Now the Journalists

This time, the shooting was in a newspaper office in Annapolis, Maryland. 

Editors, journalists, and a sales associate had not gone out to get the news.  The news came to them.  And, five dead  later, the survivors joined with a sister newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, to report on the news that had just happened right before them.

This shooting was a little different, though, because a close in law was visiting us, and she worked for a suburban New York City newspaper for many years.  She, through her words, had taken me into a newsroom on the morning of September 11, 2001, as she and fellow staff members gathered around a television set, watching the aftermath of a plane that rammed into One World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, wondering if it could have been an accident.  Minutes later, as they watched (live on television) a plane hit Two World Trade Center, they had their answer.

They all scattered, journalists, editors, other support staff.  They did their jobs, as if they had been trained for this moment, and returned that night to commuter parking lots full of cars that would never be driven by their owners again.

My in law told me of the threats her paper had received after a particular story had run, not too many years before she was laid off.  She edited her social media so that people would not know she worked for that paper.  Now, her worst fear had come true - a man with a vendetta against his local paper had taken action.

I don't know what it is like to be a journalist, but I do know what it is like to be a bystander (several blocks away, and I was not a direct witness) as respects an active shooter situation - in fact, it was the topic of my very first blog post in April of 2009.  Other people did their job that day - police, medical personnel, and - yes - journalists.

Now, we need newspapers more than ever, but journalism (in this I include support staff) has become a more deadly field than ever before.

The shooting joins all the other ones - in churches, in schools, at concerts, at nightclubs, in movie theatres, at a military base, so many that we can't even remember them all any more.

The names blur.   We hold demonstrations and nothing happens.  We send our thoughts and prayers and that keeps us going until the next time.

Our President said on Thursday: "Journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their jobs."  The Governor of Maryland said  "There is no amount of clarity that will ever explain or nullify the pain that comes with losing so many lives for so little reason,"  in a statement Friday morning.  He went on to say that "journalism is a noble profession upon which our democracy depends, and we will fight to defend it."

But the dead are still as dead, and their families, their friends, their other loved ones, cry out to us, the American public, to do whatever it takes to make it stop.

Will we answer the call this time?

Civil War Sunday - From Monocacy to Ben-Hur

It's such a peaceful place now, the Monocacy Civil War battlefield near Frederick, Maryland.

But the area was anything but peaceful in July of 1864.


Maryland was a slave state, a border state, that did not secede.  It would pay for its decision.  And, like in all border states, residents fought for both sides.

The Sharpsburg Fire Department logo shows the Civil War connection

Maryland was invaded by Confederates in 1862 and 1863.  In 1862 the Battle of Antietam at Sharpsburg, Maryland resulted in a Union victory and a retreat back to Virginia for the rebels.  In 1863, the Confederates reached as far as Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,and were beaten at the three day July Battle of Gettysburg.

But the Confederates were not finished yet.  In 1864, their plan was to capture Washington DC, the capital of the United States, a capital that lay one river (the Potomac) away from the Confederate border.  They would do this by approaching from Maryland.

And who was there to defend the Capital?  Washington, DC was heavily fortified, but, as it turned out, not heavily enough.  And not only that, but:

Things were not going well in the Civil War.  It had been going on for three bloody years.  Hundreds of thousands of people killed, wounded, missing, held prisoner, dying from disease, wounds, and starvation.  And, it was an election year.  It may see a certainty to us in 2014 that Abraham Lincoln would be reelected, but it wasn't certain in July of 2014.

The Union was stalemated on several fronts.  And now, the Confederates had invaded.
Who was standing in their way?

Some Union troops, led by a previously disgraced general, General Lew Wallace. Wallace, a former governor of Indiana, had seen battle at Ft Donelson and at Shiloh, in Tennessee (another border state) in 1862.  At Shiloh, some of his actions were controversial.  He was removed from command and reassigned in disgrace.  Eventually, he ended up at Monocacy Junction, facing a much larger, and more experienced, Confederate Army.


Washington, DC needed some time, enough time to get more troops into the area to defend it.  Would they get it?

On July 9,1864, the Confederates, under the command of Jubal Early, won the Battle of Monocacy. (Monocacy is named after a river that is a tributary of the Potomac River.) The Union suffered some 1300 casualties in this battle that many have never heard of.    There is a wonderful description of the background of the battle, and the battle itself, here.

This is part of the battlefield today.

Wildflowers, in September of 2012.

The battlefield itself is free, and well worth the visit.

A display in the Visitors Center.

The Confederates were delayed a day.  They lost at Ft. Stevens, inside the District of Columbia (the "DC" of Washington, DC, which is not technically in any state) on July 11-12, a battle witnessed by Abraham Lincoln. After their loss, the Confederates retreated still again.  It can safely be said that the delay at Monocacy Junction saved our nation's capital from falling into Confederate hands.

General Grant later wrote in his memoirs:

"If Early had been but one day earlier, he might have entered the capital before the arrival of the reinforcements I had sent. ... General Wallace contributed on this occasion by the defeat of the troops under him, a greater benefit to the cause than often falls to the lot of a commander of an equal force to render by means of a victory."

So, what did this all have to do with Ben-Hur?

 In 1880, the disgraced General Lew Wallace finished a book called "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ."  It became a best seller, topping even the sales of a novel that influenced the country in the years before the Civil War, "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Ben-Hur remained the all time best selling American novel until replaced by a Civil War epic novel, "Gone with the Wind".

In 1959, Ben-Hur was made into an epic movie, starring Charleston Heston as Ben-Hur.  It has been seen, and loved, by millions.  I read the book a very long time ago.  I've seen the movie many times.

From disgrace to helping to save our Nation's capital to Ben-Hur. Not bad as a legacy.

Civil War Sunday - Playing At War

War isn't make-believe.

I am down in Maryland visiting the South Mountain battlefield, (actually, scattered between two Maryland state parks and some sites on private land) and also, the Antietam battlefield for the 150th anniversary of  these battles.

Antietam was the bloodiest one day in U.S. Civil War history.  South Mountain is less well known, but was important in its own ways.

Yesterday, I went to the Antietam reenactment, about 2 miles from the actual battlefield.  It was very well put on (I thought) despite the large traffic jam to get in - and one thing they did impressed me very much.  (No pictures - sorry - I can't upload thanks to a balky internet connection.  Ah, travel....)

They (several times) honored the vets in the audience.  They honored a soldier just home from deployment and his two children, picked from the audience.  And they made the point, over and over, that war is not play. They don't put on the reenactments to entertain, but rather to teach.

I don't think I have ever been to a Civil War reenactment that has glorified war, but this one really brought the point home.

And today, I am linking this commemoration of battle in our United States 150 years ago as we fought for the survival of our Union (yes, I am a Northerner) with what is happening to one of my cousins.  My relative serves our country in the Foreign Service in an embassy in a country I will not name.  I blogged about this earlier this week in my post "Half a World Away". (I'm not linking, again, due to said internet problems.)  For what it is worth, this relative was born in a former Confederate state and grew up in a state that stayed with the Union.

But, we are all one, and I would like to tell the world we are one, despite our sometimes very verbal differences - especially in a Presidential election year.

My relative, after today, will be a little closer to home as this relative is being evacuated.  The embassy, let's just say, is a little the worse for wear.  Where it is is not in a state of war, but there has been war in several directions.

It seems a bit strange, visiting long-ago battlefields when a relative is in danger.  But I have to remember the lesson of the reenactors - they do not play at war.  Their business is serious, and it is to teach us the horrors of war and hate.  My relative is learning it first hand - hopefully I will never have to.

So, I would like to be lazy today and have a fellow blogger write my blog as things other than the Civil War are on my mind.  Well, not exactly writing for me.  I would love to introduce you to one of many fine Civil War blogs, John Banks' Civil War Blog. 

The John Banks blog contains a wealth of information about Antietam.  

Another blog of note about Antietam is one called Virtual Antietam.  I hate to call battlefields 'beautiful' but Antietam is a beautiful battlefield.  This will be my second visit there.

I hope to be able to bring you a current post in the very near future, Internet willing.
In the meantime, dear relative, stay safe.

Civil War Sunday - The Invasion of Maryland

The United States Civil War, already almost a year and a half old back in August of 1862, is about to get a whole lot bloodier.

Quoting from an application to include the South Mountain (Maryland) battlefield to the National Register of Historic Places:

"On September 4, 1862 General Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, some 50,000 strong, waded across the Potomac River at White's Ferry and into Maryland for the first Confederate invasion of the North."

What is now known as the Maryland campaign began, as the Confederates waded the river to the tune of a song called "Maryland, My Maryland", which is now the Maryland State song.

A series of battles would result through September:  among others, a battle at Harpers Ferry  in what is now West Virginia (Harpers Ferry is noted for much more than John Brown's raid and is very worth a visit), a series of engagements now known as "The Battle of South Mountain" and a battle near Sharpsburg, Maryland, named after a tributary of the Potomac River called Antietam Creek.

I was in that area in March of this year, and will be traveling back later in September to explore the Civil War history of this area further.

Catoctin Mountain Orchard

When traveling, one of our pleasures is to sample local food.  We will visit farmers markets in season.  More rarely, we visit orchards.  I was excited when I found that our route to Virginia last week would bring us right past an orchard we had visited online, but never in person.

I recently read (in a travelers guide) about this special orchard in rural Maryland, along Highway 15 (the path Lee took his troops on when they invaded the North and ended up at Gettysburg at the beginning of July, 1863).  We are in the heart of fruit season, and while our area excels in apples and blueberries, there are some fruits that just don't grow here.

Like peaches.

Like (commercial) blackberries.

Like plums.

And guess who had them all.

The first thing you see upon your arrival is a variety of cut flowers for sale.  Over on the side of the building are fields of pick-your-own flowers. There is nothing like that in our area.

If the weather had been more temperate I would have taken a nice long break there, but it was so hot in that sun.  So, instead we went indoors.  Greeting us were pints of freshly picked blackberries, assorted white and yellow peaches, and several varieties of plums.  They were offering samples - entire fruits! - of one of the plums, called Methley.  They were so sweet.

We purchased some apple/cherry cider made locally in nearby Frederick, MD and decided we would return on our way back to upstate NY to pick up some fruit.

This time, they were sampling something called a Cameo apple.  Supposedly a natural cross between a Red and Golden Delicious, it does resemble a Red Delicious in shape and color.  However, unlike a Red Delicious, it is so crisp.    We didn't buy any, but we did pick up some plums.  (we had already bought so much produce at Grand mart in Centreville, VA, that our car was in serious danger of bursting.)

On the way out we treated ourselves to one more view of the lovely flowers.

What a beautiful location this is in.

One day, I hope to return.