Washington DC; Lincoln's Fortress City (click here to see the excerpts)

By the way, I also enjoy shooting and editing video. I worked for 4 years at the public access television station in Grand Rapids Michigan (GRTV) I was the project manager for the MoLLIE program. My team and I travelled to area schools and taught kids grades 3-12 how to write, shoot, perform, and edit their own curriculum-linked (history, math, science, etc.) videos for cablecast. We worked with thousands of kids and they came up with some great videos.

Along the way I became interested in doing my own stuff and under the masthead of my consulting company "Museum of America", I produced three short documentaries. The one linked to this YouTube URL is the latest, though far from finished; "Washington D.C.: Lincoln's Fortress City".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6p-lcby-_U

Please note that the compression rate really has a negative impact on the resolution of what you'll be viewing

After reading the Margaret Leech Classic "Reville in Washington" as well as the more recent "Freedom Rising" by Ernest B. Furgurson I was prompted to do a 29 minute piece regarding the history of those Civil War era forts that ring the capital...at least those that are still preserved.

I'm starting the piece with a comparison between the post 9-11 frenzy of today with that of the post First Manassas hysteria of 1861. I'm working on it in fits and starts and hope to have it done by spring.

Do let me know what you think.

Mannie

Antietam Morning

My favorite time of day at the battlefield is early morning. The visitors are still having breakfast back at their motels, rangers are still on their first cup of coffee or starting the long commute, and the farmers who lease acreage on the battlefield have already been at it for three hours or so, their tractors and wagons chugging and lumbering down the roads and lanes.
When the sun comes over the mountain, at least this time of year, you'll see a park truck making the rounds to unlock the observation tower gate, open Dunker Church, empty trash bins and start the daily routine of keeping the park looking beautiful.
Some mornings we have living history groups who have been invited to spend the night on the field to provide a weekend of programming for park visitors. Those are the mornings when you can smell breakfast fires, coffee, and sizzling ham (which they always offer).

In the cool air the earlybirds of the neighborhood can be seen walking or jogging the park roads. Everybody waves.

The roulette farm pond turns all gold.


To look at this field today one can hardly believe what happened here not all that long ago.


Good morning.

Ranger Mannie

Small Tributes: how people connect with Antietam National Battlefield

One of the jobs of a Park Ranger is to make the Antietam Battlefield relevant to each visitor. Often the visitors are way ahead of us. We find evidence of the meaning the park has for people everyday in the little tributes that they leave behind.

For reasons that are, I'm sure, as varied as the people who leave them behind, we daily find at the park small reminders of how important the park is to our visitors. Early on, I found a valentine heart made of pebbles on Burnsides Bridge. Perhaps this was a tribute to the men of the Union Ninth Corps...or maybe between two sweethearts. The cool thing is that we'll never know.

These little tributes are always ephemeral and subject to the weather, curious children, or marauding crows and woodchucks.

Sometimes they are predictable and storebought like funerary wreaths and miniature flags. Sometimes they are fragile little pebble sculptures.

And sometimes they are the coins left atop the headstone of the last person interred at Antietam National Cemetery, an American destroyerman killed aboard the U.S.S. Cole, Patrick Howard Roy of nearby Keedysville. I'm assuming the coins are left by his high school buddies and the empty rifle shell perhaps by someone he used to go hunting with.

Antietam National Battlefield is a beautiful and evocative place that seems to naturally resonate with thoughtful people. Do come visit sometime. You just may leave something small, but important, behind.

the 27th Virginia returns to Antietiam...er...Sharpsburg

Here's my latest YouTube movie. I put it together from footage I shot this last weekend at the Park. We had a living history group portraying the 27th Virginia infantry (of which the original fought at Antietam).

After the smoke cleared I went home and started editing.

I hope you like it. The link is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hco4WWfjVyA

Keep your powder dry!

Ranger Mannie

I saw myself today, 45 years ago...at Antietam

Today I met a little boy tricked out in a homemade Union uniform. He had a nice, though weatherbeaten, storebought kepi, a wooden musket, a homemade sackcoat with corporal's stripes and a large black, boxy, woman's handbag as a cartridge box.

This was the image of me 45 years ago with the cheap felt kepi I'd bought at Gettysburg, the cotton sack coat that my mom sewed for me (with corporal's stripes) and the cardboard cartridge box that I had designed.

I met this boy in the parking lot of Antietam National Battlefield's visitor center today and asked him how old he was. "Ten" was his reply. I pointed to my ranger hat and badge and said "I started out just like you when I was ten." He smiled.

It was kind of a transporting experience.




Later, as I was eating my lunch at the Smith house, I saw the same kid, gamboling over the rocks, shooting down innumerable rebels as he charged his way to his parent's waiting car, and drove off to his own future.

I wish him well.