Leaving Charlottesville...

It is a Sunday morning, the start to a new week.  I am seated in a Panera Bread located on the outskirts of Charlottesville Virginia, pondering where I have been and where I have yet to travel.  Two days ago when venturing out into the unknown of the Montpelier area (or so I assumed), the length of the road - highway, actually - the traffic involved, and the rolling nature of the road's topography - sorry, "highway" - added to what I presumed as 'distance'.  My final destination that day, the Ebenezer Bed & Breakfast, was located elsewhere, Madison Virgnia, to be precise; but the Panera Bread I have frequented, the same in which I now reside, though from a distance of what I knew as Charlottesville, it still retained the location.

What does any of this matter?  None.  I merely consider the blurring of lines between one town and the next as a fascinating matter.  In Kansas, with the wide open spaces stretching out into all directions, the definition between communities is as pronounced as a simple dark line of graphite drawn on any tree pulp-of-a-sheet of paper.  Venture outside of Kansas - or, perhaps, even the MidWest itself - and those definitions become less  pronounced - a matter of no real importance; and yet, it fascinates me nonetheless.

The topography of a region, coupled with the concentration of the people, will create a differing mindset to adapt to whatever challenges might arise.  This is a subtle reality lost on the minds of those sitting in positions of authority.  The Founding Fathers seemingly grasped this truth, establishing us not under a national government, where all affairs of state would be governed from one central governing authority; but rather, they created a federal system of each individual state, county, and town governing itself.

Not entirely sure how I drifted off into that political tangent.  Ideological rants interest me not, so hopefully I steered clear from any of that pap.

Now, as to my time spent of the past four days: I visited Monticello, for the second time, three days ago.  This was followed by a visit to Ash Lawn-Highland, the home to James Monroe; which was added to yesterday by my visit to Montpelier, the home of James Madison.  Tomorrow I will complete my presidential travels here in Virginia with a return to Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, as it rests a merely one hundred miles from where I sit.

When in the area, how can one resist?

 In fact, I may begin writing those within the halls of Congress and suggest a thought to strike me after I saw Montpelier.  Members of Congress should make such a pilgrimage.  Every  member  of Congress should visit all four of these homes, learn of these men, and be inspired to emulate them.  None were perfect; not a single one of them were "gods" to worship and adore as always being in the right with what is good and true.  On the contrary,  each carried their own faults.   All fell into debt.  All owned slaves and struggled deeply with the conundrum of keeping people in bondage while demanding freedom for themselves.


Perhaps it was this obvious contradiction that caused them to more thoroughly muse over the truths of freedom.  When observing others in bondage, while grasping for freedom for yourselves, maybe such an environment aided them in grasping these issues with more clarity than we apparently hold today.  Whatever it was, all 535 members of that body in D.C. should make the pilgrimage, they should be willing to imbibe what these four men of America's past understood, and perhaps this country will continue as the home of the free...