Post by Horace In Colorado on the PATCON

Any day is a good day for a quote. None better than this one from a book my thoughtful son Vern bought for me at my favorite bookstore, in Okanogan WA.

Major R. Wilson, formerly of the 1st North Carolina Battalion of Sharpshooters, spoke the southern mind when he said,

"If I ever disown, repudiate, or apologize for the cause for which Lee fought and Jackson died, let the lightnings of Heaven rend me, and the scorn of all good men and true women be my portion. Sun, moon, stars, all fall on me when I cease to love the Confederacy. 'Tis the cause, not the fate of the cause that is glorious."

The folks who will be at the PATCON in Tarboro, NC on 4 October know quite well that the "Cause" referred to was not ever slavery. It was the cause of Liberty, which cause springs up in generation after generation of men who are tormented by Government Gone Wild. We have been able to see two previews of the next four years during the past week of TV. I call it Government Gone Wild Version Tweedledum and Version Tweedledee. I would bet my Life, Fortune, and Sacred Honor that there will be better candidates at the PATCON next month than those seen on the screen last week.

I have paid for my chunk of that hog's nephew but like everything else, you have to show up. Life is dynamic. I may be there on Oct. 4. Like Carlos Casteneda, I believe that Intent rules and energizes the Universe. I have the requisite intent. If my physical and mental condition improve as much in the next week as they have in the last week, I will be there when "October has come again."

"October is the richest of the seasons: the fields are cut, the granaries are full, the bins are loaded to the brim with fatness, and from the cider-press the rich brown oozings of the York Imperials run. The bee bores to the belly of the yellowed grape, the fly gets old and fat and blue, he buzzes loud, crawls slow; creeps heavily to death on sill and ceiling, the sun goes down in blood and pollen across the bronzed and mown fields of old October.

--Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River.