the civil war

It took me about three months of sporadic viewing, my life being as crazy busy as it is, but I finally made it through all 10 hours of Ken Burns's magnum opus The Civil War.  I had actually watched the whole thing with my family when it was first broadcast on PBS back in 1990, but seeing as how I was a teen with my mind on other things at the time (i.e. boys) I think I snoozed or fidgeted my way through most of it.  This time through I did not find myself drowsy or bored in the least, and was instead completely riveted by the images and words of the people who lived through the conflict.  Their emotions didn't seem antiquated at all, as they suffered the same fear of death and horror of war that any soldier or civilian caught in a battle zone would express today.  I got pretty emotionally involved too, screaming at Lincoln to fire McClellan already and weeping openly when they recited the Gettysburg Address.  I am also ever grateful to my parents for putting Civil War sites high on the agenda during our epic summer family road trips, because I think we actually might have hit every single battlefield they mention in the film.  Of course now I am so enamored of the late great Shelby Foote and the droll stories he sprinkled in throughout the documentary that I am actually thinking of reading his massive 3-volume account of the Civil War.  You know, in all of my copious free time.