River

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer

And singing songs of joy and peace

Oh, I wish I had a river

I could skate away on 

From Joni Mitchell's 1971 album Blue.  This is the fourth cut THC has featured from it over the years.  That voice, her sense of melody, the arrangements and unusual tunings.  An unmatched combination.  The album also contains her Peak Joni song, A Case of You.

The "Real" Noah's Ark

Irving Finkel has been Assistant Keeper in the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum for the past 48 years, where he is responsible for the museum's collection of 130,000 cuneiform tablets. 

The video is worth watching in its entirety.  Finkel is a wonderful instructor.

I first learned about Finkel from this substack article by Brian Klaas, The Mirthful Assyriologist, the Real Noah's Ark, and the Oldest Writing in the World, which is also worth a full read.

What Is The Third Estate?

These principles become even more rigorous when it is a matter of dealing with privileged orders. I take “privileged” to mean anyone who falls outside the provisions of the common legal system either because he claims not to be subject to common legality at all or because he claims to have exclusive rights. We have provided sufficient proof of the fact that any privilege is by nature unjust, odious, and contrary to the social pact. A privileged class is to the Nation what individual advantages are to the citizen. Like them, it is not something that can be represented. But even this is not quite enough. A privileged class is to the Nation what harmful individual advantages are to the citizen. The legislator does his duty in sup-
pressing them. The parallel also serves to reveal a final difference, which is that an individual advantage that is harmful to others is at least useful to its owner, while a privileged class is a pestilence upon the nation that is forced to suffer its existence. To make the comparison more exact, one would have to compare a privileged class in a nation to a frightful disease devouring the living flesh of the body of its unhappy victim. With this in mind, it is easy to see why a privileged class might feel a need to cloak itself in all the honorable distinctions it can find.  A privileged class is therefore harmful not only because of its corporate spirit but simply because it exists. The more it has been able to obtain of those favors that are necessarily opposed to common liberty, the more it is essential to exclude it from the National Assembly. 

But if privileged individuals enjoy an estate that makes them the enemy of the common order, not the beneficiaries of simple distinctions that are almost indifferent to the law, then they should be positively excluded.

- What is the third estate? by Abbe Sieyes (Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes)

What Is The Third Estate? by Sieyes, a Roman Catholic clergyman, was published in January 1789, several months before the meeting of the Estates General at Versailles and proved very influential with the delegates.  The Estates being convened were those of the Clergy (First Estate), Nobility (Second Estate), and Commons (Third Estate).  The French monarchy, desperate to solve its financial crisis, was forced to call the Estates General together for the first time in more than 170 years.  What was to be the relative status of each estate was a subject of much controversy leading to the meeting, and during its first month.

The essay starts with this memorable line:

What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing. What does it desire to be? Something.

Though Sieyes was a member of the First Estate, he was elected as a delegate of the Third Estate to the assemblage at Versailles.

While seeking the overturning of the existing system of hierarchy in France, Sieyes was a moderate in the context of what became the French Revolution, which plunged into violence and terror, though some historians, like Simon Schama, contend violence was an essential element from the start, leading to the ascension of Napoleon Bonaparte and a quarter century of European war.  However, whatever his intent, the dehumanizing rhetoric deployed by Sieyes was one of the earliest signs of the direction the Revolution would eventually take.

In the National Assembly (as the Estates General redesignated itself in 1789), Sieyes eventually lost influence because of his opposition to the abolishment of tithes and confiscation of Church lands.  He voted for the execution of Louis XVI though, unlike most, he avoided making any statement about why he cast his vote; he supported the Girondin and was not a Jacobin, though managed to kowtow enough during the height of the Terror to avoid the guillotine.  Years later, asked what he did during the Terror he responded, "I survived".

After the Jacobin Terror ended in 1794 with Robespierre's beheading, Sieyes served on diplomatic missions to The Hague and Prussia. In 1799, he became a member of the Directory, France's governing body, supporting the efforts of Napoleon to seize power the following year, retiring from politics soon after.  He died in 1836.  Sieyes was a survivor.

I Found Wilson Pickett

I was going to do a post on Wilson Pickett's breakthrough 1965 hit, In The Midnight Hour, co-written with Steve Cropper, guitarist with the Stax house band (aka Booker T and the MGs), at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the location where Martin Luther King Jr would be assassinated three years later.  When I discovered that Cropper was inspired to come up with the title from the lyric of the 1962 single I Found A Love by The Falcons, with their lead singer Wilson Pickett(!), I decided to go with the lesser-known song.  Here it is:

Nice Getaway

Looking for a quiet, unique, and little known spot for a getaway?  Kate and Greg Barrington are happy to welcome you to Forrest, Australia where they have six lovely cottages ready and waiting for you.  Just go here for info on contacting the caretakers.

A couple of things you should know before making your reservation.  Forrest is in the State of Western Australia near its border with South Australia.  It's in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain, the almost treeless, flat, 77,000  square mile area, containing the world's largest formation of exposed limestone bedrock.  However, it is conveniently located along the line of the Trans-Australian Railroad; in fact it's on the stretch of the railroad which is the longest straight track anywhere in the world - 297 miles!  Unfortunately, the trains no longer regularly stop there.  But don't let that discourage you; if you have a sturdy 4-wheel drive vehicle you can reach it by a 68 mile drive along a dirt road.  And, best of all, there's an airstrip there; used for aircraft having emergencies, but I'm sure they'd let your private plane land there if you're a pilot.

For more on Forrest and the Barrington, watch The Big Wait on Vimeo.

The Lion's Mound

Unlike the WW1 battlefields we visited in September, where the battles lasted for months over areas covering 100 to 500 square miles, Waterloo, which we saw on the last day of our trip, happened on one day, June 18, 1815.  Though it was only one day, it was bloody, with 45-50,000 men killed or wounded, twice the toll of Antietam, the worst single day of America's Civil War.

Today, it is peaceful.  But for the occasional monument and the two fortified farms on the flanks that still exist, Le Haye Sainte (privately owned) and Hougomont (open to the public), it is mostly open farm land (see this panorama from Wikipedia).

The very well done museum is underground and behind the main English/Dutch battle line.  And then there is the Lion's Mound, the artificial hill, located at the center of the British position, constructed at the order of King William I of the Netherlands between 1820 and 1826.  It rises 141 feet above the surrounding surface, with 226 steps to climb to the top.  Unfortunately, its construction caused the topography to be dramatically changed, a change the Duke of Wellington found most distressing when he returned in 1828.

We did make the trek up and down the Lion's Mound.