Every child takes field trips with their school. They go to focus on an important subject, increase their awareness of the world around them and to get the day off of school. If you don't go and see these sights with your school, many times your family vacation trips will make sure you see these sights. Well, I guess many times in my travels I am playing catch up trying to see these very same sights.
Monticello is the retirement home of our third president, Thomas Jefferson. Located just outside of Charlottesville, VA, it was the primary slave labor plantation inherited by Jefferson at the age of 26. He situated the house on top of a mountain so the views are lovely. I took the shuttle up the mountain (I walked down the mountain when I left so I wasn't a total sloth) and the first thing I saw was the front of the house. What a surprise – it didn't look anything like pictures I had seen or even the back of the nickel where the image is engraved. There was no dome, just a plain old house. After taking the house tour, I ended up at the back side of the house and there was the money shot.
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| The clouds were low over the Blue Ridge mountains this day |
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| The view out Jefferson's front door |
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| If you are of a certain generation then you will know why this amused me so. |
Interesting story: Jefferson married his third cousin Martha Wayles Skelton. They were married for ten years and Jefferson called this time the happiest period of his life. They had six children, two of which lived. When Martha came to live with him after their marriage, she brought with her several slaves, one of which was Sally Hemings. Sally was actually a half-sister to Martha as Martha's father and an enslaved woman were Sally's parents. Martha died early after ten years of marriage. Thomas took fourteen year old Sally to Paris with him as a maid to his daughter. While there, he raped her (she had no choice – she was in bondage). If you were an enslaved person in bondage and you came to France, you could declare yourself free. Jefferson wanted her to come back to America but Sally insisted that she would come back only under one condition (there may have been more conditions) – any children she had would be declared free upon their 21st birthday. Jefferson agreed and as a result Sally returned to Monticello at the age of 16 and pregnant. Jefferson and Sally had six children and Jefferson was true to his word to free them. Also interesting was that when Jefferson died, he owned 607 enslaved people. In his will, he only freed five of them and Sally was not one of them.
The Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Museum in Charlottesville Virginia is the only museum outside of Australia dedicated solely to Indigenous Australian art. Side note: it wasn't until 1967 that Australia gave citizenship to Aboriginal peoples. The Aboriginal people have much the same history as the United States and their indigenous tribes.
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| This was done by putting small dots on the paper. When you looked at it, it shimmered and seemed to move. |
The following three paintings are by Mervyn Roughsey and each one tells a story.
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| Up In The Heavens by Brian Robinson He blends traditional imagry with pop culture. See the Death Star from Star Wars? |
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