Day 24: Brutality of War

I don't think it's going to be one of my depressed posts, but I'm not going to lie--going through the Gettysburg Battle Field was just terrible.

It is not that the museum was bad, and, if fact, it is one of the best historical museums I've been into. And the weather was beautiful. And some of the monuments honored the soldiers, and some of them were monumentally ostentatious and sickening!

Isaac Walton Taber, Drummer Boys, c. 1885

There was even some art there. One thing that this trip has done is made me fall in love with drawing and painting again. I get to teach my first studio art classes at CBA this year, and I'm stoked for that. I think y'all know that is where my heart is!

Okay, I'm not sure I fell out of love, but I definitely haven't been using tools to make that kind of art lately--unless you count the show where I had 19 drawings and two sculptures. Well, there was some good art this time!

I guess what really saddens me that I never realized until just today is that the War of the Rebellion has had fantastically long reaching effects--immeasurable effects. Like when hurricane Katrina washed all of the juices from Southern Louisiana into the Gulf of Mexico. There was a mixture of so many crappy, hazardous materials that whatever maladies the Katrina concoction creates will never be able to be tested or replicated. Just don't eat the grouper is all I'm saying.

Our vet, whom we found on this pretty bronze plaque, went on to do stuff in the world. Sure, we're not exactly sure what, but we know he lived up into the 20th Century. But there are so many lives that were snuffed out, and that would have been tragic enough. But think about all of the women who could not find a suitable mate because of the lack of options. How many inventions are as unknowable as the soldiers lying namelessly in soiled dirt. War just sucks.

"No man can see the end with any satisfaction." Said some soldier on the eve of Gettysburg. No, nobody could. But the battle was necessary. I hate that there is a moral justification for war, but slavery is wrong. Period.

There is a guy in our group. A man who molds the minds of SC children. From day one he has argued that the War of the Southern Rebellion was not about slavery. Today we were talking about monuments, and the offense that many in the south give. Someone brought up an idea of taking the ones that we should let go and put them in a garden, and not a prominent one. The jackass said we may be against them now, but we may not be in 100 years. Who the fuck says that? Did I say something? You know I did. Jackass racist jerkface!

But I have to imagine that for things concerning monuments or the stuff carved into it change at a glacial pace because the sentiment is literally written stone. Not like our graffiti, though, which was written on plaster that had yet to cure. The study of the graffiti itself has been wonderful, but remember, we've tied those marks on the wall to a human. We know we did because we tracked his war and pension record. Then we went to a battlefield where he fought and survived.

So there have been a lot of ups and downs this past week, and I cannot imagine a better way to spend a part of my summer. I'm going to need a long rest after this, and I'll need a lot of alone time for the few days I have left in my summer break. But, really. I'm giddy about the whole thing. But it ain't been easy.