Bits: Colonial Williamsburg to pieces: Richard Bach lines

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Dear Reader, there are many items of general interest so here are a few to please you on this sun-filled March morning.

Bits: In Colonial Williamsburg the elegant garden of lawyer Benjamin Waller was formal and contained Boxwood parterres, unique fence pickets and a central walk of marl and gravel. Edging boxwoods were set within the formal beds. Common periwinkle and gold-dust tree shrubs were planted. Small European lindens provided shade.

Pieces: Crabapples were growing in the wild when the colonists arrived in the New World. The colonists sent for seeds and cuttings from English apples along with bees for pollination. They then planted apple orchards. They made apple butter, apple pies, apple juice, cider, and vinegar. Old apple trees were cut down and used for toys and furniture or burned for warmth in the Winter.

Bits: Author Louisa May Alcott was a nurse at the Union Hospital in Washington D.C. in 1862-63 before she contracted typhoid and had to step away from caregiving. Those experiences led to her first critical success, Hospital Sketches which was published in 1863. Her most famous novel Little Women was published in 1868.

Pieces: Carpenters, scaffolding experts, professional climbers, and organ mechanics all took part to secure the iconic towers, vaults, and walls of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. In 2019 fire tore through its roof, knocked down its spire and threatened to bring the rest of the medieval monument down.

The roofless structure had a special “Umbrella” to protect it from the weather. It is stable and secure enough now to allow companies to bid in its reconstruction efforts set to have begun last Autumn. One billion Dollars has been raised to preserve this 12th Century cathedral. One thousand oak trees that are at least 100 years old are being cut and trimmed for the spire and the transept restoration.

Bits: A prehistoric whale lived 43 million years ago and has been named Anubis by Egyptian researchers. It was named after the god of death Anubis from ancient Egypt. It was nine feet long weighing 1,300 pounds. The oldest fossil whales lived 50 million years ago in Pakistan and India.

Pieces: Mary Ann Bickerdyke was known as the “Cyclone in Calico” because she oversaw the construction of 300 field hospitals. When someone complained about the stubborn nurse to General William Tecumseh Sherman, he rose to her defense and said he couldn’t intercede because she outranked him. Now there was a strong leader who had what it took to recognize the quality industry of Bickerdyke.

Bits: Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong had one voice and one style, wrote Ricky Riccardi, author and director of research collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens “All of his ways of telling a story features this same kind of totally swinging voice.” Armstrong recorded 700 reels of tape for himself. His stage presence was “rich with sincerity and a sense of delight.” “When the Saints Go Marching In” featured Louis Armstrong and his trumpet. He was said to have a voice warming the silence around it.

Pieces: The 1970 hit Jonathan Livingston Seagull written by Richard Bach gives us these lines “And suddenly he saw his students and they were just for a moment and he more than liked, he loved what it was as he saw. No limits, Jonathan? He thought, and he smiled. His race to learn had begun. And Jonathan Livingston Seagull rose with the two star-bright gulls to disappear into a perfect dark sky.”

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