Those who know Me (and even some who don’t, still) know that:
(Here’s a little secret: I’m a history buff with my own particular, sometimes slightly compulsive, obsessions. sissy boy j. had no idea what he was really doing when he took Me for a drive down Monument Avenue one Sunday evening in the fall.) See GOOD PART #1 in the first book.
I love that Richmond, Virginia is surrounded by historical artifacts (otherwise freakish, otherwise perverted). This past Monday, as a matter of fact, marked the 149th anniversary of the Battle of Gaines’s Mill.
Even though they eventually lost in the American version of civil war, Confederates won this battle, said to be the most intense fighting of the whole entire war. It’s what lead one Union soldier to say that “Hell itself seemed to break loose.”
All sorts of clever freakishness and natural perversions broke out of this battle. Go here for full battle details.
When Union General George B. McClellan sailed his Army of the Potomac down the Chesapeake Bay and started slowly marching it across the Peninsula, he had one main objective: take Richmond (the Capital of the Confederacy) down. Just the previous day, on June 26, 1862, his Union soldiers had successfully beaten back General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate soldiers at the Battle of Mechanicsville, on the outskirts of Richmond, in the county of Hanover.
Even though Lee was still holding, the last thing he expected was a retreat by the Union. McClellan, however, knew that “Stonewall” Jackson’s troops had just arrived as victorious Confederate reinforcements. Further feeding into McClellan’s fear was an elaborate ruse directed by theater enthusiast and Confederate General John B. Magruder involving a hot air balloon flying overhead along with much noise and movement along Confederate lines. (Clever boys.)
Note here: aerial reconnaissance as we know it in the United States today began with hot air balloons during the civil war.
Richmond’s elite, including the Confederate president himself, Jefferson Davis, (again, see GOOD PART #1 for a “first date” outing with “My little southern capital boy.”) gathered as witnesses safely behind Confederate lines. Freakishly – they could hear no sounds of the fighting that they could see even though the battle was taking place only a few miles away, due to a phenomenon called “acoustic shadow” created by pockets of dense moist air.
Interesting momentary statement by nature: being able to see, but not to hear. Occasionally I’ve been known to (otherwise obsessively) explore (otherwise classic) American films. It makes me think of the film, “Blindness,” the adaptation of the novel with the same name by Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author José Saramago.
A mass epidemic of blindness where victims succumb to an expanse of dazzling white as if they were “swimming in milk” strikes an unnamed society. Everything degenerates fairly quickly into dehumanization; violence, killing, and brutality. Then one day the blindness lifts.
When Hell itself seems to break loose, boys and girls, here’s to maintaining clear sight.
