Gone With The Wind

One of my favorite forms of coincidence is when events coincide with my reading.  I mentioned in my last entry reading a funny book called MAN OF WAR about a journalist who does several time periods of Re-enactment.  I was reading his Civil War chapter when Gon With The Wind came on tv last night for the Turner Classic Movie Channel and celebration of their anniversary.  I often thought that if I took a phd, I'd combine history and literature and study Margaret Mitchell and that immortal novel GONE WITH THE WIND.  Each tiem I watch it, I focus on some other facet, this time, I took special note of the African Americans and their portrayal and also the criminal chain gangs working in the saw mill.  The free to cheap labor aspect of the movie was of interest since I watched 12 YEARS A SLAVE this year, the Oscar winner.

Also of interest is the attitudes of men towards women, personified of course, by Ashley Wilkes and Rhett Butler.  The 'classic Southern Gentleman" and the arrogant, selfish, "realist" both of whom are iron-bound to their perceptual framework and unable to see beyond or through it.  For some years, I was taken with the post Civil War women writers such as Ellen Glasgow, who wrote about survival after the war and adapting to the new world as well about agriculture and ecology and the impact from the way the land was used.
We didn't learn enough however, because right after that came The Great Depression and the combined ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl (bad farm practices) and the Stock Market Crash (bad financial practices that cripple us today - The Wall Street fiasco best posinified in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.

The re-enactment scene is so interesting I've just ordered another book CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC, by Horowitz about the modern South and the attachement to this tragic period of history.  I've only attended one Civil War re-enactment myself and it was an encampment not a battle.  It was at the Parker Press Park near Perth Amboy, and since the Revolutionary War is my period, I was as much interested in the Parker Press as the encampment, but I have attended numerous lectures and other events (since this is the commemorative years of teh Civil War) and also visited Gettysburg, once as a child, and recently with my daughter for my birthday.  That most recent visit was especially interesting since it coincided with the realization from family history that I had 3 male ancestors who served in the Union forces, one at Gettysburg.

I have more to say about Gone with the Wind, and the Irish factor, but no time left to continue.  As always my epmail is wrightj45 @yahoo.com and I wish you
Happy Trails and Wagging Tails
Jo Ann