This is not a vent board or any other kind of therapy. Before you hit the POST button, ask yourself if your contribution will add to the level of discussion going on.

Important notes on articles:

• Please do not copy entire articles into your post; rather, provide links to them.. We are now links-only for ALL Internet publications. If only a small portion of the article pertains to your post, Fair Use allows you to copy those one or two paragraphs, provided you cite the author's name and the publication for which he writes. Otherwise, put a link in the HTTP Link box.
• Even if you're copying a reference to an article, provide a link to the page from which the article came. We're trying to cut down on duplicate topics, and the posting process will check the link to your article to see if it's already being discussed on this board. At the very least, you'll save yourself some grief on the boards.
• If your first reaction after reading the article you're going to share is the author is uninformed / stupid / a jerk / all of the above, it's not worth sharing with anyone. Not every article needs to be discussed. The more the hair-pulling articles are discussed (e.g. ESPN Page 2), the more the authors will write hair-pulling articles.

Post being replied to

Hard to even imagine the carnage Holmes witnessed by sprack

He was wounded three times, including a bullet in the neck at Antietam, and was at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg and the Wilderness as well, among other battles.

I first read about his war service in fifth or sixth grade in one of those Catholic comic books we used to get in school. I was fascinated by his story. Who says you can't learn anything from comic books? I don't think it covered any of his famous dissents, though. Maybe that was in volume 2.

Anyway, I read all I could find on Holmes in the encyclopedia. My dad had a book of "101 Famous Poems" which had his father's "The Deacon's Masterpiece" (aka "The One-Hoss Shay") so I knew of the father but nothing of the son, but soon found out he was one of the greatest men this country has ever produced.

On an unrelated side note, I'm not a poetry guy by any means, but that poem from Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. has always stuck with me due to it's unique cadence. I'll be traveling to Portugal for the first time in April, and have had these words in my head for a very, very long time:

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive, —
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down

So if you ever want to know when the great Lisbon earthquake was, I'm your guy.