Kevin's Watch

I've been watching this old PBS documentary miniseries lately with my younger son.

It has us both captivated.

You know it has to be good to captivate both a middle aged mom and a 13 year old son.

It is a very well done and interesting documentary about the American Civil War. Good stuff, with lots of readings from diaries and letters from people who lived through those trying times.

I have an enormous book that covers all the material in the documentary. It's excellent. I've heard good things about the documentary itself as well.

I have this on DVD (big surprise there!) and I absolutely love it. It is very accurate, well narrated, and the expert commentary is superb (I'm a huge fan of Shelby Foote.) Please keep me informed as you watch this, as I would love to hear your perspectives.

Ken Burn's Baseball is also excellent. esp the episode about the Negro Leagues. he autographed some books from that series for us. (Julie met him)

Sarge is correct, the baseball series is also excellent. That DVD collection contains more discs than the Civil War series, and is very expensive - about $120 at Best Buy.

wow, that is expensive. i shall haunt half price books in hopes of finding it cheaper. there is an excellent book series that goes with Baseball as well.

dlbpharmd wrote:I have this on DVD (big surprise there!) and I absolutely love it. It is very accurate, well narrated, and the expert commentary is superb (I'm a huge fan of Shelby Foote.) Please keep me informed as you watch this, as I would love to hear your perspectives.

So far we have watched the first two dvd's. I think they are dusty (rentals from netflix) because they do skip around quite a bit (physically I mean), but we are loving it, even though we have to keep finding our place again whenever it skips.

We're having great discussions - what if Grant had not been relieved of command by a jealous superior early in the war? What if Jackson and Lee had both stayed in the Union army? etc. etc.

Today in his home schooling blog my son said how much he is enjoying watching this.

That's great, Duchess!

And oh, by the way - I say Grant would have still gotten promoted (cream always rises to the top.) But no Jackson or Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia? The South loses First Manasses, and the war is over before 1862.

We'll be starting the third disc tomorrow. He has finished the book which was a general overview of the war; he is working right along on Gods and Generals; tomorrow we will be doing some of Walt Whitman's war poems and poems for mourning Lincoln and reading one of the Civil War chapters of the very fun history book called What If?; next week we will be moving on to a great little book called April, 1865, The Month That Saved America.

have you covered Andersonville?

Hmmmmm - Andersonville might be just a big too graphic for Mr. Sunshine. Some of the pictures of the starved Union soldiers are horrific.

Duchess, I love talking about the Civil War almost as much as talking about Covenant - so if Mr.S wants to PM me or email me, then please tell him to do so!

maybe the conditions in brief, and a whole lesson when he gets older? i'm betting that he knows more about the war already than most kids in high school. keep up the good work!

The conditions in brief, certainly. But yes, I will probably steer away from more graphic stuff. He loved watching Band of Brothers with me and Calibaby, but he couldn't take more than an instant or two of the concentration camp scenes without having to leave the room. I had a long talk with him after, and he did understand that such awful things did happen to perfectly innocent people, and that is why both of his grandfathers fought in the war - so that such things could be ended.

I know learning about things like the Holocaust (or Andersonville, where so many died in such horrible conditions) are very important - but he' s a little young yet for some of the more graphic renditions about such things.

Even though it bothered the kids (my older son said every kid in his class cried, right along with the teacher) I was very glad that our school district required the seniors to read and discuss Night last year. And then at his university, all of the incoming freshmen were handed a memoir about the Killing Fields in Cambodia called First They Killed My Father, written by a woman who survived after being sent to the fields as a child. Every incoming freshman was to read that book, and on the Sunday before classes started they all had to gather in the biggest auditorium in campus to talk about it, then broke into small groups to discuss it.

So eventually, in a few years - yes -he can probably handle the more intense and graphic stuff. But for now he is only 13, and the concepts are enough.

fair enough. and let me say that you rock for teaching him more history than he is likely to get anywhere else. if we had more parents like you the world would be better off.

Agreed!

Duchess, if you still have the first disc to this set, be sure to watch the special features, particularly the interviews with George Will and Shelby Foote, and especially the interview with the Jay Unger (the fiddler who wrote "Ashokan Farewell.")

I'm only allowed three discs out at a time with my account; I already returned the first two to be able to get the other three.

However, we are enjoying this enough that I am planning on keeping my eyes open for a used set.

I bought my copy on Ebay new for about $20 less than listed price on Amazon.com or Best Buy.

We're in the middle of disc four now; I think we will be sad to see it end. It's just so well done and well presented.

Oddly enough, the first disc skipped like mad. The second also skipped, but not quite as much as the first. The third and fourth have not had any problems with playing at all. Not going to complain about that, either.

I've had skipping problems with a couple of other rented discs; I think some of them just get dirty after awhile.

That's a fairly common complaint; I clean so many discs from Netflix, they should give me a discount off of my subscription.

In case you're interested, some time ago I started a thread about Sullivan Ballou in the Hall of Gifts:

kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8670