Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Well, Autumn has definitely arrived in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor, with mild days and cool, crisp evenings. It is very much Ol’ Robbo’s favorite season, even when it gets colder and rainy.
For some reason I’ve never completely fathomed, it also puts me in mind to revisit my studies of North American colonialism in general, and the French and Indian War in particular. Arcane knowledge, some might say, particularly in this day and age of goddam Cultural Marxism where history began fifteen minutes ago, but Ol’ Robbo continues to be of the opinion that one cannot understand America as a concept without understanding her Revolutionary beginnings, and one cannot understand the Revolution without also understanding the Colonial roots from which it sprang. (And speaking of the Colonial Era, did I ever mention here that my geneology-obsessed cousin recently discovered that ancestors of ours were killed and captured during Shawnee raids on the Virginia frontier in 1759 and 1763? Hard cheese for them, of course, but pretty durn cool in retrospect.)
Anyhoo, it is always around this time of year that I pull my Francis Parkman off the shelf and delve into his massive opus on the struggle between France and Britain in North America. This year, I had also been considering revisiting the great Fred Anderson (I have his Crucible of War and A People’s Army), since I haven’t read him in a while.
So imagine my serendipitous delight when I unexpectedly received in the mail from long-time friend of the decanter Old Dominion Tory this week a copy of Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monogahela and the Road to Revolution by David Preston, a new-to-Robbo author, but I doubt ODT would recommend him if he was a wrong ‘un.
Poor old General Braddock – hopelessly out of his depth in the tactics of frontier fighting, bushwhacked, receiving a painful and fatal wound, then being buried ignominiously in the middle of the road the remainder of his army retreated over so as not to be dug up and scalped by the Indians. And all for the sake of Pittsburgh. I think about that a lot when I’m driving the Gels back and forth to summah camp out in southwestern Pennsylvania.
I’m looking forward to reading this book bigly.
** Spot the reference.
UPDATE: Poking around on the devil’s website, Ol’ Robbo also found a book authored by Preston entitled The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667-1783 (The Iroquoians and Their World), which of course I immediately had to scoop up as well. (Ol’ Robbo is the worst sort of impulse-buyer when it comes to books. I suppose there are worse vices.)
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October 21, 2017 at 10:50 am
Victoria
Oh don’t poop on Pittsburgh. And any time you want to visit and F&I fort, let me know. I’ll take you back to my PA hometown….
October 21, 2017 at 2:13 pm
captainned
Arthur first incongruously spots the travel bag he left at the Athens airport long before his interstellar adventures commenced while simultaneously discovering that he has somehow learned to fly. He swoops down, picks it up, and crashes into a flying party. In that bag was a bottle of retsina, the price of entry to the party in an attempt to stop the Krikkit robots from taking the Silver Bail, a/k/a the Rory Award for The Most Gratuitous use of the word **** in a Serious Screenplay. While Slartibartfast and Ford gibber on about getting out of there (as the party is now falling from the sky), Arthur “rescues” Trillian from Thor and the four then return to the starship Bistromath.
No, I haven’t committed all 26 radio plays to memory.
October 21, 2017 at 8:44 pm
Robbo
Cap’n, you are one hoopy frood! (FWIW, I happen to think that book is the best one of the series. But that’s for another post at another time.)
Vic, it’s downright obscene how few F&I, Revolutionary, and Civil War battlefields there are within two or three hours of Port Swiller Manor that I haven’t shifted my lazy backside to go see.
October 22, 2017 at 12:28 pm
Don
Mention of Pittsburgh reminded me of this bit of history of the SCA and the Pennsic war:
One day, almost 30 years ago, Cariadoc of the Bow, the King of the Middle, got bored with peace and declared war upon the East, loser to take Pittsburgh. The King of the East read the declaration of war, filed it away and forgot about it. Time passed. Cariadoc moved to New York and subsequently became King of the East, whereupon he retrieved the declaration from the file cabinet and said, “Let’s fight.” The Middle won, and Cariadoc has the distinction of being the only king who declared war upon himself and lost.
October 23, 2017 at 11:48 am
Old Dominion Tory
As i have mentioned before, whenever you come to Lexington, I can take you to the historical marker that relates to one of the raids.
October 23, 2017 at 11:55 am
Old Dominion Tory
Funny how the seasons can affect interests. Whenever autumn approaches, I often turn toward the 18th and early 19th century in terms of reading material. Right now, I am finishing a novel set in London in the mid-1960s. Next up: a bio of John Quincy Adams and a history of the Early Republic.
October 23, 2017 at 7:57 pm
Robbo
ODT, I’ve experienced this same thing year after year with musick – not so much what I listen to, but what I like to play myself. Cooler weather? Almost exclusively Bach and Handel. Only when it’s warmer out do I care to mess with Haydn, Mozart, and some of the early Romantics.
October 24, 2017 at 3:48 pm
Old Dominion Tory
Interesting, Robbo. Summer and early autumn are, for me, the best times for jazz. Later into autumn and into the winter, it’s almost exclusively classical.