In a hole

Why in the world did I get off on a stupid history lesson? I'm amazed at myself.

Anyway, what happened was that the Union army set off the explosives, and in the resulting confusion they all rushed into the crater the explosion caused. The Confederate Army stood around the edges of the crater and picked them off, and also shot cannons down into the crater. According to the NPS publication, "The Union Army had suffered a loss of over 4,000 in killed, wounded, or captured as against about 1,500 for the Confederates." This is a picture of the crater.



Now, the whole point of me telling this amazingly long story is to tell you about this guy we knew who was a docent at the park. He had a group of tourists go through, and one of them said, "That was no crater. That was just a big hole in the ground!" That was sort of how I felt at the Archives. I was like, "What's so great about this? It's just a bunch of documents?!"

After I'd been all through it, though, I crossed the street to the National Sculpture Garden, sat by a fountain, and read "Great Expectations" and felt quite cosmopolitan!