Virginia Breeze

http://www.nps.gov/apco/

Here’s a location to learn more about this historical area. A great thing happened on this plot of land barely a lifetime before I was born. A society built on slavery was defeated. It happened here. The documents were signed. I stood on the spot where Grant met Lee and looked around on this gorgeous fall day.

Nature seems to be celebrating on this day. Perhaps it is just my imagination but as I look around I am carried away with these thoughts. I am a soul who has seen an amazing thing happen in the past week.

Since childhood I have seen the transformation of a society from days of segregation to this time.

My soul celebrates. And nature brought the party here. There are a few days like this in a person’s life. I have driven by this spot many times on my way to Lynchburg. It was established long ago as a place for travelers to rest on their journeys back and forth from Richmond to Lynchburg.

But I never stopped until now.

And let’s try another photo.

Click on photos to enlarge

[Show as slideshow]

Good afternoon loyal readers and paid readers.  First of all I would like to say that it has been a special honor to blog for you this past year and four months.  If you should not hear from your blogging buddy again he would like this to be the last thought that passes through the internet continuum to you.

On the way home yesterday from Lynchburg and the birthday party for Charlie I passed by The Appomattox  National Park and decided to go in and look around.  The light was very nice as the air was clear and the sun was nearing the horizon.  Long shadows from tree branches played on the sides of very old replicas of buildings from another era.

I was in heaven.  Little did I know that perhaps this was because I carried within an evil GI bug who at that very moment was planning to literally take his host to  the Gates of either heaven or the other place.

We are still negotiating.  But the blogger feels awful at this moment.  I will spare you the details but let’s just say the human body is a nest of buzzards or a bag of bones and we are the unhappy souls who have for some ill thought out reason decided to inhabit it for a short while.

Bad decision.  Very bad.

Here’s a photo from yesterday.  If the blogger should somehow recover and is still able to take photos these will remind him of the days when he was at the top of his game.

Before the sun went down and the germs came out to play.

Update//  Perhaps I am zeroing in on the BUG that is inhabiting my blog today because if you try to add a photo here everything except the Title of the Post disappears.

The blogger is having one of those days.  Hopefully someone can figure this out or has a similar experience to share.  It may have something to do with going from Admin/comments to Admin/write post without going thru the dashboard again.  I could try it but I’m too sick to mess around with another bug right now.

11-piano-concerto-no-2-in-c-minor-op-18-2-adagio-sostenuto

Sergey Rachmaninov

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I was up at the crack of something this morning.  It was not a bright dawn that greeted us but overcast skies and a slight rain.  Temperatures are in the mid to upper fifties.  And the roads were far more busy than is usual.

There can only be one explanation.  People are out early to vote and they are not caring about getting wet.  I parked a good distance from the poll and had a nice walk as my brain said “thanks” for the oxygen.  Once inside things went quickly and ten minutes later I was in the voting booth.   I hate these “touch this and touch that” screens.  One of them was already busted and a precinct worker joked about turning it back to zero.

Not funny.  I don’t trust them.   And, in fact, I had trouble figuring this one out.  The Virginia candidates were on the right and I voted there and then pressed next expecting to find the Presidential candidates.  But all I found was a large VOTE button and I almost pressed it without getting all my votes done.

So then all my computer learning kicked in (cough) and I went back and discovered about five Presidential tickets on the left in much smaller print.    Mickey and the gang had not made it to the list.

Images flashed through my mind. Watching Eisenhower’s farewell address on a little round tube.  Listening to my teachers freak out over the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Coming home from middle school and watching Walter Cronkite cry as he told us JFK was dead.  Watching RFK in California and the replay of shots being fired. Standing on a Boston sidewalk as a young, handsome Ted Kennedy exited a brownstone after giving a talk to a small gathering.  Standing in the cold with a million other young people on a hill near the Washington Monument and listening to speeches during the Vietnam War.  Carrying the name of someone who had recently died in battle in a long line and mispronouncing it ( I was later told) as I put it in a large box. Listening to LBJ address his “fellow Americans” in that irritating way on television while he drafted young people to go fight in a jungle.  Sitting in Boston Common and watching Abbie Hoffman point to the John Hancock Building “that hypodermic needle in the sky”  as he gave an amazingly funny speech.  Watching John Dean testify on television.  Listening to Carter and Ford go at it in a debate.  Walking through a nearly empty shopping mall after Reagan was elected.  Being told by a coworker that the space shuttle had exploded.  Going downtown to hear Bush Senior give a speech.  Watching Dukakis with his head stuck out of a armored vehicle (the last time that campaign visual will ever be used). Shaking hands with Bob Dole at the Richmond VAMC.  Falling asleep (often) while Clinton was president.  Looking up the stairs at Beth as I came in the door and she said “A plane flew into the WTC”.  Watching Election Day coverage in amazement the last time .  And voting this morning.

I have witnessed just a few of the dramas that have taken place in this country.  At times I wondered if we would survive.  But we did.  The country survived and prospered at times.

And hopefully we will survive whatever happens today as well.  The challenges are as great or greater than anything I have seen in all my years.  The divisions in our society have not healed.  We are hopelessly in debt and trying to bring order to the entire fractious  planet.

It’s a mess.  But it has always been a mess.  So I voted this morning and now I intend to edit some photos.  And wait for the results.

Not the maker of plans and promises, but rather the one who offers faithful service in small matters.  This is the person who is most likely to achieve what is good and lasting.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.  ~Abraham Lincoln

I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung.  ~Tagor

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Update// Thanks to the reporter who called from Computerworld and wanted to know about “voting experiences with touch screen computers”  (they s*ck).  His article. . .

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Government&articleId=9119080&taxonomyId=13&pageNumber=2

I went out and took a bunch of photos for the newcomer’s guide I’m working on today.  It was overcast and drizzling but not really  raining until sometime after lunch.  So I went to several places and then drove down to the large state park in this area and started exploring.  The trees were looking very nice and I took some photos.

And then at one point I left the path to take a photo and found another path.  I thought “this must curve around and rejoin the one I was on”.  Why did I think this?

Good question.  So after walking for about an hour and taking lots

of photos I gave up the idea that I was headed back to anywhere
familiar and called 911.  The lady on the line was friendly and
said she would call the park ranger.  Then after awhile he called and
said he would come out and get me.

Cell phones are so cool.

While I was waiting this guy came out of the woods with a gun
hanging on his back.   He looked a little bit like a hobbit.  Or maybe
Rip Van Winkle.    But he was friendly and we had a nice talk about
deer and people who get lost in the woods.

After the park ranger showed up I decided to go back to the car and
drive over to the James River and Henricus.  This is one of the first
settlements in the new world.  It’s a small fort overlooking the James
River that was established about four hundred years ago.

So I talked with another guy who also had a gun at Henricus.  Only
his gun was a very old musket.  We had a very interesting discussion
about life in the early days and then he showed me how he loaded and
fired his gun.

Beth is down in Charleston SC this weekend for a wedding so I
probably would have just sat around the house if it wasn’t for
photography.  Instead of doing that I met some interesting people, got
a whole lot of exercise, had an adventure and fed my creative spirit.

Here’s a photo of the guy in Henricus taking aim and firing his gun.