Arts and Entertainment

Heading south on Route 89 toward Alliance in Western Nebraska, what before my wondering eyes should appear? Carhenge rising out of the wheat fields! Carhenge is an assemblage of cars to look like Stonehenge built to scale and painted gray. Can’t make it to Stonehenge in England for the solar eclipse, then consider Carhenge.

“Go West, young man and grow with the country” wrote Horace Greeley in 1865 in the “New York Tribune.” He was encouraging Americans to take advantage of the Homestead Act whereby, in exchange for a small filing fee, settlers were given 160 acres of public land. People were already moving west. It was part of what some thought was America’s Manifest Destiny, the belief that the U.S. should reach from ocean to ocean.

One of the most interesting places John and I visited on Staten Island was Snug Harbor Cultural Center. It was a one-stop see-a-lot place. It is a Smithsonian affiliate that was started in 1801 by Robert Richard Randall as a sanctuary for aged sailors and grew to have 50 structures and nearly a 1000 residents from every corner of the world. Snug Harbor was a self-sustaining community with a dairy, chapel, hospital and music hall and by the 20th century the richest charitable institution in the United States.

There are few places where I go out of my way to revisit. Hocking Hills in the southeast part of Ohio near Logan is one of those places. About 10 years ago, John and I stayed at The Inn at Cedar Falls in the Hocking Hills area. We stayed in Dogwood Cabin nestled in the woods with two balconies that overlooked the forest. In the morning I wandered out to the top balcony with my coffee to see a deer watching me.