Tree Day at Cumberland Village

Above All Trees was here at the village on Monday, January 20. They took out a few trees and trimmed up a bunch. Here are a few pictures I took that day.

Last Words

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist...." Last words of Gen. John Sedgwick at Spotsylvania (1864)

The plaque reads:

• Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick, commander of the Sixth Corps, was one of the most popular senior officers in the Army of the Potomac. On the morning of May 9, 1864, Sedgwick arrived here to direct some minor redeployment of his troops. Ignoring warnings from his chief-of-staff, Sedgwick stalked about admonishing his men to cease worrying about the occasional fire of Confederate sharpshooters concealed in the woodline far to your front. "I am ashamed of you dodging that way, " scoffed Sedgwick. "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." Shortly thereafter, a bullet slammed into the general's face, killing him almost instantly.

• The shot that killed John Sedgwick, the highest-ranking Northern officer to die on a Civil War battlefield, came from a Whitworth rifle at a distance of more than 500 yards. The identity of the marksman who fired the fatal shot remains a mystery, although at least five Confederate soldiers later claimed responsibility.

For more, see:
http://www.civilwarbattlefields.us/spotsylvania/sedgwick.html

Genuine Diffee Doodle Reprint

Today, I received in the mail my genuine Diffee Doodle Reprint. I signed up for The Diffeeville Dispatch, the newsletter of Matt Diffee, an artist and writer who grew up in Texas and moved to New York.  His cartoons have been published in The New Yorker among other publications. I was one of the early subscribers to the newsletter, and the draw was that I would get a free hand drawn doodle. I am still waiting on mine. Evidently, even though I thought I got in on the ground floor, I was way down the line. He is up to 443 according to today's Facebook page. I think I am in the 600s. Anyway, he's got some funny stuff. You should check him out.