(“Battle of Raymond” by Theodore Davis – Harper’s Weekly, June 13th, 1863, from a sketch by Theodore Davis. Image courtesy Wikipedia). These have been the words of Patrick Griffin, taken from an address he gave in 1905, some forty-two years after the events he describes. His unit- the Bloody Tinth- had been ordered from Port […]

Gentle readers, the following paper was read by Patrick Griffin at a meeting of Frank Cheatham Camp, Confederate Veterans of America, at Nashville, Tennessee in the year 1905. The Wright Brothers had just flow the first successful airplane two years before. It is the overlap of generations that is striking here- Patrick had been brought […]

(The Village of Clifden, in County Galway, where Honora Griffin’s odyssey began. The blue eyes in the family came from the Viking raider’s who harassed the coast of Ireland in olden days.) I had the most extraordinary dream last night, vivid beyond belief. There was a fair amount of stuff going on in it that […]

Patrick Griffin: The Adventure of a Lifetime By Rebecca Blackwell Drake (Author Becky Drake, speaking to a gathering of Civil War enthusiasts on the Hill of Death at Champion Hill. That struggle was part of the Union campaign that built the reputation of U. S, Grant, and was part of the strategic effort to secure […]

(Screen shot of the cover of Newsweek with a useful article by Fareed Zakaria on how to live with Radical Islam. Image Newsweek). I just got back from a haircut administered by my Tunisian barber Ben up at the corner. I never go to anyone else, because I can trust Ben implicitly, even when he […]

It is snowing again. I need to get out of here. There was a time when the prospect of the white stuff got my blood going, a sort of winter ‘Surfs up!’ to break out the Rossignols and do some serious schussing. But not so much these days, now that the legs creak and sway, […]

It was an exciting drive up from the Farm in the icy rain. One moment you are hurtling down a wet stretch of asphalt and the next the onboard computer is struggling to keep all four wheels connected to anything at all. It is an automotive equivalent to the arc of history we all shared […]

(A sample of the hundreds of thousands of wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery as part of the Wreaths Across American tribute, 2015). My pal Point Loma wrote this morning to answer a question I asked after thousands of volunteers poured into Arlington National Cemetery to reverently (but efficiently) place hundreds of thousands of wreaths on […]

 So, they are going to indict Dave Petraeus, the General who arguably won the Afghan war before we decided to lose it, and whose dalliance with an Army reservist who was writing an adoring biography of him was revealed by the FBI poking around in his email accounts. I certainly would resent anyone from […]

The madness continues in France. It is still all first-report, and you know as well as I do that first reports are always wrong. What appears to be true it that the brothers Kouachi are dead, and so is a third who conducted his own separate rampage. I hope so. The brothers were holed up […]