"The Greatest Good"

In a little under three weeks, I will be going to Vail to conduct a series of oral histories of former Forest Service employees. It is truly a unique opportunity to hear some amazing stories from some of the people who ran a significant branch of the government.

To prepare for our interviews, my class was given copies of "The Greatest Good: A Forest Service Centennial Film," which chronicles the history of the Forest Service and a few of the controversies it's been embroiled in throughout its history. The film discusses the struggle of the Forest Service in balancing the demands of conservation and logging.

Overall, a good documentary that gives an insightful look at the history of the organization and its internal struggles to provide the greatest good to the greatest number of people. If you enjoy Ken Burn's style documentaries then you should add this to your list.

Semester long, Read Along...

For those of you who might be interested in joining me in reading some of the books I've been assigned this semester. Feel free to post a comment with your opinion on a book or what you might be interested in reading. Also, should time permit with all my assignments, I want to try and post some reviews of the books. I've arranged the books in the groups that I will be reading each week.


Here they are:

Week One:
- The Comanche Empire by Pekka Hamalian
- Domesticating History: The Political Origins of America's House Museums by Patricia West
- Telling the Truth About History by Joyce Appleby, et. al.


Week Two:
- Peace Came in the Form of Women: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands by Julianna Barr
- The Gender of History by Bonnie G. Smith



Week Three:
- Second Thoughts on Colonial Historians and Native Americans by James Merrell
- Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition by James T. Kloppenberg
- Museums and the Future of Collecting by Simon Knell



Week Four:
- Silencing The Past: Power and the Production of History by Michel-Rolph Trouilliot
- Mysteries of Sex: Tracing Men and Women through American History by Mary Ryan
- Exhibitions in Museums by Michael Belcher



Week Five:
- The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
- Contesting Knowledge: Museums and Indigenous Perspectives by Susan Sleeper-Smith

I think those will keep you busy for awhile, and to think that's only half the list! I still need to pick out another book to read for my American History reading seminar in week five, but it was long and a lot of the titles looked interesting.

Hope you all will join me and enjoy :)

The Couch Fiasco

So when we relocated to Raleigh we made the choice to load up the cars with as much as possible and rebuild our home when we got out here. I have been scouring craigslist for most of August trying to find the perfect couch to go into our living room.

About a week and a half ago, we went and looked at a couch at one house. After 30 minutes or so of trying to get sofa number one out of these people's house we gave up and went home empty handed. Nearly a month later, I found another couch worthy of purchase.... seriously there's a lot of ugly couches on the Craigslist out here.

Anyways, so I'm emailing the Craigslister back and forth for a week while in my orientations for graduate school. And said CL'er insisted that the couch had to be gone that week! So between my all day orientations M-F from 8am-5pm and Jon's schedule which is mostly night shifts.... the scheduling was going to be tight.  So this girl and I agree that we would pick up the couch Thur evening after Jon got home from work. We find the house, see the couch, and instantly realize that bad boy isn't going to fit in or on our car. So we talk things over with the girl and she agrees to drop the couch off at our house in the morning. We pay her in good faith and go home.

When we get home though, Jon starts measuring to see if the couch is going to fit through the door frame and through the hallway of our apartment. He makes a judgement call that the couch isn't going to fit. Problem, right? So I text back our CL friend and see if it would be possible to get our money back, i'm so sorry, this is really embarrassing, yada yada yada. No response..... We wait until the next morning and I try calling our CL friend. No response....

Then about five minutes later, I get a text from the girl saying she doens't have the money and she's already spent it and that we can try and resell the couch if we want to or she can sell it and give us our money back after it sells. And I was like, no it's fine just bring the couch over and we'll figure it out. Well then, she starts talking about bringing the couch to us next week which is when Jon got on the phone with the local PD. To make a long story short, the cops called our CL friend and told them to bring our couch as agreed upon or we could take them to civil court. Needless to say, in a short while the couch was laying outside of our apartment. After a lot of lifting, panting, flipping and contorting we got the couch into our living room without any major causalities. And here world, behold the couch that caused our First Fort Collins Fiasco:

Through Hike on the AT

I know this is a little late but I still wanted to write up a little bit about when I had the opportunity to hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail (AT) while on vacation in Massachusetts. Not too far from our resort was Mount Greylock the highest peak in the state. I started my hike on the Jones Nose trail, which is a four mile hike to summit and meets up with a three mile portion of the AT.  My favorite part of the hike was the trailhead that is somewhere between a half-mile to mile long. You start by going up a beautiful field of wildflowers on the side of the mountain and then are transported into the lush greenery of the mountain. The hike itself was quite grueling and I have mad respect for anyone who can hike the entire AT. On top of the mountain is a war memorial to the dead veterans of Massachusetts and you can climb to the top of this and see a 360 degree view of the valley down below.

Lory State Park

Earlier this week, Jon and I went for our first hike in Colorado. After doing a little bit of research on the internet we traveled up to Lory State Park to hike the park's flagship trail, Arthur's Rock. The scenery out here is absolutely beautiful. It's a mixture of desert and prairie, interspersed with bits of greenery of the temperate forrest I'm used to back in North Carolina. The terrain is much more rocky, the trail a mixture of gravel and sand over flagstone, marble, and granite jutting up from the earth.

The hike was described as moderate to difficult, which for us east coaster's not used to the high altitude and the steeper slopes here. The trail started out low in the mountains and slowly winds its way up. As you move up the mountain you encounter a fair number of switchbacks that left me out of breath and wishing I was in better shape. As you get higher up the mountain there are more trees and the trail is much more shaded, which was nice after hiking a mile up the mountain in the hot sun. 

At the top of Arthur's Rock, you have to scale up path of boulders to see the view from the top. That was really cool but also really nerve racking. However, the view from the top is totally worth it. On one side you can see the town of Fort Collins below and behind on the other side of the mountain is a view out into Lory State Park and the Rockies. Climbing and hiking back down is a lot easier than going up and a fairly quick trip down. 

Notes From the Road

 

Hello everyone from Fort Collins, Colorado!

We left one week ago from Raleigh, NC and drove for three days till we reached our destination. Other than stops for food and to occasionally stop to adjust the luggage rack on top of my car or Lucy's litter box strapped to the trunk of Jon's Miata the drive went more smoothly than either of us could have hoped for.We left one week ago from Raleigh, NC and drove for three days till we reached our destination. Other than stops for food and to occasionally stop to adjust the luggage rack on top of my car or Lucy's litter box strapped to the trunk of Jon's Miata the drive went more smoothly than either of us could have hoped for.

I was amazed at the beauty of West Virginia, which was miles and miles of a windy mountain road. Now this is my personal opinion and I'm sure others will disagree with what I say next but I liked driving through these mountains better than the Blue Ridge Parkway. Whenever I've driven on the Blue Ridge Parkway, I have always been scared out of my wits that I am going to fling my vehicle off the side of the mountain. However, in WV it was more like a slow meandering while you got to take in the beautify of the mountains and trees working together.



We didn't get to see much of KY as we drove through the majority of the state in darkness. The second day took us through Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. I have to say this day was the most boring in terms of scenery. Through all three states it was mainly rocky hills that looked like chiseled pancakes stacked on top of each other topped with long grass. The major cities we drove through looked interesting and tempt me into wanting to visit, especially Louisville and St. Louis. Passing the Arch was really cool but also distracting as we went by it in 12 o'clock traffic. The traffic and choosing the right exits was stressful and nerve racking. We ended the second day in Lawrence, KS and stayed with a friend for the night.

From Kansas to Colorado was a lot of rolling prairie land, which was pretty but got old after five or six hours. Towards the end of KS we decided to start cutting north so we could avoid Denver's traffic. This detour took us up through Nebraska which was also stunningly and surprisingly beautiful. High, rolling roads that left you feeling like you were on a roller coaster. Sunflowers dotted the sides of the road. However, our trip through NB was short and soon we were in the prairie lands of Colorado. About two or three hours into the state we could see the line of the Rocky Mountains and we knew we were close.  Finally around seven or eight we rolled in to good old Fo'Co and got a hotel room for the night.

In what seems to be like odd coincidence, Jon and I once again had trouble when it came to renting our apartment. We found the next morning the previous tenant had not yet even begun to move out and were told to wait till noon that day to move in. All in all, we are in our new place and settling in fairly well.

More to come on Fo'Co' and our adventures soon!


xxxo.