All of us who covered that story were deeply impacted by it, just as those have been covering Sandy Hook. My kids were the same age as the children who were shot and went to a suburban school two towns away. That tragedy made us as young parents mindful not only of our mortality but that of our children. It made us resolve to make the most of the happy times together while we could.
Did you know that most of the plants and animals we raise for food today barely resemble their wild ancestors? Did you know that more than a billion people work in agriculture today? Did you know that 40 million children are overweight? Did you know that 30 per cent of all food produced is never eaten? Did you know the average American family of four wastes 1,656 pounds of food a year?
Our first day on the mountain my daughter’s instructor got her set up with a bi-ski and we all headed out onto the lift. It was a short run and I’m not sure if I breathed the whole way down, anxiously wondering how she was doing. We got to the bottom of the run and I was greeted by a wide smile. Game o!.
The Hall of North American Mammals, with its famous mammal dioramas, includes several that recreate scenes from national parks and monuments that Theodore Roosevelt helped preserve and protect.
Thirty-seven percent of leisure travelers say they’ve traveled with grandkids just this past year. Twenty-two percent report they are even leaving their children behind and just inviting the grandkids along….
Certainly you could spend all of your time in Washington, DC without paying to enter a museum—there are plenty of free ones to choose from. But two on our list are private and, the boys said, were worth the cost of admission.
One of the best things about Washington, DC is that so many museums are free. We aim to hit as many as we can.This time, instead of trying to see all that the Holocaust Museum or the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History has to offer, I tried to pinpoint certain exhibits I thought would most interest the boys from the Westport ABC House
I was chaperoning six city high school boys who attend our suburban school under the auspices of A Better Chance, a national organization that identifies kids with academic potential in middle school and sends them to communities like ours (Westport, CT) to live and attend high school. Several of the boys had visited Washington, DC on middle school trip
Here at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park, the terrific living history museum outside Indianapolis, a Smithsonian affiliate that focuses on 19th-century Indiana, the journey takes us 90 minutes, starting with our escape from an owner who plans to sell us “back South.”
There are other museums of musical instruments, but none with such an expansive collection from around the world—harps, zithers flutes and trumpets from the Middle East, African drums, a 17th century spinet and 20th century electric guitars…an Appalachian dulcimer, a ukulele, bagpipes and cymbals.