Working The Trapline — Mine Wars, Mighty Muskets, True Believer, Rumors Of War

We’re getting a glimpse from Paramount of Season 2 of The Terminal List, set for release on Amazon on October 21.

The season is built on the second book in the James Reece series, True Believer — one that I particularly enjoyed, not least because Reece spends some time on a game reserve in Mozambique with the Old Rhodesian Hastings family. There are anti-poaching operations…

Ol’ Reece is in rugged shape after the events of The Terminal List and a long sea voyage…

When a bomb goes off during a holiday fair in London, the body count is horrific and the nation’s market goes into a tailspin. This, it turns out, is just the beginning of a series of coordinated and murderous attacks against the whole of the Western world. As the scope of the mayhem grows ever wider, pulling in country after country, the United States goes on the offensive. Who is pulling the strings? What is their motive? And most important of all, how can the attacks be stopped before bloodshed and economic free fall bring America and her allies to their knees?

There is just one man who stands a chance of answering these questions. Former Navy SEAL James Reece is the only crucial connection to a shadowy former Iraqi commando who could provide leads the CIA desperately needs. Reece might be America’s last hope. Unfortunately, he is also America’s most-wanted domestic terrorist. To rein him in, a bargain is struck and Reece becomes the reluctant tool of the United States government, traveling the globe to target terrorist leaders and unraveling a geopolitical conspiracy involving a traitorous CIA officer and a sinister assassination plot with worldwide repercussions. There is always another true believer out there willing to kill for his cause. James Reece will be there to stop him.

 

Reece’s comrade-in-arms Raife Hastings is played by Tom Hopper, who will forever be Billy Bones (Black Sails) to me.

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I love people’s obsessions with obscure — yet often actually really important — aspects of history. Ran across a blog titled Bow Vs. Musket that is devoted to debunking  the notion that archery was superior to musketry, but that musketry prevailed because it was cheaper and easier to train. This idea was en vogue among pundits of the early modern period and has had a certain level of Continuity & Persistence among later historians.

It’s a silly notion, really. All you need to do to debunk it is to see the alacrity with which native hunters and warriors adopted firearms as soon as they became available. In 17th Century New England, the Wampanoag, the Narragansett, the Abenaki not only demanded firearms in trade, they wanted the latest flintlocks. They didn’t adopt firearms so readily and so completely because they were less effective than their traditional bows.

Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America by David J. Silverman offers a massive pile of evidence from the North American frontier — because the frontier was a gun frontier.

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I have voted for Jim Webb for President in the last three elections. It’s a kind of protest vote, I guess, though he actually was a candidate for about 30 seconds before the Clinton machine pushed him off the stage in 2016. Webb didn’t really fit in the Democratic Party, and he had left the Republican Party over objections to the Iraq War, in which his son Jim fought as a U.S. Marine. His Senate career lasted one term, before he walked, which speaks well of him.

I voted for him mostly because I actually think he’d have done the job right (and I also appreciate his historical fascination with his Scots-Irish roots) — but we can’t always get what we want. Not even what we need.

Anyways…

His son — also Jim Webb — has a relatively new podcast that covers topics of history, politics and national security with a distinctly populist — and slightly on’ry — bent. He’s recently run out a lengthy series with Darryl Cooper on the Mine Wars — a chunk of history that has generally been memory-holed. Nobody really wants this history.

The Right don’t like the image of militant union men fighting for their rights and against thuggish oppression by corporate mine owners, and the Left don’t like it that those militant union men were a bunch of rednecks (hat tip to Taylor Brown and his novel Rednecks about the Battle of Blair Mountain). Which makes the story a fine one for on’ry maverick populists.

Both Webb and Cooper are passionate about this history, and the storytelling (mainly from Cooper; Webb just lets him roll) is compelling. The vignettes on Mother Jones and the 100-proof badass Sid Hatfield are great.

Good stuff for the road or the gym.

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This short film on King Philip’s War was shopped at festivals in 2022, as a proof-of-concept piece for a larger film or miniseries. It was just dropped on YouTube and I have to say that the production values and costuming are quite impressive. The plot arc, such as it is, features a rivalry between the Ranger Benjamin Church and the militia leader Samuel Moseley.

I did not realize until I watched it how badly I want a full-length film production on King Philip’s War.

Rumors of War is the remarkable true story about the conflict in 1675 between colonists and indigenous people of New England. Violence, betrayal, and heartbreak combine to fuel a war for land. Fifty-five years after the Mayflower and exactly one-hundred years before the American Revolution, the people of New England face a moment of reckoning that will alter the course of world history.

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I did not know that Akubra was marking a major anniversary this year. For a long time, Akubra was my go-to hatmaker — and they still would be if I didn’t have a couple of custom hats generously made for my by Gene Baldwin Custom Hats in Sisters. They’re robust and stylish and worth the plews, every penny.

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Our friend Andrew Scott Wills, aka Hawken Horse, sat down with Ethan Yazel of I Love Muzzleloading for a long palaver.

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JigJam brings together trad Irish music and Bluegrass in an infectious Irish-American mix that strums a sweet chord of a major piece of my musical heritage. We had ’em here at Sisters Folk Festival a few years back and it was a grand set I saw, indeed. PBS livestreamed ’em in a recent Irish Fest set with a wonderful sit-in with members of Gaelic Storm (36:30).

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Speaking of things Irish and Ulster… the lads from The Rest Is History are taking on The Troubles.

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Sure am enjoying reaping the musical benefits of  Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag — Resynced. Live shanties everywhere, from The Longest Johns. I smell the salt…