I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.”--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Greetings Dear Ones!

Happy Fourth of July! I am a Bell at Liberty today and I am Grateful for that.

A dear friend rang me up last night. “Do you know what today is?” she asked. I paused.

“It’s Monday, right? It’s not the fourth already, is it? Am I off a day?” Her question puzzled me. Was she the one confused? What day did she think it was?

“It’s July 3rd. A hundred and sixty years ago, you and I were dead by now. The battle was over.”

“Ha! Yes!” I laughed. When I first met her nearly eight years ago now, she told me before we parted, “You and I, we aren’t meeting for the first time. I’ve known you before, from Gettysburg.”

“Gettysburg?” I searched her face for clues. How did she know? She was not someone I recognized from my youth, or undergraduate years at Gettysburg College or the subsequent years of combining a pilgrimage to my favorite fabric store in town with a visit to my parents who still reside nearby. Every summer, I usually take my children, friends or visitors on a tour of the battlefield—I offer anyone who can recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address by heart at the end of the day a slab of the best homemade cheesecake ever at the Lincoln Diner as a reward. Was this lady a faculty member? A park ranger? A townsperson? Did she serve cheese cake at the diner? Gettysburg is a very intimate place; one gets to know most people quickly, from Billy the hat maker on Carlisle street to Jim the high school librarian. I could not place her.

“Your neck,” she said pointing at the lines above my collar bone, “you’ve died violently at least three times in past lives. I can tell. You’ve probably been hanged as a witch at least once. And I know you died with me at Gettysburg.”

That was our first meeting. As I grew to know (and positively adore) this woman, I came to understand that all her favorite people “died with us at Gettysburg.” When I introduced her to the beloved Hermit of Hermit Hollow, she confided, “I knew the instant I saw him; he died at Gettysburg. One look at those eyes and you just know.”

“Know what?” I want to know. I have no idea how she determines such things, whether she “reads energy” or, like a great storyteller, just knows her audience. A New Englander through and through, as far as I know, she’s never had anything to do with Gettysburg personally, except that she believes we both once died there and have been drawn to return there as part of this life’s events.

“Utter nonsense! She’s stark-raving mad!” says Prudence, reaching for her prayer book, “there’s no such thing as reincarnation.”

“But Pruddy,” I protest, “energy is neither created nor destroyed. We all contain some of Napoleon’s last breath…”

“And some of Napoleon’s last fart, too!” chirps my inner fifth grader.

“Who’s to say if we don’t pick up some of the energy from the places that are dear to us?” I continue, ignoring the fifth-grader, who is still snickering. “When we love a place for its hills, its rocks, its water, wind, and weather—is there not some alchemy by which we leave a part of ourselves behind and trade it for some indelible groove Love carves upon our heart? Is there not a sticky sort of Transcendental Oneness that means we can go nowhere, and do nothing, without simultaneously marking and being marked? Do the atoms which make us Now, not contain something of Then too?”

“That’s a far cry from telling me that you, as you, marched around clutching a bayonet, with crumbs of hard tack stuck in your beard,” sniffs Prudence. “It’s hardly the same thing at all, though I do think that all atoms ought to be thoroughly sanitized before being used again.”

“Did I have blisters, from all that marching?” I wonder. “Ticks? Lice? Dysentery? Jock itch? What was life like for soldier me? Did I have a tent? How bad were the mosquitoes?”

“Pretty bad,” says Walt Whitman, who has appeared from behind a leaf of grass. “But you were young and manly and beautiful, and I loved you so! Ignore Prudence. Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes… if you want me again, look for me under your boot soles (Leaves of Grass)…for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you….”

Whatever magic or miracles are at play in recognizing each other as kindred comrades across time, my friend is right: Gettysburg is a dear and hallowed place for me. I cannot explain my connection to it. On the hottest, noisiest day, there is a palpable Silence, a shimmering Reverence emanating from the grass, and continually the barely suppressed impulse to turn suddenly and look behind oneself, as if to catch something there. The nameless, invisible Presence may be Life itself, haunting the dead rather than the other way round. The hollow dead are at peace, having emptied out what Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion.” For years, I rode my bike all over the battlefields, sometimes at night after the park had closed. Oddly, the Silence is softer at night, after the tourists have taken off their headsets, tossed away their guide books, and retired with cardboard buckets of fried chicken or Tommy’s pizza to watch T.V. in their air-conditioned motel rooms. The Silence relaxes, breathes a whisper in the woods. What is not Serene surrenders. Peace smothers all with an Ache distilled by cricket song. The crickets are native—descended from the very crickets who witnessed the horrors of brother mauling brother. The turkey vultures circling ominously overhead? Well, legend says they came from the south, following the daily feast of carrion as the battles led them northward on full bellies. They soar there to this very day—descendants of those who dined on the mortal remains of Courage, Fear & Fury.

I think soberly about all these things, today, as we celebrate the founding of a country that still has Mending to do.

Like today (here in the northeast, anyway) July 4th, 1863 was a day of rain. General Meade, having won the battle, did not press his advantage and rout Lee once and for all. Had he done so, some argue, the war would have ended then, instead of dragging on for another two shattering years. It’s possible that Meade, who had only been in his post as General for little more than a week, had no idea how decisively he had won. He had lost many of his generals and commanders and wasn’t fully aware of his command structure to start with. After 96 hours of high-end combat, his men had reached the limits of human endurance and were not able to transition from holding a defensive position on a hill to active pursuit of the enemy. Lee was able to slip away under the cover of drizzle and darkness and get his exhausted men across fifty miles of Pennsylvania mud and Maryland before crossing the Potomac and reaching the safety of Virginia.

Gettysburg, considered the high water mark of the rebellion, accomplished three things: it finally stopped the Confederate momentum after a string of southern victories, gave the North a badly needed boost in morale, and most likely obliterated any chance of European countries intervening on behalf of the South. And, with over 50,000 to choose from, it left my dear friend a lot of potential comrades who “died with us at Gettysburg.” It was the deadliest battle of that un-civil war—untethering as many as 23,000 Union and 28,000 Confederate souls who were killed, captured, or wounded in the course of just three days. The wagon train of wounded Confederates leaving the scene was 17 miles long. And that’s just the humans. What of the oxen? The horses? The dogs? The farm animals nearby? Estimates are that around 5,000 military horses and mules were lost in that battle.

Having had to bury dead livestock in the full heat of summer, I know that it is only hours before a foul, greenish foam is leaking from their nostrils and from under their tails. Their abdomens bloat, then burst and it’s an unholy mess that requires frequent puke breaks to clean up. FIVE THOUSAND of these things? Dear God…

Townsfolk carried around vials of peppermint oil and pennyroyal to mask the stench of death that hung in the air until winter. They hurriedly covered everyone they could in ad-hoc hasty graves, some of them in trenches filled with as many as 150 anonymous bodies (there being no dog tags then).The shallow graves were easily disturbed by weather and wild animals. The appalling post-battle scenes prompted then Governor of Pennsylvania Andrew Curtin to establish the Soldier’s National Cemetery on the hill overlooking the site. It was at the dedication of this cemetery on November 19th, 1863, that Lincoln gave his famous, sacred address—calling us all, then and now, to dedicate not the ground, but ourselves to a cause which remains unfinished.

Today, as we turn to fireworks, soggy hot dogs and potato salad, to celebrate the triumph of enduring Democracy, we can acknowledge that sure, it’s not everything our founders ever dreamed of—as Peace-filled, civil disagreement and the gritty Grace of compromise come with steep price tags. But it sure beats the hell out of every other alternative. One hundred and sixty years ago, we had to fight our own sisters and brothers to ensure that “…government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” I hope my friends and I did not die in vain. Perhaps the atoms rearranged themselves to give us one more chance, in Kindness and Gratitude to “take increased devotion to that cause”—that noble, blessed proposition that ALL people are created equal.

Menders, we got us some powerful work to do! Maybe we all died together at Gettysburg, maybe we didn’t. We are ALIVE NOW. Let us use our needles, pens, fabrics, fiddles, and bows to bind up our nation’s wounds… and let’s rejoice that we don’t have to wear button-up boots and hoop skirts while we do it! Yee Haw!

Let the Mending Continue!

With SEW much love,

Yours aye,

Nancy