Winter Returns

And so this morning our two weeks vacation from winter has officially ended! I'm back into shoes and warm tops--49 degrees, windy, bitterly cold and gray. After we leave Ky I'll just sleep the trip back home away. I'm furious and depressed. But today was somewhat interesting--we went to Dover Tn to Fort Donelson. The pictures are pretty self explanatory but there are some other interesting notes to be made. About two years earlier, Grant and Buckner had gotten together in NYC as old friends and classmates from West Point. Grant was broke and depressed and Buckner lent him some money until his brothers could wire him funds from Galena, Ill. After the war, while Grant was ill and writing his memoirs, Buckner visited him to thank him for his treatment of the Confederates in every instance of their defeat at his hands. ( I wonder if he visited at Gansevoort, NY?) And when Grant died, Buckner was one of his pallbearers. Also Smith, who was under Grant's command at Donelson, had been an instructor of Grant's and Buckner's at the Point. Just two more examples of the strange entanglements that occured during this strange War. This battle was the precursor to Pittsburg Landing (Shiloh) and Gulfport which we explored two years ago. I purchased Kate--a memoir written by a Confederate nurse--to go with Company Haitch which I'd read after our Shiloh experience. It is a memoir of a Union infantry soldier, which was fascinating. Then we followed back roads once more into Kentucky and started moving Northeastward to Bowling Green. Along the way we came to a monument to rival the Washington monument--well, more like the Bennington monument!--marking the birthplace of Jefferson Davis. So now I've seen his birthplace, his home in Mississippi and his final residence on the Gulf. All without any planning at all! LOL Arrived at Bowling Green and met the desk clerk, an obnoxious hulk from New Berlin, New York with a very poor opinion of the City--just a rustic--what can I say? So now I'm going to read the end of my book and try to keep warm. I dread returning to Vermont--still cold, drab and miserable with just t mud season to look forward to. I've decided I don't like the East anymore. Well, good night