Candid photos of Civil War battlefield injuries

On April 1, 1865, Alfred Lane was shot in the hip during the Civil War Battle of Hatcher's Run, Virginia. He died about a month and a half later, after the wound became gangrenous.

Candid photos of Civil War battlefield injuries

Backlink: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/dIEd0XqWnvE/candid-photos-of-civ.html

Weird Tales-inspired poetry from a 73-year-old retired civil servant

Tavie writes,

Fred Phillips is a Fan. A lifelong lover of gothic horror and weird verse, his favorite author is H.P. Lovecraft. He grew up in the Bronx with parents who were suspicious of his Fandom, his obsessive book-collecting, his poetry. They frequently disposed of his comic books and told him he was wasting his life.

He didn't waste his life. He took up with science fiction Fans, and joined up with the Society for Creative Anachronisms. To most of the world he was an oddball, kind of a loser. He talked too much. He probably had Asperger's. A Lehman College dropout, he worked at a bookstore. In 1968 he met Dorothea Nissen, and they married and eventually had twin daughters.

He got a low-level civil service job clerking at the NY Dept of Labor. It was drudgery, but he had his poetry and he had his girls and he fancied himself happy. He clerked for 30 years. He wasn't what you would call successful, and but he worked hard for his family and lived largely in his head. His Fandom kept him sane.

And then he retired, and he still wrote his poetry and discovered e-mail and then something marvelous happened. He met a man called Derrick who ran a publishing house specializing in scholarly criticism of HP Lovecraft, and Derrick really liked Fred. So at the age of 73 Fred Phillips' poetry was published.

And his daughter Tavie is very, very proud of him.

From the Cauldron by Fred Phillips (Thanks, Tavie!)

 

• Weird Tales covers 1923-1942 gallery - Boing Boing
• Erik Davis on Clark Ashton Smith's The Hashish Eater - Boing Boing

Weird Tales-inspired poetry from a 73-year-old retired civil servant

Backlink: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/P3zBWvW3pL4/weird-tales-inspired.html

Tintypes and ambrotypes of Civil War soldiers

The Library of Congress's Flickr collection includes 700+ high-res scans of ambrotype and tintype photos of US Civil War soldiers -- they're looking for help from the public with identification for many of the anonymous images: "These fascinating photographs represent the impact of the war, which involved many young enlisted men and the deaths of more than 600,000 soldiers. The photos feature details that enhance their interest, including horses, drums, muskets, rifles, revolvers, hats and caps, canteens, and a guitar. Among the rarest images are African Americans in uniform, sailors, a Lincoln campaign button, and portraits with families, women, and girls and boys."

Tintypes and ambrotypes of Civil War soldiers

Backlink: http://feeds.boingboing.net/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/TmUGg2aCEDI/tintypes-and-ambroty.html