I am watching the sun rise and drinking my coffee. The layer of light closest to the earth is a pale, fiery orange, then above it, streaks of blue and white clouds, then far above that, a long column of candy pink, then ascending to a dusty lavender, and finally twilight blue. It envelops the horizon. I know that trying to take its picture would be pointless as I do not have a $2000 camera, so I will just use my eyes, which are almost as good.

I know that hardly anyone reads this, so I suppose it’s more writing practice and personal note-taking for me at this point. When I started this blog, in the prior century, I used it as a method to teach myself HTML, and I hand-coded the entire thing, including fancy Javascript rollovers and so on. I was very proud of that and scoffed at the idea of using some kind of WYSIWYG or template. Of course back then WordPress didn’t exist. Now I am more than happy to type words into a form and press Publish. Hand-coding is an inelegant pain in the ass.

Anyway. Not a great deal to report on this day. Yesterday morning I read all about the Battle of Monmouth, 1778. Of the many accounts I have read of that day, I think the one in Washington – A Life explains it pretty well. Though he neglects to describe Hamilton’s “frenzy of valour” (but that is covered in AH).

If anyone has read this far and is interested, here is an article about Charles Lee’s court martial, and something I did not know:

His personal attacks on Washington, and those close to him, resulted in a duel with one of the men he had referred to as an “earwig,” John Laurens, the young son of the president of Congress. At the time appointed, Laurens wounded Lee in the side. Lee’s wound was serious enough to persuade him to forgo fighting an additional duel with another of Washington’s favorites, Anthony Wayne. In addition to Wayne, six other officers were waiting for their turn to duel the wounded major general, but his injury and placating letters ended his dueling career.

So, eight people wanted to shoot this guy, but only Colonel John Laurens had the pleasure.