Today is Ernest Borgnine's birthday. This Blogger had just finished an extremely stressful assigment; as a break from stress, he became a gofer on an independent film, THE YOUNG WARRIORS, shot in Canada. Since he was the oldest gofer in living memory, he became the driver to the lead of the film, Ernest Borgnine. He was the kindest, funniest guy you ever dealt with, without pretension or crassness or phoniness. We were shooting in  a very small town outside of Vancouver; at night, he would go food shopping by himself. This Blogger, and a hired local goon shadowed him for safety's sake. That was a waste of time; the  locals were enthralled, and he was patient with their requests for pictures, and autographs. Naturally, he had great stories about  Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden,Ward Bond, Nicholas Ray, Victor Mature, Susan Hayward, Valerie French,Glenn Ford, Randolph Scott, Burt Lancaster,Gary Cooper, Charles Bronson,Robert Aldrich, Spencer Tracy,John Sturgis,Lee Marvin,  Paddy

  THE MAXEY CHRONICLES is publishing a series of Blogs on World War II, A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF WORLD WAR II. This Blog is on Imperial Japan. "The statistics of the war are almost mind-numbing. Estimates differ, but up to 70m people died as a direct consequence of the fighting between 1939 and 1945, about two-thirds of them non-combatants, making it in absolute terms the deadliest conflict ever. Nearly one in ten Germans died and 30% of their army. About 15m Chinese perished and 27m Soviets. Squeezed between two totalitarian neighbours, Poland lost 16% of its population, about half of them Jews who were part of Hitler’s final solution. On average, nearly 30,000 people were being killed every day." How best to understand Imperial Japan in World War II?  Stanley Ketchel. The best way to understand Imperial Japan is to view it as a historical embodiment of middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel.  ‘  Stanisław Kiecal  (September 14, 1886 – October 15, 1910), better known in the  b

“I’ll place my knapsack on my back My rifle on my shoulder I’ll march away to the firing line And kill that Yankee soldier And kill that Yankee soldier I’ll march away to the firing line And kill that Yankee soldier   I’ll bid farewell to my wife and child Farewell to my aged mother And go and join in the bloody strife Till this cruel war is over Till this cruel war is over I’ll go and join in the bloody strife Till this cruel war is over   If I am shot on the battlefield And I should not recover Oh, who will protect my wife and child And care for my aged mother If I must die for my home and land My spirit will not falte….. Oh, here’s my heart and here’s my hand Upon my country’s altar ….Then Heaven be with us in the strife Be with the Southern soldier We’ll drive the mercenary horde Beyond our Southern border…SOUTHERN SOLDIER." Before he died, the great Southern historian ,  Shelby Foote, in the mid 1990s,    gave an interview with PBS about the Civil War. The interview was

This Blog is the first of a two part Blog series on the Confederacy and the Civil War; Part 2 will project History if the Confederacy had won the Civil War.    "The Past is never Dead. It is not even Past."...William Faulkner of Mississippi .   On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee, CSA, surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to the overwhelming Union forces of General Ulysses Grant at Appomattox.   And what was the bloodiest war in American history was transformed into the most enduring myth of American culture.   The Civil War is the American Iliad; which begs the question: why would the South start an American Iliad? Especially after Lincoln, in his First Inaugural Address, offered them a Constitutional Amendment enshrining and memorializing Slavery.     “Lincoln stated emphatically that he had "...no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so,