Ephrata Cloister and the Amish

Ephrata Cloister or Ephrata Community was a religious community, established in 1732 by Johann Conrad Beissel at Ephrata, in what is now Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

In 1732, Beissel arrived at the banks of the Cocalico creek, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Around this charismatic leader a semi-monastic community with a convent (the Sister House) and a monastery (the Brother House) was established called Ephrata.

The members of the order were celibate. In addition to celibacy, the members believed in strict interpretation of the Bible, and self-discipline. Members were required to sleep on wooden benches 15 inches wide, with wooden blocks for pillows. They slept six hours per night, from 9 P.M. to midnight, and from 2 A.M. until 5 A.M., with a two-hour break to "watch" for the coming of Christ. They ate one small vegetarian meal a day.

Services every Saturday were led by Beissel, often being several hours long.

They used the German Bible (just as the much larger and vibrant Amish community uses today).

They ran a highly regarded printing press. Their largest project was a commission from the Amish for a large book of stories of religious persecution in Europe.

The Ephrata Cloister was a haven for women who didn't have a home or who were victims of domestic abuse.

We took a trip to Lancaster to see how the Amish live. We visited a schoolhouse museum where this Amish woman told us about the Amish private school system.

School only goes to the 8th grade. I checked out some of the curriculum materials and concluded that it is extremely limited.

I really enjoyed seeing the buggies around town. The horses don't seem to mind the cars zooming past them.

Amish canned goods.

The docent explains the Amish lifestyle in front of an array of Amish clothing.

An Amish quilt covers the bed in the house museum.

Ike & Mamie's Retirement

Eisenhower National Historic Site was the home and farm of General and President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower and Mamie Doud Eisenhower located on the border of Gettysburg National Park.

Eisenhower National Historic Site comprises 690 acres and includes four farms, three of which were used by President Eisenhower for his show herd of black Angus cattle. Today the farm is maintained as it was during the Eisenhower years and the President's home retains nearly all its original furnishings. I

Here is where the helicopter landed coming to and from the White House.

Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Dennison, TX, 1890, third of six sons. He grew up in Abilene, Kansas and entered West Point in 1911. Ike is his nickname from grade school.

The Ranger gives a talk on the historic house in the living room.

When the US entered WWI in 1917, Ike was assigned duty in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in charge of training soldiers for the army's tank corp. He loved this town in the Appalachian foothills, about 50 miles south of where his ancestors had settled in the 1700s.

Anticipating retirement, Ike and Mamie bought this property in 1950 and began to fix it up.

As JFK's inauguration drew to a close on January 20, 1961, the departing President and Mamie headed north on snow-covered roads. "And so we came to Gettysburg," wrote General Eisenhower in the mid-1960s, "and to the farm we had bought eleven years earlier, where we expected to spend the remainder of our lives."

Mamie's portrait from the fifties hangs in the living room.

This room was saved for the most formal occasions. Ike thought it was uncomfortable.

Mamie's bedroom.

Ike's office.

Wedding picture.

General Eisenhower addressing the troops.

Farm map.

Ike began painting in 1948. He was modest about his work; Mamie was an ardent admirer and displayed his work prominently.

Gettysburg

I decided to take the drive over to western Pennsylvania to see Gettysburg National Park.

The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the Civil War, the Union victory that ended General Robert E. Lee's second and most ambitious invasion of the North. Often referred to as the "High Water Mark of the Rebellion", Gettysburg was the war's bloodiest battle with 51,000 casualties (the number includes the dead, wounded, captured and missing). It was also the inspiration for President Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address".

There were lots of tourists there and the visitor center was very large. I joined a long line to buy tickets to the movie/cyclorama, the guided tour on a bus, and a ride out to the Eisenhower retirement farm which is on the border of Gettysburg Park. Later when I inquired about the commercialization of the services, a Ranger explained that a Foundation raised the money for these facilities and the ticket money will pay the Foundation back and then it will be returned to the NPS.

The "Cyclorama" was a very popular form of entertainment in the late 1800's, both in America and Europe. These massive oil-on-canvas paintings were displayed in special auditoriums and enhanced with landscaped foregrounds with real physical objects and that is what I saw in Gettysburg. The result is a three-dimensional effect that surrounded us as the audience stood on a central platform, placing us in the center of the historic scene. This photo is the artist creating the cyclorama painting.

Here are three photos of it. The cyclorama would have made more sense to me later after touring the battlefield.

I photographed this in the museum.

Our tour guide was proud of his status of "official" tour guide which means he passed a competitive program involving test-taking. He was passionate on the subject and wanted us to understand the events that transpired over the 3-day fight.

Drawing the battle plan in the dirt.

Many people in the Park knew the story of the Gettysburg battle in minute detail. I felt as though I had stumbled into a sort of exclusive club, somewhat like my recent experience at the Stonewall Jackson Anniversary in Fredericksburg. Actually Gettysburg is gearing up for a similar 150th anniversary in July. I expect there will be thousands in attendance.

Pettigrew is my paternal grandmother's maiden name. I wonder if I'm related to this soldier from North Carolina.

North Carolina sacrifice.

Fought during the first three days of July 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg was one of the most crucial battles of the Civil War having occurred at a time when the fate of the nation literally hung in the balance.

The battle brought devastation to the residents of the town of Gettysburg. Every farm field or garden was a graveyard. Churches, public buildings and even private homes were hospitals, filled with wounded soldiers. The Union medical staff that remained were strained to treat so many wounded scattered about the county. To meet the demand, Camp Letterman General Hospital was established east of Gettysburg where all of the wounded were eventually taken to before transport to permanent hospitals in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington. Union surgeons worked with members of the U.S Sanitary Commission and Christian Commission to treat and care for the over 20,000 injured Union and Confederate soldiers that passed through the hospital's wards, housed under large tents.

Monument of Gen. Warren looking over the battlefield from Little Round Top.

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Where the Gettysburg Address took place.

Valley Forge

Valley Forge was the site of the 1777-78 winter encampment of the Continental Army. The park commemorates the sacrifices and perseverance of the Revolutionary War generation and honors their abilityto pull together and overcome adversity during extraordinary times.

Here the Continental Army under Washington's leadership emerged as a cohesive and disciplined fighting force.

Ask someone to think of Valley Forge and they will nearly always envision an anonymous group of soldiers struggling against winter’s fury and clothed in nothing but rags. Actually, the encampment experience could be characterized as “suffering as usual,” for privation was the continental soldier’s constant companion.

The task of developing and carrying out an effective training program fell to Baron Friedrich von Steuben. This skilled Prussian drill master, recently arrived from Europe, tirelessly drilled the soldiers and improved skills and morale.

I took a self-guided 10-mile driving tour after attending a Ranger talk. This new Ranger walked a group of us up to cabins like those used by Continental Army troops. She was very knowledgable and told me about several good books on Valley Forge. Inside the cabins were other Rangers to tell us about the Camp experience.

On the 4th of July, 1976, Valley Forge National Historical Park became part of the National Park Service. The modern park features historical and recreated buildings, memorials and a visitor center.

So severe were conditions at times that Washington despaired "that unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place ... this Army must inevitably ... Starve, dissolve, or disperse, in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can."

This was the winter that Washington finally got the excellent news that the French were going to help the Americans against the British.

Following the Civil War, a patriotic organization worked to raise funds to purchase the Isaac Potts house, Washington's Headquarters, as an historic site. By the 1880's, the house was open to the public, followed by the establishment of Valley Forge State Park in 1893.

The small building, Pott's house, known as Washington’s Headquarters was the place where General George Washington and his staff lived and worked for the six months of the Valley Forge winter encampment. I entered the site on a hilltop with a beautiful view of the Schuylkill River and walked down into the historic landscape surrounding Headquarters. Rangers were waiting at the restored 1913 Reading Railroad Station and Headquarters to give history.

In 2010 a 2011 the necessary repairs were made to woodwork, doors, windows, and shutters at Headquarters. Plaster was repaired on the interior, outdated mechanical equipment was removed, and UV screening was replaced on the windows. The exterior and interior were painted with historic colors. Furnishings, artifacts, and exhibit items were thoroughly cleaned and then reinstalled.

You can see by the photos the professional job that was done.

My photo of Washington's Headquarters.

Philadelphia's best

I spent another great day in Philadelphia.

The Swann Memorial Fountain (also known as the Fountain of the Three Rivers) is a fountain sculpture located in the center of Logan Circle.

Adapting the tradition of “river god” sculpture, Calder created large Native American figures to symbolize the area's major streams, the Delaware, the Schuylkill, and the Wissahickon. The young girl leaning on her side against an agitated, water-spouting swan represents the Wissahickon Creek; the mature woman holding the neck of a swan stands for the Schuylkill River; and the male figure, reaching above his head to grasp his bow as a large pike sprays water over him, symbolizes the Delaware River

The Masonic Temple is one of the more magnificent buildings in the city from the outside, its Norman cathedral-like exterior rising wondrously across the street from City Hall. But its interior architecture is amazing and varied. Oriental Hall, for instance, replicates part of the Alhambra, with its Moorish grille-like features. Gothic Hall has royal high-backed 19th Century hand-carved oak chairs and is a grand homage to the European Knights Templar.

With its grand façade, vaulted dome, ornate main altar, eight side chapels and main sanctuary that comfortably holds 2,000 worshippers, the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul is the largest brownstone structure and one of the most architecturally notable structures in the city of Philadelphia.

In Fairmount Park is the Ellen Phillips Samuel Memorial of America's history. Mrs. Samuel, who died in 1913, left a sum of money for the memorial.

The South Plaza theme is the initial founding and settling of the nation: Birth of a Nation, The Puritan, the Quaker, the Revolutionary Soldier, Settling of the Seaboard, and the Statesman.

The Central Plaza theme is expansion, immigration, and hard work, with Spanning the Continent and Welcoming to Freedom on either end, Spirit of Enterprise in the center, and the Miner, the Ploughman, the Slave, and the Immigrant crouching at the corners of the side entrances.

The North Plaza theme is diversity and achievement of a mature nation, with standing figures of the Laborer, the Poet, the Preacher and the Scientist, and the J. Wallace Kelly relief, Hand and Eye, which shows a hand, an eye, and the tools of an artisan.

Love Park is the brainchild of former Philadelphia City Planner Edmund Bacon and architect Vincent G. Kling. The park is across from City Hall and was designed as a terminus for the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The park was built in 1965 and covers an underground parking garage. The main features of the plaza are curved granite steps and a single spout fountain which was added in 1969. What was once the city visitor center was closed down for five years, but opened up in May 2006 as The Fairmount Park Welcome Center. The park was dedicated in 1967 as John F. Kennedy Plaza.

A "Love" sculpture, designed by Robert Indiana, was first placed in the plaza in 1976 as part of the United States' Bicentennial celebration. It was removed in 1978, but the sculpture was missed and the chairman of Philadelphia Art Commission, F. Eugene Dixon, Jr., bought the sculpture and permanently placed it in the plaza, in 1978.

City Hall - I went to the top, directly under the statue of William Penn.

View from the top.

Up there is Mr. Penn's statue.

See the statue way up there?

Downtown skyscrapers.

Quite stunning is “The Comcast Experience,” a 2,000 square-foot LED screen projecting computer-generated images so realistic, you’ll think they’re jumping out of the wall. With a resolution 500% greater than that of an HD television, the Experience is a remarkable technological and artistic achievement. (Their words, not mine; however it was fun to watch.)

The video wall, a giant HD video screen that is actually the largest four-millimeter LED screen in the world, is located in the building’s publicly accessible main lobby.

A heavenly City Park I walked through. I forgot the name!

Excellent private book business here. Herman Melville's bookcase and book collection are in the lobby.