1863 Civil War

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The single greatest mistake of the war by any general on either side was made by Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, when he sent Pickett’s and Pettigrew’s divisions across that open field, nearly a mile wide, against guns placed on a high ridge and troops down below them, with skirmishers out front. There was no chance it would succeed. Longstreet told him that beforehand and Lee proceeded to prove him right. Having made this greatest of all mistakes, Lee rode out on the field and met those men coming back across the field— casualties were well over fifty percent—and said, It’s all my fault. He said it then on the field; he said it afterwards, after he’d gotten across the Potomac; he said it in his official report a month later. He said, I may have asked more of my men than men should be asked to give. He’s a noble man, noble beyond comparison.

-- Shelby Foote at The Paris Review

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Dreams

A couple of haunting dreams last night. In the first one, I am in bed in the early morning. Mother and Jack are up and rather joyous. They are going out. She asks me in a playful, even flirty voice if I want to go with them. They are going to the park. She says, "There are so many people. It's so beautiful." I just want to fall back asleep and wave them off. I never actually see them. I only hear them. It as though they are in the hallway, ready to head off. I do not believe that they really wanted me to join them anyway. It also sounds to me like Jack is a kid again, maybe four or five years old, and despite my not seeing him, I could swear that he was wearing his old blue sailor outfit, the shirt and shorts.

As I try to go back to sleep, I hear the radio playing in Pop's room. I sneak in to lower the volume, but I don't make it, as he comes out of the bathroom naked. He asks where they went. He then asks, "What exactly did she say?"

I wake up. I go on a bathroom run. What was she really saying? What did the dream mean? My first feeling is that it was saying that Jack is going to die, and that mother has come for him.

I do not know if death is necessarily the best interpretation of that first dream, but there is no escaping it in the second dream. It is just me and Pop. We're on the road in the car and he is driving. This is a dream of our current life alone together. Maybe it is 'grocery day'. He suddenly suffers a bad attack. I do not know if it is a heart attack or a diabetic attack. It reminds me of the night he fell into a paralytic trance. The car is stopped, but we are in the middle of traffic. I get out of the car to seek help, but, immediately, another car slams into our car, sending the vehicle into the ditch, rolling over and over. I rush to the car. I see that Pop was bounced out of it and lies motionless on the ground. I desperately shake him and cry out, "Are you okay? Are you okay?" He is not okay. It is all over.

I am tempted to merge the two dreams, so that, in the first dream, when Pop is asking for mom's exact words, he is concerned because he is the one she should be coming for.

Alexander Hamilton

“You and my dear Hamilton will never cross the Atlantic. I shall never leave this island and, as to meeting in heaven, there will be no pleasure in that.”

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Angelica Church is in England writing to her sister Eliza.

[Source: Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”]

Russia Today

“We all know there will be no real politics. But we still have to give our viewers the sense something is happening. . . . Politics has got to feel like . . . like a movie!”

-- Personality on Russia's state-run TV

The quotations are from a book review of Peter Pomerantsev's "Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible", relating the consolidation of Russia's primary institutions under Putin, especially the media.

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Pomerantsev, a British journalist of Russian heritage, began going to Russia regularly as a reality television producer almost a decade ago, and it’s through that prism that he sees the country. “Reality” is scripted by the dark forces inside the Kremlin. Fake opposition parties engage in fake opposition to those who rule, a fake justice system goes through the motions of the legal process, and the fake television news shapes what Russia’s 143 million citizens are allowed to see.

-- Miriam Elder at The New York Times

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