Tag: Ed Brault

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 08MAR2024 – Some Kipling

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I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine. 

Was there aught that I did not share 
In vigil or toil or ease - 
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas ?  

I have written the tale of our life 
For a sheltered people's mirth,
In jesting guise - but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.

-R. Kipling

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 18FEB2024 – New York Exodus

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How many corporations will look at what happened to Trump, and start making HARD decisions about conducting business in New York City or State? Some truckers are already refusing loads for NYC. How many billions would it cost NY if those companies closed their offices and moved their operations to surrounding states like CT, RI, NJ, or PA. The COVID experience with remote office work proved that large corporate administrative centers are not essential to conducting business. The money saved on real estate costs may well counter the cost of server farms and optical fiber networks. Not to mention relieving workers of having to face long commutes or living in outrageously expensive apartments in the city.

In his zeal to “get” Donald Trump, this idiot DA and his megalomaniac judge may have sown the seeds of New York’s final financial ruin. Remember, if they can do this to a financial powerhouse like Donald Trump, who won’t be targeted?

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 16FEB2024 – Marie Antoinette Vindicata

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There is absolutely no historical evidence that Marie-Antoinette ever said “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” or anything like it. So where did the quote come from, and how did it become associated with Marie-Antoinette?

Folklore scholars have found similar tales in other parts of the world, although the details differ from one version to another. In a tale collected in 16th-century Germany, for instance, a noblewoman wonders why the hungry poor don’t simply eat Krosem (a sweet bread). Essentially, stories of rulers or aristocrats oblivious to their privileges are popular and widespread legends.

The first person to put the specific phrase “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” into print may have been the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Book VI of Rousseau’s Confessions (written about 1767), he relates a version of the story, attributing the quote to “a great princess.” Although Marie-Antoinette was a princess at the time, she was still a child, so it is unlikely that she was the princess Rousseau had in mind.
Since Rousseau’s writings inspired the revolutionaries, it has sometimes been supposed that they picked up on this quote, falsely credited it to Marie-Antoinette, and spread it as propaganda, as a way to rouse opposition to the monarchy. However, contemporary researchers are skeptical of such claims, having found no evidence of the quote in newspapers, pamphlets, and other materials published by the revolutionaries.

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 17JAN2024 – Vermont Driveway Survival

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Before we escaped the Peoples’ Republic of Vermont, I would stretch a poly tarp over my car. This covered the windshield, side windows and the door locks. A couple of bungie cords kept it tight. Come out in the morning, or night, and pop it off and the ice/snow/frost came with it. No scraping, and especially no fumbling trying to get keys into frozen locks. (Yes, this was back in the Ice Age when I was a specialist in stone knives and bearskins.)

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 16MAY2023 – Poem for Today

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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

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(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.