An Eye Opening Experience

Folks, I'm happy to say that this is post #600 in my blog! Thanks so much for sticking with me through the years!

Welcome back to the 2021 NPTC Convention and my travels through DC. In the last blog, we visited the site of Abraham Lincoln's death. After leaving the theater, I had planned to visit the African American Civil War Museum. Unfortunately, the museum was closed for renovations, and as of the posting of this blog, it still is. The latest estimate of reopening is November 2025! Since I couldn't see the museum, I wanted to stop at the memorial just across the street from the entrance. There were 2 National Park Rangers who provided an excellent background on the statue and the creation of the memorial. 

The statue in the middle is made "in the round," and additional photos of the other sections are in a peekaboo pocket on top. What made my jaw drop were the silver surround panels. It's rather hard to see in the photos, even in my close-up shots, but each panel is inscribed with the names of African American soldiers from the Civil War. There are more than 200,000 soldiers listed! I had no idea the number was that high. I just turned in circles, goggling at the sheer volume of people documented here. If you view the page in person, you will notice that I have focused on a close-up panel of the 54th Massachusetts, as it is the company most familiar to me due to the movie "Glory." 

I based this layout on a sketch that CM had provided in July 2023. You can see an image of it here, but I don't have a link to the actual document. I have a PDF, though, so if you'd like a copy, please email me and I'll send you the layout. I chose this layout because I had boxed myself into a corner with the last Ford's Theater page. I did not have enough content for a two-page spread of the Peterson House, so I created just the left side of the layout. That left an empty page on the right. I really wanted to use all my photos for this layout and create a 2-page spread of the monument, but I couldn't think of anything else to fill the right-side page and move forward. So I put all the photos on the desk and mulled over them for a bit. 

The first thing I did was trim them down to see how small I could make them. Then I evaluated each photo to see if it would contribute to the story. I didn't really need 6 pictures of the wall of names. I chose a horizontal photo that showcases the immensity of the memorial, and then added two close-up images in a peekaboo pocket on top (which you don't see here). I had trimmed one photo to a relatively small size, which also provided more space for journaling. Once I found the layout, I assembled the pages fairly quickly. This uses the Secret Box "Great Times" paper and embellishments. The sticker in the bottom right corner is from the Eastern National scrapbook kit.