Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas in the Rearview

After Tennessee we got itchy to move into new terrain and tbh couldn't take another serious museum.

ARKANSAS

Our first major stop was the Dollar General in who-the-hell-knows-where, Arkansas. Dollar Generals have been EVERYWHERE on this trip, and we never realized they sold somewhat fresh food! So with a dozen eggs, 2 bags of frozen broccoli, some mysterious packaged orange cheese that required no refrigeration, and salsa, we had a lovely dinner in the park!

OKLAHOMA

Okay, let's blow outta here. On to Oklahoma, where we made a quick stop in Oklahoma City to see how Americans have commemorated the 1995 bombing. It was very touching and reminded us of the 9/11 Museum & Memorial in NYC and was another serious museum and...yeah...we got back in the van pretty quick.

We spent the next 2 hours debating whether Route 66 was actually still a road or not, and then...

Click here for the Stones singing "Route 66" a verrrry long time ago...

HIGHLIGHT OF OKLAHOMA:

After 10 days of rolling our eyes at Cracker Barrel billboards, they won. We had to try the Cheesecake Pancakes. They were really good.

TEXAS

Now on to TEXAS, where everything is BIG. Miles before Amarillo, we were lured by billboards for THE BIG TEXAN, promising a FREE 72-ounce steak if we could eat the whole thing. Mark was all in until he found out you also had to finish the baked potato, salad, shrimp cocktail, and roll. Click here to learn more about The Big Texan.

And as you exit The Big Texan parking lot, you see this billboard. Ah Texas.

Sunset just before crossing into NEW MEXICO, our next post.

THREE Reading Recommendations - One is Quite Personal For Us

As a follow-up to the last post, Jeremy recommended this book about how Germans are processing their past. (ALSO Jeremy's website is TheBerlinExpert.com, not org).

As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the past

In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories.

Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize and avoid them in the future.

Click the book cover to order the book from Powell's.

Now MARK AND JUDY want to recommend a book that is quite personal for them. As many of you know, our son Sam was working in Afghanistan just a year ago evacuating people who sought to leave before the Taliban took over. Sam's experiences there were harrowing and life-altering for him and the many people whose lives he touched (sounds dramatic, but it truly was). Author Mitchell Zukoff (13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi) heard of Sam's story and has detailed it in his newest work, The Secret Gate: A True Story of Courage and Sacrifice During the Collapse of Afghanistan.

Here's the description on Amazon:

The incredible true story of a breathtaking rescue in the frenzied final hours of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan, and how a brave Afghan mother and a compassionate American officer engineered a daring escape—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 13 Hours

When the U.S. began its withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Afghan Army instantly collapsed, Homeira Qaderi was marked for death at the hands of the Taliban. A celebrated author, academic, and champion for women's liberation, Homeira had achieved celebrity in her home country by winning custody of her son in a contentious divorce, a rarity in Afghanistan's patriarchal society. As evacuation planes departed above, Homeira was caught in the turmoil at the Kabul Airport, trying and failing to secure escape for her and her eight-year-old son, Siawash, along with her parents and the rest of their family.

Meanwhile, a young American diplomat named Sam Aronson was enjoying a brief vacation between assignments when chaos descended upon Afghanistan. Sam immediately volunteered to join the skeleton team of remaining officials at Kabul Airport, frantically racing to help rescue the more than 100,000 stranded Americans and their Afghan helpers. When Sam learned that the CIA had established a secret entrance into the airport two miles away from the desperate crowds crushing toward the gates, he started bringing families directly through, personally rescuing as many as fifty-two people in a single day.

On the last day of the evacuation, Sam was contacted by Homeira's literary agent, who persuaded him to help her escape. He needed to risk his life to get them through the gate in the final hours before it closed forever. He borrowed night-vision goggles and enlisted a Dari-speaking colleague and two heavily armed security contract “shooters.” He contacted Homeira with a burner phone, and they used a flashlight code signal borrowed from boyhood summer camp. For her part, Homeira broke Sam’s rules and withstood his profanities. Together they braved gunfire by Afghan Army soldiers anxious about the restive crowds outside the airport. Ultimately, Homeira and Siawash had to leave behind their family and everything they had ever known.

The Secret Gate tells the thrilling, emotional tale of a young man's courage and a mother and son’s skin-of-the-teeth escape from a homeland that is no longer their own.

You can order an advance copy of the book now on Amazon by clicking on the book cover above. It will be available in April, 2023.

In the meantime, Judy will add that a BEAUTIFUL companion book to read prior to The Secret Gate is Homeira's book, Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother's Letter to Her Son. You can see what a great writer she is, and it allows us all to "meet" Homeira before Sam's chance encounter with her.

A People Book of the Week & a Kirkus Best Nonfiction of the Year. An exquisite and inspiring memoir about one mother’s unimaginable choice in the face of oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of the frequent suicide explosions. With the city and the military on edge, it was not uncommon for an armed soldier to point his gun at the pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain, she was once forced to make her way on foot. Propelled by the love she held for her soon-to-be-born child, Homeira walked through blood and wreckage to reach the hospital doors. But the joy of her beautiful son’s birth was soon overshadowed by other dangers that would threaten her life.

No ordinary Afghan woman, Homeira refused to cower under the strictures of a misogynistic social order. Defying the law, she risked her freedom to teach children reading and writing and fought for women’s rights in her theocratic and patriarchal society.

Devastating in its power, Dancing in the Mosque is a mother’s searing letter to a son she was forced to leave behind. In telling her story—and that of Afghan women—Homeira challenges you to reconsider the meaning of motherhood, sacrifice, and survival. Her story asks you to consider the lengths you would go to protect yourself, your family, and your dignity.

Click on the cover to order from Powell's. The book is also available on Amazon.

HAPPY READING!

"What Happened Here Changed the World"

PHASE ONE of our trip brought us into the arms of people who've "changed OUR world," and that was warm and lovely. PHASE TWO has brought us into the souls of people who've "changed THE world," and that has been uncomfortable and confusing and humbling and necessary for us. Click on the Civil Rights Trail website: https://civilrightstrail.com/ and also take a look at the sampling below of some of the places you can visit along the way.

On the website, you'll see photo after photo captioned "What happened here changed the world" so you can get a sense of the SCALE of this journey. The site is so comprehensive that it includes a Spotify PLAYLIST of music you can enjoy as you travel along! Listening to it has actually broadened our understanding of the movement, shown us real connections to BLM, and...ummm...gave us better tunes to dance to than Country. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4EWUHStfWehoQ4J2vRmOhc

Current Favorite: Gil Scott Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" with lyrics:

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmkzYM_QKtU

HOW TO TAKE ON THIS JOURNEY

As we say on the Appalachian Trail, "Hike your own hike." Same for the Civil Rights Trail. The number of museums, historical markers, neighborhoods, roads, churches, businesses, cemeteries, parks, and monuments is too overwhelming to detail here. so here are our greatest impacts:

The Legacy Museum and Memorial in Montgomery, AL - Inspired by the Equal Justice Initiative (click here to learn about EJI), this massive museum provides visuals and facts that very clearly connect the widespread historical practice of Black lynchings to the mass incarceration of Black people today. FACT: The states that had the highest number of public Black lynchings just 100 years ago are currently the states that publicize the highest number of death penalty executions. The museum happens to be built on the former site of the Lehman, Durr & Co. cotton warehouse (reference if you saw The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway). The lynching memorial is, well, indescribable.

Edmund Pettus Bridge and Tent Cities, Selma AL - Traveling on Highway 80 from Montgomery, we encountered a memorial to one of the many tent cities where marchers camped along the route. It was here that we started to piece together the chronology of the marches from Selma to Montgomery, which each crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

We learned that there were actually THREE marches in March, 1965: "Bloody Sunday," which was when SNCC chairman John Lewis suffered a fractured skull along with 60 fellow marchers on March 7. Two days later, on what became known as "Turnaround Tuesday," MLK and a larger crowd crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge again and were met by armed police and troopers. The Reverend paused, led the crowd in prayer, and told everyone to turn around and go home (hence the name).

And finally the third march, where thousands of women, men, and children left Selma on March 21 and traveled on foot for 5 days to the Alabama state house to demand justice and voting rights. They stayed in tent cities along the way and were cheered by thousands as they traveled the 54-mile route.

"Because Alabama and because our nation have a date with history."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama."

- President Lyndon Baines Johnson

Five months later, Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, Memphis, TN - It's powerful enough to round a corner and find yourself facing the iconic motel sign, but when you look to the left of the balcony outside room 306, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered, you see that the motel has been transformed into a state-of-the-art museum. Gallery after gallery provide firsthand accounts, photos, recordings, and statistics outlining the movement and its makers, until you suddenly find yourself staring into the actual motel room where MLK died. The architects of this museum are geniuses.

Final thoughts: Many of you know our dear friend Jeremy Minsberg, who gives incredibly honest and eye-opening tours of Berlin TheBerlinExpert.org (in fact, many of you reading this have had the privilege of touring Berlin with Jeremy!). When you see Berlin through Jeremy's eyes, you see a city that has acknowledged its culpability in the Holocaust and has rebuilt itself on a bedrock of self-reflection. This is how a nation heals. This is how a people heal. Same for post-apartheid South Africa with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Civil Rights museums and memorials have the power to show Americans, and foreigners who come to these museums to understand us, a history we are willing to own. Maybe that is a first step.

This was a long heavy post. NEXT ONE we blow through Arkansas and Oklahoma like a boll weevil in heat (I feel another Country song coming on...).