We could all use a laugh now and again and today’s topic is all about laughs. It was suggested by Kristi and we’re talking about our 10 Favorite Comedy Movies. I’m chuckling already just thinking about some of these!

1. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. From bring out your dead to it’s a flesh wound to we fart in your general direction, this one is simply the best.
2. Young Frankenstein. It’s my go-to funny movie, the perfect thing when I need a pick me up. It’s silly and campy and I love it.
3. The Big Lebowski. Can you believe I had never seen this until a couple of years ago? A guy at a bar in Boston told Dale that he looked just like The Dude and then we had to see it. It’s awesome.
4. Some Like It Hot. Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe – need I say more?
5. The Producers. You really can’t go wrong with Mel Brooks. Springtime for Hitler in Germany . . .
6. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Even all these years later, I simply cannot resist it when it’s on.
7. This Is Spinal Tap. The scene with the little Stonehenge gets me every time.
8. Best In Show. It’s another Christopher Guest classic and honestly, nobody does satire better than him.
9. The Sting. Sometimes subtle comedy can be the best comedy of all.
10. National Lampoon’s Vacation. You wouldn’t think a cross country drive full of disaster could be funny .  . . and yet!

I promised you a post with more details about the Museum of the Confederacy and today seems like as good a time as any to show you the photos I took just for you. The lighting was low so you will have to excuse the pictures as they aren’t of the highest quality but I still think you will enjoy them.

First up, these hand knit socks.

The card said they were knit for a soldier by a young girl from his hometown. The stitches are teeny tiny and they are not ribbed but were shaped in the calf area. I love the purl ridges at the top and also the fact that the soldiers initials were embroidered into the back of the leg.

While the main floor of the museum is mostly military related, the lower floor includes artifacts from civilian life. I enjoyed looking around there a lot and took a few photographs of things I wanted to share with all of you.

I love these fingerless mitts! The stitches on these are really tiny, too, and the thumb gusset looks pretty unique to me. Other than that they look just like something one of us would knit.

I got really excited when I read the information on this card saying that this was a remnant of a sleeve that was hand carded, spun, woven and sewn. I knew I wouldn’t remember all of the details so I took a close up for you.

Isn’t that awesome? Well, except for the part about her dying at the age of 21.

Finally, I have two more sock photos to show you.

According to the identifying card, these socks were hand knit by a young woman to wear on her wedding day. Aren’t they gorgeous? They are pretty long so I’d guess they were knee socks. And how about the deep stockinette cuff – so different than the way we knit our socks now.

Here’s a close up so you can get a better look at the lace patterning. I think it’s just lovely and I’m very tempted to try and reproduce them only with slightly less stitches. Heh.

See? Even when I go on vacation I’m thinking of you all. Or should I say y’all? This was Virginia, my friends.

It’s Macro May and that makes me happy because I love to use my macro lens. It’s tricky to get macro closeups to be sharp and focused so I appreciate the opportunity to practice at it for a whole month. I also appreciate the ability to use RadLab to make my less than focused macro shots look kind of funky, like this one!

Tomorrow is Frank Harlow Day and the weather forecast is iffy. Please send vibes for sunshine and blue skies!

Remember these socks? And that deadline of April 13th for finishing them?

Yeah, that came and went. But I knit and knit and knit in the car on our way to Richmond. And then I knit and knit and knit some more and finally finished them sitting on a bench by the Petersburg Battlefield. On Sunday knit I gifted them to my stepdaughter, Jessica, as a small thank you for watching the dog while we were away.

The pattern is Dragonfly Socks and the yarn is Gypsy Knits in the color Trapeze.

There is a lot of pooling that I’m not too crazy about but most of it gets broken up by the patterning and that’s a good thing.

I do like the way the stripes in the heels look.

And I did enjoy knitting them although I had a hard time keeping the pattern straight in my head. In any case they are done and that makes the 4th pair of socks for 2012. And that means I am right on target for my sock knitting goal for this year.

Yay.

It’s a new month and therefore it’s time to show you my last month of photos, the ones I took and posted to flickr in the month of April.

There are lots of flower and food photos (again) but also photos of our living room painting (I need to do a post on that!) as well as vacation photos and some other random subjects that serve to document my daily life.

As always, if you want more details or to see bigger images, check out my flickr 2012 set.

Today’s Ten on Tuesday topic comes from Kym and it’s a fun one: 10 Items Pinned to your Bulletin Board. I don’t think it’s a subject that needs any further introduction but I should tell you two things. One, I have an bulletin board in my office but I don’t have one at home so this will be almost all work stuff. Two, my office bulletin board has exactly 10 things on it. Pretty convenient, eh? Here we go, starting at the top left and moving clockwise around the board:

1. A memo from 2006 listing the town custodian’s contact information. I don’t think it’s particularly accurate anymore but at least some of it is.
2. A bumper sticker that says My Other Vehicle is a Spinning Wheel. I think I got this at NH Sheep & Wool many years ago. I like to just put it right out there that I’m a spinner.
3. A bumper sticker that says Don’t come knockin’ if your socks ain’t rockin’ from the very first Rockin’ Sock Club that Blue Moon Fiber Art had.  Just like with #2, I like to put it right out there that I’m a knitter. I have got some curious questions about this one, though.
4. The Carver Public Schools calendar for the 2011-2012 school year. It’s how I keep track of Dale, frankly.
5. The weekly staff schedule for the library. It’s how I keep track of everyone else.
6. Blank time sheets for the library staff. I think there must be more of these somewhere else in the library because no one ever takes mine and makes copies.
7. A memo regarding Open Enrollment for town employees. My weekly contribution is increasing 8% for the next fiscal year. It not cheap but it’s better than not having insurance at all, that’s for sure.
8. A telephone list for the library staff and other town employees. I’ve got just about everybody in my phone these days but I do still refer to this now and again since it contains the information I need to use when someone accidentally sets off the alarm at the library and I have to call the alarm company.
9. Monthly time sheets for our volunteers. We’ve got some great ones and I use these sheets to track how many hours they work.
10. A National Parks 25th anniversary passport sticker. It’s the most recent thing I there since I just got it when we were on vacation in Virginia. It adds a bit of color and I just didn’t know what else to do with it.

My guest blogger today is my darling husband, Dale and he’s writing about his connection to Frank Harlow, a Civil War soldier from our town. Get yourself a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, this is a long story. It’s a good one, though.

The American Civil War first caught my interest over fifty years ago during the centennial in 1961. I was ten years old and loved to read about the Civil War – I even convinced my family to take a vacation to Gettysburg in 1963 to witness the centennial celebration of that momentous battle. Little did I know I was starting an incredible journey that would interest me for years but especially when I met Carole and we quickly discovered that we shared a fascination with this time period. Carole really encouraged me to read more on the subject and in 1998 we visited Gettysburg together for the first time. It was the 135th anniversary of the battle and we were both caught up in the idea of becoming reenactors. It was around this time that my interest was truly rekindled and I started reading everything I could on the subject.

In the spring of 2000 I was reading The Last Full Measure by Jeff Shaara. I was in the middle of the chapter that describe the Battle of Ft. Stedman and I was particularly interested in this because it was a battle I had never heard of until then. As I was reading, Carole came in to ask me if I wanted to go for a walk with our new puppy, Dixie. I set the book down on the kitchen table and we headed out. As usual our walk took us to the Town Common and then down into the old cemetery. With my new Civil War interest I was more aware of our many graves from that time period and one in particular caught my eye. It was up a little grade from where we normally walked but for some reason I was drawn to it. the small white monument was the marker of a family plot and as I read the names I was quite surprised to find that one of the names was of a young soldier who was killed in action in 1865 at the Battle of Ft. Stedman. You can imagine my shock and I couldn’t help but be struck by this coincidence.

Or was it fate? This story is really just beginning.

Later that summer we were camping in Plymouth and I was reading the book Specimen Days and Collect by Walt Whitman. This book is really a series of short observations from Whitman’s personal Civil War experiences. One story is called “A Yankee Antique” and it tells the tale of a brave young soldier who refused to surrender when his company was surrounded by Confederates at Ft. Stedman. When asked to comply by a rebel officer, the hero of the story says, “not while I live!” Both men fired their weapons and both fell dead, side by side. As I read the story I couldn’t help but thinking how odd it was to be reading about Ft. Stedman again. Whitman then describes how the boy’s father came to recover the body and bring it home to Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Of course Plymouth County is large but my town and my cemetery are in it. I was definitely intrigued now and when we returned home from our camping trip I took the book with me and rushed to the grave I had found back in the spring. Could it be the soldier from Whitman’s story? I flipped the book open and read the name, Calvin Francis Harlow. Then I looked at the inscription on the grave and it said, Calvin Francis Harlow – a match. I was shocked and had goose bumps as I stood there and read Whitman’s story out loud. It just seemed like the right thing to do although I probably looked like an idiot to anyone passing by.

And here’s the thing – this grave is less than a mile from our house, less than a mile from where I grew up and have lived my entire life. I’ve been by it countless times as this was my shortcut home from school for years. Now, though, it was special, now there was a story, and now I wanted to share the story with others.

So I did. I told friends and co-workers. I told family members and friends of family members. I told people on the street and basically anyone who would stand still long enough to listen. Mostly, though, I told fellow reenactors. One of them, a friend named Hal, listened with great interest and when I finished he said, quite simply, “so what are you going to do with this story?” I thought about it and I realized that Hal was giving me a charge – it was time to do something more with this story.

I started doing some research on Harlow and was fortunate enough to be put in touch with his great nephew who lived on Cape Cod. Calvin was this man’s uncle and he knew about the Walt Whitman story. I asked if there was a photo of Calvin and he said he’d send me a copy of one he had and then he asked me if I was interested in reading some of Harlow’s letters home. I was speechless; it is a researcher’s dream come true to find primary sources! Along with his official military record, the Walt Whitman story, and the personal letters, I had some pretty interesting stuff to share and I learned a lot about this young soldier. Calvin was 18 when he left home in May of 1861, less than one month after the war began. He was in the 29th Mass Vol Inf Regt Co C and after three years of service he reenlisted to see the war through. In his four years of service he saw a lot of action, fighting in several of the major battles. By late 1864 he was promoted to 1st Serg of his company and was at Petersburg, VA. It was there that he made his heroic stand and was killed on March 25, 1865, just two weeks before the war ended.

With my research done, I knew what I had to do – I had to make his name known throughout our town. With the help of several friends, some reenactors, and Carole, we made a plan to have a Civil War Encampment and Living History and to call the event “Calvin Harlow Day” in honor of our hometown hero. Our first Calvin Harlow Day was held in 2005 and it rained pretty hard. I still think of it as a success, though, and we decided to do it again in 2006. It rained again, this time with the addition of strong winds and even snow. It became a sort of town joke that it “always” rained on Calvin Harlow Day but we decided to make it an annual event nonetheless. I hoped it wouldn’t rain again but I was a little despondent, I must admit. Carole was the one who figured out the problem, though. One day she came to me and said, “I think you should change the name of the event to Frank Harlow Day. I don’t think he likes to be called Calvin and that’s why it keeps raining.” I thought about this and decided she might be onto something. He signed all his letters “Frank” and his great nephew referred to him as “Uncle Frank.” I didn’t have anything to lose so our third annual event became “Frank Harlow Day” and . . . the sun came out! Frank Harlow Day continues and this coming Saturday, May 5th, we will be hosting our 8th annual. It is a fitting tribute to Frank and the nearly 400 others who left our town to go “save the Union!”

The other part of this story is that during my research I discovered that Frank’s body was never returned to East Bridgewater despite his father’s best efforts to retrieve him. He is interred in Poplar Grove National Cemetery near Petersburg, VA and that is why we took our vacation in Virginia this year. I guess it’s also why I was pretty emotional when we found his grave – I traveled a long way to meet him and it was a bit overwhelming to stand over him and pay my respects. So that’s my story about finding Frank Harlow and keeping his memory alive. I definitely feel connected to him and I feel that all of this was meant to be. This was confirmed for me when I looked up his birth day and found out it was June 26, 1842. You’ve probably guessed already, my birthday is also June 26.

Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe it’s Frank reaching across the years, wanting to be remembered, wanting someone to tell his story.  I am honored to be that person.

Foxglove from the garden at the Governor’s Palace at Colonial Williamsburg. The flowers there were gorgeous and I could have taken zillions of photographs of them.

This weekend is all about resting, recharging, and relaxing. I hope you get to do the same!

I suppose I ought to wrap up this Virginia Travelogue so today I will cover our last 3 days. There may be more next week, as Dale will be telling you his Frank Harlow story, and I think the Museum of the Confederacy deserves a post all of it’s own but in the meantime, here are the details on the rest of our vacation.

Thursday:

• Got up in time to have breakfast at the hotel – thank goodness.
• Drove to downtown Richmond in order to be at the Museum of the Confederacy when it opened at 9.
• Parked the car, walked over to the museum only to realize that it didn’t actually open until 10.
• Whoops.
• Visited Hollywood Cemetery while waiting for the museum to open.
• Loved it there and took lots of photos. It’s quite moving and many famous Confederates are buried there, including Jefferson Davis, J.E.B. Stuart, and George Pickett.
• Headed back to the Museum of the Confederacy by late morning.
• Toured the Confederate White House. I was impressed with the many original artifacts.
• Toured the Museum of the Confederacy. Again, lots of original artifacts and I have photos of things you will like.
• Kept Dale on a very tight schedule throughout this time period so that we could be finished with the Civil War portion of our day by 2pm.
• It’s like herding cats but it does work.
• Went to the Carytown section of Richmond where there are lots of funky shops and restaurants.
• Hit The Yarn Lounge. Yay! Bought Plain and Fancy. Double yay!
• Relaxed over a cheese plate and cocktails at Can Can Brasserie.
• Crossed the river to the other side of town and relaxed some more over beers and nachos at Legends Brewery.
• Soaked in the whirlpool tub in our room.

Friday:

• Packed up our room and had our last breakfast at the hotel.
• Drove north to Fredericksburg, the last battlefield visit of our trip.
• Thank jeebus.
• Waited in the car while Dale hiked the battlefield as my interest in all things Civil War had completely evaporated.
• Drove north to Washington DC.
• Met up with Hillary and had a delicious lunch at The Old Ebbitt Grille.
• Drove north to Atlantic City. This should have taken 4 hours but took over 5 thanks to traffic on route 95.
• Checked into The Golden Nugget at 8pm. Loved our awesome room.
• Discovered that Happy Hour lasts until 11pm in Atlantic City. Rejoiced over our good fortune.
• Lost money at the black jack table.

Saturday

• Slept late and loved it.
• Admired our view of the brand new pool area and the marina.
• Had a delicious cappuccino and croissant for breakfast. It wasn’t free but damn it was good.
• Won money on a slot machine.
• Checked out and headed north to Massachusetts.
• Arrived home at 7pm only to be greeted by a very pissed off cat.
• Unpacked, collected the dog, and collapsed on our very own couch.
• Went to bed early and relished being home.