Travel
A Promise Kept
We moved around a lot when I was a kid, never near ponds or rivers or bodies of water. As a result, fishing wasn’t really a part of our family vocabulary. Never did it. Never tried it. And honestly, I…
RIP, RBG
Setting aside the myriad of victories that she won as an advocate of women’s rights during the 1970s, Ginsburg spent a large part of the last four decades as the voice of judicial dissent. She prized the voice of dissent…
American Government: Caged
I could show you all the zoomed in pictures of the White House and the Capitol Building. But we walked the full perimeter. Better to show you the truth. Anything less would be insincere. This is our American government, caged…
Jefferson’s Monticello
“Each generation is as independent as the one preceding, as they were of all which had gone before them. It has then, like them, a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its…
Madison’s Montpelier
Here lies and here lived James Madison, a man who embodied our nation’s idyllic contradictions, our belief in equality and our conflict with slavery and racism, our right to republican self-defense and our eventual function as a world power, our…
Jefferson’s Tuckahoe
First stop on our Presidential Trip through Virginia was Tuckahoe Plantation, Mr. Jefferson’s boyhood home. The mile or two drive off the main road is not only picturesque, but it set the stage a residence far removed from the difficulties…
When She Talks About Peace
Most of us understand silence. We know what it means to find a quiet place, away from the roads and the crowds and the noise. We know how important it is to our peace of mind and our sense of…
Pondering in Boulder Field
Amidst the dips and cracks where people often slip between stones, a visit to Boulder Field also means being able to wander into the chilly, Pennsylvania distance, far from the major roads and byways, far from the noise and the…
The Quintessential Optimist
Reading a presidential memoir, for any American, is normally an act of retroactive curiosity. And no one does it quickly. The pages are densely littered with information no longer relevant to anyone but the most issue-specific historians. But when those…
Finding the Pocono Sunset
Attempting to self-quarantine for the most part after our arrival in Pennsylvania, Melissa and I stayed in the cabin for several days and only walked the neighborhood. But at some point, we managed to explore the mountains, wandering through sparsely…
