a.d. elliott - Take the Back Roads

 Dear Henry, While I was growing up, some of my favorite books were the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder and  Little House on the Prairie . A couple of years ago, I was able to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri, and to check out all of the china (including her chicken egg holder) that she had somehow managed to cart about the plains in a covered wagon, a feat, I should add, that I am still highly impressed with. Coincidently, it was around the time of my visit to the Missouri site that the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal was being renamed the Children's Literature Legacy Award because of statements made about Native American peoples in the Little House on the Prairie books. Most of the damning language occurred in the series' second book, which was written about the short time the family spent living near what is now Independence, Kansas. Only it wasn't Kansas when the Ingalls moved there, it was the Osage Diminished Reserve, and the Ingalls f...

 Dear Henry, I never told you about my trip to Savannah this year, did I? This past March, I traveled to Savannah, Georgia, for a long weekend. It was a much-needed trip and was the first I've taken since the COVID pandemic closed everything down.   I was excited about the journey, Savannah is an excellent place for history, and it is also the home of my middle son, who, because of the pandemic, hadn't been able to come home for some time. Savannah was established on February 12, 1733, when General James Oglethorpe and his group of settlers aboard the ship HMS Anne landed at Yamacraw Bluff. The river and city of  Savannah were hugely crucial during America's early years, and it became one of the vital export centers of cotton and timber for Europe.   The town is still a large shipping hub for the country, and spending hours watching the big cargo ships travel up the Savannah River is easy.  Unlike many other Southern cities, Savannah didn't suffer much...