May 8, 2011

"It is harder to kill a phantom than a reality." * * * Virginia Woolf

Circe doubledayi

What is the male equivalent of ballerina? ??? PASS YOUR MOUSE OVER THE QUESTION MARKS FOR THE ANSWER!

THE ARCH OF OCTAVIUS

JOHN MORGAN'S RAID INTO WASHINGTON, OHIO

Morgan's Raid was a highly publicized incursion by Confederate cavalry into the Northern states of Indiana and Ohio during the American Civil War. The raid took place from June 11–July 26, 1863, and is named for the commander of the Confederates, Brig. Gen. John Hunt Morgan. For 46 days as they rode over 1,000 miles (1,600 km), Morgan's Confederates covered a region from Tennessee to northern Ohio. The raid coincided with the Vicksburg Campaign and the Gettysburg Campaign, although it was not directly related to either campaign. However, it served to draw the attention of tens of thousands of Federal troops away from their normal duties and strike fear in the civilian population of several Northern states. Repeatedly thwarted in his attempts to return to the South by hastily positioned Union forces and state militia, Morgan eventually surrendered what was left of his command in northeastern Ohio. He escaped through Ohio, and casually took a train to Cincinnati, where he crossed the Ohio river. To many Southerners, the daring expedition behind enemy lines became known as The Great Raid of 1863, and was initially hailed in the newspapers. However, along with Gettysburg and Vicksburg, it was another in a string of defeats for the Confederate army that summer. Some Northern newspapers derisively labeled Morgan's expedition as The Calico Raid, in reference to the raiders' propensity for procuring personal goods from local stores and houses. During his daring raid, Morgan and his men captured and paroled about 6,000 Union soldiers and militia, destroyed 34 bridges, disrupted the railroads at more than 60 places, and diverted tens of thousands of troops from other duties. He spread terror throughout the region, and seized thousands of dollars worth of supplies, food, and other items from local stores, houses, and farms. Since the timing somewhat coincided with the Gettysburg Campaign and raids towards Pittsburgh by John D. Imboden's cavalry, many assumed at the time that Morgan's Raid was part of a coordinated effort to threaten the Ohio River commerce and spread the war to the North. Few in the North realized that Morgan's adventure was a violation of his orders and had nothing to do with Robert E. Lee's simultaneous movement into Pennsylvania. In Ohio alone, approximately 2,500 horses were stolen and nearly 4,375 homes and businesses were raided. Morgan's Raid cost Ohio taxpayers nearly $600,000 in damages and over $200,000 in wages paid to the 49,357 Ohioans called up to man 587 companies of local militia. To Morgan's men, the long raid had accomplished much, despite their military defeat and high casualties. Col. Basil Duke later wrote, "The objects of the raid were accomplished. General Bragg's retreat was unmolested by any flanking forces of the enemy, and I think that military men, who will review all the facts, will pronounce that this expedition delayed for weeks the fall of East Tennessee, and prevented the timely reinforcement of Rosecrans by troops that would otherwise have participated in the Battle of Chickamauga."

MORGAN ESCAPES Morgan surrendered the remnant of his command on July 26, 1863, near West Point in Columbiana County, the northernmost point reached by any significant force of armed Confederates during the war. He and his officers were sent to the Ohio Penitentiary rather than to a prisoner of war camp because of reports that captured Union officers had received similar treatment. This proved to be to Morgan's advantage: in November 1863, he and six of his officers escaped by tunneling from an air shaft beneath their cells into the prison yard and scaling the walls. Only two escapees were recaptured. Morgan returned to Confederate service and was killed in 1864.

SOMBRERO GALAXY

MOUNTAINS IN PROVENCE

Edo--once also spelled Yedo or Yeddo--is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868.
The One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, the last masterwork of the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige (also known as Ando), is a series of landscape ukiyo-e prints whose subject matter is views of the city of Edo and its outskirts. It is composed of 118 prints designed by Hiroshige I, one print by Hiroshige II and a Table of Content, totaling 120 prints as a complete set. The series, along with his Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, is not only the most renowned polychrome woodblock prints of famous placesby Hiroshige, but also, with its bold compositional contrast between foreground and background and assimilation of the Western linear perspective, represents an apex of the landscape ukiyo-e prints of the Edo period.	Its superb artistic quality was also recognized in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, and the marked influence it exerted on Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters such as Monet, Van Gogh and Gauguin is well-known. Furthermore, since the Tokyo Association for the Crafts of Traditional Woodblock Printmaking completed its project of reprinting the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo in 2003, the number of exhibitions and publications related to the series has risen. At the same time, new scholarly works on its development of pictorial compositions and its place in a wider historical background have been undertaken in recent years, showing its continuing vitality as an object of research.

ONE HUNDRED FAMOUS VIEWS OF EDO (TOKYO) NUMBER FIFTY

KUMANO JUNISHA SHRINE, TSUNOHAZU

It is hard to believe that this idyllic suburban site today lies in the shadows of the New City Center of metropolitan Tokyo, the cluster of glittering skyscrapers west of Shinjuku Station. The Kumano Shrine, whose main sanctuary we see at the very bottom, survives today in the northwest corner of Shinjuku Central Park, just west of the Century-Hyatt Hotel.  The pond has been filled in for many years, but one may see the depression it left behind the New City Hotel.

Jean Marie	Jennie

Suchomimus Suchomimus ("Crocodile mimic") is a genus of large spinosaurid dinosaur with a crocodile-like mouth that lived 110 to 120 million years ago, during the middle portion of the Cretaceous period in Africa. Unlike most giant theropods, Suchomimus had a very long, low snout and narrow jaws studded with some 100 teeth, not very sharp and curving slightly backward. The tip of the snout was enlarged and carried a "rosette" of longer teeth. The animal is reminiscent of crocodilians that eat mainly fish, such as the living gharial, a type of large crocodile with a very long, slim snout, from the region of India. Detailed study shows that the specimen of Suchomimus was a subadult about 11 meters (36 ft) in length, but scientists think that it may have grown to about 12 meters (40 ft) long, approaching the size of Tyrannosaurus. The overall impression is of a massive and powerful creature that ate fish and presumably other sorts of meat (carrion, if naught else) more than 100 million years ago, when the Sahara was a lush, swampy habitat.

pixdaus.com

BRASS ANDIRONS

AUTUMN SUNSET

Jasper Francis Cropsey (February 18, 1823 – April 23, 1900) was an important American landscape artist of the Hudson River School. Cropsey was born on his father Jacob Rezeau Cropsey's farm in Rossville on Staten Island, New York, the oldest of eight children. As a young boy, Cropsey had recurring periods of poor health. While absent from school, Cropsey taught himself to draw. His early drawings included architectural sketches and landscapes drawn on notepads and in the margins of his schoolbooks.

EARLY TOWNSENDIA (Townsendia hookeri)

These beautiful small gorgeously white flowers are among Montana's earliest spring bloomers.  The weather here has been less than spring-like (rather frightful, in fact), but yesterday and today I ventured out to see if these little guys had put in an appearance.  This is one of the prettiest clusters I found. The white ray flowers ordinarily have a pinkish tinge and contrast with the yellow disc.  When fully open, the flower heads are about one inch across.  The flowers, virtually stemless, nestle in a low, sparse clump of linear, somewhat succulent leaves. It blooms early, usually in late March and April on open plains and lower foothills on dry, often sandy or gravelly sites.

SNOW ON MOUNT BALDY IN THE BIG BELT MOUNTAINS (May 6, 2011)

This is springtime in Montana.  It was predicted that we would have a cool, wet spring and so far the prediction is correct.  The trees (actually Russian-olive shrubs) that you see in front of the woodshop are where I first spotted our black bear visitor last fall.  It remains to be seen if the shrubs recover from the damage.

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