#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

[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.

[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.

[ricardotomasz]

Such is life! Behold, a new Post published on Greater And Grander about Coming up: Bullets Over Antebellum!

See into my soul, as a new Post has been published on https://greaterandgrander.com/coming-up-civil-war-2-the-heroes-of-antifa/

Coming up: Bullets Over Antebellum!

We are excited to announce our new project is in post production, Bullets Over Antebellum!

A Ken Burns-style mockumentary covering the Second American Civil War.  In this cathartic and uncompromising feature-length film, we take the anxieties of many Americans and laugh at the Devil.  It is many years in the future, and we are looking back at the second American Civil War, which erupted over the issue of abortion, after the election of the first woman president.     

This mockumentary film will help you enjoy your experience with Greater & Grander even more.

Do you have your own thoughts? Let us know in the comments! Or join our community of successful creators on Patreon!

#AmericanCivilWar, #ComedyFilm, #Entertainment, #FeatureFilm, #IndependentFeatureFilm, #IndependentFeatureFilmMarket, #KamalaHarris, #KenBurns, #KenBurnsDocumentary, #Mockumentary, #PostPromotion, #President, #War, #Woman

[shelbymustange]

colbyjackcheesus -> shelbymustaine

[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.

[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.

[separatist-apologist]

Ken Burns' Civil War and chill WHEN???

[duckblr-book-club]

im the worst blog runner ever, i havent read the issue yet because -- you guessed it -- The Civil War Documentary Miniseries (1990) dir. Ken Burns