Looking Back

On July 2, 2010, I wrote this post:

So often after I visit a place I develop an intense curiosity about it. As a teacher, I know how important it is for students to be able to make a personal connection to instructional material, how such a tie makes it easier to learn and retain skills and information. As an adult, I see this principle in action in myself. Researching activities and destinations for a future vacation in a place I've never visited is too abstract; the information slides from my brain like butter on hot teflon-- no more than a skim coat of retention. Once on site, though, I'm motivated to voraciously consume any material I can get my hands on, but it is usually unsatisfying, perhaps because I am distracted by actually being on vacation and all. Back at home, I spend lots of time researching the place I just left, a bittersweet experience because I'm essentially discovering every cool thing I missed on my visit.

Take my recent trip to Fort Valley, VA for example. I stayed for a couple of nights at a ranch there and took a trail ride through George Washington National Forest. It was beautiful-- the mountains of western Virginia at their summer finest-- all dappled light and fragrant hayseed fern, elder berry, hemlock, and mountain laurel-- and so much less inhabited than this urban area where I reside. Our bunk house cabin may have been a little rustic, but there were bull frogs and river otters just outside our door, not to mention all the stars in the sky which were only obscured by the blazing camp fire we had each night.

Once home, though, I found that this valley within a valley was not only the site of three iron forges destroyed by the Union Army because of the Confederate canon balls they were churning out, but also the location of the very first CCC installation, Camp Roosevelt, built in 1933. AND it is named Fort Valley because it was George Washington's fall back plan. The first access road was built so that the Continental Army could retreat to this naturally fortified place for a last stand against Cornwallis. Fortunately, the Battle of Yorktown made Fort Valley a footnote to history, but now that I know a little more about the place, I can't wait to go back. 

A few weeks ago, I went through a John Brown phase in which I read The Good Lord Bird by James McBride, followed by Midnight Rising: The Raid that Sparked the Civil War by Tony Horwitz. John Brown's plan was to rob the armory at Harper's Ferry, spark a slave rebellion, and hide his army in the hollows of the Blue Ridge Mountains, like Fort Valley. He had worked as a surveyor in the area as a younger man, and he was relying on his knowledge of the land to defend his position.

Brown's beliefs and actions make for a compelling story, and the history reminded me that there have been times in this nation's past when we had weak and corrupt national leadership, as well as occasions when people felt they must take the law into their own hands to right an immoral injustice. Considering that past offers thought-provoking context to the present.

I do have to wonder, though, what would have happened if Brown's plan had succeeded.

Try, Try Again

Back on July 3, 2009, I wrote the following piece:

Happy Independence Day weekend! I read today that Sylvia Brown, the famous psychic, says that Thomas Jefferson never reincarnated after his death on July 4, 1826. According to her, that was his last life, although he continues to offer spiritual and political guidance to the leadership of America. That came as a surprise to me.

Back when I was in college, I had a job one summer selling chipwiches on the boardwalk. The zoning laws in this particular beach town were kind of picky at the time, and even though my cart was quite mobile, I had to stay put on the private property of the hotel that my boss had made a deal with. Even so, the chipwich cart and the blond girl in the straw pith helmet who sat beside it eight hours a day became a reliable boardwalk amenity, and I had both steady beach-goer business and some regular customers, too.

This particular seaside town is also well-known to a certain segment of the population as the home of Edgar Cayce, the "Sleeping Prophet." There has been an active new-age community there for well over 50 years. It is such a fixture, that most year-round residents of the oceanfront are surprisingly well-versed in such topics as reincarnation, dream interpretation and holistic health. Be careful, or they will startle you.

My chipwich gig was a one-woman operation, and as much as I liked the solitude and independence, I was also a captive audience for anyone who knew where to find me. There were a few people who stopped by regularly, not so much to buy some ice cream, as to spend a little time chatting. That's how I found out that Thomas Jefferson had indeed reincarnated-- one of my regulars told me. "See that bum down there?" he asked me one afternoon. "Everyone calls him TJ, because he used to be Thomas Jefferson."

I'm sure my eyebrows did a little dance, but I was right there with him. "Really?" I said, examining the lean, strawberry blond man with shaggy, chin-length hair and full goatee, as he picked carefully through a mesh litter basket. "It seems like kind of a big change of scene for him."

"Oh, that's exactly what he wanted," he answered. "After all that democracy stuff in his last life, he needed a break."

I've been thinking about Thomas Jefferson a lot since we visited Monticello last Sunday. The injustice and of his slaveholding was so present there, and it continues to plague me. Jefferson himself wrote in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence that the slave trade was "execrable commerce," an "assemblage of horrors,” and a “cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberties.” How he could reconcile those thoughts with his actions is a question historians struggle with to this day.

And of course, I have to wonder if his purported reincarnation was not so much a break as an opportunity for growth.

I'd like to think so.

Black and White

On our recent weekend in Charlottesville, we toured the mansions of two of the founding fathers, Jefferson's Monticello and Madison's Montpelier. Both of our guides were knowledgeable, respectful, and mindful of the complicated history of the men they were presenting. Even so, I came away with a huge ick feeling, specifically about the people these champions of democracy enslaved and the self-serving justification of that immorality, especially after standing in the room where the Constitution was drafted.

So, when we were looking for a way to spend our afternoon while visiting Atlanta, the chance to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park seemed like a refreshing counterpoint. To be honest, it was King's childhood home that I most wanted to see; I'm drawn to the quotidian details of historic lives. But with the timing of our arrival, touring Ebenezer Baptist Church first made more sense, so we headed across the street and joined the line on the sidewalk stretching down the block from the heavy wooden entry doors.

At two o'clock sharp, we started to move forward, and soon we found ourselves in a small vestibule with stairs going up and down. We were ushered down to a large open room with green walls and tile and rows of folding chairs facing a podium on a low stage. This was the Fellowship Hall of the old church, and soon we were joined by a ranger who took the dais and began his talk on the history of the place and its association with Dr.King. 

His delivery style intentionally invoked a sermon like the many that had been delivered there and upstairs in the sanctuary in the century since the church had been built. The information he gave us was surprising and even shocking in how unfamiliar it was to most of the eighty or so people in the audience. Discovering that Ebenezer means stone of hope or stone of help was interesting, and considering that the church had had only five pastors since its founding in 1886, including Dr. King's grandfather and father, as well as Senator Raphael Warnock, who leads the congregation today.

But it was shocking to hear how Martin Luther King Jr.'s mother was shot and killed on the pulpit by a demented young man from Ohio as she played the organ for Sunday services on June 30, 1974. How could such a tragedy have escaped my notice for over 50 years?

More than an hour later, the ranger led us upstairs to the sanctuary, which has been restored to look just as it did on February 4, 1968, when Dr. King delivered his last sermon there. We all slid into worn wooden pews beneath pinkish plaster walls and a pressed metal ceiling as a recording of King's homily, "The Drum Major Instinct", echoed through speakers. These were the very words that would be played as a eulogy at his funeral here two months later; King's voice accompanied his mourners as they filed by his casket.

It was a genuinely moving experience, even more so in contrast to the other tours we'd taken earlier in the week.

The Price of Progress

For years, I-85 was a mess in South Carolina every summer. We told ourselves that the time spent crawling along was an investment as they widened the way. Think how great it will be when they're done! we thought, imagining ourselves sailing through the Palmetto State on the penultimate leg of our journey from DC to Atlanta. 

And then? It was finished, and the six lanes were mostly enough to accommodate all of us vacationers, as well as the commercial traffic to the inland port of Greer. For a couple of years, we flew through South Carolina, stopping only for a half-bushel of local peaches in Gaffney, if we chose, and making it from Kings Mountain to the Tugaloo River in under two hours. 

But today, just a few miles south of the border, the route on the GPS turned an angry red,  and as we idled at the top of a low knoll, the road ahead was clogged with shoulder-to-shoulder tractor-trailers for as far as we could see. Signs warned us of lane closures ahead due to a repaving project. 

It seemed too soon for the new road to need attention, but there we were, stuck again, and to add insult to injury? All the peach stands were closed.

The Americans

Living here in the DC area makes it hard to miss that our nation's 250th birthday is coming up next year. National parks, monuments, and memorials all around us are getting all spruced up for the big anniversary, which, to be honest, wouldn't be on my radar screen at all if it weren't on theirs. But here we are, nearly fifty years after the Bicentennial, a celebration which, by contrast, was on everybody's radar screen in the early 70s.  For three solid years, we were celebrating the 200th anniversary of something in seventy-six different ways.

For example, in December 1973, my sixth-grade class did a play about the Boston Tea Party 200 years after the fact. I played Sam Adams, and my mom made my costume out of a red tweed vest pantsuit, which I had fallen and ripped the knee out of. She turned the pants into breeches and let me wear one of her frilly blouses beneath the vest. With my hair pulled back into a ponytail, I really felt like I was channeling Sam himself. (Maybe that's where I got my fondness for New England-style ales.)

Around that time, the author John Jakes also began publishing his pulpy eight-part series The Americans about both several generations of the fictional Kent family and, by extension, the nation itself, as I was reminded when I read a piece by Carlos Lozado in the NY Times this morning. Like Lozado, the books we had in our house belonged to our parents, but as early teens, we read them anyway, despite a lot of mature content. In his essay, Lozado tells how he recently revisited the series, and his analysis of the saga and its message to and about Americans then and now resonated and made me curious to look up the books I read nearly 50 years ago, which made a lasting impression on me.

Just reading the names of the characters, Philip, Amanda, and Gideon, gave me a little shiver, so I went ahead and purchased the audiobook of volume one, The Bastard. It's thirteen hours long, but I figure I still have a year and three days on the calendar until the quarter millennial. And, as I wrote yesterday, birthdays are a time for reflection.

Focus and Refocus

On Saturdays, I always look forward to the Morning Newsletter sent out by The New York Times, because the essay at the top is usually by Melissa Kirsch. Her writing style is warm and friendly, and her observations resonate with me. 

For example, last Saturday, she wrote that July 2 is the day at the exact middle of the year and wondered if perhaps it would be a better time, given the light and pace of summer, to make the resolutions traditional to January 1. At any rate, she suggested that it would be a good time to review and revise any goals set for the year, which makes sense. 

My birthday happens to fall around this time, too, and on that day, I often find myself reflecting on the year past and pending, both calendar and personal. Listing the joys in my life is an excellent lens for that exercise.

To You and You and You and You

A friend and former colleague has told people for decades that when we first started working together, she used to say hello to me and I ignored her. “I just thought she was stuck up!” she always ends. I dispute that memory: I’m shy, not stuck up, and so I probably never greeted her first, but I know if she had said something to me I would have responded. 

Even so, I realized years ago that the way to avoid any such perception of aloofness was to proactively greet folks, which I do regularly, especially early in the day. I love to say “Good morning” to anyone I see before noon. It was my habit to stand outside my classroom door and greet as many kids by name as I could, but also to smile and say good morning to all who passed.

But the satisfying specificity of that particular greeting doesn’t carry over to the afternoon or evening. Hey there and hello are fine when you know someone, but a little weird if you’re greeting strangers. Ciao works if you’re in Europe, but not so much walking the streets of Arlington, Va, and good afternoon and good evening are not very colloquial, either. 

In those situations I usually resort to a nod and a smile, and that seems to work. I wish I had a little more, though, because I really am friendly, despite what anyone says.