ARRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! revisited

So I'm just a great, big, doofus, dummyhead. Or some such listing of adjectives denoting my idiocy. The pictures didn't upload because I made the original scans too big. Blogger handles up to 8mbs and they're something like 22. It always pays to actually look at what you're trying to do and not just assume it's going to work out OK.

Gettysburg

Little and Big Round Tops

Last week the luminous Mrs. V and I took a short trip down to Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The primary goal was to see the Gettysburg and Antietam battlefields and we accomplished that. We'd wanted to take a run through Baltimore but rainy weather made us decide to drive down to Harper's Ferry for a quick look and then head home through the mountains, down in Harrisburg and then home on 78.

We went first to Gettysburg and the weather was perfect - comfortably warm and a sunny sky. We spent the money for the museum, movie (Sam Waterson now sounds like a crazy monkey when he plays Lincoln) and cyclorama. Then, in our trusty silver Honda Fit, we took the self-directed tour around the most of the battlefield (we got hungry and skipped on Culp's Hill and Cemetery Ridge).


The field of Pickett's Charge from the Confederate perspective

Alongside the southern face of Little Round Top we got parked and hiked west and through the Devil's Den and then came back and up the western, exposed face of Little Round Top.



















Devil's Den and looking at Little Round Top from the west

From there we drove north along where the Union center was located, stopping at the Pennsylvania State Memorial and finally at the Copse of Trees.

Referred to as the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy", this was where a few elements of Pickett's Charge broke through the Union center for a few moments before being stopped.
It's also where the 111th New York Regiment, was located. That was the unit served in by my great-great grandfather, John F. Robinson and presumably the point from which he killed several Confederate soldiers.

The most heart stopping thing about walking old battlefields is the eventual realization that the pretty landscape your touring was covered with blood and shattered men. It's a struggle to picture the green hills of southern Pennsylvania covered with 150,000 men and the fields shrouded by gun smoke and the constant ear shattering sounds of cannon fire, but it does come.

ARRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

Pictures won't upload to blogger. I actually have things to post today. Arrgghhh!!!

Well this made me sad.

Dog braves Staten Island traffic to guard dead companion

WPA Photo Project

Yesterday I was able to make some time and spend a few hours looking at the microfiche of the WPA photos of all the block and lots on Staten Island, circa 1939.
I was unable to find the exact pictures I went there looking for (I need to do a little more prep work beforehand next time) but I did end up with a great collection of pictures from various areas of the North Shore. Hopefully tonight will see me get them scanned, posted and annotated.

More Lost Churches of the North Shore

The original St. Adalbert on Morningstar Road. I know several people who feel the new church is cold and normally I think I'd agree but for some unfathomable reason I don't. I only went to one Mass there and it was a funeral but for some reason the church worked.



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Original Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Castleton and Clove - Today the church site is a parking lot and the new church (a boxy, sixties thing) sits on the north side of Castleton Avenue a block or so away.


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Lost Churches of Staten Island

I've alluded to, and even posted about, several of the North Shore's lost churches. These are the ones that time and tide have overcome and been replaced or simply forgotten as their congregations move away. I hope to find more pictures next week in the archives but for now these should prove interesting.



The original St. Paul's Catholic Church in New Brighton on Clinton Avenue - this beautiful Italiante church was replaced with a modern and boxy one, presumably in the sixties. Recently it has been essentially merged with the Assumption on the other side of New Brighton and switches Sundays back and forth for the celebration of the Mass.


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Original Episcopal Church of St. Simon on Clove Road
This little wooden Episcopal church was demolished to make way for either the highway or the lead on for the Verrazano (I can't remember which). It too was replaced with a (at least externally) soulless little piece of sixties architecture.





Original Episcopal Church of the Ascension - Richmond Terrace near Alaska Street
I've written about this gorgeous old church before and I was very happy to come across this new (to me) picture of it from a different perspective. The page I glommed the pictured from said that the church burned down in 1946 and the building to the right(most likely the rectory) is still in use by Rogers Surveying.
The replacement is actually a pretty building tucked away alongside the far reaches of Clove Lakes Park on Kingsley Avenue




Randall Memorial Church in Snug Harbor - I don't know the exact dates of this church's destruction but I think it was mid-twentieth century. It fell into disrepair and was crumbling. Instead of renovating and saving it the trustees demolished it.



Original Episcopal St. Paul's Church on St. Paul's Avenue and Paxton - This small wooden church was replaced by the beautiful stone church on the other side of St. Paul's Avenue