Beyond the Scenery

Park News

     September 2 marks the official end of World War II, corresponding with the day the surrender documents were signed with the nation of Japan 80 years ago. The National Park Service has a website listing several parks with some connection to that conflict, but let me highlight a few:

• Washington, DC’s National Mall has several spots: memorials to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all those who served (below), and Japanese American Patriotism
• If you want to know more about the 125,000+ plus Japanese and Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during WWII, go to this page. Several of these former sites are in the Park Service
• At Boston National Historical Park’s Charlestown Navy Yard, the WWII era destroyer USS Cassin Young has free tours throughout the year
• Those who fought the war right here in the U.S. are remembered at California’s Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park. That includes my mom and her parents, who worked at a munitions factory
• The Manhattan Project National Historical Park, relating to the development of the atomic bomb, has three locations: Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and Los Alamos, New Mexico
• Further afield, in the Pacific Ocean, American Memorial Park in the Northern Marianas Islands pays tribute to the U.S. servicemen and native civilians who died in 1944 in the battles on Saipan, Tinian, and the Philippine Sea in 1944. Guam’s War in the Pacific National Historical Park commemorates those who served in that region.
  

More on What’s Happening in the Parks

• Another free day in the national parks! National Public Lands Day is always near the end of September, this year on Saturday, September 27
• Staffing shortages in our parks are a real problem
• This month’s review from the Subpar Parks calendar: “Not much to do” in Michigan’s Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Really? Not according to this list.

Books

This year I joined the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association, a professional group for Christian authors and lecturers. A fellow member, DiAnn Mills brings out a new contemporary book this month with Tyndale, Canyon of Deceit.  

The publisher of my two Life Lessons from the National Parks books has released Designs for Nora by Karen H. Richardson on Kindle.

And my e-novella publisher, Pelican Publishing Group, is putting out a pair of new titles in September:

• Love in a Lifeboat (Karen Malley)
• Unchained Melody (Clare Revell)

Wars and more wars

         Sadly, wars are all over the news these days. World War I was called “the war to end all wars,” but as we well know, it wasn’t. Since then, we’ve been involved in several other conflicts, while fighting continues in other places around the globe.

         Luke 21 (as well as other biblical passages) talk about the real “war to end all wars,” that is, when Jesus returns to earth. The events leading up to that occurrence are frightening (false prophets, wars, earthquakes, betrayal by loved ones, and strange phenomena in nature, among other things).

People down through the ages have tried to predict when all of this will take place, or if we’re on the brink of it happening very soon. That’s a futile calculation, though, because Scripture tells us no one but God knows the hour or day (Matthew 24:36). For believers in Christ, though, while humanly distressed, perplexed and fearful when these occurrences transpire, are directed to “straighten up” and “look up,” because all will see Jesus descending from the sky in all His power and glory (v. 25-28). What a sight that will be!

         Since we don’t know when this will come about, Jesus concludes the chapter by cautioning all of us not to be weighed down by life’s worries and concerns, but be on the alert, prepared to stand before Jesus’s judgment (v. 34-36).

         Are you ready?

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 250^th

         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.