Editor’s Note: There was a question in the morning meeting about where to go in the weekly content production directive. The guy down by the Loading Dock chose not to engage in the end game discussion. He had been muttering about the vulnerability of the U.S. power grid, demonstrated by the Colonial pipeline shutdown. Unfortunately, that led directly to a discussion of alleged environmental advocates who somehow think that hauling fossil fuels by 18-wheeled trucks on busy highways or on trains rolling on thin tracks is safer than pipelines. Or easier to shut down by decree. As you can imagine, that caused a minor furor, and one of the interns was directed to go get the guru a pack of Marlboros, which would keep him down by the Loading Dock for at least twenty minutes. Thankfully, Marlow’s Coastal Empire provides an answer to many things. We can get grid-locked later.
– Vic
We’ve Seen Better Days (And ‘The Bottom Drops Out’)
Coastal Empire
Author’s Note: April brought me several Savannah images and thoughts that follow.
– Marlow
a dirty woolen robe over a night shirt draped on the shoulders of someone who had slept overnight in the bus shelter just down the block
there are few to no windows in the town’s surviving cemetery mausoleums thus the light inside them is obscure, and very gray, even semi-dark
the murkiness of early dawn in Savannah has an unreal quality that plunges rooms into an opalescent grayness
The eligibility of a place to be on the short list of where you want to live your last days doesn’t mean the right supper clubs or the right manners or the right banks. It means suitable and fitting. Well . . . Savannah was fitting and suitable beyond compare, so we chose to spend these years with us almost cleaving only unto it. We needed to have no fear. there could be no compromise, no . . . turning back . . . regardless of where its roads later led.
As we travelled its back country our eyes began to shine and mouths to tremble. We felt compelled to always turn towards the woods. One would follow the other trying to keep us on and mark the path with photos and notes.
We became intent on the chase. There was little noise as we crashed through the weeds and grass overgrown roads and alleyways, dodged around ancient trees that extended sometimes two feet or more into the roadway, bumped over fallen, dried out tree branches, all the while calling out obstacles to one another.
Sometimes after a long day of exploration, we needed an extra glass of bourbon to calm our excited hearts and trembling hands.
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An ever-dwindling number of old Savannahians see themselves as the innocent victims of world envy and hatred . . . conspired against, set upon, and ravaged by the inferior peoples of inferior regions of the USA. This was at once both fascinating and surprising. That Savannah had such a deep history of change and progress after war upon war, disease upon plague, poverty upon rising incomes, racial Jim Crow inequality to today’s diverse and female dominant local government made us a bit skeptical but patient nonetheless as keeping up with the speed of change is difficult.
Believing themselves superior beings, they never publicly admitted to error, while obvious demonstrable historical wrongdoing was met with embarrassed grimaces. The good people of Chatham County knew full well that their plantations were ravaged because they chose to ignore the sweeping changes headlong rushing their way. In reading the North’s and South’s casualty lists, we Americans should have learned the price of looking the other way. Men of truth know for whom the bell tolled. Still many never did and some still haven’t. They cannot face the truth.
Yet, America’s world is today peopled with warrior gods, marching to battlefield hymns, their eyes fixed upon the fiery swords of justice de jour they hold overhead. They believe their enemies, our enemies, are countless and on the rise. These new warriors in shining armor beneath their banners like their historical predecessors breathe fire and promise vengeance.
We old ones know you can’t reform all the people from without. That only comes from within. Basic principles of equality and freedom never have and never will take root in a resistant few. This is axiomatic. Yet, these new warriors have replaced phrases like “All men are created equal” and “Liberté, égalité, fraternité . . .” with “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”
Yeah, none of us old puds see chains or camp barbed wire here in America, but, if left to their own devices, annihilation . . . down to the last babe in arms awaits.
A Carthaginian solution.
—–
Government 101 – 2021 Style
From what I’m seeing and hearing our modern national government is off doing some new things. I think they’ve adopted a revolutionary metaphor for their preferred means of rule. Let’s call it a clock.
No, not the 31-day Constitutional one of times past — a newer, more efficient one.
The force that runs this clock, the spring, or the weight, or whatever it is, is the head of the State. The pendulum is his government which transforms his inspirations or inner voices into law, executive orders, and regulations. At this point, it gets a bit more complicated. The train of gears are the working masses . . . formed into economic units which engage each other without friction (please don’t choke or gag on this). The teeth are the individuals. And just as these are of flawless metal, well ground and polished, so must the individual be of good blood, college trained, physically fit and correct in thought and speech. The clock’s hands stand for progress, which would not occur by fits and starts, but according to the laws of harmonic motion and centrally issued divine guidance.
I sense this new idea’s supporters aren’t real admirers of democracy in its republican form, in which progressive ideas are forged in the heat of friction of debate and horse trading.
Sometimes I think I’m hearing them say they will rule like this for a 1000-years. Their manic urgency seems odd if their millennium rule is gonna happen.
PS: Here are a few last impressions and one image from this week’s back country ride through the Coastal Empire:
We came upon a vast empty space that had been a pine tree farm that was now almost unbearably open after the close quarters of the trees that had crowded the roadbed only a month ago. The slickened surface of the asphalt was melting into the air as the light morning mist that had hung low over the land disappeared.
This landscape was lunar and empty. The treed earth had been shorn with only small stumps, mounds of sun scorched brown branches, dirt, and holes being visible. Nothing moved. Nothing lived.
In the distance alongside the road was the putrid remains of a deer. A layer of black fur covered it. As we closed in on it, we saw the fur was actually composed of flies, hundreds of them. We didn’t slow down, let alone linger.
Above us screamed at no more than 300 feet of altitude, two loaded F-35’s enroute the mammoth Combined Arms mission training complex to our south outside of Richmond Hill at Fort Stewart.
We focused on our task at hand — seeing what was around the next bend in the road as I mashed the accelerator and the supercharger commenced to whine.
A keen bird’s eye view of our car’s movements revealed our path to be balletic. Beautiful even. The Hellcat twisted and almost corkscrewed as the terrain urged us along with the engine whining and the exhaust thrumming, as the car dipped and rose through the western hills.
Despite our speed of advance, we were like sleepwalkers, unsure of where we were headed other than forward.
The meadow grass in the distance swayed in the light breeze. This place was beginning to turn white gold in the midday sun. We sped through it.
Ahead on a plain, a single live oak tree towered. Untouched. On its highest branches, leaves danced in the wind.
We smiled at the supremely serene American scene.
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