Friday at Hastings

Baaaah! Our foot is killing us. We're not sure exactly what it is. But we suspect it's all the stretching exercises we were told to try. The boot don't help at all. Hell of a job all those doctor visits have done. Hell of a job. We are not necessarily in the best mood.

Once again a Thursday night football game was on, and we just weren't that interested. Over saturation? Are we just getting bored with the NFL? We find this alarming. 

In shabbat news Kristallnacht is coming to Philadelphia. Dark times for Jews in America. Dark times. 

Gloom and doom, doom and gloom. Ya'll know politics is cyclical, right? Ben Shapiro the other day said that when W and the GOP won in 2004 he thought they'd never lose again. He was young. We didn't think that, but we believed the GOP had turned a corner and rewritten the rules. Heck, Dems were posting forlorn pics of themselves holding 'I'm sorry' signs on the internet. Two years later the GOP got shellacked in the midterms. Two years after that Barry Soetoro won easily. Guess who got shellacked in 2010? Eschew gloom. We'll stand for no doomerism at Stroock's Books. 

DOGE report.

Just an excellent day, really. We read through the Battle of Los Banos chapter again. The chapter is probably as good as we can make it. This chapter shows the army and marines (both American and Mexican) and the various insurgent groups in 27 individual scenes. There's a lot of bouncing back and forth.

We spent the afternoon interpreting the first act of the Battle of Hastings. we read some primary sources, read some secondary sources (David Horvath and Marc Morris) and examined the Bayeux Tapestry. Click here to look at the tapestry, reader(s). It's really a fascinating document. Our medieval warfare prof, Professor Brian Todd Carey, taught us that the Tapestry was an excellent source for the battle. Of course we've walked Hastings. There really ain't that much to it. Hastings is just a field, a hill, and an abbey built by William the Bastard to commemorate his victory over the rightful King. 

Here's the problem we're having. We know William opened the battle with an archery barrage. Then he sent in the infantry. When they stalled on the English shield wall, William sent in the cavalry. But (!) did the infantry withdraw first? Sources don't say. If not, then the cavalry waded into the mele, into the press of men and shields and spears and swords. What good is cavalry in a situation like that?