La Luna

Last night, walking along the colonial era botanical 'museum,' I was moonbushed.

Just a woman, minding her own business, I come to the wide staircase of an open area among the tall cubes that are NYU, and -- BLAM! Right Between the Eyes! -- I get hit by this enormous, perfectly round white moon, struck immobile for several minutes.

She will do that to you.

John Keegan Does The American Civil War Wrong

Stated by no less a Civil War scholar than James M. McPherson, in his NY Times Book Review piece on Keegan's new book, THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR: A Military History.

Sometimes Brits don't seem to really understand the American Civil War. Bernard Cornwell's Starbuck series set within that war, for instance, it's so bad -- and, yes, wrong. He's dropped writing it too. It clearly wasn't winning readership -- this doesn't happen to Cornwell, but this time it did.

McPherson was more kind than the WaPo reviewer who revealed that Keegan stated, iirc, in the Introduction to his book, that he really doesn't understand why the United States had this civil war. That's pretty profound non-comprehension, which for the life of me, I cannot figure out why, since it's very simple to understand. Slavery was the root cause.  The determination of the confederacy to expand the trade and institution as the economic platform for the U.S. throughout the hemisphere, not to mention the already existing North American states.  This was not to be tolerated by the industrial capitalists of the Northern states.  They had their own vision of manifest destiny, and there was no place for this kind of slavery in it.
 
On the other hand, what McPherson more kindly takes Keegan to task about is his profound ignorance of our geography, since his central argument is that this is war as geostrategics.  McPherson has this to say about Keegan's analysis:
 

The analytical value of Keegan’s geostrategic framework is marred by numerous errors that will leave readers confused and misinformed. I note this with regret, for I have learned a great deal from Keegan’s writings. But he is not at top form in this book. Rivers are one of the most important geostrategic features he discusses. “The Ohio and its big tributaries, the Cumberland and the Tennessee,” he writes, “form a line of moats protecting the central Upper South, while the Mississippi, with which they connect, denies the Union any hope of penetration.” The reality was exactly the contrary. These navigable rivers were highways for Union naval and army task forces that pierced the Confederate heartland, capturing Nashville, New Orleans, Memphis and other important cities along with large parts of Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas. Keegan acknowledges this reality later in the book when he notes that these rivers “offered points of penetration to the Union into Confederate territory.” Precisely.

November Schedule So Far

November 8 -- concert Austin;
November 11 -- concert New Orleans Museum of Art
November 14 -- 1st Annual Congo Square Conference address and etc., New Orleans
November 17-18 -- Princeton English Department, Special Guest for this term's "Literary South" course; The Year Before the Flood is one of the texts, in company with a host of brilliant writers including Edwidge Danticatt, Flannery O'Connor, Jamaica Kincaid (who I truly adore), Toni Morrison, and several others.
November 20th -- Joe's Pub, NYC

It's Halloween -- It Must Be Vampires

Kevin Jackson, author of Bite: A Vampire Handbook: A Vampire Miscellany, lists the top 10 vampire novels.

He intelligently leaves out Rice and Meyers:  "(Anne Rice needs no plugging here; nor does Stephenie Meyer, nor Charlaine Harris ...)"

Last Night in San Francisco

Received from Vaquero this AM below.

a 3-hour event which featured a full set of reading -- which has gotten much more dramatic and in more character voices, with about 70 people in attendance, because it was the bookstore's anniverary party, and it was as good a party as i've ever been at in a bookstore. my set of reading was followed by about an hour of drinking (not by me, though i did eat a few alcoholic orange thinslices). There was a celebrity bartender, the owner's sister, who set up a punchbowl next to me, about on a level with my head but a little behind me and just off to the side. then everyone sat back down and i did a full set of singing, the second one i did today.

it was a whole new level of performance for this stuff. i did:

piety and desire
gangster roots
babydoll (with audience singing the coro)
battle call
kiss you down south
her point of view
flow

He was very pleased. Also he met a physician at an earlier event in the day, who offered to give him a steroid shot today, before he gets on the plane to come home.

We've Been Sold Down the River by Obama and the dems

It's official.

Forced purchase of health insurance.

They call that a public option?  AND nothing to be done until 2013.  All these bozos will be gone by then and the shithead liebermans and the rethugz will be back.

Cowards.

In the meantime though The Recession Is Over (tm) and They Keep Saying There's No Inflation (tm), and right here at home in New York the price of milk has fallen, at my supermarket this week milk prices increased 10%.

One term Obama.

California, THE YEAR BEFORE THE FLOOD & The New York Times

It's another beautiful day in California, my boy says.  Here?  Not so much.  Pouring buckets as it has for most of the time lately.  Sigh.

Despite the continuing shoulder and arm pain (the neck and back stuff seems gone, thank goodness), he's enjoying himself.  He played and sang 5 of his songs last night in Santa Barbara.

He's currently on his way to San Francisco.

In the meantime the AP article about The Year Before the Flood published yesterday.  Here's a link to it from the New York Times.

Though there are a couple of errors and mis-quote, it's very good; I really like this part:

Tom Lowenburg, co-owner of Octavia Books in New Orleans, said readers appreciate Sublette's perspective and gift for storytelling.


''He has a very interesting mind,'' he said. ''He's able to draw from all different directions and process it all in a way that is unique. He is one of those people who takes in a lot, has a very broad sense of things and is able to see things differently, but is not pedantic."