Ever Bethany

Anyone in Chicago with a foolish desire to see me?
Because I'm going to be there tomorrow, until Tuesday. ^_^

I have all the intense essential oils in my fingers from giving someone a healing massage. I feel gooood.
But that's not the only reason!
This morning I cruised an Acton bookstore and Trader Joe's with gjules Oh, and I brought her to the Boxboro Cemetary. Very important stop.
The sorts of things that're loads of fun in the right company. (She is the right company.  She promised me more graveyards!)


Fabulous place to be buried. Though it's been out of fashion some 150 years.



I wanted a good shot of the cracked open tomb-door, and then told Genevieve, "Now I'm going to have to look in there."
But it was stoned off just inside. I got the sense of peril with no terrible revelations...yay!

I went to Eureka Springs with my family yesterday. That was fun, and the place is lovely. I'd love to go with people who shop, and also some sort of expendable cash.

But the real highlight of this trip for me is going to be Pea Ridge, a Civil War historic national park, a totally unexpected sort of thing.

I find the Civil War depressing--reading a book about the overarching politics and basic history was enough for me to feel informed on the issue. Delving into the atrocities and such is not appealing to me. This trip was more than an expedition into forest trails and coming across a great abrupt bluff with spars of rock spearing up below. I read the meatier information blurbs avidly, listened to Mr. Docent when he went into the more fascinating branches carefully.

Someone, I think at a Conestoga panel, mentioned that if you want to learn about war, read up on specific battles. They mentioned a few they thought were noteworthy, but I don't write epic fantasy (*much*) and didn't think more of it.

Until watching the video of the battle here (which in a few ways, including scale is a significant one) then driving and looking out over the actual area and putting a picture together in my mind that was so compelling and new of what it looked like to fight a war.

Generalizations are the bane of Truth, you know it?
And specifics are awesome.