On April 30, 1863, the  the Confederates controlled Mississippi River traffic from Vicksburg, Mississippi. The Union could not transport goods from the upper Mississippi basin to the sea because they could not get past Vicksburg. It also connected the two halves of the South. The Citadel of Vickburg, sitting on a bluff overlooking the river, was called The Gibraltar of the West and considered impenetrable.

After several failed tries to take or get around the city, Grant marched south of Vicksburg on the far side of the river. Supported by Admiral Porter”s gunships and transports, he crossed back to the Vicksburg side at Bruinsburg on April 29 and April 30, 1863. They ferried more than thirty thousand men across the Mississippi, making it the largest military amphibious maneuver until World War II.

He was now deep in Confederate territory, out numbered and cut off from his supply lines. In his memoir  Grant said that he felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equalled since…

on the evening of April 30th, 150 years ago, as the sun sank in the west, it sank on the other side of the Mississippi. Grant stood on dry ground on the same side of the river with the enemy. All the campaigns, labors, hardships and exposures from the month of December previous to this time that had been made and endured, were for the accomplishment of this one object.

He was about to start one of the most dazzling military campaigns ever.

to pick up the Range Rover.

I am sitting at my computer with tears running down my face. I guess it is technically called crying.  Not exactly crying in Joy, but very far from crying in anguish. I started crying when I saw the picture above. But first I saw this picture.

The pictures came – directly, not originally – from  Elad Nehorai‘s “20 Photos That Change The Holocaust Narrative” and the title is pretty much self explanatory. They are pictures of hope and power and defiance. These pictures of normal people – Jews who then weren’t always thought of as normal people and, I guess, in some places are still not thought of as normal people – reacting in normal ways to the most un-normal of circumstances, has moved me to my core. Some are pictures of Jews realizing they have been liberated,

some are people willing to be themselves, willing to defiantly be themselves.

All are pictures of hope and, even, joy. I urge you to click through and see the pictures and read the captions.

“20 Photos That Change The Holocaust Narrative”

Formula 1 is a distinctly English sport. It is billed as being international but eight out of the eleven teams are based in England (two are based in Italy, and one is based in Switzerland). Even the head track engineer for Ferrari, based in Italy – duh! – is English (Pat Fry). The guy who runs the Mercedes Team, Ross Brawn, is English. On NBC, F1’s new US home, the technical broadcast voice, Steve Matchett is English.

Yesterday, while watching a promo to the Malaysian Grand Prix, I noticed that NBC  has their announcers wear navy blue suits with white shirts and a tie of their choice. I also noticed that the two non-English announcers were wearing black shoes with their blue suits and Steve Matchett, the English guy, was wearing brown shoes with his blue suit.

About forty years ago, I started wearing – some might even say affecting – cowboy boots. This was before George Bush the Younger burst onto the national stage with his cowboy boots, so it was acceptable. (I think, I was copying Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn, who I admired.) Anyway, a very nice pair of brown goat Lucchese boots were my favorites and I took them to England, on a trip, as my dress shoes. Several people, here, remarked that brown shoes may not be dressy enough for London but I had seen lots of pictures of men wearing brown shoes with suits in England – including prince Charles and, now, Steve Matchett – so I felt safe.

While in London, we rode the The Underground almost everywhere – it is probably more accurate to say that we only went where we could go by The Underground – and I noticed that the cars had grooming tips mixed in with the adds above the windows. This was when Prince Charles was trying to save the proper England and was campaigning against modern architecture and gauche – read modern – behavior. The grooming tips were like Gentlemen wear shirts with collars and – the one I remember the most said something like Gentlemen never wear brown shoes after 6 PM.  It turns out that to be proper in England, a Gentleman should wear brown shoes – or boots? – before 6 PM but not after. I was glad to see that Steve Matchett, the only Englishman on the broadcast team, is still following the rules even if I wasn’t.

I am not a bicycling aficionado and have little  idea how prevalent doping – or juicing which now seems to be the preferred word and, somehow, seems to make it sound both better and worse than doping – is in the bicycling world, and that is not my complaint with Lance Armstrong (Lance Gunderson, before he changed his name which might be a clue). My complaint is the way he attacked everybody who tried to tell the truth. My complaint is that he dragged other people into his world.

Sally Jenkins, a columnist The Washington Post and author of two books with Armstrong, says I think that there’s a level of anger at Lance that is out of proportion to the offence of doping. I think she misses the point. Maybe everybody juiced, but not everybody threatened people who wanted to tell the truth (and Gundrson’s threats were pretty heavy duty). Not everybody coerced other people into juicing. What a dick!