I'm home alone tonight and so happy. Since Hubby is out with the boys I am submerging myself in Civil War stories. Crying here and there. Pickett's Charge....crying for them.Last summer I set up an appointment to look at Alexander Gardner's photographs of the Civil War in the George Eastman House archives. I dragged Hubby and Momma-san along with me. They sat on either side of me as I was the only one allowed to touch the prints. I wore their tiny cotton gloves. My hands were shaking, my cheeks a shade of crimson, my eyes burning with tears, my jaws clenched tight...bite...release..bite...release...a rhythm.
When we stood up to leave I asked the man running the archive if I could see the Lincoln Assassination photos and he perked up asking "How do you know about our collection of those?" I said I assumed that if anyone had them it would be the George Eastman House for it was pointed out to me that they essentially are a warehouse storing over 3 million photographic artifacts and images after all. He excitedly disappeared and then reappeared wheeling a tall cart with a photo album on it. He said they just acquired it from the descendants of a Union Officer who had kept the newspaper clippings and original prints of the assassins before some of the glass negatives had broke and cracked which is why many of the images we see today have horrid lines running though them.
All I wanted to do was break down and cry....my eyes welled up. I told Hubbs and Momma-san everything I thought they would find interesting about each of the images I flipped to in this album. I came across a portrait of a man I had never seen before and I was stumped and disappointed at my lack of knowledge "I can't believe this...I have no idea who this man is...I don't understand" I told them. Then I heard the Archive Man's chair squeak back and he turned and looked at me from his desk, repositioned himself in his chair and said "A few weeks ago we had a Lincoln expert in here, a man who has spent the last 20 years researching Lincoln, and he didn't know who that man was". The disappointment dissipated.Image 1: Union vantage point of the Pickett's Charge field
Image 2: Ford's Theater
Image 3: Bed Lincoln died in
5 comments:
I absolutely LOVE history and all the Civil War stories. I've got big books!!!!
I would have been in heaven to have seen those photographs.
Oh P - did you know Mike Nesmith lives in Carmel and he loves the Henry Miller Library?
When I had to say goodbye to my room at my mom's house I had to go through literally thousands of letters from friends and recycle most of them. I know I saved a couple of shoeboxes full of yours and a handful of other peoples important letters.
LINNY! OH MY GOD YOU LOVE THE CIVIL WAR! I never thought I'd see the day when I found someone else who was into it as much as me! Do you have Shelby Foote's 3 volume book set??? I just got it a week ago.
No...but dammit now I'm going to have to get it!!!
I'm a huge dork. I go to the Civil War Re-enactments that they have here every year.
You're so lucky that you have those re-enactments so clse at hand. We were at Gettysburg this summer but we were there just 3 days shy of their annual re-enactment, I was so bothered that we were going to miss it so I'm going to try to plan my East Coast trip there next summer around early July.
I want to be a re-enactor and I think it sucks that I can't being female and all. I also wanted to go and have my old time pictures made as soldiers with Hubby but he wasn't so into that idea.
Wow! Those photos are amazing - such a privelege to view them! Lorena - I thought of you last night. The public radio station I work for held a special event with NPR's film critic at a historic old vaudevillian theatre with an incredible 1900s organ. Anyway, we screened 'The General' with a live organist accompanying the film...people dressed up in civil war costumes and 1920s costumes - it was great! You are the first woman I've come across who is a civil war buff! My dad believes he was in it...maybe you were too...?
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