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Country Road Take Me Home" Chicago WEST VIRGINIA, MOUNTAIN MAMA.... Alderson, West Virginia. The birthplace of my father. When he was about 14 he got on the Chesapeake & Ohio train headed west out of the little burnt-orange railway station and never came back. Just shy of 90 years later Dennis, Sara, and I find ourselves standing in front of that newly refurbished station looking up and down the street at the old buildings that would have been so familiar to Dad. The one's that maybe he looked hard at one last time as he boarded the westward bound C&O. |
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We had gone to West Virginia to see dear friends from Manila, swinging up into southern Pennsylvania(we have certainly enlarged our understanding of American geography) to visit Alison Victoria and her family. Alison is one of our early, early tlc children, a child who was truly rescued from a certain death, and is today a happy, secure part of a fine, solid family. She attends a Christian school, enjoys swimming and all the things that healthy, happy kids enjoy who grow up in a nurturing environment complete with nearby grandparents. |
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How small and fragile our world is. We stood, we friends from Manila, on a promontory in West Virginia, looking out to Maryland on our left and Virginia on the right, at the confluence of the legendary Shenandoah River and the mighty Potomac. One's mind will not stretch around looking at two rivers that have been part of one's historical awareness since childhood, rivers that were vital in the shaping of one's homeland. Below us was Harper's Ferry, the former U.S. federal arsenal, the site of John Brown's historic raid that ultimately sparked the Civil War as well as the place where Lewis and Clark had much of their equipment made for their great trek across the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific. |
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History matters and we should attend to it. 23,000 dead and wounded in one day of battle. The single bloodiest day in American war history including both World Wars. A cornfield still grows where one grew so recently as time is figured...a cornfield that changed hands so many times during that Sept. day in 1863 that both Union and Confederate sides lost count. The sunken, rutted wagon road that became Bloody Road is still to be walked along. Bodies filled the winding trench almost to the top for the best part of a half mile. We walked along it, we friends from Manila, some of from the North, some of us from the South. What came from it? A nation united under duress. A nation that is still learning how to be whole. A nation that still has not thoroughly recovered from the wounds of that war. What are we to learn from it? |
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His dad was killed by a wild pig. His sister died of cholera. He was born on a mountain top not in Tennessee, but in Abra, Philippines. He came to know Jesus because a man and woman filled with God's love walked to the top of that mountain to tell Kenny and his people about the cross and the blood, and the empty tomb. Kenny and his family now live in Richmond. Another mind warp. How is it that a tribal kid born on a mountain top in the Philippines now wheels into his driveway in a big 4-wheel drive pickup, a truck so large that tiny Kenny can barely see out through the steering wheel? Kenny is a gardener and his wife, Eden works with the elderly. If they were doing the same work in Manila they would live in a squatter community. Here they live in a very comfortable two-story home in a pine tree-sprinkled neighborhood. That's the difference between here and his home country. How is it that such differences exist? How are values ordered? |
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A two-faced clock...not to be deceptive but to indicate how time is to be valued...at least in the brilliant mind of our third president and the author of our Declaration of Independence. As we walk up the lane to stand on the front porch of his famous home, we are referred to a large clock above the door by the tour guide. The timepiece only indicates the hour because Jefferson didn't feel minutes were important when one is working out of doors. Inside the entryway in Monticello, the reception room, really, the same clock not only registers the hours AND minutes because indoor work required a more precise awareness of the passage of time, but the days of the week as well. The days of the week are noted as a weighted pendulum drops past metal plaques that bear the names of the days...Saturday is in the basement. Jefferson was not in agreement, philosophically, with the practice of slavery...but as plantation owner was dependent upon their labor. Describing the dynamic of slavery as "holding a wolf by it's ears" he wrestled with its presence his entire life. At the end of it he freed only 5 of his more than 100 slaves, 5 he felt had the skills to survive in a world in which they would not, in any way, be cared for. He read voraciously and possessed over 7,000 volumes...most of which are in the Library of Congress. As an inveterate idealist, one of his favorites was appropriately, Don Quixote. The home is a powerful monument to a brilliant and searching mind. From Monticello we drove a short way to Charlottesville , a lovely evening, lively conversation with more friends from the Manila Connection. Jeri |
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