I Know Why They Died!

Today, we ventured down to Jamestowne for the day. I know why so many of them didn’t survive that first winter. That place was cold!

This is the part of the marshy area that separates James Island from the mainland. This was made with three images, and the PhotoStitch software that came with the Rebel XTi. This is very cool stuff. I see why George Lepp was so excited about it. I didn’t even use a tripod for the three images. Addictive. A full-sized version is on my Flickr site.

Anyway, as I said, we ventured down to Jamestowne …

Parts of this chuch date to the very early 1600’s — specifically the bell tower. The brickwork was “stabilized” with concrete in the early 1900’s, and the main building was rebuilt at that time.

The foundations above were of early row houses. These were believed to be two story affairs, with a cellar (more like what we would consider a crawlspace today. The really interesting thing about them is, that if the colonists had made them with full basements, the places would have been larger than the house we live in now! And, the floor plans looked pretty nice!

This little fellow is a Northern Flicker, a new feathered aquaintance. While he was initially pretty shy, he eventually determined that I was not much of a threat — at least that I intended him no harm – and he set about his business of finding some lunch, allowing me to get within about 15 or 20 feet.

Unfortunately, I only had the 28-75mm lens, so these are pretty extreme crops. Still, I think they hold up amazingly well, especially considering how much cropping was involved.

The next image is a screen grab of a thumbnail which shows the crop. It’s pretty crappy, but, it gets the point across. I’ve been using the Canon supplied  software for everything, since my laptop crashed and all I didn’t have time to load the full Photoshop CS2 on Donna’s laptop. Of course, it remains to be seen how these images will print …

Moving right along, the last time I was at Jamestowne, I was very young. I don’t remember much about the ruins or the archealogical stuff. One thing that really surprised me, though, is that there’s really be very little done there until recently. Work at the site has gone in fits and spurts — first in the thirties, then, the late fifties. And then, Jamestowne pretty much sat, until 1994. It’s almost as if America’s first permanent English settlement was forgotten about.

Anyway, the part of my first visit to Jamestowne that I really remember was the glassblowing. And, it’s just as fascinating to me now as it was then.

They’re still making glass here the same way as in the early 1600’s, except that now they fire the furnaces with natural gas and electricity, and they can work every day. In colonial times, they were lucky to actually make glassware a week out of each month. Back then, they’d spend a three weeks of the month chopping enough hardwood to build a couple of two-story houses, and then hand-stoking the fire to reach the required temperatures.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it for today’s shenanigans, except the part where we decided to get in out of the cold for a bit. More shenanigans. Don’t worry, Donna didn’t buy the hat.