a.d. elliott - Take the Back Roads

Dear Henry, When I was in Savannah a while ago, I stopped by the old US Civil War fort called Fort Pulaski, the stronghold that the Union army used to blockade the Savannah River. It was also used as a prison for Confederate officers. It has a long and interesting history. Let me tell you all about it. Construction on Fort Pulaski began in 1829 in response to the coastal assaults during the War of 1812. The Fort was named after General Casimir Pulaski, the Polish cavalryman who joined the US Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and is considered the father of the US Cavalry. He fought in the Battle of Brandywine and Germantown and was with the Continental Army during that terrible winter at Valley Forge. General Pulaski was killed during the Siege of Savannah and, like the Marquis de Lafayette and Bernando de Galvez, is one of the few foreign nationals to receive honorary US citizenship. The Fort's construction was overseen by Major General Babcock and a recent graduate o...

Dear Henry, Do you remember the old T.V. show from the late 70s / early 80s called Dukes of Hazzard?   It was about the two brothers, Bo and Luke Duke, on probation for moonshine running. The show always featured at least one (usually more) car chase between the Duke brothers and their 1969 Dodge Charger, adorned with a Confederate flag named the General Lee and relatively incompetent Hazzard county sheriff, Roscoe P. Coltrane, led by the corrupt county commissioner Boss Hogg, played by the actor and Korean War veteran, Sorrell Booke, ( read his Everyday Patriot biography here ). The television show was based on the movie The Moonrunners.  While the show was incredibly popular and was the second most watched on American Television for a while, behind Dallas, it didn't age well. The show was about illegal alcohol distribution and contained a lot of Confederate imagery, and that culture doesn't quite have the same charm as it did nearly 50 years ago. However, I daresay, the...

Dear Henry, I've compiled a list of the rest of my favorite Sophocles quotes from the books Oedipus the King , Oedipus at Colonus , Antigone , Philoctetes , and Ajax , that I hadn't included in earlier posts.  There are a lot of them (25!).  Sophocles is incredibly quotable and has some great wisdom. 1. "Count no mortal happy til he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain."  From Oedipus, the King While I think someone can be happy, even in pain, because I live with chronic pain, I understand the challenges of finding happiness in it. 2. "One soul, I think, often can make atonement for many others, if it be devoted." From Oedipus at Colonus I think the entire philosophy of Christianity rests on this idea and I'm very grateful for His atonement. 3. "There is no felicity in speaking of hidden things." From Oedipus at Colonus. Right?  Sometimes we should just shut up! 4. "What you cannot enforce, do not command." From Oed...

Dear Henry, The other day, I noticed a place called the Cathedral Shrine of the Transfiguration on Google Maps. In the reviews, someone had written that it was the tallest Cathedral in the world, and so, feeling up for an adventure, Fish and I drove the two-and-a-half hours to Orkney Springs, Virginia, to check it out.  The Cathedral Shrine of the Transfiguration is an open-air cathedral built in the foothills of the Great North Mountain. It was made in 1925 from local stones hand-carried by local residents and their horses. The Cathedral is the centerpiece of the Shrine Mont retreat center. It does have a tall bell tower, but I don't know why the review called it the tallest. It wasn't that big. The church is, however,  rustically beautiful and contains a little pond and a nice little prayer labyrinth nearby. We also noticed they had a trail for Stations of the Cross leading up the mountain. The sign mentioned that the hike was 3/4 a mile, and despite not having brought water...

 Dear Henry,  A short time after converting to Catholicism, I needed to work out of town. The night before my flight home, I wandered about inside a Catholic store. While perusing the various rosaries, icons, and other religious tokens, I stumbled upon the shelf of scapulars. On the back of one of the packages was a listing of the indulgences granted by scapular enrollment, and one of those indulgences was the assurance of a sacramental death, otherwise known as Last Rights. And so, according to my particular strain of logic, if I couldn't die without last rights, the scapular was the perfect thing to wear on an airplane because that means the whole plane has got to stay up, right? *Side Note*  I should mention that this is not how scapulars work. There is a lot more to wearing a scapular than this. The Sisters of Carmel put together a wonderful FAQ about scapulars here .   I didn't know any of these facts before my flight, so right before I left for the airport...