Patriotism Archive

This morning I start on the back foot. Something awful has happened in the kitchen overnight. The remains of two well picked over chicken carcasses and random crockery and pots are strewn everywhere.

Could a raccoon have gotten in again in the middle of the night with ill gotten gains from a neighboring chicken coop and chased the cats around the house before all settling to enjoy some kind of feral midnight dinner party?

I think back. No. Last night I picked up two organic chickens for dinner. Hubby steamed vegetables and grilled cheese on an artisan breadstick.

The kids formed a bloc and refused to come to the dinner table.

“I’m Not Hungry”, they call back as they retreat with a packet of pretzels and a roll of frozen cookie dough. We adults are temporarily gutted at not being able to convince our children to eat a nutritious dinner. We sit in an obtuse silence with our I phones and watch two bottles of wine mysteriously drain themselves of the contents before we polish off the rest of Hubby’s birthday cake from The Cheesecake Factory.

After dinner we get distracted by a documentary on American rebel States in the Civil War.
It may not have been the Civil War (I am hazy on the history of New Zealand let alone that of the USA).
Checking the Housewife’s Fountain of Knowledge clears up the confusion:
The documentary was about the beginning of the Civil war following Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860. Seven Slave States set up their own government and war broke out in April 1861  : From Wikipedia:

“The Confederate States of America was created by secessionists in Southern slave states who refused to remain in a nation that they believed was turning them into second–class citizens^. They judged the agent of change to be abolitionists and anti-slavery elements in the Republican Party whom they believed used repeated insult and injury to subject them to intolerable “humiliation and degradation”.The “Black Republicans” (as the Southerners called them) and their allies would soon become a majority in the United States House, Senate, and Presidency.”

Whoda thunk? Way back in the day, The Republicans were the good guys. Mitt Romney, you missed your time.

Long story short:

The Confederacy got their pants kicked and told to pull their heads out of the dark ages and stop enslaving people.

Interestingly there is still resistance to acknowledging equal rights in the Deep South. From the New York Times:

Two Remaining Rebel States

The state of the kitchen explained, I set to putting things to rights. Fortunately most of the chicken has been set aside for our lunch today and I can make Matzo Ball Soup with the carcasses tonight.

In the meantime I have to turn this:

Our kitchen in the morning.

Into this:

Clear surfaces and vases of Spring flowers restore calm.

For them:

Ozy Axel and Cosmo sing The Star Spangled Banner beneath a New Zealand themed wall hanging,