The evolution of drums

This weekend I dropped by the Manassas Museum. Manassas was the site of the first battle of the US Civil War. I was mostly impressed by the ratio in their collection of percussion instruments to other objects. The picture below is a drumstick found on the battlefield in Manassas after the battle. It was quite a beefy drumstick, even by modern standards.

Rhetorical question: Can drumsticks be beefy?

Every drumstick deserves a good drum. This is a Union Army drum.

This drum (with sticks) was used by the Manassas Town Band around 1915. I love the contrast between the rope and leather tensioning system from the Union Army drum and the steel lugs on the drum from 1915.

I would have loved to snatch that bell mounted in foreground for the Farmington Community Band to use. :)

Sunday Kitties

This is our default state lately. It is getting very hot here now, and humid as well. The kitties are taking it well, but it seems like their favorite place to hang out is near the sliding glass door no matter how hot it gets. Zellie even likes to sunbathe when it's 95 degrees. Oh well, there's no accounting for taste, especially among furballs. Pumpkin spends a LOT of time in this position. I never would have thought it would be comfy for him to lay this way. Think maybe he's trying to radiate heat from his belly? He's still as sweet as ever and sleeps on my bed by me every night.

Virginia really *is* for lovers.

I love these signs! They are ubiquitous here -- or at least they are ubiquitous at Park-and-Ride lots. It's a nice way of saying "Here is where to go if you are dropping someone off and not going to park."

Fireworks pictures are coming; I haven't picked out the best ones yet.

Xede and USAI do DC

One evening after work, a few of us contractors drove into DC to see some sights. One of the guys, Spencer, had lived in the DC area for a while so he knew where he was going. I bet you can figure out what the pictures on the left are, but the picture on the right is from the Korean War Memorial. The statues were quite haunting, slightly larger than life size with exaggerated hands and faces. A larger version of the photo would show that the statues seem to emerge from the wall behind them -- there are grey faces etched into the black granite that are modeled from real photographs.

Across Constitution Avenue from the Vietnam Memorial is the National Academy of Sciences. Inside a grove of trees and mostly hidden from view is an enormous statue of Albert Einstein. He would be a very comfortable place to take a nap if his surface weren't so full of holes -- I'm not sure if there is some sort of symbolism there. It reminds me of what happens if very cold water is poured into melted wax. We wouldn't have known he was there if it hadn't been for Spencer. He (Albert) was among the highlights of the evening although we all agreed that it was very exciting to be in the places that we had seen in so many pictures.

Another highlight of the evening was seeing the World War II Memorial and finding my grandfather in the registry there. It meant a lot to my grandmother that the memorial was built and that he would be listed there as one who served. as I remember my grandmother telling it, my grandparents were newlyweds during the war and my grandfather volunteered even though he could have been excused from service because he was needed on the family farm. They lived in several different places during the war as he was transferred from base to base.

The WWII Memorial is quite awe-inspiring. Surrounding a central pool with elaborate fountains there are 50-odd (not sure which territories were included) pillars that represented the states and territories. It was replete with symbolism and provided a gathering place for people on a languorous summer evening. However, walking among the memorials it seemed to us that war memorials were getting larger in the order they were built. As we were headed toward the Lincoln Memorial, we noticed a domed gazebo-sized white marble structure that was off the beaten path and that no one was visiting. It was the World War I Memorial.

Congratulations! It's an apartment ...

This is where I live now ... as you can see, it has less charm than a house built in the 1920s. But it is home right now. I really lost a lot of space in the kitchen so that was a challenge to fit everything in.

All of the important components are present -- cats, cat perch, porch to sit on in the evening.