Hello Everyone. Christmas week is upon us! It snuck up on me pretty quickly this year, but I’m very grateful to have been able to spend the holiday season with friends and family at home. It’s always nice to be home in Washington this time of year as I truly think it’s the best time of the year to be in our nation’s capital. I’m writing to you this week from my brother’s house here in New Hampshire where I’ve only just arrived this evening. I figured it would be good to spend a few days in New England before heading off to old England for the New Year.
It’s been a fun and festive week here and I hope you are all enjoying the season however and wherever you celebrate it. We’ve certainly been busy and I’d love to tell you what we’ve gotten into this week. Last Tuesday my folks and I took a wonderful candlelit tour of the Tudor House, one of Washington’s oldest homes, the oldest parts of which date back to the late 18th century. We drank cocoa, ate mince pies and pound cake and heard the story of the family which called Tudor House home for 6 generations. Many of the furnishings are original to the house and the whole house was decorated for Christmas which was really special. After our tour we had a great dinner at Farmers, Fishers and Bakers on the Georgetown Waterfront while watching ice skaters cruise around the rink.
Wednesday we got up early and headed up to Columbia, Maryland to check out an afternoon matinee at Toby’s Dinner Theatre. We started with a really delicious buffet brunch and then enjoyed a fabulous production of the Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life performed in the round. The actors were great and the adaptation was incredibly well done. This was definitely a highlight of the season and I will absolutely be returning to Toby’s in the future. After the show we took a spin around Historic Ellicott City, a town I’ve really enjoyed visiting over the last couple of years. The town was decorated for the season and it was fun to wind around the hills and rivers for an hour or so. We wound up the day with a few craft beers at the nearby Sapwood Cellars Brewery.
On Thursday I spent the day cleaning and packing and then headed over to my friend Sandy’s house for dinner. Sandy was my date to my senior prom and has become one of my very good friends over the last thirty years.
Hollywood Cemetery is a beautiful, sprawling old cemetery overlooking the James River just west of downtown Richmond. Established in 1849, Hollywood Cemetery is the final resting place of two U.S. Presidents, James Monroe and John Tyler, and Jefferson Davis, the only President of the Confederacy. Also buried at Hollywood are 28 Confederate Generals including JEB Stuart and George Pickett as well as a considerable number of Confederate soldiers, both known and unknown. The Monument of Confederate War Dead is found there as well in the form of a 90 foot pyramid dedicated in 1869.
We enjoyed our visit to Hollywood Cemetery and spent several hours there. It has quite a history and some beautiful examples of funerary art. The President’s Circle includes the two presidents mentioned above and local celebrity burials as well. The south side of the cemetery offers beautiful views of the James River and Downtown Richmond. We used the Girl Scout Self-Guided Tour Pamphlet (found HERE) to help us find our way around. It can be tricky, but it’s not big enough to get really lost. I hope you enjoy these photos from Hollywood Cemetery.
I took these photos last week in the midst of the Confederate statue removal process in the old Confederate Capital of Richmond. It was a unique time to visit because some of the statues had already been removed, one of JEB Stuart was in the process of being removed and the two central ones to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis still stood, although both have been slated for removal.
In taking these photos I wanted to capture the spirit of the protests which ultimately have led to the conversation over the removal of these statues, so I have included some close-up shots of the graffiti. Some of the graffiti is targeted towards police brutality while some supports the Black Lives Matter movement.
I am of the opinion that these statues cannot continue to stand in these central places in our nation’s cities. While there are aspects of all of these men which I admire and respect, the cause for which they fought was ultimately the continuation of slavery in perpetuity. There are places for these statues as I believe all art tells a story, but the story currently being told isn’t a complete one and needs to be adjusted with our current understanding of history. These statues coming down isn’t erasing history, it is history.
Hello everyone, well another week has rolled by us and it has not been a bad one here on the homefront in Washington D.C. One of my friends got engaged this week, another announced a pregnancy and still another welcomed a new grandchild into the world so those were some real positive boosts. I’ve been getting some good walks in around the neighborhood despite mid-summer temperatures and high humidity levels and have been enjoying the podcast Civil War Talk Radio as I walk. It’s been great to hear some expert historians discuss some very specific issues of the war. I’ve been trying to keep myself hydrated which as silly as it sounds has been really helping me feel better. I’m usually really good at hydrating, but seem to have let it slip amidst all of the chaos of late. I’ve also been trying to keep a little further from the news and have been picking my guitar more and reading some less heavy material. I’ve started rereading Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley, one of my favorite American travel books of all time, as I start to gear up to get back to writing my own book. I had charged ahead with it when I first got home, but realized I needed to focus more and plan it out a little better to keep the story moving and make it more readable and interesting. That’s tough because every day I was out on the road was a new adventure and had an impact on the journey, but the book can’t be a thousand pages long, so I will need to map it out a little better. I hope to start putting pen to paper a little later this week.
Also this week I decided to pick up a violin seriously for the first time in 30 years. When I was in Junior High School, I used to play violin and I was actually fairly decent at reading music. Unfortunately, I was not very interested in it because I didn’t know any of the songs my teacher wanted me to play. While she said I played them well, how could I know? I have always likened it to cooking a recipe for something you’ve never eaten before, you may think it tastes just fine, but if you don’t know how it’s supposed to taste, you’d never know. Anyways, in the intervening years, I’ve seen the violin played in very different styles of music in my travels around the country and around the world (although in these styles it’s often referred to as a “fiddle”, it’s the exact same instrument). I’ve seen lots of live bands playing traditional Irish music or country, mountain and folk music and I really enjoy it. About 2 years ago when I was in Nashville I went ahead and bought one thinking I’d give it a shot on the road – it’s a relatively small instrument and I found a place for it in my van. I had romantic images in my head of sitting in the back of my van at night and playing beautiful music before bed. Sadly, I realized that the violin actually takes some space to play with the bow going up and down and my van was too tight to really make it happen. And so it just sat there. I found the space for a guitar instead which takes more room to carry but less room to play. This week I pulled out that violin though and took it for a spin. I was pleasantly surprised that with a little refresher from a book and the internet I could remember how to read music and with some sheet music of songs I actually know I could actually play them that first night (not well, but recognizable). I was impressed and really enjoyed it. Sadly, when I pulled it out last night the bridge fell off and I spent an hour trying to restring it and it was generally a big frustrating mess. But I hope to get it fixed and continue playing with it. This was another big plus this week.
The news has, as always seems to be the case recently, been a big minus. Covid cases continue to grow at a rapid rate in the U.S. and people continue to ignore it. Although we have only about 4% of the world’s population, I believe we now have over a quarter of the world’s cases…
The photos below come from a recent visit to the battlefields of the greater Richmond/Petersburg Area. With the exception of the first few from Gaines Mill which was important to the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, most of these battles were part of the 1864 Overland Campaign. This long, brutal and bloody series of battles would eventually lead to the capture of Petersburg and the fall of Richmond which set the stage for the surrender of the Army of the Potomac at Appomattox. Civil War Chronicles will trace the major battles of the Eastern Theater of the war through photos and brief histories
Richmond was not the original capital of the Confederacy, but became the capital after Virginia seceded from the Union in April of 1861. Richmond and neighboring Petersburg were major industrial hubs with rail lines connecting to points near and far and the James River to further move supplies in and out of the area. The rivers surrounding the city made defending it somewhat easier as well. Because of the strategic importance of Richmond, it would be the focus of several major campaigns during the war.
Our visit started at Gaines Mill Farm which saw some of the worst fighting of the Seven Days Battle during the Peninsula Campaign of 1862. This battle was the first in which Robert E. Lee had command of the Army of Northern Virginia following the wounding of Joseph Johnston. Lee’s ability to hold off George McClellan and his Union forces would direct the war away from Richmond and back to Northern Virginia to Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville which we visited several weeks ago…
