Recent doings - Gettysburg, etc.

[tagryn]

Last week I went out to Hagerstown, MD twice for work reasons. The local call center for the Census Bureau (my employer) is there; the first trip was to listen in on interviews being done for a questionnaire supplement our branch sponsored, while the second was to help out with an interviewer debriefing. Quite interesting stuff, as dealing with the public usually is; you never know what you're going to get when someone picks up the phone. Its also fascinating to see how a question gets interpreted - no matter how well you craft it, seeing how people actually respond to what you thought was crystal-clear is often surprising.

After the Friday Hagerstown debrief in the morning, I took leave the rest of the day and Donna and I went up to Gettysburg. It was a nice trip; usually this time of year the humidity is brutal, but for some reason this year August hasn't been bad at all. We spent most of Friday and Saturday morning touring the battlefield; I've posted some pictures here. I was quite happy to get to finally see the Longstreet Memorial that was erected in '98, as I had contributed a small amount to getting that completed. They did a good job, its in Pitzer Woods looking out from Seminary Ridge towards the Union positions. I was also happy to get to see some of the more obscure parts of the battlefield, like Spangler's Spring and the East Calvary battlefield. I'm currently reading a book whose thesis is that Pickett's Charge was supposed to be part of a two-prong attack with Stuart's calvary sweeping in from the other side, but Custer stopped him cold and the plan collapsed. Some of his evidence is circumstantial at best, but its interesting reading anyway.

I've also been reading a book about the fate of the Amber Room, one of the great treasures of pre-Revolutionary Russia that disappeared during World War II. There's a lot of different theories about what happened to it. The authors posit that the Amber Room actually survived the German occupation, but was burned down along with much of Königsberg Castle by drunken Russian soldiers a couple of days after the Russians entered East Prussia. Given what I've read elsewhere about the Russian advance into Germany I can completely believe this happened, and can also understand why the Soviets, and then the Russian Federation, wouldn't want to admit to having destroyed one of their own greatest cultural creations while plundering Germany.

We also got to see my folks on the way back from Gettysburg. My mom's been having a rough month; not only did her friend Eileen and then my cousin John pass away, but we also found out last week that my cousin Julie had also died recently. Julie's story is kind of complex; she lived very near my parents, but basically wanted nothing to do with anyone in the family once she became an adult for her own reasons. That was her choice, but I think it hurt my parents a little to keep reaching out to her and hearing nothing back. I hope she rests in peace.

I'm going to be in Columbus Ohio for much of this coming week, observing questionnaire collection in the field. In addition to the work aspects, it'll also be good to see Columbus again after living there for almost a decade. It'll be especially good to see some of my friends who still live there.

Garden output has been steady: a few cherry tomatoes a day, plus a green pepper and larger tomato every 3-4 days, on average. Here's a fun Don Polec report on how many people made the same decision I did to plant more vegetables this year in response to the higher food prices. It's worked out well. And, as you can see, I got another bloom on my remaining Icelandic poppy.

Comments

[liralen.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a great trip!!

[foomf.livejournal.com]

That's a beautiful horse-and-rider statue, life-size, and it looks like the horse is freaked out that these two scary futuristic people just appeared in front of it.

I'm sorry to hear of your cousins deaths.

[donnafair.livejournal.com]

It was probably the chili I'd had for lunch.