scenes from Wednesday afternoon

My buddy Mike is a history buff. In some alternative universe, he's a history prof at some blessedly unwoke university. Fortunately for this universe's Mike, he lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia, which is steeped in Civil War history. Today, Mike showed me some of the graffiti dating back to the Civil War and still visible on the bricks of the building he works in (partly his property firm, partly a restaurant called "Foode," where his eldest daughter once worked). The graffiti below all tell stories and were probably all left on the walls of this Southern building by Union soldiers. I'll let Mike enter the comments and narrate the details of each photo; I'm old, untrained in history (it was my least favorite subject through high school and undergrad; I didn't begin to appreciate it until grad school) and can't keep the details straight. One thing I'd be interested to know is how we know so much about the people who left these marks. Letters? Early, rudimentary photos?

If that date says "1880," that's after the Civil War, which ended in 1865.

the lovely Episcopal church across the street (St. George's)

EB and ST, two soldiers who may have served together (I think)

History is all around us if only we'd look.

Stay tuned for thoughts on today, which didn't go so well.

Mike's been taking up walking in preparation for our walk along the final part of the Camino de Santiago when we turn 60. I wonder whether he'd be amenable to do walking tours of the older parts of Fredericksburg and the battlefields in the surrounding areas. And not just little, two-mile tours, either: I'm thinking ten-mile tours. There's a lot to see.