I love being a storyteller. I almost weep each time I present my programs to children and I see how much they enjoy it.  This summer, I’m spending my time developing  college classes for my online work and improving my school programs. There is so much to do, and so little time.  The summer is known as the “lean season” for storytellers, and I hope I can prepare for a good fall.

I just ordered a DVD about the Saint Patrick’s Battalion who fought for Mexico during the Mexican War. I hope to show it at the Celtic Society of Northeast Louisiana and the Scottish Society here someday. The site I got it from is here: A bit of trivia: Did you know that 1,500,00 Mexican citizens claim Irish ancestry? That fact is amazing to me. However, I’ve learned that there are schools and streets in Mexico named in honor John Riley and the other Irishmen. There’s a lot more to this story than I realized. I tried to attach the study guide offered with the video, but I think that failed. If you’d like a copy of it, leave a comment with your email or just email me and I’ll send you one.

NEWS:

I understand a virus is ravaging Facebook.  I am on Facebook, but even though I use a MAC, which is generally virus resistant,  I think I’ll lay off a while until the virus is handled or I learn what to watch out for. I’ll soon have a new book out that I’ve edited. It’s called, Biography of a Sea Captain’s Life: Written by Himself. It’s the memoirs of W.C. Flanders that I edited for the Seegers family. I’m still intending to burn up the roads this next school year presenting stories and songs. I’m enjoying my online teaching job(s) tremendously. In July, I’ll be in Durant, OK for the Shakespeare Festival there and in Hot Springs Arkansas the last week of July for the Sons of Confederate Veterans National Convention.

A Place So Far from Texas

This blog entry is an article I wrote for TGIF Weekend Bandit, a small paper in North Texas. I thought I’d include it on my blog. See also August 14, 2006 for the lyrics to my song about Point Lookout, “Cry, Little Artillery Man.”

If you go to http://www.plpow.com/ you will find information on Point Lookout, a Prison Camp for Confederates from 1863 to 1865 in the state of Maryland during the War for Southern Independence. Point Lookout was a genocidal, ethnic cleansing, concentration camp filled with federal atrocities that housed over 52,000 Southerners, with a death count of over 14,000.  The site is devoted to many of the stories of the War Between the States that are left out of the history books.  “The tale of the camp,” writes Edwin Warfield Beitzell in his book, Point Lookout, Prison Camp for Confederates, “is a horrid story to tell. It is a story of cruel decisions in high places, a story of diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid and typhus, of burning sands and freezing cold in rotten tents. It is a story of senseless shootings by guards. It is a story of the despair and death . . .”  Yes, and many Texas men were sent there and died there.  As we appreciate our beautiful state, we should understand the pain that these men felt, suffering and dying in that place so far from Texas.

I hope you’ll check out the site and learn a little bit about this camp.  Here is a photo of the camp and a photo of the officers who ran the camp, Brig. General James Barnes and Staff. The photos are from a site devoted to Southern Maryland: http://photos.somd.com/showgallery.php/cat/591

Here are two quotes on the site’s (Point Lookout) first page that will give us a little to think about.

Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that it may find a place in history and descend to posterity … Gen. Robert E. Lee

Nothing fills me with deeper sadness than to see a southerner apologize for the defense we made for our heritage… President Jefferson Davis.

Point Lookout Staff

Last night, I presented a program of stories and music to the Friends of the Library in Greenville, Texas. Today, I presented my program to a large room of children and parents. The audience was warm and receptive, both to my stories and the music. This was my second program at this library, and I’ll have more photos of my visit to post very soon.  Sylvia, the librarian, is such a committed lady. She works long hours and takes great delight in bringing good programs to the children. In this photo is another dedicated worker–LeJeana, the Children’s Librarian.

LeJeana, the Children's Librarian at the W. Walworth Harrison Public Library in Greenville, Texas

The summer is starting to fill up and already I’m making plans for a busy fall, scheduling schools and festivals as musician/singer and storyteller. Today, I have Scottish matters on my mind. At noon today, at the Picadilly at Mall St. Vincent in Shreveport, I’ll be speaking and signing books for the Scottish Society of the Louisiana Hielands. That society has some great people in it. You can find their excellent website and all sorts of Scottish information here: If you live in Northeast Louisiana or East Texas, you should visit them sometime.

I also did some more reading on the Clan Cumming and wrote them another poem. Here it is:

The Murder of John the Red Comyn at Greyfriar’s Church

Feb. 10,  1306

John the Red and Robert the Bruce
Met on a cold day in Dumfries
The victory at Roslyn forgotten,
Because of pride and jealousy.

Bruce forged a plan of murder,
Of betrayal fed by greed,
With his brothers he conspired,
To commit the bloody deed.

An argument broke out,
It doesn’t matter why,
The Red’s blood darkened the soil,
As his soul rose to the sky.

Comyn land was divided
Among Bruce’s chosen few,
The clan was forced to flee,
To a land foreign, strange, and new.

A leader died at the church that day,
And never would return,
The victors write the history,
As the Cumming clan would learn.

A Review of Stories of the Confederate South

This review was published recently in Louisiana Libraries Spring 2009, pp. 41-42  A review by Christy J. Wrenn, Magale Library, Centenary College of Louisiana.

Winner of the 1998 Ernest Hemingway Short Story Competition, Rickey Pittman teaches freshman composition at Louisiana Delta Community College. Currently, he finds himself writing freelance, editing, singing, playing guitar, and writing songs for Angus Dubhghall, a local Scots-Irish band that performs at Celtic festivals in the South.  He is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Camp Thomas McGuire, in West Monroe. Pittman also has the titles of Civil War reeanactor, public speaker on the War Between the States, and an original musical performer of Civil War period music.

Pittman’s love for Civil War history and his devotion to Southern Heritage led him to write this collection of eleven exceptional short stories on the subject of the South and the Southerners he found during his research of diaries, biographies, and specific historical events.

Rickey Pittman is an impressive teller of Civil War stories. Within all of them, Pittman pulls bits of details of Civil War history out of time, past or present, to create stories of passion and character to let his readers in on a secret or two that may never have crossed their mind. In the first contemporary story,  “Just Another Confederate Prisoner,” the author introduces us to Joseph, a young man whose father just died in Afghanistan. His mother finds a new boyfriend from Iowa; consequently, Joseph is removed from his beloved Louisiana where he is a senior playing sports for the West Monroe Rebels and active in a Civil War reenactment group where his father was a member. Joseph is dropped into a new place where he has difficulty fitting into their anti-Confederate culture.  His introduction to a new Sons of Confederate Veterans group opens his eyes, and gives him the endurance to stay in school until age 17, when he becomes emancipated by his mother to move back to Louisiana.

In “The Taking of Jim Limber,” a young Yankee soldier tells the narrative of soldiers who invaded the home of Jefferson Davis in Savannah, Georgia. The soldiers transported Davis to Fort Monroe and returned to his home to places his wife and children under house arrest. Captain Hudson, a Union official, was not comfortable that the Davis children had an African American playing companion, a boy named Jim Limber. Hudson believed the child to be a “bastard slave child of Jefferson Davis.”  Hudson began a plan when he said, “Maybe I’ll give him to someone who will teach him to hate you and the South.” Jim Limber became the story of a beaten slave that once belonged to Jefferson Davis as Captain Hudson toured through several major cities to put Jim on display.  When it was time to end the sideshows, one night the Captain and the young narrator Yankee soldier came back from the river without Jim. Was it guilt, or Jim’s ghost that later haunted the young soldier?

“Manhunter” unfolds the story of an expert tracker and marksman named Chicolithe and his special tracking dog Nimrod.  A young guard from Camp Ford delivers a summons to Chicolithe to help find six Federal prison escapees during an electrical storm.  He knows that this is not just an escape: the prisoners will have weapons, food and a route planned, but Chicolithe would have six blood hounds and his dog Nimrod, whose name means “mighty hunter of men.”

Rickey Pittman has the most matchless technique for taking a powerful theme of the Civil War and illustrating it with an explosive twist.  For example, in “Freedom: An Allegory,” James, a seven-year-old slave, lost his mother to fever death and his father to a bullet shot by a Federal Calvary man.  His good friend and his Master’s son, William, gives him a rabbit which James names Freedom. On a requested trip to the neighbors for the Mistress of the house, he sees an eagle, “the bird of freedom,” perched above on a pine tree. He lets the rabbit go and is please to set the bunny free, until the eagle swoops down and gives the rabbit true “Freedom” as it carries it north.

This short story collection would be a recommended addition for any public, school, or academic library shelf.  Pittman has proven himself as a unique writer for this Civil War historical time period.  He has also written the book, Jim Limber Davis: A Black Orphan in the Confederate White House.

My children’s book received this new review recently:

Today, I purchased a framed print at a little yard sale in Monroe’s Garden District. I’ve attached a photo of the print. According to this site:

“Organized as the Southern Rights Battery in Perry, Houston Co., Georgia in March of 1862, this battery would later become known as “Palmer’s Battery” and then as “Havis’s Battery”. Most of the officers and sergeants were recently discharged veterans of company C, 1st Ga. Infantry (Ramsey’s) who had seen service in Virginia. The battery was mustered in to Confederate service, 14th Battalion, Georgia Light Artillery, by Captain Joseph T. Montgomery at Perry, Georgia on April 26, 1862.
The unit went to camps of instruction at Griffin and at Calhoun. As the best drilled battery in the battalion, Southern Rights Battery was selected to join Bragg’s army in the invasion of Kentucky (Battle for the Bluegrass), receiving their baptism of fire at Perryville, October 8, 1862, attached to Brown’s Brigade, Anderson’s Division of Hardee’s Corps.

Mounted as horse artillery and now known as Palmer’s Georgia Battery, they accompanied John Hunt Morgan and his famous Morgan’s Raiders on his Christmas Raid, distinguishing themselves at Elizabethtown, December 27, 1862.

Relinquishing their cannoneer’s mounts and losing the gallant Palmer through promotion and reassignment to Cheatham’s Corps, Havis’s Battery reunited with their old mates from the 14th, Anderson’s Battery, and, along with Lumsden’s Alabama Battery became the Artillery Reserve of the Army of Tennessee, under Major (later Brigadier-General) Felix H. Robertson. As one wag put it, ” we are called Reserve Artillery because we are never in reserve.”

The Reserve Artillery saw action in the Tullahoma Campaign, Chickamauaga, the Siege of Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge, and all the battles of the Atlanta campaign. In the spring of 1864 Major Palmer returned to take command of the Reserve Artillery, and after the fall of Atlanta most of Hood’s artillery was sent to Macon where were located the Confederate Macon Armory and an Arsenal. The rest of the Army of Tennessee marched off to their ill-fated meeting with Thomas at Franklin and Nashville.

In the spring of 1865 Havis’s Battery marched to North Carolina to rejoin the shattered remnants of the army, surrendering with Joe Johnston at Greensboro, N.C. April 26, 1865, three years to the day after mustering in on the steps of the Houston County courthouse.”

If you like Southern art, and art on the War Between the States, you can find more information on Stand Strickland, the artist here:

Havis's Battery by Stan Strickland

Sometime ago, in my study of Arthurian legend, I discovered this poem and this poet. I like Teasdale’s work generally, but after reading and viewing a page of the Pre-Raphaelite Society about Guenevere (there are about three spellings to her name) I decided to post this one. It tells the love story with Lancelot from Guenevere’s point of view.

“Guenevere”

I was a queen, and I have lost my crown;
A wife, and I have broken all my vows;
A lover, and I ruined him I loved: —
There is no other havoc left to do.

A little month ago I was a queen,
And mothers held their babies up to see
When I came riding out of Camelot.
The women smiled, and all the world smiled too.

And now, what woman’s eyes would smile on me?
I still am beautiful, and yet what child
Would think of me as some high, heaven-sent thing,
An angel, clad in gold and miniver?

The world would run from me, and yet am I
No different from the queen they used to love.
If water, flowing silver over stones,
Is forded, and beneath the horses’ feet
Grows turbid suddenly, it clears again,
And men will drink it with no thought of harm.
Yet I am branded for a single fault.

I was the flower amid a toiling world,
Where people smiled to see one happy thing,
And they were proud and glad to raise me high;
They only asked that I should be right fair,
A little kind, and gowned wondrously,
And surely it were little praise to me
If I had pleased them well throughout my life.

I was a queen, the daughter of a king.
The crown was never heavy on my head,
It was my right, and was a part of me.
The women thought me proud, the men were kind,
And bowed right gallantly to kiss my hand,
And watched me as I passed them calmly by,
Along the halls I shall not tread again.
What if, to-night, I should revisit them?
The warders at the gates, the kitchen-maids,
The very beggars would stand off from me,

And I, their queen, would climb the stairs alone,
Pass through the banquet-hall, a loathed thing,
And seek my chambers for a hiding-place,
And I should find them but a sepulchre,
The very rushes rotted on the floors,
The fire in ashes on the freezing hearth.

I was a queen, and he who loved me best
Made me a woman for a night and day,
And now I go unqueened forevermore.
A queen should never dream on summer eves,
When hovering spells are heavy in the dusk: —
I think no night was ever quite so still,
So smoothly lit with red along the west,
So deeply hushed with quiet through and through.
And strangely clear, and deeply dyed with light,
The trees stood straight against a paling sky,
With Venus burning lamp-like in the west.

I walked alone amid a thousand flowers,
That drooped their heads and drowsed beneath the dew,
And all my thoughts were quieted to sleep.
Behind me, on the walk, I heard a step —
I did not know my heart could tell his tread,
I did not know I loved him till that hour.
Within my breast I felt a wild, sick pain,
The garden reeled a little, I was weak,
And quick he came behind me, caught my arms,
That ached beneath his touch; and then I swayed,
My head fell backward and I saw his face.

All this grows bitter that was once so sweet,
And many mouths must drain the dregs of it.
But none will pity me, nor pity him
Whom Love so lashed, and with such cruel thongs.