#Ken Burns Civil War

[ripeteeth]

“Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us. The Revolution did what it did. Our involvement in European wars, beginning with the First World War, did what it did. But the Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things. And it is very necessary, if you are going to understand the American character in the twentieth century, to learn about this enormous catastrophe of the mid-nineteenth century. It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.”

Shelby Foote, interviewed in Ken Burns’ Civil War (1990)

[swordwizard]

This is the most romantic letter of all time and never fails to bring me to tears

[boltlightning]

when pbs thanks viewers like you

[chiropteracupola]

sing me silence, my soldier / sing us gently into death...

[victusinveritas]

Wishbone (1995) in the episode "A Terrified Terrier." Based on the Stephen Crane book "The Red Badge Of Courage".

Waiting for the Wishbone adaption of The Civil War by Ken Burns--Wishbone reads all the letters in his adorable dog voice and maybe marches a bit with his dog-sized rifle (seen above).

[in-sufficientdata]

Sullivan Ballou was a successful, 32-year-old attorney in Providence, Rhode Island, when Abraham Lincoln called for volunteers in the wake of Fort Sumter. Responding to his nation's call, the former Speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives enlisted in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry, where he was elected major. By mid-July, the swirling events in the summer of 1861 had brought Ballou and his unit to a camp of instruction in the nation's capital. With the movement of the federal forces into Virginia imminent, Sullivan Ballou penned this letter to his wife.

His concern that he "should fall on the battle-field" proved all too true. One week after composing his missive, as the war's first major battle began in earnest on the plains of Manassas, Ballou was struck and killed as the Rhode Islanders advanced from Matthews Hill.

Continue reading (link also contains full transcript of video contents)

[confuzing]

Ken Burns' The Civil War documentary fucking slaps, and is excellent for getting all those pesky tears out of your eyes.

[shadow13dickpistons]

If I am somewhere on the spectrum, 1993's "Gettysburg," and the Civil War were my childhood special interest/hyperfixation. Brings my right back to my childhood.

[whumpster-fire]

Dearest Martha,

The bus has now been delayed for 9 minutes and 35 seconds now. We are battling harsh weather and food supplies are dwindling. The troops are restless. I fear the men will soon turn to cannibalism. This may be my final letter...

romanticizing your life is such a powerful tool and it’s a shame that it’s mostly used by people on tiktok to justify the purchase of expensive breakfast smoothies when there are few better ways to force oneself through unpleasant shit than imagining a cinematic backstory for your extremely quotidian suffering

[frogshunnedshadows]

Watched the Ken Burns documentary about Benjamin Franklin last night.

Got myself a copy of "The Demon of Unrest" by my man Erik Larson today.

[toaarcan]

Hi, hey there, did you know that the whole "Jedi can deflect blasters so Mandalorians used solid-shot weapons to kill them because blocking a bullet with a lightsaber just results in molten metal spraying the Jedi" meme is actually bullshit?

Like, first thing you have to know about that lore is that it was written by Karen Traviss. Traviss is fairly infamous for writing a shitton of military wank and really hating the Jedi, portraying them as cruel, cold, fascist idiots, who are much, much lamer than the cool Mandalorians, who are badass military types and definitely haven't carried out multiple genocides in the past (they have). She was also known for not exactly playing ball with other writers, and ultimately ragequit the franchise when TCW started to include Mandalorians and portrayed them differently. This was not a detail that basically any other writer in anything Star Wars ever actually backs up.

And like, here's the thing... this exists.

That's a Jedi using the Force to deflect bullets with her bare hand.

This is Tutaminis. And/or Force Deflection, it's not really clear whether they're the same thing or not. It's a pretty standard Force ability that a bunch of characters have demonstrated. Obi-Wan blocks both bullets and a flamethrower with it in the 03 Clone Wars microseries. It's how Yoda catches and redirects Force Lightning during his duels with Dooku in Attack of the Clones and Palpatine in Revenge of the Sith. It's how Vader absorbs Han's shots with his hand in The Empire Strikes Back.

It's also evident from the amount of times that the Mandalorians fight the Jedi with normal blasters instead of breaking out their "anti-Jedi" weapons for their ancient enemies. And the fact that the Mandalorians lost their wars against the Jedi.

If solid-shot guns/slugthrowers were the amazing anti-Jedi weapons that totally always worked against Jedi, then we'd see a lot more slugthrowers and a lot fewer Jedi. We see the CIS' Droid armies fight against the Jedi for three years, we see the Clones being designed from the get-go to kill the Jedi at the end of the war and being highly successful at it, we see the Empire hunting Jedi for the next 19 years and the rest of the Galactic Civil War after that, and y'know what they have in common? None of them use slugthrowers. They all just keep using blasters.

The answer to "How to kill a Jedi" equation has traditionally been depicted as "Use more blasters than they can actually physically deflect."

There's also the detail that Jedi are precognitive space wizards who can move with superhuman speed. If you're actually in range to shoot one with a gun, they'll sense you, evade or block with the Force, close the gap before you can chamber the next round, and revoke your Hand Privileges.

Even the "You'll kill them with a spray of molten metal from the melted bullet!" thing doesn't actually track with what we see on-screen. At the climax of Revenge of the Sith, we see Obi-Wan and Vader fight in the middle of an active volcano. They get splashed with showers of lava a couple of times, and at the end of the fight, both of their clothes are scorched and burned from the embers. Obi-Wan continues to wear his charred robes throughout the rest of the movie. And he's fine. No lava burns. Neither of them actually gets hurt by the lava until Obi-Wan cuts Vader's limbs off and he can no longer move or protect himself, and even then, Vader survives getting burned to a crisp by being really fucking mad about it.

So yeah, it's nonsense. A dumb "Hurr, Jedi are so lame and my unproblematic genocidal warrior race could totally kill them super-easy" take written by Star Wars' own version of Ken Penders.

[mydaddywiki]

David McCullough

Physique: Average Build Height: 5' 11"

David Gaub McCullough (July 7, 1933 – August 7, 2022; aged 89) was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award. McCullough's two Pulitzer Prize–winning books—Truman and John Adams—were adapted by HBO into a TV film and a miniseries, respectively.

Beyond his books, the handsome, white-haired McCullough may have had the most recognizable presence of any historian, his fatherly baritone known to fans of PBS’s The American Experience and Ken Burns’ epic Civil War documentary. Making me wanting to blow him all night long… although you probably didn't need to know that last bit. Just pretend you didn't read that. Anyway

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, McCullough earned a degree in English literature from Yale University in 1955. After working for twelve years in editing and writing, including a position at American Heritage, McCullough wrote in his spare time for three years. The Johnstown Flood was published in 1968 to high praise by critics. Despite rough financial times, he decided to become a full-time writer, encouraged by his wife Rosalee. He wrote nine more on such topics as Harry S. Truman, John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Panama Canal, and the Wright brothers.

McCullough also narrated numerous documentaries as well as the 2003 film Seabiscuit, and he hosted the PBS television documentary series American Experience for twelve years.

Personally, all I know about him is that he was married to his childhood sweet heart, Rosalee Barnes (aww). They had five children, which goes to my "loves to fuck" theory. While at Yale, he became a member of Skull and Bones. And his interests included sports, history, and visual art, including watercolor and portrait painting. And he had a face that would've looked great on my cock. Again… pretend you didn't read that.

After a period of failing health, McCullough died at his home in Hingham on August 7, 2022, at age 89. Less than two months after his beloved wife, Rosalee. He was survived by his five children; 19 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Works The Johnstown Flood: The Incredible Story Behind One of the Most Devastating Disasters America Has Ever Known (1968) The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge (1972) The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (1977) Mornings on Horseback (1981) Brave Companions: Portraits in History (1991) Truman (1992) John Adams. (2001) 1776 (2005) In the Dark Streets Shineth: A 1941 Christmas Eve Story (2010) The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (2011) The Wright Brothers (2015) The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For (2017) The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West ( 2019)

[finrays]

Thinking this morning about the time I got to witness the universe spank a pedantic asshole that I was about to slap myself.

I was at a folk concert given by the local symphony orchestra with my family, and the guy sitting a row behind us was being just… insufferable. Aside from the fact that he was bloviating excessively about every song on the program, the tone of his voice was just MADDENINGLY smarmy and superior. I was ready to turn around and shove the program in his mouth the whole first half of the concert.

Then we get to Ashokan Farewell, which is a song I really, really like. This fucking moron starts going “Ah yes, it’s an old Civil War folk tune, written by an artist from the South, I believe-“

And if you know anything about the song you’ll know that’s entirely wrong. It’s a rumor that got started because Ken Burns used it as the intro for his Civil War documentary series. The damn thing was written in 1982 by Jay Ungar and his wife Molly Mason, and it originated as a goodbye/goodnight piece at a mountain valley in Upstate New York where they used to hold fiddle and dance camps. One of his companions cautiously ventured this and was summarily dismissed with something like “Oh, well that’s not what *I* heard.”

It took a HERCULEAN effort not to turn around and Well Actually this guy. I strongly feel that if you’re gonna be smart about something, you should be cheery and excitable about it, as if you’re sharing a bag of snacks. The point is to share the knowledge you love, not to try and puff yourself up like a blowfish.

But I was beginning to observe how much smoother my life went if I hid my strangeness at that point, and a lot of that was shutting the hell up. So I just held my tongue, ground my teeth and sat there.

And I was rewarded for it; the conductor must have heard my psychic scream, because he introduced the song by pointing out the Civil War Folk Song rumor and then dismissing it and providing the real info.

Folks.

Mr. Grand High Cultured Muckity Muck. Went DEAD SILENT. I heard not another word from his mouth for the rest of the night. It was magnificent and I immediately had the NEW problem of not giggling and kicking my feet.

Sometimes, if you stay quiet and keep out of the way, an asshole will own THEMSELVES, and it’s glorious to witness.

[johnnycrass]

[Ken Burns Civil War documentary fiddle music] dearest bloggers, I haven't taken a good fit pick in weeks. out here there are no full length mirrors. the men and i have to find other ways to get even the shoes in the shot. Nug supplies are holding, and there is enough water for everyone. when the good lord delivers us to California, my heart will surely burst

[ulysses-s-grant]

There’s an image in Ken Burns’s The Civil War that I cannot find and it is driving me up the wall. Only place I can find it by reverse image searching is a website that doesn’t provide citations for their images. I’m in agony.