One hundred and forty two hours ago, I wandered into the Houston Casino, not 
really sure why other than a free floating anxiety that could only be 
appeased by attending to the ministerial tasks in life that so frequently 
make us forget how good life is.  So after a rousing game of tennis on Friday 
morning while my children were frolicking with Dede's 3 children at the 
Houston Country Club, I tackled my desk and made head way to no where. After 
trashing 457 emails, I opened the the 458th.  And then it came to me.  An 
epic. A history. A sense of time, commitment and value. A place where my 
roots are (as you all know, my mom and dad are buried in a family graveyard 
200 feet from the only barn not burned in the Shenandoah valley during the 
Civil War and which was used a Yankee hospital).  And of course there is the 
hope of sustaining energy to cope with this lackluster, stressful career in 
the Casino. 

And the Gods must have seen this coming too.  Being meager and always wanting 
to commit small, I sought only volume 1 of the opus.  Not to be found.  
Plenty of volume 2s and 3s but not a volume 1 to be found.  Other than in the 
sole, 3 volume set, neatly packages in the box, high up on a lonely shelf.  I 
knew I was on the right track when the person behind me tried to grab it out 
of my hands.  I fought and won.

I'm now on page 32 having met Jefferson Davis and Dear Abe.  At this rate 
I'll be finished in about 4 years, a true history of the war.

May Shelby be with us all  providing sustaining .......

es



	Christian Yoder
	04/16/2001 11:12 AM
		
		 To: Genia FitzGerald/HOU/ECT@ECT
		 cc: Elizabeth Sager/HOU/ECT@ECT
		 Subject: Re: Notice of flare up of Civil War imagery

I'm sure there's a scholar out there who has already published that big 
magnum opus on "Dogs in the Civil War."  However, Shelby Foote doesn't 
mention a single dog in his work and so the topic hasn't entered my 
imagination.  Your name is Patrick Cleburne.  I'm sorry about the gender 
thing, but your spirit and behavior is the same as his and you're going to 
have to go through this reading cycle bearing my comments about his behavior. 
I'll try to work in some dog analogies if I can.  Cleburne was a German 
Shepherd if there ever was one.  I would have hated to be across that line 
looking at his formation over there.   ----cgy


From: Genia FitzGerald on 04/16/2001 07:43 AM CDT
To: Christian Yoder/HOU/ECT@ECT
cc: Elizabeth Sager/HOU/ECT@ECT 
Subject: Re: Notice of flare up of Civil War imagery  

Christian,

Isn't there some canine hero/heroine that is mentioned in one of the history 
books?  I would prefer waging the battle as a four-legged soldier, North or 
South it doesn't matter, we are here just to serve our Masters.

Awaiting my name



	Christian Yoder
	04/12/2001 05:37 PM
		 
		 To: Elizabeth Sager/HOU/ECT@ECT, Genia FitzGerald/HOU/ECT@ECT
		 cc: 
		 Subject: Notice of flare up of Civil War imagery

One hundred and forty two years ago today, the great great great grandfather 
of Stacy Dickson, a guy named Edmond Ruffin, when other sober minded men held 
back, stepped up to touch a burning torch to a big cannon pointed across the 
Charleston harbor at Fort Sumter and touched off the great Civil War. His 
rash temper caused him to play directly into Lincoln's hand and forever after 
it would be said:  "The South started the war."   On this anniversary day, 
Clyde Durham, itinerant journeyman energy attorney,  touches off his third 
consecutive reading of Shelby Foote's great American Iliad about that war, 
this reading giving him more sustaining energy to cope with his lacklustre, 
stressful career in the Casino than any other theraputic activity he has yet 
found.   The Civil War imagery and analogies  will be flowing soon.  I see 
Elizabeth as a daughter of old Virginia with the Sager homestead right there 
in the Valley where much of the action took place.  I'm not sure where your 
folks would have fit in Genia, but you will soon be  assigned the proxy name 
I can't think of at the moment, the Irish warrior who fought for the South.  
Unfortunately I am on the North side.  I hope this won't cause serious 
professional difficulties for us as we wade through the epic battles and 
their respective corporate analogies. ----cgy