Onomatopoeia

Currently I have the album 10,000 Days by Tool in heavy rotation. After being introduced to Lateralus, Tool's previous album, by Zetetical when we shared an office, I have continued to follow Tool and count myself as a fan. I cannot seem to get enough of their brand of progressive metal. Who can argue with exquisitely crafted music with thought provoking lyrics written in un-common time signatures?

I however have not given myself over to the progressive metal genre completely. While I appreciate the energy and complexity of the music, when I listen to a group like Mastodon; the vocals bug me. Maybe I am off base about (prog-)metal, but I do not think that vocals need to be screamed all the time. Sure, you can scream some, or even a lot, but not all the time. The screaming detracts from excellent musicians playing intricate, complex rhythms and melodies in the rest of the song.

Refraction

Considering that this is Black History Month, it may be appropriate to commemorate a couple of interesting, but over-looked anniversaries that occur in February: The Battle of River's Bridge and The Orangeburg Massacre. These are two events separated by over one hundred years took place in the backwoods of South Carolina not far from my home.

The Battle of River's Bridge

The Battle of River's Bridge took place in the first week of February 1865 along the Salkehatchie River in near the border of Bamberg and Colleton Counties. After burning Atlanta to the ground, cutting a swath of destruction to the sea, and taking Savannah; General William Tecumseh's forces split in two to ravage the heart of secessionist movement, South Carolina. The next stop after Savannah would be Columbia, the city where infamous meeting to form the Confederate States of American took place. By cutting inland and moving due north, Sherman's forces could irreparably sever the supply lines between the coastal and inland cities.

The left (western) flank made its way north and was met by part of the CSA army entrenched with the primary objective of preventing the US army from advancing beyond the Salkehatchie River or at least delay them long enough for reinforcements to get to Columbia. Legend has it that it was a particularly cold Southern winter in 1865 and no one expected the US troops to wade through the cold, black waters of the Salkehatchie swamps; but they did. The US army fought the CSA across a series of trenches, laid down corduroy roads, and slashed and burned their way through the CSA positions. Next, they would rendez-vous with the right (Eastern) flank and take Columbia on 16 February, 1865, and subsequently was burned on or about 17 February, 1865. It was the right flank who, during the early stages of the Carolinas campaign started redistributing abandoned lands along the coast to former slaves in what would become part of the "forty acres and a mule" reparations directive/legend.

Sherman's "scorched earth" approach to war, while dehumanizing to those who stood in the way, was integral to defeating the Confederacy, re-unitining the states, and freeing many a Negro slave. The best practice Sherman employed in this approach was the "Sherman Necktie." Knowing that railroads were crucial to the CSA's infrastructure and that iron was in short supply, General Sherman had his troops not only tear up railroad tracks, but also heat the rails to warp and bend them sometimes leaving the iron tied around trees.

Some may weep at the torching of Atlanta (1864) and Columbia (1865), or cringe at the melted rails and incinerated fields. Not I.

The Orangeburg Massacre

A little more that one hundred years after General Sherman's troops marched through the sea islands, swamps, and pine forests of the South Carolina Lowcountry and three years after President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965, there stood in the city of Orangeburg, South Carolina, a whites-only bowling alley. During the first week of February, 1968, a small number of college students from the two historically Black colleges in Orangeburg, Clafflin and South Carolina State, decided to take a stand against this illegal establishment which operated with impunity.

Each night the number of students protesting grew as did the law enforcement agencies mis-handling the situation. On 8 February, 1968, the youngsters started a bonfire. That evening after allegations by law enforcement that the group was armed and detritus was thrown at law enforcement, law enforcement opened fire at what was actually an unarmed crowd. Three young men, two of whom where students at South Carolina State-- my father's alma mater-- died as a result of law enforcement shooting bullets into the crowd. This dark night in Black Civil Rights history is often over-looked or omitted.

It terrifies me to look back at this incident considering that it took place less than forty miles from where I grew up. To think that only forty years ago my parents, who graduated from college in 1963, were teachers in so-called "separate but equal schools," is sobering.