Once again, Fort Mifflin in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania hosted the Assault On Vierville-Sur-Mer World War II Reenactment. There were several military displays and battle reenactments at 11:00 AM and 3:00 PM. I was in attendance for the 3:00 Battle. This blog entry features two videos and many photographs. Here is a video of the Battle (unfortunately I did not have time to snap photographs): The url for the above video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ2FjclQ4rA Here is a video of the barracks and a weapons display: The url for the above video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWemJgf4qWk
Alright, the month of April, and I am already tanning!! My tanning season usually ends in October and starts in April or March, warm weather depending. I was happy to see the weather forecast late last week. We hit the high 80s and, possibly, low 90s a few days ago! April 8, 9, 10 and 11 were all fine days to go for a tan ... the two days in the middle had the peak temperatures.
Here I am on April 8: They must be thinking "Michael Mike is at it again!": More from April 8 ...
April 9 (Yes, I am listening to a cassette tape!):
As I stated in the video, the last time that I tanned was back in December ... not September ... DECEMBER!! December 4 to be exact. I am shocked that I did not not blog about it back then. Here is a photo of that day ...
Once again, Fort Mifflin in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania hosted the U.S.C.T. United States Colored Troops Civil War Reenactment. It was a two-day event. This blog entry features photographs and videos of the second day (Sunday, April 7, 2013). The event featured camp life, firing demonstrations, displays, lectures, music and more.
Here is a photo of Antoine Watts portraying Jacob C. White (there were some great stories about incidents on horse carts):
A band known as Becton Kemp And Watts (featuring Joe Becton, Crystal Kemp and Antoine Watts) performed a few songs. Here is a photo of the band: I do have some Becton Kemp And Watts performance videos. First off, youtube is giving me trouble. In all of my years on that website, this is the first time youtube is giving me problems over copyright. All of the songs I uploaded are public domain so I was shocked to see a third party claim. The problem is that shady people have put copyright claims in for songs that are many years old, and youtube is allowing them to make money off of the work of other people. Just so you see how disgusting the matter is, someone has a copyright on the music playing while the American Flag is lowered, and youtube facilitates this with new software that can listen to a video without a title being in the video. I uploaded the following five videos, and youtube put copyright claims in for three of them so I deleted them and uploaded them to my photobucket account. When I heard about youtube being sold to google in 2006, I knew that it would cause problems. The problem with photobucket is the size limit. The same can be said for vimeo. Dailymotion uses ads so for now, photobucket is my only option. In order to upload them to photobucket, I had to decrease their megabyte size using Windows Live Movie Maker. They are now of lesser quality. I hope to run into Joe at the Neshaminy Reenactment later this month so I can give him a CD with the original higher-quality versions. Now for the videos ... Here they are performing "Battle Cry Of Freedom" ... the "Union Version" of course: *Video no longer hosted due to Adobe Flash.* George Frederick Root wrote this song in 1862. Like a fool, I was not paying attention and I left Crystal out of the footage. She is in the other concert videos. Here they are performing "Goober Peas":
The url for the above video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktVRdZswhTk I am the guy speaking in the beginning (in reference to the newspaper article). This song was performed by Confederate Soldiers during the War Between The States. The reason why it was performed at this event is due to the word "Goober" itself. It is derived from the West African word "nguba" which translates into our language as "peanut". Peanuts were transported on the same ships as captured slaves, and the variation of the term nguba survives to this day. More information can be found at this link: http://www.answers.com/topic/goober Here they are performing "Give Us A Flag":
This video features footage of the second day in four parts [1. Firing Contest (3rd Regiment, 6th Regiment and 26th Regiment), 2. Final March, 3. Lowering Of The Flag and 4. Final Words]: *Video no longer hosted due to Adobe Flash.*
The Final March ...
Here is the flyer showing the itinerary of the day:
This is a "Before And After" video for a 78 RPM record that I recently acquired. It is titled "Juke Box Polka" by Johnny Vadnal And His Orchestra. I also recently acquired a used Audiotronics 304E record player as well as a couple new old stock dual-needle cartridges. I played the record before cleaning it with the old needle and then I played the record after it was cleaned with a new needle. Part 1 was filmed on April 2, 2013 and Part 2 was filmed on April 3, 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm-HdgyhC_o
Here is my assessment ...
1.) The scratch sounds are gone, and only the background noise remains. 2.) It actually sounded clearer and otherwise better when it was dirty ... it has a muffled sound now. I can only guess that the original needle was manufactured closer to the time of 78s and, therefore, will allow superior sound quality whereas the other needle was manufactured, I presume, in the 1960s or the 1970s or, possibly, the 1980s. Either that or I messed up the 78 record by cleaning it, haha.
I did take "Before And After" photographs. Unfortunately, they look almost exactly alike. This is due to the amount of scuffs on the record as opposed to dirt.
