perpetual memory loss

I have some big changes coming up in my life over the next few months and I have been planning it all out trying to make sure that my transition from school to the job market goes as smoothly as possible in this crazy economic climate.  However, things are quickly unraveling.  Today, for example, was my big comprehensive final that I need to pass in order to graduate.  Well I did a little research found out all the ins & outs and created a strategy.  I decided to pick the three classes that went together–Colonial America 1600-1690, Colonial America 1690-1765, and American Revolution.  I figured I would study for those three classes write one enormous essay split it into three parts and then BAM! I’d be pretty much done.  Sounds like a good idea right?  Nope total fail.  You see even though they told me I would have a choice from all the classes I had taken they lied.  They threw me a nasty 12-6 curve ball and gave me a partial list of classes.  Once I read the questions and saw that my plan had gone awry my mind went blank and I stared at the computer blinking for the next 10 minutes.  I then looked to see if any of my current classes were on there since they were still fresh in my mind–negative on that point too.  (Funny thing was that the other person from the history department that took the test at the same time had all three of the questions that we had studied for plus questions from all his current classes.)   In anguish I looked over the list of questions again and saw that there were two questions I had studied for and the rest I hadn’t.  Most of the remaining questions were terrible and way too ambitious–on the teachers part–for me to answer cogently in an essay with the limited time I had.  So I decided to answer the Civil War question even though I really don’t remember much from the class.  Well to make a long story less long I somehow grinded out an essay (not very good ones mind you) for each question.  Some of you may say well that’s your fault for not studying for all of your classes, but while that may be true, I had a good strategy and the thought of studying for 10 classes over the last 2 years didn’t sound very appealing or a productive use of my time.  I figured better to know a few really well than all of them not very well at all.  Oh well I’ll find out soon enough it I scraped by.  So that was the first plan that went wrong.

My next plan was to spend this next week holed up in my hovel working on homework in an attempt to get ahead on my semesters workload–I have three research essays that I don’t have topics for never mind the books.  Novel idea for me since I always procrastinate and end up slammed at the end of the semester and well that is starting to get really old.  Besides along with my regular workload I have extra research work to do for teachers, I have to find a job, and a new place to live.  So it would definitely be a good idea to take this break to get ahead on everything so I’m not living in a box in a few months.  Well as luck would have it JetBlue was having some kind of blow out on tickets to Vegas.  I found a round trip ticket for $225 (how crazy cheap is that?) and decided to take advantage of it.  So there goes my plan of not procrastinating and putting my nose to the grindstone and getting some much needed work done.  Now I guess I can look forward to a long stressful last couple months of this semester.  I’m sure this will be an epic week in Vegas, and it’s a break that I do need, but keep your fingers crossed that it all works out and you don’t see me teaming up with a midget and dancing to Thriller in the subway.

I recently finished Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals and it is an incredibly good read.  The book begins on May 18, 1860, the day when the Republican Party was set to select their Presidential candidate, and shows the demeanor of the four potentials: William Seward, Salmon Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln.  After this chapter ends she begins a multiple biography detailing the lives of the the four main rivals.  For the next ten chapters she deftly details these men’s lives from their beginnings all the way until the election of Lincoln. Throughout she also sprinkles in the lives of other notable people:  Mary Todd, Stephen Douglas, Edwin Stanton et. al.  She does this by focusing each chapter on a period of time and then splitting the chapter into four pieces.  Although it may sound awkward it works well and the reader is carefully guided through with her strong narrative.  To further help the casual reader she has removed all footnotes and instead has opted for extensive end notes (while the historian in me misses the footnotes the end notes are extensive enough that most people won’t miss them but will probably be glad that they are gone).  Her prose is clear and concise and she deftly weaves multiple story lines together so that the reader can follow along easily.

She tries her best to get to the facts about who Lincoln was and what he believed, and she does this by using, not only his words and actions, but those of his rivals.  One of the main strengths of this book is that you can see how all of these men’s opinions about Lincoln changed as they got to know and appreciate his talents.  One person in particular, Edwin Stanton, dismisses Lincoln as a “long armed ape” upon his initial meeting with him; but years later, after working with Lincoln through the Civil War, he becomes so distraught at his assassination that he has trouble functioning.  This happens time and again throughout the book, and even more stunning than their changes of opinion is that Lincoln took all of these slights without bearing any animosity towards these people.  One of the worst characters was Salmon Chase (I really grew to dislike him) who was way too sanctimonious and kept working against Lincoln, even while he was on the cabinet.  However, Lincoln kept taking the high road because Chase’s talents were needed for the war.

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I finished A Farewell to Arms today–it was a really quick read–and this will be the last time I ever go from a Steinbeck novel to a Hemingway novel.  Their styles are so different that I think I don’t like A Farewell to Arms as much as I may have.  One reason for this is because, if you know anything about Hemingway, you know that his prose is short and succinct.  Where Steinbeck gives the reader an epic description of a sunset, the tilled earth, and a grasshopper Hemingway tells the reader that it is cold and muddy.  And it works it really does there is something about his sparse style that is really gripping and leaves you wanting more.  He gives you the bare essentials and then moves on; it’s almost like watching a chase movie where you have to watch it a few times before you catch everything.  Since this is one of Hemingway’s earlier novels, however, it is also not as strong or polished as his later works and it is easy to tell that he is still trying to perfect his style.  All that would be forgivable if it wasn’t for the fact that the I hated the characters.

A Farewell to Arms is a love story set in World War I betwixt Lieutenant Fredric Henry, an American serving with the Italian army, and Catherine Barkley–a British nurse.  There are a lot of good elements in this story and some very good scenes, but the crux of the story depends on the love affair between the two protagonists, and that element fails.  I never for a second believe in or care about these two characters.  Catherine Barkley seems like a precursor to the babbling bitches from The Hills that infect our airwaves on a daily basis.  The dialog between the two is mind-numbingly terrible and reminds me of the high school couple that would argue about who is going to hang up first.  Bleeetch.  Henry doesn’t fair much better.  He is developed a bit better than Catherine, and instead of being one-dimensional he is one and a half dimensional.  They basically become two characters who I don’t care much about and I tend to root against  instead of for.  Their first few meetings are cringe worthy and I totally don’t buy their summer love-affair, but that’s just me maybe I’m just a cynical Grinch.  Lucky for me it’s a Hemingway novel so you know that it isn’t going to have some crappy Disney fairy book ending.  For me the last thirty pages made up for the first 300.  If you have read For Whom the Bells Toll then you know what Hemingway is capable of.  The relationship between Robert Jordan and Maria is so much more compelling.  By that time Hemingway’s style was set, his dialogue was great, the story was amazing so I think that maybe I was expecting a bit too much out of this one.

There is still a lot to like about this book despite the fact that it’s never going to be, for me, one of those epic books.  Even in this early stage Hemingway’s sentence construction is fascinating, and there is really no one else that does it like him.  He will go from a regular sentence, to a long sentence, to a three or four word sentence that concludes his point succinctly.  Most of his sentences though are brief.  He also has this habit where he will overuse ‘and’ in one sentence and then not use it in the next sentence in an obvious situation.  Like I mentioned above his descriptive prose left a lot to be desired but the more I read of it the more I liked the sparse descriptions.  It works especially well when the characters are in life or death scenarios and instead of plodding through these he briskly describes them and then moves on quickly giving the reader a sense of immediacy that would not come as easily with long plodding prose.  If I want pointers on how to write a brief concise sentence Hemingway is the man.  It’s not as easy as it sounds especially for people who like to write and who like to be as thorough as possible in all of their sentences.  Sometimes it is easy to forget how much can be said with just a few words.  If this book was a movie I would say wait for the DVD.  It’s worth reading if you’re a fan of Hemingway, but don’t buy it just check it out from the public library.  I will refrain from leaving an excerpt this time too as the only part I would like to excerpt might spoil it for those of you who haven’t read it and want to read it.  Tomorrow I will start Team of Rivals and hopefully I can finish that before school starts.

Some things are just meant to be together, like peanut butter & jelly or peanut butter & chocolate (damn why is peanut butter so darn good).  I have always been a big fan of drinking profusely and I have always been a big fan of history, and even though at times I have mixed the two, I have never actually thought of recording said conversations.  So a big thank you to Sara for texting me to inform me of these skits, which combine two of my favorite things, and also fits in perfectly with the theme of  this blog.  This is just one more great combo in life that was meant to be.  Maybe one of these days I’ll get my own episode and I’ll give them a drunken lecture on some random historical event (seriously Pacificus/Helvidius debates are still fresh in my mind and I could wax about it drunk no problem).  Now enjoy Drunk History.

It has been a long time since I wrote the first great stories post, which can be found here.  I didn’t have any ideas for a new one for the longest time until the other day, as I was in the midst of procrastinating by watching TV, a Jericho promo came on the channel I was watching.  I’ve never seen the show so I wasn’t really paying attention until in one section of the commercial there was some kind of battle going down, and the villain told Skeet that he was surrounded and there was no hope.  Ol’ Skeet put on his best tough guy face, and yelled Nuts into the walkie-talkie.  When I heard this I started laughing because here was yet another great real life story that Hollywood was appropriating and ruining.

Bastonge Surrounded

Our story begins in Europe in December 1944.  Five months after D-Day the Allies had been slowly pushing the German forces back.  Hitler sought to turn the tide with a counteroffensive in the Ardennes–even though he was advised against it by his Generals–the battle would come be known as the Battle of the Bulge.  The plan was for the Germans to slice through the American and British forces–cutting them off from each other and valuable supply lines–and to recapture the port of Antwerp.  It was hoped this move would allow the Germans to either negotiate a more favorable peace treaty with each nation separately or it would allow German time to recoup their losses and continue the war with a new generation of military technologies–like jets and rockets.  The offensive began on December 16, 1944 and the Germans made swift advances, in part, because bad weather grounded Allied planes which allowed them to move quickly.  However, after some quick gains the Germans met stiff resistance and their momentum slowed.

One of those areas of stiff resistance was Bastogne, Belgium.  The importance of Bastonge was that it was a crossroads near the German border.  These roads would be needed to quickly move tanks and other supplies overland to the front.  By December 18 the Germans were outside of Bastogne engaged in a fierce fight with the American troops.  For the next three days the Germans were repulsed by the American forces that were defending Bastonge, and the weather continued to worsen.  The masterly use of small-arms fire, artillery, and some tanks allowed the American forces to hold their ground.  Because of their slow progress two Panzer divisions were told to bypass the town, and were subsequently destroyed near Dinant–making the roads held in Bastogne even more important.

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Today I went to Barnes & Noble to buy some books to read over the break.  Fortunately I received a gift card from the history department for my exemplary work this semester, so I was able to buy more books than I was planning on.  So here is what I am going to be attempt to read over the break:

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Oil! by Upton Sinclair

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

I almost got Dostoevsky’s House of the Dead, but instead decided on Oil!.  If I somehow manage to finish all of these I will probably pick it up or I may re-read Don Quixote.  Anyways look out for reviews for these books as I finish them, and feel free to recommend other books that you think I may like (not Twilight though).  Now I just have to figure out which book I am going to start with.

On January 16, 1919 the 36th State ratified the 18th Amendment and Prohibition became the law of the land.  The movement to prohibition was a long one and started in the 1780′s when physician Benjamin Rush warned of the dangers of alcohol.  The real push towards prohibition began after the Second Great Awakening (1790-1840) with the rise of evangelical Protestantism.  What a shock a bunch of religious zealots tried to stop other people from having fun because they were incapable of enjoying themselves.  Although the reasons for the temperance movement–and eventually prohibition–were not entirely religious, those beliefs did play a pivotal role in pushing for the legislation.  Anyways this evangelical movement spawned a plethora of temperance movements throughout the 19th Century.  There was the Washingtonian Movement, the American Temperance Society, the Sons of Temperance, and later in the century the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Anti-Saloon League.

Although these movements preached temperance towards the end of the 19th Century they started to work towards a complete prohibition of alcohol.  By 1919 the 18th Amendment was ratified and in 1920 the Volstead Act was passed to reinforce prohibition.  The grand hope of prohibition was that by forcing people to stop drinking the country would enter a golden age of peace and prosperity.  The truth was much different however:

Prohibition did not alleviate the problems of alcohol—instead it just exacerbated the problems. It created a black market where none had existed before, Americans drank stronger, more lethal alcohol, the purity of which was unregulated, the dosages higher, and violence and alcohol related deaths increased dramatically. Furthermore, criminal organizations were able to take advantage of this new market and rise to prominence. Their rise brought corruption into politics and law enforcement in many American cities…

Once Prohibition went into effect prohibitionists in America lauded the amendment and prophesied that a new and better day was beginning in America. One of those people was the minister Billy Sunday who proclaimed, “the reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.” Unfortunately it was quite the opposite. Prostitution and gambling had always been a staple of organized crime; but once the Eighteenth Amendment took effect organized crime found a new and much more profitable industry. As a result of completely prohibiting alcohol the prohibitionists unwittingly created a vast market; bootlegging became the order of the day and with it came an increase in violence and corruption. Organized crime was able to take advantage of high demands by the populace; and by supplying liquor and beer to citizens of all social standings criminal organizations became rich and powerful. They were able to influence everyone from judges to politicians.

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Once again we come to that time of year when there are a superfluous amount of pointless holidays.  It seems like every religion has like 3 or 4 holidays and they are all mostly lame.  Besides that, this is the time of year when people decide to be nice and generous for a few days or weeks out of the year.  Personally I am of the opinion that this is the time of year to really gut out my assholeness, and not succumb to the pressure of being kind and generous.  In all actuality it is easier to be an asshole at this time of year, because so many people are trying to be nice, for example:

“So dude are you excited for Christmas?”

“No? what am I five?”

“How can you not be excited for Christmas, it’s the most joyous time of year.”

After any stupid statement that is similar to the above you just reply with something like:

“Well I hate Christmas, because any meaning that it originally had is completely lost in our current society.  Instead of a holiday that espouses thanks and goodwill to others it has degenerated into a holiday that is rife with selfishness.  These desires of self have consumed…”  Seriously just keep it going as long as possible, and watch their Christmas cheer turn into a major case of depression or they will just call you an asshole–either way you win.  So what does any of this have to do with Evacuation Day, and what the fuck is evacuation day?

Like I stated above I’m not a big fan of these super commercialized holidays, but I’m a huge fan of the obscure and eclectic holidays of this country: Arbor Day, Flag Day, Constitution Day, and Groundhog’s Day (love the movie too).  This year I am adding Evacuation day to my list of cool eclectic holidays in which to celebrate.  So what is it?  Well let me drop a little bit o’ history on you.

Gen'l Washington

In 1776 hostilities broke out between American colonists, and the British Empire.  After the symbolic victories of Lexington and Concord the British dropped the hammer in New York, and over time sent the Continental Army into retreat.  For the next seven years the British Army would occupy New York City (NY has the distinction of being the longest held American city).  Over those seven years NYC was decimated by fire, and British need.  All trees were cut down, and most other wood–fences, walls, etc–were used for fuel.  The British also let the city fall into complete disrepair.  On top of all of this NYC became the central holding area for American POW’s and it is estimated that over 10,000 American soldiers died while being held on the floating prisons on the East River.
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Today is Veteran’s Day, but it also marks the 90th Anniversary of the the original impetus for this holiday.  Veterans day was not always known by this name, in the beginning it was called Armistice Day, and was meant to celebrate the war to end all wars (that’s WWI for you non-history people).  The Armistice took effect on November 11, 1918 at 11:00 A.M. or at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.  That date quickly became a holiday in Allied nations to commemorate the many Allied troops that had died during the Great War.  Since then, however, we have been through World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, and countless other minor skirmishes throughout the world.

It was President Eisenhower, in 1954, who signed a bill into law proclaiming November 11th as Veteran’s Day, and as such, a day of remembrance for all veterans past and present.  Since then today has been the day (although for 10 years it was celebrated on the 4th Monday of October until it was changed back to November 11th because of the historical significance) that we all take to remember the sacrifices of those who came before us that helped to ensure that we would get to live in a free society.  So if you have the day off take some time to remember the sacrifices of other and then proceed with the drunken revelry.

In honor of the origins of Veteran’s Day I am posting a small selection from Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, which detailed her life through World War I.  This is one of my favorite passages, and if you haven’t read this book yet, you should.  It’s rather long, but it is well worth the time.  This excerpt comes as Vera is working on the French front as a nurse.  It is 1917, and the war has taken a toll physically, mentally, and emotionally on the Allied troops, and the prospects of victory seem slim:

They looked larger than ordinary men;their tall, straight figures were in contrast to the under-sized armies of pale recruits to which we had grown accustomed. At first I thought their spruce, clean uniforms were those of officers, yet obviously they could not be officers, for their were too many of them; they seemed, as it were, as Tommies in heaven. Had yet another regiment been conjured out of our depleted Dominions? I wondered, watching them move with such rhythm, such dignity, such serene consciousness of self-respect. But I knew the colonial troops so well, and these were different; they were assured where the Australians were aggressive, self-possessed where the New Zealanders were turbulent.

Then I heard an excited exclamation from a group of Sisters behind me.

“Look! Look! Here are the Americans!”

I pressed forward with the others to watch the United States physically entering the War, so godlike, so magnificent, so splendidly unimpaired in comparison with the tired, nerve-racked men of the British Army. So these were our deliverers at last, marching up the road to Camiers in the spring sunshine! There seemed to be hundreds of them, and in the fearless swagger of their proud strength they looked a formidable bulwark against the peril looming from Amiens.

Somehow the necessity of packing up in a hurry, the ignominious flight to the coast so long imagined, seemed to move further away. An uncontrollable emotion seized us seized me- as such emotions often seized us in those days of insufficient sleep; my eyeballs pricked, my throat ached, and a mist swam over the confident Americans going to the front. The coming of relief made me realise all at once how long and how intolerable had been the tension, and with the knowledge that we were not, after all, defeated, I found myself beginning to cry.

So that’s it now go out and celebrate, and pour some suds out for those who didn’t make it.

Where it all began.

I’ve been so busy with my working on my paper and finding distractions to keep me from writing my paper that I completely forgot what today was.  I guess that could be considered a testament to how much things have changed of late.  Today is the Marine Corps Birthday.  223 years ago on November 10, 1775 the Continental Congress ordered the creation of the Marine Corps.  As legend would have it the Marine Corps, appropriately, was formed in a bar in Philidalphia–Tun Tavern to be specific.  Even then they knew that someone would have to be either crazy or drunk to join, I was both.  Just a little more than a year later, Christmas Eve 1776, a detatchment of Continental Marines would cross the Delaware River with George Washington, and proceeded to kick the crap out of the gawddamn redcoats at Princeton.  Over the years the Marines have made a name for themselves as fierce fighters and epic drinkers.  For over two centuries the Marine Corps has been striking fear into the heart of America’s enemies, and with luck they will continue to do so for the next 200 years.  So to all my fellow devil dogs out there Happy Birthday.