Red Cloud, NE

" That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great." - Willa Cather


We finally made it to Red Cloud.  We arrived here on Sunday morning, so it was largely a ghost town.  The Willa Cather Society had a walking tour map in front of the Opera House, so we picked one up and looked around.  Nebraska seems harder hit by the drought than many of the other places we have been, and the whole place seems hot, dry and sad.  It is easy to imagine Cather's despair at having been brought here from lush Virginia.

After lunch, we decided to go on a guided tour.  I did not know if we would see much that we didn't see our self-guided tour, but wanted to hear what they said.  The Willa Cather Foundation owns many of the properties related to Cather and runs the tour.  The Cather Foundation has worked hard to identify the sources of the people in her books.  They want to portray her as a local author, even though she seldom visited after she left for college at 16.  They have done what seems like a thorough job of identifying people, and it is interesting to see sights important to them.  Our guide was also aware of certain problems; there was a person here named Jim Burden, but the character Jim Burden was based more on Cather herself than on him (although some details of his family life seem to be from the historical Jim Burden).  

The Willa Cather Society is aware of the tension between portraying Cather as a local writer who wrote about people she knew, and Cather as a writer of fiction that transcends mere recollection.  There is a short film that accompanies the tour that makes it clear that Cather's writing itself should be what we remember most.  I wish I had a transcript for the film so I could quote it directly.

This is the only area that has set out to preserve the memory of Willa Cather in earnest, and there are considerably fewer people coming here than to any of the Laura Ingalls Wilder sites.  Our tour had thirteen people, and our guide said it was the largest she has ever had.  The guide wanted us to see the places that were mentioned in the books, and she knew which books corresponded with particular rooms.  She did not reflect on the extent to which Cather was a sentimental writer, nor whether preserving these sites might affect the way the books are interpreted.  

This is the church that Annie Sedilek, the model for Antonia, had her son baptized and was later married.  They could not afford a bell or a priest, so they would blow a whistle when a circuit priest was on his way.

 Annie Sedilek

 This is the place where Annie Sedilek would have slept when she was working for the Miners, who provided the model for the Harlings in My Antonia.  The local lore says Mr. Miner really was gruff and brought an end to the fun at this house whenever he was in town, just like Mr. Harling.

 This is how the Sedilek homestead looked when it was purchased by the Willa Cather Foundation.

 This is the site of a "suicide grave" that Willa Cather found moving.  

De Smet, SD

We spent a little over a day in De Smet.  I can say without reservation that this is the best Laura Ingalls Wilder site; if you want to visit only one site, choose this one.  The guides are well informed, the buildings are carefully curated, and the town is nice and easy to navigate.  There is nothing about the TV show here at all, so if you know the story only through television, you should go to Walnut Grove.  The Ingalls family was here longer than at any other site, and their presence is clearly felt.  I will not give you a turn-by-turn review, but tell you some of the highlights.

The guided tour takes you to the first school house that Laura attended in De Smet.  It had been turned into a residence, so there was new siding and flooring.  There were also layers of wallpaper.  The Laura Ingalls Wilder Society heard that there had been a blackboard painted onto the wall.  They scraped through layers of wallpaper until they found some of the blackboard paint.  Our guide said that it would take $60,000 to restore the walls, and so right now they are considering leaving it with layers of wallpaper partially cut away. I think this is an interesting decision, since it gives a sense of the passing of time.  They also cut through the machined-wood flooring to show the original rough-cut floor.

As at the Spring Valley Methodist Church, our guide here was a school teacher.  Both of these guides gave us a large amount of information; they had carefully memorized presentations that were presented with careful, speaker-like diction.  Our Burr Oak guide spoke in a more conversational tone, and it seemed that she was just talking to us.  To me, I find the less formal style much easier to follow.  My brain tends to shut off when I hear the lulling cadence that many speakers use.  I have worked hard to avoid using my "teacher voice" for this very reason.  Please leave a comment about which style works best for you.  One of our presenters also passed around pictures, which teachers often do.  I really dislike this, since it focuses my attention on making sure the pictures are circulating well.

We also saw the Laura Ingalls Pageant.  They portrayed The Long Winter.  The highlight was that Amelia was chosen as an extra.  The play started out by saying that God does not take care of people the way he takes care of the animals because he wants us to be free and take care of ourselves.  For the most part, the play was about what you would expect.  The sets were very well built.  They used ballet dancers to portray the snow.  See the pictures.

Prophetic Authorship

I have been thinking about what distinguishes a good author from a great author.  At Burr Oak, I was given a chance to peruse Laura's handwritten draft of a book about her life there.  She wrote this before any of her published books.  Laura is a good storyteller, although she depends on non-evocative adjectives to describe how things felt ("cold," "hard," etc.)  What I think Rose contributed most to her writing is using descriptions of what people did to combat the cold, rather than mere use of adjectives, to help draw the reader in to her world.  Rose is much more of a literary stylist, and I think her intense editing helped to make these stories exciting and inspirational.

There is more to being a great author than telling good stories.  I don't know what all the aspects of being a great author are, but I find that the greatest have a prophetic element in their writing.  In this sense, "prophetic" means calling into question the assumptions of the status quo to point to a deeper, more authentic understanding.

Even though prophets are not necessarily insubordinate, they must occasionally find themselves in conflict with the defenders of traditional dogma, at least to the extent that they are understood.  Socrates described himself as a gadfly whose constant irritation kept Athens from becoming philosophically complacent.  As would be expected, they made Socrates swallow poison.  Jesus of Nazareth said, "Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplace and have the best seats in the synagogue and the places of honor at feasts."  We all know what happened to Jesus.

Of course, when the defenders see the popularity of these prophets, they try to claim their teachings as their own.  How long was it before the scribes in long robes were the people who were promoting Christianity and not persecuting it?  What is hardest to control is that often the actual words of the prophetic writers are preserved, and they can be silenced only by destroying their writings or keeping people from reading them.  In part, this is why I am so excited about the emphasis on primary documents promoted by the Great Books schools.

Therefore, the final question is, do the writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder serve a prophetic role, a palliative role, or a combination of both?  I think that Laura (I am using her first name to follow the practice of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Society) is largely a writer of fiction for children who tends to avoid difficult questions, often even trying to tell the story in such a way that it minimizes the fact that there are serious issues underlying the events she describes: the morality of occupying land acquired through force, relying on free land while criticizing government handouts, etc.  Laura often seems aware of some of these problems, but doesn't want us to focus on problematic aspects of history.  Her writings clearly are sentimental, in the sense of portraying a past that was more pure and simple than today.

All of these museums emphasize this role of Laura's writing.  Every official museum has a cut-out of a scene from one of the books with a sign that says, "Come Home to Little House."  The lessons we are supposed to draw from Laura's life are that faith and hard work are what makes a good life.  I do think it is possible to say that her writings have a certain type of prophetic significance, as her emphasis on simplicity counters the theme of self-indulgence that has become a controlling theme of our culture.  On the other hand, the way that her legacy is preserved is as someone whose message is more comforting than challenging.  Indeed, the stores set up at every site are really temples of the consumer culture.


The sites differ quite a bit on the degree to which they emphasize the libertarian sentiments of the Wilders.  The De Smet site has a room set up with furniture and office equipment once owned by Rose, and there is a clear description of her strident patriotism.  It tells the story of a time that she kicked a Latvian salesman, who was closing a sale with her roommate, out of the house for saying that he had a hard time making a living in this country.  It also said she had outspoken political views.  None of the sites say anything about Laura and Almanzo's politics, although they all sell books that describe it quite well.  

Plum Creek

The highlight of our visit to Walnut Creek was a quick trip to the actual site of the dugout house.  We got a chance to wade in Plum Creek minutes after reading Laura's description of getting attacked by leeches here. Unfortunately, no leeches for us.  Maybe next time.

The people who own this site, the Gordons, did not realize they owned a place of historical significance until they were contacted by Garth Williams, the illustrator of the Little House books.  They now maintain the place to accommodate tourists.  Even though there are trees here now, I could look over the fields and imagine that I have a better sense of Laura's life.

Walnut Grove, MN

Walnut Grove has an enormous gift shop.  It is large and has the feel of a modern store.  I paged through a couple of interesting books.  One of them is Islam and the Discovery of Freedom.  It is an excerpt of a book by Rose Wilder Lane, carefully annotated by Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad.  She argues that there were three attempts to establish freedom as the basis of government: Abraham's community, the early Islamic community under Mohammed, and the American Revolution.  Lane realized that she had made serious errors in her book, so withdrew it rather than rewrite it with corrections.

The other book is The Rediscovered Writings of Rose Wilder Lane.  Although I did not read these books, and do not plan to do it now, I do get a clear impression of a person who views the study of a history as a means of showing that freedom is always more successful than tyranny.  I think the thesis that the Little House books have a political message is clearly true.  I definitely think it is a mistake to see the books as mere propaganda.  If they were, would so many people love them so much?

The Walnut Grove museum seems largely set up for fans of the television show.  The museum consists of two large exhibit buildings, and several reconstructed historical buildings.  The first museum has a room dedicated to the books and a room dedicated to the show.  The "book room" is mostly storyboards with photographs. It was mostly stuff that we have already seen.

The television show room emphasizes articles that were written about the show, and memorabilia from TV show promotions: masks, games, a tea set, and so on.  The actors who have visited Walnut Grove are generally given better coverage than other people.  They have displays about the books the various stars wrote, with signed copies and photographs accompanying them.

The buildings are pretty large and don't have a feeling of authenticity.  For example, they have a replica dugout house, but it is clearly a small building with dirt on it.  It has more an amusement park sense to it.

The second museum building has several exhibits relating to local history, from pioneer days to the 1950's.  The kids enjoyed the fact that they could touch many of the things here, and it seemed designed to interest kids.

Vesterheim Museum and Spring Valley Church Museum

Going to historical museums gives me a chance to reflect on the degree to which the present is shaped by the past, often in ways that escape our awareness.  For pioneers, the big decisions relate to where they are going to settle and what elements of their past lives they are going to preserve.  These decisions affect the descendants of these pioneers forever.

We visited the Vesterheim Museum in Decorah, MN.  This museum is dedicated to Norwegian pioneers.  This museum showed the way things looked in the old country and the reasons for emigration from it.  They show Norway as a beautiful place, but one that is running out of land and that is trapped in a largely feudalistic economy.  Since land ownership was restricted largely to the aristocracy and there were strict rules for passing on property to descendants, Norwegians did not see any way to get ahead.  There was also persecution of Norwegian Quakers and follower of pietist preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge, and overpopulation brought about by - among other things - the introduction of calorie-rich potatoes.

The most striking thing about this museum was that it showed the way certain folkways and arts from the old country were preserved to this day.  The second floor has breathtaking displays of woodcarving and rosemaling.  I did take some pictures, but since we could not use a flash I think you should check out the museum's website.  The chip carving is particularly detailed, and the pieces have an elaborate symmetry that is stunning.  I think that only a people who lived in an exceptionally. cold climate could have the dedication to create such a detailed art form.    The third floor holds a display of modern pieces based on the traditional forms.  The art of Americans of Norwegian heritage is not something that I knew much about, but since we visited this museum we have seen tropes in various aspects of Minnesota design and architecture.  

Not only does history shape us, but we shape history.  I don't mean to say that history is a blank canvas for us to invent a past, but there are elements of the past that we preserve and some that we don't.  In the Vesterheim, it is clear that they want the story to be of escape from oppression and triumph in a new country.  While there is some mention of early hardships, the emphasis is on success in the New World.   

This museum definitely put me in touch with an aspect of American history that I was only vaguely familiar with.  In My Antonia, Lena Lingard is portrayed as a skilled dressmaker, but I did not have a sense of the long tradition of fine craftsmanship that Norwegians are known for.

We also visited the Spring Valley Church Museum in Spring Valley, MN.  This church was built, in part, by a donation from Almanzo's parents, and Almanzo and Laura attended services here for about a year.  Although this museum has a tenuous connection to Laura Ingalls Wilder, they do an exceptional job of capitalizing on that connection.   We almost did not stop here, but decided it was best to escape a storm.  It was a good thing, because the rain hit hard.

This a large church, and the admission gives you a guided tour of two floors.  The top floor is a museum with pictures from Laura's family and some historical religious implements, which don't have anything to do with the Little House books, but which are well preserved.  Even though the Little House things are mostly pictures that we have already seen, our guide had good descriptions of the other sites.  The bottom floor is dedicated to Spring Valley history.  Richard Sears, of Sears and Roebuck, was from here.  This collection was rather random, but much better organized than the museum in Pepin.  I can understand that it is a hard task to organize hundreds of items that are donated or are on loan.  

Pepin, WI and Burr Oak, IA

Today we went to Pepin and Burr Oak.  Pepin was The Little House in the Big Woods and Pepin does not figure in any of the books, but the Ingalls family lived here while Pa worked several jobs.  According to the guide, the family ended up owing money to a Mr. Bisby, and so they had to sneak out of town in the middle of the night.  Charles Ingalls ended up squaring everything with Mr. Bisbee after earning some money in Walnut Grove, but I can see why this story would be a little embarrassing to include in a book for children.

The Pepin site is a modern copy of the historical cabin surrounding by fields growing beans and corn.  There is a forested area between Pepin and the site, but the cabin is not currently in the forest.  There is a museum in the town of Pepin.  The museum is made up of various Native American, pioneer-era, and 20th-century items that were given or loaned to the museum.  Much of the stuff is not directly related to Laura.  The museum is organized mostly at random and I was interested in the juxtaposition of items from different historical periods.

Grain cradle and Little House puzzle

Little House lunchbox and pig bladder

Here are some pictures from the cabin.  

This barn is across the street from the cabin

Burr Oak


The people who manage Burr Oak have a more polished presentation.  The only original site is the hotel where Charles, Caroline, and the girls all worked.  You pay at a nearby historical jail and they walk you over and give a guided tour.  They only have three artifacts that actually belonged to Laura (a calling card, handcrafted handkerchief and some "handiwork"), but they do have some possessions that belonged to other people who lived in the hotel.  There are some life-size dolls that are nice and quirky.

The curators of the hotel put up signs depicting "Laura's virtues," which are maxims culled from her writing, particularly responses to fan mail.  These tend to emphasize Laura's promotion of perseverance and self-reliance, which is pertinent to the question I asked when I started this project.  Laura is clearly portrayed as someone who wanted people to draw specific lessons from her writing.

While we are traveling, we are listening to Little Town on the Prairie.  The book has some interesting vignettes, but it is hard for me to say that they are any better than stories about "the good old days" that elderly people always seems to know.  Somehow these stories captured imaginations around the world, especially in Japan.

My wife thinks these stories have stood out from other pioneer narratives because they show that period in history the way people want to believe it was: hard, but also full of fun.  I am not sure this is the whole reason, but it is interesting to think about.

Alexandra and Ivar from O Pioneers!

I feel sorry for barefoot Ivar, who cannot fit in and feels isolated in a country where they do not tolerate unusual people.  This is from the second section of O Pioneers!

Alexandra frowned. "Ivar, I wonder at you, that you should come bothering me with such nonsense. I am still running my own house, and other people have nothing to do with either you or me. So long as I am suited with you, there is nothing to be said."

Ivar pulled a red handkerchief out of the breast of his blouse and wiped his eyes and beard. "But I should not wish you to keep me if, as they say, it is against your interests, and if it is hard for you to get hands because I am here."

Alexandra made an impatient gesture, but the old man put out his hand and went on earnestly:-"Listen, mistress, it is right that you should take these things into account. You know that my spells come from God, and that I would not harm any living creature. You believe that every one should worship God in the way revealed to him. But that is not the way of this country. The way here is for all to do alike. I am despised because I do not wear shoes, because I do not cut my hair, and because I have visions. At home, in the old country, there were many like me, who had been touched by God, or who had seen things in the graveyard at night and were different afterward. We thought nothing of it, and let them alone. But here, if a man is different in his feet or in his head, they put him in the asylum. Look at Peter Kralik; when he was a boy, drinking out of a creek, he swallowed a snake, and always after that he could eat only such food as the creature liked, for when he ate anything else, it became enraged and gnawed him. When he felt it whipping about in him, he drank alcohol to stupefy it and get some ease for himself. He could work as good as any man, and his head was clear, but they locked him up for being different in his stomach. That is the way; they have built the asylum for people who are different, and they will not even let us live in the holes with the badgers. Only your great prosperity has protected me so far. If you had had ill-fortune, they would have taken me to Hastings long ago."

George Herbert Walker Bush quotation

"If anyone tells you America's best days are behind her, they're looking the wrong way."

We saw this at a Veteran's memorial in Winona.  I thought it was pertinent.

Poetry and the Sublime

We are currently in Winona, MN.  Although it is a little dry here in places, the river is running and I find it extremely beautiful.  I have tried to express how I feel, but it always comes out sounding trite.  I have been reflecting on why poetry and music typically expresses feelings better than prose.  I think that all the oft-cited reasons, such as the inadequacy of our vocabulary to express subtleties of emotion, are probably partially true.  I think another factor is that people cannot really listen to each other.  As soon as somebody starts talking, we start hearing what we think the person is saying rather than what is actually being said.  This is probably why it frustrates people if they can't figure out what "box" to put you into.  Are you a liberal?  A conservative?  A reactionary?  People always want to filter what is said, to reduce it to something familiar.

Poetry has the ability to throw you off guard.  I think this is why the best poetry is not easily accessible; if you have to take the time to understand it, it can get past your filter and into your heart.

I think this is why Willa Cather wanted to separate her art from her politics.  As soon as she is labeled a "reactionary" for describing a romantic image of the past, then we can shut off what she is really saying. My opinion is that Willa Cather really wanted to capture, as well as possible using the limited palette of the English language, is a sense of the sublime.  This is why her writing is so apt to use elaborate descriptions of romantic images, such as sunsets and horizons.

In addition, I am not sure that her politics are very well understood, either.  I hope to look into it when we travel to Red Cloud.  Political thought is always provisional, and can seem superficial to people in different contexts.  It seems somebody as sophisticated as Cather could not be adequately described using simplistic labels of any kind.

I also don't think her vision of the past is all that romantic, to be honest.  Her characters seem to be alienated and helpless, particularly the most sympathetic of her characters.  There are three suicides in My Antonia, one of them was beloved Mr. Shimerda.  

I found Cather's valedictory speech, delivered when she was sixteen, to be very insightful and reflective.  In this speech, she clearly has her heart in the future; she has a clear picture of how people can prepare themselves to maintain a sensitivity to the divine in a world where accepted views are being challenged by the  advances in science.  

Jonathan Swift wrote, "When a true genius appears among you, you will know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."  I think this describes what has happened to Willa Cather.  It is too bad that academic interpretation of literature is shaped so much by intellectual trends.  I think that there is so much pressure for professors to publish that they almost need to hang their reputation on movements, particularly if they lack the creativity to come up with new perspectives on their own.  The problem with applying a critical approach to interpret somebody's writings, particularly writings as deep as Cather's, is that it is intellectually limiting.  That is not to say that Freudians, for example, don't have anything to say about literature.  It is true that we should try to see the literature beyond the filters we use.  

Reflections on other sites

They are in a severe drought in the Midwest, but I have been quite surprised at how green everything is compared to Arizona.  Oklahoma seemed particularly lush, but they have had some rain recently.

In addition to the sites I have written about, we visited numerous other interesting places.  At first, I thought they were not important to my overall investigation, but now that I reflect, I am seeing a theme.  We saw the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, a giant cross with surrounding statue park depicting the Stations of the Cross in Groom, TX, and the Precious Moments chapel near Carthage, MO.

What makes something sacred to us?

I started this trip hoping to learn how we preserve the of Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder.  The common theme, as I thought, was a view of the pioneer as emblematic of the good life of self-reliance and perseverance.  The other theme that arises is the way in which people turn people into something more than people.  We live in a literary culture, and the religions that shape Western Civilization are scriptural religions.  In the end, what we will preserve of these people is their writings.  Who knows what Homer's house looked like?  In the meantime, however, the people themselves become transcendent personages based largely on the fact that the words they wrote resonate with people.

In the Midwest, preservation of history is carried out with a great deal of fervor.  It sometimes seems that people have their heads in the past.  The towns here look old, and you get a feeling that they see their greatness as based on what happened in the past.  While it seems very important for people to interpret the past to make it consonant with their current political realities (as in Confederate-friendly Carthage emphasizing Union supporter Molly Hood and her "petticoat flag"), but there really is not the sense of future that we have in Arizona. 

Cadillac Ranch

 Precious Moments Chapel

Springfield, Illinois

Gerardus van der Leeuw thought that the feeling of awe that people feel in the presence of great personages is the basis of all religion.  Visiting Springfield, I think that van der Leeuw may have been onto something.  Abraham Lincoln is treated with a respect here that it is no exaggeration to call "worship."  I myself felt a mystic rush as we approached his home. 

Lincoln moved to Springfield at the age of 28, just about halfway through his life.  He was a successful circuit lawyer, and the house is very nice.  Many of the possessions are original to the house.  I don't know why it makes a difference, but to look at something that Lincoln actually owned is different than looking at a replica. 

In Japan, the shrine and all the buildings at Ise are taken down and replaced stick by stick every twenty years.  Is this the same shrine of the ancestors?

We visited Lincoln's tomb, which I found to be surprisingly elaborate.  Would people have built such a structure for a mere human?  Although some people seemed to be having fun outside the tomb itself, the feeling inside was one of deep reverence.

I have to wonder how a person becomes a god.  In Springfield, the most common interpretation of the significance of Lincoln is that anybody can become president.  He had very little formal education, but taught himself law, arithmetic and science.  He spent his childhood in a log cabin, but by the time he was in his twenties he was able to build this mansion in Springfield.  The story of Lincoln, who seems to have been a deeply troubled and conflicted individual when he was human, becomes a myth.
 

     

Hannibal Pictures

It is ironic to find this quotation in a museum in a town

dedicated to preserving the memory of Mark Twain

They say no lighthouse in the US is farther away

from any ocean

Hannibal, MO

Hannibal is where Samuel Clemens lived from ages 7 - 17.  This site is set up as a walking tour, which includes his family's house, the office where his father was Justice of the Peace, the house where the girl he modeled Becky Thatcher after lived, the "Huckleberry Finn House" where Tom Blankenship lived, and a large museum.  The boyhood home was the real highlight here.  The rooms are glassed off, and there are white statues in every one of them.  Each room has a quotation from Mark Twain.  There is an "interpretive center" that has a detailed timeline.  This museum has the feel of a museum, but it also was moving.  I think the emphasis on Twain's writings is what makes this museum work.  Twain's writings make his legacy.

They say that the raconteurs of one age become the emblems of conservatives in the next.  The Twain displayed in Hannibal does have some rough edges, but there is an attempt to emphasize the whimsical side of his personality and cover up the subversive edge.  There is very little mention of Twain's views on religion, for example.  The upside is that Twain's writings are so well known that it is not possible to sanitize him completely.  

The absolute highlight of this trip was a performance of Twain's A True Story Told Word for Word as I Heard It by Gladys Coggswell.  This is the story of a woman whose family was broken up and sold.  Here is a link to a Youtube video of Ms. Coggswell singing "The Three-Eyed Cat."  Splendid.

Museum of Westward Expansion

This is the museum at the base of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.  It has some interesting displays, including a full-size teepee and some full-size taxidermy animals, including a horse and a bear.  It had quite a few authentic artifacts, dealing mostly with the technology of westward expansion (surveyors tools, weapons, canteens, wagons, etc.).  It also has some good information about American Indian tribes.  It is mostly sympathetic to the Indians.  I think the Indian displays could be described as overly sentimental.  There is much more talk about the damage caused by westward expansion than a real understanding of who they were and how their cultures varied.

My main criticism of this museum is that there is really no sense of context at all. It is a dark museum with rich blue paint and high ceilings. It has a feeling reminiscent of an airport museum.  Most of the displays were not labeled, my wife said it was because it was designed for somebody to show you around.  There were some animated figures, which were interesting, but a little creepy.  There was a time when I was very young when people decided that having animated figures representing various historical figures was a great way to preserve history.  It seems that this museum itself is a type of artifact.  It shows how Americans in our recent past thought that history should be presented.

We also saw the old St. Louis courthouse.  This is an overwhelmingly beautiful building.  This is the building where the first two Dred Scott hearings were held.  I liked that they have much of it set up to look like it did when it was in use.  There were some areas dedicated to museum-type displays, but these were mostly in side rooms and did not distract from the experience.

St. Louis has a lot of historical sites, and the feeling I get from every place we have been in the Mid-West is that the past is very important here.  There are so many museums that we are worried every ten miles or so that we are missing something that we are going to regret.  It is also remarkable the degree to which preservation of the past is an industry here.

We are currently in Hannibal, MO.  We will look at some sites relating to Mark Twain tomorrow.  We drove around here, and images of Twain are everywhere.  It is interesting to speculate what Twain would think if he could walk these streets today.  It seems that there are people living lives not too different from young Mark Twain, but they probably are not doing it here.

Nothing brings history to life like a plastic robot.

This guy made peace medallions.