[Magdalen] Fwd: The Almost Daily eMo From The Geranium Farmttiingv

[Lee Lemmon]

She's on FB. Make her a friend and you can see her regularly. I'm not sure
but I think she's given up her subscriber mail list
hugs and blessings

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 4:43 AM, Grace Cangialosi <gracecan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks, Lynn! I used to get these daily pieces, but I was just getting way
> too much emai, and I unsubbed. Maybe I need to get back on her list!
>
> > On Sep 10, 2014, at 11:49 PM, Lynn Ronkainen <ichthys89 at comcast.net>
> wrote:
> >
> > owerful piece from Barbara Crafton+ tonight
> >
> >
> > THE CIVIL WAR
> > Summer films at St Luke's were a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
> Last year it was a group of nature films about birds. The year before that,
> it was African American films. This year, the 150th anniversary of the
> church's founding, we watched Ken Burns' powerful documentary about the
> bloodiest war in American history. It was 1864 when a small band of
> townspeople here in Metuchen began to meet for worship in one of their
> homes -- whatever else they were praying about, the war must have been at
> the top of their list. That house was very near the train station: they
> must have watched soldiers and supplies go by on the rails every day.
> >
> > Nobody alive in America at the time was unaffected. Everybody knew
> somebody who was serving, and most people knew somebody who had died. Many
> families lost more than one son. Some families lost all their sons.
> >
> > Many of the generals in the war, both North and South, knew each other
> from West Point. Some who opposed each other in battle had been classmates.
> John Lafayette Rosser and George Armstrong Custer were roommates. Rosser
> defeated Custer at Trevilian Station in Virginia in July of 1864. In
> October, Custer defeated Rosser at Tom's Brook and seized his entire
> wardrobe, including his underwear.
> >
> > At the war's beginning and before, it seemed clear to some -- on both
> sides-- that the South could not prevail on its own. Its population was
> smaller, and it lacked the large industrial centers the North possessed.
> Both sides anticipated help for the South from its trading partners,
> England and France, who were hungry for the cotton it grew. That help would
> never materialize. Still, raised closer to the land than their Northern
> counterparts, Southern soldiers were more accustomed to many of the things
> essential to military success at the time: horsemanship, the use of
> firearms, familiarity with the terrain. And Southerners counted on the
> ferocity of their devotion to their native soil and the passion of their
> families' connection to it.
> >
> > Thousands perished in a day during some encounters, on both sides. In
> some instances, thousands perished in half an hour. More soldiers died of
> disease than of gunshot, and the grievously wounded outnumbered both of
> these.
> >
> > Sherman's March to the Sea burned its way from Atlanta to Savannah from
> mid-November to just before Christmas of 1864. It was primarily purposed to
> demoralize the civilian population, to convince Southerners that their
> government and its armies could not protect them. It was the largest
> destruction of civilian property in the entire war, destroying homes,
> farmland, animals, tools, equipment, food supplies -- everything in its
> path.
> >
> > Sherman believed that it would hasten the end of the war. Perhaps it
> did. What it did not do was bring peace. Military defeat was one thing; the
> widespread destruction of the people's means of future survival was
> another. The South was laid low for generations. Some would say it has yet
> to recover fully.
> >
> > I am reading Shelby Foote's compendious history of that war. It is slow
> going -- it's a trilogy, and I am only now finishing the first volume. I
> read it after listening to the evening news, sometimes, and it can feel
> like a continuation of what I just heard on the radio. The themes of
> invasion and destruction, the effect of civilian casualties, the way the
> passion of defending one's own land differs from the more distant resolve
> of the invader - it is all still there in war today. In war anywhere, at
> any time in any century. Armed hostilities may cease, but their cessation
> does not really end the war. The peace has yet to be won.
> >
> > Do not expect people to reconcile easily if you destroy their homes or
> kill their children, no matter who you are or why you struck. Do not expect
> them to understand. Do not expect them not to strike back. Do not expect
> the reasons for which the war began to matter much to them -- to matter at
> all, really. The dead remain dead regardless of the reason, regardless of
> the cleanness of the method you used. That cleanness was one sided, anyway,
> clean only for you: the civilian bystander in Iraq killed by a drone
> launched from the air-conditioned comfort of a bunker in Utah bleeds as red
> as if he'd been bayoneted on the spot.
> >
> > We must be careful what we begin. We must be careful of even our noblest
> motivations: a war may be just or unjust, but it is still a war, and a war
> is about death and destruction. It cycles around and around, attack for
> attack, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Do not expect such a deadly symmetry
> to stop of its own accord.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > This email was sent to lronkainen at ichthysdesigns.com by
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