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The Daily Dose/November 19, 2008
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
   
Notes from around the Human Experience...Marilu Henner is the Column Four Foto!
TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET: You know, we are hardly Scrooges here at the Writer's Shack. We enjoy the holidays. Really, we do. Like, you we go way back with them, and, like you, we have our own traditions and meanings associated with them.
But we like to enjoy the holidays during the holidays, which is why were annoyed to hear Christmas music at Wal-Mart this week.
Look, officially we are pro Wal-Mart, though we seldom shop there, honestly. We are still too much of a snob to buy clothes there, and we never got into the habit of grocery shopping there, but, honestly, when you need a cheap coffee pot, where else are you going to go? At Wal-Mart you know you are going to get a decent item at a cheap price.
This is why we were there today. Our computer speakers weren't working. This catastrophe was brilliantly diagnosed by the Writer's Shack tech department as "they're broken" despite the fact they weren't broken, merely partially unplugged, a fact we didn't bother to check until the new speakers were purchased.
So we go to Wal-Mart. We are hardly audiophiles, so a set of speakers that serves our purpose should run no more than $20, though we are secretly hoping for $15, which is what we ended up spending.
Deck The Halls With Boughs Of Savings: This country has been inching the start of the holidays forward for years. It started with store displays being put out the week of Thanksgiving, a good and honorable holiday that is now nothing more than a way station before everyone loses their minds the following day and acts as if they'll never be able to shop again.
This is wrong. The holidays begin on Thanksgiving and this encroachment by business in order to get us to open our wallets sooner is sinful. One, they are completely throwing off the natural cycle of the calendar year and we are not even allowed to enjoy autumn anymore. This is too bad because every season has its place in the yearly cycle and autumn is certainly one of your nicer seasons, a respite from the summer heat before the cold of winter sets in. Or so we've heard. The high today was almost 80 degrees.
As Long As We're On The Subject: Two, we are missing out on one of the best parts of the holidays, the anticipation of their arrival. Even as an adult it's nice to be able to look forward to it getting colder and darker earlier and family gatherings and whatever you happen to enjoy about the holidays, because these things are personal, of course. Now we are even denied that pleasure, the holidays are forced upon us before anybody is really ready for them.
A Question? So here's what we're wondering, though bear in mind we are the same people responsible for The Bottom Ten so maybe were not the deepest thinkers on the planet: has this country become so emotionally and spiritually bankrupt that we have to start the holidays right after Halloween? We can't even wait until an actual holiday to start the holidays?
The answer appears to be a resounding yes! We are so far removed from having a national purpose or a spiritual center we no longer have the patience to wait until the fourth Thursday in November to start our holiday season.
Joyful And Triumphant: A radio station here in Las Vegas even started playing non-stop Christmas music this week! We are not making this up! In past years they have started the day after Thanksgiving, but this year they apparently couldn't wait.
A Confession: We like Christmas music. A lot. Both sacred and secular, though primarily sacred, which is funny because we don't have any particular religious convictions right now. But we don't really want to hear Christmas music on November 18, especially since temperatures are above normal and I had the goddamn air conditioning on in the car today.
SEVEN SCORE AND FIVE YEARS AGO: On this date, in 1863, the Soldiers National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania is dedicated. The first speaker is Edward Everett, a former Congressman, Governor of Massachusetts and Secretary of State.
Everett talks about wars of freedom throughout history and ties them into America's Civil War. His speech was rather well-received, which is funny because reading it, it is more or less as dull as you would expect a two-hour speech by a politician to be, though it should be noted two hour speeches were the norm for the period. Everett's little chat checks in at 13,607 words long. For reference, today's Daily Dose is around 1,200 words.
Get Your Excerpts Right Here: While Everett does drone on a bit, parts of his speech are somewhat memorable. Consider this line about an hour and a half in, which probably could have been the philosophy of a couple generations of Americans:
A sad foreboding of what would ensue, if war should break out between North and South, has haunted me through life, and led me, perhaps too long, to tread in the path of hopeless compromise, in the fond endeavor to conciliate those who were predetermined not to be conciliated.
Then this a little later, again, probably reflecting the views of a substantial number of Americans:
The bonds that unite us as one People, - a substantial community of origin, language, belief, and law (the four great ties that hold the societies of men together)…these bonds of union are of perennial force and energy, while the causes of alienation are imaginary, factitious, and transient.
And Down The Stretch He Comes! Everett finished strong. This is the last line:
…as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country there will be no brighter page than that which relates the battles of Gettysburg.
Oh Yeah: After Everett spoke, President Abraham Lincoln stood and delivered a few dedicatory remarks. Though History has largely ignored Everett's speech, Lincoln's speech, of course is remembered as The Gettysburg Address. It was 272 words, and was delivered in about two minutes. It was not particularly well received at the time.
Everett, however, knew. The next day he sent Lincoln a note praising the "eloquent simplicity and appropriateness" of his remarks, adding "I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes."
Anyone who has read about Lincoln knows he had his share of ego and it's likely Old Abe knew he nailed a good one, and may even have suspected his speech would live down the ages. In his reply to Everett, though, he was characteristically modest:
I am pleased to know that, in your judgment, the little I did say was not entirely a failure.
Thought For The Day: The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here... - Abraham Lincoln, from The Gettysburg Address.
The Trivia Question Returns: Sometime in the 1810's - various sources are unclear on the matter - Edward Everett went to Germany and returned to the US the first American to possess what? - Answer next time!
Comments? Recipes? Complaints? Email the Writer's Shack here!
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