November 29, 2009
Had a nice, four day stretch at home to work on a variety of artwork. Began an ambitious splash-page painting of the Mesilla shootout (January CG) complete with clarinet beatings and French horn whipping (as opposed to pistol whipping). Lots of dust, lots of blood, lots of anatomical problems. Hope to finish tonight.

Also finished an overview of the Burnside rifles duel at forty paces, and by the way, I'm assuming that in a duel like this, the two stood back to back in classic duel stance? Then each stepped off forty paces, which would make it eighty paces apart? I actually stepped this off on our road out front to see what that would look like and that's a fair distance for rifle shooting, especially when it was reported to be quite windy and dusty on the day of the duel at Tubac, A.T. (both missed, more than once).

Hope I get this one right. Gee, I wonder what ol' Coleridge has to say about this?

"Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live."
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge