May 12, 2011

Known as the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wanted to be remembered instead as governor of Virginia, U.S. minister to France, Secretary of State under George Washington and President of the United States. A powerful advocate of liberty, Jefferson was not only a celebrated statesman, but also an architect, naturalist and linguist. He was the silent member of the first Continental Congress, drafting the Declaration of Independence at the age of 33. As President, Jefferson was popular with the people, reducing taxes, cutting the size of the military, lowering the debt and doubling the size of the country through the Louisiana Purchase, which was completed in 1803.

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither."

Eulampis jugularis

THE OREGON TRAIL

MOSBY'S RAIDERS DESTROYING SUTLER'S TRAIN

The 43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, also known as Mosby's Rangers, Mosby's Raiders or Mosby's Men, was a battalion of partisan cavalry in the Confederate army during the American Civil War. Noted for their lightning strikes on Union targets and their ability to consistently elude pursuit, the Rangers disrupted Federal communications and supply lines. The 43rd Battalion was formed on June 10, 1863, at Rector's Cross Roads, near Rectortown, Virginia, when John S. Mosby formed Company A of the battalion. Mosby was acting under the authority of General Robert E. Lee, who had granted him permission to raise a company in January 1863 under the Partisan Ranger Act of 1862, in which the Confederate Congress authorized the formation of such units. By the summer of 1864, Mosby's battalion had grown to six cavalry companies and one artillery company, comprising about 400 men. After February 1864, the Confederate Congress revoked the authority of all partisan units, except for two, one of which was the 43rd Battalion. The battalion never formally surrendered, but was disbanded on April 21, 1865, after General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, but not before attempting to negotiate surrender with Major General Winfield S. Hancock in Winchester, Virginia.

MOSBY'S RAIDERS 43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry

Robert E. Lee is said to have exclaimed, "Hurrah for Mosby! I wish I had a hundred like him!" Ulysses S. Grant told General Philip Sheridan that "where any of Mosby's men are caught, hang them without trial." It was Abraham Lincoln who gave him his moniker of "The Gray Ghost," when, as his reputation increased, the Union Army's biggest fear in Washington was that Mosby would kidnap Lincoln from right beneath their nose.  Lincoln, upon hearing several of his generals discussing Mosby and their fears, loudly announced, "Listen to you men, you speak of Mosby as though he is a ghost, a gray ghost."  It wasn't until after the war that Mosby learned of this and the nickname stuck. It was General Lee, through General J.E.B. Stuart, who authorized John Singleton Mosby to organize the 43rd Battalion Virginia Calvary "to weaken the armies invading Virginia by harassing their rear." They operated in my neighborhood, throughout Northern Virginia, in an area known, during the Civil War, and even in the Northern press, as "Mosby's Confederacy." Not exactly rag tag, they were not the disciplined, military regiment that all might imagine. The regiment was formed to disrupt Union supply and communication lines. Mosby's Rangers would stay individually in many locations, coming together for raids. They also became known as Mosby's Raiders or Mosby's Ghosts.

JOHN SINGLETON MOSBY                      "THE GRAY GHOST" Born in Powhatan County, Virginia and raised within view of Jefferson's Monticello, Mosby was the ultimate citizen soldier. University of Virginia-trained, he was a small town Virginia lawyer opposed to secession when the War broke out in 1861. He was born December 6, 1833 at his maternal grandfather's home, Edgemont, in Powhatan County, Virginia. Raised in Nelson and then Albemarle counties, Virginia, little is known of his childhood, other than that he was a frail, sickly child.

John Singleton Mosby started with 9 cavalrymen from the Confederate Cavalry command of J.E.B. Stuart on detached duty in Loudoun and Fauquier counties in early January 1863. Stuart supplied several more two weeks later. Mosby knew that if his raiders had a camp, sooner or later federal troops would find it and capture his men. Instead, Mosby requested that patriotic Virginians board his men in their houses. Mosby relied heavily on the local farmers to supply forage for his men’s nearly 1600 horses. Often leaving on two raids a day by the autumn of 1864, there was inevitably a detail led by Mosby’s quartermaster, Major Hibbs going on a “corn raid” for forage. John S. Mosby lived to be 82 years old. After the war, Mosby felt that the South’s fortunes lay in peace, prosperity and a diversified economy. Learn more.

In his autobiography, Ulysses S. Grant wrote about John Singleton Mosby.  It says: "Since the close of the war, I have come to know Colonel Mosby personally and somewhat intimately. He is a different man entirely from what I supposed. He is able and thoroughly honest and truthful." Such a legacy, as expressed by a former enemy, is profound indeed.

STARDUST

HOUSE OF THE HANGED MAN

House of the Hanged Man was probably painted in the spring of 1873.  It is among the most heavily worked of Cézanne's canvases from this decade, and the rare appearance of a signature, and the fact that--with Cézanne's consent--it was exhibited several times during his lifetime, suggest that it was one of the rare paintings with which he was satisfied. Repeated reworkings, over almost the entire surface, characterize this painting.  Canvas texture is practically irrelevant, but the effects of stiff, crusty paint dragged across previously dried brushstrokes, are fundamental to the grainy appearance of the picture. The solid forms and monumental shapes in this composition appear stacked up, like a wall, and all are tightly interlocking. Cézanne's high viewpoint encourages this because although a distant vista appears between the houses, it is not made easily accessible, and its strong colors bring it toward the spectator.  Thus there is an inherent tension in the painting, between flatness and naturalistic illusion.

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-ONE

SANNO FESTIVAL PROCESSION AT KOJIMACHI 1-CHOME

In the heat of midsummer, on the fifteenth day of the Sixth Month, the grand festival of the Sanno Shrine is in progress. Wispy cloud bands hang in the sky as the sun beats down on the blue waters of Benkei Moat and on the grassy slopes of the high embankment along the southwest side of Edo Castle. The festival procession is shown in the distance at the important symbolic moment when it enters the castle grounds from Kojimachi 1-chome through Hanzo Gate.  From there it will pass under the personal review of the shogun himself at Inui Gate, an honor shared only by the Kanda Myojin Shrine festival, with which the Sanno festival alternated every year after 1681.  The two together were known popularly as the Tenka Festival--Tenka ("all under heaven") being an honorific title of the shogun himself. In the immediate left foreground is the float of Odemna-cho, the so-called Drum-Bird, a huge model of an ornamental rooster with outstretched wings--we see here only one tip beyond the drooping tail feathers--perched on a large ceremonial drum, the legendary Chinese "drum of admonition" that sage-kings used to summon and chastise their subjects.

Jessica	Karma Sangria

Szechuanosaurus Szechuanosaurus ("Szechuan lizard") is a genus of sinraptorid dinosaur from the Late Jurassic.  It resembled a small Allosaurus, with a weight of 100 - 150 kilograms (220 - 330 lb) and a length of 8 meters (27 ft).

pixdaus.com

BRASS SCALES

FISHERMAN'S HOUSE GREENWOOD LAKE

Jasper Francis Cropsey (February 18, 1823 – April 23, 1900) was an important American landscape artist of the Hudson River School. Trained as an architect, he set up his own office in 1843.  Cropsey studied watercolor and life drawing at the National Academy of Design under the instruction of Edward Maury and first exhibited there in 1844.  A year later he was elected an associate member and turned exclusively to landscape painting; shortly after he was featured in an exhibition entitled "Italian Compositions."

MARCH 7, 2011 -- "Fisherman’s House, Greenwood Lake" and other paintings by Cropsey were stolen from the Ringwood Manor in New Jersey. The works are highly regarded and were painted at the peak of Cropsey's career, said art historian Kenneth W. Maddox of the Newington-Cropsey Foundation. Maddox said it was unlikely anyone would be able to profit from the theft of the paintings.  Auction houses usually contact the foundation to authenticate Cropsey's work before any sale. "There is really no market for stolen paintings of the Hudson River School," Maddox said. Foundation director Anthony Speiser said the 12-by-20-inch paintings are worth about $150,000 each, adding that it was a "conservative estimate." "They are definitely six-figure paintings," Speiser said.  But he agreed that it would be nearly impossible to sell the stolen paintings for their true value.  Whoever took the paintings "can’t bring them to Sotheby's for auction because they would be arrested," Speiser said. "It is distressing that people would target the history of our region and our country," he said.

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