scattered shots

[grinninfoole]

It's rather cold out, so today I wore my grandfather's old coat.  It's a genuine raccoon fur full-length coat, and it's about 90 years old.  It's very heavy, and is the warmest garment I have ever worn--warmer even than my cloak.  (Were I to wear them together, I would probably develop Dave's Syndrome. :)

I have been spending a lot of imaginative energy on D&D of late, in particular the Midnight setting.  (In brief, imagine something like Middle Earth 100 years after Sauron won, and you are part of the last resistance movement.)  D&D, as a game system, is built around heroic fantasy, and not realism, hence 1 guy with a sword can beat 20 others with swords, and I do enjoy it, but mingling it with the constraints of a tragic setting has really captured my fancy.  It helps that we decided to turn Suave's campaign into a share world.  Thus, I ran a two-part story about a mysterious island (I have to pat myself on the back for better than normal planning), and next (alias TBA) will run a story in which we will be unit commanders for an isolated dwarven enclave with an army of orcs bearing down on us for a winter seige.  Where it will go from there, I don't know, but I'm excited about weaving stories back and forth, and maybe having cross-overs between games. 

Had lovely meals/chats last week with Morlock and Syd and later with Allen Steele, asking him for advice on getting published.  The most pressing advice was to write every day, which I haven't been, at all, what with thinking about Midnight, and about the game I'm running on the Cloth.  Still, good chat, and I shall start writing again tomorrow.

Oh, and last Saturday, M and I went to a friend's house in Vermont where we joined a group for a reading of Richard III.  Compulsive narcissist that I am, I was allowed to read the part of Dick III himself, and I did well, for the most part.  (I stumbled over a few scenes I didn't remember, but I think I managed the famous opening and ending lines as actual speech, as opposed to declamations.)  M read Lady Anne (amongst others) and our friends SV and CSD were there, too.  (SV was a fun Buckingham to play against.)  One thing that struck me on re-reading the play was how so many of the characters bemoaned their fates, and so few of them recognized that they had it coming, because they were mostly treacherous, murdering assholes.


I heard some of the State of the Union address, and read most the text. It's nice that Bush is beginning to recognize some of the real priorities facing the world (like global climate change and a collapsing health care system) and that he's at least somewhat aware of how badly the war he started for no good reason has become a major disaster, but he's still a liar,a weasel, and a shameless incompetent.  His horrible example continue to make the Democrats look much better than they deserve to look.  Where are the conservatives like my dad, people who, even when they are terribly wrong or complete dicks, nevertheless concern themselves with sensible, grown-up concerns like not spending more than we have, making sure that whatever policy we pursue will at least accomplish its stated goal, and not starting another fight when you haven't finished the first?  It seems increasingly that the only "conservative" voices out there are people like Rush Limbaugh, who admitted in an NPR interview today that what really drives his radio show is greed--bigger audience = higher advertising rates.  Jefferson and Washington are forever tainted by their ownership of slaves, but even today, they look good in comparison because they were driven by more than avarice.  (Though they were both in it for the money, too.)

Comments

[sydneycat.livejournal.com]

Random thought...have you read the book on Washington's Expense Account during the Revolutionary War? If not I'll lend it to you...it's hilarious. He was one shrewd bugger. 'Oh no, I don't need a salary! I'll just submit an expense report after the war....when you'll have to pay up because I saved your asses. Oh, and did I mention that includes my love of Port?' HEH.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I think Washington is less tainted than Jefferson, even though he could be a right ruthless bastard with his slaves (he had one of his overseers move them across state lines to prevent their emancipation on one occasion)-Washington freed his slaves when he died, but Jefferson didn't. (Not even the ones he probably fathered...)

Two things that amused me about the state of the union:

• The shout-out to Nancy Pelosi, which made it very clear that she is, like the President, part of a political class where membership is oft determined by inheritence. We are rapidly approaching the day when the phrase when Adam delved and Eve spanned, who was then a Congressman? will be appropriate.
  
• Bush mentioned several Presidents...all Democrats.
  

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

True, but you'll only hear it during Wat Tyler's audition for American Idol, in which he'll be panned by all the judges.

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

Washington looks better to us today because he didn't write eloquently about how evil slavery is. I give the man full credit for refusing to let his officer corps stage a coup and make him king--one of a very few people in human history to choose principle over ambition. I admire him for that. But he still owned slaves, and didn't see the need to abolish the custom. It's akin to liking Nixon for, say, his role in creating the EPA, but still not forgiving him for Watergate. One can choose which aspects of character and history to emphasize, but one must not lose sight of either part of the story.

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

I never did see that, but it doesn't surprise me. I can't recall the details, but I believe that, during his service in the Seven Years War, Washington made sure to have the soldiers in his command travel along a route or to an area that he planned to buy--either helping to clear a road that would allow him to profit, or else helping him to survey the area. Either way, he took the opportunity of his military service to score himself the inside dope on a real-estate deal.

I think Dan Rostenkowski did something similar a few years ago.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

What is the title of that book? It sounds like a fun read.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I thoguht I had replied to this..my apologies for doing so late.

Washington did speak of the evils of slavery, in private. He apparently grew more and more anti-slavery as he got older, especially after he came into contact with the Marquis de Lafayette. No one is sure why he didn't talk about it more in public, though some people think he was afraid the issue would split the nation.

Apparently, he didn't manumit his slaves after he came to dislike slavery because he was afraid they'd be left to fend for themselves, though he did stop buying slaves.

aLso, I was wrong-his will said his slaves would be freed on his wife's death, but she freed them before that.

I don't like Nixon at all. Creating the EPA is, in my mind, of a piece with the treachery that marked the man's life, since it went against the philosophy of government he supposedly believed in.

On the scales of his life, Washington comes out overall, in my opinion, pretty well, even with his flaws. Nixon, on the other hand...it's hard to find anything but flaws about that wretched tyrant.

[sydneycat.livejournal.com]

I don't have it at hand...If you were local I could just lend it to you....it's on my desk at home. I'll snag the title this evening.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I am unfortunately not local, which means I only interact with grinninfoole and his friends via the æther, though that might change if I ever make a trip to MA again.

[sydneycat.livejournal.com]

Well, here is the terribly creative title: George Washington's Expense Account, by Gen. George Washington & Marvin Kitman PFC. (RET.) Happy Reading!

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[grinninfoole.livejournal.com]

I don't actually LIKE Nixon, but I approve of some of his actions in office.

Mrs. Washington did, indeed, free the slaves early. However, as someone else at UMass pointed out to me, that may simply have been prudence. After all, the terms of her husband's will were known to the slaves, and provided them with a powerful motive to murder her.