I do think of London often (even though I've seriously neglected this blog of late, I know). But small town Texas courthouse squares might seem pretty far removed from London's bustle and sophistication.
However, they have one thing in common: war memorials.
And this one in Llano in particular made me think of the many I'd seen in London and in the UK as a whole. As doesn't always happen with monuments around here, this one was originally built, apparently, to honor the local dead from World War I. That's the plaque you see on the rock underneath the figure. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) Of course, in the UK, these WWI monuments are the big boys in any collection, given the horrific losses from that conflict.
Then, off to the side (on the right in the photo above) there's an additional plaque for World War II. Which is how a lot of UK memorials are constructed. For instance, the Avebury church memorial I featured here.
(I was able to include the Llano County courthouse tower, a very lovely structure, in this shot)
We visited beautiful downtown Llano at the end of a canoeing and camping trip that I've been writing about over on Hometown Tourist. Getting to spend some time in their photogenic courthouse square was a bonus treat: we've become something of connoisseurs of county courthouses in Texas, as we get out to little towns often on our paddling trips. This is one of our favorites.
5 comments:
It must be so interesting to see civil war memorials! I like looking at war memorials and have been wandering around the ones in Westminster lately. The memorials I feel most ambivalent about are the Boer War memorials because friends of mine are descended from Afrikaners who were incarcerated in British concentration camps.
Hiya! Blogger doesn't like me and moves all of my comments to spam! I think it might be because I browse using my iPhone or work or home PCs and it doesn't like that. So if you check your spam folder, you should find my posts there. :(
OK! Thanks, Emm, for the tip re: disappearing blog comments! It worked!
I wanted to respond to your comment about the war memorials. I personally feel ambivalent about them in general: very, very sad about all the deaths, and wishful that somehow they wouldn't be necessary.
WWI memorials REALLY set me off because that was such a senseless conflict. I've been reading more and more about it lately and the more I learn the sicker I feel about it.
I'm really feeling that lately as I stop and read the names on the actual memorials, rather than just walking past them unseeing. But it kind of creeps me out that we're not erecting memorials for the men who have died in the past 20 years (not that I necessarily agree with the wars but I stand by the soldiers).
I didn't show the photos I had, Emm, from this square but they have a Desert Storm memorial and an Iraq-Afghanistan one. Not a list of names on the latter, but at least an acknowledgement. Plus they have one for Vietnam.
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