Sunday, April 26, 2009. The Grand Parade, Food, Northernmost Confederate Land Action
It’s parade day! The Maple Fest “Grand Parade” starts at 1:00 PM. We got to town about 11:00 so we would have time to get some food and wander around a bit. We got some good food from the vendors at the park on Main Street. Then we found a spot to watch the parade. The parade was great, very Norman Rockwell, kids on floats, school marching bands, Shriners, fire trucks, you know.
We also learned more history about St. Albans. It was the site of the northernmost Confederate land action of the American Civil War.
The St. Albans Raid took place in St. Albans, Vermont on October 19, 1864.
In this unusual incident, Bennett H. Young led Confederate States Army forces. Young had become a prisoner of war after the Battle of Salineville in Ohio ended Morgan's Raid the year before; he later escaped to Canada (then the Province of Canada, part of the British Empire) and returned to the South, where he proposed raids on the Union from the Canadian border to build the Confederate treasury and force the Union Army to protect the northern border and divert troops from the South. Young was commissioned as a lieutenant and returned to Canada, where he recruited other escaped rebels to participate in a raid on St. Albans, Vermont, a quiet town 15 miles (25 km) from the Canadian border.
Young and two others checked into a local hotel on October 10, saying that they had come from St. John's in Quebec for a "sporting vacation." Every day, two or three more young men arrived. By October 19, there were 21 cavalrymen assembled. Just before 3 p.m. the group simultaneously staged a robbery of the three banks in the town. They announced that they were Confederate soldiers and stole a total of $208,000. As the banks were being robbed, eight or nine of the Confederates held the townspeople prisoner on the village green as their horses were stolen. One townsperson was killed and another wounded. Young ordered his troops to burn the town down, but the four-ounce bottles of Greek fire they had brought failed to work, and only one shed was destroyed.
The raiders fled with the money into Canada, where they were arrested by authorities. A Canadian court decided that the soldiers were under military orders and that the officially neutral Canada could not extradite them to the United States. The Canadian court's ruling that the soldiers were legitimate military belligerents and not criminals, as argued by American authorities, has been interpreted as a tacit British recognition of the Confederate States of America. The raiders were freed, but the $88,000 the raiders had on their person was returned to Vermont.
Hey Bill and Deb -
I just found your Christmas card with the blogsite listed. Sorry not to be in touch for so long. A lot has happened in the last year, especially on the health front. I'm fine, but I've spent a lot of time seeing doctors. Here's the short version.
Sept 2007 Developed bad tendonitis in left elbow.
Nov 2007-May 2008 physical therapy
Dec 2007 - Cortisone shot, worked for 3 months or so.
June 25, 2008 - Biopsy of prostate. Ouch. "Oh," he says. "There might be some blood in your urine for a day or so." Jesus, it looked like Rosie O'Donnell had her period in my Johnson! For two weeks after, it felt like I had been kicked in the nuts two hours ago. Not only does the biopsy hurt, but it shows early prostate cancer. I decide to get the whole thing ripped out.
June 29 Surgery on my elbow. As long as I'm going to be recovering from prostate surgery, I might as well be recovering from elbow surgery at the same time, right?
August 4, 2008 - Prostate removed, so is cancer. The surgeon calls it a "surgical cure." So in five weeks, I went from "I've got cancer," to "I'm a cancer survivor." My PSA (prostate specific antigen, produced by the body fighting prostate cancer) has been undetectable since the surgery.
Dec 22 2008 = Onset of shingles. Wo, Nelly. You don't want it. Get the vaccine. It's an infection of the nerves by a virus named "herpes zoster," related to the virus that causes herpes of the lips and genital herpes. It is the same virus that causes chicken pox in kids. If you had chicken pox, you have herpes zoster living in your nerves. If your immune system becomes compromised, herpes zoster comes out and bites you on the ass (well, on the neck and shoulder in my case).
It hurts like nothing you've ever felt because it's neuropathic (caused by the infected nerves) pain, rather than pain caused by trauma, burns, cuts, impact, fractures rheumatism, arthritis, headache heartburn, toothache or tumors.
The pain takes a lot of forms that are unlike anything you've ever felt, so they're mostly indescribable, except that but one of the pains feels like red ants on a bad sunburn. Others are like electric shocks or stabs. At one point, I was taking eight Vicodin a day. Did I mention that you don't want this?
In March, I had 6 nerve blocks, where they stick a needle into the front of your neck to inject a cocktail of anaesthetics into your nerve roots in the seventh cervical vertibra. I don't know if they worked, or if the pain just diminished with time. Anyway, it's better now, but still sucks.
Oh yeah, after the prostate surgery, you have a catheter coming out of your schween for two weeks, and after that you leak pee and have to wear panty liners, like Rosie O'Donnell. Also, the only reliable way to get a boner is to inject about 2 cc. of drugs into the side of your Johnson.
Tough year. Email me.
Leer
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