The Hammock Papers: Happy Birthday, Rogers

07 November 2020

Happy Birthday, Rogers

Robert Rogers was born on this day in 1731.

ROGERS' STANDING ORDERS

Don’t forget nothing.
Have your musket clean as a whistle, hatchet scoured, sixty rounds powder and ball, and be ready to march at a minute’s warning.
When you’re on the march, act the way you would if you was sneaking up on a deer. See the enemy first.
Tell the truth about what you see and what you do. There is an army depending on us for correct information. You can lie all you please when you tell other folks about the Rangers, but don’t never lie to a Ranger or officer.
Don’t never take a chance you don’t have to.
When we’re on the march we march single file, far enough apart so one shot can’t go through two men.
If we strike swamps, or soft ground, we spread out abreast, so it’s hard to track us.
When we march, we keep moving till dark, so as to give the enemy the least possible chance at us.
When we camp, half the party stays awake while the other half sleeps.
If we take prisoners, we keep ’em separate till we have had time to examine them, so they can’t cook up a story between ’em.
Don’t ever march home the same way. Take a different route so you won’t be ambushed.
No matter whether we travel in big parties or little ones, each party has to keep a scout 20 yards ahead, 20 yards on each flank, and 20 yards in the rear so the main body can’t be surprised and wiped out.
Every night you’ll be told where to meet if surrounded by a superior force.
Don’t sit down to eat without posting sentries.
Don’t sleep beyond dawn. Dawn’s when the French and Indians attack.
Don’t cross a river by a regular ford.
If somebody’s trailing you, make a circle, come back onto your own tracks, and ambush the folks that aim to ambush you.
Don’t stand up when the enemy’s coming against you. Kneel down, lie down, hide behind a tree.
Let the enemy come till he’s almost close enough to touch, then let him have it and jump out and finish him up with your hatchet.

A collection of four documentaries titled Frontier: Legends of the Old Northwest. The espisodes ...

Robert Rogers
Pontiac's Rebellion
George Rogers Clark
Tecumseh

I was born at the wrong time.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL