Day 4

July 27, 2005 2:30 PM

South Dakota is long and it’s boring. Our fourth day of traveling is starting to wear on us a little. A__ (cat) was absolutely miserable about me packing her up this morning. She saw it coming too. Whereas last night she was purring and playing with me, today she avoided me steadily. It didn’t help that I had to give her monthly dose of flea medicine which made her more distrustful. By the time I actually had to pack her up she was struggling so much I had to give her anti-anxiety medication for the second time on the trip. Poor thing.



This morning we hit Mount Rushmore . We stayed close enough to it that we were able to leave A_____ in the room while we went to check it out. U___ has been wanting to go for years. And as excited as I was about actually getting to stop at a famous attraction, I was a little cynical.

“Why would anyone want to carve people’s heads into a perfectly good mountain?” I protested until I realized I might jeapordize enjoyiment of the site for both of us.

It’s an amazing sight. It really is. Big and impressive and artistic all at once. I was most fascinated to see the photos of its construction (including Roosevelt’s original structure to the left of Washington that had to be struck down because of poor quality granite) and a model of how the sculpture was first intended to look. I also really liked a photo of a young guy whose job it was to sit at the top of the mountain and take radio instructions from below to relay to the workers. What a cool job that would have been!

I think part of my resistance to the site was that I wasn’t sure what to make of the choices of who were carved into the site. But as we walked along the path I heard a father pointing up at the mountain and asking his son,

“Do you know why Lincoln was important?” When the boy said no the father continued, “He held the country together…” was the beginning of his explanation. Suddenly I was able to think seriously about the importance of those four men. In our generation, presidents actually encourage bipartisanship (while accusing the other party of discouraging unity), I realized that these four guys actually cared about America and it’s people and were responsible for creating everything good about this country today. As the brochure says, “Borglum [the artist] declared that they represented 150 years of American history, including the birth [Washington], growth [Jefferson], preservation [Lincoln], and development [Roosevelt] of this country.” I can’t help but be especially appreciative to Roosevelt, because without him, national parks like this one, Yellowstone etc., might never have been built.

As many complaints that the world has about America – and many are appropriate complaints – this is a great place. We have an impressive history and I’m inspired right now to understand it better. I want to know more a bout both our successes and our failures towards being a land of justice and democracy.