One of the conveniences of being a creature of the night is that you get to read all of your friends’ blogs and comment upon them after the fact. This nominally saves me the effort of digesting actual news, but sadly in order to confirm information I have to run screaming back to the Sun and Morning Call and Times-Dispatch to see just what the hell is happening, anyway. (Got a great shoofly pie recipe from the Call, though: it involves pecans. Sort of a food bridge between Allentown and Lynchburg. Does it get better than that, I ask?)
Bill and Lisa both touched on the “fuschia alert” , although given the timbre of the current administration, I think it’s more like the Taupe Alert. For one thing, taupe is about the extent of Baby George’s personality, and it’s beyond the extent of Konigin Laura’s fashion sense. My God, if we have to have a piece of nouveau-riche trash at the nation’s helm, couldn’t he have at least had a gorgeous and awe-inspiring consort? Remember the Second Empire of France? There was Napoleon III, an unattractive doof if ever God made one, with about all the political savvy of the now rather soggy olive in my drink. Oh! But the Empress Eugenie! Only one woman in all of Europe was more beautiful, and the Kaiserin Elisabeth of Austria was so ethereally gorgeous that she transcended mere beauty. After all, she was Bavarian, and beer and the good Bavarian mountain air do wonders for the complexion. Eugenie was gorgeous, and stylish, and patriotic. She contributed much more to liberté à la française than did her ineffectual Imperial mate.
Sadly, we have no Elisabeth or Eugenie to rally our booboisie; we’ve only the dowdy Laura. At least Marian the Librarian got good costumes.
Now that the nation has sounded a Chartreuse Alert, I hear from the Washington front that antiaircraft guns have been placed around the city and that jarheads with shoulder mounts are stationed in the subways. Even Richmond has managed to ratchet security up a bit; the Virginia Museum is apparently checking ladies’ handbags.
Thank God that Baltimore is exercising its usual sangfroid. I stopped in the railroad station on the way home tonight to pick up a paper and a couple of postcards, and it was business as usual. No one on the campi of Johns Hopkins batted an eyelid today, and the city transit flowed as smoothly as ever.
Now, lest anyone think that Baltimore is not a terrorist target, let’s review: This is the second-largest port on the east coast. Wipe out Baltimore’s port and the U.S. will be very effectively handicapped. Wipe out Baltimore’s rail connections — every major east coast railroad has to pass through here — and you’ve cut off North and South as effectively as the Recent Unpleasantness of 1861.
We have history on our side, though. Only once in its history has the United States ever been invaded by a completely foreign power. Although I will stand to my death for the brief sovereignty of the Confederacy, the Confederacy was not actually a foreign power — merely a separate state of a like race, comparable to the Union in America as Braunschweig is to Sachsen in Europe. That invading power was not the devil Japs nor the evil Germans, nor was it the godless red Russia. It was our own mother nation, sainted England herself, our closest modern ally. In the 1812 War England burned, raped and tortured her way up the Chesapeake, flaying men alive at Hampton, butchering the populace at Havre de Grace and Queenstown. England made a fatal mistake at trying to take Baltimore, which hadn’t much love for the mother country anyway, and was already insanely proprietary. Perhaps foreseeing her future as a haven of German immigrants, Baltimore’s people defeated the invading English at North Point on land and at Fort McHenry by sea. These cutting victories were the only battles, other than the too-late battle of New Orleans, that were decisively set to the Americans.
And — discounting the concept of foreign invasion — Baltimore has been an occupied city. In the War between the States, Baltimore voted overwhelmingly for Secession. The Union president wisely (for his part) realized that Maryland’s secession would leave the Union capital high and dry and, perhaps worse, would grant a major industrial port city to the Confederacy. Therefore, acting in not-quite-genteel but very practical terms, he enforced the occupation of Baltimore. The city remained under Federal military law for the duration.
Though Defender’s Day is little remembered now, and nobody knows why there is a Wells & McComas Monument, and outsiders wonder why our city symbol is the weird old Battle Monument instead of the Washington Monument... We seem rather secure in ourselves. If someone invades, I know where to find water. I am perfectly capable of canning my own vegetables. I’d hate to have to cut down an old elm in the Park for firewood, but I suppose I could if I had to.
The Viennese have a saying that they’re “muddling through” — not doing well, perhaps, but they’re doing, and not so badly. We Baltimoreans are the same; we’re not necessarily doing well, but we make out. I’m sure we’ll still make out in the face of bombing and invasion. We already have.
Bill and Lisa both touched on the “fuschia alert” , although given the timbre of the current administration, I think it’s more like the Taupe Alert. For one thing, taupe is about the extent of Baby George’s personality, and it’s beyond the extent of Konigin Laura’s fashion sense. My God, if we have to have a piece of nouveau-riche trash at the nation’s helm, couldn’t he have at least had a gorgeous and awe-inspiring consort? Remember the Second Empire of France? There was Napoleon III, an unattractive doof if ever God made one, with about all the political savvy of the now rather soggy olive in my drink. Oh! But the Empress Eugenie! Only one woman in all of Europe was more beautiful, and the Kaiserin Elisabeth of Austria was so ethereally gorgeous that she transcended mere beauty. After all, she was Bavarian, and beer and the good Bavarian mountain air do wonders for the complexion. Eugenie was gorgeous, and stylish, and patriotic. She contributed much more to liberté à la française than did her ineffectual Imperial mate.
Sadly, we have no Elisabeth or Eugenie to rally our booboisie; we’ve only the dowdy Laura. At least Marian the Librarian got good costumes.
Now that the nation has sounded a Chartreuse Alert, I hear from the Washington front that antiaircraft guns have been placed around the city and that jarheads with shoulder mounts are stationed in the subways. Even Richmond has managed to ratchet security up a bit; the Virginia Museum is apparently checking ladies’ handbags.
Thank God that Baltimore is exercising its usual sangfroid. I stopped in the railroad station on the way home tonight to pick up a paper and a couple of postcards, and it was business as usual. No one on the campi of Johns Hopkins batted an eyelid today, and the city transit flowed as smoothly as ever.
Now, lest anyone think that Baltimore is not a terrorist target, let’s review: This is the second-largest port on the east coast. Wipe out Baltimore’s port and the U.S. will be very effectively handicapped. Wipe out Baltimore’s rail connections — every major east coast railroad has to pass through here — and you’ve cut off North and South as effectively as the Recent Unpleasantness of 1861.
We have history on our side, though. Only once in its history has the United States ever been invaded by a completely foreign power. Although I will stand to my death for the brief sovereignty of the Confederacy, the Confederacy was not actually a foreign power — merely a separate state of a like race, comparable to the Union in America as Braunschweig is to Sachsen in Europe. That invading power was not the devil Japs nor the evil Germans, nor was it the godless red Russia. It was our own mother nation, sainted England herself, our closest modern ally. In the 1812 War England burned, raped and tortured her way up the Chesapeake, flaying men alive at Hampton, butchering the populace at Havre de Grace and Queenstown. England made a fatal mistake at trying to take Baltimore, which hadn’t much love for the mother country anyway, and was already insanely proprietary. Perhaps foreseeing her future as a haven of German immigrants, Baltimore’s people defeated the invading English at North Point on land and at Fort McHenry by sea. These cutting victories were the only battles, other than the too-late battle of New Orleans, that were decisively set to the Americans.
And — discounting the concept of foreign invasion — Baltimore has been an occupied city. In the War between the States, Baltimore voted overwhelmingly for Secession. The Union president wisely (for his part) realized that Maryland’s secession would leave the Union capital high and dry and, perhaps worse, would grant a major industrial port city to the Confederacy. Therefore, acting in not-quite-genteel but very practical terms, he enforced the occupation of Baltimore. The city remained under Federal military law for the duration.
Though Defender’s Day is little remembered now, and nobody knows why there is a Wells & McComas Monument, and outsiders wonder why our city symbol is the weird old Battle Monument instead of the Washington Monument... We seem rather secure in ourselves. If someone invades, I know where to find water. I am perfectly capable of canning my own vegetables. I’d hate to have to cut down an old elm in the Park for firewood, but I suppose I could if I had to.
The Viennese have a saying that they’re “muddling through” — not doing well, perhaps, but they’re doing, and not so badly. We Baltimoreans are the same; we’re not necessarily doing well, but we make out. I’m sure we’ll still make out in the face of bombing and invasion. We already have.
posted by Daniel | 1:48 AM
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