Dixie's Land Chapter Two

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TWO

From a distance, the city resembled a beach: a crescent of white, spreading back from the shore of a river wide enough to be an ocean.  As the steamboat Liberty drew closer, the white resolved itself into a series of pale-gray buildings, numbingly uniform in size and shape, set amidst a topography that was equally monotonous, with nary a hill in sight.  There was no single object to attract the eye, and as a result the city seemed to blur, to defy attempts to fix it in the mind.

“So much for New Orleans,” Stewart muttered.  Leaning on the rail, he sipped his coffee and watched, curiosity mingling with distaste, as the wharves of the Canadian winter capital drew nearer—and, with them, two assignments, neither of which he had asked for and one he already despised.

KABOOM

Overall Rating: 21

An early-morning disaster combining the colour sense of a Shriners parade with the delicate sweetness and good taste of Zsa Zsa Gabor. Feed this to children you really don’t like.

Image from the Institute collection

Appearance

At last: a cereal that looks worse than Teenage Mutant Ninja Cereal. Oddly though, Kaboom makes the same mistake as TMNT does, attempting to form an oat-based cereal into what it purports are clown heads. These have the same unfortunate resemblance to cadavers as the mock-Turtles do, with the added disadvantage of a colour palette that seems to have been borrowed from an Iraqi army surplus store. Where the Turtles were satisfied with just a bilious green, Kaboom explodes in a whole bunch of muddy, murky colours that an extremely generous (or half-blind) consumer might mistake for purple, green, orange, yellow, etc. These colours appear to have been mixed with diesel oil to achieve that hard-to-get dull, appetite-suppressing finish.

Texture and Taste, Dry

Eurgh. There’s crunch galore here, but so what? You can get great resistance chewing a mouthful of raw oats. This stuff has all the excitement of cat-kibble (with none of the health benefits). And there’s no sweetness to distract you from the banality of the taste and texture, either. This is the least-sweetened breakfast cereal we’ve encountered since we stopped eating Corn Flakes. No, take that back: Corn Flakes are sweeter.

Texture and Taste, With Milk

Even worse. There’s no heightening of the bland flavour, and the absence of sugar is only made all the more obvious. The stuff just sits there, and since it’s made of oats and then apparently kiln-dried, it doesn’t even have the decency to sog once the milk goes on. Instead, these dead-and-rotting clown heads just float there, brainlessly grinning their rictus grin and making you wonder why you don’t just chuck it and go out for bacon and eggs.

Conclusion

General Mills has always been the Chrysler (FIAT-Chrysler? American Motors? Studebaker?) of the kids cereal business, but this stuff marks a nadir even for their halfhearted attempts. You’d be better off eating muesli―no, you’d be better off eating gravel. [August 1992]

Dixie's Land 1.4

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[Concluding chapter one]

Sound returned to Stewart’s ears.  It wasn’t the cough, rattle and roar of battle, either.  He awoke to the murmur of water and the rustle of wind in the trees.

He also awoke to a pain so all-consuming that not even screaming could dull it.  He screamed anyway.

"Drink this, son.  Quickly."  Something cold pressed against his lips; after a second, Stewart recognized the mouth of a flask.  He drank.

Dixie's Land 1.3

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[Continuing chapter one]

The men were shouting, but what shocked Grant into immobility wasn’t the vocal din.  It was the way their formation had been solid one second, and non-existent the next.  In their hundreds, in the pale blue of the line or the dark blue of officers, they poured into the woods out of which they’d attacked just minutes ago, flowing around him as if he were an insignificant rock in the river of their panic.  Most of the men were unarmed: they seemed to have thrown away everything they’d carried, so desperate were they to not be here.  Grant had stumbled into three Seminole ambushes in Florida in the first weeks of that Indian war, and he had never seen soldiers just give up and run like this.  “Follow me!” he shouted to his staff, and urged his reluctant horse into the woods.

“Where are we going?” shouted one of his aides.

“Back to our clearing.”  Grant had no trouble keeping his voice steady: in the earliest moments of the first ambush the Seminoles had laid for him, he’d been frightened.  Then his fear had just evaporated.  Ever since, he’d been mildly surprised at how little he was affected by things that seemed to make other men lose their senses.  “We have to stop these men,” he shouted to the aide, and to the adjutant, who’d appeared from out of the smoke and attached himself to the party on horseback.  “They’ll aim for that clearing, and it’s the best place to start a rally.”

"What the hell is this, and where did I get it?"

I'm currently reading a delightful book called What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories,  by Laura Shapiro (who turns out to be the author of an earlier book I loved, called Perfection Salad, about the origins of the Home Economics movement). And I think I'm in love with Barbara Pym. Not only did Ms Pym put food and drink into all her novels, she noted these subjects in wonderful detail in her journals and notebooks. And she seems to have had the same problem sourcing the items in her notebooks that I have: the title of this post comes from something Shapiro says Pym wrote into a notebook next to a bit of conversation she'd taken down someplace at some earlier date.

Equally important to any writers reading this: Pym spent nearly a decade and a half in the publishing wilderness, unable to sell her novels to anyone. She kept at it, though, and lived long enough not only to see her reputation revived, but to see it enhanced and to find herself on the short list for the Booker Prize.

The critic in me feels obligated to mention that the chapter on Eva Braun doesn't really belong in this book (or, to be honest, much of anyplace else) but I'm enjoying this book and that's what matters.

And I think I'm going to see what the library has in the way of Barbara Pym.

Dixie's Land 1.2

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[Chapter 1, continued]

“Where the Hell is the Second Massachusetts?”  Grant had to shout in order that his aide be able to hear him.  The man was only a sword’s-length away from him, as close as their horses would get to one another, but the cannonade had steadily increased in volume until now the sound of it threatened to inflict pain.  “We’re supposed to be advancing!”

“I don’t know, sir!”  The young lieutenant was clearly upset, and his horse, aware of the man’s anxiety, shied nervously.  “I rode all the way back to our baggage train, and they’re just not there!  And they’re not anywhere on the way!”

Dixie's Land Chapter One

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ONE

They were coming, and everyone knew it.  The whole company stirred, eighty restless and uncomfortable men, echoing a tension that worked its way down the regiment’s entire line.  For all Captain Charles Stewart knew, the tension originated on the ridge to the north, where the big guns in the heart of the Confederate position continued to fire at an enemy he could not see.

Stewart stared at the woods in which the enemy forces were hidden, and fought against the urge to loosen his collar.  It was unseasonably warm for May, and the heavy kersey of his jacket and trousers itched abominably as he tried to ignore the trickle of sweat making its way down his back.  He wanted to be busy, but until the day demanded more of him than watchfulness, there was little he could do.

"What do you think, sergeant?"  Stewart turned to Fitzgerald, the company sergeant and a man whose twenty years in the Old Army had left his face the same color and texture as his boots.  "When do you expect them?"

Now We Are Sixty-Four: II

The Internet Song

(The following is a work of doggerel. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, in the following lines is purely and embarrassingly coincidental. Really)

Some friends and I write

In the midst of the night

In a sort of a forum that only we read;

Though we may seem quite dense

Our enjoyment’s immense

And it’s clear that to publish ourselves fills a need.

In the comments we strive

To keep language alive,

By trashing each other with little remorse.

It’s a form of debate

That leaves some quite irate;

But we always indulge ‘cause that’s par for the course.

Though we know that it’s vicious,

Completely malicious;

Civilized folks wouldn’t do it;

The desire to take part

In the bloodletting art

Makes us all sing this song and get to it:

Keith is clouting Cory;

Pippa's stabbing Hugh

Helen R

Has gone to war

With Peter and with you.

Weiss is slagging Jairus;

Natalie’s incensed.

Sara growls;

Caitlin yowls

And now the fun’s commenced.

Not all have the strength

To survive this at length

And some have announced that they’re calling it quits.

But those who have stayed

Battle on, undismayed;

For the chance to call others “oblivious twits.”

If it’s quiet you seek,

Or your temperament’s weak,

Then I strongly advise you to pass on your way.

But if you’ve got the gall

To attack one and all,

By all means come join us and jump in the fray.

Sure, we know that it’s vicious,

Completely malicious;

Civilized folks would know better;

But our rabid convulsion

Gives ‘way to revulsion

Unless we cut loose and go get ‘er:

Corwin hassles Peter;

Cameron gets him back;

Lorna’s sting

Confounds Do-Ming

Who leaps to the attack.

Karen shows up cursing,

To join in all the fun;

The whole darned gang is sturm und drang,

And still we’re not quite done:

Sherry’s after Robin;

Karl unloads on me

Madeline,

With stealthy grin

Joins Janice on a spree.

Mark and Jill are snarling

Like a pair of stoats;

Chris and Dave begin to rave

― And Paige is taking notes.