last words

So I've stumbled over the last words of a handful of Civil War people over the last few weeks and being as I cringe these days when all I have to contribute to most conversations are Civil War facts, stories and quotes. I figured this is why I made this blog in the first place right? To spare my beloved friends/colleagues.

The other day when I apologized for cutting a friend off to tell her something civil war related she laughed and said it was OK and that she didn't mind - "really!". She started laughing and told me that she had overheard me cut into someone's conversation about their thighs at a party we both had attended a few weeks ago. She said that I walked up to them and declared: "One of Lincoln's good friends from Illinois thought Lincoln's thighs were 'as perfect as a human being's could be'"! I guess this made my CW tidbits somehow bearable to her???

In any case, here is a very tiny list of last words I've compiled, The CW ones are uninterseting in some respects but I like them just the same:

“They won't think anything about it”
- Abraham Lincoln
(His wife Mary had sat very close to him in the theater box they shared with Major Henry Rathbone and Miss Clara Harris, she had put her hand in his and whispered, "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you so?" He was reassuring his wife that it would be all right to hold hands just before John Wilkes Booth sneaked into the box and shot him from behind).

"Strike the tent."
- Robert E. Lee
(On his deathbed 5 years after the war had ended)

"Please don't let me fall"
-Mary Surratt
(The first woman executed by the United States federal government, was hanged on July 7, 1865 for conspiracy related to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln)

"Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees."
- General Stonewall Jackson

Last night I got curious as to people's last words in general and here are some more I came across:

"mi mou tous kiklous taratte"
Translation: "Don't disturb my circles!"
- Archimedes
(In response to a Roman soldier who was forcing him to report to the roman general after the capture of Syracuse, while he was busy sitting on the ground proving geometry theories. The Soldier killed him in response.)

"The Earth is suffocating... Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive."
- Frederic Chopin

"Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!"
- Karl Marx
(asked by his housekeeper what his last words were)

"I'm bored with it all."
- Winston Churchill
(before slipping into a coma and dying nine days later)

"To my friends: My work is done. Why wait?"
- George Eastman
(he took his own life)

"Turn up the lights— I don't want to go home in the dark."
- O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)

"I see black light."
- Victor Hugo

“Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies."
- Voltaire
(when asked by a priest to renounce Satan)

"I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis."
- Humphrey Bogart

Here are 2 epitaphs that scared me:

Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and nowhere to go.
- Unknown grave

"Quello che siete fummo, quello che siamo sarete"
Translation: "What you are we were and what we are you will become"
- Unknown adult's grave in Rome, Italy

that was fun

I'm back. That was fun. We had the entire place to ourselves. Apparently they don't get many visitors on weekdays because the restaurant and the bar were both closed and therefore there was no staff present our entire stay. We arrived last evening around 6pm and when we stepped out of my car the heat was so stifling I was forced to hike up my pant legs immediately. San Francisco is cold and windy during the summer months so it doesn't feel like summer one bit...blech, I hate it. It has been especially hard adjusting to it after spending the last 3 weeks in balmy climates such as Savannah, GA. So in a way it felt like I had a second chance at salvaging a summer for 2 more days.

As the hotel was completely vacant, the woman told me over the phone how to get into the place. The doors to all of the rooms were wide open and the keys to our room as well as 2 huge fluffy pool towels were left at the foot of our bed. She said if we liked another room better that we could just sleep there instead. Our room was by far the biggest, most beautiful, and coziest of the selection. We had access to the entire balcony which stretched the length of the hotel from each of our tall French windows.

After a short stroll through the town, we put on our bathing suits and headed down to the pool in the cozily overgrown courtyard. At a canopied table by the pool we lit our 3 Spanish white candles, and unpacked our 3 bottles of wine, 1 baguette, 1 loaf of olive and spinach Italian bread, and 4 selections of outrageously potent cheeses. We sat in that candlelight until 1am talking about miscellaneous topics, and of course I interwove my civil war facts in and out of the verbal tapestry...it was beyond my control.

Yaaawn...my friend suddenly grew sleepy, and we hurriedly packed up our belongings, just as 2 curious faces were peeking at us through a fence on the other side of the pool. Creepy. We moved faster, and just as we were halfway across the courtyard, a set of wind chimes on the balcony startled us with its sudden and erratic chiming. You could hear a pin drop in that town it was so quiet, every time a leaf had fallen from a tree and landed on the grass we both jerked out heads to look. Not to mention there was not one breeze the entire night and trust me we would have noticed one had there been, given the temperature which swelled into the night right along with us. We both paused and glanced up and in the direction of the chimes, nothing there. We reached the front of the hotel and there was nobody anywhere but we felt so safe and happy. We both sat down in the middle of the street and took pictures of each other and our surroundings and then retreated to the balcony outside of our room.

When you glanced down the long stretch of the balcony to the other end both my friend and I could see the men in their nice suits reclining and smoking their cigars and pipes, their billowy mustaches, their tall hats. The overdressed women fanned themselves as they sat perched at the edges of their wicker chairs. What a beautiful sight our imaginations offered us on that balcony, we were quiet and smiling as we watched.

The first words I heard my friend say the next morning as I stepped out of the bathroom and she stood looking through the slats of our wooden blinds were "Look, I see a person out there!" I ran to look too. I think our whole stay in that town we saw about 15 people total over the course of 24 hours. We exchanged words with more than half of them, on more than one occasion because in this small town you see the same people again and again and again. By the end their apprehensive watchful faces became inviting and full of the warmest smiles.

We didn't want to leave. After heading out to a nearby town for some lunch and antique photo collecting, we sat out in the courtyard of the hotel with our legs dangling in the pool, reading our books until the sky began to coat everything with a warm shade of orange. The magic hour had arrived and it was time to get back to reality.

Hours later I found a parking spot in my neighborhood, and got out of my car to the harsh slap of the wind along my bare legs, partially lifting my skirt and making me growl out loud. My car had maintained the same hot temperature of Mokelumne Hill, so it hurt to step out into the icy San Francisco street in a summer skirt and a spaghetti-strap shirt. Sigh.

the haunted hotel léger

In about an hour and a half a good friend and I will take off to a cozy little "semi-ghost" town named Mokelumne Hill to stay the night. This little towns only place to lodge is called the Hotel Léger, and it is supposedly haunted. My first stay there was in a tiny back room where the proprietor used to live and where purportedly most of the "hauntings" have occured. You have to go through these little western swinging doors to access that part of the building. I'd have to say personally that the haunted feeling more than likely stems from the overwhelming pattern of the wallpaper more than anything else. You instantly feel like you're spinning when you walk in the door.

That day when I downloaded "Assassination Vacation", half of my reasoning was to have it for the little road trip required to reach this historic little town. I really needed to escape the modern trappings of this world and the hectic grind of city life, so I researched nearby ghost towns in Northern California and stumbled upon Mokelumne Hill:

"Settled by miners from Oregon after a gold strike in October of 1848 along the Mokelumne River, the town quickly developed a reputation of wildness not to be exceeded by most other mining camps. The site was called Mokelumne Hill. The first structures to be built were leveled by fire in 1854. Subsequent buildings were mostly of stone and many have survived. What sets Mokelumne Hill apart from many other mining towns is its cemetery. Set among a grove of Italian cypress, it tells a grim story of the town's early days."

I booked a room for my husband and I for the weekend. Sarah's voice talked us through the windy dark back roads and forested freeways. That was the day this Civil War obsession began for me, and to stay in this town which preserved the architecture and feel of the Civil War era only helped solidify it. No internet café's, no email or web addresses on signs, no neon lights, just hand painted signs, wood flanked raised sidewalks, dusty little streets...I was transported back in time. At the close of this little weekend getaway and upon returning back to San Francisco I was kind of overwhelmed with culture shock, especially as we wound closer and closer to our little congested neighborhood. Alas the weekend was a success, who'd of thought that a 2 1/2 hour car drive could take one seamlessly back 150 years.

So anyway, I will take off soon and I'm charging my iPod as I write, with Vowell's book all queued up for the road trip...in the hopes to transport my friend to the 1800's right along with me.

anywhere but here

It's been a little over one week since I returned from my 3 week sojourn to the East Coast to revisit many of the Civil War landmarks I had visited as a small girl. Every Spring my mother, brothers, and I would drive from upstate NY down south to either North Carolia, South Carolina, or Florida, stopping at places such as Gettysburg or Ford's theater along the way. It was the Peterson Boarding House in particular that made the most lasting impression on my young mind. That tiny bed where such a long body had died...the blood stained pillow.
I am thankful that the infatuation which spurred from those early travels has resurfaced in an era of such accessible information at my fingertips. This resurfacing stems back to NPR's This American Life and one of my fazvorite contributors: Sarah Vowell. About 3 or 4 months ago I saw her on The Daily Show with John Stewart discussing her new book "Assassination Vacation" and was instantly glued to the TV set. Days later Terry Gross was interviewing her on Fresh Air and soon afterwards I found myself making my first purschase off of audible.com. I've listened to it so many times I've caught myself mouthing along with Sarah or her cast as they quote those involved... pretty lame. Her book covers the assassination of Presidents: Lincoln, McKinley, and Garfield, although these days I only listen to the third dedicated to the Lincoln Assassination, and this only occurs on my iPod while at the gym, taking public transportation, or on long car rides.

In the meantime I have spent all of my spare time and income on researching, buying, and bidding on literature, photography books, civil war/assassination paraphenelia. My obsession has since branched out to engulf specific civil war battles, specific generals, and Lewis Thornton Powell (one of the conspirators who attempted the murder of then Secretary of State, William Seward). As not one of my friends shares this enthusiasm with me, I created this blog to spare my friends.