Fear and uncertainty

Across the wide Missouri

So take open order, lie down, and sit tight, And wait for supports like a soldier.

1862 Gold Rush and Revolution

One evening, as the fates arranged, they noticed each other with new interest in the gambling room of Daisy’s establishment.  It wasn’t long before Phoebe asked Daisy to stand with her at a small but beautiful wedding ceremony in the Presbyterian Church. She and George were to honeymoon in Panama, tropical and foreign to her, and determine where they would start their new home together. Daisy had to replace her for a new musician and find a trusted theatrical manager before she went back to the plantation. She hadn’t planned on the entertainment business holding its own during an inevitable wartime anyway. It would fall as it may and it could be resurrected later.

States were in the middle of designating their official allegiances to either North or South. The line was being drawn further to the north than anticipated. Fear and uncertainty were increasing everywhere and Daisy knew she must prepare at her true home. Her commercial and humanitarian responsibilities were more serious in the south. She took care of affairs as they took priority. Daisy left St. Louis and traveled to Georgia, leaving the uncivilized to their own devices. The Missouri tribe, whose name in turn meant “people with wooden canoes,” are boat builders. Henry learned of them from the steamboat decks on the even-wider Mississippi.  Henry spent ten years on the Great Plains of America carrying the Dutchman’s gold.  There he learned the ways of the Indians and the Walker revolver. 

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Back to the World

But these are the days of steam propulsion and iron-rich spheres.  There is coal… and alchemy that comes from such things. In the factories and mills… in the shipyards and mines…there are iron-rich spheres of influence.  Solid shot. Americans must have their stupid war.  American workers will kill each other to make their princes rich.  One has no choice but to look for opportunity, ja- while staying the hell away from the goddam war. The old baron sent Henry to America to learn the American System of Manufactures, and naturally Henry found the Hawken rifle… in Glasgow… manufactured in St. Louis, America.  It could have been farm implements- the baron didn’t care. 

So your future veils its face,
  Shenandoah!

The Baron just wanted to get Henry the hell out of Hesse.

Gettysburg Buddha

Tactical Regard on Homefront

In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about
   to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!

On Eatonton Ga., June 1873 

Red and blue make(s) green.  Anybody who has a family is a communist.  Everybody who uses money is a capitalist. Looting is the official USA religion now.  Green is the new deal.  Jimmy can pick Jill up the pail of water, etc..  General strike until there is M4A.  Capitalist party is over.  But our business is down south now, and into the longest days of 1873 with a financial panic coming- but that’s another story as well.  Pope Pius IX declares Gorcumse holy martyrs… because they were killed by the Geuzen in 1572. So the story could begin there. Geuzen (beggars) was a name assumed by the confederacy of Calvinist Dutch nobles, who from 1566 opposed Spanish rule in the Netherlands. The most successful group of them operated at sea, and so were called Watergeuzen …Sea Beggars. There is irony aboard here.

McCandless knocked loudly on Daisy’s door. You ‘wake, Miss Daisy? She rolled to her side and groaned. The slightest of light was in the northern sky, not yet even giving color to anything below it.  She swung her legs to the edge of the bed and sat for a moment trying to gather thoughts for the day. There, under the oaks that lined her entrance road, were tents.  They were perfectly and geometrically arranged and demonstrated that the property had become somewhat of a military operation. The arrival must have been in the middle of the night and the camp must have been constructed with stealthy but tactical military-like performance. She shook her head and exchanged her smile for tight lips. The stairway awaited and she strode downstairs with great purpose and consternation.

Twa Corbies

And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.

These will have to be relocated to the back lawn in great haste! Please be kind enough to send your commanding officer to my dining area immediately! Without boots! Moments later, Henry stood in the doorway bootless and with newly hand knitted socks to comply with her passed down orders. Daisy and McCandless stared him down, neither of them rising to welcome him. After a longish, awkward, silence, a smile crept back onto her lips, then spread to Henry’s. Daisy motioned him into the room and held out the back of her hand in anticipation of his kiss. Vot iss? Where is the signet ring of the dutchman’s gold?

Corvidae is a cosmopolitan family of perching singing birds that contains the crows, ravens, rooks, jackdaws, jays, magpies, and nutcrackers.  In colloquial English, they are the crow family, or, in jargon, corvids. Henry had no more control over them than he did during war, being a civilian and such.  True, they were deutschers all… but ties to the old country and friendship with General Schurz only went so far.  Some were hard men… and some were prosperous American businessmen… for now… tell me, darling, about the Hearst family.  You know them, ja.  Attended their wedding, perhaps.

After a lovely breakfast, Daisy cheerfully cleared the table herself and helped in the kitchen for the following hour. Henry watched a reset of the men and their camp on the back lawn. Dilger got bored with the reunion Henry had planned and headed back to Ohio via Front Royal.  Eatonton was no place for him, even with a chance to play with the new Hotchkiss gun.  What the boys were doing in back with the tents was anybody’s guess.  Rosa Meade Thorn was only ten years old. Austro-Hungarian Empire forms.  Barbed wire patented by Lucien B. Smith of Ohio. 

Hanging from the beam,
  Slowly swaying (such the law)

Rosa heard all connections in a starlings’ murmuration years ago.  Baby stars… like Pleiades.  Kapu mate, Mother of Graves.  Ja they often sing when they clear the table, gamblers corbies and such… and that’s where the best listening is.  To speak of such things as Rosa knows would be madness indeed, and Henry was mad as a flatter, just the flip-side of a taunt, and Henry always tried to blend in.  A local girl on Cemetery Hill taught Henry life is a transition illusion… much more than the battle ever did.  Rosa talks inside the head.  Even if she is dead.  Sometimes she answers questions.  Witches are present among the Indians like in the old country.  Rosa is near Buddhahood.  Like all invisible folk- sometimes reveal things you wish you never knew. 

What is true.  What does real mean.  Such pilwah is for babies and amateurs.  Philosophers and scientists maybe… but in 1873 science was still a baby.  A hundred years later Beanfield Hank will be telling war stories nobody wants to hear.  Like Dilger who is real as Jubal Early.  Today the machine has become sentient.  Like the tents in Daisy’s yard.  So much to explain between raptor and raven.  Jayhawkers.  There’s another story.  But for now- it is 1873… and the machine is not yet awake.  But profit maximization is well on its way, along with the terrible karma of taking an oath. 

Like weird John Brown, the meteor of the war.

Compound Fractal

Crossfire Hurricane  

The primary benefit of this design compared to the earlier “hot-blast” design was to maximize… brightness and stability of the flame.

River Singing Spruce, 1862

There are some word experts who believe the word “Shenandoah” means “spruce river” because the waters of the river run through great forests of spruce trees. And this explanation could be correct. If there is a God, when judgment is at hand, a jury in the court of the angels will bum-rush this party of chaos into a special hell of an eternal drag queen story hour, featuring a dolled-up stump speaker reading Uncle Remus to an assembled multitude of howling Jacobins, Bolsheviks, and Maoist Red Guards. Refreshments will not be served. Ever. 

We tweak the tail of the dragon in Taiwan.  We bait the bear in Ukraine.  We USAs are worse than the Germans ever were- and here’s why:  it is the size and visibility of our lie– an untrue statement with intention to deceive.  That’s the story.  Believe what you want to believe.  Phoebe was one of Daisy’s theatre girls, and a sweet thing too.  But that’s another story.  Henry was one boy a baron sent to learn America.  Kit was the son the baron sent to Berlin.  What is true is the year is 1862.  When they married on June 15, 1862, George Hearst was 41 years old, and Phoebe was 19. Now is a time of fractals in the jungle distance calls with tales in other ears.  Heads up. 

That year Henry was about 30 years old and on the Ohio- maybe- near Chattanooga, gambling as usual.  This attack on Chattanooga was a warning that Union troops could mount assaults when they wanted.   The attack also prompted Edmund Kirby Smith to withdraw Confederate troops from other areas to defend Chattanooga. This redeployment of troops allowed George W. Morgan to capture the Cumberland Gap on June 18, 1862.  Henry could not remember the boat or the river.  But Henry gained much more that year by losing than winning.  But that is in the future- where lies a real-life gothic horror story.  It was in the papers in 1862. Photographs in Philadelphia.

Bridge Species, Sharpsburg water- 1862  

British and French had abolished slavery before the Civil War and did not wish to give the appearance of supporting slavery by supporting the Confederacy.

Henry is a guest in a foreign country, and nobody likes guests who win.  Guests who lose money are plied with liquor and stories.  Some of them are true.  Some not so much.  As a boy in the Hessian forests Henry learned to read such signs.  What began as buffalo rifles for the baron brought the lost Dutchman’s gold to Europe and Henry over the edge of madness.  And that was before Antietam.  Burnside’s bridge is only an engraving.  This is a story that tells the truth.  Henry attained him a purse of gold.  And he had placed it on her knee.  His Indian familiar.  Doppelgangers are real and dwell in secret.  Aye ye shall see.  

The horse and dog lived with us for a million years- and they evolved as much as we did.  Dogs have more empathy and horses have more sense.  Changelings have been around as well.  We are only a temporary transitional offshoot of a carbon subspecies.  Someday the machine may keep us around as pets.  Spirits are trans-dimensional beings.  We usually cannot see them, but that’s another story as well.  Space and time set boundary for regions, so Henry began dreaming of machines that could fly.   Here there be dragons.  

The “style” of this recursive detail depends on the region of the set boundary being examined. 

Although they be not comely.

American kestrel

Cosplay Maggie May

Wha sae base as be a slave?

         Let him turn and flee! —BB

First days of Summer, 1873

It was a sleepy afternoon southeast of Atlanta when bagpipes began to skirl Scots Wha Hae and drums started thundering in front of a black Yankee infantry company led by a squad of cavalry and a Hotchkiss M1875 mountain gun, trailing caisson and crew.  Dexter’s neck hairs spiked at the sound of the pipes… but the sight of white Yankee horsemen topping the ridge made his blood run cold.  Custer’s crazies… buff gauntlets, polished brass on deep blue…high black feathers and all.  Federal marshals they said… on a diplomatic mission from Washington City with a whole goddam army if need be-  and here to re-construct your Georgia cracker asses just for fun.  You got any fun left in you, Johnny?  You look like one of Gordon’s boys.  Ran into you at Gettysburg.  Cold Harbor too.  Remember? Captain silver bars gleamed afternoon gold. The Dutchman pays his debts.  Bet we can flatten your two-ton town with this two-pounder gun from a mile away, ja.  Can you shoot that far Johnny?  Otherwise I am off to Savannah to dine with General Hampton, do you know him, sir?  Sehr gut.  Sleep tight, Johnny.  Good day.  

Henry was going to be valuable in arming and vetting the help Daisy needed. She could use him for some much missed and required personal comfort at the same time. She stood in the tack room off the stable and mentally worked out the wording of the four wires she would send out to him later that afternoon. There were four places he was known to be in the scheme of things. She also made the mental arrangement to sell all her railroad stock and return to the north temporarily with Henry to collect her return in cash. She was unaware of the panic to come, but felt it to be near. She was dead right. The Greek term indicates the feeling of total fear that is also sudden and often attributed to the presence of a god. A two-ton heavy thing.

Aboard the Delta Queen, Late Spring 1873

It weighs 116 lbs, and its caliber is 1.65 inches. It uses a charge of 6 ounces of powder, and a percussion shell weighing 2 pounds.

Gründerzeit is not a word for sneezing.  Send a wire to Dilger.  Tell him I am inviting the boys to a picnic at my expense.  Tell him to bring a battery of our hardest XI C. men to Atlanta by rail.  Now Tom grinned at the prospect.  Red man chuckle to himself. Big Indian has relatives among the Cherokee.  I promise the moistest fun you ever had for the leastwise money.  Silver is crashing in Vienna.  We must strike while the iron is hot… and milk some of them young boobies.  

Now, she would spend time on the gallery and watch the horizon from time to time for Henry. He would not come by wheel, but by dazzling steed. He would come with his idea of the required amount of militia, but she knew it would be an overkill. She figured the militia would largely be made up of a foreign element trying to earn citizenship to a country that wasn’t quite solid in union.  The probability was Hessian, the offshoots and ancestors of the great Landsknecht, only armed with firearms rather than the sword. It was Henry’s style. But it was Henry’s style that bored her.

To Daisy, it was his only dreary fault. But he had many purposes that caused her to overlook such as a personality flaw.

Old Towns. New Clowns.

Excuse me Miss Daisy.  There be a escaped circus clown at de back door.  Say he came to sign a dance card.  Can I shoe him away mam?  He crazy.  Seed him in orchard on little spotted pony.  Knocking down little green apples wit a big long pole.  Jumps de horse and it run away.  He don’t care.  Gonna take dis hatchet and part his long hair. Hello Mag.  I did not know Dilger was such a fine actor and I’m afraid your paper is nearly worthless.  Henry you insufferable swine.  Ah but you still have related assets if you use them carefully.  You bastard.  No.  I just want to play with my boats.  You have powerful little enemies in your big kingdom of Georgia.  Your big powerful friends interest me.  Kit is the baron now.  Authoritarian Prussian.  Interested in everything that goes boom.  You my dear must find where they keep the cheese.  But Henry ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm.  Eatonton. Some clever code, ja. I read the wire. I did not believe there was such a place.

Henry for Daisy like knight of broken class… an American Kestrelnecht. Words can tell the future like tea leaves for those who can read the signs.  Travelers and Indians know this.  Dough-faced pikers generally don’t.  Jay Cooke the blueberry chef… an Episcopalian like big chief Roberty Lee.  Bluejay is my friend and owes me some flavors.  We sent the old Baron boatloads of California gold.  New empires are rising.  They don’t think much about the Schwartzers or peasants of any stripe.  They follow the pike into a fog of war.  

Crazy lifers ignore the signs. Not lost… but gone before.

Stealing Nobility

Changing State

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. 
 
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

The Grand Duchy of Hesse and by Rhine, 1848

The old baron was nothing if not clever.  He had two sons, one by marriage… the other by heritage over ten generations and 300 years. The Landsknechts were fierce, well-armed, experienced…  recruitable in large numbers throughout Germany and Austria by the Holy Roman Emperor. Mercenaries guaranteed both quantity and quality to the Imperial military for a century and a half.  In the baron’s Hessian forest territory over the Bieber river valley, every timberman’s house and old family trees each had a name.  But there was only one Baron… and one Jägermeister. It is the hunter’s honor that he Protects and preserves his game. Hunts sportsmanlike, honors the Creator in His creatures. 

Noble gases are typically highly unreactive except when under particular extreme conditions. The inertness of noble gases makes them very suitable in applications where reactions are not wanted. However… the vault of religion and monarchy were changing state by 1848… and both sons were now of military age. Above the forest canopy, there is atmosphere.  Whether it contains god or gas, nobility is something in Heaven… and the baron was only concerned with keeping the forest and its people above the Bieber… from the Bavarians, the Austrians, Napoleon himself… and finally the Prussians. 

His great twenty-times grandfather’s lost-hope lads had settled the forest well among the giant mother oaks by keeping the steel sharp, powder dry, and serving each invader elsewhere.  The Verlorene Haufen were chosen from the Landsknechte, primarily tasked with breaking the enemy formations.  The inertness of nobles also makes mercenaries very suitable in applications where reactions are not wanted.

Rest assured, I love the Fatherland just as much as you do. — Heinrich Heine

Christoph is the heir… and Heinrich the spare- the wild card.  Kit educated at Heidelberg… Henry went to Glasgow.  Now the fault between Catholic and protestant… between Uradel and Briefadel is becoming unbearable.  Barons must bear the unbearable- with the hardness of an oak and the flex of a willow.  Kit is a beam and Henry a basket.  He sent them to Berlin and Pennsylvania respectively to stand and to catch.  Ancient trees must be protected so the guilds can continue beneath the boughs.  Because god causes rain to fall on the just and unjust alike there is gravity.   And the baron was getting old and his wise old hunting hound nearly blind.  They would fade into the old forest together of course- and leave the boys behind. Steel and steal have roots in our tongue, so the baron gave his son to one, his friends to another. All entwined in degree and kind, no tree grows to the moon.

Great esteem becomes greatest steam in the State of a Machine. The moon cannot be stolen.