From an NPS news release and the Casa Grande Ruins website…

In honor of the Arizona Archaeology and Heritage Awareness Month in March, Casa Grande Ruins National Monument will host special tours of the park’s backcountry area, normally closed to the public.  Highlights include the Prehistoric Ballcourt, Compound B, and an ancient roasting pit or “horno”. 

The tours will be offered on Saturday and Sunday mornings from March 1st through March 30th.  Each tour will begin at 9:00 AM and last approximately one hour.  Participants should plan to arrive at the park visitor center by 8:45 AM and will be charged the normal entrance fees.  The tour will cover approximately 1.5 miles over uneven ground, (sorry, this area is not wheelchair accessible), and no one can leave the tour once beyond the picnic area.  Sturdy shoes and water are recommended, with clothing appropriate to current weather conditions

Each tour is limited to ten persons, so call (520) 723-3172 to make your reservations.
 

From an NPS news release and the NPS website:

Chamizal National Memorial will host the 33rd annual Siglo de Oro Drama Festival (in partnership with Mexico and the City of El Paso) from March 5 to 8.  For more information, please contact Michael Groomer at (915) 532-7273, ext. 124.

Siglo de Oro Spanish Drama Festival (Schedule)

Since its modest beginning at the Chamizal National Memorial in the spring of 1976, the Siglo de Oro Spanish Drama Festival has attained an international reputation for presenting quality presentations from Spain’s Golden Age, in both English and Spanish, by theatrical groups from all over the world.

The Festival celebrates Spain’s “Golden Age” in which luminaries such as Lope de Vega, Miguel de Cervantes and Calderón de la Barca left a heritage of classical drama that has enriched the world with its beauty and passion. Over the years, symposia in both El Paso and Ciudad Juárez have provided a rich experience to both scholars and audience members with a vivid comparison and discussion of the original literary form inspired by the modern theatre productions staged at the Festival.

The Chamizal’s Student Outreach Program gives hundreds of students every year the opportunity to examine the contemporary world through the relevant eyes of the past and to understand that although material culture may change, people and emotions have remained the same through the centuries. The presentations instill in the students a sincere love of literature and a keen appreciation of their language and traditions.

The Siglo de Oro Drama Festival remains an important cultural manifestation that is directly linked to communication and education, and is an endeavor that contributes genuinely and effectively to our society on both sides of the border. Over the past thirty-one years the Festival has hosted more than 250 productions from fifteen countries, involving more than 150 directors and 3,000 cast members, playing before a combined audience of 125,000.

Additional resources for kids:

Chamizal Nat’l Memorial sponsors many theater programs specifically for K-12 audiences throughout the year.

18th Century Clothing Workshop — From an NPS press release…

In celebration of Women’s History Month, Boston National Historical Park will hold an eighteenth-century clothing workshop with expert seamstress and reenactor Darlene Wigton on Sunday, March 2 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Battle of Bunker Hill Museum in Charlestown.  Learn about and watch demonstrations of the making of clothing worn by women at the time of the American Revolution. 

The free event is co-sponsored by Boston National Historical Park, the Charlestown Militia Company, and House of Garak.  For more information, please call Sean Hennessey at (617) 242-5616.

Date:  Sunday, March 2, 2008
Time:  2:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Location:  Battle of Bunker Hill Museum, 43 Monument Square, Charlestown

From the NPS website…

The Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail was established by Congress in 1996, to commemorate the events, people, and route of the 1965 Voting Rights March in Alabama. The 54-mile trail follows the historic voting rights march by beginning at the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, and crossing the Edmond Pettus Bridge. On March 7, 1965, as non-violent marchers crossed the bridge, they were tear-gassed, beaten, and their processional stopped by law enforcement officers. This display of violence, heaped upon non-violent protesters was captured by the news media and broadcasted worldwide. This event came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” Outraged protesters from across the country joined the marchers for a subsequent five-day march that began in Selma on March 21, 1965, this time with state and federal law enforcement protection.

The marchers traveled along U.S. Highway 80 in Dallas County, continued through Lowndes County and Montgomery County, and ended the five day trek at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery. The Southern Christian leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organized the logistics for the march—providing food, water, sanitation, and other services for the marchers, who camped out along the way. Twenty-five thousand marchers concluded the historic march in Montgomery on March 25th with many notable speakers who addressed the crowd at a concluding rally near the capitol building. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered one of his most notable speeches at the rally. As a result of this historic event, the Voting Rights Act was passed on May 26, 1965.

 

A multimedia overview of these events is available on the NPS website for Selma to Montgomery Nat’l Historic Trail at http://www.nps.gov/archive/semo/freedom/.  In it you’ll also find an Edukit with a number of lesson plans on Change, Civil Disobedience, Courage, Perserverance, Nonviolence, Marching for Freedom, and Justice.

 

Parke Diem!
— Jon

Just imagine you’re strolling along in southwestern North Dakota near Theodore Roosevelt National Park and instead of a bison or a rattlesnake, you stumble into a crocodile!  Far-fetched fantasy, you might say?  But it’s very possible that in this arid climate with little vegetation other than grasses and shrubs, you could in fact find a crocodile.  A 10-foot long Champsosaur, to be specific.

Yes, 60 million years ago, crocodiles, turtles, and fish navigated the swampy waters of this part of the world, and today you’ll find them strictly as part of the fossil record.  My son and I have been planning a fossil dig in this part of North Dakota with the Marmarth Research Foundation, founded by Tyler Lyson (pronounced Lee-son) not all that long ago.  You see, Tyler is still in school, working on his PhD at the moment, and has been finding fossils on his family’s land since he was knee-high to a crocodile’s belly button. 

By the time Tyler graduated from high school, he had already discovered some of the most important dinosaur finds known to the field of paleontology, and his research continues today through the Foundation.  The best part about MRF is that it welcomes inexperienced volunteers to work at their dig sites, and my son and I will be there during the first week of August (Week 7).

Checking in with the MRF website today, I just discovered that the focus of Week 7 will be at a site near Theodore Roosevelt National Park, one of my favorite National Parks.  Champsosaurs have been found within the park boundaries in the past, and we’ll be looking for more of them, other crocodile species, turtles, and fish in the nearby Little Missouri National Grasslands.  We’ll also be staying in cabins very close to Medora, which is the gateway town for TR Nat’l Park, so I’m very excited! 

All of these creatures survived the great dino die-off around 65 million years ago, which many scientists believe was cause by a meteor impact.  Other mammals, baldcypress, magnolia, and ginkgo trees co-existed with these survivors of the dinosaur age and pretty much still exist today, although not in North Dakota, that’s for sure…

Parke Diem!
— Jon

Junior Ranger Essay Contest Announced

Winner to Receive Family Vacation and Other Prizes

(Washington, DC) – The winner of this year’s 2008 Junior Ranger essay contest will receive an all expense paid family vacation (for four) to Everglades National Park, one of the country’s most remarkable national parks, and a starring role in an electronic field trip about invasive species in national parks. The prize includes round trip air transportation, car rental, hotel accommodations, meal expenses, a $1,000 Macy’s shopping spree, and an America the Beautiful National Parks and Federal Recreation Lands Pass.

The essay contest is open to children between 9 and 12 years old. Each person must express his or her thoughts on “What can you do now to turn over a new leaf for the environment and help preserve our national parks?”

National Park Service Director Mary A. Bomar, First Lady Laura Bush, and National Park Foundation President and CEO Vin Cipolla announced the details of this year’s contest during a recent visit to Everglades National Park in Florida. A group of local 5th graders joined them to help plant native trees in a park restoration project prior to the announcement.

“Children throughout the country, like those here today, are more interested and involved in environmental issues than ever before,” said Bomar. “They can make a difference, both now and in the future, on the impact of humans on the land. I can’t wait to hear all of the wonderful ideas that will come from this essay contest.”

Essays must be 500 words or less and received on-line or by mail by March 14, 2008. Each entry will be judged on originality, clarity, and understanding of the issue. Additional contest information is available.

Well, I went and bought plane tickets to Denver for my soon-to-be-seven-year-old daughter and me for our 2008 rendition of the Daddy-Daughter trip.  This is unschooling at its finest.  Both last year and this year, I let my daughter decide where our trip would take us, with the caveat that I could always veto anything unreasonable (or particularly challenging to turn into an edu-vacational trip).  This year’s adventure takes us to Nebraska where we’ll visit Agate Fossil Beds and Scotts Bluff National Monuments, as well as Fort Laramie NHS nearby in Wyoming and Rocky Mountain NP near our port of arrival in Colorado.

A few weeks ago I sent off e-mails to the parks requesting brochures, maps, Junior Ranger materials, and anything else they thought might prove useful in planning our trip.  Two of the parks didn’t even have e-mail addresses advertised on their websites, which I found a tad annoying — perhaps some backhanded way to avoid being contacted as often.  So I broke down and typed up a letter, stuffed it in an envelope, stamped and mailed it off to the wild west.  No pony express required this time. 

I’ve received replies from three of the four parks already, and these materials will help plan an agenda of our activities for the week.  I particularly like getting the Jr. Ranger stuff ahead of time, although some parks think they’re doing you a favor by not sending them because the booklet can’t be completed without being there.  Well, duh.  But there are usually some activities like word searches, crossword puzzles, or matching exercises that my daughter can do in her spare time now. I’ve found that having the kids review the Junior Ranger materials before we get there helps them complete it more efficiently when we finally do arrive, and I think it also gets them more excited about the destination as well.  There’s nothing I despise more than spending ALL our time at the park doing the Junior Ranger booklet, then having to leave. I like to build in plenty of unscheduled, unplanned time when I can.  Wait, if I plan it into the schedule, it’s not unplanned time is it?  Sure, it’s just scheduled time with nothing particular to do.  The weather, new information, or some unexpected turn of events will help decide how we spend that time.

Some time estimating between locations will help figure out how many days we’ll spend at each place.  Except for Rocky Mountain, the other offer no camping facilities, so we’ll have to look for nearby state and other federal lands that do.  Fort Robinson State Park in the northwestern corner of Nebraska looks particularly attractive, as does Nebraska National Forest.  There are plenty of non-National Park destinations as well, including Oglala National Grassland, Toadstool Geologic Park, and Hudson-Meng Bison Kill in Nebraska. I wonder if my daughter will still want to be an archaeologist after visiting the bison kill site.  Only one way to find out!

So after that list of more than seven possibilities for only seven days, now it’s time to figure out a rough itinerary.  I’ll plot them all out on a map or on my GPS unit and get a sense of what roads go from location to location, how long for travel between, where our evening campouts could possibly happen, and after that we’ll have enough of an outline to get by even if we don’t plan another thing.  Add in a motel night or two for a real shower and bed every once in a while and we’ll be all set.

I hope someone out there finds these details of our trip planning useful.  I do this twice a year now, once with each kid, so I feel I have a lot of sage advice to contribute to someone who may wish to attempt this sort of trip for the first time.  If you have specific questions about anything I mention along the way or about something I have not, please don’t hesitate to ask here on HSR. Will write more as time and schedule permit (and as soon as I shake this nasty illness that’s zapped me this past week).

Parke Diem!
— Jon

A couple of weeks ago, the tub in our bathroom seemed to have sprouted a leak where the drainpipe meets the tub.  We had been thinking of re-doing the bathroom at some point anyway, so this was the excuse we finally needed to get a new tub and take down the awful-brown-plastic-molded-piece-of-junk-sorry-excuse-for-a-shower-wall we inherited when we bought the house.  After two weeks of taking bird baths at the sink, the first shower in our new tub this evening was very satisfying.

Now, I have gone for a week or so with no shower back in my Army days, and a few days on recent camping trips, but to feel those itchy crawly tingly prickly tickly sensations all over your body for two weeks straight isn’t really enjoyable.  And it’s not like I’m getting some benefit out of being dirty like a nice canyon view or some time away from the stress of the daily grind.  But finally the wait is over, and I’m clean — really clean, once again.

So (finally getting to the bison part, hang in there) as I was letting out the family dog this evening (Phoenix the golden retriever), I watched him as he did his usual thing: 1) immediately find a toy he wants to fetch and stare back at me, 2) sniff around the yard for several minutes for just the right spot to go, and 3) refuse to come back in because he wants to play frisbee or wait for me to rattle the treat bucket.  So while Phoenix is getting impatient waiting for me to realize it’s playtime (it wasn’t), he reverts to optional step 2b, which involves squirming around on the ground rubbing every square inch of his body to scratch various itches and shed unneeded hair (don’t worry there’ll be more hair tomorrow). He particularly enjoys it when there’s a light dusting of snow on the ground.  If you’ve ever watched an episode of Clifford the Big Red Dog with the little ones, it’s basically the same thing Clifford does sometimes — with feet straight up in the air and wiggling like a giant worm. 

Soon after arriving in Yellowstone National Park last August, my son and I were treated with a similar display from a HUGE bison near Lake Yellowstone rolling around in a sand pit.  It might seem strange, but seeing a 1,500 pound animal squirming around like that was one of memories I’ll keep with me for a long time.  At first it was “Hey look at the size of THAT bison!” and it quickly turned into “Wow, now there’s the most awkward bath I’ve ever seen!”.  Bison use their “wallows” to cool themselves off from the baking sun, keep insects at bay, and rub against trees and rocks to help shed their winter coat in the springtime. You know, that sounds a lot like a golden retriever to me.

Now, looking back, I feel a little closer to our friend the bison.  There were times at work these past two weeks where I just wanted to back up against the wall and rub, rub, rub those itchies away.  And all this time I could have just headed out to the back yard with the dog and taken care of all my personal grooming needs at a moment’s notice.  What was I thinking?

Parke Diem!
— Jon

I’m almost afraid to admit it (not really but it feels like that needed to be said, so keep reading to find out why) but since I’ve been home with the flu most of the week and the latest Netflix DVD came in the mail, I watched the first three episodes of season three with my daughter yesterday.  Season three of what?  Oh, uh, sorry didn’t I mention that already?  Gosh I don’t know how that could have slipped on by with me saying that yeah we were watching… the Brady Bunch.

We watch a lot of the old classics like The Addams Family, The Monkees, The Andy Griffith Show, Gilligan’s Island, The Flintstones, and many others.  Most of them reflect decent family values, and they’re also priceless cultural time capsules, so my son and daughter can look back and laugh at the time when men actually had the nerve to say things like “That’s just like a woman.”  Priceless teaching opportunities, if you ask me.  Yep, even the Brady Bunch had its misogynistic moments — that previous quote was from Greg Brady himself.

So with that wonderful thought in mind, I’m watching the trio of Grand Canyon episodes with my daughter where the whole family packs it up and hits the dusty trail for Grand Canyon National Park. Having worked there in 1985, I immediately had my radar up looking for things that didn’t pass the smell test.

One of the first things I noticed was the family car and popup trailer, driving along the road to Grand Canyon, was shown driving along the rim road (US89) long before they ever reached the Canyon.  The telltale evenly spaced boulders to prevent people from pulling off the road in unsafe or overused locations was the first clue.  The second clue was there there was nothing above the pinyon pines along the roadway visible on the horizon.  Nothing but sky above (and surely canyon below).  The kids actually tolerate my dissection of tv shows and movies like this.  Freeze frame on DVDs makes it so easy, too!  The first episode got the Bradys no further than some fictional ghost town with Jim Backus (see kids, that’s Thurston Howell the Third from Gilligan’s Island, but with a beard!) as the local prospector with more than a screw loose.

The second episode gets the Bradys to the park (finally), complete with a roadside potty stop for Bobby who dashes off into the trees and hopefully had nothing more than number one on his mind.  The quick stop at the entrance gate brought back fond memories as they didn’t pay a cent at the gate (you’re old if you can remember that!) and wow, check out the early 70s mini the gate gal — uh, I mean Park Ranger was wearing.  I could see her dancing on Laugh-In with Arte Johnson popping out of the bushes with his Nazi helmet and his trademark “Verrrrry, intereshting.” (if you don’t know what that means, you’re not that old after all).  Ah but I digress — and way off course!

Anyway, there are plenty of things in the show that just aren’t accurate.  They took the mule train down and got dropped off, pretty close to what I suppose was to be the Havasupai tribe’s runaway boy Jimmy, but when they finally meet the entire clan (within walking distance of their impromptu camp) they looked more like other tribes from around the country… the full headdress of feathers and other glaring discrepancies.  Just your standard tv “injun” for the most part. But that was acceptable back then — another great teaching moment for the kids.

Yeah, I got a good laugh out of it all, and my daughter once again became enthralled with the story of the Brady family adventure, but even after all my analysis and frame-by-frame replays looking for errant boom mikes and other continuity issues, there’s one thing about the show they nailed DEAD ON ACCURATELY.  When the family stops at a viewpoint to get their first glimpse at the Canyon, you get to see 9 jaws hitting the top railing as they stare out in wonder and amazement.  I was on a Trailways Bus when my jaw hit the ground floor that first time.  It’s one of those places that no matter how many times you go or how long you stay, you don’t grow tired of looking out into that peaceful space.  It’s something we’ll all need at least once in our lives, so if your family hasn’t seen it yet, get ta plannin’, pardner!

Parke Diem!
— Jon

Growing up on the Eastern seaboard, I got a healthy dose of George Washington knowledge back in public school in the 60s and 70s, well before homeschooling was considered an option for perfectly sane people. But sometime during my adult years, perhaps when I was researching George Washington’s Birthplace National Monument in Virginia for a field trip a few years back, I finally learned that George Washington was actually NOT born on February 22nd.  Say what?!  Right away I’m thinking it’s another instance of government meddling for convenience sake — they moved it so there’d be evenly spaced holidays or something like that.

Well, as it turns out, George Washington’s birthday was really on February 11th, 1731.  This was back in the day when the Julian calendar was in effect and March 25th marked the beginning of the new year.  That’s right, so on the evening of March 24th, everyone got out their whirlygigs and tambourines and risked their lives setting off homemade explosives for the grand new years’ celebration. 

Sorry Julius Caesar — at least you still have that month named after you, which is more than George can say.

It was only with the advent (yeah, pun intended) of the Gregorian calendar that people born before 1752 were asked to add 11 days to their date of birth and the New Year’s Day was moved to January 1st.  So in one fell swoop, George had to wait an additional 11 days before he reached the exciting age of 21, and even more confusing, his year of birth switched from 1731 to 1732.  How bizarre is that? George, in a rare display of stubbornness (hehe), continued to celebrate his birthday on the 11th for the rest of his life.

The calendar switcheroo happened in September, 1752.  To account for the adjustment, September 3rd through September 13th simply didn’t happen.  The new year of 1753 began on January 1st for the first time in England and the Colonies.  Confused?  You oughta be.  Hopefully our dear astronomers won’t find another reason to change everything around again during our lifetime.  On second thought, I could really use an 8-day week and permanent four-day weekends… Who do I call?

Parke Diem!
— Jon

Resources:

• George Washington Birthplace National Monument, Virginia
• GEWA “For Teachers” page
• GEWA “For Kids” page
• GEWA Biographies and Research Links (for the older kids)