The Meaning of War in Black and White and Color

This is the stark future that awaited Civil War soldiers in particular and many soldiers in general.

The flag they fought for.

There's rarely been a question about where I stand on war and here is a group of photos--taken in the Civil War section of Lynchburg City Cemetery yesterday--that will help explain why. The result of war is singular. There are no winners, only losers who wind up in lonely graves, often unmarked.

The Lynchburg cemetery has a place for Yankee soldiers and for African Americans, separate and unmarked, as well as for the Confederate dead. They're mostly kids, appropriated from the farms and small towns without education or purpose. They haven't had time for either, and now they're dead.

That, not the medals and monuments and marching songs and "thank you for your service," is what it's about. Dead people. Permanently dead people. Who keep piling up without reason.

It was sad then when we were a very young country. It is tragic now as we age and learn nothing.

Tree shadow shakes through headstones.

A boy, far from home, and dead.

Self-portrait in cobblestone.

Finally, death's happy face ... in color.

(Photoshop treatment on the color flag in the black and white pix is by Janeson Keeley. She promised to teach me how ... again. I used to know.)