Happy Birthday Dad... belated

Happy Birthday Mom

So many happy memories. Love you and miss you.

Your kids...

 

Eric's Cabin 2013

 

Many thanks to all those who made the Hospice Healing Garden a reality... and to John Goodine for the photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Auspicious Beginning

I seem to be stuck in reverse... at least in terms of the chronological order of my blogs. Here is a story that precedes our move from Bar Harbor.

In the summer of 1975 I returned from working the Alaska Pipeline to attend our parents 25th wedding anniversary celebration. I fully intended to return to Alaska and keep raking in the big bucks. And then Connie entered the equation. We had met only twice before I had headed to the frozen North in January, but she had made a strong impression. And so I invited her to meet the family at the 25th party. They were delighted with her bubbly personality... and so was I.

The day came when I was to say goodbye, get on a jet and fly back to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week in a pipeline camp in the Arctic Circle. I can't say I was looking forward to the challenge. It was exhausting, lonely, hard work. But I was determined to continue my adventure. Connie had a different vision of my future. She held my hands, looked deeply into my eyes and begged me to stay, but it wasn't until she delivered the coup de grace that I understood that my life was to head in a different... a better... direction.

"Don't go. I'll make you happy," she whispered sweetly.

Game over. 

The plan was for me to go back to UMO and obtain a secondary education certificate and for us to undertake careers in public education, enjoying coordinated vacation time and saving the planet one child at a time.

I took a job driving a beer truck for Tabenken Distributors in Veazie and burned the midnight oil completing the core course requirements for my certification. The final challenge was student teaching and I was assigned to a middle school in East Holden. They were country kids, I was teaching science and my supervisor, Bill Stinchfield, was a great guy. We had a blast and success appeared to be within my grasp. Until one day...

We were studying environmental science and the kids seemed interested... except for this one boy. He was having a bad day, actually a bad year, interrupting, making disruptive comments and agitating the class. He was testing me. I was determined to regain control of the class.

" That's enough, Mike," I warned, walking down the aisle to his desk.

"No, it's not," he goaded. The kids laughed nervously, aware that something was coming to a head, the green student teacher vs. the class bad boy.

"OK, you're going to the office," I announced.

"No, I'm not," he challenged.

A hush settled over the room. All eyes were on us and I sensed the intense interest of the other students in our little drama. They had seen many student teachers come and go. They knew a defining moment when they saw one. And here was one.

Mike smiled at me. He smelled victory, yet another student teacher reduced to ashes by his awesome prepubescent power.

I reached down and grasped the front of his flannel shirt. His eyes sparked with alarm. What was this? Teachers couldn't touch students! That was against the rules. "Let go of me!" he demanded. And then I pulled him to his feet and ripped the front of his shirt off his body.

The students were stone silent. Mike began to scream. "I'm going to sue you!"

Well, so much for a career in public education, I thought. "Yeah Mike, you sue me if you want. But you are going to the office... RIGHT NOW!" I bellowed. I saw the fear in his eyes. I walked him out the door and down the hall to the Principal's office, not the first time he had been there. The Principal sent me back to continue my class.

There were no more disruptions that day or for the rest of my term as a student teacher. Mike returned to class the next day, silent and sullen. And at the end of my term I received the highest evaluation Bill Stinchfield had ever awarded a student teacher. Go figure.

I'm sure that today this story would have had a dramatically different ending. But in that place, at that time, with that dysfunctional and abusive young person, my behavior was deemed to have been appropriate... and admirable, albeit without public acknowledgement . As in "Remember the time that student teacher ripped the shirt off that little shit, Mike so-and-so? Wasn't that great?"

Regardless, it was an auspicious beginning...

One of Those Days

I don't think it was the dead duck. It wasn't that big a deal.... Ok, maybe it was. But, I'll never know. Stan Trask died last year and the answer to my question died with him.

1976. Connie and I were married in April in a snow storm and after a mind-muddling, second guessing honeymoon in Bermuda (Do you think we should have gotten married? Maybe it was too soon? Do you really love me? Do I really love you? Maybe I still love my old boyfriends... ah, the first year of marriage. Wouldn't go through it again for anything... except her.), we moved to our little apartment in Bar Harbor. I was the Superintendent of the Water Pollution Control Facilities... the sewage treatment plants. Connie thought I was an executive, big title and all. The first day I returned home covered in stinking sludge, she refused to let me in the apartment, made me strip naked on the back stoop and cried inconsolably. "I thought you would carry a briefcase..." And so, to save my new marriage, I began seeking a new job.

Connie was an elementary school teacher. I had my secondary education teaching certificate. We'd have vacations and summers off together. It didn't require much deductive reasoning to determine that public education was our path forward. Connie's other plan was for us to move into a comfortable little doublewide in her parents backyard. I desperately typed cover letters and sent resume's around the state, around the clock. Finally, in late summer, an opportunity for a science teaching position presented itself in Waterville. And Connie secured a position in the same school district teaching reading in the elementary school.  Goodbye Bar Harbor- Hello Waterville!

We moved into a second floor flat off Cool Street and we were so very cool. My students were six to ten years my junior. My fellow teachers were typically 20 to 30 years my senior. I was a kid teaching kids and we were all figuring it out as we went along. The Principal, Stan Trask, was a tight ship, awkward-but-lovable administrator. They called him "The Bear". He had the ability to present an "I feel your pain", moist behind the eyelids, blink, blink, blink, "Really... I'm your friend", persona; on demand. It's an attribute that all politicians possess or covet.

My class assignments ran the gamut. Senior level Environmental Science. Junior level Health.  Sophomore level Biology, and Freshman General Science. The freshman classes were all 13 year old young men, behaviorally challenged, under achievers... Boneheads. I loved 'em.

We disassembled car engines, built flat plate solar collectors, learned about wilderness survival skills, took field trips. My goal was to engage them, excite them, keep them coming to class... measurable learning results criteria be damned.  One day, while cross country skiing on the frozen Messalonskee Stream, I came upon a dead cormorant. Lesson Plan!  I knew the boys would be all over this.  The next day we examined it, probed it, counted the feathers, looked at the contents of it's stomach. The boys were enthralled, turned on, self directed learning. A successful class. It was these types of unfortunately rare experiences that made me love teaching. Most education was mandated rote memorization, teaching to the test, boring, mindless.

I don't know why I placed the dead duck on the teachers chair and slid it under the desk except that my junior teacher friend and fellow freshman football coach, Fred Nassar, was scheduled to occupy the room the next period and we used to prank each other. As my class was exiting he strode purposefully into the room. Fred was short, stout, muscular and he walked with long, exaggerated steps.

He threw his briefcase on the desk. "Get out of my room, Foss" he growled.

Without a seconds hesitation, he pulled out the desk chair and sat down heavily... right on the duck. Even as I write this, 35 years later, I can't control my laughter. The duck emitted a loud farting noise and Fred' arms and legs went rigid as he looked down to see the ducks head protruding from his crotch. He scrambled to his feet as I bolted for the door. "You're dead, Foss!" he yelled as he grasped the duck by the neck and sprinted after me into the hall.

I rounded the corner first and tore down the hall... only to find Stan Trask standing motionless, watching me. I stopped cold in my tracks, but Fred rounded the corner, the duck firmly in his grip, lost his footing and slid across the highly polished floor, crashing into a bank of lockers on the opposite wall. He also spied the principal, regained his footing and walked, head down, back into the classroom. I avoided Stan's glare and, also head down, walked past him to my next class.

Perhaps this incident might have been overlooked... but on that day, for some reason, I just decided to let it all hang out. At the next break, I retrieved my duck alone with a multitude of blows from Fred and headed to the teachers room where I pinned it spread eagle on the bulletin board with a sign that said "State Bird of Latvia". It was discovered, amidst loud squeals and hysterical laughter, by my teacher friends Laima (a Latvian) and Liz during their lunch break. I couldn't stop laughing (then or now) even as Laima berated me. "Glen, you are such a FOOL! What ever possessed you to do such a stupid thing!" To this day, I can't answer that question.

Perhaps it was the duck, the combination of my two sophomoric pranks or maybe, as Stan explained several months later, with crocodile tears in his eyes, it was the drastic cut in the school budget. "Hate to let you go. You're a fine young teacher."  Fred got the same speech.

I walked home dejected. What were we going to do now? I wasn't looking forward to telling Connie. Our French-Canadian landlord, Louie, met me in the driveway. "Glen, my daughta's coming home in two months and I need the apartment. You gotta move out."

"Louie, I just lost my job!" I pleaded.

"Moo Gee! Sucks to be you. Two months. Sorry. You gotta go." he replied.

I stumbled up the stairs and went directly to the cupboard where we kept a bottle of scotch... for medicinal purposes. I hadn't even poured a shot when I heard the sound of screeching tires in the driveway. Out the window, I watched Connie bail out of the barely stopped vehicle. She left the drivers side door open and ran across the parking lot crying. Oh God, perhaps she had already heard I had lost my job... or maybe that we were losing the apartment. She was clearly upset. I met her at the top of the stairs.

"I'm pregnant... with TWINS!" she sobbed.

What happened next? I finished the bottle of scotch... and over the next months, our lives unfolded in unforeseen and exciting new directions; Another story for another time.

This was just one of those days...


 

Hindsight

We were in Waterville last week. Like robins and right whales, we migrate back to this place every summer. Genetic imprinting, circadian rhythm... whatever .I mean, Maine is the place where we were spawned and raised, where we raised our family, where nine generations of our family before us did the same. Everybody has someplace they call home and regardless of how far we travel or how long we linger away from here, there is a real comfort in coming home. I guess I will always consider myself a "Mainer".

As we drove down Cool Street by our first apartment, I remembered something that had happened thirty seven years before, something that I had not thought of in all these years. Here is the story:

We moved to Waterville shortly after we were married. I had secured a job at the high school as a biology and environmental science teacher and Connie a position at the elementary school as a reading specialist. We took a cute little second floor flat in an old house on the bank of the Messalonskee Stream within walking distance from my work. It had pink and lime green. wall to wall shag rugs that Connie used to rake. We furnished it with a nauga-hide couch, a beanbag chair and other furniture collected from family and yard sales. Money was tight, but we were comfortable and happy.

The French Canadian landlords, Louie and Madeline, lived downstairs and used to scream at each other late at night in a language we didn't understand.  The neighborhood was working class poor, most people working in the local textile and paper mills. We soon discovered that most of the neighborhood was also French speaking.

The first winter it started snowing in October and didn't stop until April. Mountains of snow through which I would trudge to and from school and, each trip, I would pass the old shack at the top of the street. It had been decades since it had seen a new coat of paint and the wooden shingles were rotten, exposing the tar paper beneath. The roof sagged ominously and many of the windows were broken and patched with cardboard. The small yard was overtaken by sumac and hemlock which partially hid the piles of junk and trash. At first I thought the hovel was abandoned, but late at night we would see the faint glow of a kerosene lantern through the window and smoke curled from a rusty stovepipe.

One day, when a Nor'Easter had dumped 3 feet of snow overnight and school had been canceled, I strapped on my snowshoes and tromped up the yet to be plowed street. A very old man stood in front of the shack dressed against the bitter cold in many layers of worn clothes. His beard was long and gray, unkempt and his thin, wrinkled face peered out from under a tattered wool cap . He wore old socks on his hands for mittens, green wool pants and mucklucs on his feet. And he was laboring greatly to shovel a path from the road to his rickety steps.

My mom raised us to pitch in when someone was in need and the old timer was obviously struggling. I stopped and said good morning. He didn't respond, acted as if he didn't know I was there. So I took off my snowshoes and walked up beside him. He was startled. "Morning," I repeated. He started to bellow at me in what I assumed was French. The drool  and snot from his nose had frozen in his beard. His eyes were rheumy  behind thick, taped glasses. It didn't take long to figure out that the poor old guy was stone deaf and likely legally blind. I smiled, grabbed a shovel and started digging out. He watched me for a moment and then began shoveling again.

We cleared the path in around 30 minutes. He struggled up the stairs and motioned for me to follow him inside. The interior of his little house was more shocking than the exterior. Piles of newspapers were stacked against the walls for insulation and tattered filthy blankets covered the windows. The sink was filled with frozen piles of potato peels, egg shells and coffee grounds. There was no running water and no electricity. In the corner was a chair filled with a huge pile of blankets and dirty clothing. And under the pile was an ancient old woman. Only her expressionless face was visible. She watched me silently with sharp, suspicious eyes.

The old man stoked the little woodstove which was fighting a losing battle to keep the room above freezing. He shuffled to the single cupboard and pulled out a pint bottle of cheap whiskey. He poured some in a broken coffee cup and passed it to me. Then he poured one for himself. We didn't talk. We stood in the middle of that squalor and shared a drink. I finished and turned to leave. "Merci." he croaked.

I was troubled. I had never experienced such shocking poverty and destitution. Something needed to be done. I needed to get them some help. I called the city welfare office and relayed the situation to a person on the other end of the phone. He thanked me for the information and I was hopeful that someone would do something, anything to help the old couple.

I delivered hot food to their door a couple times, dropped off a pair of winter gloves, watched for the old man to help him shovel the next storm. And then one day they were gone. No more lantern light. No more smoke from the stack. I waited and watched. They seemed to have disappeared. I should have followed up. I didn't.

That spring the fire department burned the building. The rats scurried into the neighborhood and as we watched the fire, a neighbor recalled the day that she had seen the ambulance crew carry the old woman out of the house and lead the old man into the back of a waiting ambulance. Obviously someone had done something.

I was conflicted. My well intentioned report to the city had resulted in the destruction of this man's life. It wasn't a life that I would have wanted, but it was his life. I hoped his new life was cleaner, more comfortable, that they were warm and well fed, but I had a nagging fear that he was no longer free, locked in a nursing home, separated from his woman, frightened and confused. In hindsight... I don't know.

Thirty seven years later, I am still conflicted.

Saturday Morning in Portland

The breakfast queue at Becky's Diner on Commercial Street snaked down the cobblestone sidewalk and around the corner of the old waterfront building. We drove by shaking our heads, reconnoitered and headed uptown. We parked with the dogs safely in the shade just off Congress Street and we began our morning walk in search of a cup of coffee and a bagel.

Marcy's Diner was also swamped and we continued on up the hill in the busy streets of the old historic city to Starbucks. The number of severely disabled people on the street was striking. People on crutches and in wheelchairs navigating their way along the rough brick and cobblestone. Stumbling old men in alcoholic fogs shuffling towards the open door of Mathew's Tavern on Free Street, the oldest working man's bar in the city. Homeless people with shopping carts and with signs working the corners for handouts. The display of tattoos was also striking. The public display of skin art was ubiquitous.

We waited in line at Starbucks behind a mute, wheelchair bound old man with his male Somali caregiver as they ordered their coffee. The old man gestured wildly, pointing and signing his order, repeatedly touching his face and waving his arms, making loud, excited bellows and squawks. He smiled broadly, rapidly maneuvering his chair with his feet as his caregiver carried their coffee to a table. We followed suit and took a table in the sun just beside them.

I watched the toothless, tattooed man in a white wife-beater tee-shirt cross the street with a 5 year old little girl in tow. He wore gold chains around his neck and a backwards baseball cap. She wore a long, dirty blonde ponytail and pushed a small baby stroller. They entered the restaurant and she smiled proudly displaying her missing front teeth as she approached the old man in the wheelchair. He glanced into the baby stroller and began to gesture frantically, pointing and stroking his chin.

The father sat the child at a table beside us and went to the counter to order. The little girl reached into the stroller and lifted a small furry object onto the table. I assumed it was a stuffed animal until it began wheeking and chirping whereupon she began feeding it pea pods. She looked proudly around the room and announced, "You can pat him if you want." I reached over and stroked the hairy guinea pig. "What's his name?" I asked. 'Shaggy", she said. An old man with bleary eyes, white hair and no socks stood behind her and observed for a long moment. I mean it's not every day you see a guinea pig on a table in Starbucks. The Starbucks crew watched chagrined and silent from behind the counter.

The father returned with his bag of Starbucks and began to recount to anyone listening how he had been bitten that morning while feeding the rodent a blueberry. "Blood everywhere!" he announced. "Lots a blood!" The guinea pig went back in the stroller and out the door they went. Just in time as the old man in the wheelchair was about to develop carpel tunnel from his wild gesticulations. A young woman walked by with her coffee and declared loudly " THAT is so unsanitary!"

A waiter approached with a wet towel and began to swab down the table. Connie approached him and asked if this was a common occurrence. "Well no, but we didn't want to embarrass the little girl. Plus with the laws in the state of Maine, we couldn't tell them not to bring it into the restaurant." "What law?" Connie asked. "The Service Animal Law. Stroking the animal keeps the little girls ADHD under control. Keeps her calm... I love working at this location. You see it all. Never a dull moment."

Portland is so different today from the days of my youth. It has become a mecca for the poor and disenfranchised, for the unemployed, homeless and the disabled and for refugees from around the globe. The levels of social assistance and accommodation are ever increasing and I wonder how long the city will be able to continue on this track. But that aside, it is a fascinating place with interesting people where the material for a short story presents itself at every turn, at every corner, a place where you can experience new experiences and learn new, never considered things. For example, today we learned about "Service Rodents".

Who has more fun than people?

Declaration of Independence

“All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”


~Abraham Lincoln 1859

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Gettysburg--- 150 years later

Kate and Dad walked around the battlefield for a day... the 150th anniversary of the second day of the three day battle. We listened to the speakers, watched the movies, viewed the exhibits and walked through the reenactments. We glimpsed the awesome and terrible things that had happened here. Unimaginable things.

There has been much written about this battle. Here is a link to the detailed Wikipedia site providing lots of detail of that day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gettysburg,_Second_Day 
If you prefer historical novels, try the Pulitzer Prize winning Killer Angels by Michael Shaara or the movie Gettysburg. It's not hard to get swept up in the history and the details of it all and the little town of Gettysburg was crowded with people, young and old, from all around the country doing just that.

For the reenactors, this week had been long anticipated and they marched in file, fired their muskets and cannons, suffered the heat in their wool uniforms with a look of pride in their eyes. We spent an hour walking around the encampments listening to their fascinating presentations.

We walked up the Union lines that Pickett charged on Day 3, passed the memorials to all the regiments including that of the 19th Maine where Joe Ware's ancestor, Richard H. Spear fought at the Bloody Angle to the High Water Mark, the furthest point the Confederates reached in the Union lines. Looking directly across the battlefield was the Virginia Memorial where 10,000 men marched in formation across a mile of open fields directly into the face of murderous artillery and mini ball fire. It boggles the mind. We ate out lunch sitting in the shade behind the cannon.

Next we walked the Gettysburg National Cemetery where President Lincoln gave his famous Address ("Fore score and seven years ago...") and we found an ancestor's grave. He was shot on Little Round Top with the 20th Maine and Colonel Joshua Chamberlain  on July 2, 1863 exactly 150 years ago and died on July 3rd. Elfin was the cousin of my great great grandfather, William H. Foss, who fought in the 2nd Maine in the Civil War.

 

We walked to the Visitors Center where Katie's good friend Elise hooked us up with free tickets for the museum, cyclorama and film presentations. Thanks, Elise! Elise and Eric live in an historic building on the South end of the battlefield at the foot of the Round Tops. Eric is a Park Ranger and Elise works at the Visitors Center when she isn't coaching high school soccer. We enjoyed sitting on their back porch and drinking a cold beer that late afternoon aware that it was the same time of day that Little Round Top had been attacked by the 15th Alabama and Elfin Foss had met his fate. We hiked up to Little Round Top before heading home to the 20th Maine Monument and spoke with a sharp shooter reenactor who recognized Elfin Foss from the battle, the cemetery and the Gettysburg movie ("Private Foss is praying, sir."). He was really into it.

We looked down on Devils Den, The Peach Orchard and The Wheatfield where close to 15,000 casualties took place in the six hour battle. It has been called the bloodiest single engagement of the Civil War. We looked up the battlefield to the North where Pickett's Charge was to take place the next day. The beauty and serenity so contrasted what it must have been like that day in 1863.

At 51,000 casualties, the Battle of Gettysburg was by far the bloodiest battle of the entire Civil War. In total 620,000 American soldiers died (of all causes... 213,000 combat deaths) during this war compared to 644,000 in all other conflicts (next highest was 405,000 in WWII... 292,000 combat deaths).Almost 2% of the US population died in this war from 1861 to 1865. Many more were left disabled.

And it was only 150 years ago...

Thanks to my driver, tour guide and beautiful daughter. Great day, Katsel! Love you...

A Few More Pics from our Trip

These shots didn't make the first cut.

Our new favorite beer.

In Georgia. It says "Police".

 

A Georgia bracer...

 

Georgia political graffiti... 

A Tbilisi restaurant

 

Something gets lost in translation...

A local favorite, Ayran, a salty, yogurt drink sold at McDonalds.Translation "See. This is the love." On my list of "Things I will never drink again"...

Out the Front Door...

Georgia June sunset over the Marshes of Glynn on the high tide after a monsoon rain... a little piece of heaven.