This past weekend Kristen and I joined some of the usual suspects from Altered Fluid and headed to the tunnels of Manhattan for story ideas and just general coolness. The yearly Nostalgia Train run happens every Sunday this month, running on the M line.  Old trains, old advertisements, and lots of people who really go all out in period costumes made for an enjoyable afternoon.

Click on the photos for more… well, photos.

I’ve started my first scratch-build model project.  The subject is USS Carondelet, a City Class gunboat of the American Civil War.  You can see my progress so far HERE.

Apologies if the Blog and parts of the website appear wonky over the next few weeks.  I’m finally in the process of updating my site, and it is very much a work in progress. I REALLY need to find a new theme for this Blog, as the formatting has gone haywire and I can’t seem to fix it!

Oh well, the price of technology.

Besides visiting the NASM while in D.C. this past weekend, I also spent more than my fair share of time out at the Manassas National Battlefield Park.  It’s a beautiful woodland area now smack dab in the middle of urban sprawl.  I have to admit to not knowing a lot about most of the first battle of Bull Run, and I have only studied about one aspect of the Second Battle.

My area of interest is Brawner’s Farm, where the Iron Brigade first saw combat as a unit on August 28th, 1862.  The farm remained in private hands after the war and up until the late 20th century.  It’s still a relatively unknown part of the park, as the National Parks Service is still restoring the site and mentions it only in passing in the park literature.  It took me a while to find the place amidst terrific thunderstorms that moved through the Washington area on May 29th, but find it I did, at last, and during a 15 minute break in the weather I was able to walk the field completely alone.

The photos are random shots from the Henry Hill area of the First Bull Run area of the battlefield, and the shots of the white two-story house are the Brawner farmhouse.

This past weekend Kristen and I traveled to Washington D.C. While she was in conferences all weekend, I rented a car and did my usual “visit old stuff” thing. I made several trips out to the Manassas battlefield (more on that in another post) and finally made my way to the National Air and Space Udvar-Hazy Center.  This center, far from the confines of the D.C. mall, is in a remodeled hangar at Dulles airport.  The facility is massive and houses dozens of rare and wonderfully restored aircraft.  I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Some of the photos are a bit on the dark side as I only had my small camera (one does not take the Chinatown bus while lugging a ton of camera equipment) and the built-in flash just isn’t effective in such an enviroment from any sort of distance.

A week ago I returned from my most recent trip to Gettysburg.  This time I went with my writing group on our yearly Altered Fluid writing retreat.  We rented two amazing houses approximately six miles east south-east of the battlefield.

I found myself making multiple trips to the battlefield for my own research, and every day I’d take a group of writers out and give them my own version of a tour of the battlefield.  No one dozed off on me, so I’ll consider that a success.

This is the first time I’ve visited Gettysburg while writing about the battle. It is an amazing but humbling experience to spend an evening reading and researching about men of the 19th Indiana Regiment, and then walk the National Cemetery the next day and see the names of some of those very same men etched in the stones that fan out along the ground.

Overall, I didn’t get as much writing done over our five days as I would have liked, but it was still a great time, both because of the location and the company.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that ‘all men are created equal.’

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow, this ground—The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us —that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “Nicolay Copy”, one of five surviving hand-written copies of the Address, and the one Lincoln read from at the dedication.

 This past Thursday, October 2nd, the floating museum USS Intrepid returned to her west side Manhattan berth, after a yard period and exile to Staten Island.  Intrepid was launched in 1943 and served through WWII and Vietnam.  She doesn’t look a lot like she did back in 1943 anymore, due to upgrades and refits, but she’s still an impressive ship.

The tow was right at mid-day, and there were a surprising number of spectators on the 14th street pier here in Hoboken.  I say surprising because I only found out about the move the day before, and honestly a big gray boat moving along the Hudson isn’t that odd of an occurrence.  I met some very nice people, and some tourists from Boston shared their picnic lunch with me.

The photos are a bit washed out due to the time of day, but the ship still looks better than I’ve ever seen her, sporting a new coat of paint.  More photos here.

This past week I returned to Gettysburg and spent four days there and at Antietam taking tours, talking to historians, guides and rangers, and doing general research.  I stayed at my usual hotel on the site of General Lee’s headquarters during the battle.  Its proximity to the first day’s field on the west of town is very convenient since that’s the focus of my research.  To be within walking distance on a battlefield that is approximately 25 square miles is a huge bonus. This was my first real summer visit to the area, and I highly recommend it even though it was hot and humid.  The various summer programs going on throughout Gettysburg will keep anyone busy.  I was there four days and there were at least another four days worth of activities I wish I could have stayed around for. The tour guides and rangers were of great help while I was there, especially Joanne Lewis, who came in on her day off to give me a tour of the Gettysburg Day 1 field, Gerry Eak, who gave me a great tour of the town of Gettysburg itself, and Mannie Gentile, who gives a wonderful no-nonsense tour of the Antietam field.

I’ve posted some photos here.  Yeah, more sunset photos.  No matter where I go in the world it seems my camera ends up focusing on sunsets and clouds.