Have a Blessed Christmas!

To all My Wonderful New Blogger Friends...may your Christmas be filled with blessings and may the New Year bring you joy, peace and happiness. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son..... On this day that we celebrate Christ's birth may we all remember why He came.

I will be away for about a week. I am moving and won't have access to a computer at all at first, so it's going to be hit and miss for a while. But, until I return, I'll be thinking about you all!

Merry Christmas!

Marie

Battle of the Crater--My World Tuesday

This is My World Tuesday....please click on the link to see My World views from bloggers all over this big wonderful world. Today, I want to share a historic site from the War Between the States with you. Perhaps the first time many of you ever heard of the Battle of Petersburg or the Battle of the Crater was when you saw Cold Mountain. But for aficionados of the War, it is an important site, and one that is near to my present home. A couple of years ago, my dear cousin Kenna (Willo-the-Wisp and Seeking Solace and Sublimity and now her new blog Sojourns) visited the Petersburg Battlefield together. Here are some of the photographs we took that day:




In 1864 Lee was tenaciously defending Richmond, which was then the Capitol of the Confederacy, by defending nearby Petersburg. Miles of trenches, some of which you can see above, were dug in the defense. This was a precursor to the trench warfare of World War I. The Seige of Petersburg was long, and the two enemy forces were in close proximity during the stand-off.


A Union Colonel, Henry Pleasants, who was a mining engineer proposed digging a tunnel under the Confederate lines, then blowing up the enemy forces there, causing confusion, and being able to capture Petersburg as an end result. The Confederates suspected the tunnel was being dug, but could not find the exact location. Here I am standing at the entrance to the tunnel.



On July 30 the Federals exploded a mine blowing a gap in the Confederate defenses, but things did not go as planned. The Confederates quickly recovered after the initial confusion and launched counter-attacks led by Maj. General William Mahone. The break in the lines was sealed, and the Federals were pushed back and suffered severe casualities in the process. There were another eight months of trench warfare that ensued. Here are two photographs of the Crater.



Here is a drawing of the actual trench that was dug. And if you are interested in the church adjacent to the Battlefield, old Blandford Church, check out Mom's last My World post at Life in Wakefield

My World Tuesday and Jamestown

In My World I am very fortunate to have enormous resources of historical sites within an hour or hour and a half drive. My husband is from this area, and when we lived here before, we visited them as often as we could. Today I decided to post an earlier trip to Jamestown, when our daughter was a young teen and still lived with us (I'm missing her today!) I had a post on Jamestown's 400th Anniversary Celebration back in the summer, and if you wish to see more recent photos of the site, please check it out! But today I am feeling very nostalgic and weepy about missing our daughter, so I wanted to post these earlier pictures. I am so happy that Jamestown is part of our world!!!! As the first permanent English colony in America, it is a very important place in our history! I hope you can all go there some time and visit....in the meantime, enjoy it here. And for more My World Tuesday posts of other great places, please click on the link! Sharing our worlds brings us all closer together!


I love the available light in these two photographs...rosy and soft! This is the exterior of the recreated church. The next is the interior, and our daughter Y and myself sitting on a bench there.



A recreated well.

The Susan Constant, Discovery and Godspeed replicas moored at the dock.

New Award

This award is about blogs that draw all of us together...bring us closer as friends, even though we are separated by many, many miles, and have never even met. It is about sharing, and giving of ourselves. Dorothy at Counting My Blessings received this award, and she greatly deserves it. She passed this on to several blogger friends, including me. I was very touched and honored that she included me in the list. I have come to feel a deep bond with many of the bloggers I have come to know here in blogdom, and I am thankful for you all! Though I have decided I won't be passing any more awards along in the future, mostly because of having less and less time....please know how much I appreciate this, Dorothy! And, all of you--thank you for being the blessings to me that you indeed are!

Ocean Quilt for my Grandson

When Grandson C was VERY small, he exhibited a real interest in fabric when I would take him shopping with me. He particularly loved the bolts of brightly colored character fabrics. I began to collect yards with his favorites....trains, pigs, cartoon characters, airplanes, and later lizards, ocean animals and dinosaurs. In the beginning I made him several sets of pajamas out of the cute pieces he loved, but many of the pieces I had purchased were saved for later use in making quilts. In fact, he called the yards of fabric "my quilts" and he loved to play with them.


Finally I endeavored to make him an ocean quilt. I designed the entire quilt, and it finished up as between single bed size and double bed size when I was finally done. I chose to make "waves" of the different bright ocean fabrics, and placed a strip of "sand" at either end. Then I hand appliqued various figures on the front. The back was mostly a dark blue so I decided to quilt ocean fish and mammal designs when I started the quilting phase. This can be best seen on the back or dark blue side.



Here is a snorkeler that I appliqued onto the quilt.



Here is a shark applique.


This shows the crab applique, and also the footprints I quilted onto the sand. I had the footprints "walk" across the sand, and here stop to show that the boy is looking at the crab he has found. The footprints are actual outlines of my grandson's footprints.



Here is a sand pail, and some of the other footprints.


The next two pictures show some of the quilting designs I did. I would draw a picture on a piece of paper, and pin the paper to the fabric, then quilt by hand using an "in-and-out" method. Once finished I ripped the paper away. Most people use a rocking motion with their hand quilting, and could not use this paper method with the rocking motion, but because I do the in-and-out, I could. However, it is a very SLOW method of quilting, and the quilt took a long time to complete because of that. I did figures of shells, various fish and whales and dolphins and electric eel, a treasure chest and shipwrecked boat, just to name some of the "pictures" you can find in the quilting. Below is a fish, and an octopus with a mean face.




The birthday is coming up, and I just mailed the quilt to my grandson. He has known I was working on it for a long time and that I am finally sending it. I wish I could be there to see his face!!!!! He loves animals and really everything about nature, and his room has a nautical theme. The quilt isn't the most finely crafted one that was ever created, but it was made with a LOT of love, and I hope it gives him joy for a LONG LONG time!

Skywatch Fridays---Storm's a Comin'

A week and a half ago on our street we had these wonderful storm clouds looming overhead! They were too beautiful not to photograph!!!! To see more skies from all over the world, click on the link and visit the blogs on the Skywatch meme!

My World Tuesdays--Bacon's Castle Part II

This is My World Tuesday! For more fascinating worlds of bloggers everywhere, click on the link and view the sites listed at this wonderful meme....and come join us!

The fascinating history of Bacon's Castle did not end with Bacon's Rebellion. There are many stories to tell, but one of my favorites is the love story that developed there during the War Between The States. In 1863 four Signal Corpsmen arrived at the front door of the Castle. They were invited here from nearby Fort Boykins to see General Hankins and to have an evening of leisure with the Hankins family. One of the Corpsmen was a talented young writer from Macon, Georgia, Sidney Lanier. He quickly formed a close friendship with the General's daughter Virginia Hankins (called Ginna), and in the coming months he spent as much time with her at the Castle as his duties permitted. Their romance blossomed. But soon the War intervened, and Lanier was able to visit Ginna little more as Butler's fleet was spied heading up the James River toward Richmond. Lanier and another soldier rode to Petersburg to carry the news of the enemy's approach, and later he was a scout for Beauregard at Petersburg and involved in battle in North Carolina, and then he returned to his native Georgia. He wrote to Ginna, and later was able to see her again, and proposed. But, by now Ginna's mother had died and Ginna was needed to take over in her mother's place and help raise her younger siblings. She refused the proposal of marriage. How reluctantly, we do not know. How severely wounded Sidney Lanier was by this news we also can only imagine. But they seemed star-crossed lovers, and the tale of the dashing young Confederate soldier and the lovely belle of Virginia is very sad.







Sidney Lanier wrote a novel later called Tiger Lilies, and much of it is drawn from his own life experiences. Ginna is alluded to in the work. He also wrote a poem called "To___" in 1863 which seems like it may also allude to his romance with her:

"The day was dying; his breath
Wavered away in a hectic gleam;
And I said, if Life's a dream, and Death
And Love and all are dreams--I'll dream.

A mist came over the bay
Like as a dream would over an eye.
The mist was white and the dream was grey
And both contained a human cry.

The burthen whereof was "Love,"
And it filled both mist and dream with pain,
And the hills below and the skies above
Were touched and uttered it back again.

The mist broke: down the rift
A kind ray shot from a holy star.
Then my dream did waver and break and lift--
Through it, O Love, shone thy face, afar.

So boyhood sets: comes Youth,
A painful night of mists and dreams;
That broods till Love's exquisite truth,
The star of morn-clear manhood, beams.

Boykin's Bluff, Virginia 1863

This is the fireplace hearth where the cooking was done in the cellar at Bacon's Castle.



The staircase at Bacon's Castle....can't you see the two lovers descending hand in hand?

A top story room, with spinning wheel.

A field of planted corn, done in the style of early America, as taught by the Native Americans. The garden as well as the home has been meticulously preserved. There is also a black walnut tree at Fort Boykin where Sidney Lanier was stationed when he first came to Bacon's Castle that is over 200 years old. The tree was there when the soldiers were there those many years ago. If the trees, and houses, and the very wind could whisper its secrets to us, we could know the history that is all around us.....

A Counted Cross-stitch Piece From the Past

Back before I really started quilting much I was more into embroidery and cross-stitch. This is a piece I did as a present for my brother and his wife. It was completed in 1986. Tina (and some of my other bird-lover blogger friends!)--I thought you'd enjoy the fact that it has robins on it!

ANOTHER AMAZING GIVEAWAY!!!

Incredibly....another great giveaway by Coloradolady. Go by her blog and enter for a chance to win all these wonderful gifts!

My World Tuesdays--Bacon's Castle Part I

Welcome to My World Tuesdays! Please click on the link to see other blogger's wonderful worlds posted in connection with this wonderful meme. Join us! And enjoy!

This is the oldest brick home in English North America. It began life as Arthur Allen's brick house and was built in 1665 in Surry County, Virginia, about an hour from where we currently reside. The house has a cruciform shape, with triple chimneys and curvillinear gables. It is a rare example of surviving Jacobean architecture, and a true treasure! It also has a fascinating history.

When the house was passed to Allen's son, we were governed by Royal Governor Berkeley, who came under disfavor by many of the people in the outlying areas of the colony because of taxation, no less....Because Allen was a Loyalist, he was driven from his home in 1676 in what would later become known as Bacon's Rebellion. The followers of Nathaniel Bacon seized the house and grounds, and plundered goods, but Bacon himself was never there with these men. The group searched in vain for the Allen silver which had been carefully hidden. Bacon and many of his followers burned Jamestown in a brutal attack on the colonial capitol, and Captain Allen became one of Berkeley's staunchest supporters, leading some of the attacks on the rebels from a ship in the York River near West Point. On Dec 27th British marines from the ship Young Prince came up to Surry and the Baconians fled. Many of the rebels were later hanged. One of my own ancestors, a man named Drummond, was among the followers of Nathaniel Bacon and the rebellion he led against unfair taxation one hundred years before the Declaration of Independence from England. Much later, the house began to be known as Bacon's Castle.

This beautifully preserved house echoes the time before we became a nation and stands tribute to lives given hope by a new world where someone could build a large brick house and own hundreds of acres of land and forge a dynasty. It was a time when freedom was longed for, but not yet gained, when life held new promise.






Storm clouds threatened on my most recent visit to the house with my cousin Kenna (Willo-the-Wisp and Seeking Solace and Sublimity) and I have to give Kenna credit for most of the photographs. Here you can see the marvelous chimneys!




The brickwork is wonderful!



These models show the cruciform shape of the house. Next week there will be more to tell about this marvelous house!

Friday's Today in History

On Friday I noticed that the "Today in History" mentioned that the first woman to serve a seat in British Parliament was elected on that day in 1919. She was Lady Astor, and my further reading about her yielded some fascinating facts. She was an American, for starters--born in Danville, Virginia as Nancy Witcher Langhorne. She was from a wealthy family and was also quite beautiful. Her sister, in fact, married Charles Dana Gibson, and became the inspiration for the famous "Gibson Girl." This was not the Lord and Lady Astor who were on the Titanic...they were related. Nancy married Waldorf Astor and moved to Clivedon in England.

What fascinated me the most about her, aside from her ascerbic wit (or maybe it was just her inability to be embarassed by anything that came out of her mouth!) was the fact that she was a beautiful, wealthy socialite, and could have been content in that day and time to be that alone.....but she ran for a seat in Parlaiment and gained it. She was a "Unionist" or Tory, and she also had a tendency to be elitist and somewhat racist. She did not like Jews or Catholics, for instance....something I do not particularly care for about her. She did do some good, supporting the development of nursery schools, and bringing more women into civil service, police forces and the House of Lords. She worked to reform education, as well. And, though she was a Christian Scientist, she was a great help to wounded World War I veterans (though later commented that WWII veterans didn't compare to those from WWI!)

Lady Astor was a great friend of George Bernard Shaw and actually went on a trip with him to Russia, causing great criticism as it seemed a pro-Russia stance. But, while there (remember I said she didn't care what she said!) she asked Stalin, point-blank, why he slaughtered so many Russians. Some of her other fascinating comments include:

That Hitler couldn't possibly be taken too seriously because he looked too much like Charlie Chaplin
To Churchill: "If I were your wife, sir, I would put arsenic in your coffee." to which Churchill replied: "If you were my wife, Madam, I would drink it!"
"The only thing I like about rich people is their money."
"I married beneath me. All women do."
"My vigour, vitality and cheek repel me. I am the kind of woman I would run from."

So....Lady Astor was indeed an interesting person. BUT reading about her, led me to someone else. Someone with vastly different views and a different take on "doing their part" to make the world a better place. It was the woman who was the first one elected to Parlaiment, but who did not take her seat there. Her name was Constance Markievicz. She ran as part of Sinn Fein and therefore rejected her Parlaimentary seat on principle.



Constance Gore-Booth was also from a wealthy family and was also incredibly beautiful. She too could have rested on her laurels. Instead, after her marriage to Count Markievicz, she became very involved in the Irish Revolutionary Movement. In 1909 she founded Fianna Eireann, to teach young boys to do military drills and use firearms. She was imprisoned in 1911. Most women during the Uprising acted as nurses or ran messages, but Constance joined Connolly's Citizen Army. She supervised setting up barricades and was actively involved in the fighting, being second in command to Michael Mallin. When a young girl had been horribly wounded, Constance left her side for a time, and returned, saying "Don't worry, Margaret, me dear, I got the wretched blighter for you!" In the aftermath of the Easter Uprising, she was in Kilmainham jail with the others but she was not executed, because she was a woman. Her response to that was "I do wish your lot had the decency to shoot me." She was later pardoned and later in the Irish Civil War, she was once more heavily involved with the fighting. She held a seat in the Dail and felt that the pro-treaty advocates (including Michael Collins) were traitors. There was nothing in her sense of duty that allowed her to go against her convictions.

Clivedon is in Lissadell Co. Sligo. The young W.B. Yeats had been a frequent guest when the girls Constance and Eva lived at home. In a poem he would mention Constance and her sister Eva: "Two girls in silk kimonos, both beautiful, one a gazelle." I think what fascinated me the most about these two women, Lady Astor and Constance Markievicz, and more so, surely, about Constance....was their desire to have deep convictions, and act on them. They left their pampered lives and their many admirers, to have controversial, and yet, meaningful lives, and make a mark on history. I am not saying I advocate either lady's journey, but I certainly respect their ability to make it happen for them in a day and age when to do so was the road far less traveled. Hope you also enjoyed learning a little about them both.

SkyWatch Friday Sneaking Up on Everyone!

It is Thanksgiving...and the last thing I had on my mind was that it was time to do my Skywatch post, and BOOM, suddenly it hit me....hey, yes it is indeed time! I had recently found these wonderful photos of Corolla, NC and had planned to get them posted in the next couple of days. So, they are now my Skywatch Friday post! For more wonderful views of the skies all over the world, click on the link and join the Skywatchers!

Here is the beautiful beach at Corolla, with, yes, a lovely blue sky.....


But here is what I wanted to show you all....the wild horses of Corolla. These wild horses, whose ancestors came with the Spaniards to this area, have been a wonderful link to the past, and attract animal-lovers and naturalists from everywhere. Yet, regrettably, I have to say that a drive through Corolla today will probably not yield the kinds of photos you see here....the horses habitat has been greatly reduced by over-development of the beach areas, and the horse population suffers from that, from the increased traffic and even from cruelty! I took these pictures at least twelve years ago, when the horses were very easy to find. Now it is more difficult to see them...instead you have lots of views of hotels and beach houses. It is truly sad. For more information on the wild horses, how to find them, and the movement to save them, click HERE and HERE.

















Here is the Corolla Lighthouse, a fascinating lighthouse to visit if you are in the area. It dates, as you can see, from 1873.