Looking at the Eclipse — October 1865

From Harper’s Weekly

(click on image to view larger version)

With large digital copies of civil war — or other — photographs, it’s sometimes interesting to zoom in on different sections of images to more closely examine what is there.

The next image, cropped from the photo, shows a ghostly image of a man. This, of course, is someone who was moving during the long exposure required for photographs. He pause long enough to appear as an apparation superimposed over the background.

Part of an encampment can be seen on the right in the background, where the shapes of possibly five soldiers can be seen. Two are squatting; one is standing, reading a newspaper, it appears, with another fellow, possibly shirtless, standing next to him. On the left of this cropped image, there appears to be a a fifth soldier bending over at the waist. Parts of at least four tents can be made out as well as stacked arms — with at least five weapons with bayonets. Behind the soldiers on the left, there seems to be a part of the curve of a road.

In the picture below, a telegraph operator sits in the wagon, with a pen or pencil in his hand, writing.

Petersburg, Va. U.S. Military Telegraph battery wagon, Army of the Potomac headquarters

Photograph from the main eastern theater of war, the siege of Petersburg, June 1864-April 1865; MEDIUM: 1 negative : glass, wet collodion; CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1864 June; photographer: David Knox; Civil War photographs, 1861-1865; compiled by Hirst D. Milhollen and Donald H. Mugridge, Washington, D.C. : Library of Congress, 1977. No. 0357; LOC digital image

Other sizes of this image are available on my flickr page for it.

Yesterday started out to be a very, very nice day. We were planning to work outside, expecting temperatures in the upper 60s to low 70s. We didn’t know that a fiece cold front was heading our way.

The temperature peaked at about 72 degrees, but about 100 miles northwest of us the temperature was already 50 degrees below that. I decided working outside wasn’t too smart after our trash cans had blown over three times, especially with small dead branches and twigs coming off the trees. After the third time, we decided to bring the trash containers next the house where thay would be sheltered from the wind.

As we were heading back indoors, I heard a sound like sheet metal roofing ripping loose. We looked around to see if we could find the cause and discovered we had several trees down in our acre east of the house. Great. We’ll deal with that later.

Soon after we got back in the house, we lost power. That was at 1 P.M. When we called the utility company, the automated system said that they were aware of the power outage and that power would be restored by 9 P.M.. It’s now after 9 P.M. the next day and power is still out.

Not long after we lost power, I got a phone call from the consulting company that my contract is going to be through with word that they had received the purchase order and that the client would like me to start today. So I went to work this morning, even though employment paperwork could not be done because I didn’t have computer access due to the power outage.

Tonight, I have a generator running to provide power for the fan in our fireplace insert, a light, our DSL modem, wireless router, laptop, television and satellite dish — and power to the printer so I could print out the employment paperwork so I can get it all filled out and faxed in from work in the morning. Bedrooms are closed off, so we are sleeping on couches in the living room tonight. They’ve opened shelters in a nearby town for people that don’t have heat. In Ft. Chaffee, the wind wind spread a fire through over 100 buildings slated for a 21 million dollar demolition project — the building that Elvis got his haircut in when he went in the army wasn’t affected, though.

They’re predicting snow for tomorrow.

……Previous posts on this (most recent on top):

• Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho… (not yet!)
• Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, it’s….
• BIG BUMP in the road for my online plans…. perhaps.
• The BIG BUMP revealed