The sun looks like a cohesive ball, though it is actually a vast conflagration of plasma rotating at different speeds. Volatile humans could emulate.
Happiest day, beloved Joy Train Rider! Welcome aboard! I love you and want to use the light I got from copious experience in our National Parks and Forests to illumine the present moment. I feel incredibly fortunate and destined, even. Because how else could a girl from the “bush” in Jamaica be so prepared for this work?
I affirm you are doing well and had a rejuvenating weekend. Given the cacophony around us, the incomprehensive, illegal and deadly barrage from the administration, it takes intense discipline to avoid getting caught up in panic and distortion. I try to stay above the fray, greatly helped by the fact that I am touching real nature in ways that millions of people are only touching plasma – the virtual reality of their devices.
Astronaut Doctor Story Musgrave’s words come winging back to me from the first Badlands Astronomicaal Festival, August 2012:
“This is the first time in recorded history that human being are drawing the majority of our information from ‘content’ developed by other humans on TV an on our devices, with little connection to nature.”
I’m keeping my connection close. An incredible benefit is that I can point to a unit of the National Park System where history was made relevant to almost any situation we’re in.
Just as I was wondering which park highlights the fraught present moment, Rider Bethany sent me a link to a Black History Month Program being offered by Boston National Historical Park. Immediately my mind lit up – this is the exact spot most relevant today, and the Boston Tea Party which took place here is as close example of where we are today:
“In 1770, the Boston massacre ignited intense scrutiny of the British Regular Army on American shores. Although British Parliament removed government soldiers from Boston and walked back many of their unpopular actions, in 1773 they granted the struggling East India Company a monopoly on tea sales in North America. The Tea Act made East India Tea cheaper than smuggled Dutch tea, increase sales and helped the government collect a tax on the tea. For many Americans, the idea of a failing corporation receiving a bailout from a government that did not grant colonists any say in the matter represented yet another overstep by British Parliament.”
Today we’re faced with a government recklessly dismantling guardrails developed over 259 years, burdensome and biased tax. Boston parks are a living manual of how to negotiate on behalf of the people and our democracy, and what should be avoided.
The Boston National Historical Park and Boston African American National Historic Site together contain a plethora of the buildings and neighborhoods most integral to the Revolutionary War and the Abolition Movement. They intersect at points and an easily walkable and assisted trail enable everyone to enjoy, learn and have our patriotism re-awakened.
I’m focusing on the African American Site for Black History Month whose theme this year is “African Americans and Labor.” Black labor built many of these historic buildings. Faneuil Hall, central to the Revolutionary War, was named for a man who was reportedly a notorious trader in human beings. The African Meeting House was known as The Black Faneuil Hall to signify its importance.
Sit back, relax and enjoy as I relate my first-hand experience around 2008, recorded in “Our True Nature: Finding a Zest for Life in Our National Park System.”
That time I visited the Paul Revere House straight from visiting Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, also part of the National Park System.
“The Boston African American National Historic Site includes the Black History Trail, a 1.6-mile walk along which you can experience the largest collection of historic sites in the country reflecting the lives of free African Americans before the Civil War.
