Beyond the Scenery

 
Park News

 433! With the addition of a pair of spots established last month, that’s the new number of sites in the National Park Service.

 • On December 9, a place I’d mentioned in an earlier blog is now the Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in Pennsylvania. This is within the US Army’s Carlisle Barracks, home of the Army War College, and as yet there are no visitor services.


 • In Maine is the Frances Perkins National Monument, added December 16, 2024. She was the first woman to hold a federal Cabinet position, serving as Labor Secretary under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She’s considered the “Woman behind the New Deal,” working to enact social welfare laws, including Social Security and the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act creating, among other things, a minimum wage and overtime pay after forty hours of work a week, as well as prohibiting oppressive child labor. After her Cabinet tenure ended, she joined the US Civil Service Commission, then taught Cornell University and other schools until she died in 1965.

Her home at the park site is undergoing renovation, and is expected to be ready for visitors by summer. The fifty-seven-acre grounds, open during daylight hours, has walking paths leading past historic farm buildings and the remnants of the family’s brick-making business.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

 This year the celebration falls on Monday, January 20, and as usual, all fees are waived at the 109 Park Service sites that charge an admission. Check out the parks preserving his legacy and the Civil Rights Movement here. They include his home in Atlanta, Alabama’s Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail and Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, and in Washington, DC, the Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorials on the National Mall. Just beware January 20, 2025 may not be the best time to be in DC for sightseeing—there’s a presidential inauguration on the same day…

Writing News

 I’m working on a new program called Women’s History Sites in Our National Parks. Francis Perkins will be mentioned in it, along with a host of other American women who made history in work, wars, and through sheer willpower. I’ll share more about this project in March, which is Women’s History Month.

How Long?

 On March 25, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a legendary speech on the steps of Alabama’s state capital, at the end of the momentous Selma to Montgomery march. Speaking of the struggle for racial equality, he concluded, “I know you are asking today, ‘How long will it take?’…I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long…” He went on to say, five times, “How long? Not long,” following the last one with two verses from the Battle Hymn of the Republic, which references Isaiah 63:1–6 and Revelation 14:14–19.

 “How long” is a common cry in Scripture. So many biblical people asked when they’d be relieved of persecution, suffering, and misery, and why God delayed action and judgment of evil (Psalm 13:1-2, 74:10, 89:46; Jeremiah 12:4; Habakkuk 1:2; Revelation 6:9–10).

 The prophet Habakkuk got his answer: the fulfillment of all God’s promises would “surely come” at God’s “appointed time” (Habakkuk 2:3). The apostle Peter closes his second epistle with this encouragement: God isn’t slow; He will bring about a new heaven and a new earth, “where righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:9, 13).

 How are you waiting? With dread? Or with joy and expectation?