As near as I can figure out, I’ve been blogging a little over 15 years.  The first post that I can find, for sure, is dated March 27, 2004 and deals with computer problems and reformatting a hard drive.

My first blogging efforts were on Blogger, but in October 2004, I left and began using WordPress to manage my blogs.  “It’s not that I have anything against blogger overall,” I wrote. “I just wanted the blogs on my own server. Simple as that.”

At the time, I had established 4 blogs:

• North Farnham Freeholder—my personal blog—”a little bit of this and a little bit of that— including some vintage photography and other images, quality on-line sites that I’ve found over the years and more.”  It morphed into Exit78, which now has 2,827 posts. That’s an average of about 13.6 post a month. It also has 45 pages published. (Facebook)
• Out ‘n About—outdoors related postings.  It became Haw Creek Outdoors and is now just Haw Creek. It has 1,653 posts and 52 pages published.  Sadly, some of the pages need some serious updating. (Facebook)
• Chronicles of the American Civil War started out publishing public domain material from the corresponding day of a year during the civil war.
  • It became Daily Observations of the Civil War (DOTCW), with multiple daily posts during the civil war sesquicentennial from before, during, and after the war.  It has 17,536 posts and 15 pages.
  • American Civil War Chronicles (ACWC) used the DOTCW database, adding to it, for the “sesquicentennial plus five years.” It is now going through the civil war again with the previous posts rescheduled for 160 years following the applicable diary or journal entry, news article, images and more.  By April 2025, 160 years after the end of the war, ACWC will probably have published over 25,000 posts.  Currently, in the blog, it is just after the First Battle of Bull Run [Manassas]. [Facebook: American Civil War Chronicles and American Civil War]
• A Selection of Poetry – The Blog—I had created a website called A Selection of Poetry beginning in 2002 that garnered quite a bit of traffic.  I was publishing material from that site in the blog and, for some reason, that stopped in 2007. I actually restarted that blog in 2019, but the restart only has 9 posts.

Over time, I’ve tried different strategies for blogging, mostly around sharing photos, both mine and public domain or creative commons images I’ve found online.  I’ve tried blogging themes like 1000 words (posting images worth 1000 words), travel photos, Art on Sunday and Eyes of the Great Depression.  I’ll still do some of that but, for now, I’m just writing and blogging on topics as they occur to me.  I’ve done several recently on COVID and vaccination. I imagine I’ll do more.  A local casino issue will probably garner more posts as things move along [that topic typically get a lot of visits as I share those posts on a local Facebook group that is intensely interested in getting the casino approved and built].

I’ve interacted with a number of other bloggers over the years.  In 2004, I saved a link list of 14 blogs.  None of the blogs’ links are currently active in their original incarnation.  Several still exist but, except for one who last posted in March 2019, their most recent post was in 2011 or earlier.  Others return 404, 503  or Server Not Found errors, have their URL for sale, or have a URL that has been taken over by someone else.

Though some may think so, blogging isn’t dead. Some of the bloggers I interacted with or followed over the years are still blogging.  Some are now long-time Facebook friends, including a few that haven’t blogged in quite some time.

My wife is one of the most prolific bloggers I know.  Karen blogs nearly every day at Quilts…etc..  Her focus is primarily on her quilting but she includes many other things in her daily chatty post. Having started in 2007, she has averaged just under 29 posts per month and has had 57,202 comments an average of about 11.5 comments per post.

To blog or not to blog?  The answer to that is I think I’ll stick with it at least a while longer.

A local physician told me that he was worried about his grandchildren.  “They can’t get the vaccination,” he said, “and they are unprotected from the virus with school starting up soon.”

His grandchildren are up in northwest Arkansas—Benton County—where the COVID risk level is very high. About 43.8% have received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine but only 35.1% are fully vaccinated. Over the last week, the county has seen an average of 90 new confirmed cases per day. The percentage of positive COVID tests is 10.6% but testing is limited and most cases may go undetected.  With the total number of active cases growing, it is thought that each infected person there is likely infecting an average of 1.4 other people.¹

COVID cases are increasing in nearly all states.  The only way to get ahead of the Delta variant is to vaccinate more people, but the rates of vaccination in most states continue to drop.  In 35 states, cases rose 50% or more last week.  New daily cases in the U.S. have gone from 11,000 last month to an average of 25,000 per day. “We’re losing time here,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told CNN. He told MSNBC, “If you’re unvaccinated, this virus is looking for you.” “The Delta variant is spreading, people are dying,” Collins said. “We can’t actually just wait for things to get more rational.” The variant now accounts for 58% of new COVID cases in the U.S.²

The Atlantic³

(In rural Arkansas) They might have the flu, except for the added telltale symptom of this coronavirus: the loss of taste and smell. Many of the patients now are younger than those in previous months; a nurse who works there told me she saw two cases of young children in one day.

PBS News Hour⁴

Casey Johnson has never let a COVID patient die alone.

In her years as a bedside nurse at St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro, Arkansas, Johnson has watched countless patients pass. But the pandemic… brought a wave of death unlike any she’d ever seen.

To those who die in her care, she is a stranger, she said. But she can still offer them comfort. She’s caressed patients’ hands, quietly played “Amazing Grace” from her iPhone, gently bathed tired limbs. She sharpened her sixth sense for when someone was about to die — their breathing more sporadic, their mood more restless before becoming solemn and withdrawn. Those who hadn’t been robbed of their voice by the virus would often tell her “‘Today’s the day,’” or “‘I want to go home.’” She’s never gotten used to the conversations with loved ones who have been left behind, she said, and each time, it “takes a little bit out of you.”

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette⁵

Fifty-seven Arkansas National Guardsmen have tested positive for covid-19 in the past week during a training exercise at Fort Polk in Louisiana.

Soldiers from the 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, based out of Camp Robinson, traveled to the U.S. Army base near Leesville, La., for a combat readiness training exercise.

In addition to the 57 who tested positive, another 64 soldiers were put in quarantine. None of the soldiers have been hospitalized, Arkansas National Guard officials said Tuesday.

Like most of the state, most of the soldiers in the Arkansas National Guard are not vaccinated. An estimated 30% to 35% of guardsmen have gotten vaccinations, officials said.

New York Post⁶

Young, unvaccinated patients are begging for the COVID-19 shot as they fight for their lives at an Alabama hospital.

But Dr. Brytney Cobia has to deliver a heartbreaking dose of reality, instead.

“One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late,” Cobia, who works at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday.

Cobia said she has been forced to turn down the desperate pleas from coronavirus patients about to be placed on ventilators.

“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” she wrote.

1. U.S. COVID risk & Vaccine tracker. (2021, July 21). Retrieved July 22, 2021, from https://covidactnow.org/us/arkansas-ar/county/benton_county/?s=20821001
2. Crist, C. (2021, July 16). NIH Chief: U.s. ‘LOSING time’ AGAINST Delta Variant. Retrieved July 22, 2021, from https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210715/nih-chief-says-u-s-losing-time-against-delta-variant
3. Khamsi, R. (2021, July 19). COVID-19’s effects on kids are even stranger than we thought. Retrieved July 22, 2021, from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/clues-about-mis-c-and-covid-19-kids/619447/
4. Santhanam, L. (2021, July 21). Traumatized Arkansas hospital workers struggle as COVID surges among unvaccinated. Retrieved July 22, 2021, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/traumatized-arkansas-hospital-workers-struggle-as-covid-surges-among-unvaccinated
5. Earley, N. (2021, July 21). 57 Arkansas GUARDSMEN test positive for covid-19 at Louisiana fort. Retrieved July 22, 2021, from https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/jul/21/57-arkansas-guardsmen-test-positive-for-covid-19/
6. Salo, J. (2021, July 21). ‘It’s too late’: Doctor forced to turn Down COVID patients begging for vaccine. Retrieved July 22, 2021, from https://nypost.com/2021/07/21/its-too-late-doctor-forced-to-turn-down-covid-patients-begging-for-vaccine/

I’ve had a Pinterest account for quite a few years.  I use it to save and share images that I find interesting as well as to share many of my own images.

I try to stay clear of copyright issues with the images I pin.  Most are either public domain, Creative Commons, or mine.  I also selectively pin from Pinterest-friendly sites… and Zazzle products.

I used to spend quite a bit of time pinning new images.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve done that.  Now, I’ll pin an image on occasion when I think of it.

I seldom actually go to the Pinterest site.  Since I’m not as familiar with it as I once was, it seems to be less intuitive to navigate than it once was.  It took me a while to figure out where to access the page that has all on my pinboards.

I was just thinking that I hadn’t been able to find how many total pins I have, but I see that it’s listed on the page I just mentioned.  There are 20,467 pins.  I have 3,744 people following my pins and I follow 182.  Apparently, my pins get about 260,000 monthly views.

I guess some of that does send traffic to some of Karen’s and my pages.  We do earn enough money online to do a bit more than pay for all of our internet usages, excluding streaming services.

I used to get information showing the pins that were the most popular and getting the most repins.  I haven’t seen that information in a while.  I suppose that I could probably access that somehow, but I really don’t have the interest.

As one of the most popular social media sites in the world, Pinterest currently has 478 million monthly active users.  Just 9 months earlier, it first exceeded 400 million. Most of the recent increase has been from a year-on-year rise in international users (up 37%) though US growth continued (up 9%). Sixty percent of users are female and women tend to pin more.¹

Pinterest has more active users than both Twitter and Snapchat combined. (That’s pretty amazing given all of the media attention that tweets garner regularly in the media.) Around 85% of pinners save pins using a smartphone app.  The total number of pins saved by users now exceeds 240 billion – an average of about 533 pins per user. Pinterest use is growing fastest among younger users.  About half of U.S. users use Pinterest for shopping (I didn’t even know that was a thing!) and almost 90% use the platform for planning purchases and getting inspiration for “what could fit well in their homes, offices or make great gifts for friends and family.”²

“Pinterest is a social site where you can collect and share images of anything you find interesting. You can also visually discover new interests by browsing the collections of other Pinterest users.”  It’s a virtual bulletin board with organizational and bookmarking tools.³

After looking at Pinterest a bit more, I think I may start using it a bit more, though I don’t plant to get obsessed with it like others are.  I have plenty of other things I’m interested in.

1. Lin, Y. (2021, July 15). 10 Pinterest statistics every marketer should know in 2021 [infographic]. Retrieved July 20, 2021, from https://www.oberlo.com/blog/pinterest-statistics
2. West, C. (2021, March 03). 23 Pinterest stats and Facts Marketers must know in 2021. Retrieved July 20, 2021, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/pinterest-statistics/
3. Moreau, E. (2021, July 09). Everything you need to know to start using pinterest. Retrieved July 20, 2021, from https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-pinterest-3486578

Civil War Era Photographic Portraiture

I am currently making my way through the American Civil War with material that I have gathered over the last 15 or so years—diary and journal entries, news articles, letters, photos and images, day-by-day stepping through the war.  I am sharing the material 160 years after the events that these snippets of peoples lives and the news recorded in a blog called American Civil War Chronicles.

Today, for instance, most of the material is from July 20, 1861, two days before the first major battle of the war, Bull Run—also called, by the South, Manassas.

Forces are moving and colliding already in the days before the battle.

The blog does not and will not dwell on the battles and the conflict itself.  There are other resources that do that very well.

The blog conveys some of what individuals and the media of the day saw and recorded for posterity, such as

• the Woolsey family and their letters,
• a diary recording the experiences of Battery A, First Regiment, Rhode Island Light Artillery,
• the diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut.
• a US patent clerk’s diary
• the war letters of William T. Lusk,
• the diary of a refugee in the south, Judith McGuire
• a daily diary of events for that day compiled in the 186s by Frank Moore
• diary and letters of Union officer Rutherford B. Hayes
• the diary of a high level clerk in the War Office of the Confederacy
• Extracts from the diary of Rafael Semmes, commanding CSS Sumter
• Letters of the Adams family—the US Minister to the UK and his sons
• Letters of General Samuel Ryan Curtis
• Letters and journal of Louise Wigfall
• War Diary of a Union Woman in the South

and more. There are currently 23,802 total posts that will be published over a period of a little over 5 years.  3,867 have already been published, 9,445 are scheduled, and 10,490 are in draft, having been previously published and requiring minor editing, mostly changing the date from the previously published date to a date five years later, which will put them in the schedule 160 years after original writing date or occurrence.

The following is the information for this image.

Title
[Jesse Sharpe Barnes, later captain of Co. F, 4th North Carolina Infantry, in South Carolina militia uniform with sword and pistols]

Summary
Photograph shows identified soldier, Jesse S. Barnes, a Confederate captain who was killed on May 31, 1862, at Seven Pines, Virginia. Captain Barnes probably fought in a South Carolina militia unit before organizing the Wilson Light Infantry which became Company F, 4th North Carolina Infantry and began enlisting on April 18, 1861. (Source: Katharina Schlichtherle, 2015)
Created / Published
[between 1861]

Subject Headings
– Barnes, Jesse Sharpe,–1838-1862
– Confederate States of America.–Army.–North Carolina Infantry Regiment, 4th.–Company F–People–1860-1870
– Soldiers–Confederate–1860-1870
– Military uniforms–Confederate–1860-1870
– Handguns–1860-1870
– Daggers & swords–1860-1870
– United States–History–Civil War, 1861-1865–Military personnel–Confederate

Headings
Ambrotypes–Hand-colored–1860-1870.
Portrait photographs–1860-1870.

Genre
Portrait photographs–1860-1870
Ambrotypes–Hand-colored–1860-1870

Notes
– Identification based on an almost identical photograph of Jesse S. Barnes published in Histories of the several regiments and battalions from North Carolina, in the great war 1861-’65 … Ed. by Walter Clark. Raleigh : E.M. Uzzell, printer, 1901, vol. 1, bet. pp. 256-257. The uniform depicted in the book shows has been painted over to change it to a North Carolina uniform.
– Title devised by Library staff.
– Case: Leather; floral and scroll design.
– Jesse Sharpe Barnes was brother to William Sharpe Barnes who is depicted in AMB/TIN no. 2697 and cousin to Thomas A. Martin who is tentatively identified as being depicted in AMB/TIN no. 2696.
– Palmetto tree insignia on cap.
– Vintage mat supplied by donor.
– Gift; Tom Liljenquist; 2011; (DLC/PP-2012:127).
– More information about this collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.lilj
– Purchased from: Bryan Watson, Civil War Images, Torrington, Wyoming, 2011, who obtained this photograph with two others, one of William Sharpe Barnes (AMB/TIN no. 2697) and the second one tentatively identified as Thomas A. Martin (AMB/TIN no. 2696), from an estate in Florida.
– Forms part of: Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs (Library of Congress).

Medium
1 photograph : quarter-plate ambrotype, hand-colored ; 11.9 x 9.3 cm (case)

Call Number/Physical Location
AMB/TIN no. 2730 [P&P]

Source Collection
Ambrotype/Tintype filing series (Library of Congress) Liljenquist Family collection (Library of Congress)

Repository
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Digital Id
ppmsca 31657 //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.31657

Library of Congress Control Number
2011648526

Reproduction Number
LC-DIG-ppmsca-31657 (digital file from original item)

Library of Congress permalink

___________

Mike’s notes:

Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject

Royalty-free images by Mike¹ — No. 146 of over 1200 images

Purple iris in the evening sun, west-central Arkansas, April 28, 2018 (Pentax K-3 II)

Iris

Iris is a genus of 260–300 species of flowering plants with showy flowers. It takes its name from the Greek word for a rainbow, which is also the name for the Greek goddess of the rainbow, Iris. Some authors state that the name refers to the wide variety of flower colors found among the many species. As well as being the scientific name, iris is also widely used as a common name for all Iris species, as well as some belonging to other closely related genera. A common name for some species is ‘flags’, while the plants of the subgenus Scorpiris are widely known as ‘junos’, particularly in horticulture. It is a popular garden flower.  (see much, much more at Wikipedia)

Post Endnotes

1. I am sharing some of my public domain images in periodic blog posts.

Series Notes:

• This image is also shared as public domain on Pixabay,  Flickr, and Pinterest.
• Images are being shared in the sequence they were accepted by Pixabay, a royalty-free image sharing site.
• Only images specifically identified as such are public domain or creative commons on our pages.
• All other images are copyright protected by me, creative commons, or used under the provisions of fair use.

I’m not a particular fan of eggs.

I eat eggs on occasion, usually hardboiled, scrambled, or even more rarely an egg sandwich where the egg is “over-hard”—well-done, with nothing raw.

In the last few weeks, we’ve had the occasion to eat out for breakfast when we were staying in a hotel.  In Hays, Kansas, we went to IHOP and, a couple of weeks later, a Cracker Barrel in Bentonville, Arkansas.

In most of their menu options for breakfast meals, they included eggs, which I wasn’t interested in.

In both places, I basically ordered the same thing—three pancakes, with sides of hash brown potatoes and sausage patties.  On the rare times I do eat out for breakfast, that’s my standard fare.

At home, though, I do fairly regularly have eggs, a little less than half of the time, for breakfast—two hard-boiled eggs, two buttered pieces of toast, and several turkey sausage links.  The rest of the time I usually have brown sugar and maple oatmeal with some honey, walnuts, and raisins added in. On occasion, Karen will fix breakfast for both of us and then we might have pancakes, waffles, or french toast—or, sometimes, scrambled eggs, toast, and sausage.

Any time I do have eggs, though, they gotta be thoroughly cooked—no over-easy, sunny-side-up, or soft-boiled eggs for me.

I do like deviled eggs at Thanksgiving and/or Christmas, though.

Our daughter, Jessica, has a blog called A Pressure Cooker featuring recipes for the Instant Pot pressure cooker.

A few days ago, one of her recipes, Easy Instant Apple Cobbler was included in Ridiculously easy dump-and-bake desserts on MSN.

Jessica say’s:

If you are looking for an easy apple cobbler recipe, look no further. Here you have a super easy recipe. If you are minimal on groceries, raid your pantry and whip up this super easy dump and bake dish.

I love recipes using Apple Pie Filling, it makes it so easy, and you still get that cinnamon-spiced tender apples in each bite.

See her recipe, Easy Instant Apple Cobbler, and more on her blog.

The photography for her food recipes is all her own.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign (originally posted September 2016)

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?

• All of the images and video segments are public domain from Pixabay.com, the US National Archives, or the US Library of Congress.
• The main audio track, of course is “Sounds” by Five Man Electrical Band. It is used here under the current policies set by the copyright holder which means this video will be viewable everywhere except Germany.
• The intro thunder sound track was recorded by Grant Evans License: Attribution 3.0 obtained from http://soundbible.com/2053-Thunder-So… soundbible.com
• The crowd sound audio track is https://www.freesound.org/people/yott…” more random people.wav by https://www.freesound.org/people/yott… yottasounds | License: Creative Commons 0
• Category Music
• License: Standard YouTube License

I received this text a couple of days ago.  I don’t trust unsolicited phone calls or messages from numbers I don’t recognize and I certainly am highly skeptical of any too-good-to-be-true call or message saying that I won something.  Needless to say, I didn’t respond.

I checked the number on Hiya, a call blocker, fraud detection and caller ID app that’s available from the apple and google app stores.  It said – no surprise – that it was suspected spam.  I don’t know why it didn’t flag it to tell me it was suspect, but it doesn’t seem to catch everything.

I also searched Google for “walmart.yourcards.”

The first hit was from scam detector. It says:

“Is walmart.yourcards.us legit? Nope. It has the lowest trust rating on our chart. Let’s take a look at it and its industry. We put to work 53 powerful factors to expose high-risk activity and see if walmart.yourcards.us is a scam.”

Scam detector gave them a score of 0.4/100 and said, “It signals that the business could be defined by the following tags: High-Risk. Phishing. Beware.”

0.4/100 is  about as low as you can go.

It gives Exit78 a score of 75.4/100 and says, “This rating means the business is Standard. Valid. Common.” I can live with that.

Other hits on the search had to do with gift and other cards from Walmart.  The 4th hit, though, was Fraud Alerts – Walmart Corporate. It has several pages of different kinds of frauds and scams as well as guidelines and resources for dealing with them.  The first page deals with gift card scams.

It’s a shame that there are people out there who have to prey on others for financial gain.  Many who might fall victim to a scam like this are those who can least afford it.

I don’t, of course, know any details of this scam past the text that I received. It may be a fraudster trying to pose as a brand you trust over email to try to trick you into sharing personal information like your account password or financial details.