Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Baby Hedgehog, Post-Manassas

Today the Guardian UK is posting photos of baby hedgehogs & kittens and stuff:
"Cheer corner: how to cope with the new world order (with kittens)".

Ay ay ay, I didn't see Hillary's defeat coming.
I feel like one of those civilians of Washington DC in July 1861 who went out with picnic baskets to watch what they thought would be an easy romp to an early victory at Manassas/Bull Run.


At that time, London Times correspondent William Howard Russell observed:

“On the hill beside me there was a crowd of civilians on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, with a few of the fairer, if not gentler sex .... The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera glass who was near me was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood —‘That is splendid, Oh my! Is not that first rate? I guess we will be in Richmond to-morrow.’"
And, as we know, it was a hideous slaughter instead, and a Union loss.

This was a house, before the battle.
The ruins of Judith Henry’s house, “Spring Hill,”
after the First Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861.

[via]

4 comments:

Michael Leddy said...

You know the website Cute Overload, yes? No longer posting, but still online.

Fresca said...

I do! After looking at photos of Civil War battlefields, a little leavening is welcome.
(I also just so happen to be reading Bruce Catton...)

Michael Leddy said...

Did you add the Civil War photo? I was reading the RSS, and I could swear I didn’t see it. I don’t think I’d have mentioned Cute Overload if I had.

Fresca said...

Yeah, I added the Civil War photo later, but Cute Overload is totally appropriate because I left the cute hedgehog up too--
I mean, my point was we need silliness amidst devastation---
and I also chose not to post dead soldiers, just ("just") a ruined house.