Lunch waits.
See you along the Trail.
photo taken 4 August 2013 at the
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park
Category Archives: National Park
Food storage
Filed under National Park, Photo
Flight
Perfection is nice.
Symmetry is appealing.
Sometimes
wounded wings
can fly.
4 August 2013
Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park
Filed under National Park, Photo, Poem
Making the Fourth of July a day for us all
Whose holiday is the Fourth of July?
We like to think of this day as a day of celebration for all the citizens of the United States of America. But as Frederick Douglass proclaimed over 150 years ago, for many people – people living in this country – the Fourth of July serves as a painful reminder and a mockery.
When he spoke, the issue was slavery. Millions lived in the chains of chattel slavery. Those chains have fallen, thanks in large part, to Frederick Douglass and other African-Americans who resisted enslavement.
But many still do not enjoy fully the vision of freedom. Racism persists. A number of states greeted the recent Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act by moving ahead with Voter ID laws, some of which have been rejected under the voting rights act. Immigrants face challenges as they seek to make a new life. Supreme Court decisions have made it possible for our LGBTQ brothers and sisters to marry – in certain states. An economic gulf looms between the rich and many people who struggle to find ends, let alone to make them meet. Men, women, and children are trafficked for labor and for sex. Slavery has morphed; it has not disappeared. For many, the promises of freedom and the United States remain unrealized. For all of us, the words of Frederick Douglass ring true.
Frederick Douglass was born in a slave cabin in Maryland. The date and year remain unknown even to Douglass. The condition of enslavement resulted in such a lack of knowledge for many. Douglass endured the violation and horrors of slavery. And he resisted. His first attempt to escape failed. Then he tried again and, in early September 1838, disguised as a sailor, he escaped to freedom – precarious freedom, but freedom none the less.
During a visit to the African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan, Tricia and I opted to take a tour that focused on slavery, resistance, and abolition efforts in New York. We learned that Douglass made his first stop in New York City. He did not stay because of the city’s support for slavery. In New York, Douglass married Anna Murray. They went to New Bedford, Massachusetts to live.
Douglass became a leader in the abolitionist movement. A talented speaker, he would spend about six months each year travelling and speaking. Douglass attended the Seneca Falls Convention and became a supporter of women’s rights including the right to vote. This connection led Anna and Frederick to move their family to Rochester, New York, perhaps to be near Susan B. Anthony.
On July 5, 1852, in Rochester, Douglass spoke at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence: the Fourth of July, U.S. Independence Day. Perhaps they anticipated his words and tone. Most likely they did not. Douglass reminded his audience that, “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” He went on to note:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Douglass did not end there, however. He observed that, despite his experience and the painful realities, “I do not despair of this country.” He closed with a poem of hope written by William Lloyd Garrison that begins:
God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
The poem ends with an affirmation remaining engaged in the struggle for liberty, freedom, and justice – of working to make the promise of the Fourth of July real for all.
Frederick Douglass devoted himself to that struggle.
May I do the same.
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Antiracism, Current Events, Human Rights, National Park, Photo
Ghosts of Gettysburg
Through early morning mists they march
across the fields of green,
fields red-stained by their life blood
when they were young.
No long range kills,
no smart bombs then;
just frightened, courageous
too-young men
who,
for cause
country
comrades,
engaged each other
face to face
and
hand to hand,
performing acts of
unspeakable horror,
incredible valor,
absolute futility
until the arms of Mars
did embrace and claim them.
23 August 2002
The Shire, Louisville
Filed under National Park, Poem
Holy ground
I stood today on holy ground. Of course all ground is holy for God creates all ground and entrusts it to our care. Still some ground bears special meaning because of what happened there.
My quest to visit National Parks took Tricia and me to the African Burial Ground in Manhattan today. It is a well done park that tells a significant story.
New York’s African Burial Ground is the nation’s earliest known African and African American cemetery. Enslaved Africans played a key role in building Manhattan as they played key roles in building this entire country. The Nation notes that:
In 1703, 42 percent of New York’s households had slaves, much more than Philadelphia and Boston combined. Among the colonies’ cities, only Charleston, South Carolina, had more.
From the late 1600s until 1794, both free and enslaved Africans were buried in a 6.6-acre burial ground in Lower Manhattan, outside the boundaries of the settlement of New Amsterdam, later known as New York. The National Park Service notes that “an estimated 15,000 men, women and children were buried here.
Africans resisted enslavement in countless ways: from rebellions to running away to educating children and more. The care they showed their loved ones was another form of resistance. Faced with the brutal dehumanization of enslavement, honoring those who died (or were killed) served to affirm the humanity and dignity of the individual and the community.
Lost to history due to landfill and development, the grounds were rediscovered in 1991 as a consequence of the planned construction of a Federal office building. The African-American community in New York led a campaign to have the remains honored and remembered. Their efforts, after some controversy and hard work, succeeded. The remains were taken to Howard University for analysis.
After the scientists finished their work, the remains were placed in new coffins and taken back to New York for reburial. The New York Historical Society reports:
The ceremonial journey stopped in five cities along the way, so that people in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, Wilmington, and Newark could pay their respects. Then the remains arrived by boat in New York City, at the same spot where slave ships had docked two centuries earlier. After days of rituals that included horse-drawn hearses, drummers in African kente cloth, singing, dancing, and prayers, the remains were returned to the earth in lower Manhattan.
The community’s efforts resulted in the designation of the African Burial Ground as New York City Historic District, a National Historic Landmark and, on February 27, 2006, a National Monument.
Today, the African Burial Ground National Monument includes a visitor center with four exhibit areas, a theater where a 20-minute video tells the story of the burial ground, and a bookstore. A short walk away stand the graves and a memorial.
Holy ground.
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Antiracism, Human Rights, National Park, New York
Oh the places I want to go
On the way to Korea, our plane kissed the edge of Hudson Bay from some 30,000 feet. I have long wanted to visit Hudson Bay. This is as close as I have come.
The flyover got me thinking. If I had unlimited resources, what places would I most like to visit?
I would like to return to a number of places, including the Republic of Korea now. But for this list, I focused on places I have never seen – places I would some day like to go.
I made the list as the places occurred to me. I reduced the list to ten and then I put them in a priority order, although I think that order might change on any given day.
Some places are quite specific. Some are very broad. My list. My rules.
The list:
- New Zealand
- Australia
- Glacier National Park
- Hudson Bay, Montreal, Quebec City
- Rhode Island
- Victoria Falls
- The Great Wall of China
- Machu Picchu
- Shiloh National Battlefield
- A Norwegian fjord
That’s my list. This time. What is yours?
Limiting the list to ten proved more of a challenge than I had expected. Many other places occurred to me but simply did not make the final cut. This time.
Some of these places I will never visit. Too old. Too out-of-shape. Not enough money. Others I may. I may go to some of the places that did not make the list of ten. I may get to places I did not name that prove more interesting than anything on the list. That is the beauty of the Trail. When we set out upon it, we do not know where it will lead.
See
Filed under National Park, Travel
Stones River, 150th
It seems a week for anniversaries. I suppose every week brings them and what really happens is that I notice some of them some of the time. The 150th anniversary of the Battle of Stones River this week caught my attention.
As 2012 draws to a close, I find myself reading a biography of George Thomas. Born in Virginia, educated at West Point, Thomas chose to stay with the Union as Civil War convulsed the United States. He served in the Western Theater of the war where he earned the nickname, “The Rock of Chickamauga” for a defensive stand his troops made during that battle.
Earlier, the men under his command fought at Stones River, Tennessee. From December 31, 1862 through January 2, 1863, forces under the command of Gen. Bragg (CSA) and Gen. Rosecrans (USA) clashed along Stones River. Men in blue and men in gray fought and died in cotton fields and among cedar timbers and in places now remembered as The Slaughter Pen and Hell’s Half Acre. 3,000 men died; the number of men killed, wounded, and missing totaled over 23,000.
In January of 2010, I visited Stones River National Battlefield and Stones River National Cemetery. I experienced mixed emotions: horror, sorrow, pain, pride and more intermingled. The place seems hallowed in ways I can never describe. Walking alone on the boundary trail, every rustling leaf and every squirrel moving on the ground made me feel surrounded by ghosts.
In the end, the cemetery made the greatest impression on me. I thought of those who died in that battle – and in all battles – in all wars. And I ask myself – Why? And I ask myself – How long? And I ask myself – Can the human race not do better?
Row upon row they stand,
across Stones River,
resting under the trees’ shade
in perfect formation:
silent, eternal reminders
of who was lost
and who paid the cost;
of what once was
of what might have been.
Shire on the Hudson
29 July 2011
See you along the Trail.
Filed under National Park, Photo, Poem
Purple flowers, Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve 2
Away from the sand,
yellow hats
top purple petals.
17 July 2011
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve
Colorado
Filed under National Park, Photo, Travel
Along the Graybeard Trail 