Run-Away Slaves...

I can't believe it's November already!
Where has the year gone by?
It's been a while since I have been on here... Not that I didn't have anything to share... not by far... We are just too busy!!!
Our latest outing was educational, as we took Michael and his pal Mitchell to Conner's Prairie to participate in "Follow the North Star" event. They offer this activity twice a year in May and November.
I didn't participate but happily volunteered Bruce to accompany the boys as they needed adult supervision and a Mom tag-along didn't sound quite right for these two teens.
A waiver had to be signed before participation was allowed and I must say it had our imaginations soaring... Would there be dogs, would they do anything realistically to have happened to caught run-away slaves?
OOOPs.. I didn't tell you what this activity was about but maybe you have guessed from what I just said. The purpose of this program is to sensitize the participants to being helped to run away on the Underground Railroad.
It was supposed to last 90 minutes but even though their session started at 6:45pm they didn't return until almost 9pm.
Groups of 20 people are taken through the experience every 15 minutes.
No cell phones or cameras allowed, no running, no gum either...
The bottom line was to cooperate and Bruce was not about to play his part. Mitchell got them into trouble by saying they were run-aways and that cost them all three to have to lay down flat on the ground face down... But the boys played along much more easily.
After their orientation, they were taken to be sold at Liberty Corner or somewhere on the grounds, then they were moved around the grounds, meeting different types of people who helped or not. Before leaving they went through a sort of debriefing where they were explained how out of the 20 people in their group, maybe 3 would have made it to freedom.
Some would have been killed, others, injured, some others retaken and who knows what fate would have awaited them then!?
The three of them will surely remember the experience a long time that's for sure.
While I was waiting the guide who got the tour started shared some thoughts about a book she read about a woman who had a baby with her when she escaped on the real Underground Railroad and how the baby started crying and because she could not let the baby cause the group to be caught, she had to smother the little one... Can you just imagine!? "Beloved" is the name of the book but I can't recall who wrote it.
I saw a wonderful movie recently that falls into the subject of this post: "Amazing Grace" - the story of how the slave trade was dismantled in England. A wonderful true story...
Since there were no cameras allowed, I can't share any pictures with you, at least not pictures taken November 5th. But we have been to Conner's Prairie several times this year as we decide to purchase a membership. We went to Country Fair and plan to go again for the Civil War Days in May. I feel like I'm rambling tonight... maybe because it's been so long and thoughts are jumbled up in my head. Maybe this will peak your curiosity and if you live in Indiana, you will want to know more... This would make an excellent Young Men/Young Women activity. In fact there was a group of old Mennonites who went with a later group. They looked the part that's for sure... How lucky they all were that the weather was nice, and that it had been for several days... I can't imagine the boys (and Bruce especially!) putting their nose on the wet ground...
But let's face it, reality would not likely have been stopped by the weather... snow maybe... maybe not... Memorable evening though...

March Ramblings

I am not a political person. Never have been. Politicians too often speak one thing –what they think people want to hear- and then do another, whether or not it is due to circumstances outside their control. But that was my mother’s world for a few years when we were still in Belgium. She still holds a fervent ardor for the rights of workers everywhere and thinks of her father when she hears Michel Fugain’s “Le Chiffon Rouge”. She chokes up on some of the words as she sings it, remembering what he went through especially after the war. He was a good man, one of many whose voice would not have counted for much were it not for the workers’ movements.
Anyway… I just finished listening to the Lincoln-Douglas debates and they have stirred up a lot of thoughts within me. That was about another group of underdogs… I remembered reading that Joseph Smith and Stephen Douglas had been friends and Joseph had even prophesied that if Douglas would not turn his back on the mormons, he would become president. Well we all know Lincoln won the election. So these debates had an added meaning to me. What was Stephen Douglas like?
The Stephen Douglas I found in the debates seemed like a good man but someone who would go with the flow rather than take a firm stand for what he really believed in if it meant becoming unpopular. As I listened to the debates I told Bruce I could not imagine how Lincoln could have won against him and his sharp tongue. Well, truth is, I didn’t realize Lincoln had actually lost that election but it set the stage for the presidential election a couple of years later.
It’s good to want peace but peace does not mean the absence of problems and it should not be kept for the sake of not stirring up trouble. When something is wrong, it is important to stand and speak out.
If the Founding Fathers had not stood against tyranny, would the USA exist today? Who knows, but as they well put it as they signed the Declaration of independence, they would either be victorious together or hang separately, rebels that they were, according to King George anyway…
Yes, it’s all in who tells the story…
When we went to Washington DC back in 1984 to be sealed in the temple as a forever family, we also toured the sights and of course visited the Lincoln Memorial. The huge white monument made you feel so very small…

The recent election of the first African American president and his use of the Lincoln Memorial as a prelude to his taking office stirred up a lot of emotions across the country, especially from the descendants of the African slaves.

He even retraced Lincoln’s train ride from Philadelphia to Washington
"It is one of the great, patriotic symbols of our country," Presidential Inaugural Committee spokeswoman Linda Douglass said of the location. "It's a symbol of the American spirit; it's a symbol of unity; it's a symbol of our values. So for all those reasons it's an appropriate place to celebrate an inauguration that is really built around celebrating our common values as a people." And how right she is to say that!
One of the reasons I was naturalized is that I believe a people should have a voice in who rules the country they live in. Then I was told I had to register with a party. Instead of studying each party’s current platform prior to registering, I opened the Encyclopedia to learn about the roots of the two main parties and discovered Abraham Lincoln had a hand in creating the Republican Party.
I also didn’t miss that the US presidents who had turned away the Mormons’ pleas for redress against their persecutors, were both Democrats. Sounds like a stupid reason to register Republican but that was my reason.
I don’t trust my vote to a party, I give my vote to the person I think is a better person, the one who will do the right thing for the right reason. No ego trips. I did find this simplicity in Lincoln’s debates. I don’t know how he was able to remain quiet as Stephen Douglas pushed the envelope and took things out of context for the sole purpose of bringing Lincoln down. I can see how some people would fall for Douglas’ words yet at the same time I can’t imagine how anyone would not see through his game.
Stephen Douglas has a memorial too, in Illinois.

tomb of Stephen Arnold Douglas in Chicago, Illinois located in the approximate area of the former Camp Douglas (POW concentration camp).
Photograph and upload by John Delano of Hammond, Indiana.
Photograph taken 8 October 2006 CST/UTC in Chicago, Illinois

Would Barrack Obama have become president had Lincoln not won? How different would things be?
President Obama’s inaugural speech was strong. Time will tell what his presidency will bring. Much hope is riding on him. Will he be able to get things right? Only time will tell…
He does feel like a man ready for action though and that should be a good sign as America needs to regain the respect of other nations. It will take time… hopefully not too much.