It was only 11 in the morning and already the sun was hot.
I didn’t want to leave the cool canopy of the oaks on the wash.
But I had already pushed my luck to the limit.
It was time to get back to the task at hand–glassing the hills for those all-too-elusive deer.
A set of twins in my refrigerator were screaming my name yesterday.
Pork Tenderloin twins that are.
I had to do something with these two beautiful babies, and so my creative spirit was sparked.
Besides, I was hungry.
Abraham Lincoln–Nov. 8, 1863-One month after his Thanksgiving Proclamation and a little more than a week before he gave the Gettysburg Address
It was the month of October 1863.
A silvery Indian Summer haze drifted over the White House as the leaves on the trees, starved of summer’s extended light, were beginning to turn vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow.
And the American Civil War was raging.
Lickety-split we loaded up, skittered into the Jimmy, and we were off to a new hunt location.
I had no idea where we were headed next, but my husband drove off with purpose. He knew exactly where he was going.
Deer Hunt Glassing in Canyon
Are you here to photograph or are you here to help me find deer?
Poof! Just like that, at the sound of my husband’s stern whisper, my hair-brained thought about entering that mine shaft evaporated. And it was a good thing.
Of course, I answered. I just wanted to get a shot or two of this mine.
We left for the hunt on Friday morning.
The clock read 3:48 a.m. as I said goodbye to my dogs and followed my husband out of the house.
(I hadn’t slept much. I wasn’t at all ready for the wicked 2:30 a.m. wake-up call from my husband’s ancient and much-hated-by-me alarm clock. Bright-eyed-and busy-tailed, I was not.)
We hopped into our trusty, 1983 Jimmy, permanently marked with plenty of Desert pinstriping, and headed out.
Tomorrow, at the crack of dawn, I leave with my husband for the wilderness to…HUNT.
Yes, I said, hunt.
I can’t believe it either. The fact he wants me to go along is mind-boggling because, well, he knows me. I’m the kind of gal that can’t travel down the road 50 miles without having to pull over to see the world’s largest ball of string, or stop and do something. So I can’t quite figure out, after all these years, why he would want me “out there” with him, wherever “there” is.
Lt. Colonel Thomas Marshall, 7th Virginia Cavalry, Aide to Stonewall Jackson
Colonel Thomas A. Marshall, Jr., was a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War.
He was also a believer in the one true God and demonstrated his devotion to his Lord and Savior on and off the battlefield.
He served mightily and valiantly in the 7th Cavalry along side General Turner Ashby and he also served as an aid to the venerable, Stonewall Jackson (more on Marshall’s contributions below).
Did you know that there was a time when promises actually meant something?
I came across this exceedingly rare, handwritten “engagement of marriage agreement” in an enormous letter archive from the mid-19th century.
The agreement was penned by then 18 year-old, Edith Durer. She was born in 1852 in Baltimore, Maryland. She was well-educated and her family quite prominent.
As I prepared the roast beef for the oven, my thoughts wandered to my childhood.
On Sunday afternoons in what seems like a lifetime ago, we (my Dad, Mom, and siblings) often went to my paternal grandmother’s house…and we feasted.
Together as one huge family, we celebrated food and it was bountiful–roast beef, ham, potatoes, gravy-like velvet, salads of every color, Halupki, Pierogi, homemade pickles, cakes, pies, and cookies. You name it, it was a cornucopia of all the comfort food you could possibly imagine.
Vanity All Is Vanity 