“When you have to share your toys with Ghosts”……my grandson’s hello from the spirit world.

The Roses and Thorns of Life

My four year old grandson came to Gettysburg to spend Memorial Day weekend with me.   Accompanied by his bag of toys, of course, for the trip.  His favorite stuffed animals come along to have adventures and sleep with him as well.

One of my bedrooms…..the one we think the Confederate General convalesced in during the battle of Gettysburg has two big ducks that rest peacefully on the bed.   I believe the General stayed here because a section of the floor has been removed and replaced…….(perhaps blood stained.)   My grandson asked me if he could take the ducks to bed with him ……..(he was sleeping in the next bedroom with his parents on their bed.)   He carried them off.   My daughter promptly told him they could not have a sleepover on the bed too…….since he already had Pete the Cat and another large stuffed bluebird dozing there already.   There was limited…

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“You Never Know Who You’ll Meet in Gettysburg”

The Roses and Thorns of Life

Not just ghosts are wandering about in Gettysburg.   Take this chap, for instance.   I met him on the road yesterday.   He was casually walking by, from the scrape on his neck, he must have had a run in with some briars or thistle thorns or worse……..

We made our acquaintances and I watched him safely crawl into a tall, overgrown grassy patch, out of the roadway…….

I wish him well, who knows how many springs he has seen in the rolling hills of this hallowed land…………Mr. Turtle, what stories might you tell of the dark, foggy nights among the marshlands…….

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“Gettysburg Snow”

Visiting the battlefield in the snow

The Roses and Thorns of Life

I spent the past couple of days in Gettysburg, visiting the battlefield in the snow.   My favorite time…..not many adventurous tourists braving the winds and cold, no ticks trying to snuggle up my pant leg.   I have been having problems with my Facebook page, so I thought here would be a nice place to catch up and chat.

We went to a nice restaurant on Friday night, in the next town over.
Restaurants are great places for blog writers.   You can see and overhear so much from the diners nearby.   I remember our last visit, a woman chewed out her husband the entire meal for ordering steak.   The rant was endless, You know you can’t eat that…..are you really going to finish all that……..and so on and so on.   The man retaliated, probably eating more than the point at which his stomach was satiated…..I am sure he went home…

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“What happened centuries past…..did entire villages go blind in the path of an eclipse?”

The Roses and Thorns of Life

I have been pondering a question…….before the days of eclipse glasses…..in centuries past……….did entire villages go blind in the pathway of an eclipse?????????

Think about it……when the skies grew dark, wouldn’t it have been a logical action to look up……(maybe after you ran and hid for a few moments)……..

Did these people all lose their sight…….Was an oral tradition of eclipse warning handed down through generations after the horror of the Gods causing blindness as punishment occurred ………..

Somewhere, someone had to put two and two together and realize the result was damage to one’s vision………

It is incredible to me how astronomers of centuries past were so accurate in their predictions of these events……..

Had it not been for this accuracy, Columbus might have met a much different fate……He convinced the natives of his “godliness” by predicting the dark skies of an eclipse……Who would dare touch a God who…

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“What will Change???” My thoughts on what is happening in my country.

The Roses and Thorns of Life

So easy it seems for man to destroy things…..when I look at Civil War monuments and memorials, I don’t think of slavery, I don’t think of racism…….I think of all those lives lost……all those who still lie unrecognized in the ground, or pieces of them still in the ground….when you desecrate one of those monuments, you desecrate the life of each one of them…..making it worth nothing…….

So disappointed to see this happening in my country…….and for what purpose……they will be destroyed and gone……and what will change in my country……

People will be the same…….easy to destroy, easy to fight, easy to hate……losing every single monument won’t change that………

I was around during the Vietnam War protests…….People in the streets, on campuses, wanted peace…….When these soldiers returned, they treated them in a way that left so many of them unwanted and shunned by society.   You can hate a war…

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“Both sides of the Protest street”

The Roses and Thorns of Life

I awoke to the news of more monuments taken down in the darkness of night in Baltimore.

All my life I have never fit in…..now, yet again it seems.

Would I march with the torch wielding white supremacy crowd……..NO

Would I march with the “take them all down” crowd…………………………NO

How does walking by an empty spot of barren ground in a park or library lawn make a poor child’s life better?   How does making history evaporate make anyone’s life better…….now that much of history and english and all subjects have diminished in our childrens’ curriculum nowadays.   And how many of our youth still walk in front of a library these days.

There are those who say………“they belong in National Parks and Museums”………

Some impoverished city kids never get the chance to vacation at a National Park or go to a museum, unless on a class trip……..if they…

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“They erased her life, but not her words” Remembering Anne Frank on her birthday

The Roses and Thorns of Life

I have an unexplained connection to Anne Frank, ever since I was a little girl.   Last  night, while scanning through some obscure television channels, I happened upon “The Diary of Anne Frank.”   So, instead of the Tonys, I sat watching it again.   For some reason, there is compulsion to watch, to remember, it seems to come from the depths of memory or soul.   I wrote this blog a couple of years ago, but today is Anne’s birthday, a good day to share it again.

August 4, 1944 ~~ Anne Frank is captured.

Today’s blog breathes life into a memory stored for nearly half a century.
It is a moment I have never forgotten; it is “written” in my heart, perhaps the reason I write today.
It is the memory of a little girl and her mother who went to the local MacDonald’s for lunch one afternoon.

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“Coming Home”

The Roses and Thorns of Life

I have read several stories in the past weeks…..soldiers coming home.   No, not from Iraq, Afghanistan, but from WWII.

DNA has been the tool to identify remains long since decomposed into dust and bone.  It’s bittersweet.   Mothers and fathers who themselves have died, will not weep at a son’s gravesite.   Perhaps some nieces and nephews who never knew the boy……just the memory told to them before the last of his generation left this earth.

I have a farmhouse in Gettysburg.   Beneath the fields, many still remain unknown.   We now have monuments to remember those who fought, each thinking his side was right.   Sadly, those monuments are being torn down.   It is my hope that history’s truths, the ugly, the heroic, the rights, the wrongs, will always be taught and those who sacrificed will all be known in this way.  They gave so much…

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“Bleached of Blood”

Erasing our history this Memorial Day…………….

The Roses and Thorns of Life

I took this photo yesterday in the cemetery……it was the only veteran’s marker I could find, walking throughout the grounds.

I was using my infrared camera at the time, hence the bleached out color effect.   But as I sit looking at this flag, it seems appropriate.

Our nation seems to be forgetting the blood that soaked the ground from our Civil War.   Whether you were Union or Confederate, your blood seeped the ground the same deep red, the marshes and creeks flowed the same crimson shade.

We think erasing monuments from the eyes of passersby will change our history.   It won’t.   Blood shed on both sides must be remembered…….We cannot wash its stain away by cleaning the ugly parts of our history.

Trying to cleanse that blood from our history won’t bring us all united closer under our flag, it will only bleach its honor for…

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“The Mark of a Hero”

The Roses and Thorns of Life

Near my hometown in New Jersey,  lies a beautiful cemetery, Holy Cross in North Arlington.   It is a reverent place because it holds the remains of many, many veterans, some who came home only to be placed in its soil.   My Uncle was one of them.   He perished in the forests of the Ardenne, at the Battle of the Bulge.   He has a tiny stone, flat to the ground with his unit on it, surrounding him are many who died the same week………I wonder sometimes, if they were buddies then and now…….

The news reported yesterday that the Archdiocese of Newark has made the decision to remove all veterans’ markers placed at headstones.   A son had visited his dad and discovered it missing, questioned the cemetery and learned its surprising fate.  He found a marker in the garbage and placed it back on his father’s…

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