Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

On Friday Dan and I drove to Washington to visit Cedar Hill, the home of Frederick Douglass from 1877 until his death in 1895.  The home was preserved by his 2nd wife Anna and in 1962 became a National Historic Site.

The house sits on a hill and has views in all directions.

Douglass was the 2nd owner of the house and added to it extensively.

If you are not familiar with Frederick Douglass you should read his first autobiography: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.  Dan recently did and I had read it years ago.  He was an amazing man, who with no formal education became an accomplished author, statesman, orator, and outspoken defender of abolition and women's rights.

Our visit started at the information center.

We joined a kindergarten class to watch the informative video about Douglass' life, then signed up for the tour joining a group from North Carolina.

While we waited we explored the exhibits there.

Douglass was a tall man as can be seen by this life sized statue.  Dan is 6'3".

He came to Washington because of his appointment as US Marshall.

We walked up the hill to the house for the tour.

These first graders are headed back to their bus.

The front porch with the views.

Stepping inside the front hall the stairs to the 2nd floor is in front of you and two parlors on either side.

The family parlor was to the right with the dining room beyond it.

The formal parlor was to the left with Douglass' study beyond that.

I could capture this portrait only by taken the photo through the mirror.

Upstairs on the 2nd floor were 5 bedrooms.  There was also a third floor with more rooms that we didn't see.

In Douglass' time lights were kerosene and heat was from burning coal in fireplaces and stoves.

There was no running water and plumbing was never added.

Most of the furnishings are original to the house since it was never occupied by any other families.

Quite a lovely home and worth the visit to learn about Douglass'.

Death Cleaning

No one has died.  But my husband had heard of the book The Gentle Art of Death Cleaning from me when I read it a year ago.  He decided it made sense to go through all his writings from the last 25 years and deep six those of no use to anyone but himself at the time he wrote.  He did keep some that he thought his grandchildren or great grandchildren may want to read some day.  As he says he would like to know more about his great grandparents but there's nothing in writing about their lives other then what you can find with genealogy research.

He printed out what he saved and I read and edited it.  Now I have it downloaded on Blurb and am using Bookwright to make it into a book.  It will be a long process.

After he completed that task he went through all the letters I wrote to him, re read them, offered them to me to re read, I declined.  They have now been trashed except for one that I did read.  

In reading it it brought back memories of college and a decision I had to make about studying abroad in Japan.  It didn't happen.  The course work didn't fit my Urban Studies major plus it was out of reach financially for my parents.  I think back now to why it was so attractive to me and I think it was because of my childhood spent in the Philippines. As I said in my letter I thought I'd have a chance to travel back to Dumaguete where we lived.

In the rest of the letter I wrote "I guess there are a lot of things in life that a lot of people would like to do but never get a chance to.  And then too I guess the happiest are those who look forward to trying to do something so that someday they might get a chance and the saddest are those who give up before they even try."

I then followed with a list of things I would like to do.

1. go to Easter Island and other Pacific islands

2. live off the land for a year or two

3. learn how to really play the piano or guitar or flute

4. sew a long frilly skirt

5. paint a beautiful mural

6. go backpacking on the Appalachian Trail

7. bake some bread from scratch

8. cut down my own Christmas tree and make everyone presents instead of buying them

9. hitchhike or bike around Europe or Eastern Europe.

In reviewing this list I can say at almost 50 years later I've done #s 6, 7, & 8.  And I have no desire to to do any of the others!  Who was I in 1970?

Here I am in early life.  I sent Dan some of these pictures in my letters.  These were taken in the Philippines.  What a long time ago that was.

And then my husband checked out the Death Cleaning book to read it.  He made the right decision on his clean out.

From the Files - 2

This is an occasional posting to savor the moments from past travels.

Walking the Cotswolds in 2014 we visited every church that was open to visitors.

Inside were others but resting in peace.

Two Very Different Books

The last two books I've read were both for book groups I'm part of.  Here at Vantage House the book for our March discussion is Alternate Side by Anna Quindlen.  The March selection for the WOW Book Club is Gateway to the Moon by Mary Morris.

Two very different books!

The first is set in present day New York City and revolves around the life of Nora, museum director, wife, mother, neighbor, runner, and dog walker.  They live on a deadend street in an old home and have a close relationship with their neighbors.  Though some neighbors are liked by Nora others are not.  Neighbor troubles bring to a head prejudices and income inequality and the fact that Nora and husband Charlie are no longer on the same trajectory in their relationship.

Quindlen's writing style does not tell a story straight from beginning to end so as the story progresses you are taken back in time, so to speak, to learn the backstories.  Once you get used to it, it makes for good reading.

Mary Morris is telling lots of stories in her novel set in New Mexico in the 1990s, and Spain and Mexico of the 15th and 16th centuries.   In present day there's primarily Miguel, age 15 who is enamored with the stars but in the earlier times there are a long list of characters forced to give up their Jewish heritage and religion by the Catholic Church.  And even once renouncing that are still brought to Inquisitions. It was a terrible time and I'm sure that Morris' research is accurate on what was done to them. 

At first you are bombarded with lots of characters and I found myself flipping back to the family trees to see who they were in the scheme of her story.  It was confusing and if I had read this book slowly it would have been doubly so for all the characters.  But overall it made for an interesting history lesson and uncovering of family traditions that date so far back that present day has lost touch with their origins.