Theft and Movies at Biltmore Estates

Back in the late 1970's, a security guard at Biltmore Estate began stealing books - hundreds of books - a few at a time.  During the filming of a movie there (yes, there have been a LOT of movies with the Biltmore Estate as a backdrop) in the early 1980's, the theft was realized, investigated, prosecuted, and resulted in a six year prison term for the dummy.

The collection of books at the Biltmore include copies of correspondence George Washington Vanderbilt had with others about the books - sort of an elite book club.  Correspondents included Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth, Oliver Cromwell...  and the books are first editions from as early as 1817.  Vanderbilt had about 60,000 books - almost half are still here at the Estate.  His library was his pride and joy.


This is a different photo than I showed earlier.  Notice the world globe is in a different location.  In the foreground, covered in plexiglass (is that to protect Napoleon's DNA?  nothing else in the house is covered in plexiglass...) is Napoleon's chess set and table.  To the right, in front of the windows, there are huge magnifying glasses on the table that readers can use to study maps, pictures, etc.  The "mural" on the ceiling is actually painted on canvas.

According to ArchitectsandArtisans.com:  Peering down on all in the library is an 18th-century Pellegrini painting known as “The Chariot of Aurora.” It once adorned the Pisani Palace in Venice. “Hunt probably found it and collected it,” she said. “The canvas was cut into 13 strips, shipped here, and then basically nailed up.” The ceiling painting depicts dawn and the light of learning.

(Who has the nerve to cut up a centuries-old piece of artwork???  Glad he did.)

According to Wikipedia, the grounds and buildings of Biltmore Estate have appeared in a number of major motion pictures:

• Tap Roots (1948) 
• The Swan (1956)
•  Being There (1979)
• The Private Eyes (1980)
•  A Breed Apart (1984)
•  Mr. Destiny (1990)
• The Last of the Mohicans (1992)
•  Forrest Gump (1994)
•  Richie Rich (1994)
•  My Fellow Americans (1996)
•  Patch Adams (1998)
•  Return to the Secret Garden (2000)
• Hannibal (2001)
• The Clearing (2004)
• Marry Me (2010)

The estate also had a minor appearance in season eight of the CW television series One Tree Hill.

Again, I found the photo at  http://www.romanticasheville.com/biltmore_house.htm

Well, Looky What I Finally Found!!

FINALLY!  I found these photos at http://www.romanticasheville.com/biltmore_house.htm

Arched column passages:

Most of the common rooms don't have entry doors, that just have arched entrys with heavy drapes that I assume were designed to minimize drafts.  In fact, it was suggested that we not only plan to wear our coats, but to at least TAKE our gloves. 

Every room is so huge as far as square footage goes, but here at Biltmore Estates one shouldn't go by square footage; one should measure by cubic feet.  The ceilings are SO high in every room - so high that height almost dwarfs length and width. 

Sunken glass domed entry:

Straight through the front door the entry is like any other entry (with, I don't know, 40' high ceilings), but just to the right is a circular, sunken, plant filled atrium with fountain and sculpture.  The ceiling is not just glass, but truly breath-taking in its design.  We went to the right through several rooms and came out on the other side of this atrium.  Each person, couple, family, or group was offered a free photo taken standing beside this room.  We didn't pick ours up after the tour, but have ordered it on line.  Not the greatest photo of us - jackets all askew, hair a mess from the wind outside, light reflecting off of my eyeglasses, hands full of (useless) cameras and gloves...  When it comes in I may share it with you - may not. 




On to the Billiard Room:

A couple of pool tables - of course, hand made and elaborately decorated.  Taxidermy to be expected: buffalo, eagle (we'd probably get arrested if we tried to get one stuffed today), big horn sheep, fish, elk - still looking pretty good, as if one could really tell when they're hanging 10 - 12 feet above your head...

 

There were also cloth covered domino tables (good idea!)

Harold S. Vanderbilt invented the game of contract bridge. (All good Baptist's know that it was a couple of teenage Baptist boys who invented the domino game of 42 so that they could covertly play bridge.  "Card playing" was considered a form of gambling, and their parents wouldn't let them play bridge.)  Seems like the cloth covered domino tables go hand-in-hand with Vanderbilt's bridge game...

Now to the Banquet Hall:

Think medieval castles.  The ceiling here is SEVENTY feet high.  On the far wall is a set of THREE fireplaces with enormous openings and andirons about three feet tall, and a common, marvelous (think about that word, "marvelous."  Definition: causing wonder, miraculous, of the highest kind or quality, notably superior) mantlepiece. There is an area in front of the fireplaces that the family would have their normal meal at sitting at small tables. Scanning to the right you see five Flemish tapestries dating from the 1500's.  Don't mentally blow that off.  The tapestries are Brobdingnagian in size and scenes depicted in those tapestries are realistic down to the smallest detail.  Since Biltmore Estate wasn't constructed until the 1890's, those tapestries were somewhere around 400 years old when George brought them over - and are now 500 years old (give or take a decade.)





In front of the tapestries you have a gargantuan table that easily seats 35 - and would hold enough food for a small army.  Over your shoulder to the right is a gallery fronted by three-dimensional wood carved panels with a background of (I'm sure) gold leaf.  Above the gallery rail you see the pipes for an organ that were ordered and put into place in the early 1900's - but no organ came until 1999.  Why the almost 100 year delay ??? 'Tis a mystery.



And, yes, we did get to hear the organ play while we were there. 

The flowers on the table were most likely grown at the Estate and are set out for the Spring Festival of Flowers.

We leave this grand room for what is called the Breakfast Room, but the family ate lunch in here, too.



The door frames leading into and out of this room were made of carved marble.

There are more photos I will share in the coming days.

Try this link for a photo worth looking at...

For the first time ever I am truly frustrated by trying to find you information on this traveling experience of ours.  I have come across a web site: bookthink.com, that has the best photo I have discovered of any part of the Biltmore Estate: 

http://www.bookthink.com/0072/72libimage.htm

Wow.  Amazing isn't it?  Look at the andirons (and multiply them by all of the fireplaces in this home), look at the five foot tall world globe, the ladder (if you could call it that), the tapestry above the mantle, the carved marble mantle itself,  the exquisite carvings on each side and above the mantle, the mural on the ceiling...

Each of the 205 rooms in this place have the same fabulous, unimaginable decor.  

My research has underscored for me the fact that this is a HOME.  It is still owned by the original family.  It is not a museum.  It is not "operated" by a foundation.  It has not been turned over to the government to be maintained by taxpayers like you and me.  It is a HOME, not a house.

I have also discovered that after the stock market crash of 1929, the city of Asheville came to the Vanderbilts and asked that the home be a focal point for attracting tourists to the area.  THAT is why they opened the home.  I doubt seriously that the average visitor has any idea that the Vanderbilt family has done this to help out their friends and neighbors.  Every five years, the Vanderbilts have a complete appraisal done of their home for tax purposes.  How many of us would do that just be sure we were paying the right taxes - good or bad.

I'm sorry I can't share more photos of the interior of Biltmore; I am, however, honored to be invited into someone's home in the way and for the reasons the Vanderbilt's have,

:-) but I can still "talk story" about what I saw and took notes on !!!  :-)

G.W. Vanderbilt's Civil War, Titanic, WWII Connections (and other interesting information)

George Washington Vanderbilt II is named after his uncle who died young of tuberculosis contracted during the Civil War.  Not much of a connection, but there you have it.

George and Edith booked passage on the Titanic, but changed their minds at the last minute, sailed on another ship and arrived in New York before the Titanic.

During World War II the National Gallery of Art stored priceless paintings and sculptures in Biltmore's Music Room for safekeeping - even though the room was left unfinished by George Vanderbilt.  His grandsons had it finished in 1976.



Notice the upholstered ceiling beams.  I wonder what lucky person got the job of being interior designer for this room in 1976 ???

George was into scientific farming, stock breeding and forestry, establishing the first-of-its-kind forestry school in America.  The man that managed Biltmore's forests went on to become the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service.

Fredrick Law Olmsted, the man who was George's landscape architect, also designed the landscaping in New York's Central Park and the U.S. Capital grounds.

George's father was very much into art and George probably got his love of books and artwork from him.  Among other things, there are two Renoir's at Biltmore Estates.

George's grandfather made the first family fortune, and his grandsons run the Estate properties now, so I guess you could say George was the man in the middle.

Again, I found these photos at  http://www.romanticasheville.com/biltmore_house.htm

O-o-o-h, You Want PICTURES of Biltmore Estates!

Well, we have a few pictures of the outside; inside pictures were not allowed. 

When you first arrive at the (remaining) 8,000 acre estate, there is a stone entrance guarded by a wrought iron and (presumably) gold gate.  Once through there, one is given directions at the first intersection either to the house or the Antler Hill Village and Winery.  If you're headed to the house one passes under a highway:

and to several locations for parking lots.  We park and hop on a small bus to be carried to the front door of the "house." 

All 250 rooms of it.  (For our basic ticket price we got to see 44 rooms - and it took about an hour and a half. We didn't go the extra $10 apiece for the audio headsets; we probably should have.) 

Through the front door and...

that's the last indoor picture we were allowed to take.  I have searched high and low (and will continue to), but I have not found interior pictures anywhere.  I suppose pictures wouldn't do the rooms justice, what with 20 - 30 foot ceilings and rooms up to 90 feet long...  The architectural details are stunning in person, but I suspect they would lose something in the translation to photos.

No pictures?  My only option was to whip out the iPhone and take notes - lots of notes:

Arched column passages
Sunken glass domed entry
Domed ceilings
Taxidermy up high
Buffalo eagle sheep fish elk
Cloth covered domino tables

Exquisite woodworking carvings
5 Tapestry from 1500s
70' ceiling
Triple fireplace 6' high
Andirons 3' tall
Pipe organ !
Gallery 5 carved panels gold relief

Doorway drapes
Brkfst room ( always served lunch)
Carved Marble door frames

Bay window wall
Busts
Life size portrait of architect, Olmstead
Draped Tapestry ceiling

Music room, upholstered ceiling beams
5' deep fireplace
WW 2 stored priceless art here

Tapestry gallery big enough to put our whole house in - used for tea n music

Library ceiling, painted canvas w/chicken
Napoleon's chess set
Book gallery
Carved marble mantle
Carved wood wall above
Looking glass size magnifying glasses on study table
5' high globe

Stone stairs
Bedroom mantle shelf starts at 10' high
Quarter-sawn Oak walled sitting room

Fans on Christmas tree
Louis XV Room
Doors details

Basement ? Bachelors qtrs?
Ping pong. Bowling. Nudes?
9 changing rooms

Heated Swimming pool
High dive garden

Exercise room, rowing machine, p bars

Kitchen area:
Fresh fruit room
Walk in canned goods room
Walk in fridge (in 1890?)
Preserved foods room

Maids rooms - 5

Pastry kitchen
Rotisserie Kitchen
Main kitchen
Copper cookware
Butlers pantry n dumb waiter

20 seat servants dining room

Fan room to power pipe organ
2 Florists rooms
Brown laundry
Main laundry with huge belt driven barrel washing machine, 5 sinks
Drying room
Bachelors wing: off main dining room
Smoking room
Gun room off right side of house

and we're out the door.  But there are a lot of outdoor pictures!

If Biltmore brings in $56 million a year...

I was just reading some more on ol' George Washington Vanderbilt and his descendants.  The Biltmore Estate is a private, self-sufficient preservation of an American treasure.  It wouldn't surprise me now that they bring in over $100 million in revenue on everything they have going on there - maybe half-again as much as that.

Let's see.  There are how many National Parks?  64?

In 2009, there were 2,372,500 vehicles entering the just the Grand Canyon National Park...at $20 a car, that's almost $47 1/2 million.  And $28 million raised by the official fund raising arm of the park.  But let's just go with the $47 1/2 million.

$47 1/2 million x 64 parks is ... $3,036,800,000.  For those of you who are numerically impaired,
that's $3 billion 36 million 800 thousand dollars - give or take a car or two.  From PARKS.  And America is having trouble balancing it's budget ???  Shame on us.

A Gold Mine at the Biltmore Estate

Our tickets to get into the Biltmore Estate were $56 each.  That's with the hotel discount.  ("They" now tell me you can Google Biltmore Estate + Coupons and get some even better discounts.  Why am I always the last to know?)  With over a million visitors a year at $56 each, isn't that something like $56 million dollars a year?  That's not even counting $10 per person for head set tours, candlelight tours, Segway tours (you know, those gyroscope riding gadgets)  (HEY!  that's where I've seen those before!  Gyroscope in the Donald Duck comic books used to ride one, didn't he??), equestrian tours, souvenirs, etc.  I guess that means there is more than one kind of gold mine in North Carolina....

Wrinkles

I've discovered a wonderful way to get rid of wrinkles!  A combination of chocolate candy, Granny Beth's pecan balls, and Ben and Jerry's ice cream!  Fat removes wrinkles and smooths the skin beautifully!

The Vanderbilts and Biltmore Estates

Vanderbilt built Biltmore.  George Washington Vanderbilt, that is.

Their fortune began with Cornelius Vanderbilt, also known as "The Commodore," born in 1794 on Staten Island.   In 1810, at the age of 16 (!) Cornelius started a ferry business in New York harbor transporting passengers with one boat.  (Now you can't even get a job flippin' hamburgers at the age of 16...)  During the War of 1812 (the one where the British captured Washington, D.C. and burned the White House), Cornelius bought several more boats to carry supplies to American government outposts.  By then he was 18.

At 24, "The Commodore" sold the ferry business and started his own steamship company operating on the Hudson River.  He was like an original Sam Walton - he cut prices but improved accommodations.  Ultimately, he controlled traffic on the river, and he added the eastern seacoast to his routes.  By 1846, at the age of 52, he was a millionaire.

According to Wikipedia:  When the Civil War began in 1861, Vanderbilt attempted to donate his largest steamship, the Vanderbilt, to the Union navy. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles refused it, thinking its operation and maintenance too expensive for what he expected to be a short war. Vanderbilt had little choice but to lease it to the War Department, at prices set by ship brokers. When the Confederate ironclad Virginia (popularly known in the North as the Merrimack) wrought havoc with the Union blockading squadron at Hampton Roads, Virginia, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and President Abraham Lincoln called on Vanderbilt for help. This time he succeeded in donating the Vanderbilt to the Union navy, equipping it with a ram and staffing it with handpicked officers. It helped bottle up the Virginia, after which Vanderbilt converted it into a cruiser to hunt for the Confederate commerce raider Alabama...

Cornelius, aka "The Commodore," sold out of shipping, and there must have been a non-compete clause in his contract, because he switched his attention to railroads.  He began buying up railroads like we bought the B&O and Reading Railroad as children playing Monopoly.

At the time of his death in 1877, he was worth over $100 million dollars.  At the time, that was the largest personal fortune in America.

(TOTALLY off the subject, did you know "aka" meant "also known as" ???) 

When Cornelius Vanderbilt died, he left $1 million to Central University, which later became Vanderbilt University.  $1 million in 1877?  No wonder they changed the name to Vanderbilt...  Almost all of the balance of his fortune he left to his then 56 year old son, William Henry Vanderbilt. At HIS death nine years later, he had doubled the inheritance and was the richest man in the WORLD.

William Henry left the bulk of his estate to his two oldest sons, William Kissam and Cornelius II.  His youngest son, George Washington Vanderbilt, was a bibliophile - a lover of books.  HE is the one that built the Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina.  The others built monster homes in New York City - but they have all been torn down.

George wasn't married when he decided to build in Asheville.  Knowing that fact as we toured the home, it was easy to see that there wasn't much of a woman's influence in the construction and furnishing.  Don't get me wrong; it is magnificently beautiful.  But a woman would have done it differently, I think.  For one thing, it is 135,000 sq ft. (some say 175,000 - but what's 40,000 give or take among friends?)  No self respecting woman would want to sweep or mop 135,000 sq ft!  Men don't think about that though.

It is THE largest privately owned home in America.  George called it his "little mountain escape." (Sheesh!)  The Biltmore Estate sat on 125,000 acres of land, 85,000 acres having now been sold to the government and is the nucleus of  the Pisgah National Forest.  Let's see, that left 40,000 acres still belonging to George's descendants.  Nice.  But that's been whittled away until there is a paltry 8,000 acres left.  Bummer.  Such a shame.  Tsk-tsk.  That would hardly make a decent ranch in Texas...

Our Lodgings

The first thing that greeted us in Asheville was:

Not bad for the lobby of a lil' ol' country inn, uh, make that Country Inn.  We stayed at a Country Inn and Suites the first time years ago, and I've liked them ever since.  They're kinda halfway in between a motel and a hotel (but more on the hotel side.)  We carry our own things in (with a luggage cart), but access to all the rooms is from the inside, there is an elevator, the ambiance is great (as you can see), with fresh fruit and homemade chocolate chip cookies on the sofa table for the taking anytime along with hot tea, coffee, or hot chocolate.  The free full breakfast including biscuits, sausage gravy, sausage, eggs, waffles, milk, orange juice, etc. sells John on Country Inns every time.  If you shop online for the room you can get one for almost (but not quite) the same price as what we call a "cheapy."

The rooms are equipped with high-speed Internet, refrigerator, microwave, 32" TV, and queen size beds - very important when John is 6'3" and *** pounds.  (I'm only 5'2", but let's just say John has started calling me Tubby Cat.  He gets away with that because cats are nice to curl up with...)  At home we have a king size bed, on Kauai we had a king size bed, but in Danville we've been making do with a double bed.  After five months and now with another three months to go, that double bed seems to get smaller every morning, so we REALLY appreciate the queen beds here!

We could have gotten a Jacuzzi suite; that would have been fun.  Asheville is normally a ski area, but they've only had a light dusting of snow so far this year.  (The Texas drought must have come a callin'.)  A waitress said yesterday that, for the last two years, by this time there was so much snow on the ground businesses had to close.  In fact, considering this is a resort/ski area, the price we paid for the room at this time of year was probably pretty darn cheap!


When I was eight or nine years old, our family moved from Texas to Nashville, Tennessee.  Our house wasn't available to move into yet, so Daddy put us up in the Biltmore Hotel.  All I can remember is that it had an inside, heated swimming pool, but I do remember Daddy being pleased as punch.  Soon, as an adult, I guess I might discover what all of the hub-bub over "Biltmore" was about.

Asheville, North Carolina

When the kids were young, before the Internet (in fact, before personal computers!) I would travel, by car, with a full set of encyclopedias.  I would have them look up different things as we traveled - just like I occasionally Google things for the blog.  For me, it's not enough to say, "That's a pretty town," or "That's a pretty building."  I want to know the STORY behind things.  Usually, when I research, there is a piece of information that is memorable or remarkable, and that's what I include in the blog posting.

Well, not so with Asheville, North Carolina!  There's so much interesting info I don't know where to start! 

Geographically, it is nestled between the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountain ranges.  That's cool enough in itself.  We're in the way-far western part of North Carolina - within spittin' distance of Tennessee.  Gatlinburg (Tennessee) is only 70 more miles west.  There are trees - forest of them - everywhere (which is probably why there is so much furniture built in North Carolina.)  We were surprised at how many hardwood trees there are vs. soft pine.  (All the better to build furniture with!)  Pine would have been prettier year round, but you can't beat hardwood for fall foliage - or furniture.  Unfortunately, it's winter, so there is NO foliage, but not winter enough for snow.  We didn't come for the scenery though - this time.  We came to see the Biltmore Estate.

But back to Asheville itself.  According to Wikipedia:

Asheville pops up on national rankings for a variety of things:
Modern Maturity named it one of "The 50 Most Alive Places To Be,"  
AmericanStyle magazine called it one of "America's Top 25 Arts Destinations,"  
Self magazine labeled it the "Happiest City for Women," 
it is one of AARP Magazine's "Best Places to Reinvent Your Life",  
and was proclaimed the "New Freak Capital of the U.S." by Rolling Stone. 
Asheville has also been called "a New Age Mecca" by CBS News' Eye On America,  
In August 2006 Asheville was named one the "Best Outside Towns" by Outside Magazine. 
In the 2008 book, The Geography of Bliss, by Eric Weiner, Asheville was cited by the author as one of the happiest places in the United States. 

In 2011 Asheville was picked as one of the “10 Most Beautiful Places in America” by Good Morning America. 

In 2007, Asheville was named one of the top seven places to live in the U.S. by Frommer's Cities Ranked and Rated, 

and #23 of 200 metro areas for business and careers by Forbes. 
It was also named one of the world's top 12 must-see destinations for 2007 by Frommer's travel guides.

WOW.  What else is there to say?


Well, in the beginning, probably even the beginning of the beginning, the land around here belonged to the Cherokee nation.  (We all know how that turned out: The Trail of Tears.)  But the misery Europeans brought started way before the Trail of Tears.  De Soto came in 1540 and brought all kinds of European diseases the Cherokee had no resistance to, and the Cherokee died by the droves.  Even so, for the next 300 years this area was simply free hunting ground for game.


Asheville the town actually began as Morristown in 1793, and located where two Indian trails crossed.  (That's less than 20 years after the American Revolution.)  Morristown incorporated and changed it's name to Asheville in 1797.

Ten years earlier a soldier came and built a log cabin in the area.  Cherokee hunters kidnapped and killed him.  Bad idea.  He had a twin brother and brother-in-law.  We all know how that works.  After they got his body back the whole family came and settled here in the Swannanoa Valley at Bee Tree Creek.  And thus began the European (now American) occupation of the Cherokee Nation.


There were a couple of itty-bitty Civil War battles fought here - just because it was here.  There were no railroads to or from here, and it was of no real strategic value, literally nothing worth dying for.

The first railroad TO reach here was in 1880, and it became part of the Richmond and Danville Railroads.  (Hey!  I know where Danville is!)  The railroads brought steady growth to Asheville, but the last passenger train ran in 1968.  (Anybody here ever road a passenger train?  I did a couple of times back in the late 1950's and early 1960's.  Quite an experience.)


Asheville had the first electric street railway lines in the state of North Carolina, the first of which opened in 1889.  They were replaced by buses in 1934.

With the collapse of the stock market in the late 1920's, eight of the nine banks in Asheville failed.  The town itself had issued so many bonds to pay for the construction of city infrastructure that it was $56 MILLION in debt in 1929.  Instead of defaulting on those bonds, Asheville took it's time and paid off every penny of that debt.  Took them FIFTY years, but they did it.  Now, THAT's my kinda town.  Woo-hoo!  Good for y'all!  That's so cool it makes me want to move here!

So, that's pretty much Asheville.  You'll have to come back tomorrow to learn the story about the Biltmore Estate.  (I love to "talk story," as they say in Hawaii.)

Surprise!

I got up this morning, took John to work, came home, ate breakfast, and got a text from him saying the hospital was sending him home because there were so few echos to do.  Woo-hoo!  a paid day off ! Yea!!

So I hop in the car, go get him, and a few minutes down the road he says, "I'm not supposed to go in tomorrow either."  WHAT!  TWO days off!  Awesome!  And then it's the weekend, so that's a total of FOUR days off!

What to do, what to do?!  Well, we had talked about going down to North Carolina (how does one go down when one is going North?) to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville.  Guess maybe we'll just move the plans up a couple of days and treat ourselves to an overnight stay!  Happy New Year!!

Counting Down? or Counting Up?

About four weeks ago I posted our "Count Down" to leaving Danville.  Since then we have tried to eat up as many groceries as we could, and I have resisted buying more than the minimum we need - which has been pretty tough seeing as it was CHRISTMAS!  When considering Christmas gifts for each other we realized just two weeks after Christmas we'd be moving somewhere else.  I've been mentally packing all of our belongings.

Well, a few days ago, the supervisor asked for John to please extend his contract here in Danville.  (Stress the word "please.")  The decision of where John wants to work is ALWAYS entirely his - I'm not the one who has to get up every morning and go spend eight hours with (good or bad) co-workers or supervisors.  He may just be tired of sight-seeing in the current location, maybe it's too hot or too cold or too rainy, maybe he doesn't like our accommodations, maybe ...  well, could be any number of reasons he wants to not re-up.

He came home, let me know how very much they want him to stay, and told me that he would let them know the next day.  He shared his pros and cons with me, slept on it, got up the next day and said he would be re-uping (is that a word?)  Yesterday we were sent a new contract basically extending us until April 8th, with time off to go to a cardiovascular symposium written into the contract.

Time for me to mentally shift gears again and (literally) beef up the refrigerator, laundry detergent, bath soap (clean is always good!) and NEW LOCATIONS TO PLAY TOURIST!  YEA!! 

Gift Returns

Nothing in life is simple...

Well, almost nothing.  Working with Amazon.com on returns is simple enough, and they refund the money before they even have the product back.  Can't beat that.  But getting the package on the road ain't so very simple.

I printed out the UPS locations which included hours of operation - which I didn't look at.  Bright and early Monday morning I'm following Lil' Miss GPS and find the main UPS location in Danville easily enough.  But it was closed Monday for the holiday.  No problem.  I'll go to one of those private shipping locations that accepts UPS shipments.  Re-program Lil' Miss, and I'm on my way. 

Oops.  I see the location before Lil' Miss and almost miss turning in.  (I never panic about that; I just go around the block.  That works everywhere I've been except California - specifically San Francisco and L.A. - because they don't believe in "blocks" being shape like squares or rectangles...  One could wander off and fall into the Pacific Ocean before finding ones way back to a destination!)

I turn in, find a parking space, park, radio off, (I always do that, so that whenever I re-start the engine I can hear if it is hummin' or knockin'), ignition off, seat back, seat belt off, sunglasses off, get purse, keys in purse, wrestle package around the steering wheel and out the door.  Whew!

Confidently walk to the door of the store - and it's locked.  Aargh!  Back to the car, get the print out, find the phone number, call the store.  I'm welcomed by that oh, so annoying, tone and recording stating, "The number you dialed is no longer a working number..." (In the first place, I haven't "dialed" a number in a long, long time, and in the second place I'm sitting in front of the store, and there is every evidence it is a functioning shipping location accepting UPS and Fed Ex and anything else one might want to ship.)  Aargh!

Deep breath.  Amazon is refunding the money within two days (so John can go ahead and order the camera he thinks he has decided he wants), and I have 30 days to get this puppy back to Amazon before they re-charge our account.  I'll go home and come back tomorrow.

It's tomorrow now.  It is raining cats and dogs.  Thirty-mile-an-hour winds.    Thirty-nine degrees, less wind-chill.  Nothing in life is simple...  I'm down for a cup of tea and a chocolate bar - for BREAKFAST!

Christmas Gifts

Well, for Christmas John got a bullet smoothie maker (officially known as a single serve blender.)  He made us a strawberry-banana smoothie that was pretty good.  I said, "Does this mean we can make a New Year's resolution to eat healthy smoothie's every night instead of chocolate candy?"  He said, "Sure.  Right after I finish eating a handful of double-dipped chocolate covered peanuts..."

I got him a super zoomie camera.  He used to be a professional photographer - has one camera that cost over $1,000 twenty-five years ago.  He's gone through many upgrades over the years, and I bought him another one for Christmas this year.  I was just SURE I'd gotten the very exact one he'd been looking at.  Wrong.  I always get it wrong.  Give me a screw or bolt, send me to the hardware store to get a dozen exactly like it.  I will have everyone including the store manager help me, and I will inevitably come home with the wrong thing...

I told him that it is totally okay to return the camera; in fact, I DEMAND that he return it and order what he wants.  So, John spent the afternoon surfing the internet, shopping for the one he really wants.  Now, John is not like most men - he LOVES to shop.  (No, ladies, you can't have him.  He's mine!)  And so to spend Christmas afternoon singing Christmas carols and surfing the net was just his cup of tea.  He hasn't told me which one he's decided on yet, but when he does I'll get things worked out to return and reorder - as long as he's looking over my shoulder, double-checking me and then verifying before I hit the send button.

Maybe, after he gets the new camera, the bear will come back by, and we can get some really good pictures!

Christmas Eve Gift!

"Christmas Eve gift!"  That's a challenge our family has perpetrated on each other for as long as I can remember.  It's simple.  When you see or speak to a family member for the first time on Christmas Eve, and if you say "Christmas Eve gift!" first, they have to give you one of your Christmas presents right then and there.

To my knowledge, no one ever designated what KIND of present it should be:  Naughty? or nice?  One year Granpa gave me a gallon jar of whole dill pickles.  Took us a whole year to eat those monsters.  Another time he gave me a box of Millionaire chocolates.  It's the thought that counts, right?  (I wonder if I had been a sour-puss one year and a sweetheart the other?)


Over the years, as my brothers and sister moved apart, and as we have passed that tradition down to our children who have set up their own households, it's the game that has come to matter, and not the gift.

We have learned that if I call you, you answer the phone "Christmas Eve Gift!" and I lose.  (That kinda puts a crimp in holiday phone calls.)  There are arguments going around about whether text messaging counts, or emails.  When John and I were on Kauai, Christmas came to Texas six hours before it came to us.  The question then became, by who's clock was it Christmas Eve?  With Granpa and our kids, I am the undisputed champion.  (Probably because they let me be...)  But one year I totally, completely forgot.  I think it was our youngest son, Christopher, who nailed me first.  I'm not sure I have EVER heard such total, unabandoned joy come out of an adult before - which was the best Christmas Eve gift I could have.

I gotta be dreamin'!

Doin' the deer watch out the kitchen window as usual.  There seem to be a lot more animals than usual; that's cool.  Wait a minute!  What's in heaven's name is THAT?  A baby elephant!?  I blink.  I blink a few more times.  Oh my goodness!  A CAMEL?  and two GORILLAS! 

Where's the camera!  Out the front door, oonch over to the edge of the porch, back against the wall.  Slowly, ever so slowly, turn the camera on, inch my head and the camera around the corner of the house.  Perfect shot ... push the button and ... the battery is deader than a doornail.  Aargh!  I'm gonna shoot John.  (You see, it's his camera so it must be his fault.)

The alarm clock goes off, and I wake up - not surprised that the elephant, camel, and gorillas are a dream, and not surprised that the dead battery is not.  This man needs a new camera for Christmas...

Advertisements

Hey!  That's kind of interesting.  Every post has a different set of ads!  I guess I thought it was an "ad of the day" thing, but if you click on different posts you come up with different ads.  Interesting.

They also said that when I first started letting Google put ads on the blog, the ads would not be very "targeted" to the content I was putting out there.  They have this thing called a "crawler" (I'm guessing that's a program not a person :-) that "crawls" through my blog, ( "Tron" like? ) picking out key words and making assumptions as to what advertisers might be a good link.  The more it crawls around (this is gettin' creepy...) the more targeted the ads get.  There seem to be a lot of hotels and vacation kinds of ads, but I'm thinkin' a medical traveler company should start advertising here ...  but what do I know?  Also, maybe companies that have personnel that travel a lot?  I can contract directly with companies to put their ads on our blog, too.

Traveling doesn't have to be all hotel rooms and airports, fast food and no fun.  (I mean good clean fun.)  There is so much to see and do out here in the world, especially if family can travel with you!  Folks need to EMBRACE life a lot more.  It can be glorious if you let it, if you laugh about the trials and tribulations instead of letting them get you down.  Joy, folks.  It's all about joy.

Spotsylvania

Okay.  I've had my R&R.  I can go back to the Civil War and this last battleground we visited.  I really am thankful that these fields have been set aside for posterity.  One, it honors those who fought; Two, it gives all of us an opportunity to try to understand, reflect on, and come to grips with war.  Is war necessary?  Well, microscopically, if you have a neighborhood bully that beats up on his family and has no regard for neighbors or authority, somebody will have to stand up to him sooner or later or you all become victims of the brutality.  MACROscopically, it becomes nation against nation, and that's called war.

So, to Spotslyvania, where the worst of the hand-to-hand combat of the entire Civil War took place.

Remember the timeline and that all of these locations are within just a very few miles of each other:

December, 1862 was the first Battle of Fredericksburg and the Sunken Road with Lee vs. Burnside.
April into May, 1863 was the second Battle of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville with Lee vs. Hooker
Then up to Gettysburg, and back down to
May 5-6, 1864 for the Wilderness Campaign with Lee vs. Grant for the first time.

It is now May 8 - 21, 1864 in Spotsylvania.  From here on out it will be Lee vs. Grant in a series of battles leading to the battle at Richmond and nine month seige of Petersburg, and finally to the surrender at Appomattox Court House.  (If you're just finding us and want to know more, scroll down the list of blog postings to those battle posts.)  Realize how many of Lincoln's generals Lee has gone up against and defeated.  Lee really was an amazing military genius.  Grant was pretty smart himself, but he was also tenacious.

So, to the battle.  As you can see by the map, the "Bloody Angle" as it became forever known, would have been a real bummer to defend.  Grant surprised Lee, but the southerners were up to the challenge.  Grant's forces broke through the Confederate line at one point, the rebels beat them back and held them while others built a new line of defense a mile back - one that wouldn't be sticking out there and able to be attacked from all sides.

Can you imagine, looking at that picture, how bullets would be coming from every direction, from friend and foe alike?!  And there were a LOT of bullets.  So many that they CUT DOWN a 22" oak tree!

That wasn't blown up by a cannon, it was gunshots, small arms fire, that chewed in down.  An OAK !  What chance did a man have?

This is not a natural contour of the land.  This is the breastwork the rebs built by hand.  Over the years erosion and people walking on it have brought in down (which is why they have signs all over the place asking you to keep off of it.)  During the battle this would have been at least as tall as a man - and therefore a really good place to hide from all of those bullets.  Above, you're looking down the line; below, you're looking across the breastwork into the Bloody Angle.  I used to tell our sons, "use your vast and vivid imagination."  Now, imagine the ground in front of you covered in blue and grey uniforms in hand-to-hand combat, kill or be killed, no where to run...

That's about a 22" oak tree on the left.  Imagine bullets cutting it down...


If you've never been to a battlefield, the National Park Service has allowed states to erect monuments in positions where their battalions took a stand.  I am continually surprised by whose boys fought where and by the fact of how many of them were there, all in one in a group.  When someone enlists now, one at a time or ten from the same town, they are scattered across the military branch they chose to serve to lots of different places.  At least that prevents a whole region from losing a lot of its men in a single battle/engagement.

From here Grant pursued Lee to the North Anna River, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and finally to surrender at Appomattox.

All of that fighting at the Bloody Angle, "all for nothing more substantial than ticks on the clock and a few inches of ravaged landscape."  True, but the bigger picture was a fight for states rights: the right to continue slavery in order to uphold the economic survival of the south.  When you think about it, isn't that what we are still doing today?  Not on the battlefield, but in politics, in our courts.  I used to think that it was alright for California to become a welfare state, to tax their citizens and businesses to the bone.  Now they're talking about filing for bankruptcy, and want MY tax dollars to bail them out, AND raise my taxes to do it.  Unintended consequences of total freedom ...  oops.  I swerved into politics.  But, "all for nothing more substantial than ticks on the clock and a few inches of ravaged landscape" set me off.  That statement is microscopically correct - but macroscopically incorrect.

We're running out of contract time in Virginia and will be moving on after the first of the year.  Still don't know where to yet, or whether we will be able to go back to Tyler for even a few days.  But trust me, I'll keep you "posted."   :-)