A question for Longstreetlass?

[rivrrat]

How is it that you use the name of one of the South's best generals when you are such a Yankee?

[longstreetlass]

Dear Doug,

There is no accounting for love. It goes where it will, like water. That's the straight answer.

Now let's go to my old lonely-days friend, Miss Dorothy Parker, for her take on the North-South thing (alas!):

My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled-
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world-
And I wish I'd never met him.

My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams-
And I wish he were in Asia.

My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathways of the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start,
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart-
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.

lol

LongstreetLass

[unionblue]

LongstreetLass!

How you turn my head and make me wonder. Your words only make my heart feel fonder.

Say on, my dear and treasured friend, that I may learn and be filled with wonder, at the words you spin, way out yonder!

I ain't no poet, but I know what I like!

YMOS,
Unionblue

[redeye]

This Dorothy Parker sounds cool, LongstreetLass. I didn't know her, but I'll soon fill the gap. Thanks!

[rivrrat]

I can’t take exception to that. Anybody who can quote Dorothy Parker, heck anybody who in this day and age knows who Dorothy Parker was, gets a bow and a sweep of a plumed cavalry hat from me.

I think I like this group!

[longstreetlass]

Dear Doug,

Thank you for the bow and the sweep of the hat!

You know Dorothy was a terrible cynic, and love-crazed women like me need a stern dose of her stuff once in a while, though it does no good.

When I read about General Longstreet, it is as though a window opens and I can see right into him. I could talk and talk and talk about him, though about things that I believe would hardly interest anyone else.

Thank you for your question. I am truly challenged to amswer it, as you have learned.

Sincerely,

LongstreetLass

[rivrrat]

Well I agree that "Old Pete" as his troops called him was an interesting man. Have you ever read "From Manassas to Appomattox" Longstreet's memoirs of the war. There is a recently published version out from Konecky & Konecky publishers. I found it on sale at Barns & Noble.

[redeye]

Dear LongstreetLass, do talk to your heart's content about Old Pete! And one day I may reciprocate about R.B. Garnett, though the talk would be much shorter. There are also some chapters of "From Manassas to Appomattox" online, here.

[longstreetlass]

Oh, Redeye!

My heart thrills! Thank you for that little taste. I can see I need to buy this book, which Doug also mentioned.

So you have a window that opens onto R.B. Garnett? Then you understand me. How wonderful to be his horse!


I do not know how to articulate the silence in...well, James, not Pete. The men called him "Pete." He has a lot of silence in him, vast, vast plains of silence. It is also a place from which he draws energy. He was really never tired, but he could become sad.

I think I have said enough for now. Maybe us women should start a thread called, "The Inner War Between the States." Do men have this ability to see into? I do not want to leave them out unnecessarily.

And, Redeye, about Dorothy. She is not a great poet, but she is a wonderful friend. She loved a lot...and lost. I am sad for her, and I respect her honesty.

Blessings to you, dear Redeye,

LongstreetLass

[redeye]

LongstreetLass, so he preferred to be called by his given name? I've never understood where "Pete" came from, if not, as some has said even on this message board, I think, that it rhymes with Longstreet. What is your opinion of his portrayal in "The Killer Angels", apart from the fact that they call him in a variety of ways?

Alas, I may have a window into R.B. Garnett, but what I see inside is mostly in darkness, which maybe is the reason for my curiosity. He had no renown prior to his death, no grave, not even a portrait attributed with certainty. What can be known of his personality are only glimpses. Yet he's said to be the man responsible of Jackson's only defeat at Kernstown and plagued by this stigma until it brought him to his death. Rationally I think this romantic interpretation is not necessary - he would have done what he did at Gettysburg even without previous complications, it was just his duty - but it's intriguing. Our Dorothy, whose richness I've only begun to tap, would certainly have a quote fit for him too...