In this one you can see the plane, but the sun’s glare obscures the flag, and I missed the words (I had trouble aiming with the sun in my eyes).
Having those guys waving Confederate banners in front of the State House (even setting one up on a stationary pole, as a way of undoing the legitimate actions of the Legislature), wasn’t enough. Somebody had to tow one around in the air over downtown.
Some people just never outgrow the urge to get in other people’s faces, do they?
I apologize for the quality of the photos. This was a job for a telephoto lens, not an iPhone. I couldn’t make out the words towed behind the flag, but someone said it said “No Compromise.”
Well, I couldn’t agree more. That “compromise” in 2000 was completely unsatisfactory. The Legislature continues to deserve our thanks for taking down the flag in 2015 without any quibbling about compromises.
What the guy tooling around up there was trying to say remains unclear.
So does the date of Confederate Memorial Day. Why is it the day Stonewall Jackson died? Why not something cheery, like Robert E. Lee’s birthday? Or the day Lynyrd Skynyrd released “Sweet Home Alabama” (June 24, 1974)?
… and here you can see the flag, but the plane’s behind the tree.
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Oh, wait — I see what it can’t be Robert E. Lee’s birthday. It’s Jan. 19. As absurd as it was to have this separate holiday for the white folks (on account of the MLK being only for black folks, as too many believe), having them at the same time may have complicated things further. (Of course, we could have had just one holiday for MLK, and just tell the cranky white folks it’s for Marse Robert.)
Wouldn’t it be nice if folks who wanted to have an observation to respect the suffering and deaths of forebears (including several of mine) in the Recent Unpleasantness could come up with something less confrontational than waving those flags around?
I feel like The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” says everything that should be said, and does it without getting in anybody’s face… So, here’s my observance of the day:
… but definitely not the Joan Baez version, thank you very much…
Or, if it’s about honoring the war dead, how about July 5, the date on which, in 1864, my great-great grandfather Henry Waller died at Petersburg?
Or June 11? On that day, also in 1864, my great-great uncle Thomas Chiles Bradley was killed at Trevilian Station.
Then there’s September 22 (or 23rd?) of that same year (a bad one for folks on my family tree), when my great-great-great grandfather Wesley Samuel Foxworth died, also around Petersburg, after the Battles of the Weldon Railroad. I’ve read that he was buried up there, but there’s a marker for him in Marion — here it is….
You’d think grave markers would be the ultimate authority. I mean, people take care with something permanent like that, right?
Yet if you go by Thomas Chiles Bradley’s marker, you read that he was killed in a skirmish at Ball’s Bluff, Va., on Oct. 21, 1861.
But he wasn’t. In fact, over at the Caroliniana Library in the Bradley Family Papers, you can find letters written by him after that date. He lived until Trevilian Station in 1864…
I also had several ancestors who died in the Wars of the Roses, but do you see me going around waving Lancaster or York banners? No.
But seriously, yes, I know how much more connected we are to the Civil War. I’m acutely aware of it. My great-grandmother was born months after her Daddy, Henry Waller, marched north to Virginia, and she never laid eyes on him.
And she lived until I was 4 years old.
So yeah — the Unpleasantness was Recent…
Or how about no date for it at all?
Guess what Wart….Your ancestors have disowned you. the “unpleasantness” will be real when you meet them in the afterlife.
Actually, you couldn’t be more wrong. As I said in response to the other comment below…
I subscribe to the belief that when honorable soldiers lose a war, they don’t run around afterwards waving their battle flag, pretending that they did not.
And I like to think my ancestors were honorable soldiers.
I’ll share with you the first stanza of the famous poem that addresses the issue, written by Father Abram Joseph Ryan, widely considered the “Poet Laureate of the Confederacy:
Why should Abram Ryan have the last word? Did he stand in the face of battle?
Randolph Harrison McKim, June 14, 1904
We still love our old battle flag with the Southern cross upon its fiery folds! We have wrapt it round our hearts! We have enshrined it in the sacred ark of our love; and we will honor it and cherish it evermore,—not now as a political symbol. but as the consecrated emblem of an heroic epoch; as the sacred memento of a day that is dead; as the embodiment of memories that will be tender and holy as long as life shall last.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if folks who wanted to have an observation to respect the suffering and deaths of forebears (including several of mine) in the Recent Unpleasantness could come up with something less confrontational as waving those flags around.”
Hear him, hear him!
I typed out a response to this and then wanted to include a picture, but the easiest way for me to toss a picture in was for me to put up a post of my own and link it.
Oops. I just have said “than,” not “as”…
Also, there should have been a question mark..
“Everyone needs an editor.” – Stuff Brad Warthen Said, Vol. II
Dang. I post ONE thing on the blog today, and now WIS wants to interview me about it. They’re coming by in a few minutes…
Well, that’s done. I stumbled over my words several times, so it’s not going to be great. There are reasons why I’m a written word guy, not a TV guy.
I’m actually not bad at radio, but I get self-conscious on TV sometimes.
After the interview, Chad and I got to talking about special purpose districts and other things having nothing to do with the flag, but they’re a lot harder to get people interested in…
Such a shame to see someone with such valiant ancestors turn out to be such a sarcastic, mouthy blowhard. I bet your ancestors are rolling over in their graves with shame.
I bet they aren’t.
I subscribe to the belief that when honorable soldiers lose a war, they don’t run around afterwards waving their battle flag pretending that they did not.
And I like to think my ancestors were honorable soldiers.
I’ll share with you the first stanza of the famous poem that addresses the issue, written by Father Abram Joseph Ryan, widely considered the “Poet Laureate of the Confederacy:
Pretty sure Brad worships Jesus Christ, not his ancestors, so who cares what they would think? They’d still want to have slaves.
Easy, the man comes from royalty from every branch of his family.
Now, now, you exaggerate.
Far as I can tell so far, only two of my 16 great-great grandparents had royal ancestors — and there’s a link or two in the chain of one of them that I’m not 100 percent sure about. One or two others lead to nobility, but not royalty.
And, let me hasten to add, I don’t think this is particularly unusual. Basically all Europeans are descended from Charlemagne, statistically speaking.
The fun part is finding the links and learning HOW you’re descended from big shots in history. And I’ve had some lucky breaks in my searches.
Frequently, if you can get to one person with a noble title, or even with a “Sir” before his name, as long as the connections are uninterrupted going back through the centuries (and once you find someone of prominent birth, their ancestry is well established), you’ll eventually find a king…
Then, of course — and remember, Richard, you brought this up, so don’t complain that I’m going on about my obsession — there’s a line that brushes by nobility but never quite achieves it.
It’s the Pace line, which was either the first or second that I was able to carry back to the Middle Ages. And this one feels close, since my maternal grandmother was a Pace.
You follow that name back through the male line, and you find people who were at the Tudor court in visible positions, but never had noble titles that I can tell.
One of them is a character in “The Tudors.” In fact, he’s the first character addressed by name in the series. A minute or two into the first episode, Thomas More addresses him as “Pace.”
He was a diplomat in the reign of Henry VIII.
The fun one, though, was his nephew, who was a jester to Henry’s daughter, Queen Elizabeth. One or two of his jokes survive — he apparently had a pretty edgy standup act, so much so that the court tried to keep him out of Her Majesty’s presence. As Francis Bacon wrote, “Pace the bitter fool was not suffered to come at the Queen because of his bitter humour.”