July 2014 Travel Photo: Empire State Building

New York's official nickname is the "Empire State."  While some theories claim George Washington gave the state this nickname, notably due to its key role in the country's economy, there is no confirmed reason on how New York earned this name.

The Empire State's economy, and that of all the United States, suffered severely in the crash of 1929.  As part of the effort to reassert the economy and New York's role as a producer, construction of the Empire State Building began in 1930 (with plans only a few weeks old) and was finished in 1931.

The building was the tallest in the world until 1972 (now 23rd) and remains a cultural marker for New York City.

March 2014 Travel Photo: Overlooking from Marye's Heights

In December 1862 a crime was committed by Union generals Ambrose Burnsides, Edwin Sumner, and Darius Couch.  Union forces were meant to distract Confederate forces, firmly entrenched on Marye's Heights, while the main Union force worked its way around the Virginian town of Fredericksburg.  Instead Union commanders ordered one brigade at a time to assault the position.  Fourteen times Union soldiers were easily cut down.  8,000 Union men were needlessly killed.

Standing on top of Marye's Heights it is easy to see why the assault failed despite urban encroachment and trees.  The heights dominate an easy slope which denied Union forces much cover.  With the main Confederate force entrenched at the base of the heights and artillery and snipers placed on top, I could easily see how Union forces were picked off piecemeal.  Famed groups such as the Irish Brigade, an infantry outfit made up of Irish Immigrants and the third most causalitied Union unit in the war, were among the victims of the slaughter.

Photo take at the edge of the "National Cemetery" (center).  Notice how the heights drop off suddenly.

December 2013 Travel Photo: The Closed World War II Memorial

The government shutdown in October 2013 was a time of extreme partisanship by conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats.  National Parks became scenes of the shutdown played out by both sides.  The Obama administration ordered the national park barricaded, breaking past procedure of government shutdowns which left memorials open, just unmanned.

Veteran and conservative groups responded by adopting the "occupy" tactic of political left.  These groups engaged in civil disobedience by trespassing past the barricades (nicknamed "Barrycades" in mocking President Obama's name) around the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC.  The closing of the monument and actions against the barriers made the memorial the "place" of the government shutdown.

November 2013 Monthly Travel Photo: Bridge over the Potomac at Harpers Ferry

Photo by TDAXP

Now a regional tourism destination and the half way point along the Appalachian Trail.  In the past the meeting of the two "wild" rivers of the Shenandoah and Potomac near the capital of the United States helped destine Harpers Ferry to being a flashpoint for Civil War.

October 2013 Travel Photo: Doha Fashion Show

I can only imagine what the Russian fashion models thought about the hijab-wearing Arab women and what the Qatari women thought of the swimsuit-wearing Europeans.

August 2013 Travel Photo: Shenandoah Valley from Hawksbill Mountain

The valley is past the clouds.  Click to enlarge.

This month's travel photo is the Shenandoah Valley viewed from Hawksbill Mountain right along Skyline Drive.  While the Blueridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley below are beautiful but have been witness to two tragedies, one of war and the other due to bigoted federal government greed.  I will expound of these two themes as well as the valley itself in upcoming posts.

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July 2013 Travel Photo: Looking at the Confederate Line from the Union Position on top of Cemetery Ridge Gettysburg

On July 3, 1863 some 12,500 Confederate soldiers lined up in the tree line in the photo below.  These men marched one mile (~1.6 kilometers) under cannon, rifle, and musket fire.  The Confederate's goal was the Union line up on Cemetery Ridge.  The assault failed and was known as Pickett's Charge, the hightide of the Confederacy.

The march cost the Union 1,500 men while the Confederates suffered 50 percent causalities.

The white monument in the distance is the main memorial to Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who commanded Southern forces in the battle.  During the charge Lee was actually further north (to the right) but his monument was placed in its current location so it can look directly at the monument dedicated to General George Meade, commander of Northern forces in the battle. 

Mead's monument triumphantly looks over the battlefield knowing he held the ridge.

General George Meade.  He took command of the army three days before the battle and was the first Union general to completely defeat Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

 

June 2013 Travel Photo: Cholera Graveyard along the Oregon and California Trails

Outside my old research stomping grounds of St Marys, Kansas is the 49ers Cholera Graveyard near the Oregon Trail Road bridge over the Vermilion River.


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Cholera was the major killer of emigrants leaving the eastern United States for new settlements in Utah, Oregon, and California.  The bacteria infection killed more people than any other sickness, injury, or hostiles.  The bacteria grew in water polluted by human and animal waste.  Mental Floss gives the following history of cholera along the Oregon Trail.

The number one killer of the actual Oregon Trail, cholera is an infection of the intestines caused by ingesting the bacteria Vibrio cholerae. Spread through contaminated food or water, cholera released an enterotoxin that effectively flooded the intestines with excess water. This led to continual watery diarrhea, causing severe dehydration and often death. The worst outbreaks occurred on the Oregon Trail in 1849, 1850 and 1852. The only available treatment in the game was a medicine known as laudanum—understood today to be pure opium.

Since the Vermilion River is so close to the jumping off cities (where emigrants started their journeys west) many people would reach the crossing at about the same time.  Because of this the crossing would be the site of wagon train camps for weeks.  In 1849, the year of the California Gold Rush, an outbreak broke out and claimed the lives of many people going West.

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By the end of 1849 over fifty grave stones were visible at the river crossing.  However, only three worn out slabs are visible today.  The shaded green historic site looks peaceful.  However, the peacefulness lies on top of a site of sadness and poor medical understanding which claimed the lives of people who left their homes for a brighter future for themselves and their families.  

May 2013 Travel Photo: Jacqueline Kennedy Garden

Recently I was able to attend a White House function in Washington, DC.  While people were busy in the Rose Garden area I was able to walk away from the group for a second and take a picture of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden which is on the east side of the White House's south lawn.

The garden is next to the more famous Rose Garden.  There is an unofficial understanding that the Rose Garden is for events hosted by the president while the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden is for events hosted by the first lady.

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April 2013 Travel Photo: Interior of Hagia Sophia Church/Mosque/Museum

Photo by co-worker "Horsegauze"

Hagia Sophia, literally meaning Holy Wisdom, was first built in 537 in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.  In the empire it served as a church for the united Catholic-Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Latin Catholic, and the reunited Greek Catholic-Orthodox Churches.  In 1451 it was turned from a Catholic-Orthodox church into a Sunni Muslim mosque when the Ottomans seized Constantinople and made it their capital.   When the city fell Hagia Sophia was the largest church in the world.

As a mosque Hagia Sophia served as the religious capitol of the empire and main mosque of the emperor-caliph.  It lasted as a mosque for over 450 years until the fall of the Ottoman Empire and its replacement with the secular national socialist Republic of Turkey.  The government turned the mosque into a museum which it remains today.

Inside one can see Islamic surrounded by Christian mosaics.  The area with in the far background has a Christian altar table with altar candles in front of a Islamic mihrab. This dichotomy is an excellent physical example of east meeting west in Istanbul, Turkey which itself is divided in two between a western bank in Europe and an eastern bank in Asia.


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March 2013 Monthly Travel Photo: Forbidden City from Starbucks

Photo by Catholicgauzette

The Forbidden City's Starbucks is no more.  It was closed in 2007 to protect (idealized historical) Chinese culture from (modern-day Chinese) capitalism.  However, while it was opened it provided a popular good and represented both past and present China.

The Forbidden City in Beijing was the capital of imperial China of both the Ming, Shun, and Qing dynasties.  It was first built between 1406 and 1420.  Its complex layout represents China as the Middle Kingdom uniting both heaven and earth.  Further examination of the geography of the place shows frequent use of Taoist yin-yang: light and dark, male and female, heaven and earth, land and water, etc.


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National Geographic has a great special on the history and design of the Forbidden City.



Today the Forbidden City is a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Tourists come from around the world.  Those who are thirsty can visit a "traditional Chinese tea house" which now sits in the old Starbucks.

February 2013 Monthly Travel Photo: Abraham's Oasis

The above photo is by Pep Photo of Abraham's Oasis on Al Asad (The Lion) Airbase, Al Anbar Province, Iraq.  I picked this photo since my Iraq photos are sadly lost.


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In the past I wrote about the Oasis and it's religious geography history

"First, a little geography. The oasis is about six miles (ten kilometers) away from the Euphrates River. At this point on, the more northwest one goes along the river the deeper it sinks into cliff sides, making side stops difficult. The whole western portion of Iraq is desert making any access to a rest area with water extremely valuable. Finally, the oasis is last oasis of any importance until well after the Syrian border.

All these factors lead locals to claim Abraham visited the Oasis during his divinely inspired mission to the Holy Land. Despite the fact neither the Bible or Qu'ran mention any stops, if the oasis was in existence at the time Abraham would have most likely stopped there."

While the base was under United States control the oasis was clean and access was restricted to those with a chaplain guide.  My visit to the oasis required me to attend a cultural awareness briefing about respecting the Iraqi traditions around the oasis.  However, several blog readers claim that the oasis is now trashed as the base is under Iraqi control.  Sadly, this matches the oasis' condition before American occupation.  While the United States treated this place as a holy site, local Iraqis, even those who believed the story, treated it like a garbage dump. 

January 2013 Travel Photo: Oregon Trail Wagon Ruts in Western Nebraska

Out in western Nebraska, not to far from the life giving Platte River and the rest stop of Ash Hollow are wagon ruts from the Oregon Trail.  The ruts are on private property and are near rancher motor vehicle tracks in the foreground.  The marks left by hard working historical emigrant Overlanders and present-day local ranchers compliment the tough physical terrain of the region.

December 2012 Monthly Travel Photo: Mexican Christmas Tree

 
Although Santa Claus, as Americans imagine Saint Nicholas, is making large inroads into Mexico due to cross-cultural exchanges via mass media and migration of legal and illegal immigrants, Christmas celebrations in Mexico outside Mexico City can still be considered mostly traditional.  European and New Spain (mixture of European and Mesoamerican Indian) celebrations are found all over the country. 

However, the Christmas tree first made its introduction in Mexico in the northern regions.  It was in and around Monterrey, Mexico where German industrialist and others settled and brought along the tradition of the Christmas tree.  Today, the Christmas tree is found throughout Mexico.

November 2012 Travel Photo: Guanajuato Cemetery

One of the major attractions in the Mexican city of Guanajuato is the city cemetery.  Rows upon rows of bodies are interned in above ground burials.  However, most people do not come to see the graves but something else.


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Since the rise of Mexican national socialism/positivism in the 1870s, the city has controlled the cemetery and required families and/or friends to pay rent for a spot.  When family can no longer pay then the bodies are moved from the cemetery, and if mummified, moved into the adjacent museum which houses the largest collection of mummies in the Western Hemisphere.

The incredibly warm and dry climate of the elevated interior of Mexico can quickly dry out bodies causing them to naturally mummify.  The display of mummies including men, women, and children with some of them dressed up in scenes like a baby crying for its "madre" made me physically sick.  This was due to the cultural clash between my English-American background which ultimately greatly fears death, as evidence in Gothic literature, and the Spanish-Mesoamerican Indian hybrid culture of Latin America which accepts death to a greater extent and even mocks it in part.

October 2012 Travel Photo: Shrine to the Last Hapsburg in Washington DC

In downtown Washington DC is the church of St. Mary, Mother of God.  The parish was founded in the early 1800s to serve the German-speaking Catholic community of the District. Germans were at the time largest source of Catholic immigration to the United States before the Irish boom.  However, as time changed the German nature of the parish changed though the church never forgot its heritage.  Meanwhile, in the 1990s the Latin Mass-using Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) was given control of the parish.  The FSSP implemented the old, pre-Vatican II Latin Mass while still offering English-language massess.


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The combination of German roots, Latin mass, and being in the United States' capital has made the parish a sort capital for traditional German Catholicism which lost its strongholds in liberal Europe.  Somewhat naturally because of this yet still surprisingly the parish has attracted the attention of the House of Hapsburg.


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Washington DC served as a de facto rallying point for the family after their exile and bans from most of Europe (some only lifted at the end of the Cold War) following the fall of the empire after World War I.  Every October 21st, the FSSP holds a mass attended by the major heads of the imperial house honoring the Blessed Emperor Karl, the last emperor of Austria-Hungary.  Emperor Karl restored the overt, devout Catholicism of the house which slid from the head of Christendom to any other decadent royal family.  The house continued the traditional nature of the family's Catholic faith after his death in 1922 and even Vatican II's reforms.

St Mary, Mother of God has acted as the church of the Hapsburgs in other ways.  In early September Archduke Emry gave a relic of Karl to the Church to be placed in the pictured shrine.  Also in September Archduke Emry was married in the parish.

September 2012 Travel Photo: Bloody Lane at Antietam

The above photo is the back side of Bloody Lane at Antietam battlefield outside Sharpsburg, Maryland.  During the noon hours of September 17, 1862, Confederate (South) forces used a sunken road to act as a natural trench against wave after wave of Union (North) attacks.  It was not until the third assault that Union troops were able to outflank the defenders, and shoot down into the road.  The sunken road, which was the protector of Southern forces, turned into a death trap.  By 1:00 the road was full of bodies.

A video tour of the Sunken Road by VideoHistoryToday

The sunken road provided a great blind spot for Confederate forces.  While Union forces were forced to fight on top of the ridge in the background, exposing their full bodies, Confederates were mostly hidden.  The above photo has a 6 feet 4 inches tall man standing inside the natural trench.  Below is the same man standing outside the sunken road.

Video documentary about the full Battle of Antietam including the Bloody Lane

August 2012 Monthly Travel Photo: Saudi Airport Book Store

An airport book store is a good window into popular culture.  A foreigner would learn that American taste in books is limited between political manifestos, how to books, and soft/hidden pornography.  A trip to Saudi Arabia taught me the trinity of Saudi books is histories, religious, and anti-Semitism.

The two photos below are snapshots of blatantly anti-Semitic books.  The first one seems to be the fifth in a series of religious books while the second photo shows a standalone book.  Sadly, my Arabic is not what it should be so if anyone can translate I would be very grateful.

July 2012 Monthly Travel Photo: Little Round Top from the Valley of Death

An unique look at how geography impacted my family tree and why a good genealogist would study geography.

A see of blue uniforms, including my ancestor, swarmed down Little Round Top into the Valley of Death.  They were easy pickings.  Photo by Catholicgauze, directed and inspired by Catholicgauzette

On this Gettysburg hillside in the evening of July 2, 1862, one of my ancestors, marked his 366th day in the Union army by leading his men down from Little Round Top into the "Valley of Death".  Their mission was to clean out areas known as the Wheatfield and Devil's Den which were taken by Confederates earlier that day.  The hope was they could push the Confederates away from the critcal hills known as Big and Little Round Top.  These hills served as the southern flank of the Union line and protected the army's connection to Washington.

The view from Little Round Top down into the Valley of Death from the 17th United States Infantry's position.  This is what my ancestor saw (along with smoke and an army of Confederate soldiers).  Photo by Catholicgauze

Within 15 minutes, 150 of the 260 men of the 17th United States Infantry were dead or wounded.  According to a family historian, my ancestor, Edward, was shot in the lung and was taken to a farm house half of a mile away which served as a hospital.  The hospital was already full of wounded from fighter earlier on the second day.  He fought for his life through July 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th.  He died on the eighth, five days after the end of the battle.


View Edward at Gettysburgh in a larger map


View Edward at Gettysburgh in a larger map

At the end of the second day of the battle Confederate General Robert E Lee decided to focus all his attention on breaking the center of the Union line, away from the Round Tops.  The fighting which killed Edward proved to be a sideshow, perhaps even unnecessary.

June 2012 Travel Photo: Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill at Dusk

This months travel photo is on Cemetery Hill at dusk with Culp's Hill in the background.  Cemetery Hill was the fallback point for the Union troops at the end of the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg.  Both Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill were the seen of intense fighting the second day into the night as Confederate troops learned the hard lessons of attacking an entrenched force on the high ground.

Union General George Meade ordered his troops to hold a series of hills and ridges outside the town of Gettysburg.  He was a topographic engineer (geographer) who knew the value of terrain in a battle.  His victory turned the tide of the Civil War and was the first significant defeat for Confederate General Robert E. Lee.