This Week in The Civil War: Sunday, July 31

Spying by Balloon

Military preparations deepen as the nation girds at the first hints of a long, brutal conflict. Washington is abuzz with troop movements while the Confederate states also are organizing and calling up more forces for the inevitable fighting to follow. In Tennessee, Gov. Isham G. Harris advises the Confederate War Department in an Aug. 1 missive that he has formally transferred Tennessee forces over to the Confederacy. "The transfer is now being made as rapidly as Confederate officers can verify our rolls by the inspection of our regiments, and I hope will be completed within a few days," Harris advises Richmond, seat of the Confederacy. He proposes Nashville for a major Confederate army supply depot. Meanwhile, each side is eyeing each others' military strengths warily. New technologies emerge in the first summer of wartime as federal forces make several initial attempts in July, including at First Bull Run, to send up manned observation balloons to spy out rebel troop movements. For decades, balloons had been used generally for sport but are now seen by the commanders as a way to glean valuable intelligence about one's foe. Reports indicate a balloonist on the Union side completed the first successful ascent in late July in Arlington, Va., just outside the nation's capital, and spied out Confederate artillery emplacements and rebel scouting parties in northern Virginia beyond Washington's Union defenses. Despite some spectacular crashes, more reconnaissance balloons would be sent aloft in the first weeks of August and the technology would be deployed particularly in the first two years of war.

Went with the wind

I now completely understand why Carol Burnett said in a 2007 interview,

"When we were doing the Gone with the Wind take-off, it had originally been written that Starlet would come down the stairs with just the draperies hanging (off her). I went into the costume fitting on that Wednesday, and (fashion designer Bob Mackie) said, 'I have an idea.' He picked up the curtain rod with the dress on it, and I fell on the floor. I said, 'This is one of the most brilliant ideas anybody has ever come up with.' It was one of the longest laughs we’ve ever had on the show. You can see me kind of biting the inside of my cheek, trying not to laugh, before I could say, 'I saw it in the window, and I just couldn’t resist it.'"

Look for Went with the Wind online, especially YouTube (Part One and Part Two). It's hilarious. 

Oh, and you'll probably never see me in pink again.

It is so not my thing.

Green velvet, however....

Thanks Terrie!

How Old are You, Evil Wheaton?

Dear Evil Wil Wheaton,

Evil Wil Wheaton and Me!

Remember Me? Your shortest Fan?

I wanted to sing a Certain Well-Known Song to you, but I can't since it's copyrighted.

I'm too young to be sued, Momma can't afford it, and I'm not sure if they can sue Me if I sing it in 1864, before it was Written. I'll ask My lawyer.

In the meantime, I shall write another verse since I don't think that's copyrighted anywhere.

How Old are You?
How Old are You?

How Old are You, Evil Wheaton?

How Old are You?

QoSlIj DatIvjaj! 

Love,
Steampunk Addie

The Philadelphia Eleven

Today is an important date in the history of The Episcopal Church: 11 women were ordained to the Episcopal priesthood on July 29, 1974 in Philadelphia!

These ordinations, performed by retired or resigned bishops, were denounced as “irregular” and the women became known as the “Philadelphia Eleven.”

Charles V. Willie of Harvard University, who gave the sermon, favorably compared the ordinations to African Americans refusing to sit at the back of the bus. 

According to The Episcopal Church:

The 11 women who were ordained priests at the Church of the Advocate, Philadelphia, on the feast of St. Mary and St. Martha, July 29, 1974, two years before General Convention authorized the ordination of women. The women ordained were Merrill Bittner, Alla Bozarth-Campbell, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield, Jeanette Piccard, Betty Schiess, Katrina Swanson, and Nancy Wittig. The bishops who presided at the service were Daniel Corrigan, Robert DeWitt, and Edward Welles II. These ordinations, and the ordinations of four more women in Sept. 1975 in Washington, D.C., were widely criticized as irregular because the Episcopal Church had not yet authorized the ordination of women to the priesthood. In 1976 the House of Bishops affirmed the validity of the ordinations by requiring of the 15 women only "an act of completion" that would be "a liturgical incorporation of what was done on those two occasions" in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. All of the "Philadelphia Eleven" participated in public events of "completion" within the following year, with the exception of Marie Moorefield who left the Episcopal Church to join the United Methodist Church.

Bishops Jefferts Schori (left) and Harris

Barbara Harris, a Philadelphia native who became the first woman bishop in 1989, participated in 1974 as a laywoman and bearer of the cross.

And finally, The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected in 2006 as the first female Presiding Bishop in the history of The Episcopal Church and also the first female primate in the Anglican Communion.

Let's hear it for women breaking the stained-glass ceiling! 

I have newfound respect for Episcopal Priest Barbie, rector of St. Barbara's-by-the-Sea in ... Malibu, Calif., of course.

So you wanna be a cowboy

While I am excited to see tomorrow's release of Cowboys & Aliens, I thought I'd let you in on a Southwestern secret - make sure you know the local vernacular before you call yourself a cowboy.

I learned this the hard way while visiting Arizona. 

In the 1880s, it was an insult in the Tombstone, Ariz. area to call someone a "cowboy," as it implied he was a horse thief, robber, or outlaw. Cattlemen were generally called herders, ranchers or punchers.

One loosely organized band was dubbed "The Cowboys," and profited from smuggling cattle, alcohol, and tobacco across the U.S./Mexico border. The Cowboys' activities ultimately ended with the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on Oct. 26, 1881.

The San Francisco Examiner wrote in an editorial, "Cowboys [are] the most reckless class of outlaws in that wild country...infinitely worse than the ordinary robber."

On the other hand, there is little doubt that women, particularly those on small ranches that could not afford to hire herders, worked with men and needed to ride horses and related tasks.

The largely undocumented contributions of women to the west were acknowledged in law; the western states led the United States in granting women the right to vote, beginning with Wyoming in 1869.

I highly recommend the books by Nancy E. Turner, starting with These is My Words. They're a fictionalized account of the author's great-grandmother Sarah Prine, who lived in southern Arizona at the time.

Now, what to wear to the theatre....

If it happens, it happens... We can't stop living

Since I just wrote about Yellow Fever on Monday, I was interested to read that Walter Reed Army Medical Center held a ceremony today in preparation for its September closing. The hospital has treated the nation’s war wounded since 1909.

During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793,
Philadelphia authorities sent carriages around the city
to pick up the dead and dying.

Major Walter Reed, M.D., was a U.S. Army physician who in 1900 led the team that discovered that Yellow Fever is transmitted by mosquitoes, not humans.

(Sadly, Reed underwent an emergency appendectomy and died of complications within those same hospital walls in 1902.)

Although the last North American epidemic of Yellow Fever occurred in New Orleans in 1905, yellow fever epidemics in North America have caused about 100,000-150,000 deaths through the years.

(The New Orleans epidemic of 1853, featured in the upcoming Cécile Rey American Girl book series, killed 9,000 people.)

A 1793 outbreak in Philadelphia resulted in the deaths of several thousand people and forced the administration to flee the city, including president George Washington.

A church in Charleston, S.C. suffered 308 Yellow Fever deaths in 1858, reducing its congregation by half.

In 1873, Shreveport, La., lost almost a quarter of its population to Yellow Fever, and in 1878, about 20,000 people died in an epidemic in the Mississippi River Valley.

In 1878 Memphis was hit with an unusually large amount of rain, which led to an increase in the mosquito population. The result was a huge outbreak of Yellow Fever. A ship took people fleeing Memphis hoping to escape the disease, but the ship was not allowed to dock anywhere due to fear of Yellow Fever. The ship roamed the Mississippi for the next two months before unloading her passengers.

Signal flag called the "Yellow Jack."

Yellow Fever was sometimes known as Yellow Jack. Why? A ship flying a yellow flag meant that there was illness aboard. Often this was used to trick pirates away from potential targets.

Huh. I thought a jack was a pirate flag but turns out it's a small flag flown from any boat or ship.

Anyway, thanks for a job well done Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

 

Civil War to Civil Rights

Ooh, I'm off to Washington, D.C. again!

Explore DC’s powerful position in the Civil War and its unique role in the civil rights movement with “Civil War to Civil Rights,” a four-year commemoration. Browse this site for information about special events, exhibitions and new attraction openings taking place in and around DC.

On the Net: http://washington.org/cwcr

 

Once upon a midnight dreary

I am intrigued by a Moving Picture scheduled to be released on March 9, 2012 called, The Raven. In it Edgar Allan Poe is challenged by a serial killer to solve a series of murders based upon his stories and focuses on the mysterious last days of Poe's life.

Did you know Poe lived in Philadelphia, which at the time boasted many publishers, beginning in either 1837 or 1838?

Poe had already sold a few stories to The Philadelphia Saturday Courier, six years before his arrival. He now hoped to work for a magazine which would provide him both stability and economic independence. 

The many stories he wrote while living in Philadelphia include:

• The Black Cat 
• The Cask of Amontillado 
• A Descent into the Maelstrom
• The Gold-Bug
• The Fall of the House of Usher 
• The Man of the Crowd 
  
• The Masque of the Red Death
• Murders in the Rue Morgue 
• The Oval Portrait
• The Pit and the Pendulum 
• The Purloined Letter 
  
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• William Wilson

He was also likely to have started The Raven while living in Philadelphia!

John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe.

A surprising (at least to Me) Philadelphia outlet for Poe's writing was Godey's Lady's Book (!) edited by Sarah Josepha Hale. Hale is usually remembered for writing Mary Had a Little Lamb, but she had an eye for writers and Godey's paid well. One of Poe's earliest short stories, The Visionary (or The Assignation), was printed in Godey's in 1834.

Godey's also published several other Poe works: A Tale of the Ragged Mountains (April 1844), The Oblong Box (September 1844), and Thou Art the Man (November 1844). The Cask of Amontillado was published exclusively in Godey's Lady's Book in 1846.

Poe lived in several homes in Philadelphia, spending his last 12 to 18 months there at a rented house on North 7th Street which is the only one which still survives. (The National Park Service has maintained it as a National Historic Site since 1980.) Poe, his wife Virginia, his mother-in-law and their cat moved in sometime in 1842 or 1843 and left in April 1844.

Poe's time in Philadelphia has been called his most prolific period since he published 31 stories while living there. It has also been described as the happiest of his life.

Once Poe left Philadelphia on April 6, 1844 for New York, his life spiraled out of control. His wife died Jan. 30, 1847 in New York and he died Oct. 7, 1849 in Maryland.

He was 40.

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

Time flows like a river

Ha, I just saw a Press Release claiming that time travel is not possible.

Double Ha!

As You and I both know, it is possible.

Even Stephen Hawking, one of the Great Minds of the 20th and 21st centuries thinks so.

Einstein, Hawking, Data and Galileo play poker.

That's good enough for Me.

And my Time Machine.

I spy with my little eye

Me guarding President Lincoln while he meets Gen. McClellan on Oct. 3, 1862.

After the defeat of the Union forces at Bull Run on July 21, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln summoned Philadelphia's George McClellan from West Virginia. McClellan traveled by special train on the main Pennsylvania line through Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., and was greeted by adoring crowds that met his train along the way.

This effusive article was printed by the Philadelphia Inquirer on July 26, 1861:  

General McClellan in Philadelphia—Grand Reception

A telegraphic dispatch was received in this city yesterday morning from Pittsburg, stating that General McClellan would pass through Philadelphia en route to Washington. He left Pittsburg in the fast night line on the Pennsylvania Railroad, and reached the West Philadelphia depot at two P.M. yesterday afternoon.

The ground in the neighborhood of the West Philadelphia station was crowded with workmen, citizens and ladies, and as the last car, in which the General was seated, was detached from the locomotive, it was invaded by the curious spectators. The utmost exertions of the brakesmen and employees was required to keep the platform even passably clear, and finally the object of the excitement was induced to expose himself to view at the rear door, when he was greeted with enthusiastic and oft-repeated cheers.

Gen. McClellan was accompanied by his wife and Colonel Key and Major Storman. Mrs. McClellan joined her husband at Wheeling, and participated in the reception at Pittsburg. E. C. Biddle, Esq., a relative of Mrs. McClellan, with other Philadelphians, met the party just beyond the city.

The passage of the car down Market street was almost obstructed by the crowds rushing over the cobblestones and pavements. The General made his appearance on the front platform, and received cheers at every corner. He gratefully acknowledged the compliment, and as the curve at Eleventh street was rounded, and the vehicle turned into the railroad depot, he was doubtless glad to be relieved from the necessity of paying tribute to the admiring people. Another trial was yet to come, however, for while passing from the car door to the street, he was beset by a crowd more enthusiastic than polite, and was obliged to yield to the pressure, and be carried along by the tide. Before leaving the car, he was introduced to Mayor Henry, and the two proceeded to the barouche in company. They were then driven up Market street to Broad, and the General was received by the First Regiment of Grey Reserves, Colonel Ellmaker, who were drawn up in line, the right resting on Market street. The barouche was driven along the front of the line, and the men presented arms, General McClellan standing upright in the vehicle. The steps of the Mint, immediately opposite, were crowded, as was the sidewalk.

The barouche halted in front of the color-bearers, who then took precedence, and the regiment, escorting the General, marched down Chestnut street to Third, along Third to Walnut, and up Walnut to the residence of John McClellan, brother of the General. At various points on the route, including the Continental Hotel, and the office of The Inquirer, loud cheers were given, and acknowledged by the recipient. The vehicle also contained Mayor Henry and Paymaster R. P. DeSilver, of the Grey Reserves.

At the house on Walnut Street the military halted. A strong police force was in attendance, and General McClellan passed into the dwelling without difficulty, only to reappear, however, in a few moments, upon the balcony, in answer to repeated calls. He then reviewed the troops, and as the cheering and shouts still continued, made a few remarks.

He thanked his fellow citizens for the reception which they had given him, but felt that the good wishes and good feeling expressed were not intended for him personally, but for the brave men under his command. This was not the time to indulge in words, but to act, and in obedience to his instructions he would go to Washington and lend what assistance he could in the present emergency. After again thanking the large number of persons for the kind reception, he withdrew amid continued applause, and the crowd dispersed.

General McClellan will leave for Washington, this morning, at eleven o’clock.

Carl Sandburg wrote, "McClellan was the man of the hour, pointed to by events, and chosen by an overwhelming weight of public and private opinion." McClellan was appointed commander of the Military Division of the Potomac on July 26, the main Union force responsible for the defense of Washington.

He later lasted four months (November 1861 to March 1862) as the general-in-chief of the Union Army. While beloved by his troops, he was reluctant to enter into battle. Lincoln said this about McClellan: "If he can't fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight."

I'll say this about McClellan, he viewed slavery as an institution recognized in the Constitution, and entitled to federal protection wherever it existed. (To be fair, Lincoln held the same public position until August 1862.)

After the war, Ulysses S. Grant said, "McClellan is to me one of the mysteries of the war."

McClellan's not the only mysterious one of the war....

Meet Cécile!

I am so excited! I am soon to be joined by another African American Girl! Her book, Meet Cécile by Denise Lewis Patrick, is not due until Aug. 30, but my anticipation is building.

Set in 1853 New Orleans, the stories revolve around Cécile and her friend Marie-Grace and how their lives are affected by a Yellow Fever outbreak.

Cécile Rey can't wait for Mardi Gras -- New Orleans' dazzling season of parties and costume balls. For the grandest event of all, the Children's Ball, Cecile is determined to come up with a fantastic costume like no one else's. Everyone will notice her! And after Mardi Gras, Cecile's beloved brother, Armand, will finally come home after two long years in faraway France. But Mardi Gras season turns out to be even more exciting than Cecile expects when she meets a new girl named Marie-Grace Gardner. Together they form an unlikely friendship ... and share a daring adventure!

Some claim that I shall be retired when Cécile debuts, but I think they have Me confused with that other Addy doll.

I shall never retire!

In the meantime, if you're looking for great books about 19th century New Orleans I can't recommend the Benjamin January series by Barbara Hambly enough. Make sure you start with A Free Man of Color.

 

Feeling hot hot hot

Please pardon Me as I run around in a state of undress. Some of my black stockings have left marks on my legs, so I am getting a spa treatment!

I know you'll understand since so much of the Country is in the grip of a heat wave.

Stay cool!

This Week in The Civil War: Sunday, July 24

First Bull Run's fallout

The Confederate victory in northern Virginia triggered the somber realization on both sides that war could possibly drag on far longer and be far more bloody than imagined. Shock fell on the North at the federal defeat. At the time, it was the largest and bloodiest battle of the young conflict. An Associated Press account from Washington said the rout of federal forces "excited the deepest melancholy through Washington. The carnage was tremendously heavy on both sides." The AP's correspondent wrote of the battle that Union troops were driving toward Manassas Junction, Va., when a Confederate countercharge commenced, driving federal forces back in full-scale retreat to Washington. "The panic was so fearful that the whole Army became demoralized," it added. The AP also reported "the most intense excitement" in Washington followed combat as the wounded and dead streamed back aboard wagons and some even briefly feared that the Confederates might even attack Washington. "The greatest alarm exists throughout the city, especially among the female portion of the population," the AP dispatch said. Immediately there came a shakeup of the Union military command. On July 25, President Abraham Lincoln and his administration named Gen. George B. McClellan, at the helm of the Union armies after another commander was largely blamed for the federal defeat at Bull Run.

There's a new sheriff in town

And I have an iPhone and I'm not afraid to use it!

I don't know nothin' 'bout restorin' dresses

http://terriespot.blogspot.com/

I was reading an interesting, but sad, article about how five of the dresses from Gone With the Wind are being restored and wished I had the talent to do that.

I got to thinking about Carol Burnett's classic spoof, Went With the Wind, and found this Blast from the past!

Add a brass curtain rod and I am all over that look!!

War is no picnic

I know that those of you in the 21st Century are commemorating the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, and this weekend marks the 150th anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the First Battle of Manassas.

Did you know that Washington, D.C.'s elite, including congressmen and their families, expecting an easy Union victory, came to picnic and watch the battle on Sunday, July 21, 1861? When the Union army was driven back, the roads back to Washington were blocked by panicked civilians attempting to flee in their carriages.

Yes, a Picnic.

While bringing food along was a necessity since fast food hadn't been invented yet (unless you were on a running horse), the idea of going to war simply to watch it for entertainment is barbaric.

Henry House Mathew Brady/U.S. National Archives

Eight hundred and forty-seven men and one woman (Judith Henry, an elderly widow and invalid, who was unable and unwilling to leave her bedroom in the nearby (right) Henry House) died while others munched on cucumber sandwiches.

According to London Times correspondent William Howard Russell:

“On the hill beside me there was a crowd of civilians on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, with a few of the fairer, if not gentler sex .... The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera glass who was near me was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood —‘That is splendid, Oh my! Is not that first rate? I guess we will be in Richmond to-morrow.’”

Sightseers at war. It gives new meaning to William Shakespeare's famous line,

Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Julius Caesar Act 3, scene 1, 270–275

At least people learned from that experience. I have found no more reports of people picnicking during battle for the duration of the Civil War.

That's the way the bowling ball bounces

I am so jealous.

Momma went bowling without Me.

Me!

I don't know Why she left Me at Home.

What's worse, she had Fun ... without Me!

I could have played. I mean, just how heavy can those balls be?

On entering the amphitheatre, new objects of wonder presented themselves. On a level spot in the centre was a company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins. They were dressed in a quaint outlandish fashion.

Rip Van Winkle
Washington Irving

To boldly go where no women have gone before

Three of my favorite women are being celebrated in The Episcopal Church today, and I learned about a fourth. Gosh darn, that Episcopal Church is smart.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Ross Tubman:
Four American Pioneers of Black Rights and Women's Rights 

The Episcopal Church has added to its Calendar four American women who were pioneers in the struggle for black emancipation and for women's votes. The date chosen for commemorating them is the anniversary of the Women's Rights Convention held in Seneca Falls, N.Y., July 19-20, 1848.

Sojourner Truth (Nov. 26, 1883) 

 
Sojourner Truth, originally known as Isabella, was born a slave in New York in about 1798. In 1826 she escaped with the aid of Quaker Abolitionists, and became a street-corner evangelist and the founder of a shelter for homeless women. When she was traveling, and someone asked her name, she said "Sojourner," meaning that she was a citizen of heaven, and a wanderer on earth. She then gave her surname as "Truth," on the grounds that God was her Father, and His name was Truth. She spoke at numerous church gatherings, both black and white, quoting the Bible extensively from memory, and speaking against slavery and for an improved legal status for women. The speech for which she is best known is called, "Ain't I a Woman?" It was delivered in response to a male speaker who had been arguing that the refusal of votes for women was grounded in a wish to shelter women from the harsh realities of political life. She replied, with great effect, that she was a woman, and that society had not sheltered her. She became known as "the Miriam of the Latter Exodus."

Harriet Ross Tubman (March 10, 1913)

Harriet Ross was born in 1820 in Maryland. She was deeply impressed by the Bible narrative of God's deliverance of the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, and it became the basis of her belief that it was God's will to deliver slaves in America out of their bondage, and that it was her duty to help accomplish this. In 1844, she escaped to Canada, but returned to help others escape. Working with other Abolitionists, chiefly white Quakers, she made at least 19 excursions into Maryland in the 1850s, leading more than 300 slaves to freedom. During the Civil War she joined the Northern Army as a cook and a nurse and a spy, and on one occasion led a raid that freed more than 750 slaves. After the war, she worked to shelter orphans and elderly poor persons, and to advance the status of women and blacks. She became known as "the Moses of her People."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Oct. 26, 1902)

Mrs. Stanton was born in 1815 and reared in the Presbyterian Church. She found the Calvinist doctrine of predestination dismaying, and rebelled against it. She denounced the clergy of her day for not upholding women's rights, but as she traveled giving speeches on the subject, she found no lack of pulpits available to her. She undertook to write what she called a Women's Bible. It never got beyond a series of notes on selected Biblical passages. For example, she quotes the passage in Genesis where we are told that Noah's Ark had only one window, and remarks that if a woman had been consulted, the Ark would have been better designed.

Amelia Jenks Bloomer (Dec. 30, 1894)

Amelia Jenks was born in New York in 1818, reared as a Presbyterian, and as a young woman became an activist for the anti-slavery, anti-alcohol, and women's votes movements. One of her concerns has made her name a part of the language. In her day, women's fashions encouraged tightly laced waists, involving severe health problems. (The fashions were denounced in 1728 by William Law--see April 9.) The fashion also called for skirts trailing the ground, an arrangement that made it difficult to keep the skirts reasonably clean, especially since the streets were full of horses. Mrs. Bloomer designed a women's costume featuring what are known as Turkish pants, or harem pants, loose baggy trousers gathered into tight bands at the ankles and waist. Over these she wore a mid-calf-length skirt. It seems a thoroughly modest garb, but it excited indignation and ridicule. (At least well into the 1940s, women's underpants, and women's baggy outer pants worn for athletics, were known as "bloomers.")

Mrs. Bloomer and her husband eventually settled in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where she worked to promote churches, schools, libraries, and progressive and reform movements. On one occasion she said:

"The same Power that brought the slave out of bondage will, in His own good time and way, bring about the emancipation of women, and make her the equal in power and dominion that she was in the beginning." 

O God, whose Spirit guideth us into all truth and maketh us free: Strengthen and sustain us as thou didst thy servants Elizabeth, Amelia, Sojourner, and Harriet. Give us vision and courage to stand against oppression and injustice and all that worketh against the glorious liberty to which thou callest all thy children; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Tooth envy; or, Sojourner Tooth

www.southtowndentalcare.com

Momma is one step closer to being a pirate!

Captain Jack Sparrow might have six (or more), but Momma now has her Very First gold tooth!

Her dentist was Very Obliging (once he Stopped Laughing) and shared some photographs with Me so I could see exactly was going on - including a new-fangled X-ray!

www.southtowndentalcare.com

Ooh (or should I say Au?), tempting as that shiny Gold Tooth is I think I'll go brush my Vinyl Teeth.

After all, I've only got two.

On the other hand, how do you think I would I look with a Gold Tooth?

Don't worry, I can handle the Tooth.

Dolly, pardon?

I don't even know where to begin.

While some see Me as the Intimidating Doll that I am, I am not Scary. 

Really.

These are scary.

(Well, some are.)

Especially Voldemort.

It's not often that I am speechless, but I am now.

(Although I do Fancy Tonks' hair!)

Ms. Addie goes to Washington

Ooh, I'm off to Washington, D.C.!

African American Civil War Museum reopening in DC


WASHINGTON (AP) — The African American Civil War Museum in Washington is celebrating its grand reopening in a new, larger location.

Events were held all weekend and Monday. On Saturday the new location in northwest Washington hosted a series of discussions on topics ranging from teaching the civil war to women in the civil rights movement. On Sunday the museum hosted a film festival.

The original African American Civil War Museum opened on U Street in 1999 near the African American Civil War Memorial. Its new location at 1925 Vermont Ave. NW provides about 5,000 square feet after a $5 million renovation. The original location only had about 700 square feet.

On the Net: http://www.afroamcivilwar.org

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Why do we fear those who are different?

http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/undesirable/deploy/index.html

Why?

I was thinking about that this weekend as I reread Little Women and Werewolves, watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2, and read an interesting book called Shadow of the Quarter Moon.

We have So Much to learn from one another. Just think where we could be both as a Society and as a World if we could stop fearing differentness and start embracing it.

Maybe then we could stop these Wars.

Until then, I guess you'll just have to call Me Undesirable No. 1, because I intend to embrace the different and unknown.