Monday, May 6, 2013

Shenandoah (1965)

My posting this clip got a rise out of a commenter over on Althouse who thought the Jimmy Stewart character was a pretty much a pussy:


rcocean said...
Thanks for the link. Funny how some farmer who saw the idiocy of the civil war is turned into some Ayn Randian "free marketer". Jimmy of course owed an obligation to either the state of Virginia or the USA. Had some foreign power decided to invade & take HIS sons and take HIS land he wouldn't pulled his absurd "When did the state raise my kids?" shtick. Instead he'd be cryin' for mama. 
No man is an island. I'm always amazed at how many dumb-ass white boys think they're "citizens of the world" who just happen to live in the USA. Yep, it's all about you boy-o, and how you don't owe nothing to nobody. We're just random individuals - competing. The East Asians and lots of others are laughing at you. 
5/6/13, 11:03 PM

16 comments:

  1. At market this week a group was in my booth speaking German. I mentioned Walpurgisnacht, as my son had just gone through that the other night in Kreuzberg, and I'll grasp at straws to engage a potential customer.

    My German is horrible, I said my son is in "Cruise Burg", a gentleman in the group said "Kroitz Bayrg" - but we understood each other. He translated it for me - Cross Mountain. How about that? The real old timer said "Vitches flyink on brooms" and made a gesture that I hope was related to that activity.

    It turned out they were from Switzerland and they did buy a piece.

    That's my report on international sales this week.

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    1. Sixty, the German consider the Swiss Germans to be the hillbillies of Germandom.

      The Swiss have their own dialect of German which is actually older than what we now call "High German." For example, when I lived in Zurich there was a favorite Bierhalle staffed by two elderly twin sisters. After serving the beers and usually a meal, they'd always ask isch guet gsi?" which translated into standard German literally means "Ist gut gewesen?" or was is it good? The origin of the phrase requires knowing that the past particle of the German verb sein or "to be" is gewesen but logically, and at one point in time (and still resident in Swiss German) it was actually gesein. So the closest High German word would be the now archaic ist gut gesein? If you recognize that many Swiss words are now truncated with an "I" sound you can trace the progression:

      Ist gut gewesen --> isch gute gesein --> isch gut gsi I put the sound evolution in another chirbit: here.

      That is all for my international language lesson.

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    2. Thank you for helping me out with that. I do enjoy talking to folks from over yonder, but since I am losing my hearing much of what I might have caught before now escapes me. I also like it when my products journey to foreign lands. Did I tell you the story of the bowl I made that was a wedding gift for bride married for greater good of Kazakhstan? Turns out the marriage lasted about 6 weeks and the bride demanded that she get to keep the bowl. Turns out her husband was some sort of terrorist or something and hadn't mentioned it before the vows were exchanged. I wonder if he is going to play in the NBA next season.

      How about your new handle - and how appropriate it is, seeing as how that show is filmed where you live, rather than the homeland of my people, Kentucky. Hope you have appropriate headgear to go with the handle.

      Speaking of misplaced geography, I saw the movie Shenendoah back when it was first released, thought it was kind of a melodramatic tear jerker, but since I had spent a lot of time near the actual Shenendoah river, something seemed off about that movie, even then. What do you know - that sumbitch was filmed in Eugene, Oregon. Yeah, that's close.

      And that's all of the arborealism we need today.

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    3. Speaking of los arbolitos, Disney filmed a couple few episodes of Zorro at the Mission San Luis Rey back in the day. How's that for Hollywood arborealism?

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  2. It's interesting how state's rights have been almost completely eclipsed by the federal government. That's not what Jimmy's character spoke about, of course, because the character of government had a distinctly different cast in the 1860's.

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    1. Wasn't the Civil War the first big test of state's rights versus federal rights and all the encumbering loyalties?

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  3. Bruce, You change monikers more often than I change underwear.

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  4. I just turn the names inside out.

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  5. You can do that when you are a Parallel Loony. I shall omit the other anagrams - they veer into Titus territory rapidly.

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  6. So I am proofreading a medical dep this morning and the doctor, who has the same last name as a member of Tony Soprano's crew, used the word "gemish".

    Well, never saw that before, and my first thought was that it was a Rickey Branchism, but a bit of research shows it is Yiddish, from the German Gemisch.

    Which reminds me, I was reading a poem about trees turning on woodworkers, well, I was reading an English translation of the original German version. Some folks were taking issue with that particular translation, and Google was not helping me a bit, but I want to thank you, Raylanovich, for opening my eyes to a language I have always avoided as harsh and barbaric. You know, spoken by guys with beards.

    Rochen, Funke, Strahl, Schimmer, get those for "Ray". Lan - nuttin'. An - ein.

    Yeah, I better stick to Romance languages...

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    1. German suffers from people's opinion of its mid-20th century association with mass psychosis--other than that, it's a fertile source of linguistic truth if you care to dig. English is more rooted in it despite attempts to supplant it. But remember that German itself has grown away from its Germanic roots. I should do a blog post on the "High German Sound Shift" which if, properly understood, is useful for recognizing cognates between German and English.

      As for Romance languages--they are invaluable. I recommend Italian because of its proximity to the mother tongue.

      I once asked an Italian friend where their word for the German language (which is tedesco) came from. His quip was that it derived from ti detesto (I detest you) which has a certain kernel of cultural rivalry which still endures, but which is completely false. The actual orgin is explained here.

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    2. That list left out Hungarian, but it did include Finnish, so that probably covers it.

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  7. Replies
    1. That explains a certain lack of support.

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    2. That in no way changes my previous comment, but it does prompt this one - TMI!!!

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