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Hall’s Hill Wall

Hall’s Hill Wall

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It was a late-summer walk with my daughter and granddaughter, but it became a history lesson. Yesterday I learned about Hall’s Hill wall, a stark reminder of segregation in Arlington, Virginia. Bazil Hall was a 19th-century plantation owner whose first wife was so abusive to their slaves that one of them killed her. 

Although he was a slaveowner, Hall was also a unionist. He voted against Virginia’s succession, and in 1861, Confederate troops set fire to his home during an attack from an adjacent site. Union troops later occupied the area. 

After the war, Hall sold off his property, some of it to formerly enslaved people. According to the Arlington Historical Society, he didn’t do this because he was nice, but because he wanted to irritate his white neighbors. The Black community that resulted was known as Hall’s Hill.

In the 1930s a wall was erected along the perimeter of the neighborhood to block Black citizens from entering the new subdivision of Woodlawn. It remained mostly intact until 1966, when the county tore most of it down. The vestiges still standing are a sad reminder of life in earlier times. 

Politics of Fear

Politics of Fear

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Yesterday was as picture-perfect a day as that September 11th, but 23 years later, nearly a generation ago. As it happens, I spent part of it on class readings about 9/11 and the politics of fear. 

One of the points I took home from these articles was terrorism’s legacy of anxiety and containment, of divisiveness — there are those who are terrorists (or look like them) and those who are not. 

In class last night, a colleague mentioned something I hadn’t thought of in a long time: threat levels. Remember those colors — red, orange, yellow? They were part of the Homeland Security Advisory System, I learned from Wikipedia today. In place from 2002 till 2011, they affected the level of security at airports and public buildings. 

Some class members were babies then; they had no memory of those. The threat index they’re most familiar with are air-quality levels. 

Chimney Rock

Chimney Rock

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A thousand years ago, Ancestral Puebloans made their home in the desert southwest. Yesterday we trudged the trails they navigated a millennia ago as we explored Chimney Rock, a national monument celebrating Chaco culture.

These were sky-watching people, who learned that every 18 and a half years, the moon would rise between Chimney Rock (right) and Companion Rock, the two sandstone spires above. This alignment is made possible by a phenomenon known as Major Lunar Standstill, a time when the moon appears to pause for three years in its wobbly north-to-south cycle. 

It’s believed that the Great House Pueblo we visited today was constructed in 1093 A.D., during one of these times. Another one is happening later this year. I wish I could be here to see it.

Last Chance Mine

Last Chance Mine

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When we pulled into the cramped parking lot we had gone as far as we could go. Last Chance Mine, the sign read, and that’s just what it seemed. Our last chance to visit a mine on this trip, since the Creede Mine was closed. Our last chance to turn around and find the loop road that was taking us around the mountain. 

Turns out, the name had another, more colorful meaning. A long-ago prospector, Ralph Granger, having struck out on other claims, was about to give it all up, move to Denver and become a city boy. This was his last chance to hit it big, he told his cronies down at the bar. But when Granger went to collect his burro (the sale of which would be his ticket out), he couldn’t find the critter. He looked around town to no avail, finally locating him 2,000 feet up the mountain. 

Granger was so angry at the wild goose chase that when he reached the burro he beat his hammer on a rock to vent his frustration. And that strike revealed the apex of a rich silver vein that ultimately yielded over $2 billion of the precious medal. 

We toured the mine yesterday, getting a taste of mining life circa 1891. It was fascinating and creepy. The best part: after an hour and a half they let us out. We made our way down to the old Wild West town of Creede, its main street dead-ending in a box canyon, and celebrated with ice cream. 

Happy Early Solstice!

Happy Early Solstice!

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Today at 4:51 p.m., the northern hemisphere of our planet officially enters its hottest season. It’s the earliest solstice in 228 years, they’re saying, since George Washington was president.

I’ve been thinking of George Washington lately, what with the discovery of 35 bottles of preserved cherries recently found at his home, Mount Vernon. Now I’ll think of him again, enjoying the longest day of the year, perhaps in Philadelphia, then the capital of these United States. A few months later, he will deliver his farewell address. 

But back to the solstice, which is early this year because of leap year and our imperfect calendar. I could have waited one more day for it — savored the anticipation — but there’s no way to stop a celestial body when it has made up its mind. 

And so I prepare to drain as much daylight and happiness from this day as I can. It’s the longest one; it can spare it. 

(A favorite sunrise shot, the beach at Chincoteague, April 2016.)

Slipping Into History

Slipping Into History

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Today is the 80th anniversary of the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy. It is also “the moment when D-Day will slip almost entirely from memory into history,” says Garrett M. Graff, author of When the Sea Came Alive: An Oral History of D-Day, a 19-hour audiobook.

My knowledge of World War II is also from oral history — Dad’s stories about the 35 missions he flew in 1944, including air support on D-Day. He always insisted that his efforts were nothing compared with soldiers on the ground. 

“I don’t think the American people appreciate what some of those men did,” he told a newspaper reporter in 2009. “Those guys, they deserve all the honors.” I think Dad was too modest; being crammed into the tail gunner’s seat of a B-17 bomber carried enormous risks and responsibilities. 

Dad was one of the lucky ones. He survived to return, marry, have four children and die peacefully at the age of 90. Like him, most of the boys who stormed the beaches (or flew above them) are now under the ground. As D-Day slips into history, it’s up to us to keep it alive. 

(Dad poses beside a B-17 bomber at his air base in Horham, England in 1944.)

Memorial at Ball’s Bluff

Memorial at Ball’s Bluff

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I couldn’t visit my parents’ graves at a national cemetery in Kentucky, so yesterday I thought I’d do the next best thing: visit a national cemetery in Virginia. Arlington immediately sprang to mind … and just as quickly left it as I thought about the traffic.

Instead, I found a small national cemetery — the third smallest in the U.S., as a matter of fact — located near a Civil War battlefield, Ball’s Bluff. You can hike down to the Potomac, which Union soldiers crossed before the battle on October 21, 1861. 

The skirmish did not go well for them. The Confederates prevailed, just as they had at the Battle of Bull Run a few months earlier, and a U.S. senator,  Edward Baker, was killed. His death is commemorated with a marker, and the small walled cemetery there holds the remains of 54 Union soldiers. 

It was a warm day, but the paths were shady, and at the trail’s end, the Potomac River was calm and peaceful, a contrast to that day … and so many others.

Happy Birthday, Rhapsody

Happy Birthday, Rhapsody

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Yesterday, after the errands were run and the groceries put away, I sat down at the piano, pulled out the ancient sheet music and played the opening run. For the next 30 minutes, I bungled my way through one of the most important and beautiful pieces of American music ever written, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

A hundred years ago to the day, on a snowy February 12, 1924, Gershwin played the piece at Aeolian Hall in New York City in a concert billed as “An Experiment in Modern Music.” Paul Whiteman had commissioned Gershwin to write the piece, and Gershwin had done it in just a few weeks, roughing out the original idea on a train trip from New York to Boston. “I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our metropolitan madness,” Gershwin said.

He had created a masterpiece. Though no one knows exactly how the piece sounded that day (it wasn’t recorded and Gershwin improvised parts of it), a recording made a few months later is thought to be a close replica. The piece was an immediate success, with multiple recordings, and Paul Whiteman made the Rhapsody the theme song for his radio show. Gershwin had created an anthem for the Jazz Age. 

Later versions of the Rhapsody give it a more lush orchestral sound, but the original performance brought out the jazzy brightness of the piece in all its syncopated glory. Even hopscotching through the music as I was last night, cherry-picking the easier sections, I felt its magic in my bones. 

(Thanks to Wikipedia and The Syncopated Times for info and art, and to Hot Jazz Saturday Night for the inspiration.) 

Time and Memories

Time and Memories

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I’m reminded this morning that it’s been 60 years to the day since President Kennedy was shot. The act that defined our country for many years, until the other tragedies came along. 

Now there are young adults who were born after 9/11, who have no direct or televised experience of the smoldering ruins or the silent skies. 

Time marches on; memories do not. They stay locked in place — in amber, perhaps, or something far less valuable. They define us, as a generation and as a people. 

How do we honor them and move on? Only by understanding them, I guess, by realizing the many ways they hold us in their thrall. 

Good Words

Good Words

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Today is the birthday of Eleanor Roosevelt, mother, teacher, writer, wife, first lady and activist, whose 2020 biography was unputdownable. 

One of Eleanor’s many noteworthy traits was her capacity for growth. She was not afraid to plunge in, assess, take action, and, when necessary, reverse course. She was ahead of her time. 

Perhaps this quotation helps explain some of her courage: “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you,” she said, “if you realized how seldom they do.”

Good words to take into the day. 

(Writing about Eleanor gives me an excuse to feature a Washington, D.C. photo.)