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I'm betting only a few folk here might have ever heard of the "Charge of the Light Brigade" so here's a bit of Wikibackground: quote:

The Charge of the Light Brigade was a failed military action involving the British light cavalry led by Lord Cardigan against Russian forces during the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854 in the Crimean War. British commander Lord...
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unita:
great post, thanks for sharing❤
ferkixlll:
Nice to add the Kipling. **To be remembered, later in the Afternoon the Heavy Brigade did over take that position. ** The group Pearls Before Swine ( 1970's ) had ( on their album ) the old Edison Cylinder recording of Trumpeter Lamphery playing the Charge on the trumpet that he played on that fateful day.
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This has been running through my mind/memory and on my flat screen these past few days... :

the whole film is on You Tube and is SO worth seeing!! the acting alone is stunning, the writing even more so. most of the cast had been performing this on stage for a year or more, so ... tight.

but all that is truly besides the point....
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francy:
good
ferkixlll:
Good observation. As "Blazing Saddles" put it: " Gentlemen, we have to save our phoney baloney jobs". **Short term profit shall be the death of us.
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ferkixlll:
Proves my point: all of these easily offended types Need to listen to Lenny Bruce, Richard Prior, Don Rickles & George Carlin on repeat until they get a Sense of Humor.
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the first days of dope... of reefer as it was called... with joints thinner than a needle and paranoia larger than Texas.... i was reminded of this because a very uptight friend of mine just opened a marijuana store in Marin County... she was an executive of a well-known and oft-cursed computer company (whose initials are Microso*t)... retired, she's gone back to her roots...or rather...
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ferkixlll:
Wisdom wasted on the old, youth wasted on the young. *And a deal was a 3 finger nickel bag that cost $5.00. "Those were the days my friend......"
francy:
wanderful
11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luAqu8VX5wo

was there then, missing there now!

(sg won't let me post the video... you'll just have to open it to find out) -- i was there, am still 'there' in that i bought a farm around then which we still live on, though it's mostly leased out at this point to younger backs and stronger arms... the town itself has lost most of its...
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ferkixlll:
What a distant time $6.50 tickets!!!
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after the news--if it can be called that--of late, songs like America by Steppenwolf are often in my ears, and the grittier protest songs of the 60s, including Helter Skelter...

reading Gibbon's Fall of the Roman Empire, seeing patterns repeat of course, or form and suggest repetition...he observes that Christianity came to the fore because of the hypocritical brutality and dissipation of the Roman elite......
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oldernow:
@ferkixlll yeah -- as an active protester in the 60s (and later until my health broke), we undertook to either actively and substantively disrupt 'normal operations' or to do a fifth column thing and work from the inside! - at one point my wife as working for personnel for the corporation we wanted to protest, so that when we got folk to sit in, she was able to fire off the security lock-down protocols *after* the protestors were inside and the corporate geeks were outside... ... the whole "Occupy the park across from Wall Street" really bothered me... why not actually occupy Wall Street? repeatedly??  ... at this point I don't see any other result than the splitting of the country into three or four sub-groups (in 50 years perhaps): the northeast, the southeast & central states; and the far west--oh, and Texas will probably go its own ultra conservative way.  // the other point you make, that the world's governments are paralleled by the multinationals is more true in the West; I don't see the mega rich Chinese businesses that independent of the government... but in either case we are back to the mid-19th century robber-barons, and that worked out great! ...after a few world wars and decades of horrible poverty...
ferkixlll:
A book from the late '80's ( that you might have come across ) "The 9 Nations of North America" ( I'd have to find it to post the author ). Premises is that the regions are more similar, than the State Lines would predict.
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...Something Wicked This Way Comes... --said the witch in Macbeth, and said Mr. Bradbury some time later... of the two, in this case I must own that I prefer Bradbury... here's a quote from his novel about two boys and a truly unworldly, dangerous circus - "

So there they go, Jim running slower to stay with Will, Will running faster to stay with Jim,...
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ferkixlll:
I think that the Witch had the right of it. The time of small towns where boys could break windows and the exotic circus came, passed away as it happened in Bradbury's youth. Now wickedness has become the norm.
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This is from Edward Gibbon's lil 5-tome treat "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" - Book 1, Chapter 3 -- and really, he is so eloquent throughout I cannot but recommend him to the doughty reader! -- and note the date of publication --

The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of· a state, in which a single person, by...
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oldernow:
@ferkixlll  point.  that quote of JFK's (dark irony that) is really out of date! my point is that holding a positive attitude which is patient and poised for the moment when an action can be quite powerful--not 'it's all good" (it's not), or "it will all work out" --maybe maybe not-- but there will be a moment.. it may come at too high a cost, or it may be rejected by the other person... -- i recall the moment my first wife chose to reject my forgiveness of her cheating--that was really what ended not only our marriage but any connection with her thereafter-- i saw that she could have acknowledged her own darkness and we might have at least ended on a civil note...  ... i ramble... enough on this for now
ferkixlll:
Being able to forgive is one action, being able to accept being forgiven a different action and sometimes they don't happen at the same moment of Space/Time: to the sorrow of all. **Entropy wins, the game is to postpone it winning for as long as possible. Finding a clear vision that doesn't vear into utter nihilism or Pollyannaist denial is the tightrope. "I am but an egg".
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kinda makes my jaw ache and a particular sort of biting on aluminum flavor in my mouth...

oh yes indeedy... gotta watch them rabbits runnin in the ditch...

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oldernow:
@ferkixlll yeah, I never did buy in to the "tune in, turn on, drop out" thing - or the whole "all war is bad" thing either - my dad and both my uncles went through WWII as POWs from Bataan... not a lotta love of the Orient in our house...  they made it, but with physical and mental scars .. // I did enjoy the 60s and the creative energies, the willingness (for a while) to confront a moribund status quo... but it was clear to me that my friends weren't so much "anti war" as "anti-getting-my-ass shot off"... so when their ass ceased to be in wind... their values reverted to type.   Meanwhile, up here in Ithaca, some of us have persisted in trying to move the political needle a bit more to the left as a counterpoint to the current misuse of the right...   ... welp, it'll all be over soon anyway I suppose...
ferkixlll:
Those young whipper snappers are going to have to cope with the mess. I wish them luck.