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In 2006 I had the privilege of celebrating Memorial Day at the place where it all started, Gettysburg, Pa.
I put together a flash video of that day — a slideshow with audio — and would like to share it with you now. It was a great day, and a touching ceremony with the opportunity to see some of the most important places in our nation’s history.
Since it autoplays I’ll just link to it here. Please turn on the speakers and share 2:20 of your time with me.
The weekly post where we slap together a bunch of pictures that didn’t get featured elsewhere among the many treasures of the Internet and show them off with banal commentary for cheap content.
Component kit? Takes the wind out of your sails for deviled eggs a bit, doesn’t it?
I was going to write a lengthy essay about the humble push broom, but decided against it. You’re welcome.
The Fox Theatre marquee in Atlanta. We were there Tuesday to see Jersey Boys. (Great show.)
But does it light up? Why, yes, it does.
Roadside flowers in the heat of a late spring day. I was out wilting, they were thriving. Somewhere around Beauregard, Ala.
I am obliged to put up Allie pictures every so often, or she wakes me up in the middle of the night. We’ve reached an arrangement about this sort of thing.
I hid under this tree for a moment of shade on my bike ride today. It was circled by old cement benches. I bet they don’t get used very often any more, though.
She lived 98 years and, now, I bet almost everyone she knew and loved is gone. Unsurprisingly the Internet knows nothing about her. What is known of the place she’s buried has survived largely based on oral histories, so she might be a complete mystery at this point. But there’s that little lamb, still.
I broke my helmet — thankfully not while I was in it. Guess I need a new one.
We visited Fox Theatre in Atlanta to see the Tony award-winning Jersey Boys. Great show: funny, dramatic and a terrific juxebox musical. Many of the tunes, of course, have forced their way into a certain level of timelessness, and all of your favorite Four Seasons songs made their way into the show.
It was a great way to learn about the band, too. Some things had to be capsulized for theater purposes, of course. Condensing the better part of three decades into two hours can’t be easy. But there’s a great tale in this show and, if you didn’t know any better you’d think it highly improbable.
My in-laws saw it on Broadway some time back. They grew up with this music, they lived in some of the same areas, so they find it very relatable. We might have been the youngest people in the place when we saw the show, but it transcends generations easily. After all, we grew up with the music too, just in a different time.
They said the performers they saw were better than the original Four Seasons. (The guy they saw playing Valli was in his debut role on Broadway. Incredible.)
Here’s that original cast performing at the Tony Awards in 2006:
The cast we saw wasn’t the Four Seasons, but they were great. Catch the show if you can.
We went for a ride yesterday. Well, I went for a ride. The Yankee is in training and so she did something called a brick. This involves swimming and riding and I’ve no idea at all how bricks have entered into this.
So she swam in the neighborhood pool. The Olympic pool was closed, on account of their being no Olympians there that day. (There usually are. We live in a place where she gets to be drowned in the wake of people showing off Olympic ring tattoos. Not a bad perk to the locale.)
We counted out the laps, measuring and doing math. The neighborhood pool is small; she did a lot of laps. And then she hopped on her bike and I hopped on mine and I chased her through the countryside.
She was moving on well. I had great legs, owing to taking a day or two off, perhaps. But I was also going on the longest ride I’ve been on in a while, so I wanted to pace myself.
I caught her on a hill after about eight miles. I’m a little bit stronger on hills and this was a series of three respectable climbs. She caught me again later, I let her play out in front and then chased her down just before home. She took the direct route and I meandered through the neighborhood. It was a 20.75 mile ride. Felt great.
I’d intended to take a few wide pictures to celebrate the day, but there was too much huffing.
Did take this somewhere along the way though:
Pretty as a roadside wildflower can be, it was the three buds on this one that intrigued me.
And now for something beautiful:
That is the Lyrid meteor shower, from space. Did you catch Florida as it moved by?
Astronaut Don Pettit on the ISS took the shots last month and they were converted into the inspiring quasi-video. The Lyrid meteors, dust trails from the comet Thatcher, have been observed from Earth for thousands of years. I learned all of this from a Huntsville reporter.
Finally: the grading is done. Now on to other things.
