Travels in History

The 18th Century has terrible wifi

I meant to blog every day, but since the connection required me to sit outside in the heat with the mosquitos, I abandoned that plan.

I am on my way home tonight. What a wonderful week!  But I am happy to be going home.

I found the poem I wrote at the end of my week here in 2008. I wrote a different reflection this year, but it is not quite ready for public viewing.

I started this poem standing at Surrender Field in Yorktown.  I revised it on the flight home.

What message?

Reaching out across the years, black ink on paper speaks to us

Of rights and responsibilities, traditions and laws.

Across the Atlantic to land flanked by English rights and native peoples

Starving, building, growing, killing, making a life here.

British citizens, mercantilism rules your world.

What have we learned?

 

Brought back from ruin, from the lazy and the crazy, to teach and learn from the past, the bricks and boards, pottery shards and tobacco notes, they speak to us.

The 18^th century brought to life, in a sleepy Virginia town. 

Do we disturb the ghosts?

From mother England you break away, declaring Virginia’s rights, human rights.

All people are created equal.

That is our great history, that word people – who are the people?

United States citizens, you have changed the world, will any republic so conceived and so dedicated long endure?

What could we learn?

 

What is our great task today? 

What standard do we unfurl into the future, so that it will be said that what started in Jamestown and Williamsburg and triumphed at Yorktown and Philadelphia grew in our day too?

Who are the people?

World citizens, what should we learn?

 

 

Heather Pang

Summer 2008

Burton Parish Church

Sent from my iPhone

Day 2, Williamsburg

Internet access is, at best, unpredictable here, so I may not get much posted.

We spent the morning in Colonial Williamsburg, learning about tavern keeping and the life of Anne and Mathew Ashby.  We had an interpreter reenact Anne's character, and she was fantastic.

We also did some work on technology at Burton Heights School, exploring the possibilities on the CD for participants and on the Williamsburg website.

Photos later if the access is still up.  I am sitting outside on the steps, since the wifi does not seem to read into my room. It did on the first day I was here, but since then it has not worked.  Everyone says this is how it always is, and there don't seem to be any good ways to fix it.

This weekend Williamsburg has been captured by the redcoats, so I have to watch out for patrols. I think I will go wander the town and see what I can see. I hear they are encamped near the center of town.

Day 1, Jamestown

Last night we had our orientation dinner, and today 19 teachers set out to explore Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.  On the hottest day of the year in Virginia (so far). 

At the archeological site we actually ran in to Dr. Keslo, the man who led the research and the dig that found the fort in the 1990s.  He was great, happy to talk to us while he waited for a different group.

All of our guides today did their best to keep us in the shade, but there was nothing to do for it but be hot.  I can't imagine how hard it must have been in the days when the English mostly wore wool clothes.

We looked at the dig, and the church, and then visited the museum.  What a fantastic collection.  And it is in an amazing building -- built over the old statehouse foundations, without damaging that historic site.

The Church at Jamestown.

We spent the rest of the day at the Jamestown Settlement, the recreation I go to every year with the 8th grade. I love that place, but I confess to loving the air conditioned museum more this time than usual.

From iPhone

I am testing the email address for this blog. This is a photo from my morning walk.

Sent from my iPhone

Back in Williamsburg for another Teacher Institute

I have been looking back at this blog, and realizing I have not used it much. I hope that does not really mean I have not traveled much, I suspect it just means I am on Facebook more, and not thinking about this blog.  But since I am back in Williamsburg, this time I am the peer facilitator, I figure I should be blogging again.

I took the redeye last night, Delta from San Francisco to Atlanta, and then Atlanta to Richmond. Some delay on the second flight, but not too bad.  The drive in from the airport was entertaining, the driver had stories to tell about his youth driving whiskey around (I am sure it was illegal), and he lived in Chicago in the 1960s, and was a big Cubs fan, so he had stories about that too.  

When I got to the Williamsburg Inn they did not have my name so it took a while to get me a room. I found out later all the names for my group had not gotten to them!  Some kind of mess up in their email system, the email was still sitting in drafts.

I did get a room. I am in the Bracken Tenement Kitchen.

Under the ramp at the back there is a large animal (well, he is not large, he is about a foot tall. He just seems large to me).  

Here he is: