Joeletter 11.1

The Joeletter

Another month, another letter. Well, now that I'm home I hope to write more often again.

Yes, I, Joel Jackson, am home. After nine wonderful months of Deeper, and two 'most excellent' weeks of vacation with my family, I am back for the summer in good old Indiana. Funny, it's still pretty much the same as when I left it. It's me that different.

One difference is how much more I love my country. I still dislike American tourists, but I definitely love my country even more than I did before both Deeper and this vacation. Let me explain why:

We started out the trip by flying from Indianapolis to Boston. This was the first time for some of my siblings to fly, or at least be old enough to appreciate it. It was neat to fly with them.

We rented two 7-passenger vans there in Boston, and drove up to Maine. It was wet, rainy, and cold, but walking along the coast was still an amazing and wonderful experience. We got to see the real New England ocean, stormy and raw. Looking at the rocky coastline, it made us appreciate how difficult it would have been for the Pilgrims to land, farther down the coast at Plymouth. Here at this hotel we enjoyed the indoor pool and Roman Spa.

The next day we drove back down to Boston to see several sights. My favorite was the USS Constitution, the oldest warship afloat still under commission. This ship, nicknamed "Old Ironsides," never lost an engagement.

We also stopped by a visitor's center that had a 270 degree ( not 360) movie about the Battle of Bunker Hill (Breed's Hill), as well as some displays. We drove by the Old North Church (one if by land...). And we parked on the Lexington Green, where the shot heard round the world was fired. Did you know that the Patriots and the British soldiers began the war with the same type of musket? The Americans had been equipped by the British previous to the Revolution, and thus had very similar equipment.

The next day, having picked up our relatives from Kansas, who flew into Boston, we toured the area around Plymouth Rock. The Mayflower 2 was anchored in the bay, modeled as close to the original Mayflower as possible. Just 50 yards from the Mayflower 2 lies Plymouth Rock, the rock the Pilgrims were said to have landed at. Plymouth Plantation, a recreation of the original settlement, was a fantastic place to visit. People in the character of 1627 residents spoke with us about their lives and histories. Detailed research allowed them to role-play these characters down to accent, personal history from before crossing the ocean to America, and current occupation.

In Philadelphia we visited Matt and Melissa Johnson and their children Miles and Nina. The Johnsons are a loved part of our church family. God called them to serve in the Levittown, Pennsylvania Church of Christ.

While in Philly, we also saw the Liberty Bell, and a lights and music show entitled "Lights of Liberty." It was in this show that I understood how uncertain our future really was, back when we were revolting from British control. There was a lot of uncertainty.

I got to see the room where they wrote and signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America. Later, in D.C. I got to see both of these original documents. It was pretty cool to have stood where they started out.

Speaking of D.C., that's where we drove to next. We saw the Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson Memorials, the Vietnam memorial, and the new W.W.II memorial. The Capitol, the outside of the White House, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and quite a few metal detectors. It was an amazing trip.

Btw, if you ever go to the Library of Congress, don't take your shoes off. Well, let me back up. Don't wear steel-toed boots on a trip where you know you will be encountering the heaviest security precautions in our country. Don't be an idiot.

See, the airports don't mind if you send your shoes through the metal detectors. You just pop your shoes off, set them on the machine, and walk through the metal detector. No sweat. But not in the Library of Congress! No Sir! You can't even explain that you have metal in your shoes, and you know that they will set off the detector, and you just want to send them through the x-ray machine, and save everyone a whole lot of time. No, you have to be wanded. Every time. Every. Time. The worst part is that they don't have a standardized procedure for wanding you. So I never knew if they wanted my to put my Mt. Pleasant sweatshirt and jacket through the machine, or leave them on my person, or hand them to someone to feel through to make sure I wasn't smuggling a pair of nail clippers into the building.

Don't wear steel-toed boots to Washington D.C.

In His Time,