29 January - Fluff Update

22 January - On the Trail



It's been getting tougher to get the cats interested in a walk in the woods nowadays, but Natasha and Nutmeg did agree to accompany me for a bit of a hike the other day. Above, Natasha in the fullness of her winter ruff -

16 January - Der Frontfliegerkatze



I thought I knew the von Wallingsfurt collection pretty well, but I just found another photograph that had been mistakenly filed elsewhere - here is the great ace Lothar von Wallingsfurt himself, standing by his

14 January - Sugarloaf, Painted


Ascent of Sugarloaf, Frederick County, Maryland by Adolphus Norbeck, 1887. Oil on canvas.

Should've recalled, when I posted previously on the 3D summiting of Sugarloaf Mountain, that the Janus Museum actually possesses a canvas by the great Adolphus Norbeck commemorating an expedition of a team of Washington Grove men in 1885, led by the noted soldier and explorer Captain Thaddeus Wallingford, who also appears in Norbeck's

2 January - On the Summit



It's becoming a tradition, my skipping the traditional New Year's Day journey to beautiful

31 December - The Year in Review



Looking back over the old year as it passes from the scene, I daresay I could think of some notable accomplishments for 2011, or a pithy summation of the year's events. Instead, I've compiled the annual Year in Catwalks slideshow -





This year, the coverage is a bit thin as compared with years past - the Circle Cats were just too busy to get out there and catwalk with me.

25 December - No Reindeer, But a Cephalopod; Plus a Song



Natasha's magnificent winter ruff shows up to good advantage in 3D during our annual walk to the town gazebo to view the Christmas tree. Fortunately, there was no

24 December - The Christmas Truce



Remembering the 1914 Christmas truce, now 97 years on, with a superb photograph from our files, taken on that occasion, of British and German troops meeting in No Man's Land...




... Which reminded me that

19 December - Tragical Scene from the Collection



The Tragical History and Even More Tragical Death of Kim Jong-il (with Cat).

18 December - Cat-Related Miracle Not so Good for the Cats, Actually



Pleased to feature another superb ex voto by the master of the genre

My wife loved cats and she adopted all homeless cats she found, the problem is that she let the cats to stay at nights in our bedroom and they prefer to play and jump istead to sleep, my wife sleeps as a rock but I couldn't sleep at all and I was already hallucynating for the lack of rest, I thanks to the Virgen de Zapopan because my wife finily noticed the dark rings under my eyes and she now put the cats in the livingroom at nights and I can sleep again.

17 December - Kill Devil Hill, December 17 1903, with Coelacanth



From our files - Orville and Wilbur Wright preparing their aeroplane for its first flight on Kill Devil Hill - today's the 108th anniversary of that flight.

Adventures in Retail - the Janus Museum Museum Shop's exclusive

14 December - Hommage à Arbus



And now... Coelacanth with Toy Hand Grenade.

12 December - More From the Museum's Coelacanth Gallery



Here's a painting that's a particular favorite with Museum visitors - Coelacanth's World.

Get your own lovable coelacanth

December 11 - From the Collection



Today's featured treasure from the capacious files of the Janus Museum - Migrant Coelacanth.

24 November - The Face of Command



From the Museum's collections: Major General Theophrastus Truthuhn, c.1862. One of the lesser-known commanders of the Army of the Potomac - in charge of the Army for the period between Ambrose Burnside and Joe Hooker (about 20 minutes) - managed to lose 8500 men during that time.

20 November - Recent Pickelhaube-Related Acquisition



Very pleased to present the Museum's latest acquisition, a superb snuffbox decorated with a pickelhaube, the iconic spiked Prussian helmet. It was generously donated to us by our old Friend of the Museum, Rebecca Richters, and it's now on view with our equally superb

11 November - Way out in Loudoun County



Yesterday I mentioned that I've been temporarily seconded to the archives of the National Air and Space Museum's

10 November - Airship Disaster Poetry Corner


ZRS-4 Akron, June 13, 1932. Via

REQUIEM

For the Ill-fated Akron's Heroic Officers and Men
Seventy-four of Whom Perished in a Storm off Barnegat Light
April Fourth, A.D., 1933

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

           At midnight's solemn hour of mystery,
           With raging winds and lurid lightning's flash,
           From queenliest airship in all history,
           Came the grave order: "Stand by for a crash!
           As from his watery grave each head was showing,
           Rang out in cheery tones 'mid thunder's roll,
           "The best o' luck - wherever you are going,"
           The Morituri Salutamus of his soul.
           Brave Admiral Moffett, whose pride was his air fleet
           Has perished e'en as Icarus had done
           When this first flyer, glorying in his flight,
           Propelled his waxen wings too near the sun.
           Immortals all! They've gone to their last rest.
           Requiescant in pace! God knows best.

31 October - The Ghost of Walt Whitman



Special for Halloween is this ghostly bit of poetical ephemera from the Museum's collections... they say that on nights of the full moon, the shade of Walt Whitman still roams the gay bars of Camden, New Jersey.

What it really is...




... is the back of a superb

22 October - Aerial View



Cat Natasha ascends a tree in 3D (red/blue glasses required), the better to view the superb fall foliage in the historic Circle, Washington Grove. In the background, the Museum's

15 October - Down Scenic Cabin John Creek



Here is Cabin John Creek, an achingly beautiful salted paper print from the Collection. Cabin John Creek is a tributary of the Potomac, running through Montgomery County and entering the river downstream from Great Falls. There's a historic bridge spanning the creek,

The river ... maketh his passage downe a low pleasant valley overshadowed in manie places with high rocky mountain from whence distill innumerable sweet and pleasant springs... Having gone so high as we could with the bote, we met divers savages in canowes well loaden with flesh of beares, deere, and other beasts whereof we had part. Here we found mighty rocks growing in some places above the ground as high as the shrubby tree.

14 October - An Incident of the Franco-Prussian War


Captain Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin asks Wendling's Peter for Milk. Illustration by Ernst Zimmer.

At the start of the Franco-Prussian War, Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin (1838-1917), a captain of the Württemberg general staff, took part in a reconnaissance into Alsace by a small cavalry force. On July 25, taking a break for omelets at the Schirlenhof Inn, the detachment was surprised by a squadron of French hussars. The Germans fought it out; Zeppelin stole a horse and escaped the ambush. Later, after the smoke cleared, he returned to the inn and paid his bill. What happened after that is narrated in

When Wendling's Peter (God bless him!) was tending his cows in the pasture that evening close to the wood by the mountain slope between Nahweiler and Linienhausen, there came along a strange looking man who could not be a Frenchman. He was leading a tired warhorse by the bridle and asked if he couldn't get a little milk. Peter looked at him in alarm. "Yes, I would just as soon give you a little milk if I had something to milk into." "That is easily arranged," said the man and drew a leather object out of his pocket which could be drunk out of and milked into, and Peter milked into it bravely enough. The milk tasted so good to the stranger that he let the cowherd fill the cup again, whereupon he gave the dumbfounded fellow a two-frank piece, said "Thank you" and "Goodbye." And all this happened while French horsemen were scouring up and down not more than three hundred paces away, and were execrating the Prussian in the wood though they did not go into the wood after him...

9 October - Cats of Washington Grove - Socks



Here's our old buddy Socks, also known as Cat Van Beek, chilling on a porch over on First Avenue. Last seen here

8 October - Dr. John's Flintlock



The Museum was touched, pleased, and greatly honored to be given this superb .45 flintlock pistol from the armory of the High Speed Triumph Research Laboratory of Myersville, Maryland; the gun was built by the Lab's founder and chief boffin, our old friend

1 October - Enoch and Jemmy



The fact that we keep digging up Cats of War images in our collections is either a testament to the size and breadth of our holdings or the fact that our inventory database is a total mess. At any rate, here's the latest to float to the top - General Enoch Wallingford and His Cat Jemmy at the Battle of Darnestown, 1814, by