Wednesday: Manassas and Flight 93 Memorial

On Wednesday of this week I had to go 30 miles away to NPS HR headquarters to get my PIV card. It comes with the background check done for most of my volunteer work. I made a big day of it. Originally I intended to go to Greenbelt Park and D.C., but traffic out here is really scary so I decided to find a visitor center and plot my travel to D.C. via public transportation another day. (By the way, Greenbelt is an NPS facility where I had originally tried to get a job for the fall, located 12 miles north of the capitol.)

In search of the Virginia VC I accidentally found the NPS VC for the Battle of Bull Run, so I stopped there. Too early for it to be open, I just walked around the battlefield enjoying the many statues and monuments.

More than 5000 people died at the first battle of Bull Run, so that kind of set the tone for the day. Gloom & Doom, but well worth remembering how horrendous war is. I laughed a little, though, as I looked at this sketch of the Henry House after the battle and the contrast of the reconstructed home below. Quite a difference as a lot was added to the "new" house!

Since I had passed it on my way to Prince William, I then made my way back to the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania. It was a little under 3 hours from where I was in Virginia. Sorry to any Republican friends, but I constantly stew about what a narcissistic psychopath Trump is and pray daily that people will wake up and realize how dangerous he is. In my mind, for the last year, I liken him to Hitler and his rise to power without his nation challenging him or his actions. His recent denigration of the Muslim family who lost their war hero son and his contention that Trump himself has "sacrificed" is maddening. Then gleefully accepting the Purple Heart stating, "This was a lot easier!" No shit, Sherlock!

Visiting the Flight 93 Memorial brought home the nature of true sacrifice. Who can visit there without praying that they, too, would act as heroically under similar circumstances? Trump, so you know, those 40 people sacrificed their lives and saved countless others by their actions.

A wall of books of the heroes of September 11, 2011

There are 40 stone panels representing each of the heroes of Flight 93. This one is especially poignant.

The Memorial was beautiful with wildflowers everywhere. It was formerly the site of an abandoned strip mine and the crash site itself a hemlock grove that was incinerated in the crash. Family members were involved in choosing each aspect of the Memorial - a place of renewal. A huge boulder chosen by the families sits atop the filled-in crater that was the crash site.

One of the ways victims' families remember their loved ones is the impression of hemlock bark seen on all the walls of the memorial.

The families also chose to plant the entire site in wildflowers. Trees line the 1.7 mile walk to the Memorial wall and crash site. The walls of the crash site Memorial are impressions of charred hemlock bark as opposed to the lighter colored bark of the living hemlock trees.