I would not exchange my home on the range (the photo essay)

The last of three posts waxing poetic on Kansas.  ('The soliloquy' and 'The discourse' are here and here, respectively.) If you want more Kansas photos, go to Andrea LaRanye Etzel's website. I didn't want to post any of her's without permission, but they are excellent. Here is another website with links to other Kansas photos and photographers. Excellent as well. The photos not marked are mine. As it says in the captions, if you know the source to the Ad Astera and Keeper of the Plains photographs, let me know and I will give them their due.

 

Ad Aspera on the Kansas Capitol dome in the moonlight. I don't know who is the photographer of this.
If you know the source, let me know and I will acknowledge.

 

Keeper of the Plains in Wichita. Again, I don't know who is the photographer of this.
If you know the source, let me know and I will acknowledge.

 

Flint Hills

 

This graphic novel has humor

 

A part of John Steuart Curry's mural Tragic Prelude at the Kansas Statehouse (courtesy-Kansas State Historical Museum)

 

Wichita Footballers (courtesy-Wichita/Sedgwick County Historical Museum)

 

Civil War Rotunda at Maple Grove Cemetery in Wichita

 

Civil War Rotunda at Maple Grove Cemetery in Wichita

4 to 50:Talk to Your Grandparents (part two--peace)



My grandmother (second to the left) with her siblings and the Great-Great Grands



 

I hadn't planned on two posts, but I don't think I can do one without the other. Today is Memorial Day and the idea is remember, remember?

My son's are still at Maple Grove and my wife and sister-in-law are still in Pratt, America.

But I'm not done. I have a friend whose area of expertise as a historian is genocide. He has studied the Holocaust and Rwanda and Darfur and ... (unfortunately there are too many 'ands' here). Its those 'ands' which are in my head.

What I am going to say next is going to put me on someone's list somewhere, and if it does, so be it. I would like to point out that I love my country and had the balls to serve it. I continue to serve it by entering a field of battle each day with a dozen 14-year olds; showing that the Rock 'em-Sock 'em Robots that is American History and Civics is messy but important. That being citizens can be a full-contact sport and you need to make sure you know how to play the game in order to be most effective.

Here goes:

National Pride has a shadow side that causes us to do horrific things in the name of country. Its easy to point to Africa and Europe and Asia and point to the ills of those regimes, past and present. But we need to remember our history is a complicated one as well. Native Americans. Slaves. The treatment of the Chinese and Japanese, not to mention other immigrant classes. Please note that I my goal is not to be a nationalistic buzz-kill. I think nationalism at its core asks us to look beyond our self-interest to our neighbor. I think it gives us leaders who become public servants over politicians. So I have an idea.

A recipe for National Pride: equal parts War and Peace...that's it. I am proud to have served my country and I thank God for those women and men who have and continue to serve. However, that is only have of the thought for today:

Remember.

Part of remembering is remembering the peace part of that story and so here is my challenge for you this Memorial Day. Talk to a grandparent. Talk to a neighbor. Talk to each other. Ask those whose lives have been longer about the life before social media. Ask them about clothes lines. Ask them about train rides. Ask them about Benny Goodman. Ask them about ... You get the idea.



My Great Grandmother, her maiden name was Younger and was a distant cousin to Jesse James. There have been several discussions with my sons about whether having an infamous relative is a good thing or not. We are also supposed to be descendants of William Penn, but I will tell you that people are often more impressed at Jesse James and the Younger Brothers over William Penn--usually its, 'he's Quaker Oats guy, right?' Just sayin'.

My Great-Grandfather. When my grandmother would talk about him, it was clear she was a Daddy's Girl. Its hard to imagine the grandmother who had weathered the Depression, two marriages and raised almost a half dozen kids on her own that way, but I loved to hear that story.

4 to 50:Talk to your grandparents (part one, war)



 

Today is Memorial Day.

 

My wife and sister-in-law are heading to Pratt, Kansas to place flowers on headstones and my sons are serving as greeters at Maple Grove Cemetery here in Wichita. As a military kid and veteran myself, this day is one of pride and reflection.

 

Today's thought is simple:

 

Remember.

 

I can't express my thoughts better than Lincoln did more than 151 years ago, so I won't even try. I will let his words, and my camera speak for themselves. The images are from Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg National Cemetery, Maple Grove Cemetery (Wichita, KS) and monuments and memorials from Washington DC.

 

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

 

 

 



Civil War Washington Teaching Fellowship--Reboot

In the last post, I talked about the Civil War Washington Teaching Fellowship. This mini-post is a set of links to previous posts about my week with them last summer. There are easily the same number of posts I don't offer links to so, if you are up for some exploring....

Walking in the steps of grieving father at Oak Hill Cemetery

When memories aren't allowed, let the house speak for you

Prepare. Experience. Reflect.

How long do you let kids marinate in an uncomfortable discussion?

Furnished with ideas, not objects

Sleeping in the president's deathbed

Wichita Connection #2

At Ford's Theater

I was asked by the kids which spot had the most meaning and I'll close with a link to that post. My attraction to these types of  location are all over this blog, like here, here and here. I don't think of them the way otehrs do, I see them as flashpoints for rememberance, reflection and vision for the future. History is a way of looking at the past in order to chart a course toward the future--these places encapsulate that idea.

How Sleep the Brave

An Olympian lost to the weeds and weather

Sol Butler, Olympian

What you can't see is the relief of a runner on his headstone.

Sol's sister, Josephine, was responsible for his interment in Maple Grove. She was also a college educated nurse, an impressive acheivement for an African American woman in the 1910s and 1920s.

I know I promised you Civil War Wichita, but this story is cool, trust me. The man who took me around the cemetery on Monday really wanted to show me this one. I'm glad he did. Solomon Butler was an athletic prodigy. He won all of the biggest meets in the nation and was a favorite at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp. An injury at the Games tragically ended his career and he would be later shot on the South-side of Chicago while working as a bouncer in 1954. His sister lived in Wichita and brought him home to be buried. Josephine Butler was impressive in her own right. She was a college educated nurse in the Wichita medical community in the 1950s when her brother died. One story goes that they were the children of  freed slaves which is possible but, given their birth years, their parents would probably have been the first generation of free blacks. Still, little more than a generation after emancipation and in the middle of Jim Crow, the Butler children both attended college; one graduating from nursing school and the other an Olympian. 

Sol Butler biography