fog and moon

forgive me if i go all golly-gee-whiz on you, but it is an amazing thing to me to be here at my home waiting for people i never heard of to post their home movies.

in general when i hear about a thing happening in the world, i just go to youtube and start searching for video of it, which is a stunning concept in itself if you care to think about it.

but specifically, i was waiting for anything about the performance of the foghorn requiem at souter light.

i'm a musician and a composer, so performances and public art are of general interest to me, but a thing on such large scale that it has to be directed by use of GPS technology and computer sequencing is such and amazing thing to me.

there are some who believe musical performances need to be held in controlled little indoor spaces where every nuance of every note comes out, but i was spoiled for that view by having read all the works of john cage early in my college career.

in his theory, the performance of music includes whatever else happens during it. coughing, fire sirens, uncomfortable silences, all of it.

and with this foghorn piece, it is designed for the sound of it to reach the crowd on the shore, which means taking into account WIND SPEEDS and oh, my! what a collection of instruments: brass bands, single soloists, horns on ships out in the water, and the huge and powerful foghorn.

and the crowd! you do a thing like that and there's no even pretending to put people in seats and call it a concert, so you have a free range audience and they shout and laugh and check their guidebooks and cover their ears and i have been watching clip after clip of this thing to try to get some concept of what it was like because of course a performance like that is not only never replicated, but it is probably never going to be approximated and no amount of careful recording will tell you what it was like to be there.

i have waded through every clip i can find on this incredible thing and here are some of my favorites.

in other news, here at home, the moon was full. the best view of the moon from anywhere near my house is right here from my desk, but because of the mountain, the moon is pretty high in the sky before it clears my horizon, which means the moon never appears as huge here as it does places where you can look at a moonrise against a low and distant horizon.

it's ok, i'm with the band.

there were a lot of people carrying the name carr in the mid 19th century in springport and aurora, ny. and of course aurora was the civil war recruiting center for the area, so the records have them all enlisting there.

i am just going to hazard a guess that they're mostly family of some kind just because of the sheer number of them and the number of them who share first names. a lot of these guys are named george.

what makes the carrs of this area interesting to me is that a weirdly high percentage of them enlisted as musicians with the 19th new york infantry, later redesignated the 3d light artillery. in 1861 there are maybe twenty musicians to a regiment, but four of those guys in the 3d artillery are carrs.

CARR, ALBERT H.—Age, 27 years., Enlisted, November 19,1861,
at Auburn; muistered in as musician in the band Nineteenth Infantry, May 4, 1861, to serve two years; designation of regiment
changed to Third Artillery, December 11, 1861; discharged, August 30, 1862, by order of War Department.

CARR, ASHBEL W.—Age, 34 years. Enlisted', May 4, 1861, at
Auburn; mustered in as musician in the band, Nineteenth. Infantry, November119,1861, to serve two years; designation of regiment changed to Third Artillery, December 11,1861; discharged
for disability, March 1862, at Fort Corcoran, Va.

CARR, GEORGE E.—Age, 21 yeans. Enlisted, May 4, 1861, at
Auburn; mustered in as musician in the band, Nineteenth Infantry, November 19,1861 to serve two years; designation of regiment changed to Third Artillery, December 11, 1861; transferred, August 30, 1862, to Battery G and discharged, June 2, 1863; again enlisted, August 20,1863, and mustered in as a private, Battery K; captured, February 2,1864, at Beech Grove, N. C.; paroled, date not stated; discharged on writ of habeas corpus, date not recorded.

CARR, HENRY C—Age, 22 yeans. Enlisted, May 4,1861, at Auburn ; mustered in as musician in band, Nineteenth Infantry, May
4, 1861, to serve two years; designation of. regiment changed to
Third Artillery, Decemiber 11, 1861; discharged, May 2, 1862, at
Newbern, N. C.

i started looking at these guys because i happened to have been walking by the grave of ashbel carr and noticed that his headstone says MUSICIAN, which is a thing i have never seen. i have known forever about the presence of bands in the civil war and their work which involved getting shot at a lot like the other guys, only carrying horns and also their secondary jobs working as medics and corpsmen in the grisly hospitals.

there's a really good article about these bands here. i came across this article because i was trying to figure out why, of these four guys, one was transferred to another unit on august 30 1862 and why one would be discharged on that same date by order of the war department. usually they just discharge the guys for disability or muster them out when it's time, but a discharge by order of the war department made me wonder.

what i learned was that in the second year of the war the expense of every regiment having its own band was just too enormous so the war department discharged the bandsmen. some of them re-enlisted as regular soldiers, and some had seen enough and went home.

because i am a musician by training and trade, i feel a kinship with these men more maybe than others.

so then as i was reading these records, i noticed the words "discharged on writ of habeas corpus", which is a thing i had not yet seen, so of course i googled it and it turns out it's not all that uncommon.

the tricky bit now for me was figuring out what that actually MEANT, because while i have a rudimentary understanding of what habeas corpus is, i did not get how that might apply to the discharge of a soldier.

so here's a nice dense article about the writ of habeas corpus in the civil war, but it doesn't really explain what's going on when you see it in the discharge records. apparently (and this just gives some examples) when soldiers are discharged on writ of habeas corpus they are usually either underaged, or else they enlisted in the army as a way to escape legal prosecution at home.

when you read the brief service records of the men in a unit you can get some clues about how things were going for them.

in this particular regiment there seem to be a higher number than usual of men who show up in the inspection or muster roll but there is no record of service. there are also a lot of guys who go missing after furlough. some of them return and some don't.

on the other hand, there's a high incidence of the words "captured" and "andersonville" in these records, too.

between the phisterer tables and the regimental history it would be possible to think that henry carr was simply among those of his unit up for discharge in may 1862, but his record says his term of enlistment was for two years, so even though his record does not specify that he is discharged for disability, he is discharged a year early and from a town with a union hospital pretty soon after his unit took its highest casualties of the war.

the discharge of ashabel carr is a little more of a mystery to me, though. during the time of his service only five men of his unit are wounded at all, and fort corcoran, while overcrowded, had some of the nicest conditions of any war posting because of its accessibility and proximity to cities.

so i just don't know.


but his headstone is on chestnut hill, and he was a musician.

 

dear mr. kiriakou,

on thursdays i write a letter to mr. john kiriakou.

mr. kiriakou is in a federal prison for leaking the information that the us government is engaged in illegal torture of prisoners. the agents who carried out the torture are not, i note, in prison.

it is not ok for a government to engage in acts against its own laws and it is not ok for a government to enact laws to prevent it from being exposed when it does so.

the only good government is an open and honest government, so these people who are letting sunlight in so the citizens of the country can see and discuss what does and does not go on in our names and the name of freedom are heroes.

they are serving the best patriotic ideals, at great cost to themselves.

mr. john kiriakou is in prison for work he did on my behalf, so each thursday i write him a letter.

there's nothing i can tell him about why his sacrifice is important; he already knows that.

but prison life is tedious and terrifying and then tedious.

and tedious.

...i hear. i've never been in prison, but i hear that it involves a huge amount of tedium and that distractions are much welcome.

i want to make mr. kiriakou cookies, but instead i send him a letter each week briefly thanking him for his work and then moving on to a page of nice chitchat, which i hope will break up his time just a little bit.

here are some excerpts:

--
today it is sunny and warm here, which is a welcome change from last week, when it was nothing but filthy blattering, slat-blasting, barrel-busting rain and the road crews had to hot juggle to keep up with the washouts.

a pair of orioles has been sitting nearly every day in the tree outside my window. i had never seen orioles before where i live.

i am sore and muddy and i have not yet had a shower this evening, so i smell kind of funky. today i went mountain biking and the ground is slippery and i don’t yet have a sense for how my wheels will roll so i am still riding tentatively and slowly, like granny panties.

this was not any good last night when we were riding the season opener in our local race series. we were to have opened LAST week, but see rain, above.

--

tonight for dinner i made macaroni and cheese. i’m almost fifty years old and i only made real mac and cheese for the first time this year. i made it tonight with american cheese along with fontinella and gouda since i happened to have gouda, see above.

i like american cheese in it because american cheese makes it smooth and creamy.
and lately i have been feeling like i don’t get enough protein and today in the grocery store i saw a vegetarian kielbasa that looked interesting so i bought that and fried it in a pan and tossed it sliced in the casserole when i put the mac and cheese in to bake.

yesterday was a race day and we were riding the black course, which is difficult and technical. i was slow, but i do pretty well for a little middle aged lady.

this afternoon it started to rain and it is expected to rain until sometime next week.

--

the oyster mushrooms in my kitchen have fruited again and i think tomorrow night i will cook something with them. it’s just a kit my mom got me for my birthday last winter, but it’s yielded a number of good mushrooms.

i’m thinking, though, how to grow mushrooms on a regular basis and it turns out after some googling that you can grow them easily if not quickly so long as you have starter stock, so this week i’m going to look into getting the shavings and straw i’d have to use to grow them regularly. it’s supposedly a six month project, but cool to do.

i'm probably going to get put on a terrorist watch list for writing these letters, but that sort of thing is why whistleblowers are going to prison in the first place.

foghorn requiem

i heard about this thing.

it is about the coolest thing ever (ok, there's a lot of room up on that platform), but tomorrow they're going to perform the foghorn requiem at souter light.

apparently they're enlisting the aid of any vessel at all to come and play the piece, which will be GPS and computer enabled so that the sounding of the horns will REACH THE SPECTATORS ON SHORE at the proper time in the piece.

maps! GPS! lighthouses! historical locations! oddball musical compositions!

i could just die.

i am very sad i can't just go there and see it.

i hope, hope, HOPE there will be tons of videos and recordings.

lewis winegar on chestnut hill

right, so. i'm trying to write my geocaching logs for the 5th of may and of course i can't just go to a cache and find it, because GRAVES.

there's a cache just off the edge of the chestnut hill cemetery in aurora, ny, and of course the best parking is up in the cemetery and of course the guy i happened to have seen when i got out of the car looks interesting to me.

so we're off and running again.

sometimes when the guys went away to the civil war they came back just fine, but a lot of the guys didn't come back ok. it's not a terrible big surprise to any of us, because war is bad for people and even though civil war veterans got pretty decent benefits by the standards of the day, a lot of the guys came back with tempers, or habits.

it usually doesn't say that in the records, but you know the signs.

louis winegar was a sargeant of company I 9th new york heavy artillery. that's what it says on his official gubmint issue headstone. when the company "was honorably discharged and mustered out, under Col. James W. Snyder, July 6, 1865, at Washington, D. C., the men not entitled to be discharged then having been formed into four companies and transferred, June 27, 1865, to the 2d N. Y. Volunteer Artillery as Companies I, K, L and M of the latter."

mr. winegar's record indicates that he is one of those soldiers transferred to the 2d artillery for the remainder of his service.

there is available online a picture of M company of this regiment; although mr. winegar is not in this company, it is perhaps safe to think that his company would have looked similar to these men. you should go look.

here's what the official rosters say of mr. winegar:

9th artillery

WINEGAR , LEWAS.—Age, 21 years. Enlisted, December 22,
1863, at Springport; mustered in as private, Co. I, December
30, 1863, to serve three years; transferred to Co. M, Second
Artillery, June 27, 1865.

2d artillery

WINEGAR, LEWIS.—Age, 21 years. Enlisted, Deoember 22,
1863, at Springport; mustered in as private, Co. I, Ninth New
York Artillery, Deoember 30, 1863, to serve, three years; transferred to Co. I, this regiment, June 27, 1865; mustered out, November 21, 1865, at Washington, D. C, as of Second Company,
Second Battery, Veteran Reserve Corps.

there are some indications that his life does not go well after he leaves the army. we don't know that it's causative; some people aren't doing that well before they join the army.

mr. winegar lives until 1909, but the 1902 listing of survivors of his regiment does not include him.

the census records list him as a carpenter and that he has a wife, elizabeth, but it's the newspapers that tell his story so i'm just going to quote you the relevant passages and let you draw your own conclusions.

i am linking you to the full pages, and if you have time, i REALLY recommend reading the digitized copies of the originals because there is a BOATLOAD of interesting stuff there.


union springs advertiser, thursday may 13, 1880

Louis Winegar, an account of whose
arrest appears in another column, has been
committed to jail by Justice Cootes. to
await the action of the grand jury.

Louis Winegar, residing at No. 8
lansing street, adopted the Sprague shot-gun
policy in ejecting a German music teacher
from his house Saturday afternoon. It
seems that the professor is giving music
lessons to Winegar's wife, and went to the
bouse for that purpose. He was invited in
by Mrs. Winegar, when her husband, who
was home and a little the worse off for
liquor, proceeded to serve a writ of ejectment upon him, with a shot-gun. The
professor didn't stand on ceremony but
bolted and made the best time on record,
down street, not excepting the time made
by the special train which took Vanderbilt
and other railroad magnates to Cleveland
the other day. After the professor's sudden departure the ram-crazed husband
turned on his wife whose cries brought
to her assistance the neighbors, who secured Wlnegar with a rope. A warrant
was sworn out for Wlnegar by a neighbor,
and Officer Cook went up and arrested
him. He occupies a cell in the calaboose.
— Auburn Corr. Syracuse Standard.

auburn evening auburnian, saturday april 16, 1881

PICTURES OF CITY LIFE
DRAWN BY THE AUBURNIAN'S
PENCIL PROPELLORS

News From All Quarters of the Mu­nicipality of Every Kind  and for
Everybody's Reading-:
Recorder Cootes disposed of a number
of minor offenders this morning. John
Malady for intoxication and disorderly
conduct was sentenced to pay $10 or 65
day in the penitentiary. A man with the
jaw breaking name of Albert Sieltlikowska,
paid $5 for drunkenness. Lewis Winegar 
for indulging too freely in the ardent paid
$5 for his entertainment. James Crow,
whose name is indicative of a filthy bird,
while drunk had the misfortune to fall into
a stench trap of some kind and the effluvia
arising from his clothing was almost sick­ening.
The court disposed of him hurried­ly
by imposing a $5 fine which Crow paid
John Murphy arrested for intoxication, not
having $3 about him to pay bis fine with,
went to jail for fifteen days. William
May word, intoxication; paid $4. Edmund
Dugan went up for fifteen days, to get sober in.

auburn bulletin, tuesday january 14, 1890

A Family Jar.
Lewis Winegar of 8 Lansing street
was arrested this afternoon on complaint
of his wife who charges him with threat­
ening to kill her. Mrs.. Winegar called
at the City hall Saturday night and
claimed that her husband had. driven her
from the house, threatening to kill her
with a part of a heating stove. She
swore out a peace warrant, yesterday,
and the husband will be compelled to
give bonds to keep the peace.



union springs advertiser, thursday may 17, 1894

— Lewis Winegar, late of the
Soldiers' Home at Bath, is visiting
friends in town.

union springs advertiser, thursday september 8, 1904

—Alexander Stewart and Louis 
Winegar have been sentenced to
the county jail for sixty days for
disorderly conduct.

union springs advertiser, thursday may 10, 1906

— Lewis Winegar, the veteran
soldier, has been located at Bath,
Stuben county, where he is working at his trade as a carpenter. He
did not enter the Soldiers' Home.

union springs advertiser, thursday march 22, 1906

— An Old Veteran Missing On
the 13th day of February last Louis 
Winegar, a veteran of the civil
war, left Union Springs for the
Soldiers' Home at Bath. He was
last seen on the east shore of Cayuga lake about midway between
Union Springs and Cayuga, enquiring if he could cross on the
ice. He has not arrived at the
Bath Home and fears are entertained that he may be drowned.
He carried a satchel and had money
sufficient to pay his expenses to
Bath. Winegar is about sixtythree years old, weight 175, dark
complexion; eruptions on face; has
drink habit. Any information will
be gratefully received by A. A
Hoff Post, 494, G. A. R , Union
Springs, N. Y.

union springs advertiser, thursday november 12, 1908

—Louis Winegar and Alexander
C. Stewart have gone to the Soldiers Home at Bath for the winter.


union springs advertiser, thursday october 7, 1909

—Lewis Winegar, a native of
this place and an inmate of the
Bath soldiers' home, was picked
up in an unconscious condition on
South Division streeet, Auburn,
Wednesday morning. It was supposed at first that he was intoxicated but at the hospital it was
found that was a mistake and that
he was suffering from a fractured
hip. He had been on the roadside
all night.

port byron chronicle, saturday october 9, 1909

Lewis Winegar, an aged veteran of
the Civil war, was found Wednesday
morning in the western outskirts of
Auburn, suffering with a fractured hip.

auburn citizen, saturday october 9, 1909

WINEGAR IS DEAD.
Shock and Exposure Proved too
Much for Old Veteran.
Lewis Winegar, the old man who was found In an unconscious condition
in South Division street near
Paul's corners Thursday morning
and who It was afterwards found was
suffering from a fractured hip caused by a fall the previous night and
remained by the roadside all night, died at the City hospital last night
from shock aud exposure.
Winegar was an old soldier and has been living at the Soldiers' home
at Bath. He came here a few days ago to visit friends in Aurelius and intended to go back today.
The funeral arraugoments are incomplete.

union springs advertiser, thursday may 19, 1910

MEMORIAL DAY PROGRAM.
Veterans will proceed In carriages to
decorate graves in outlying cemeteries
in the forenoon, leaving here at 9:oo
o'clock. Flowers should be left in the
vacant store next to D. Everett's before
that time.
Later in the forenoon veterans will
decorate graves in village cameteries.
No band has been engaged tor this
year.
Veterans will meet in Post rooms at
3:00 o'clock and march to Baptist
church where services will be held at
3:30. Address by Rev, A. E. Atwater of
Syracuse, former pastor of the M. E.
church.

Prayer by Rev. E. E. Edwards.
Music by Union Springs brass sextette.
singing by Presbyterian choir
Song by Harlsod Yawger.
Reading of Lincoln's Gettysenrg address, by Fred Myers
Reading the names of honored dead.
Decorating chairs commemorating
live comrades who have died within
the past year: Lewis Winegar, Peter
Me Kenny, T. J. Mereereau, John R.
Krambley and Thomas Knspp — by
Tliomaa itureh, Edwin Hill, Willi.
Kllaworth, Henry Bailiner[?] and [illegible]
Shank.


alexander stewart and lewis winegar served together in the 9th heavy artillery.  mr. stewart is on record as being employed from time to time by the city of auburn as a day laborer. in his later years mr. steewart was active in going to veterans' reunions and apparently getting drunk and cutting loose with his old friend.

science you can do at home

if you've known me for more than ten minutes, you know that i am a big fan of citizen science projects.

home science is awesome.

so here's a little thing you can do: you can measure your intestinal transit time.

why would you want to do such a thing?

because how your body works is cool. plus it can be handy medically to know what your baseline is for intestinal transit time so that if you get an illness where they need to measure that time, you already know what yours is likely to be when you're healthy.

plus did i mention science?

and medical sources will tell you that it's an inexpensive test and can be done with dye capsules or charcoal capsules or even radio-opaque markers, but really and truly, you can simply eat some corn.

how's that for cheap?

note what time you ate the corn, and note what time it comes out the other end.

voilà! you have a measurement of your intestinal transit time!

if you want to be really science-y about it, you should repeat the test a number of times and maybe even graph your results because graphs are cool.


maybe you're not the sort of person that looks at your shit when you're done with it, but ever since my gallbladder and i parted ways some years ago, i always have a little look because the color and shape of it gives me useful information about how i'm doing in terms of diet and overall digestive health.

i don't have to poke at it or anything; just look.

so, yea.

*goes off to buy some corn*

life in clippings: postscript

i'm still posting these pretty far out ahead of real time, partly because i want to have time to prepare the posts that require research and also because i want to post out ahead of my vacation so i can keep my uninterrupted streak going.

i know it doesn't really matter, but it means something to me to post something every day and it's a discipline.

anyway, i wrote to the tompkins county historical society just to tell them what all i had pieced together, because while it's no earth-shaking news to them, they love history and they love ithaca history in particular.

donna eschenbrenner, the director of archives wrote to me, in part:

Since we are all avid lovers of history in all its guises, we can relate well to your very personalized search for information about the Mintz family of Ithaca. ...   We happen to have a Lawrence Mintz Collection, and it contains interesting things like a family photo album, transcripts of some of his correspondence, newspaper clippings, and some memorabilia of his service in World War I.

really? BONUS!!!

and one of the living descendants wrote back to me, so i sort of feel i have delivered something.

these awesome people, these stories and hints of stories: they belong to you. they are part of where you came from. your grandfather, he was the life of a lot of parties. he worked his way up some ladders.
your great grandfather did well for himself, but he was also generous and funny. a hundred years ago he was living in a house that still stands and you can look at it in google maps.

i think he would be proud of you.

pavement markings

on june 3d some interesting pavement markings appeared near my home. i didn't see them get painted, but they weren't there sunday evening and they were there tuesday morning so i'm guessing they were painted on monday sometime.

they look like a thing that might mark an intersection, but there's not even a driveway nearby.

and then i was on my way out and i noticed a second identical mark had also just appeared similarly out on brown's trace.

and the two markings, while identical, are in two different towns.

so it's not a road crew thing. and it's not for measuring speed, because it would need another mark on the same road, yes?

hm.

i like a mystery.

so i marked them with my GPS. the only reason i can think of for these things to be on the pavement is maybe some kind of aerial viewing placeholder, which makes me kind of uncomfortable.

it's not too farfetched an idea, though, because if you look at a map,  the two points just happen to square up pretty well with the eastern and western boundaries of a local military installation, if you were looking to place your markers on a flat area of paved road.

you could get closer to the actual boundaries of the range on a paved road, but if these things are some kind of marker meant for aerial viewing maybe there are markers on the OTHER side of the range that will make sense and have some kind of symmetry to them.

of COURSE i'm going to go look.

you know, because.

pavement markings.

mystery.

maps.



View pavement markings in a larger map

rights and freedoms

i think one of the problems with political debate is that a lot of people are raising a great cry about FREEDOM and PROTECTING OUR FEEEEEDOMMMMMMM but we don't all agree really on what freedom means.

basically if you define freedom as being the right to do whatever you want, you are out of luck if you live close enough to any other people as to infringe on THEIR freedom not to have you do whatever it is you want to do in their space or have the consequences of whatever you're doing run over into their space.

there are some kind of subtle freedoms that involve actually ceding absolute autonomy in favor of some common benefits.

for instance, your freedom to travel is kind of dependent on our collective "enslavement" to government projects like roads.

but let's just move past those basics for a moment, 'k?

because if you are reading the things written all over the news with regard to (insert area of legislative concern here) it becomes really apparent that people are talking a lot about PROTECTING OUR FREEDOM but we aren't talking about the same freedoms.

to me, freedom is the absence of government intrusion in my private life and the ability to be informed on governmental matters and no warrantless searches and no presumption of guilt and the ability to travel without police interference and the ability to communicate without surveillance.

but that's not what freedom means to other people.

for some people clearly freedom means the ability to decide FOR OTHERS what is and is not acceptable in their personal lives. their very definition of freedom means the ability to go in and take other people's freedom.

but it's larger than that, because for an apparently large group of people, freedom is not about going about your business without interference; it is about feeling secure. freedom for some of these people is above all the feeling that they can go about their lives safe from danger, and they are completely willing to let government or police or anyone else step forward and take on the tasks of making them feel safe and while i think they're not correct, i also can't fault them for feeling the way they do.

i mean, really, how free do you feel when you are afraid? if you do not have food/housing/job/personal security, how free do you feel? when you feel threatened, do you feel free?

the tricky bit here is that we are threatened to different degrees by different things. and that we live in a civil society (by which i mean to label it as a nation, supposedly, of laws rather than to comment on the degree of civility in the discourse) and in a civil society we have to find some balances between our personal sense of liberty and larger corporate liberties we may all share.

i hear this arguent a lot: if you have nothing to hide, why do you care about search or surveillance?

because.

because at some point if the shoe is on the other foot and my way of life becomes unpopular or laws are passed against me, laws that protect us all will come in handy.

laws that protect people i do not approve of will also protect me if i ever need them.

do not trust the government.

i do not care which party is in power. do not trust any government, anywhere. if a government is ever trustworthy, it is only because it is being held accountable by the governed. in order for us to trust a government, we must be able to see inside it and see who is making the decisions and who is making money off of it and we need to be able to protect ourselves from it if it gets too big for its britches.

good government is open government. when a government starts to tell the citizens that it gets to make secret decisions based on secret rules and we have to trust them because hey, they're the government, it is probably too late.

the good news, i guess, is that government secrecy and government abuse of power is not a new thing. you go ahead. look it up for yourself.

it is an old, old dance, this one of government doing things in secret for "the good of the people" and in the name of "freedom" and the people pushing back.

or some of the people pushing back.

because we keep betting that those freedoms will come in handy maybe later. and we notice that when we give up freedoms we rarely get them back.

so fine. make use of the government. participate in the government. care about the government and the goverened.

but do not ever, ever, trust the government.

make it show its work. make it explain itself. make it earn its keep, every damn day.

do not stand on the outside and cry about FREEEDOMMMMMMM. understand that citizens may differ about what does and does not constitute freedom. come prepared to talk and to listen and to ask and to explain and to balance.

and demand the same of government.

we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

we have been racing at catamount almost exclusively on the black course this summer on account of the unrelenting rain. the black course is this year's hillside course.

traditionally there are three courses: two on the woodside, the low course and the high course, and the hillside course.

the woodside lowland course, traditionally marked blue, is relatively flat and goes on all the twisty bits on the lower part of the trails. there are a few technical bits, but it rides fast. if it rains enough and the ground is saturated, whole big swaths of it can wash out else water just runs down the trail like a streambed and running a race on it would just damage it too much.

the woodside high course, traditionally marked in purple or yellow depending on the year, meanders through some twisty things and has a long steep climb followed by a long descent. it is more technical and punishing than the blue course by far. some years it runs clockwise and some years counter-clock, and so you either get the big climb at the beginning or the end. it doesn't really matter. it still hurts. this course is the most likely to be washed out by rain or by use in the rain, so we haven't even seen it yet even though the season is a month old almost.

the hillside course, traditionally marked in pink but this year with black arrows, has pretty much always been the climb-iest of the three. it has a lot of wide open field riding and a lot of going up and down goose hill. they change where the actual courses go every year, but the basic characteristics stay the same. this year marc and eric decided to build a bridge in the black course. it isn't a hard bridge, but still.

i am a skilled rider. if you give me a twisty course that just stays on the ground i have excellent control and can run pretty fast on a narrow line. i can put my wheels on a path two and a half inches wide and keep them there.

diana on the bridge

but i am old and scared, so if you take a path two and a half FEET wide, an EASY path two and a half feet wide but you put it a couple of feet off the ground and all of a sudden i am terrified of it.

because, you know, consequences.

so when they put the bridge in the black course it scared the willies out of me and i looked hard at it and decided to take the b-line.

in mountain biking when they have an obstacle in the course they sometimes put in an a-line (the hard way) and a b-line, which is an easier but more time-consuming route. sometimes there is even a c-line.

me on the bridge

anyway, i've been looking at that thing for a number of weeks knowing i have the skills for it. i walked it a couple of times and walked my bike over it just to see how my wheels would roll on it.

totally nothing to be scared of. totally easy.

except if you make a mistake, it's going to be a costly mistake and i am a timid little middle aged lady.

so last monday i was out riding with my friend diana (who has mad skills but is also afraid of falling) and we decided to learn how to ride that bridge. and we took pictures.

and you know what?  pictures take some of the fear out of it.

because while i'm goign across the bridge, i am thinking that if i fall, it will make excellent video.

mmmhm.

sad but true.

soldiers' lots

in a lot of cemeteries there's one lot set aside for the burial of indigent solders and sailors and sometimes their comrades who wished to be buried among soldiers.

there are two soldier's lots in the ithaca city cemetery and i was on my way back from sort of meeting some people but while i was on my way up looking at mr. fralick and the mintzes (do i need to give you a link at this point?) i thought i'd just stroll by the soldiers' lot on my way back down to my car.

it isn't by any means a careful cataloging; i simply don't have the time or inclination to research the full biography or even the service record of every veteran whose grave i pass.

and yet i wish to recognize something about each of these people and take a moment to notice that they once walked the earth and breathed like me.

so a representative sample, then. i will pick some at random and call their names and learn a little of their time on this earth.

i'm struggling at the moment organizing my thoughts about this handful of men from the two soldiers' lots. it's different, looking at civil war graves not from vermont. vermont men mostly served with the vermont regiments. our men mostly went into regiments that fed the two vermont infantry brigades.

in our hill cemeteries our civil war veterans for the most part served in vermont brigades and that's that.

in the ithaca city cemetery, they were local boys serving new york regiments mostly, but more so here than in the smaller central new york towns, the civil war veterans served so many units! they were cavalry, a bunch of them. and they fought with units from wisconsin and massachusetts. and they served in colored units, both infantry and cavalry.

they're all dead the same, though.

civil war:

6th NY heavy artillery:

SWARTWOUT, AUGUSTUS J. — Private, Fourteenth Artillery;
transferred to Co. B, Sixth Artillery, May 10, 1864; wounded,
July 30, 1864, in front of Petersburg, Va.; discharged for disability, June 6, 1S65, at Satter









2d NY cavalry (provisional):

BROWER, WILLIAM H. ~ Age, I8 years. Enlisted, September
16,1863, at Ithaca; mustered in as private, Go. K, Fifteenth New
York Cavalry, October 3,1863, to serve three years; transferred
to Co. G, October, 1863; transferred, June 17, 1865, to Co. G,
this regiment; mustered out, September 8, 1865, at Elmira,
N. Y.







5th NY cavalary:

CULVER , LEWIS I [sic].—Age, 21 years. Enlisted, August 17,
1864, at Lisle; mustered in as private, Co. O, August 17,
1861, to serve one year; wounded twice; mustered out with
detachment, June 15, 1865, at Staunton, Va









21st NY cavalry:

STEVENS, CHARLES.—Age, 29 years. Enlisted, December 30,
1863, at Dryden; mustered in as private, Co. F, December 30,
1863, to serve three years; transferred, September 9, 1865, to
Co. G; mustered out with company, June 29, 1866, at Denver,
Colorado Territory.








1st NY dragoons:
CRAWFORD , HENRY.—Age , 44 years. Enlisted, July 26, 1862,
at Mount Morris, N . Y. ; mustered in as private, Co. B, August
8,1862, to serve three years; mustered out with company, June
30,1865, at Clouds Mills, Va. ; also borne as Henry Crouford.


AGED VETERAN DIES. 
Henry Crawford Saw Service With
the First Regiment of New York
Volunteers—lifelong Resident.
Henry Crawford, a long-time restdent of Ithaca and a veteran of the
Civil war, died Saturday, aged. 83
years. He whs a member of Company B, First regiment, New York
State Volunteers.
He is survived by one daughter,
Mrs. William M. Seamon of No. 307
East Tompkins- street. Death was
the result oif complications due to advanced age.
The funeral will probably be held
from Mrs. Seamon's residence.

5th MA cavalry (colored):

price, adam

The home of Adam Price at No.
 114 Fifth street was partially destroyed by fire shortly after 6 o'clock
yesterday afternoon (ithaca daily news, september 15, 1900)

Davjd Barnard. Riley Updike. arid
Adam Price returned  this morning
from the G. A. R. encampment at
Washington. Emerson Spicer of Trumansbarg also returned . with the
party. The quartet, by leaving Washington ahead of the regular scedule
avoided the crush of the regular trains (ithaca daily news, october 1902)

VETERANS OF CIVIL WAR
RECALL LEE'S SURRENDER (ithaca daily news, april 1905)

—A special meeting of Sidney post
G. A. R. will be held at 8 o'clock tonight to make arrangements to attend'
the funeral of the late Adam Price (ithaca daily news, october 4, 1905)

The funeral of Adam Price was
held today at 3 o'clock, the Rev. T.
A. Auten officiating.' Sydney post, GAR
attended in a body and gave a
flower banner in the colors of the
 American flag. The Masonic order
sent a wreath and the colored band
an anchor. (ithaca daily news, october 6, 1905)


11th PA cavalry:

Thompkins, William, Private,
Captured at Petersburg, Va., June 9, 1864; discharged by General Order, June 21, 1865; Vet










1st wisconsin cavalry:

Miller, Hiram H discharged may 27 1865

32d NY infantry:

WHITE , THOMAS.—Age, 21 years. Enlisted, May 7, 1861, at • 
Ithaca, to serve two years; mustered in as private, Oo. I, May 
31, 1861; mustered out with company, June 9, 1863, at New 
York city, as Thomas B. White. 

Memorial Services Held at the First
M. E. Church -Addresses of
Rev. W.H.York and Col. 
T. B. White. (ithaca daily news, january 30, 1890)

OLD SOLDIERS WILL TAKE A HAND (oswego daily times, october 18, 1890)

GOOD BYE THOMAS!
For some- time it has beln reported
around this city that "Colonel" Thomas
B. White has been threatening to desert
the republican party (oswego daily times, october 24, 1891)

Col. White in Syracuse.
Attorney Thomas B. White, formerly J>fcthis eityvaddressed a meeting
of the Builders'and Traders' Exchange,
Syracuse, last evening. The subject
upon which Colonel White talked interestingly was: "The Builder, the
Builded and the Lien Law." Colonel
White is now a resident of Syracuse (oswego daily palladium, april 30, 1892)

In his place
Colonel Thomas B. White, of Ithaca, was
secured. Colonel White is In magnificent
voice, and with tears In his eyes told of
the passing away of many veterans who
had formerly gathered at the encampment. (rochester democrat and chronicle, august 21, 1901)

COL. WHITE POPULAR. 
Well-known llhaca Orator Warmly
Greeted At 8odas EncampmentNoted As A Speaker. (ithaca daily news, august 20, 1902)

Colonel Thomas B, White. 
Ithaca, N. Y , Dec. 27.—Colonel Thomas
Benton White, a veteran of the Civil war,
died to-day, aged 6o. He enlisted when the
war broke out and at the age of [unreadable] was
breveted colonel for bravery. Colonel White
was a lawyer and had practiced ia Oswego
and syracuse. He was well known throughout the state aa a Republican orator. (rochester democrat and chronicle, december 28, 1902)


65th NY infantry:
SIMPSON , DECATUR. — Age, 30 years. Enlisted at Ithaca,
to serve three years, and mustered in as private, Co. D, July
20, 1861; promoted corporal, October, 1861; returned to ranks,
no date; re-enlisted as a veteran, December 26, 1863; transferred to Co. F, September 1, 1864; mustered out with company, July 17, 1865, at Halls Hill, Va.

Decatur Simpson got drunk on the 8th
October, was in the lockup over Sunday
and fined ten dollars ou Monday.  (the local democrat, november 1857)

OBITUARY. 
Decatur Simpson.
Decatur Simpson, a veteran of the
Civil War, died at the residence of
David Letts on Brindley Street at noon
today. He leaves a nephew, Thaddeus
Stevens of Syracuse. The funeral will
be held at the Inlet Mission at 2
o'clock Tuesday afternoon. Burial will
be in the City Cemetery. (ithaca daily news, january 30, 1909)

97th NY infantry:

PERRY , ELI—Age , 28 years. Enlisted at Hornby, to serve
three years, and mustered in as private, Co. B, July 17, 1863;
mustered out with company, July 18, 1865, near Washington,
D. C.









143d NY infantry:
STEVENS, LEWIS.—Age , 31 years. Enlisted, August 16, 1862,
at Ithaca, to serve three years; mustered in as private, Co. D,
October 8, 1862; mustered out with company, July 20, 1865, at
Washington, D. C.










179th Ny infantry:

RYERSON , JAMES C—Age, 26 years. Enlisted, August 13,
1864,, at Ithaca, to serve one year; mustered in as private, Co. 
I, September 13, 1864; mustered out with company, June 8,
1865, near Alexandria, Va.








8th regiment, United States Colored Troop:

sylvester suzey, Substitute; mustered out with Company, November 10, 1865

Help Tommy Ray!  (geneva gazette 1894)

—Vet Suzey had fourteen chickens
stolen from his coop last Saturday night. (ithaca daily news, decemer 16, 1899)

—Vet Suzey fell from a step ladder
yesterday afternoon while washing the
ceiling in the Windsor cafe on North
Cayuga street. He landed squarely on
his head but was not seriously hart. He
said to a reporter that if he had struck
his shins there would have been one lets
"coon" in the city. (ithaca daily news january 24, 1900)

DEBATE ON NEGRO PROBLEM. 
THIRTY NEW MEMBERS
A lively debate was held last evening at the A. M. E. Zion chutch on
the question, "Resolved, That the negro of this country should migrate to
Africa."
The debaters -were the Messrs.
Suzey and Green-for the affirmative,
against Messrs. Woodson and Terry,
who supported the negative. They
manifested their convictions in an interesting and entertaining manner.
The judges declared the debate a
draw, much to the satisfaction ot the
audience. (ithaca daily news, may 1904)

i wonder why mr. suzey, an owner of property and involved member of his community would debate the affirmative in sending black people "back" to africa, but the more clippings i read, the more obvious it becomes that mr. suzey is accomplished in debate and is called upon to speak at many organized adjudicated events.

DEBATE ARRANGED. 
Colored Orators Will Argue Question
at Catholic Fair Tonight—Man
Valuable Prizes Awarded (ithaca daily news 1904)

Sylvester T.Suzey. 
Sylvester Thomas Suzey, Colored,
familiarly known as '.'Vet," died at
his home, 119 Wheat street, at 7 am.
 from general debility. He Was 73
ysars' of age, and had lived In this
city for 40 years.
Suzey was a member of-Company
B, Eighth regiment of colored troops
in the Civil war. He is survived by
his wife, Lucy, and oaf daughter,
Mrs. Niola Whitley of Boise, Idaho.
The funeral will be held Monday
afternoon at 3 o'clock (ithaca daily new january 11, 1908)

Obituary. 
Sylvester T. Suzey.
The funeral of Sylvester T. Suzey
was held this afternoon from his residence in Wheat street, and later from
the A. M. B, Zion church,, the Rev. T.
A. Auten officiating. Interment was
made in the City cemetery. (ithaca daily news, january 13, 1908)




26th Regiment, United States Colored Troops:

Waters, William

SIDE:Union

COMPANY:K
SOLDIER'S RANK IN:Private

SOLDIER'S RANK OUT:Private

AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MEMORIALDISPLAYED AS:William Waters 

PLAQUE NUMBER:B-42

WWI:

11th infantry division, 11th sanitary train

claude d. schrauger

this division got all trained and equipped and had its orders to go to europe but then the armistice was signed.

77th infantry division, 302d ammunition train:

Morris Cornell has returned, honorably discharged from overseas service. (ithaca daily news,june 2, 1919)


there is little record of mr. cornell, but there is a great collection of letters from another man in his unit and if you want to have an idea what his service was like, i recommend you go read those.












and last:


OLD SOLDIERS PAY 
TRIBUTE TO DEAD 

fold up the banners
smelt the guns
love rules.