Whether a Maine Civil War reenactor wears the blue or the gray, they are still yankees that stubbornly maintain thefeatures invented by puritans. 99% of the Confederate reenactors (has the lowest number of Confederate reenactors in all the states except Hawaii)Maine have contradicted the honor, faith, and compassion represented in those uniforms of gray.  Those coats reflect the gentle chivilary of Lee's Army in Pennsyvania on one hand and the deadly willingness of General Forrest's cavalry to fight for home referenced echoed throughout the four years of conflict.  Yet, for those that wear it for parades and picnics here in Maine, the uniforms are little else than the common fashion of their paciliar past time.

For most of them wearing the gray uniform and flying the Confederate flag is a mid-life hobby for outcasts and drunks. Most (usually spotted by the stars or bars on their collars) are failures in real life and will scratch, claw, and deceive their way up in rank.  What a sad sight; their desperation and obession for a rank that is nothing more than that of the private's: it is a role.  It is a portrayal. And they wield that exagerated power arrogantly and pathetically though most of them have no real experience or knowledge of the rank and post they are portraying.

Yet, the most common image of Confederate reenacting in Maine is the combination of chaotic politics, rank being the true goal and cause of participating, personality considered before principal, and a list of personal dishonors to the soldiers they are portraying. A couple of examples in that list include a pick up bed full of farby or non-period gear and uniform parts found in each group. And then there is the completely stupid fact that the Confederate troops in Maine do not like to drill and perfect their image and over all presentation for public events. Most of the Confederate officers in Maine can not lead their units through more than ten different marching orders.

There have included a train robbery by a group of infantrymen. They don't consider the fact that there never was one incident during the whole civil war involving infantry soldiers capturing a train.

Mosby's Rangers and JEB Stuart's cavalry rode on horses. They were the ones that captured the trains.

These gavalnized yankees do these silly events because it gets the public off and playing train robber banditos is a lot more fun than doing a graveside ceremony at one of Maine's five Confederate graves. Marching across level open fields for a hundred yards before dying is usually the style for both the Union and Confederate units here in Maine. Considering that the average weight of these so called soldier reenactors is 290 lbs (wives: 300 lbs) and are usually no younger than thirty-five and as old as the sixties, there hasn't been a tactical reenactment in Maine in many years.  The last I heard, one "Confederate" reenacting group in Maine has a first sergeant in his sixties that cannot spend more than an hour in the direct sunlight and had dropped out of reenacting for three years following a battle that caused his feet to get wet. 

I've visited and experienced a number of Confederate units from others states and I am usually impressed by them, especially those from the South. Many of them have a well-balanced presentation of not being too serious yet serious enough to give an appropriate portrayal of the Southern soldier.   The very serious guys are the coolest, to me, at least.

Confederate reenacting is too sloppy in Maine. The whole thing has turned a hive of units, each with no more than fifteen reenactors that actually form for a parade or drill. The spare no efforts to compete with each other.  The competitions between Maine Confederate units would shame even the most dramatic battles between the blue and gray.

I've had very few experiences while Confederate reenacting in Maine when topics such as battlefield and monument preservation were brought up by any one other than my family and I. Other topics and subjects like planning events to honor two of Maine's Confederate generals or the Confederate raid into Calais or even large scale encampments in the state.

They never discuss or attempt to try group effort school presentations, making a booth at community events, or doing an event in public to celebrate a Civil War anniversary date or Confederate Memorial Day.

In fact, in the dozens of schools that I gave countless classroom presentations of the Confederate soldier, there was only one or two times where maybe one or two other members of my unit participated in.

Again, Confederate reenacting has turned into a pack of little people motivated by big egos.

If these were the kind of "men" that were charged with defending the South during the Civil War, the war would have been lost long before Fort Sumter!

Actually, in the movie, V for Vendetta, a stinking freethinking liberal exaggeration of the drawbacks of conservatism, the line was, "Remember, Remember, the 5th of November." 

Why do super heroes wear masks?  I am sure this has been asked before in countless circles while passing around peace pipes and joints.  I am sure it was asked over many coffee lattes and coffee brandies. 
But for now-its mine. 

I believe that the hero’s mask is their trademark of self-denial, hypocrisy, and self-righteousness.  Too ashamed to face themselves or have others know the violently insane and obsessive cases they are capable of being.   V and Batman and Spiderman all wear their masks for the same reasons the Green Goblin and the Riddler wear theirs.  The Joker wears his make up for the same reasons the Ninja Turtles live in the sewer and wear masks.  They are freaks. The Joker (like Two Face) was horribly deformed and transformed from an unknown street pirate and mob goon to a super vindictive and violent and determined opponent.  As much as the mask defines the psizophrenia personalities of super heroes so does the mask and makeup define the villian's own disorders of hate and rage or in the super hero’s case, self-medicating by saving others. 

Every point in our history where there have been cultures and empires that have not been inspired to live the teachings of Jesus and the lessons of His death and resurrection (You'd be surprised how few moments in history had been inspired by Him) the people have been at war.  Division and plunder.  Greed and power.  Glory and lust.  Blood for lies. 

I find the so-called super hero’s image and story as pathetic as the stories of some of the state cases I live near.  Instead of trusting in God and following His word through times of trial, these guys plunge themselves into a self-glorified angel with a black belt.

The entertainment industry, the same a holes that brought us Rudolf (I do not blame the comics because they are not the first form of literature that has expanded on society's weakness) feed us that these are only normal guys that are channeling their negative forces towards the greater good.  We eat up that happy bs.  Go Wild Cats!

However, Bat Man as well as the Joker, both the red and black Spiderman, give us an extrordanary opportunity to watch a two-hour film about your own dark cores without having to acknowledge it. 

In our dreams we are the christs that people pray for when they are in trouble.  In our dreams we are the angels that can fly around  NYC or Gotham either on the wings of a pterosaur or upon a spider string.  In our dreams our villains are justly beat (by us) and all the pains of the past and present are confronted and challenged. 
Yet, in our dreams we are also the flamboyant and charismatic playboy villain.  The guy that, like the super hero, is unafraid to stand up and face the world without fear of consequences.  Though villains usually get killed, in our dreams that is cool.  Villains always go out standing and with a bang. 

Whether we acknowledge this or not, there is a part of our ego that wears both masks of the villain and the hero.  Yet, we live in reality, where there isn't an are to a company and fortune that has the right recipe of rage, wrath, and obsession to stalk the night for a Penguin or a guy that got his big screen break in One Flew Over the Coo Coo's Nest. 
We live in a world where an evil yet sexy opportunist doesn't just suddenly rise to the top of the world as a part of his evil plan.  Wait, this is November 4, 2008 right?  (Woman screeches) OMG its Blitzkrieg Barrack!  Not unlike the Joker,  Blitzkrieg Barrack wears a different face than in his past and he won our hearts through charisma and image alone. 
His blue imps have raided most of the national senate and house too.

(Shines a spotlight into the night with an outline not of a bat but of a plunger).  Joe the Plummer, where thou art?

I get a kick out of the many forms of art featuring a devil as recognizable as a half goat half dragon with clover feat, spike tail, two horns, and a cool goatee.  
Shouldn't we know by now that the devil also wears a mask?
In Eve he was a snake (on a planet where there is hundreds of species of them). 

My confident, hopeful fellow Republicans, I have heard and read countless accounts of witnesses to war.  Most of these stories had come from Civil War veterans of many ranks.  In comparing all my readings from memoirs and published letters from that war with those that I have also read from the world wars and Vietnam, I've learnt that the Civil War was by far the most insanely horrible, terrible, and tragic.  Ironically, all this terror and blood was not produced by a Hun or a jap but rather the volunteer forces that answered Lincoln's call to destroy and wipe out the independence of the Southern states. 
More often than not, especially in the war's first couple of years, the gray lines faced north and the blue, south.  Ranks of tens of thousands of Southern men were all that separated the Federal armies and the complete sacking, burning, and conquering of the South beyond the rear of the Southern defenses.  Often, Confederate soldiers from Tennessee, Virginia, or Georgia would find themselves charging the enemy across their own lawns, careful not to shoot the cows. 
In fact, at the battle of Gettysburg, there was a Confederate private by the name of John Wesley Culp from that village.  Those that know something of the battlefield know that Union Commander, Maj General Meade's northern right flank constructed its defenses on the hill, known locally as Culps Hill.  Pvt. John's family owned it.  He was killed less than a mile from his home. 

The battlefield deaths would have made even the opponents of the Geneva Convention squirm.  The technology of small arms and artillery had advanced further in the twenty years leading up to the Civil War than what was advanced for three hundred years prior.  Spiral rifling became mandatory for all military rifles.  Musket balls were modified to the revelations of a Frenchman named Mini, a cone shape rather than a round ball with three groves around its length to catch the spirals in the rifles.  This increased the accuracy of the rifle from twenty-thirty yards to five hundred to one thousand, depending on the terrain. 
The tightly packed ranks and battle lines that had been crucial for soldiers with inaccurate weapons (putting enough smooth bores into one place increased the likelihood of somebody hitting something) surprisingly did not receive the same advancements as the weapons of war.  These shoulder to shoulder battle lines hardly ever stood up to a defensive position armed with the latest. 
Even loading had become more efficient.  The Mississippi rifles was the first of their kind to include a simple mechanism to ignite the powder.  Where before it was the clumsy, messy, and some times dangerous flint stone and powder pan, useless in the land, by the late 1840s, the percussion cap nipple had replaced the pan and the flint was replaced by the rugged and simple percussion caps.
Whether it was the Federals at Cold Harbor or the Confederates at Franklin, regardless of the size of these forces, they would fail miserably while advancing on a well dug in position. 
Artillery had advanced in the same ways of the rifles of that period...spiraled bores, shells molded the same shape as the mini ball, and cannon were converted to fire by the simple tug of a rope.  Some Confederate batteries even included the ahead of its time, Whitsworth breech loading artillery pieces that could send shells up to two miles.  Quite a feat for a light artillery piece! 
These guns got bigger and more dead.  Field pieces also included a mobile arsenal that not only included solid shot but also canister (a can filled with dozens of golf ball sized projectiles.  It was a big shot gun. 
Men were torn to pieces by the artillery.  The small arms fire could be just as grooving.  For when the exceptionally slow musket ball entered a soldier's flesh, it would pan out to almost twice its size, loose its momentum and become like a pin ball in the body often going in one way and tearing out the other leaving broken bones and organs. 
The field hospitals were more deadly than these weapons for the doctors of the time had no clue about germs.  The same cutting blades and other instruments used on some patients were used on others, washed only for a moment in a blood tainted water pot.  Infection killed so many.  And the conditions of thousands of men from different parts of the North and South pressed into great groups caused outbreaks of all the deadly diseases of the time, most common pneumonia, pox, or diarrhea...all killers. 
The POW camps killed plenty more.  Despite all the attention given to Andersonville, more Confederate soldiers died in Northern prisons than in Southern ones.  This is especially strange considering the North had a lot more resources to care for its prisoners.  Instead, thousands of Southerns died at Elmira, Camp Douglass (my own great great uncle died there) and Point Lookout. 
Lastly, during that war hundreds of thousands of unarmed and helpless civilians were either killed, raped, starved, or made homeless in the South by Northern assaults on Jackson, Columbia, New Orleans, Richmond, Charleston, Atlanta, Savannah, Petersburg, and Vicksburg. 

Yet, even when I hear some of McCain's stories on being a POW in the Vietnam war or even some of those from the citizens of Vicksburg that had to dig caves to replace their homes when the Federals shelled their community for months, I can't help but feel that our nation's most decorated war heroes have not seen a more sadder side of hell on this earth.  I won't argue that seeing your comrades and mess mates die in a burst of red or slowly on a cot is a despair that I would not wish to know.  Killing others, even the enemy, would be high up there in despair. 

Yet soldiers as well as the citizens in Vicksburg stuck together, banded together to either save lives or help their cause.
But I challenge McCain or any other to visit Sand Hill in Augusta to happen upon something probably worse.  How so?

As terrible as it is, in war there is the sense of honor, duty, and sacrifice regardless of the cost of war's want of blood.  Yet, in this community in Augusta from the lawn of Saint Augustine’s castle church that also serves as the intersection of Washington and Northern Avenue to Monroe Street, on Sand Hill there are things that are worse. 

Here we have people that are not dying from battlefield wounds but self inflicted ones.  Here the American dream seems as distant as Washington DC.  While men and women serve to protect our freedom, the citizens of these parts choose not to honor any of these values our soldiers fight for.  They exist only to consume.  Friends only exist to aid in battles against neighbors provoked by rumors or differences.  Parents have children to receive government benefits, and most of the many, many, people here on disability income neither deserve it or need it any more than the most productive worker. 
These people are lazy, spoiled, vindictive, and crazy.  They are defeated, plagued, and live only outdated trends that haven taken years to finally reach Maine. When Maine cut back on its mental health funds the state hospital was forced to release dozens of critically messed up patients.  They now mostly live on Sand Hill, screaming, thrashing, and ticking like time bombs.   Sand Hill's population of a thousand or more has a higher concentration of sex offenders than in any other community I've lived in.  In fact, many of them live across the street from or live in the same apartment building as children. 

Joe the plumber is does not represent this place or its voters.  If asked to live on Sand Hill for one year, on Stewart Lane or Washington Avenue or Jefferson Street, I am confident that both McCain and Obama would have either something new to their conscience and campaign promises or either continue not to consider the people's plight, as they have all along any how. 

War exists but in these wars there are victories and causes.  There are battles upon Sand Hill.  Yet these never include either valiant causes or any kinds of victories.