November 2024
Posted by Penny Musco onPark News
I have a program called Presidential Sites in the National Parks, which I’ve done several times this year since it was a presidential election year. The Park Service lists all Chief Executive-related sites under its jurisdiction.
One of them had its 50th anniversary in 2024. Surely you remember Martin Van Buren? Yeah, he’s one of the obscure Commanders-in-Chief. The Martin Van Buren National Historic Site is in his upstate New York home, Lindenwald. Guided tours of the house are available only from spring to early November, but the grounds are open all year, so you can get your picture with our eighth president any time you want. November is Native American Heritage Month. There are currently 574 federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaska natives in our country, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which, like the National Park Service, is part of the Department of the Interior. The 2020 U.S. census reports a Native American population of 9.67 million.
The Park Service has many locations recounting the often-bleak history of the original inhabitants in the U.S. Fortunately, the parks also relate positive stories and showcases artifacts, drawings and carvings, and intact structures the indigenous people left behind. Here are two of them:
You’ll find a pair of earth lodge villages at North Dakota’s Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site, near where explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their Corps of Discovery interacted with the Mandan and Hidasta people. On their return trip from the Pacific Ocean, the pair persuaded a tribal chief and his family to accompany them to Washington, DC to meet President Thomas Jefferson. This site is observing 50 years with the Park Service.
Iowa’s Effigy Mounds National Monument celebrates its 75th anniversary as a Park Service site. Check out the different kinds of hillocks sacred to its long-ago builders.Perhaps you heard about the renaming of Clingmans Dome in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The mount originally was named after Confederate general Thomas Lanier Clingman.
Its new moniker, bestowed by the US Board of Geographic Names at the behest of the Eastern Band of the Cherokees, is Kuwohi (Kuh-WHOA- hee), meaning “mulberry bush.” Not only is Kuwohi the highest point within traditional Cherokee lands, it’s the park’s loftiest spot and the third tallest in the eastern US. 
Another news item is President Biden’s formal apology on behalf of the county to Native Americans, for shipping off Native children to boarding schools far from their tribal homes. There, Indian language and clothing was prohibited, cultural and traditional practices forbidden, and thousands of children traumatized by the forced removal from their families and way of life. “It’s a sin on our soul,” the president said. Although it’s not in the Park Service, this is a photo from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, the flagship Native American boarding school, operating from 1879 through 1918.
I’ll be presenting my newest program, Native American Sites in Our National Parks, at two senior communities and a pair of libraries later this month.
Christmas Books!
Yes, it’s that time of year again…actually, it’s been that time of year in the stores since before Halloween!
If you like Christian romance centered around the Christmas season, have I got a list for you! First up is my (not new) ebook, The Christmas Child.
Here’s a synopsis:
A barren couple.
A baby who needs a home.
A husband adamantly opposed to adoption.
Infertility casts a shadow over Robert and Hannah’s marriage in 1891 New York City. So does her newfound Christian faith, a result of Dwight L. Moody’s evangelistic campaign. Their world is further rocked by their immigrant maid’s pregnancy, and by Jacob Riis’ exposé on life in the city’s tenements.
The Christmas Child intertwines the themes of childlessness and cultural differences in an exciting inspirational story.
My fellow Pelican authors have been busy churning out new Christmas Extravaganza titles and you can find contemporary and historical fiction in pure romance and romance suspense genres.
A Sin on Our Soul
Sorry to say, it’s not just Native Americans we’ve sinned against, and our transgressions are not only in the past. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” the apostle Paul writes in Romans 3:23.
Sin is considered an old-fashioned word these days, but its definition is as relatable today as it was when back in the day. The Hebrew noun for sin means “to miss the mark.” The term “come short” is in the present tense, indicating a continual action of coming up short.
If we’re honest, we know we miss the mark or come short of our good intentions all the time. We apologize to people we hurt if we want to maintain a good relationship with them. We also must forgive ourselves for our shortcomings.
As our president expressed, our country fell short in its treatment of Native Americans. Biden’s act of regret was part of our nation making amends, or atonement, for that “sin on our soul.”
So why do we think we can get away scot-free from God, for all the ways we fall short before Him—indifferent to what He says is right and true?
All belief systems recognize this need to make amends to a god or gods, through repeated acts of sacrifice. Christianity is the only one where God made the sacrifice for us, through Jesus, God in the flesh.
In Romans 6:23, Paul puts this great good news very succinctly: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
If you’ve got sin on your soul—and we all do—Jesus stands ready to wipe the slate clean.
If you have a cat, you know they specialize in bad behavior. Take as an example Rayne Beau (say the name out loud and you’ll get its meaning), a cat who shot out of her owners’ truck and disappeared into the forest surrounding their campsite in 
• I just finished reading Erik Larson’s 
• The “Angel of the Battlefield” during the Civil War, at right, is remembered at 