The 11th Hour, of the 11th Day, of the 11th Month
HT 
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Comments on this entry are closed.
Rickenbaker’s autobiography is well worth your time.
As is this re-creation of sound ranging equipment recording the cessation of firing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTA10n1Ztqo
Awhile ago I was standing in the kitchen and my wife came in and said, “Look, (pointing at the clock) it’s 11:11…on 11/11!” I said, “Yay, it’s historical! Take a picture!” Then we laffed and laffed and laffed.
Eddie R. noted after he landed that there were new bullet holes in his plane…during his flight to the front that day, before the Armistice, the Germans were still firing at him.
It should have happened four years earlier, with the troops of both sides returning home to string up the politicians, bankers, and arms merchants that started and perpetuated that pointless mass-slaughter.
Deep, abiding respect to all veterans on this day.
Dear Skorpion
We in this house share “Deep, abiding respect to all veterans on this day.”
Only Europeans would do that. You think Africans or Asians or native Americans will do that?
The Great War killed Europe demographically and intellectually, IMHO. The best and brightest of their generations were slaughtered in those fields, and to ensure the death of Europe, they repeated it twenty years later. The artists, writers, scientists, inventors, musicians; those that would’ve led Europe into the 40’s and 50’s as some of the best of the world, instead turned to organic matter.
From the old shop – my grandfather’s Armistice Day, near Montfaucon:
http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2010/11/november-11th.html
“Deep, abiding respect to all veterans on this day.”
Indeed.
And for those interested, do read this recent history; what happened to the 79th Division (my grandfather’s unit) was criminal, and Pershing did himself no honor by aiding the cover-up:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Betrayal-at-Little-Gibraltar/William-Walker/9781501117916
Skorpion, You are spot on. And if you dig a little deeper you will find that it is and has been one family that has financed all sides. TC, you eloquently stated an ugly truth.
It was, “the war to end all wars”, they said.
I marvel at his work.
And yet today Norman Rockwell would be branded by the Left as being a White Supremacist, among other things.
Norman Rockwell abides. Rifles rise dynamically; soldiers abut and defend. The native colors of the uniforms rise up in the pageant of our military past, but these aren’t regulars – they are American men. The militia. Eyes fixed and dangerous.
There is nothing “correct”, polite or yielding about this painting. Like the Bill of Rights, it spells out the fact that we are at war. Have you read the Bill of Rights? It has teeth and it ain’t friendly.
World War I. I read Rickenbacker’s book, but it was so long ago and I completely forgot that bird’s eye view of the breakout of peace. Oh, that war was a waste, was it? Fuck off, mate! World War I was the event that accompanied and sealed the end of the monarchies. Did the Bilderburgs do that? The Illuminaughty? Uhhh, I doubt it, Slick.
We are living critical history as we speak. Do try to keep up, Bueller.
Army National Guard. Infantry Captain. 1975-1985.
If Rickenbacker has a memorial anywhere, I’m sure that the young leftists will demand it be torn down.
For ‘reasons’.
“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”
George Orwell