I am sorry about the paucity of posts recently. The Hayfoot and I are squeezing out a few last days of vacation before the busy fall semester begins. I am typing these words from a coffee shop in Union Station. We came to DC to see the sites and catch up with some friends. DC means more to me with each visit because I learn more with each trip. I am halfway through the Lockwoods’ The Siege of Washington, which chronicles the first twelve days after the fall of Ft. Sumter. The Confederate capture of the federal capital was a closer thing than I realized. DC means a great deal to me personally as well because my mother lived here as a little girl. Today would have been my grandmother’s 100th birthday.

We have a lot to do when we get home. The Hayfoot starts her final semester in grad school next week and I have a number of projects coming due this fall. These are things to look forward to. I will be back next week with more posts.

Bon weekend.

Hey everybody, it’s Sunday afternoon.  It is also the last day of my week off.  For years I always visited my father in Arkansas the first week in August.  My father was not much into the Civil War but over the years he took me to Shiloh, Vicksburg, Pea Ridge and elsewhere because he knew how much visiting these places meant to me.  These trips were all the more poignant because my father’s health was in decline for a long period and I knew year-by-year that each visit might be the last.  If he were still alive I would be flying back right now instead of typing these words. Knowing that I will never again have the chance to do so leaves me reflective, but aware too of the need to move forward and enjoy life in the moment.

We decided to have a quiet week.  I took some classes at the Apple store to learn more about my new Air, went to Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery, and broke out a few regiments for some skirmishing on the kitchen table.  I also read Gary Gallagher’s The Union War. Here are a few photos from the last seven days:

Boat in Prospect Park

Picnicking

Major David B. Bridgford, Army of Northern Virginia; Green-Wood Cemetery

Moving ever onward here in Brooklyn…

(uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by Hugh Manatee)

My friends and family know how much I love to write postcards. When we went to Gettysburg in June I felt like a slacker for sending “only” eleven to various people we know. The thing I love abut postcards is that, with the incorporation of email into our everyday lives in the 1990s, the personal letter has become a thing of the past. I am not saying I want to return to a life before electronic mail, it’s just that I miss the exhilaration of reaching into the mailbox and pulling out a letter from a friend far away. If it contained a few newspaper clippings and a photo or two, even better.  Postcards are an ideal middle-ground. And besides, I feel so bohemian when I’m sitting in a coffee shop far from home writing them out.  I always thought it was just me, but thankfully I am not the only one who sees it this way.

Hey everybody, I am writing this on my new MacBook Air from a coffee shop on SOHO.  My best friend and I weathered the rainstorm on Wednesday night and went to the Apple Store across the street from the Plaza Hotel.  I was determined, resolute, adamant when I walked in the door to walk out with an iPad 2 but after some deliberation I decided to go in this direction.  I am happy I did, though an iPad is still in my future. It is all part of my future plans for the blog and my research pursuits.  This morning I had a One to One training session at the Apple SOHO location. Being a Mac novice I thought it would be wise to sign up for the twelve month membership of lessons.  An added benefit of entering the blogosphere is that doing so has forced me to improve my computer and technology skills, which to be honest were starting to lag.

Wednesday was a propitious time to enter the Mac world because it marked the six month anniversary of the Strawfoot.  Entering the blogosphere has been an adjustment but I am glad I did.  It has been a process, especially given my technologically challenged condition.  Still, saying I wasn’t proficient with computers just didn’t seem a good enough excuse.  I remember taking a colleague for coffee in early January where she patiently walked me through the ins-and-outs of blogging.  I had done some preliminary research but was still ignorant of a great deal.  Other colleagues provided helpful input as well.  After deciding to move ahead I chose my focus, opened up an account, and jumped in.  It was all somewhat hush-hush the first few weeks because I wanted to get 20-25 posts under my belt before going “wide” and putting it out there on the Web for all to see.  My mantra with the blog is “all in due time.”  I am committed for the long haul and would rather take my time and do things the right way.  The Air and (eventually) iPad are all part of my longer term plans to incorporate voice, video, and social media to my repertoire.  These are all coming soon.  The past six months have been rewarding in ways I could not have imagined and I am looking forward to what the future brings.  Stay tuned.

Opening the box.  This guy was especially helpful.

Hands-on training, literally

Six months, 131 posts and counting…

I have always been intrigued by stories of slave descendants meeting descendants of slave owners.  Such stories add an immediacy to our nation’s history and serve to remind us that in the grand scheme of things our Civil War was not that long ago. Sometimes, for reasons I do not need to explain, the individuals are actual blood relations.  Sometimes not.  The book on this is of course Edward Ball’s Slaves in the Family, which came out in the late 1990s.  I am surprised by the lack of bitterness and generosity of spirit that usually surrounds such gatherings.  Recently Wayne Hunter showed up at a family reunion in South Carolina.

Few Americans have understood more clearly the seductions and inadequacies of professing gratitude than Abraham Lincoln. Offering to a mother who had lost two sons in the Civil War “the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic,” Lincoln nevertheless acknowledged “how weak and fruitless must be any words … which should attempt to beguile” her from her grief. Expressions of thanks constitute the beginning, not the end, of obligation.

(U.S. Army Military History Institute)

Anyone who has seen Ken Burns’s The Civil War knows the Sullivan Ballou letter.  The Washington Post has more on the Rhode Island officer killed at First Manassas.

Yours truly has been collecting Civil War revenue stamps for a few years now.  Coins and stamps have always fascinated me because of their tangibility.  The people using them at the time had no way to know that these items would someday be part of history.  They were just the accoutrements of everyday life and commerce, used in the types of transactions we all conduct each day without thinking about them.  Thus a coin, stamp, or bill from an earlier era is a connection to the past in a genuine and understandable way, giving us a real connection to the people who once used them.  And why do we study history if not for that?

(Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University)

(Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division)

Everyone’s favorite piece of Lost Cause nostalgia was published on this date in 1936.

Photograph of Margaret Mitchell by Al Aumuller; Courtesy: LOC

Can you outdo a fourth grader?