We left Ohio and headed south on I-75 to Great Smoky Mountain National Park. On the way it actually began to rain hard (the first real rain since we left Oregon). We spent a miserable time on the interstate caught in a huge traffic jam due to an accident and some road repair. We finally reached Cosby Campground on the northern edge of the park, which is less popular than the route through the center. We put up Snoopy between showers and the next morning meandered through the woods. There are no real views in the Smokies, just deep lush forest. It has some of the most diverse forests in the world.
We got to Charlotte NC, left Snoopy at Emily and Glen Stephens' (our niece and husband) house and checked into the hotel before checking out the first of two courses. I walked around with Bob. It was hot and steamy. This is a basket at Sugow course, in the middle of a flame tree. In the afternoon on Saturday I went to the Museum of the New South in downtown Charlotte. It tells the fascinating story of Charlotte from the end of the Civil War. Cotton becomes king and both poor white and freed blacks become sharecroppers. By the 1930's fully 80% of all blacks and 50% of all whites were sharecroppers. Eventually the textile industry developed with the arrival of the railroads and NC boasted the highest rate of women working outside the home of any state in the union. Charlotte-Mecklenberg was the site of the first court-ordered bussing to integrate the schools, which was done with a minimum of violence and was one of the cases that went to the Supreme Court. While the court-ordered bussing was in effect no school had greater than 60% of one race; since the end of the court order the schools have all become 80%+ one race. The museum had lots of interactive exhibits, including some wonderful music from the 1930's (Carter Family, Monroe brothers) which was recorded at a local radio station which had the largest listening area in the country.
On Sunday morning early I headed north to Charlottesville, VA to visit some old friends from Portland. Madelyn is in the general counsel's office and Tony works at the med school. I explored the campus Sunday afternoon. This photo is of the basement of Thomas Jefferson's rotunda. Each floor has three oval rooms set into the circular shape of the rotunda which leave an hourglass-shaped central hallway. The rotunda and the Academic Commons are undergoing major renovation.
Edgar Allan Poe was a student at UVA for a brief period in one of the rooms along the Lawn. It is unoccupied except for this raven sculpture in front of the garden window. I got filled in on all the politics surrounding the firing and rehiring of President Priscilla Sullivan. Like so many public universities, the state provides less than 10% of its funding but exerts massive control of its operations. The rector of the Board of Visitors was dissatisfied with the speed of change of the president during her two-year tenure and engineered the firing using an executive committee. There was massive faculty and student uproar and she was reinstated after 18 days and now both the rector and president (both women) have issued a joint statement of how they are going to work together. We'll see.
While Madelyn and Tony worked on Monday I went on the "Presidential Trail." I investigated Michie Tavern, near to Jefferson's Monticello, still operating as a restaurant.
I then headed to James Monroe's home, Ash Lawn-Highland, which abuts Monticello. It is now owned by the College of William and Mary and I had a delightful tour of the facilities by what I suspect was a student. Monroe (who was a US Senator, Minister to France, England and Spain, Governor of Virginia 4 times, Secretary of State and of War and president) lived here. He wanted to retire here, but did not. The house is actually quite small. It was a plantation and Monroe had slaves, but it never made much money because he was gone so often. This photo shows the overseer's office and house on the left and a building with a guest room and domestic slave quarters. After lunch with Madelyn I headed to Montpelier, James Madison's home. His family had lived there for several generations before he was born. His grandfather was murdered by slaves. His grandparents built the first brick house and his parents eventually created an identical duplex in which they lived. Madison went to local boarding schools, was sent to Princeton, and came back to be tutored by a local clergy man. He served in the Continental Congress and then went back to Montpelier to study and draft what eventually became the US Constitution. He read 400 books in 7 languages to look at philosophers, politicians and others' ideas of government. He had earlier married Dolly Madison, a widowed Quaker from Philadelphia, who was shunned/banished by the Quakers after her marriage to a non-Quaker (I didn't know that Quakers did that). They held slaves and never freed a single one. The photo of the grey structures shows the location of the kitchen, smokehouses and some domestic slave houses. After drafting the basis of the Constitution and going to the Constitutional Convention, he also wrote the Federalist Papers to encourage its ratification and the Bill of Rights (which started out as 17 amendments, was reduced to 12 by the Congress, but only 10 were adopted). He, like Monroe, was Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson prior to becoming President. During his tenure he fought the War of 1812 without violating provisions of the Constitution (there was an interesting exhibit on the Constitution talking about things various presidents have done that violated the Constitution, running from Lincoln's sedition acts to George W. Bush and the Patriot Act). Dolly was beloved and after her death was given an honorary seat in the House of Representatives (the only person so honored). The photo on the
left is of the formal gardens. The photo below is of Montpelier (the original portion of the house was only the tall right hand portion without the portico). Madison made it into a duplex by adding the tall left portion and eventually he and Dolly hand drew the design to add the two lower wings on each side and Jefferson loaned them his designer and builder to build the house. Dolly Madison fell on hard times and sold the house soon after James' death. Since they did not keep detailed records like Jefferson, there is only a little original furniture in the house. It was ultimately purchased by the DuPont family when it decided to return to the US from England and they lived there until the 1980's with the last daughter developing a huge equestrian facility including a round race track, a permanent steeplechase course, a facility for retired thoroughbreds, etc. The house was renovated between 2000 and 2005. Now they are trying to find some of the original furnishings.
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