Several years ago, I took a blogging journey through the American Civil War. Each day, I posted material from the corresponding day in a specific year of the war. I started with the fall of 1860, the last several months before the war started
At first, the material was from news articles, including images, from both sides, with a semi-regular entry from the diary of a Washington, D.C. clerk. Over time, a couple of more diarists were added with fewer and fewer news articles.
On of the things I was trying to do was to – like so many others – “make money online.” While I was making virtually nothing from the civil war chronicles, I was making a couple of hundred dollars a month on another website.
With another year until the diarists would reach the end of their war, I made the decision to abandon the civil war chronicles and concentrate on trying to capitalize on the success of the other site.
Two years later, that site is still earning money – a couple of hundred dollars a month.
I keep getting distracting off into other things that interest me more.
That being the case, I’m taking a step back to the beginning – a new civil war based blog.
It’s called Diaries of the Civil War, though it will also include letters and other narratives. Most posts will be for the corresponding day 150 years earlier.
The blog is organized as though there is a community of authors. Each diary, letter, and journal writer will appear in the blog as a contributing author.
And, yes, it is already live.
The main events don’t begin until later in 1860. Until then, I will be populating the blog with material, for the most part, that occurred before the current date in 1860.
It is at http://dotcw.com. Please come visit.
It’s pretty plain right now. I will be adding graphics later and links later on. Yes, there will be advertizing, but the ads will not intrude into the content.
I’m already learning new stuff – and, it’s hardly even started.
I’ve started work on a blog project which will use the WordPress scheduling feature.
I’m returning to working with material written at the time of the Civil War. Next year, 2011, will be the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the war.
I will be publishing material day by day associated with the same day 150 years earlier. The material is coming from a number of sources – all from the time of the civil war or written by people who lived during that time.
So far, I have 127 posts scheduled.
Right now, the earliest post is for December 17, 1860 – which will be published December 17, 2010. (Tensions are escalating between the North and the South. South Carolina is on the verge of seceding from the Union. )
The latest post, so far, is for May 19, 1861, and will be published one year from today, May 19, 2011. (The nation is split asunder. Five weeks ago, South Carolina forces under Confederate General Beauregard opened fire on United States troops in Charleston Harbor’s Fort Sumter, reducing it to rubble in the 34 hour bombardment. Miraculously, there were no Union soldiers killed during the battle. A Confederate soldier bled to death from wounds resulting from a misfired cannon.)
The Mariner’s Museum, Newport News, Virginia, May 10, 2009
Unable to build or buy enough warships to contest Northern control of the seas, the South purchased several fast cruisers in Britain and sent them out with orders to raid Union shipping. The most famous of these vessels was the Alabama, commanded by Raphael Semmes. Prowling the seas from the West Indies to the Indian Ocean, the Alabama captured 63 vessels in just 22 months.
The Alabama was caught by the Kearsarge at Cherbourg, France. Although his ship was worn out by many months at sea, Semmes chose to meet the Kearsarge in battle. The Alabama was sunk within two hours. Semmes and many of his crew were rescued by the English yacht Deerhound and escaped captivity.
Gallery: The Mariners’ Museum, Newport News, May 10, 2009
See more of our Image Galleries at Haw Creek.
Mountain Farm Museum
May 6, 2009
near Cherokee, North Carolina
The Mountain Farm Museum is a unique collection of farm buildings assembled from locations throughout the park. Visitors can explore a log farmhouse, barn, apple house, springhouse, and a working blacksmith shop to get a sense of how families may have lived 100 years ago. Most of the structures were built in the late 19th century and were moved here in the 1950s. The Davis House offers a rare chance to view a log house built from chestnut wood before the chestnut blight decimated the American Chestnut in our forests during the 1930s and early 1940s. The museum is adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center. – National Park Service website
Great Smoky Mountains National Park,
Tennessee and North Carolina
Gallery: Great Smoky Mountains National Park
See more of our Image Galleries at Haw Creek.
The only program that I’ve found so far that I wasn’t able to install on Windows 7 was my OmniPage 14 OCR program.
For those who don’t know the term, OCR stands for optical character recognition – in other words, a program that recognizes text in a scanned image and turns it into editable text.
For Christmas, I received a copy of OmniPage 17. I plan to use it in a long range project that involves old public domain books.
Like any other processing software, an OCR program will to some degree be limited by the quality of the data, or, in this case, images, that is provided as input.
For my first test of the program, I loaded a pdf file of a 440 page book published in 1913. OmniPage 17 was able to load and process the entire book, unlike previous versions of OmniPage and other OCR software that I have used, though I’m sure that, at the time, they had also been somewhat limited by the operating systems and computers.
During the processing, OmniPage 17 flags text that it is not “certain” of and provides the user with the opportunity to correct or ignore the text. The percentage of flagged text is far lower than I expected.
After the book was processed by OmniPage, I saved it and proofed it in Microsoft Word.
The proofing was, by far, the hardest part of the process. I read the entire book, with much more attention to detail than I would have if I had just been reading it for pleasure, in order to correct any errors that the OCR might have made as well as to italicize words that were in italics in the book. Again, the number of corrections needed were far fewer than I expected. I suspect that there were be very few corrections needed when converting modern documents from image to text.
What was the book that I converted, some might wonder?
It’s part of the long term project, so I don’t want to be too specific at this time other than to say that it was a diary of a lady who had been raised in privilege.
September 15, 2009 – Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado
On our last full day in Colorado, we toured the six-mile Mesa Top Loop Drive, visiting most of the archeological exhibits and overlooks.
Square Tower House cliff dwelling is named for the four-story-high structure standing against the curved back wall of the alcove. About 60 of the original 80 rooms of Square Tower House remain.
All of the cliff dwellings, including Square Tower House, were part of the final Mesa Verde building phase. People lived here between AD 1200 and 1300.
Small lizard on a ruin wall
After spending the morning among the ruins, we took a drive in the afternoon. At one point, we found ourselves on open range, with the road blocked by a herd of horses. As I very slowly eased the car forward, the horses parted and let us through.
Commentary and images from the road
image and information from September 15, 2009
This post is being simultaneously published on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About
Pithouse – For thousands of years, native peoples were living in the surrounding areas before coming to Mesa Verde. As with people all over the Southwest, Ancestral Puebloans lived in modest dwellings — shallow pits dug into the ground, covered with pole and mud roofs and walls, with entrances through the roofs.
In this excavation (above), what appears to be one pithouse is actually two. The larger one, built first, around AD 700, was destroyed by fire. The smaller one, which looks like an antechamber to a larger room, is actually a second pithouse built soon after the first one burned. It contains a new feature, a verticle ventilator shaft in one side, which appears in pithouses from then on — innovation!
Above is an Ancestral Puebloan kiva – an undeground religious room. The small circular hole in the floor is a sipapu, a symbolic entrance into the underworld – the Pueblo place of origin. This early kiva design was continued in the Mesa Verde villages and cliff dwellings.
Many fires have swept across Mesa Verde over time. Recent fires have exposed previously undiscovered Puebloan sites.
At our campsite on our final afternoon in
Colorado, 2009.
Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado — September 12, 2009
We arrived at Mesa Verde early enough to relax for a while before heading further into the park.
(click on any of the following photos to view a larger image.)
View of the sky over Mesa Verde National Park
It’s a mother-in-law warning device! (see previous post on it.) from display at Far View Visitor Center
Spruce Tree House was constructed between AD 1211 and 1278 by the ancestors of the Puebloan peoples of the Southwest. The dwelling contains about 130 rooms and 8 kivas (kee-vahs), or ceremonial chambers, built into a natural cave measuring 216 feet (66 meters) at greatest width and 89 feet (27 meters) at its greatest depth. It is thought to have been home for about 80 people.
Knife’s Edge, location of the old pre-1950s harrowing route into the park.
Evidence of past wild fires can be seen throughout the park, some quite recent.
Spruce Tree House is the third largest cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde. Unlike other cliff dwellings in the parks, Spruce Tree House can be accessed without a ranger guided tour, though rangers will be on duty at the ruin when the trail is open.
Spruce Tree House was opened for visitation following excavation by Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Fewkes removed the debris of fallen walls and roofs and stabilized the remaining walls.
It was discovered in 1888 by two local ranchers searching for stray cattle.
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Commentary and images from the road
image and information from September 12, 2009
This post is being simultaneously published
on Exit78 and Haw Creek Out ‘n About
Spruce Tree House information is from National Park Service web page — Spruce Tree House
