Park News
For Christmas, my son-in-law got me a Subpar Parks Illustrated National Parks calendar, featuring those with “one-star reviews.” We’re only four months into 2025, but I’ve enjoyed the laughs it’s given me so far:
January: “It’s just a big mountain of sand” (Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado)
February: “Nothing to do there” (Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Alaska)
March: “Pretty ugly” (Mojave National Preserve, California)
April: “Very very very very muddy; a lot of mud” (Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio)
I’ll keep you posted on the reviews month by month.
America’s 250th
A big birthday’s coming up! The National Park Service will hold many events as we approach July 4, 2026.
This month, the place to be is Boston National Historical Park. On the evening of April 18-19, 1775, silversmith Paul Revere left his home to warn fellow patriots Samuel Adams and John Hancock the British might be coming to arrest them. Others spread the alarm about the advancing troops, but Revere got all the press, thanks to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 poem:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
While you’re in the area, also check out the Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.
The Revere house is the oldest standing residential building in downtown Boston. The Park Service partners with the Paul Revere Memorial Association, which operates the home.
Just outside Boston, visit Minute Man National Historical Park to see where the Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord (you know, “the shot heard ‘round the world”). Patriots Day is a Massachusetts state holiday, and lots of events are planned.
Free Day!
On the first day of National Parks Week, which this year is Saturday, April 19, entrance fees are waived at any park site that changes admission (the two Boston park sites I mentioned above are free, although some of their partner sites, including the Revere House, do have an admission fee).
For Those Who Love to Read
You can preorder my fellow Pelican Publishing Group author Mallary Mitchell’s American Civil War romance novel Echoes of Blue and Gray, beginning April 4. A week later, Carol James comes out with a contemporary Christian second-chance romance, Always and Only.
Easter
“Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; He was buried, and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” (I Corinthians 15:3-4).
In this chapter, the apostle Paul goes on to summarize who saw Jesus alive again after His death—a guy named Cephas, the twelve disciples, 500 others, his half-brother James, and then, much later, Paul himself (he doesn’t mention the followers who encountered Him on the road to Emmaus—Luke 24:13-35). After twenty-five years Jesus’s resurrection was still being attested to by living witnesses. If He wasn’t, or if all these people were lying, then the Christian faith is meaningless, and there is no hope of anything beyond death.
Countless people over the years have doubted the resurrection, and some have written about their disbelief. An oldie but goodie is Who Moved the Stone? A Skeptic Looks at the Death and Resurrection of Christ by Frank Morison (I found it in my local library). A more recent look into the subject is Josh and Sean McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World.
…And Tax Day (sigh)
I can’t wait to pay my taxes, said no one ever. But I love the answer Jesus gave to a Pharisee, a member of the most influential Jewish sect at the time, who asked if it was permissible to pay Caesar’s poll-tax, a levy imposed by Rome on every Jew. But the questions was, if they worshipped God, how could they pay tribute to another king?
Jesus recognized they were trying to trap Him, to get Him to say something that would show either disloyalty to the Jewish faith or to Rome. He replied by asking them to show Him a Roman coin. “Whose is this image?” He queried. The answer, of course, was…Caesar. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:15-22).
Jesus rightly distinguished between political and spiritual responsibilities. Taxes are our civic responsibility, as is submission to law; worship, service and obedience our duty to God.
