Upon arriving at my Aunt’s in Atlanta and sharing that doing some work at Stone Mountain was on the agenda for this visit, my cousin told me that the guy that did the carving had lived around the corner from them and had also done Mt. Rushmore. So, desecrating sacred mountains was more than just a hobby for this one. Stone Mountain is a granite dome east of Atlanta, and a bas-relief carving of Confederate leaders has been carved into it. The modern KKK was reborn at its base, with a meeting...

This image is AI generated, but the text is written by me. My big trip this year is focusing on Civil War sites. The work started before I left Arizona in March as there is a site about an hour and half south of me at Picacho Peak. There was a lot of activity around securing the 30th parallel all the way to the west coast. The Confederates wanted to make sure that any new territories that were admitted to the US were slave-holding and not free. So much for the war being about local control...

I believe it's important to stay informed. I spend a lot of time on the proverbial mountaintop, but it's incredibly important to know what’s happening in the valley. After election day, I decided I would be the one in charge of where my attention goes and when. No more being pulled into mercurial drama multiple times a day with the next outrageous move designed to grab attention. I’m on a strict media diet. I don’t do most social media. I limit when I read the news. But even being...