Can I Just Speak For A Second About How Much Of An Absolute Crazy BAMF Stonewall Jackson Was?
Can I just speak for a second about how much of an absolute crazy BAMF Stonewall Jackson was?
I mean, this was a guy who was raised in the mountains of Virginia (later West Virginia) who pulled through West Point because of his skills in math and sheer tenaciousness. But he LIKED the army, and even after the Mexican American War he was teaching students what it meant to be a soldier.
When the South seceded from the Union, Jackson followed his State and was recruited into the Confederacy.
“Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken and can then be destroyed by half their number.”
He earned his nickname of “Stonewall” in the Battle of First Manassas (First Bull Run as it was known in the North) when he stood in the midst of battle without retreating and thus inspired his men and the surrounding Rebels to stand their ground and chase the Union off. He became one of General Robert E. Lee’s most trusted soldiers and friends, so much so that when Jackson died Lee reportedly said, “He has lost his left arm. I have lost my right.” Jackson and Lee together won so many battles due to their combined tactical genius and tenaciousness that if Jackson hadn’t died then it’s possible that the Confederacy may have won the war.
Aside from his (near) brilliance on the field, Stonewall was well known for being eccentric. A list of habits and beliefs he had baffled contemporaries and still fascinates people today:
1) He believed that one of his arms was longer than the other and so would frequently held up the “longer” one to aide in better circulation.
2) Although debatable today, it was also said that Jackson loved chewing on whole lemons and was rarely seen without one even in the midst of battle.
3) He believed that if he had pepper in his food that it would make his left leg ache.
4) He was known by contemporaries as a “champion sleeper”, able to sleep anywhere-- even falling asleep with food in his mouth.
And that was only a few things.
And of course Jackson was a religious zealot, believing that he belonged to the “army of the Living God.” His religious views made it so that he was unafraid even in battle, believing that the Lord was utterly in control and would call him home only when it was time. He wouldn’t even mail a letter on Saturday in fear that it would be in transit on a Sunday.
But of course his respect of the Sabbath didn’t stop him from participating in battle.
He was also oddly bloodthirsty. He was known for his need for pursuit of the enemy, and there was even once when asked how the Confederacy could stop the Union from pursuing them, Jackson replied, “Kill them! Kill them all!”
Jackson has got to be one of the most fascinating figures of the American Civil War. I can’t say that this man was as great a hero as history will sometimes paint him but he was still someone who even today is hotly debated among historians. Some say he was a religious nut. Still others say that he was a hero of the South.
I think he was just a man, but he was someone who history will never quite figure out. Stonewall Jackson observed the Sabbath but was unafraid to kill the enemy. He was a borderline hypochondriac but he was unafraid of death. He’s simply a contradiction to himself in a lot of ways, and I think that is what makes Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson still such a figurehead of the Civil War and, I daresay, one its most fascinating.
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Just listened to a much-garbled but still understandable recording of Queen Victoria speaking. As someone historically interested, the thing that saddens me most is the fact that we'll never know what these people sounded like. Did Abraham Lincoln really sound as high-pitched as contemporary accounts said he did? What was it like to hear Harriet Tubman speak? There's a few seconds of silent video of Anne Frank, but what did she sound like? Every so often I find myself looking up videos of people like Eva Peron and I listen to her speak and she's alive to me in a way a lot of these people aren't and it's all because I can listen to her voice.
hey so protip if you have abusive parents and need to get around the house as quietly as possible, stay close to furniture and other heavy stuff because the floor is settled there and it’s less likely to creak
Let’s all take a moment to appreciate over-protective Ellie Miller in S02E07:
Claire Ripley comes marching up to the courthouse with her murder face on.
Ellie sees her come in. She knows Hardy is downstairs and that Claire is heading for him. Alarm bells go off.
shit shit shit shit shit
…aaaaand she’s off, faster that Mad Max in his Interceptor, ready to cut off Claire and stop her from getting to Hardy before she does
We see the target, sitting awkwardly alone and pretending to text on his phone.
Ellie has run ahead of Claire and she’s watching her like a hawk, positioning herself between the two of them, ready to fight to defend her large idiot friend
Claire reaches into her backpack. Ellie’s watching her, still a few strides ahead
She looks at Hardy, who is completely oblivious to what’s happening (jfc Hardy this is why she doesn’t trust you to look after yourself)
And bam. When Claire slaps the pendant against Hardy’s chest, Ellie is right there, literally having positioned herself between the two of them to make sure her tall skinny Scottish bastard isn’t in any danger
(ง •̀_•́)ง
Without even thinking about it Ellie ran (ran!) to throw herself bodily between Hardy and a murderous-looking Claire. It turned out to be a complete overreaction on her part, but if Claire had reached into her backpack to pull out a weapon instead of the pendant, Ellie would have been on top of her and wrestling her into submission faster than you could blink, and probably before Hardy was even aware that she was in the building. For all her complaints about him, Ellie is so instinctively protective of Hardy. Her entire attitude is basically “he may be big but he is fragile I’ll fight ur ass don’t test me”
u ever hear a drum beat that changes ur life
“What town is that?”
Longstreet looked. “Gettysburg,” he said.
The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara, p. 16
It’s been a long time since I’ve watched season 1 of Broadchurch straight though, but man, the Latimer family kills me. Ashamed to say that when I first watched the series Beth got a lot of my attention (not really ashamed, just guilty), and then Mark ripped my heart out in S3, and meanwhile poor Chloe just got shafted to the wayside. Watching the series though again as a whole recently, though, I found myself paying a lot of attention to her.
This is the moment that served to punch me in the gut the first time, but it’s so much worse now in hindsight. She’s a fifteen year old girl who’s just lost her baby brother to a horrific murder, and now on top of that grief she’s overhearing her parents’ marriage falling apart.
And she’s probably thinking that it’s her fault. She got Becca Fisher to confess to the police she was having an affair with Mark to get him off a murder charge, sending her the assurance that ‘no one else needs to know’. But Beth finds out anyway, and Chloe doesn’t know how she does. She likely assumes the police told her, which in her mind paints her as the guilty one in all this, because if she hadn’t told Becca to talk to the police, Beth wouldn’t have found out.
It’s just a sad moment all the way around, and beautifully shot. She’s still a child struggling with her own grief over a dead sibling, but the camera angle shows her isolated. Her parents’ door is closed, obviously because of their argument, but it also shows Chloe’s extreme loneliness in this moment. Is it any wonder why she had a room at Dean’s to help her forget she’s the ‘dead boy’s sister’?
Why Red Dawn(1984) is a good movie
•The movie shows guerilla warfare accurately, and the various ways a small group of people can successfully attack a larger group.
•The Wolverines are the main characters but they are NOT always shown as the Good Guys.
•The Soviet Union is the invading army but its soldiers are shown to be just regular human guys several times throughout the film.
•The movie is not your typical America-Is-the-Best war film. The Wolverines are not soldiers, they have not been trained, they don't make impassioned speeches about how they are the Good Guys and that America Is the Best.
•Several of the characters show signs of serious psychological trauma as the storyline progresses, one of them turning into a danger to his fellow Wolverines and another who by the end of his storyline finds his surviving the war to be impossible.
•6 OF THE 8 CHARACTERS DIE. WHICH SHOULD HAPPEN IN A WAR MOVIE.
Storm blowing in. Love it when it looks like this.
