I thought this would make a fitting close for Memorial Day. I found it some years ago, and always try to listen to it during the weekend.
Celestial Navigations, The Soldier
Tag: Ed Brault
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 20MAY2023 – Gunga Din – A Dramatic Recital
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 18MAY2023 – A Favorite Kipling Poem
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 16MAY2023 – Poem for Today
INVICTUS
BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 09JAN2023 – On Settling Old Scores
(This was in response for demanding reparations for the cultural appropriation of my ancestors superior concrete recipe – photog)
As a descendant of Slavs, I demand a reparation from your reparations! My ancestors were seized and transported to Rome as slave labor and forced to mix their superior concrete. (I wonder if the formula also included human blood.) I will take my payment in gold aureae, 1000 per captured ancestor and descendants to the Fall of the Empire. If coin is not available, I will accept (unrolls scroll) bullion, jewelry, a reserved parking space, my own Winnebago, a chance to direct, (OOPS, wrong scroll), vineyards, pastureland, and 5000 sheep, and a Rudis, the wooden Sword of Freedom.
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 24OCT2022 – Northern Tier Winter
“And the first time one of those cute little electric cars gets stuck in a snow storm and runs out of charge on the road”
I lived on the Northern Tier (North Dakota, Champlain Valley of NY/Vermont) for over 30 years. double-digit below-zero winters were the norm. I know some very long, lonely stretches of highway where an EV would be at a serious disadvantage. I would really like to see an honest evaluation of range and battery performance at minus-20F. Just how much of that “300-mile” range will you get at night, with the headlights, heater, wipers, and other accessories, as well as propulsion drawing power. Add in an 80-mile stretch of road that has NO cell, CB, VHF, or FM coverage. Would YOU want to be in an EV, alone, at night, in a snowstorm, with no way to call for help?