You know how people often haven’t seen the attractions near their own homes? I have had family in Western North Carolina all of my life and had never been to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We had to remedy that! This National Park has the dubious honor of...
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Wow, has American history come alive for me on this trip! I keep getting insights about how the natural resources attracted native peoples and their subsistence lives, then colonial settlement and their resource-extraction economies. How the labor forces evolved to...
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I had a basic sketch of Harriet Tubman in my head. Underground Railroad. Led scores of enslaved people to freedom in the north. But really, I had to be with the enormity of this. She had spent her life as a slave, mostly separated from her family, performing brutally...
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Washington, DC was designed by a Frenchman who grew up in Paris. I see some similarities in the layout, grand monuments and landscaping. I have been to DC countless times, but there is always more to see. This time I spent SIX HOURS in the Smithsonian’s National...
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Like so many others, I was consumed with the musical “Hamilton” a couple of years ago. It really brought home a couple of insights to me. One of the lyrics was “Look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now – history is happening.“ It...
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My 26th visit to a National Parks site in 2018! And it seems so particularly symbolic since Teddy Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service, signed into law the creation of five National Parks, proclaimed 18 new U.S. National Monuments, established the first 51...
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