A good send off from Sandy.

The last three days in America were meant to be spent in New York. Friends travelling with us had arranged for three nights with their relatives in central Manhattan. As it turned out, our friends flew home on time and we were unexpected guests for five more days. Thanks to Hurricane Sandy our plane was cancelled at the last minute on the Sunday, and the first flight we could bag was on the following Friday.

This was the day before Sandy arrived.

We threw ourselves on the mercy of our new acquaintances and they responded with fantastic hospitality and good grace, so thank you Sharon and Paul Blackman. We felt worse imposing on them than they did having strangers in their home. They also had friends lodging with them who lived in lower Manhattan and had lost their power supply, so it was a social week. But we had plenty of time to visit the sights and catch a show.

Our last Frank Lloyd Wright building.

The hurricane came and went, and we hardly noticed its passing. However, walking down Manhattan we found that others weren't so fortunate. Marinas were damaged, cranes toppled, electricity cut off, houses lost their walls and subways were inundated by the sea. We felt extremely lucky…

These were on the day after Sandy had paid a visit.

We loved walking the streets getting a feel for this vibrant city. Of all the places we'd visited, we felt this was the one we could live in. Maybe it was the cosmopolitan mix of nations, or the energy on the streets, whatever it was there was a feeling of open minded acceptance that we missed in small town America. It felt almost European in outlook, acknowledging that there was a world out there that wasn't necessarily threatening.

Three months travelling the lesser known parts of North-East America has  been a wonderful education. By learning America's history first hand, talking to hundreds of people and seeing for ourselves how ordinary folk live their lives, we both feel we have a much better understanding of what makes Americans tick.

It's still a relatively young country, and we reckon their national mood reflects this. A couple of hundred years ago when Britain was the most powerful nation on Earth we built numerous monuments to our heroes. We had total confidence in our power. We believed we were a civilising force for good around the world. We proudly flew the national flag outside our homes and stood solemnly when the National Anthem was playing. This is how Americans are today.

Overwhelmingly, any US citizen will happily state that they're proud to be American.

Diane and I aren't proud to be English, but we are both very grateful.

The Battle for the Nation.

The impressive Pennsylvania Memorial.

Gettysburg is famous as the site of the biggest battle of the American Civil War, fought over three days. More men died in this battle than in any other - around  50,000 -  and the defeat of Robert E. Lee's Virginian Army halted his invasion of the North. Nowadays there's an impressive museum with exhibits and films, as well as the most impressive 'Gettysburg Cyclorama'.

This is just a section of this impressive work. It was a 360 degree panorama.

This is a painting in the round from 1884, (21 years after the battle) by Thure de Thuistrup. It was exhibited around America, and then forgotten about and left to rot. Fortunately it was rediscovered, restored and hung in a purpose made gallery, with set dressing in front of it spanning the 360 degrees. It sounds naff, but is in fact a very impressive piece of work.

Can you see the join between the foreground set dressing and the painting?

The whole scene is full of such detail...

We chose to walk to the battle site and get a feel of the terrain. Here is not the place to detail the event - there are a multitude of resources for the curious, we're simply recording our impressions of the site.

The battle is much easier to understand when on the spot. The heights of the inclines, the distance the soldiers had to cover over open ground, the positioning of the guns - all this helps to decipher what occured on those fateful days of 1863. What we both found astonishing was the frontal attack up a hill over open ground. Looking at the view today it seems suicidal, yet the Confederate soldiers almost made it, at one point capturing some Union guns on the ridge. But the attack couldn't be sustained, and the Confederates withdrew.

This is the open ground the Confederates attacked across...

...the Union soldiers were here on the ridge behind the wall, firing down with cannon and rifles.

In England, our civil war battlefields have very few monuments. In Worcester where the final decisive battle was fought between Cromwell and King Charles II there are a few noticeboards explaining the events, but that's about it. In America things are different.

Just some of the memorials.

We couldn't believe the number of monuments honouring the regiments that fought at Gettysburg. There are rows of them lining the roads - we counted over 20 on Cemetery Ridge alone including the largest, the State of Pennsylvania Monument. Apparently in total there are around 1200 at Gettysburg. Presumably no-one wanted to be left out. We prefer the Shakers quiet confidence of one memorial for everyone

As a reminder of why the American Civil War was fought, here's Lincolns post battle speech at Gettysburg:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

But the area isn't completely safe from harm. A lot of the surrounding land is private property, and on July 20, 2009, a Comfort Inn and Suites opened on Cemetery Hill adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery. 

Capitalism may yet get the better of America's history.

Shake it up...

America has long offered freedom from religious persecution - the Amish being one example. One other is the Shakers, founded in England in 1770 by Ann Lee. An offshoot of the Quakers, they were said to "shake" because they danced and spoke in tongues.

Their prayer meetings looked like a good old knees up.

Lee had lost four young children which she saw as a punishment from God. Following the death of her fourth child she claimed to have had a vision from God in which it was explained to her that sexual intercourse was the root of all sin, and that to truly serve God, one must be celibate.

Ann Lee

In 1772, Ann received another vision from God, in the form of a tree, in which it was communicated to her that "a place had been prepared" for the Shakers in America. So nine Shakers emigrated to America in 1774, and built the first of eighteen Shaker communities in America.

Their buildings have an elegant practical simplicity.

Shakers live by four basic tenets; they live communally, they were celibate, they regularly confess their sins and they separated themselves from the outside world. The communities were revolutionary because they offered both spiritual and physical equality - men and women were fundamentally equal and treated as such. This equality also extended to non-Christians and individuals of different races who joined the communities.

Each member of the community had an obligation to work, which resulted in a surplus of products that the Shakers made for sale. This meant they were a prosperous community. Their beautiful crafts, buildings and grounds have therefore always reflected both the pride and care that they took in their work, and the simplicity and utility that their lives demanded.

Typical Shaker furniture - cleverly made to hang out of the way.

 We visited what was once a Shaker community in Canterbury, New Hampshire and liked what we discovered.

The Meeting Hall. Gentlemen entered the door on the left, ladies on the right.

They had no personal possessions but they were practical - inventing metal pen nibs, the flat broom, a prototype washing machine called a wash mill, the circular saw (invented by a woman, Tabitha Babbit), waterproof and wrinkle-free cloth, a metal chimney cap that blocked rain and they improved on the plough.

No photographs allowed inside the buildings - so the wood store must suffice to show how practical they were...

As pacifists the Shakers did not believe in harming others, even at time of war. As a result, in the Civil War both Union and Confederate soldiers found their way to the Shaker communities. Shakers tended to sympathize with the Union but they did feed and care for soldiers on both sides. President Lincoln exempted Shakers from military service, and they became some of the first conscientious objectors in American history.

With one of their tenets being celibacy, to survive as a community they needed new believers to join them - or they adopted children. At the age of 21 however these were given a choice of whether to remain with the Shaker community or go their own way into the world - even receiving money and help to get themselves started if needs be. But perhaps inevitably the numbers have dwindled from over 4000 in 1850  to under a dozen today.

Here they elected to have one gravestone for all the Shakers buried in this graveyard. That's real solidarity!

We liked the Shakers. There was a simplicity and honesty about their lives that had a great attraction for us.

Women did women's work and men did men's, but they were always equal before God.

To quote from the website of the last Shaker community at Sabbathday:

"Shakerism has a message for the this present age - a message as valid today as when it was first expressed. It values human fulfillment highly and believes that we fulfill ourselves best by being nothing more nor less than ourselves. It believes that Christian love is a love beyond disillusionment, for we cannot be disillusioned with people being themselves. Surely God would not have it otherwise for it is in being ourselves - our real selves - that we are most like Christ in his sacred oneness. "