Gettysburg

Vicki had never seen Gettyburg, and I hadn't seen it since the early 00s when Rachel (a history major) and I visited it. We began at the visitor center and the excellent video there, narrated by Morgan Freeman, which gives the big picture. I was reminded of a bumper sticker that said "I want my life to be narrated by Morgan Freeman".

After the video you see the Cyclorama, a 360
degree oil painting depicting the battle; a special
building has been built to display the painting,
reputedly the largest oil painting and canvas
in North America; above is a tiny segment

The painting was done by the Frenchman
Philippoteax and his assistants in the 1880s and
displayed in such places as Boston and Philadelphia
(not Richmond nor Atlanta)

Honest Abe in his Bubba Gump pose

What's a minie ball worth these days?

The Union's General Abner
Doubleday, who, if he did not invent
baseball, popularized it among the
Union troops during the war; it was
played according to "New York rules"
in those days; Doubleday was from
Cooperstown; oh, yes, he was a hero
at Gettysburg, too

Looking back toward Seminary Ridge

Part of the Lutheran seminary, as it was in the
1860s

From Seminary Ridge, we drove Confederate
Avenue, which leads through the entire battle
line of the rebels; and then up the Roundtops
to Cemetery Ridge, which the Federals defended

Artillery where Hill's batteries were located

At the Virginia memorial, looking across the field
to the Union side

The Virginia memorial, the largest Confederate
memorial, among scores of them

Gen. James Longstreet, Lee's "Old War Horse," who
differed with Lee on the battle plan July 3, and told
him "It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men
ever arranged for battle can take that position";
Longstreet, a great general. has been reviled in
the South for 150 years; two months after his
triumphs at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville,
Lee suffered from what the Japanese later described
as "the victory disease"

Now turning to the Union battle line

The Pennsylvania memorial

Among the scores of Union memorials

The "angle"; just to the right is the "high water
mark," where the rebels briefly breached the
Union line 

Looking back across that field of death (Pickett's
Charge," etc.) to the Virginia memorial

"After Gettysburg": from the fall of
Vicksburg on July 4th, 1863, that war
was mostly about U. S. Grant; nearly
all the Union victories prior to
Gettysburg, in the West, were Grant's
too

Sunset over Gettysburg

An unforgettable place, so recently desecrated by
Trump...

From MA To PA

At length we left New Hampshire and drove on into Massachusetts. The need to take a day off, and then a serious cold spell, kept us hunkered down in Pittsfield a couple days, but then we drove on into Massachusetts, and then, quickly, through Connecticut and New York to Pennsylvania. We had visited Pittsfield earlier, in the 90s, when Rebecca was teaching at Miss Hall's School there.

On into the Berkshires

No corpses or zombies in cars at...

Louis XVIII we guessed

Thus

Deeper into the Berkshires and color

By a creek at a roadside rest

Wait a second...what happened to Connecticut, New
York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas
and Georgia?! And where are the palm trees?!

View from Florida, MA

Descending now into North Adams

Flashing forward...crossing the Hudson

And then in Milford, PA, and the home of Charles
S. Pierce, the founder of Pragmatism

Nice digs for a philosopher...now the administrative
offices of the Delaware Water Gap National Park or
somesuch; reminded me of an incident where I had
expressed astonishment that the Cuyahoga was now
a National Scenic River (it used to burn regularly
when I was in Ohio) and was informed, by a ranger
friend out west, that, well, 2/3s of the US population
still lives in the eastern time zone, and they like
parks too...

Mount Monadnock

I was going to do a riff on Mount Monadnock. Of course it is famous in the writings of Emerson and Thoreau, but also as the subject of a thought experiment in the writings of the American philosopher Roderick Chisholm, whom I read, lightly, in graduate school. The great Enlightenment philosopher Leibniz also wrote about monadnock, but that is an entirely different story. In any case, we stopped in Jaffrey and gave some thought to climbing Mount Monadnock, as many other people were doing on a beautiful autumn day. It was enough just to see it, however, as with Everest, and we proceeded on.

Mount Monadnock

Gorgeous color, driving through Monadnock
State Park

Parthian shot

One of many beautiful stone churches we saw in
New England

More New Hampshire

We proceeded on...to Conway and some shopping and then beyond Conway into the White Mountain National Forest and a beautiful little campsite at the Hancock campground, marred only by the rain that came just as we were really getting into the campfire (we had just finished the s'mores and beer).

At Hancock campground, White Mountain NF

View from along the highway

A stop for a little hike in the yellow woods

The creek (or "crick" as they say in Montana)

The falls, part of them

Driving on to Peterborough...this, I was told, was
the first public library in the United States of
America...

Main street, Peterborough

You have to feel pretty good about a
place where the Unitarian (Universalist)
church is still going strong

And the Baptist church has been
converted into a multicultural museum

Thus

Neat item in a neat store

Main street view

Town administrative offices

Peterborough also enjoys some fame as the "real"
site of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, a great play
that many of us were forced to read in high school

A paltry example of something we saw throughout
New England, a house joined on to a garage or barn
or both by another building; some of them (not
pictured) were huge

In Peterborough (or was it Jaffrey?) there was also
a humongous display of scarecrows, these done
by school kids; hmmm, not so sure about the one
on the left...