Catching Up

 I am going old school in my lack of posts, but it is nothing too serious... Mom duty, recovering from the Polish Festival, and the general stuff of life, I guess.  I watched the VEEP debate last night, and it was... good?  I am not saying it was entertaining or informative, but it was good to see...well, issues, if you will, discussed.  I don't think it changes the trajectory of anything, of course, but it...stops the bleeding, for a bit, though the propensity for self-inflicted wounds is...massive.

One nice thing about all of this is that I have been catching up on some reading and making progress on the book list.  I am almost finished with Hess's bio of BRaxton Bragg and while he does not say the man was a great general, he does make the point that his battles were in some ways similar to Lee's (Perryville vs. Antietam, Stones River vs. Chancellorsville) and that while in many ways the results were similar, Lee was of course covered in glory while Bragg was not. To be sure, Lee had better command cohesion (which can be blamed on Bragg) but he also faced less effective commanders (i.e., Rosecrans didn't cut and run like Hooker did). In short, both commanders made the best of the circumstances they had, but for Bragg, it didn't work.  I hadn't quite thought of the battles that way, which is why I love to read, you can always get a new perspective.