got interested in chancellorsville, if only because we have a big chancellor, and a small ville, and it's been a very long week in which i've indulged myself in extended fact-finding missions to wikipedia in hopes of forgetting the whirl of conflict around me even as the strike was settled, and everyone i know virtually is back at work, happily or not. so it turns out that chancellorsville was a key battle, one in which the rebels won, and they won through a daring and clever move of splitting their army up into two, and going around, and so, because the rebels won (I assume), re-enacters like this battle, because they always have enough confederates to make two companies and sneak up on the poor union blokes, although those guys, I'd bet, are also confederates who just dress up as union blokes every couple of years, so that they get to be confederates the rest of the time. so the re-enacters like this battle of chancellorsville, and get out to re-enact it a lot, and battle strategy historians study the battle and reflect on how things could have turned out.

but then there's this general, general stonewall jackson, of the rebel side, who at one point gets shot up by his own men by mistake, and he's shot in his arm, so badly that they cut it off. and then, not only do they cut off the arm, but they give it a proper burial, an entire burial for only an arm, because they hold him in such high esteem, as he's a general and all. but he dies eight days later anyway. and i keep thinking about him, this guy's got a name, i've heard that name, he's actually quite famous. and he is.

but he is not, in any way, related to the stonewall riots of new york city in the late 1960's, the birth of the gay rights movement, apparently, sparked by a police raid of a seedy mafia-owned bar in greenwich village by the name of stonewall. if this place had any relation to the general, i'd doubt it, but i can't find any other connection, and it seems to me that as far as i can tell the riots came along and purloined the name, expropriated it, maybe old stonewall is rolling over in his grave.

a guy at the swimming place pointed out a couple of interesting things; he works in the library and takes a keen interest in the way people try to revive old events, and don't let the conflict die, especially in a case like that of old general jackson, or the "war of northern aggression." he said first that in fact, this is the sesquicentennial of the civil war, it's been 150 since fort sumter, so there will be some festivities any time now, particularly in the direction of fort sumter itself, i would imagine. and second, he said, if anyone back then at that battle knew that we would, 150 years from that date, go out camping and re-enacting that kind of thing, they would consider us crazy, gluttons for punishment. they would laugh at us. yet we do, and are likely to re-enact others as well: wwII, the revolution, and the war of 1810, maybe? is it the war we like, or the old clothes?

the boys are now old enough to do serious damage to each other on a simple drive across town, or you would think so judging by their anguished howls, and accusations of pinching, hair-pulling, torture, etc. now i know the geneva convention specifically mentions some of these actions and the sibling exemption in no way allows any of it, nevertheless it frequently gets so bad that we have to stop the car and pull over or wait until sense reigns again. i know i know you are thinking of parallels again, both to a strike situation and to an outright war where everyone loses their senses entirely and takes up arms. i'm not arguing. in any case, at one point we pull up next to this enormous truck at a stoplight, and in the truck are a number of pigs, or rather the younger boy claims there are kangaroos in there also, and they are making an enormous racket, very unhappy to be driving across town, and i think this might help the pinching/hairpulling situation so i roll down all the windows and we listen to those howling pigs for a while, until the light turns green. but it doesn't work, a few blocks down, near the cash-loan pawn shop and the railroad tracks, they're at it again, worse than ever. it's an ongoing battle, so to speak. i'm about to construct a false wall, keep their hands off each other, and their eyes to themselves, the purpose of which, i could drive across town, maybe listen to some bluegrass for a change.

the picture below comes from the virginia countryside where they have names like rappahannock and spotsylvania, and where appomattox is a small nowheresville town with a little work in it but where nobody will ever forget, ever, what it represents and what happened to dear old stonewall makes him a martyr in the eyes of the true and faithful, even though he was shot essentially by his own guys, by mistake. in the end, somebody always loses, that's the cycle of war, you can re-enact the victories, or the feeling of power, or the movement through a beautiful glade on a fall day, but you don't really want to re-enact the sawing off of limbs, or the actual starvation, or even the feeling of defeat. it's over, and it's time to move on; here, the gingko leaves have fallen, and they didn't quite pick a single day, instead, they kind of came down in bunches, all week. most everyone's back to work, but it's a holiday, veteran's day, in fact, time to back off, enjoy the weather, and get some sleep, for a change.