Haven't read the article(s) yet. Soon... Note: FYI, the restriction to two links is in the 'comments' WW. You can put a 'Lot-O-Links' in the body of the blog proper. off to read now

That second to last sentence is meant to convey that after seeing the film, you will be less likely to support capital punishment.

Thanks for reading and commenting, Mh2o -- I always learn something new from your take on anything. And thanks to both you and PCA for additional format instruction. One day I will get it. In the meantime, I appreciate your help. Would be wonderful if Al would provide a "cheat sheet" of instructions for every function. Thank you,M, for the one you gave me about photo insertion.
Off to work now. Will check in later.

Dammit, Wendy, It is 12 noon and I just finished this compelling story when I was supposed to be cleaning my house!

Wow, I don't know where to start -- It amazes me that with 43,000 dead at that battle, Bourn could get so much interest in finding out the identity of one person. And also that the mystery was solved.

Then, the interesting descendants of Amos; so many professionals doing various work. The Mayan-Egyptian connection -- I was particularly glad to read of a reason that 2012 is not correct for the end of the earth.

But my mine kept coming back to the complete waste that war is; who knows what contributions Amos and his brothers in death might have made? All those suffering orphans at the "asylum" who would have otherwise had a family if not for war.

I also noted on one photograph; it was titled, "The War for The Union." I have never heard the Civil War called that before, yet this was contemporaneous.

Thanks for a fascinating read. I am checking out now, my dustbunnies are calling!

What I would like to know is what were the motivations of Amos to enter this war and leave his wife and three children? The clearest description of his ideas seem to be that he refers to the war as a rebellion. No mention of freeing slaves, but rather a reference that suggests he felt it important to preserve the Union. That being said, it is clear otehrs went to war to abolish slavery. I suspect they all had their own reasons and money and adventure might be among those. Clearly, Amos was a restless sort going whaling for three years and travelling to Michigan as well.

If we don't stop hanging on to the myth that we live in separate cultures, we will never progress. Whether we like it or not, we live in one culture and that culture is the one we create together.

That is the true meaning of "American exceptionalism", that of all nations, we were unhampered by tradition, by heredity, by religious institutions and able to create something new by ourselves, for ourselves.

I recall your blog entry but I don't recall your question. Ask again and I'll be happy to respond.

Why do you consider it stealing for someone to take the one possible identifying piece of information off of a corpse before burying it in a (semi) mass grave? Surely everyone knew that it would give some level of comfort to a family to find out what happened to a loved-one who died.

As an emergency room nurse, I have removed rings, other jewelry, and all possible identifying stuff when a dead Jane or John Doe was brought in. Although what I removed went to the police, you have to remember that 43,000 people died in those three days -- leaving it with an inn-keeper turned out to be a pretty good way to get the news to the family after all.

Obviously the person who first took the picture and then gave it to the innkeeper did not benefit personally from it. Although Bourns didn't steal it, he ultimately stole its worth, and refused to return it to Amos' family.

Thanks for your post and an old picture of three beautiful children whom I belatedly claim become some part of me. I digress into the double helix.

Visual presence is important to me and helps form the context I’ve carried from my past. Cold Mountain is one of my favorite movies. Many of my relatives seem portrayed in that film, esp. the musicians. And through those people’s lives, I find a road back, not always where I want to go. Even though they remain anonymous to my understanding I still carry forward some of their values in my genes.

Like John Trudell says: DNA means: “Descendants ‘N Ancestors” - that’s who we are, going in both directions.

Wars. Native Americans were 100% of the population here, and now 1%. A common history informs our politics and we have to deal with it, somehow. As far as racism and war go, I think we should replace the black/white dichotomy because together, we are now much more of a mix than that. Maybe we’ll figure it out if we bring out the big pictures, like Flowerchild did on Memorial Day.

I haven’t finished reading the Errol Morris series yet.
But the questions I have float somewhere between nature and
culture, as usual. For me, the common
denominator is image and language...

The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people. The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences. – Genetics Home Reference

AGCT vs Who, Me?

Once more: “Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people.”

What in that 1% makes us racist or violent or mean? I don’t know but I guess its religion and power, gender and politics and culture. The upside is the answers must reside there too. Somewhere. Maybe we’ll figure it out before we all turn phosphorescent greenish-blue like dickday’s “Devolution” blog predicks.

:-)
P.S. Congrats on the big win over at Quinn's!

The idea that Amos died with the picture in his hand contemplating his children is likely someone (Bourns?) exercising creative license.

It sounds so much better than the story of someone (Bourns?) ransacking Amos' dead body.