In Which Robbo Gathers His Whits

Regular friends of the decanter may recall that in honor of the Civil War sesquicentennial ol’ Robbo was rereading his copy of Stephen Spear’s Landscape Turned Red to mark the Battle of Antietam Creek that was fought 150 years ago last Monday?  Well, in fact I finished it and, because the book goes on to cover Lincoln’s sacking of Little Mac and appointment of a reluctant Burnside to command of the Army of the Potomac in November 1862, am now chronologically ahead of the game, at least as far as the Virginia theater goes.

Anyhoo, although I’ve read the book a couple times before, it was only this time around that an interesting little piece of trivia got caught in the grease trap that is Robbo’s braim.  Do you know who this fellah is?  He’s George Washington Whitman, younger brother of poet Walt.  Whitman enlisted as a private in the 51st New York Volunteer Regiment, where he quickly rose in rank, eventually becoming (I believe) a captain.  At any rate, the trivia bit that I wanted to highlight was that he actually took part in the Union attack on Burnside’s Bridge, writing a letter home about it a couple days later that Spear cites a couple times in his book.  (Well, I think it’s interesting.)

A bit of perusal reveals that George had quite the war career serving in the IX Corp.  He was wounded by a shell fragment at Fredericksburg and later was an eye-witness of the Battle of the Crater before Petersburg.  He was captured in 1864 and spent some time in Libby Prison, too.  Evidently, ol’ Walt admired the man tremendously.  And I believe it was Walt’s trip to find and comfort George after Fredericksburg that got the old, ah, um….., got Walt interested in volunteer nursing.

As Johnny Carson used to say, I did not know that.

UPDATE: Oh, let me just clarify that I have absolutely no interest a-tall, a-tall, in the poetry of Walt Whitman.  I throw the matter out as historickal trivia, not literary.

In Which Robbo Is Reduced To Monday Random

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

How did it get to be Monday again so soon?

The Port Swiller household is now well into the full monty of school year activities, commitments and deadlines.  Just sitting down with Mrs. R to work out the schedule for the week makes me feel like the celebrated one-armed paper-hanger with hives, never mind the actual execution of such.   So it was with all the more relish that I managed to sneak in an hour in the ol’ hammock late Saturday afternoon, sadly my first such hammocking all year.  Note to Self: Do this more often.

As ol’ Robbo lurked in the pew of RFEC on Sunday morning, the rector tangentially brought up in his sermon last week’s “news” about that scrap of ancient papyrus which allegedly raises again the question of whether Jesus was married.  And rayther than dismissing it out of hand as the ridiculous gnostic clap-trap that it is (assuming the scrap isn’t a fake and assuming it really is asserting that Jesus had a wife, neither of which is a-tall clear), he actually suggested that it would make an interesting topic of exploration.  Why does this not surprise me?

Indeed, I’m reminded of a joke I read recently somewhere, one about Unitarians in fact, but just as applicable to contemporary Palies:  Seems a fellah went to the store to buy his wife a new nightgown.  The clerk asked what size he would like, to which he responded that his wife was a size 8 but that he wanted a size 18.  When the clerk asked why this might be, the fellah said, “We Unitarians would rather seek than find.”

I mention how busy things are at Port Swiller Manor, and this week is going to be an absolute beast, as Saturday evening sees the middle gel’s first concert performance of the season and rehearsal/preparation is reaching a fevah pitch.   They’ve been running ads for it on the local classickal station and every time the gel hears one as we’re driving in to school, her eyes light up and a mighty smug grin passes across her face.  Not that I think she’d ever go down this path herself, but I believe one can see from this at a distance the toxic addictiveness of celebrity.  On the other hand, she’s been working so hard that, in my opinion, she’s every bit entitled to feel mighty pleased with herself.

I see where today is the “official” anniversary of the birth of Arthur Guinness in 1724.  (“Official” in that it was arbitrarily chosen by the brewery some time back in order to stop speculation.  Nobody really knows the actual date, but I’m willing to go with this one, especially as it’s gotten cool enough out to make stout enjoyable again.)  Feel free to celebrate appropriately and I will understand if you pass on the port for once, as we all know the unwisdom of mixing grapes and grain.