patterson filmed a Sasquatch meandering through a dried river bed in Bluff Creek, California.

Patterson, who was to die of cancer five years after the encounter, was an avid Bigfoot buff who’d regularly go out hunting for the giant cryptid, after first reading about it in 1959. He even published a short book of his sasquatchian musings in 1966.

On Friday, October 20, 1967, around 1:30 in the afternoon, Patterson and his friend, Bob Gimlin, on horseback, rounded a bend in a dried creek marked by a large overturned tree. Patterson’s horse spooked and nearly threw him. He got off, steadied the animal, and began filming a large, hairy, upright creature approximately 25 feet away, who seems itself to get spooked and bustle away.

The film in its entirety lasts 59.5 seconds.

Myself, I probably first saw this clip on one of the Leonard Nimoy-narrated In Search Of episodes in the late 70s. That launched a pre-adolescent fascination resulting in many hours studying Bigfoot books in an untraveled nook at the library where my mom worked. Though lost to my memory, I must have easily devoured ten or twelve books of varying degrees of difficulty and seriousness on the famously shy hominid. To this day, when in the grip of insomnia, I’ll creep down to the laptop at the writer’s desk in the basement, throw on the headphones, and watch endless Bigfoot videos and documentaries, everything from obvious hoaxes to that greatest documentary of all time, another Nimoy-narrated Sasquatch bio by Ancient Mysteries.

Now – does Hopper believe in Sasquatch?

Uh, dunno. Normally, I’d shout emphatically “No!” Despite a fascination with all things paranormal, cryptozoological, and downright weird, a fascination spawning in part from the countless hours of enjoyment reading and watching science fiction in my childhood, I am at heart a pragmatist. UFOs do not travel here from other galaxies; the Greys do not abduct campers and single moms in trailer parks. Hundreds of eight-foot-tall, 500-pount hairy man-apes do not inhabit the forests of the continental United States.

And yet … I recall reading about how the existence of the African gorilla 150 years ago was roundly mocked and belittled until, uh, a gorilla was actually captured (probably killed). I guess I’m saying Bigfoot’s existence is plausible, though unlikely. Maybe a 5 percent chance of actually being an actual being, were I a betting man.

A common rebuttal to the Sasquatch question is, why haven’t any bones been discovered? Then I read and hear hunters talk and say things like, bears exist, but we don’t find bear bones out on the trail. Dying animals hide, and then other animals dismember and ultimately digest the body.

Then again, I’ve seen plenty of photos and videos of bears.

So, I don’t know. I’d like to think Bigfoot exists. I even thought I saw one, for a split second, peripherally from my ground-level bedroom window as a boy. Turned out just to be my mother, taking out the trash.

I’ve tried to get my girls interested in the creature, if only for the campy, creepy, “what’s that staring at us just beyond the treeline?” effect, but no dice. They ain’t buying it. Perhaps if they were boys, I don’t know. My oldest likes watching the occasional Finding Bigfoot, but only to make fun of the quartet of nerds on the show endlessly not finding Bigfoot and using the cringe-worthy word “squatchy” whenever possible.

Do I think the Patterson film is legit? That the creature filmed is really a Sasquatch, and not some dude in a Hollywood special effects costume? Again, probably not. Breathless affirmations that the suit is lifelike, that “muscles can be seen undulating beneath the fur,” that it’s too realistic to be faked, don’t convince me. One thing, though, does: the fact that when the creature turns to look back at the human intruders, it throws its shoulder and arm back too. This is what gorillas do, because, unlike man, their chins do not rise above their shoulders, and to look back they have to move their entire body 45-90 degrees to one side. Would amateur hoaxers realize that?

So … mostly I know, but there’s a tiny, childlike part that still says “I dunno.”

Creepy, regardless.

Quest

“A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn’t there.”

- (in all probability erroneously) attributed to Charles Darwin

Can also describe Hopper trying to figure out something worthwhile to do …

Book Review: The Sun Also Rises

© 1926 by Ernest Hemingway

Another book of which it is quite preposterous for me to label a post about it a “review.” I am but a flea compared to the conquering swaggering warlord that is the force of nature called Hemingway. However, I do quite non-preposterously consider myself widely read, so I’d like to share my opinion of one master’s debut novel I spent a week with.

In one sentence,

… I followed a bunch of insufferable drunks from Paris to Pamplona, with some bullfighting thrown in between tiresome drinking, fighting, and veiled sexual amorality.

In another,

… I didn’t enjoy the ride.

Oh, I can appreciate it. I very well did and do. I think the main problem with the novel was an expectation that something dramatic would happen. Something dramatic within the novel, such as someone getting killed at the end. And I had a good idea who it would be. But nothing of the sort happened.

Then I realized that something dramatic did happen. Something dramatic not within the novel, but about the novel itself.

It was Something New.

As anyone who’s ever read Hemingway in school knows, he revolutionized the way novels were written. In lieu of multitudinous, flowery, run-on, turgid, zig-zagging, stilted, embellished, ( … consults online thesaurus …), overly exegetic and ultra expository sentences, one atop the other, sentences upon sentences, page proportionate paragraphs, crescendo-ing to the highest heavens to tumble down thunderously to the foundations of the Niagara, The Sun Also Rises changed all that.

Changed all that. The book did. This book, now in my hands, late of the wooden shelf by the desk. This book changed all that. While drinking sherry, or jerez as the old Spaniards call it.

Hem’s revolution was much like, though more dramatic than, the chasm separating the previous two paragraphs.

Hemingway’s prose is sparse, functional, to-the-point. Long trains of interconnected prepositional phrases you might spot in the Conjunction Junction cartoon. And somehow the style amplifies the manly men and women who populate this tale. Everyone’s a drinker. Everyone boxes. Everyone fishes, or hunts, or steps in front of bulls, wants to step in front of bulls, or, if you’re a female Hemingway character, wants to seduce a bullfighter, in front of three or four other drunken boxing wanna-be bullfighters who’ve either bedded you, want to bed you, or can’t bed you due to a war injury.

So, while appreciative of what Hemingway did, overall I was disappointed. Am I a product of my time? Absolutely, unfortunately. But I can rise above it. I can dig good art when I see it, or read it. I wanna give The Sun Also Rises either a respectable solid-A or a disappointed C-minus. I’m not sure which. Maybe a mashed-up B / B-minus. Maybe if I drank more jerez I’d give it a B-plus.

Anyway, still planning on reading the other Hemingway I picked up a few weeks ago, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Might be a good exercise to do the ol’ high school compare / contrast essay, though that might also be a bit boring, unless I can come at it out of a field lefter than the one used for this “review”.

We’ll see …

Is Someone a Racist?

* * * * * * *

As a despiser of muddled, confusing gender-neutral language, I’d change the “are they” to “is he” and the “like them” to “like him” and the “they are” to “he is”. “Someone” is singular, after all, so later pronouns must not be plural to be effective in communication.

Otherwise, I believe this flow chart accurately describes a disturbingly larger-than-one-thinks segment of the population out there.

Book Review: Worldwar: In the Balance

© 1994 by Harry Turtledove

Spring 1942. Total war rages across the globe as the US reels from the Japanese sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, Britain suffers nightly attacks from German bombers, the Warsaw ghetto toils under extreme Nazi oppression as mainland China toils under the barbaric imperial Japanese, and the Germans and Soviets lock horns over the vast plains of southeastern Russia.

Then, the aliens descend, armed and spoiling for a fight.

I found this longish paperback (565 pages) quite readable despite the fact that, for some reason, I could never get more than 20 or 25 pages done at a clip. I read it just about everywhere – bed, bath, bleachers during soccer practice, reclining chair in office during lunch, huddled over a slice at the local pizzeria – and I never lost interest, but the sheer weight of it kept me from motoring through it. Not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the novel really takes you into the 40s and Turtledove has a solid grasp on the cultures and personalities involved. But I’m getting a bit scattered. Let’s refocus.

Similar to my recent reading of Silverberg’s Tom O’Bedlam, the novel takes a form I like: characters scattered about who slowly come together. In Worldwar, there’s a “cast of thousands” appeal, a dozen protagonists who easily come to life under Turtledove’s pen. Americans, Brits, a pair of Nazis tank jockeys, a female Soviet flyer, a Swedish physicist, a Polish rabbi in Warsaw, Chinese peasants taken captive by the aliens. Oh, and the aliens, too, known as “The Race.” We’re privy to meetings and musings by the battle commander, various underlings, all the way down to alien fighter pilots and tank drivers. And then sprinkled in is a generous dose of historical character cameos: Patton, Fermi, Churchill, Molotov, Ribbentrop, General George Marshall, future General Leslie Grove of Manhattan Project fame, Hitler even, for two or three pages. So there’s really a lot packed into the book.

I liked that the action moved. I liked how humanity responded to the alien invasion with an uneasy truce, altering tactics and strategy, probing the aliens for weaknesses. I also liked how the Race realized it had come unprepared, expecting to fight a war with men in armor on horseback (due to a probe they sent 600 years ago and the human race advancing far quickly than theirs). There’s an interesting subplot where some aliens become addicted to a super-cocaine drug, known to us as ginger. And the underground drug trade that grows up around it. Also how the Race begins nuking us (Berlin first, Washington second) and how our scientists reverse engineer nuclear fission from the leftover byproducts at the devastation sites (plutonium?).

But, to be honest, there were strains of stuff I didn’t like, primarily focusing on the Race. I felt it odd that the aliens were basically matched with us, technology-wise, though their tanks and aircraft were probably two decades more advanced. And I thought taking all the secrets away from the Race and humanizing them was a mistake. Plus they were a tad bit monolithic: a society and culture that’s lasted hundreds of thousands of years without any revolutionary ideas or movements.

Bottom line: Worldwar: In the Balance kept me interested, but not enough to continue on to read the remaining three books in the series. Perhaps if I was a teen again I’d devour this. As is, I plan on giving his alternative history Roman legion stories a go should I come across them.

Grade: B+

Prophetic?

Came across the 1867 poem “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold a week or so ago and still can not get the third stanza out of my mind:

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

To me this encapsulates perfectly – oh too perfectly – that dim and obscure feeling that descends upon me when I read of what’s happening to the Catholic faith post-Vatican II, the changes currently test-driven by Francis and his cohorts, and the steroidal tsunami of transformation that’s molding our world like a brutal calloused sculptor that serves no master but itself.

Or am I being too histrionic?

… now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating …

If the South Won Gettysburg

© 1980 by Mark Nesbitt (concept by Paul S. Witt – whose signature is in the copy of the used book I bought)

This is a neat little book I bought down in Hilton Head last August on vacation, purely based on the cover artwork:

How could I resist a book such as this!

Anyway, it’s a short read – 197 pages, the last 26 being appendices: tactics, technology, the Confederate Constitution, army corps organization charts, and an index. I read it over two nights. In fact, I couldn’t put it down, really, and that’s always a bonus for a guy like me who has a thousand books on deck to read. It makes reading fun. Yes, this was a fun book.

According to his bio, Nesbitt first read about Gettysburg when he was eight. He eventually worked as a ranger at the battlefield for four years and has been passionate about it ever since. It shows. This little book is probably the best moment-by-moment play-by-play of the battle I’ve read. In short vignettes of half-a-page to a page-and-a-half, he clearly explains the lead-up to the Pennsylvanian invasion, the thinking of the generals, war councils, troop movements, and the actual combat. It was so simple to follow along I was actually amazed.

The best thing, though, is that it’s a mix of fact and speculation. And the demarcation line between the two is seamlessly crossed. I didn’t notice it, though, truth be told, it’s probably been five years since I read anything about Gettysburg, so the details of the battle have been lost to the mists of memory. That rusty creaky file cabinet between my ears. Perhaps I should have read up on the battle before reading If the South Won Gettysburg, but it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of it. Actually it was kind of challenging: where, exactly, in the battle does Nesbitt move from fact to fiction?

My guess is the final day. There’s no Pickett’s Charge, the cliché-tagged “high watermark of the South”, Lee’s failed attempt at smashing the Union line on Cemetery Ridge and the Round Tops using 18th-century tactics in a war quickly moving into the early 20th-century. So it must’ve occurred before then. There’s mention of Longstreet’s pincer plan, much like the movement used by Stonewall Jackson to win at Chancellorsville, being approved (I think) by Lee instead of declined, thus setting up the South’s killing blow – Jeb Stuart’s unimpeded cavalry ride south to assault, and ultimately take, the capital city of Washington.

Then the speculation flows. Lincoln and his cabinet flee the city, but no other northern city will take him. He winds up in Canada. Britain recognizes the Confederacy. But what interested me more was what could have happened further down the timestream. For instance, the authors believe slavery would have died out fifteen or so years after Southern independence for economic reasons which they explain. Also, due to big-E economics, the South would not suffer the morass of depression that an FDR-led North muddled in (due in large part that it was led by FDR – my conclusion, not the book’s). The continental United States would fracture into five nations: the USA, the CSA, the Republic of Texas, the Rocky Mountain States, and the Republic of California.

However, we don’t see the North supporting the Central Powers in the Great War (and possibly Nazi Germany) that I’ve read speculated elsewhere, nor do we see a Southern astronaut plant the Stars and Bars in the Sea of Tranquility.

But to me the best part of the book is the five short pages on Civil War tactics in the Appendix. How were battles fought? Strange, but in the two dozen or so books I’ve read on the subject, battlefield tactics were never straightforward explained to me. And now, care of If the South Won Gettysburg – 

1) Gain the high ground. If the enemy attacks, he’ll be tired climbing up after you. Also, easier to hide your reserve forces while he must show all his.

2) Remember when gaining the high ground not to silhouette yourself against the skyline.

3) Clear a field of fire in front of your position so the enemy must advance over open ground.

4) Create obstacles before your position to break the enemy’s formation while not giving him a chance of seek cover from your fire.

5) A position with a stream or river running before it is a bonus, as the enemy must advance through it and may be unable to return fire while doing so.

6) Secure your flanks – the “ends” of your line of firing. If you have a company of a hundred men in two lines, they have an alternating 50 weapons to fire with straight ahead. But if the enemy can attack the flank (the “side” of your line), you will only have at first two weapons to turn and fire upon him until and unless you reform the line. Securing the flank meant placing it against a hill or in the woods or at a river or water source where the enemy can’t get at it easily.

So, lots of interesting stuff packed into a small book you can read in two quick nights. Definitely worth seeking out.

Grade: solid A.

Birthday Book Score

Well, in addition to the Les Paul my family got me for my fiftieth, I did receive a few birthday gift cards. Over the weekend I took Patch shopping with me and we picked up a bunch of books. Here’s what I scored:

The Sun Also Rises and For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway.

Sick and tired of all the limp-wristed SJW temper tantrums dominating the news cycle, I’ve been desperately on the lookout for something manly written by someone manly. A few books ago I completed the last tome of Rick Atkinson’s World War II “liberation trilogy,” The Guns at Last Light, and Hem was a minor character, popping up here and there as he propelled his jeep through war-torn France, binoculars, pistol, and flask ever at his side. What could be more masculine than that? True, I did read him way, way back in high school, though that was sadly wasted on a not-ready me. But I’m looking forward to both books, as they’re both now swinging bats in the On-Deck Circle.

A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsey.

This will be my Halloween reading. I read it exactly ten years ago, and while I don’t recall all the details, I do remember it being creepy, philosophical, fantastical, and thought-provoking. I do remember thinking at the time that it needs a re-read in the near future. Well, a decade later, moisture, mildew, and possibly an encounter with flood water ruined my copy. Beneficiently, a newer ancient copy jumped out at me perusing the used book aisles with Patch. So I bought it, and come the fourth week in October, I will voyage again to Arcturus and try not to get too creeped out.

Le Morte d’Arthur, by Sir Thomas Mallory.

This has been on my radar forever, but never got around to seeking it out for a read. I’m a minor fan of the Arthurian legend, dating back to my nerd days. Read the Mary Stewart books in high school and re-read them two or three years back. Read the T. H. White classic to relax when not getting drunk as a college freshman. Read parts of Steinbeck’s book on the Round Table fairly recently. But this is the source material. This is reading J.R.R. as opposed to Christopher. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. Maybe around Christmas I’ll crack this one open.

I also picked up

100 Things Ranger Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die, by Adam Raider and Russ Cohen, as well as the current issue of The Hockey News.

This all came about from a decision to extend my metaphorical middle finger to the protesting millionaires in the NFL, by switching my limited TV viewing time to the NHL.

My household during my tween years, before my parents divorced, was a broiling roiling zone of Rangers hockey. Seemed just about every night during those late-70s winters a game would be on, though in truth I usually read a book on the floor and only glanced up at the screen when the adults jumped up and down, hooting and hollering in excitement. Skimming through the book though brought back memories: mostly names – Esposito, Maloney, Duguay, Murdoch, some guy named Ulf, and the more I thought about it the more visuals I recalled. Mostly of bloody noses and torn uniforms.

And from one of the trad Cath websites I’ve been frequenting of late, I ordered the following:

The Inside Story of Vatican II (formerly The Rhine Flows into the Tiber), by Ralph Wiltgen.

From Ecumenism to Silent Apostasy, an analysis compiled by the SSPX.

The Roman Rite Destroyed, by Michael Davies.

Time Bombs of the Second Vatican Council, by Fr. Franz Schmidberger.

These all should rightly be part of a separate post. For several months now, discontent with the pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio, I’ve been researching the recent Church past to discover how we’ve gotten to where we now are. I’ve learned about John XXIII, Paul VI, Vatican II, the SSPX, the FSSP, Sedevacantism, and have listened to countless hours of podcasts on the internet from all differing opinions. I’m slowly – glacially – coming to an internal consensus, though I must admit I still am awaiting firm convincing. But I’ll keep reading to fill that aching itch in my soul, for I fear we are on the wrong path, a path leading very far from where it promises to take us. More, much more, later, after I digest these works.

Until later … happy reading!