Randy, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to wander around in your strange mind. I'd probably fall down some rabbit hole and never be heard about [but never from] as you weaved me into the weft and warp (more warped than most) of the curls and valleys of your brain. Enjoyed this truly fractured fairytale. BTW, with any luck, Sinbad and Sybl will be introduced today. I've got several pictures (and bloody scratches) from our two new hellions (aka black kittens.) Right now they're busy expoloring the computer room. They seem to stay fairly close to me - just not always in reach.

Many UHH folks have asked me about the intriguing snippet that the Dark Lady dropped during our dinner together, about her being responsible for starting the American Civil War. During a most delightful follow-up lunch with the Dark Lady of Swallows (shown here in one of Matthew Brady's early photos), she related the events leading up to beginning of the War Between the States. The tale she told was both fascinating and dreadful, and I'll reprise it here, as best I can remember it.
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The young Dark Lady was the toast of Washington. She quickly drew the admiring eyes of the politicians of the time, including those of an ex-military man and senator from Mississippi, one Jefferson F. Davis. Davis, altho married, was smitten, and was seen in attendance with her at the 1860 Washington Summer Olympics. The Groucho glasses the couple wore to disguise themselves fooled no one, least of all the Press, and word of their romance began to spread.

But the arrival in early 1861 of a lawyer from Springfield, Illinois, newly elected to high office, put an end to the affair. Varina Davis (in an email that--according to the FBI--was later illegally deleted by the Secretary of State) complained to Mary Todd Lincoln about her husband's straying, and Mrs Lincoln immediately told the newly-elected President to put a stop to it, or 'face the wrath of the entire God-fearing population of the North.'

Lincoln, sick of listening to Mary's incessant yammering on the subject and not wanting to upset the rest of the God-fearing North, (and being honest, Abe admired and had designs on the beautiful and exotic young witch himself), told Davis in no uncertain terms to put an end to the dalliance. Davis refused, and fled south to Charleston with the Dark Lady. Lincoln immediately alerted the FBI, who issued an APB on the couple. Davis eluded capture by becoming President of the Confederacy, but the Dark Lady herself was apprehended and handed over to a Major Anderson at Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, to be shipped back to Washington and Lincoln.

Davis threatened war. In one of his first orders as President, presuming she was still being held in the Fort, he sent a Fax (on this occasion, Private Tobias M. Fax, 1st Virginia Artillery Regiment) to Governor Pickens of South Carolina and had him instruct Brigadier General PGT Beauregard to demand the Dark Lady's release, unaware she had already been returned to Washington on a Federal gunboat under cover of darkness.

Beauregard, receiving Anderson's now-famous 'Nobody here by that name' reply to his demands for her surrender, ordered his troops to open fire on the Fort, and thus began the Civil War.

As an interesting side note, a lowly second lieutenant inside Fort Sumter was given the privilege of firing the first shot in the fort's defense. The shot missed its target high and outside, and was ruled a ball by the gunnery umpire, for which he was loudly booed by the troops in the stands, who roundly swore it was a strike. The battery lieutenant's name was Abner Doubleday. For his poor shooting, he found himself stationed in Guam, with nothing to do. To exact his revenge, he invented baseball, thereby inflicting his own boredom on millions of Americans down to this very day.

How anyone, including Messrs. Lincoln, Davis and their respective cohorts would not be completely mesmerized by the Dark Lady would be a mystery to me. Even though that image is truly beautiful, just imagine how much more mysterious and "Mona-Lisa" like it would have been if Treepusher had been alive at that time!
This corrective tale of how the war started is fascinating to me personally, a student of history, and especially as it comes on my 82nd Birthday!! Even to this day there are those devotees of the display of the Confederate Flag in many of our Southern States.....So what she started seems to have a never-ending life.....
[BTW----count me in on the roster of those who find Doubleday's invention totally boring]
What would this long hot summer be without your inventive mind and great camera work Randy?????