Destroying Monticello
PART I
Anyone who knows me knows I have this bromance with Thomas Jefferson. I can't explain it really, and lord knows I've had my breakups with him. Even sworn off him a time or two when I was feeling indignant about his hypocrisy, after the proof about Sally Hemming came to light. Really... this is your hero I said to myself?
This 'relationship' actually started while I was in college. I went to college a full scale, 24 hour a day jock, and soon found myself organizing demonstrations against the Vietnam War (actually I remember organizing ONE demonstration against the Vietnam War. Unfortunately my radical life has grown in my minds eye over the years...I was really just a jock who made believe he was radical).
Anyway as I got political I decided I might want to learn a little bit more about this country I was screaming at and more about why I believed what I believed. This lead me to Jefferson, of course, who had written the great document of revolutionary life. (Which, by the way, was we must remember, written almost 15 months AFTER the Revolutionary War had already begun. The Declaration simply put the 'facts of the issue' on paper.)
I found in Thomas Jefferson three things that still excite and incite me:
--unfettered belief in everything... literally everything... being open to discussion, debate and a search for truth;
--an insatiable appetite to learn more about more things everyday;
--a faith in a God without all the stuff the church has created around that God;
I will write in a future post about this methodology having served me well and how it can serve others...
So though I find myself regularly wondering about his hypocrisy and the fact that he could get people to lie for him with the best of him, my separations from Thomas Jefferson don't last long. I always come back to him.
Maybe it's his long flowing hair...
With that bromance comes a love for his house, Monticello. After my own home, which I call The Hermitage, I love no place like I love Monticello. I've been there a zillion times and its location (being Virginia) makes living here all the more fun. (My kids, as I have noted before in this blog, will tell you it was the ONLY place we went for vacation. Which is not true. As Jennifer has confirmed she only remembers going there twice.)
Anyway, Monticello is a place I can go back to over and over because like the man, Jefferson, there is always something new you can learn about it when you get there. And it's a structure, a place, where this unfettered search for truth, political, cultural, spiritual, can be felt in the air. The joint just breathes Jefferson. Honestly, when I'm there I know he's there too.
So since the day my first grandchild was born, Hayleigh, I have counted the days when I can bring her there... and the same with her brother Max. Somehow, I felt, though my kids considered the place a nuisance and an interruption in their lives, and developed no interest in Thomas Jefferson, somehow I felt, and just knew, my Hayleigh Grace would. I would be rescued from 'historical isolation' by my granddaughter.
I literally have counted the days when I could take Hayleigh and Max up on 'my mountain.'
Now when you bring a child to Monticello is something important to consider. After all it's all this history stuff, which isn't exactly Sesame Street, if you know what I mean. I didn't want my grandkids to remember the place as 'oh, that place' as my two other children call it. I wanted her especially to love the mountain and the house and want to go there a lot.
So recently I began to think about bringing her to Charlottesville though I also was honest enough to think perhaps it's too soon; maybe she's too young.
But my granddaughter being the smartest and best looking almost five year old in the world, I figured she would get something out of it if we went. So when Jennifer said they were heading south to see me I decided it was time... 'Hayleigh and Max will love this' I said to myself! It will be a wonderful adventure full of fun and information and educational opportunities. They will be fine!
I was wrong...
Our trip to Charlottesville was smooth though it was during a weekend following a snowstorm. I should have wondered when the speaker for the day, a woman who had written a children's book about Jefferson (the excuse I used to take the kids) was cancelled because she couldn't get into the airport. We went anyway.
When you go to Monticello now you start at the information center which has a wonderful 'exploration room' for kids. There the kids can experience some of the marvels of Monticello (like Jefferson's Polygraph which was just two quill pens in a contraption that made a copy of every letter he sent) and the Campeche chair that Jefferson brought back from France (a copy of which I have in my study and which Hayleigh immediately recognized... told you)!
The kids had a ball at the exploration center.
But then in order to get to the house you take a bus up the hill. Though we were going up hill, things kinda' started to go down hill from there... the first clue was when Hayleigh announced she had never been on a bus before and all she wanted to do was ride up and down the rest of the day. Perhaps having to convince her to get off the bus to see the house was my first clue that this may have been a little soon...
TO BE CONTINUED...
Anyone who knows me knows I have this bromance with Thomas Jefferson. I can't explain it really, and lord knows I've had my breakups with him. Even sworn off him a time or two when I was feeling indignant about his hypocrisy, after the proof about Sally Hemming came to light. Really... this is your hero I said to myself?
This 'relationship' actually started while I was in college. I went to college a full scale, 24 hour a day jock, and soon found myself organizing demonstrations against the Vietnam War (actually I remember organizing ONE demonstration against the Vietnam War. Unfortunately my radical life has grown in my minds eye over the years...I was really just a jock who made believe he was radical).
Anyway as I got political I decided I might want to learn a little bit more about this country I was screaming at and more about why I believed what I believed. This lead me to Jefferson, of course, who had written the great document of revolutionary life. (Which, by the way, was we must remember, written almost 15 months AFTER the Revolutionary War had already begun. The Declaration simply put the 'facts of the issue' on paper.)
I found in Thomas Jefferson three things that still excite and incite me:
--unfettered belief in everything... literally everything... being open to discussion, debate and a search for truth;
--an insatiable appetite to learn more about more things everyday;
--a faith in a God without all the stuff the church has created around that God;
I will write in a future post about this methodology having served me well and how it can serve others...
So though I find myself regularly wondering about his hypocrisy and the fact that he could get people to lie for him with the best of him, my separations from Thomas Jefferson don't last long. I always come back to him.
Maybe it's his long flowing hair...
With that bromance comes a love for his house, Monticello. After my own home, which I call The Hermitage, I love no place like I love Monticello. I've been there a zillion times and its location (being Virginia) makes living here all the more fun. (My kids, as I have noted before in this blog, will tell you it was the ONLY place we went for vacation. Which is not true. As Jennifer has confirmed she only remembers going there twice.)
Anyway, Monticello is a place I can go back to over and over because like the man, Jefferson, there is always something new you can learn about it when you get there. And it's a structure, a place, where this unfettered search for truth, political, cultural, spiritual, can be felt in the air. The joint just breathes Jefferson. Honestly, when I'm there I know he's there too.
So since the day my first grandchild was born, Hayleigh, I have counted the days when I can bring her there... and the same with her brother Max. Somehow, I felt, though my kids considered the place a nuisance and an interruption in their lives, and developed no interest in Thomas Jefferson, somehow I felt, and just knew, my Hayleigh Grace would. I would be rescued from 'historical isolation' by my granddaughter.
I literally have counted the days when I could take Hayleigh and Max up on 'my mountain.'
Now when you bring a child to Monticello is something important to consider. After all it's all this history stuff, which isn't exactly Sesame Street, if you know what I mean. I didn't want my grandkids to remember the place as 'oh, that place' as my two other children call it. I wanted her especially to love the mountain and the house and want to go there a lot.
So recently I began to think about bringing her to Charlottesville though I also was honest enough to think perhaps it's too soon; maybe she's too young.
But my granddaughter being the smartest and best looking almost five year old in the world, I figured she would get something out of it if we went. So when Jennifer said they were heading south to see me I decided it was time... 'Hayleigh and Max will love this' I said to myself! It will be a wonderful adventure full of fun and information and educational opportunities. They will be fine!
I was wrong...
Our trip to Charlottesville was smooth though it was during a weekend following a snowstorm. I should have wondered when the speaker for the day, a woman who had written a children's book about Jefferson (the excuse I used to take the kids) was cancelled because she couldn't get into the airport. We went anyway.
When you go to Monticello now you start at the information center which has a wonderful 'exploration room' for kids. There the kids can experience some of the marvels of Monticello (like Jefferson's Polygraph which was just two quill pens in a contraption that made a copy of every letter he sent) and the Campeche chair that Jefferson brought back from France (a copy of which I have in my study and which Hayleigh immediately recognized... told you)!
The kids had a ball at the exploration center.
But then in order to get to the house you take a bus up the hill. Though we were going up hill, things kinda' started to go down hill from there... the first clue was when Hayleigh announced she had never been on a bus before and all she wanted to do was ride up and down the rest of the day. Perhaps having to convince her to get off the bus to see the house was my first clue that this may have been a little soon...
TO BE CONTINUED...
All men (and women) are fallible. Each of us has moments that, if exposed, would make those who know us think twice about who we are and what we stand for. For the most part I think it called "Life"...growing from our experiences, trying things, stretching our boundaries and belief systems...then trying to put together, especially in later years, the core beliefs that we understand to be true.
ReplyDeleteThe best thing I read in your posting was...you shared your passion. You shared it with your children and you continue to share it with your grandchildren. Nothing can be more important that giving of yourself...your time, energy and beliefs. It's who you are...or, at a minimum, who you want to be remember as...both of which are good.