5 Comments
Aug 10, 2021Liked by Adam Smyth

Tying Viet-Nam and the Crimean war together, is a track on the eerie 1968 album balaklava by the American band Pearls before Swine. It is entitled Trumpeter Landfrey..., and purports to be a crackly recording of the last surviving member of the Charge of the Light Brigade. My copy of the album is an old junk shop find, and its songs represent the high point of a certain kind of baroque hippy language ('the translucent carriages are calling morning in'!), blended with period antiwar sentiment. It is dedicated to Pvt. Edward D. Slovik (US Army, deceased).

Expand full comment

Oh Adam -- thanks so much for resurrecting that wonderful story about Dorothy, whom we still miss -- she was a legendary, Marlene- Dietrich sort of figure -- in our family. Gone for thirty years. That's a splendid blog post too!

Expand full comment

"I've danced with a man, who's danced with a girl, who's danced with the Prince of Wales"... A ex-colleague of mine came from a family where the men married and had children very late in life. Born, like me, in 1954, his grandfather fought in The Crimean War.

Completely irrelevant, but you may enjoy / benefit from this discussion of "punctum" by one of my favourite photo-bloggers, Andrew Molitor:

https://photothunk.blogspot.com/search?q=punctum

Mike

Expand full comment