Today’s rant – The Civil War.

It has increasingly become a part of my life despite my best attempts to ignore it. I tried to stay away, but it keeps coming back to haunt me, rather like broccoli now that I think of it.

Which part of my comps did I do the worst on? The Middle Period (1781 – 1877). What am I doing now? I’m in charge of what goes into the USS Monitor Center. What does my work life revolve around now? The Civil War.

So anyway – I decide to find out why the War is following me around, and I get this book Confederates in the Attic to try to make sense of the whole mess. And it’s got me thinking – why does this war still echo so strongly in people’s lives? What are my own perceptions?

As a historian, I can reel off all of the causes of the Late Unpleasantness – but that’s not what I’m talking about.I’m thinking – Why the romance? Why the still burning resentment over the fact that we lost (yes, I’m in the South). Gone With the Wind can only account for so much. What I’d like to know is why do I feel a melancholy – a sense of loss for something that I didn’t take part in, don’t necessarily agree with, and have tried to avoid for lo, these many years? I think I’ll be having to explore this for quite some time.

Hoop a dooden do!