Tuesday - January 04, 2011

blogger’s block?

No, Drew isn’t AWOL.  He’s just having a bit of trouble turning out posts that seem worthy.

Not that I’m trying to write any kind of opus, magnum or otherwise. Sometimes stuff just doesn’t gell. Sometimes it won’t come together no matter what.

In the mountainous jungles of western Vietnam, along the border with Laos, explorers have recently found the largest cave in the world. Called the Hang Son Doong caverns, the place isn’t merely big enough to fit a 747 in. You could LAND one inside the cave. You could build block after block of 40 story buildings. The thing is gigantic. National Geographic covers the story with their wonderful writing and world class photography. A sinkhole or two lets in a bit of light, and an entire rainforest grows down there. These underground forests are called dolines. The ceiling is so high that clouds form at the top and create their own weather.

The cave was actually discovered last year, and a team of British cavers has been on two expeditions to explore it. Although the cave is a million or so years old, the entrances are very hard to find, and I gather no evidence of human habitation of any kind ever was found in the cave. A local man discovered the place when he was a kid wandering in the forest, but lost it again for decades.

Try as I might, there’s no way I could write anything about it better than what Nat Geo put together. Heck, they even made an interactive map thingy you can click on to see each part of the cave. Stupendous work. Buy the January issue, follow the links, or just Google it up. Several news sites have run articles as well.

So that was hours and hours “wasted”. I don’t really want to say wasted, because I went and read everything I could find, and marveled at the amazing size of it all. And the pictures are as good as it gets. But I gave up trying to essay this assay; all I can really do is point out the pages and urge you to go. It’s worth it.

I was feeling a bit punchy earlier. A bit of a chip on the shoulder kind of thing. If I’ve got that cold glint in the eye, and I’m whistling this bit of tune that sounds a little like a sea chanty, look out.
and I’ll learn you the art of war, if you’ll meet me in the morning!

33 years or so before the American Revolution, the English were having this nasty game of conkers called Who Shall Be King that pitted the house of Hanover against the house of Stuart (Stewart). Maybe you’ve heard of the Second Jacobite Rising? It pulled religion into the mix as well, and was a nasty mess for quite some time. Eventually the Krauts won.

Anyway, one of the more famous engagements in that disagreement was the battle of Prestonpans, near the coal fields on the banks of the Firth of Forth, not far from Edinburgh Scotland. On the one side, General Sir John Cope and his Hanovorian regiments. Foot, heavy horse, and artillery. On the other side, Bonnie Prince Charlie and a horde of slightly savage Highlanders armed with swords and machetes. Perhaps with a few French too, since he’d promised to bring a whole army of them with him. I think 7 actually showed up. Seriously. Seven. Such an uprising, right?

The battle started at dawn but was over in 10 minutes. It was a total rout. About 1000 redcoats were killed or wounded, and about twice that number were captured. The artillery was destroyed, the infantry was wiped out, all the supplies and money were captured, and the dragoons on horseback ran away. Huge object lesson there about training, logistics, and battlefield communication.

General Cope gathered up his surviving mounted troops and led them back to their base in the city of Dunbar (actually Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumbria, 28 miles away). Since he was leading the column, this made him the only general in all of English history to be the bearer of the news that he himself had been defeated in combat. Oops.

Such was the magnitude of that defeat and the panic caused that a new verse was quickly added to the then new national anthem:

The Scotts dearly love this old tune. They’ve been singing it for over 150 years. Dozens and dozens of versions can be found out on YouTube. But not one of them is a regular version of the song, with the right mix of traditional musical accompaniment. I can find poetic readings. I can find heavy metal versions (and Scottish heavy metal is an acquired taste more challenging than Brussel sprouts!). I can find every wrong flavor of the song ever made, included one with two swishy fiddlers who repeat just one line over and over, but I can’t find one nicely done version. Several good attempts have the tempo cranked up to 11, when the song was originally only a quick march. Other versions have modernized the lyrics, and purged all the difficult Nac Mac Feegle-isms from the lyrics. [Nae King! Nae Quin! Nae Laird! There can only be woon thousan!] Which cuts the soul of it right out. Mostly actress (she played Charlotte Ryan on The Unit), sometimes folksinger, and Scottish Lass by choice Rebecca Pidgeon does a lovely formal version on her Four Marys disc (Chesky records, CD and DVD-audio), with all the proper burrs left on, but her tunes at YouTube are mostly blocked by one of those country code thingies. And this one isn’t out there anyway. Blast.

So having done all that research, and all that horrible listening, I gave up. No good version of the tune I can link to. Fuggedabowdit. So I went bowling. And we lost, 5-2. But they had to fight for every damn pin, so it was no cakewalk for our opponents. And that kind of losing I can live with. Especially since my team did quite well, and I rolled a 608.

An’ I’ll learn ye the airt o’ war, If ye’ll meet me in the morning.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/04/2011 at 10:44 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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