Just a Beautiful Love Letter

https://www.historynet.com/sullivan-ballou-letter-mystery.htm

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.   Our movement may be one of a few days’ duration and full of pleasure–and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine O God, be done.

If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing–perfectly willing–to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt . . .  

I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death . . .   Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.  

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar—that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.  

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have oftentimes been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience will we meet to part no more.  

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night–amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours–always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.   Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.   As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father’s love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue-eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers his and hers I call God’s blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.  

Sullivan

Sullivan Ballou died at age 32, leaving behind a wife, Sarah, two children and a letter written to his spouse that would make him famous. Interestingly, however, the letter was never mailed, but was instead supposedly discovered in Ballou’s trunk. Also perplexing is that of the five copies of the missive known to exist, none is in handwriting that matches Ballou’s penmanship. Both factors call into question the document’s authenticity. Regardless, the letter remains as a testament to the tragedy of the Civil War for thousands of soldiers and their families.

Read All about it, many twists to the story.

https://www.historynet.com/sullivan-ballou-the-macabre-fate-of-a-american-civil-war-major.htm#

 

The Woman in the Window

This was a lousy book in any case but for some or other reason it seems some women liked it.

BUT The best-selling author of The Woman in the Window has been exposed, but he’s just the newest con in the canon. A Literary Scammer.

You can read it here.

https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2019/02/what-my-afternoon-with-daniel-mallory-reveals-about-literary-scammers?mbid=nl_CH_5c5b199ff7b7320adf2c1533&CNDID=52736924&utm_source=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_brand=vf&utm_mailing=vyf_vanityfair_news_newdb_active_20190206%20(1)&bxid=MjUxNTA4MzY4NjkxS0&hasha=684273fe26b62ac134ef962aea81c7a0&hashb=db91679b020c42591c54f9333b6a68ffc84682cd&spMailingID=15086262&spUserID=MjUxNTA4MzY4NjkxS0&spJobID=1580468242&spReportId=MTU4MDQ2ODI0MgS2

The evil Men do.

In “The Garden of Evening Mists”by  Tan Twang Eng , one of the main characters, Magnus Pretorius, was a veteran of the Anglo-Boer War . These are the less graphic and harrowing photographs.

Lord Kitchener was a war criminal.  He was never stripped of this title neither have I ever seen an apology of sorts.

If you can stomach it watch the photographs. This is no  longer taught in schools – but of course!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4850592/Photos-reveal-plight-Afrikaners-concentration-camps.html

The Woman in the whatever

At the moment I am a bit allergic to reviews especially on Goodreads. especially after the woman in the Window. Somebody gave a good review which I love  on Amazon and which I agree with. “One star, One word – cr*p”.

It seems to me every second book has the title The woman or the girl….. and then suddenly it becomes a psychological thriller. And I have not come across anyone that really deserves more than 2 stars. What have we become  – an uneducated reading nation of sorts? What happens if you give THE WOMAN ON THE WINDOW 5 stars and you get to read a really good book say like The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes? Will you recognise it Dear Person who gives the Woman….. 4 or 5 stars?

Anybody can Google DSM5 and get the definition of some psychological disorder and pass a book off as such a thriller. As for reality? Far, far  removed. I mean if you had so much to drink plus all those medication as The Woman…. the Window you would probably be dead. Or maybe DSM 5 did not tell the writer that you cannot mix alcohol and pills without a limit.

At least I am not the only one that thought the writer was a woman. It is a man. Hmf!

I am eager to start the new Julian Barned book, The Only Story.

The Only Story opens with a question: “Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less and suffer the less?” In The Sense of an Ending, the circumscribed life of Tony Webster was in some ways a response to that question (“I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and succeeded – and how pitiful that was”). This time, Barnes’s narrator, Paul, chooses love, but ends up in the same bitter and regretful place. It’s interesting that Barnes should spend so much of his late career turning over the themes of his first novel, Metroland, published almost 40 years ago. That book allowed its protagonist, Christopher, to end up with some measure of comfort in the banality of a suburban marriage. Here, viewed from what Barnes calls “the other end of life”, there’s only the dull, intransitive rage of a terminally disappointed man.  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/04/the-only-story-review-julian-barnes

What Sagan said still applies

Me-Too snowflakes

It has become like a mass hysteria.And everybody is joining in especially the hypocrites that knew about it but never said a thing.Yes you Meryl Streep.
And of course the Golden (what is so Golden about it, it is all plastic?) Globes have become a platform for those who seek attention. Hollywood disgust me. After all they are only  mere actors desperately seeking attention.
So?
One individual that took full advantage of appearing on stage was Oprah Winfrey. Most definitely and without doubt to further her own ambitions.

Does anyone remember all the pseudoscience and quackery she’s promoted?

Pseudoscience and quackery? Oh, yes. In the early years of this blog, Oprah was a frequent topic of Orac’s Insolence, and for good reason. She was one of the foremost promoters of pseudoscience, quackery, and general New Age BS in the world. If you think I’m exaggerating, just think of it this way. Oprah not only gave the world America’s quack, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and the foremost promoter of pseudoscience in mental health, Dr. Phil McGraw, who also stands accused of providing alcohol and drugs to addicts featured on his show in order to ramp up the drama factor. It would be bad enough if that were all she had done, but it’s not. https://respectfulinsolence.com/2018/01/09/oprah-winfrey-president-anyone-remember-pseudoscience-quackery-shes-promoted/

As I say, she is an ecumenical promoter of fantasies. Remember the satanic panic, the mass hysteria during the 1980s and early ’90s about satanists abusing and murdering children that resulted in the wrongful convictions of dozens of people who collectively spent hundreds of years incarcerated? Multiple Oprah episodes featured the celebrity “victims” who got that fantasy going. When a Christian questioner in her audience once described her as New Age, Winfrey was pissed. “I am not ‘New Age’ anything,” she said, “and I resent being called that. I don’t see spirits in the trees, and I don’t sit in the room with crystals.” Maybe not those two things specifically; she’s the respectable promoter of New Age belief and practice and nostrums, a member of the elite and friend to presidents, five of whom have appeared on her shows. New Age, Oprah-style, shares with American Christianities their special mixtures of superstition, selfishness, and a refusal to believe in the random. “Nothing about my life is lucky,” she has said. “Nothing. A lot of grace. A lot of blessings. A lot of divine order. But I don’t believe in luck.” https://slate.com/health-and-science/2018/01/oprah-winfrey-helped-create-our-irrational-pseudoscientific-american-fantasyland.html

But do yourself a favour and read the book by kitty Kelley.
If there was one untruth Oprah would have sued Kitty to hell and back!

Things we thought were facts

In 1271, the Venetian merchant Marco Polo set off with his father and uncle on a legendary trek across Asia. Over the course of his 24-year journey, Polo would become one of the first Europeans to chronicle the cities, cultures and technology of the Far East. Discover 11 fascinating facts about the life of one of history’s greatest explorers.

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/11-things-you-may-not-know-about-marco-polo

but

 There is no real record of the explorer Marco Polo. 

• Nowhere is he mentioned in Chinese writings and the Chinese were well known for documentation  and certainly they would have documented at least something about Marco Polo especially as he was claimed to be a mayor of some small province.
• A Man called Marco Polo did live in Venice but that was not the Marco Polo we learned about.
• What a disappointment!

In a book published in 1995, “Did Marco Polo Go to China?”, Frances Wood, the head of the Chinese section at the British Library, also argued that he probably did not make it beyond the Black Sea.

She pointed out that despite being an acute observer of daily life and rituals, there is no mention in Marco Polo’s chapters on China of the custom of binding women’s feet, chopsticks, tea drinking, or even the Great Wall.

“There’s nothing in the Venetian archives to say that the Polo family had direct contact with China at all,” Dr Wood told The Daily Telegraph. “Nothing from China has ever been found in the possessions they left behind.

“One theory is that Marco Polo copied a sort of guide book on China written by a Persian merchant. Only about 18 sentences in the entire manuscript are written in the first person – it is extremely rare for him to say ‘I saw this with my own eyes’.

“I believe that rather than being one person’s account, it’s a sort of medieval database of European knowledge of the Far East at the time.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/8691111/Explorer-Marco-Polo-never-actually-went-to-China.html

you can also read all about MP in Wikipedia of course. That is if you never read his travels.

You can see

What a wonderful world …

The human eye, Darwin argued, could have evolved from a simple light-catching patch of tissue of the kind that animals such as flatworms grow today. Natural selection could have turned the patch into a cup that could detect the direction of the light. Then, some added feature would work with the cup to further improve vision, better adapting an organism to its surroundings, and so this intermediate precursor of an eye would be passed down to future generations. And, step-by-step, natural selection could drive this transformation to increased complexity because each intermediate form would provide an ad–vantage over what came before. https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-surprising-origins-of-lifes-complexity-20130716/

 

Come Fly with Me

Amazing absolutely amazing.

 

The Eyes of Eagles

 

An eagle’s flight from the top of the world’s tallest building to his handler below. An eagle was fitted with a camera and released from the top of the 2,715 foot Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai.
The eagle has no idea where the tiny speck of land was that his handler is standing on or what it looked like among all of the other islands and buildings and people. Somehow from that altitude, the eagle actually picks out and recognizes the trainer from all of the other objects, people, etc. You can see him looking, looking, looking for the trainer, completely invisible to a human eye and the camera, then fold his/her wings and drops like a bullet straight to his trainer.

What surprised the experts is not only how efficiently the eagle spots his trainer from that altitude, but how smooth its flight is with no camera shake whatsoever, even when it goes into a power dive.

 

 

Click on the link below to enjoy this record flight. https://www.youtube.com/embed/ 6g95E4VSfj0?rel=0

Smart Mrs Dragonfly

In order to avoid males of the species bothering them for sex, female dragonflies fake their own deaths, falling from the sky and lying motionless on the ground until the suitor goes away.

 

A study by Rassim Khelifa, a zoologist from the University of Zurich is the first time scientists have seen odonates feign death as a tactic to avoid mating, and a rare instance of animals faking their own deaths for this purpose. Odonates is the order of carnivorous insects that includes dragonflies and damselflies.

But you can read the article here – http://www.newsweek.com/female-dragon-flies-fake-death-avoid-sex-evolution-591494

Reminds me of :-

Thought from the Greatest Living Scottish Thinker–Billy Connolly.  “If women are so bloody perfect at multitasking, How come they can’t have a headache and sex at the same time?”