Dear Friends May 2015

After our final history class (which lasted 8 minutes), I hit the road, driving through a hailstorm between Lewisburg and the Virginia line. I’ve never driven through hail before. The rain was very heavy and I suddenly couldn’t see out the windshield with my wipers on “normal.” Quickly turned them to high and slowed down. It was very loud. Had to turn my music up high to hear it. Only lasted 5 minutes. After a 7-hour drive, I met Cousin Maggie at a relative’s house in the mountains near Front Royal, where Maggie left her car. We headed south on I-81, chatting and listening to the music of our youth (Ian & Sylvia, New Christy Minstrels), arriving at Christiansburg, Virginia, as darkness fell. Nice meal at Outback and then settled down at the Hampton next door to rest up for our long weekend adventure.

The next morning, we drove the rest of the way to Asheville, arriving an hour before our first scheduled tour -- a self-guided audio tour of Biltmore House. I haven't been here in a very long time, and a lot has changed. I remember parking along the circular drive right in front of the mansion. Now you have to park several miles away and take a shuttlebus. It was as crowded as Disney World.

Some background, courtesy of online sources and my notes:

Biltmore House, the main house on the estate, is a Châteauesque-styled mansion built by George Washington II between 1889 and 1895 and is the largest privately owned house in the United States, at 178,926 square feet of floor space (135,280 square feet of living area) and featuring 250 rooms. Still owned by one of Vanderbilt’s descendants, it stands today as one of the most prominent remaining examples of the . In 2007, it was ranked eighth in America’s Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of Architects. 2

Vanderbilt’s idea was to replicate the working estates of Europe. He commissioned prominent New York architect , who had previously designed houses for various Vanderbilt family members (including and The ), to design the house, using several Loire Valley French Renaissance architecture chateaux, including the Chateau de Blois, as models. The estate included its own village, today named Biltmore Village, and a church.

Vanderbilt went on extensive buying trips overseas as construction on the house was in progress. He returned to North Carolina with thousands of furnishings for his newly built home. These included furniture, tapestries, hundreds of carpets, prints, linens and decorative objects, all dating between the 1400s and the late 1800s, and all coming from various eastern and western countries and continents around the world. Among the few American-made items were the more practical oak drop-front desk, rocking chairs, a walnut grand piano, bronze candlesticks and a wicker wastebasket.

Wanting the best, Vanderbilt also employed landscape architect to design the grounds, with the immediate gardens in the Garden à la française style, beyond those in the English Landscape garden style. Beyond these were the natural woodlands and agricultural lands with the intentionally rustic three-mile approach road passing through. There were originally 60 miles of roads on the estate, most of them dirt. Intending that the estate could be self-supporting, Vanderbilt set up scientific forestry programs, poultry farms, cattle farms, hog farms and a dairy. His wife, Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, also enthusiastically supported agricultural reform and promoted the establishment of a state agricultural fair. In 1901, to help provide local employment, the Vanderbilts started Biltmore Industries, which made furniture modeled after the furnishings of the estate.

The Vanderbilts invited family and friends from across the country to the opulent estate. Notable guests to the estate over the years have included author Edith Wharton, novelist Henry James, H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, and Presidents McKinley, T. Roosevelt and Wilson. 3

Vanderbilt paid little attention to the family business or his own investments, and it is believed that the construction and upkeep of Biltmore depleted much of his inheritance. After Vanderbilt died in 1914 of complications from an emergency appendectomy, his widow, Edith Vanderbilt, completed the sale of 85,000 of the original 125,000 acres to the federal government. This was to carry out her husband’s wish that the land remain unaltered, and that property became the nucleus of the Pisgah National Forest.

During World War II, 62 paintings and 17 sculptures were moved by train from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to protect them in the event of an attack on the United States. Among these were the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington and works by Rembrandt, Raphael and Anthony van Dyck. David Finley, the gallery director, was a friend of Edith Vanderbilt, who had stayed at the estate. The music room was not ready, so it was used for storage from January 1942 until 1944, when the possibility of an attack became more remote.

This is John Singer Sargent’s portrait of George Vanderbilt, appropriately holding a book.

In an attempt to bolster the estate’s financial situation during the Depression, Vanderbilt’s only child, Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, and her husband, John Amherst Cecil, opened Biltmore House to the public in March 1930. Family members continued to live there until 1956, when it was permanently opened to the public as a house museum. Visitors can view the 70,000-gallon indoor swimming pool, bowling alley, early 20th century exercise equipment, two- story library, and other rooms filled with artworks, furniture and 19th century novelties such as elevators, forced-air heating, centrally controlled clocks, fire alarms and an intercom system. The estate remains a major tourist attraction and has almost 1 million visitors each year.

In 2010, they debuted Antler Hill Village, as well as a remodeled winery, and connected farmyard. The Village includes the Outdoor Adventure Center, Creamery, Cedric’s Tavern, and the Biltmore Legacy, which is another museum highlighting the time of the Vanderbilts. George Vanderbilt’s preserved 1913 Stevens-Duryea C-Six is currently on display at the Winery. Vanderbilt was an early and ardent driver; documents show he upgraded to the ’13 Duryea (from the previous year’s model) because the newer car featured electric lamps (as opposed to oils). Originally delivered in a dark gray or black, rumor holds that Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt found the color depressing, and ordered a repaint. Hence the car is dressed in white with black pinstripes (and features her monogram on the rear doors). 4

The estate today covers over 8,000 acres and is split in half by the French Broad River. It is owned by the Biltmore Company, which is controlled by Vanderbilt’s grandson, William A.V. Cecil Sr., who inherited the estate upon the death of his mother, Cornelia. William Sr.’s son, Bill Jr., serves as company president. In 1964, it was designated a National Historic Landmark. The dairy farm was split off into Biltmore Farms, run by William Cecil’s brother, George Henry Vanderbilt Cecil. William Cecil converted the former dairy barn into the Biltmore Winery.

We took five different tours over two days. The first was a self-paced audio tour. Here are some highlights:

The banquet hall measures 72 by 42 feet with a 70-foot ceiling and has 3,000 square feet of space -- more than most of our homes. It features Flemish tapestries from 1525, which took five years to plan and five more years to weave. The center of this magnificent room is dominated by an oak dining table seating 64 chairs. Due to the size of the room, the table was specially designed by the lead architect, Richard Hunt. The acoustics are said to make it possible for a person at one end of the table to speak with another at the other end without raising a voice. There are many portraits by John Singer Sargent -- of the Vanderbilt family as well as the “hired help” like architect Richard Morris Hunt and landscape architect William Law Olmstead. (No photos are allowed inside the house, so these were found online.) The acoustics of the hall were designed so well that two people sitting on opposite ends of the banquet hall table do not have to raise their voices in order to be heard. High above the triple fireplace in the banquet hall hangs the Vanderbilt family crest, crowned by flags of the great powers of the 15th century.

When Vanderbilt took 18 months planning the house. He and Hunt took a tour of Europe in order to copy the architecture and brought along photographers, who filled 42 photo albums with ideas. His team of architects produced a wood and plaster scale model of the proposed house and 1,000 detailed drawings. Details of the house are inspired from Notre Dame Cathedral and 5

Château de Chambord at Chambord in France (at right), one of the most recognizable châteaux in the world because of its very distinctive French Renaissance architecture which blends traditional French medieval forms with classical Renaissance structures.

The Biltmore house was designed with electricity, powered by generators in the basement. It contains two electric elevators, an electric dumbwaiter and a rope-pull dumbwaiter, and huge refrigerators which also made ice. Electricity also powered the intercom and servants' call systems. And there was central heat.

One of my favorite rooms is the two-story library, which contains half of Vanderbilt's 23,000 volumes, all personally selected. Many are first editions and almost all are leather- bound and gilt tinted, evidencing the care Vanderbilt expended on his collection. He employed a librarian to catalog his books. Author Henry James visited the Biltmore in 1905 complained that his bedroom was half a mile away from the “mile-long library.”

Other antiques and art decorate the library in addition to the books. Giant Ming Dynasty urns that were used as goldfish bowls rest among walnut and silk damask settees, armchairs and sidechairs in 19th century Baroque style.

The stables were built beside the house to block the wind from 6 the north. The architecture of the stables is identical to that of the house and has huge pocket doors at the entrance. The stable area now contains gift shops and an excellent restaurant.

George Vanderbilt’s bedroom features an ornate 400-year-old four-poster bed from Portugal. Hunt designed furniture for the rest of the room to match it. In the master bath is a huge clawfoot bathtub 6 feet wide. Big enough to share. Guest rooms for women contained bathrooms; men would have to go down the hall to one. Each bathroom contained a pull chain toilet and a tub that could be filled with instantly hot water. An odd fact about the 43 bathrooms in the house: None of them contain sinks. People enjoyed these modern bathrooms, with their chain flush toilets and tubs with instant hot water, but they preferred to use traditional pitchers and basins in their rooms to wash up with. All the doors in the guest areas were kept shut, but guests were able to tell which door hid a bathroom because the threshold was of white marble instead of wood.

Victorians were concerned about health and exercise. George offered many healthy diversions -- horseback riding, swimming, bowling, and an exercise room filled with equipment such as parallel bars, a rowing machine, a climbing rope Indian pins, fencing equipment and afterward guests could take a “needle shower” -- which produced ultra-thin sharp streams of water.

The huge (23,000 square feet) indoor pool was filled with cold water from a mountain spring and then heated by hoses which brought steam from the boilers. To prevent the warm pool from becoming a science experiment (in the days before modern pool chemicals), the pool was drained and cleaned after a couple days. There are large ropes hanging down into the water, mainly for the ladies to hold onto, since they wore heavy woolen “dresses” in the pool. The pool featured underwater electric lights which worked on DC current. When Biltmore was built, it wasn’t certain which type of electricity would survive, so Vanderbilt installed both. The use of underwater electric lights was remarkable because many people were so afraid of electricity “leaking out” that they plugged up the electrical outlets.

Back in the day, the only extra tour offered was a peek Behind the Scenes -- upstairs to some rooms that had not been restored, down in the basement to the boiler rooms, etc. Now Biltmore offered dozens, including hikes, kayaking, carriage tours, horseback tours and many others. 7

We also took the Rooftop Tour, during which we went in several rooms not on the main tour and out onto several balconies and on the roof. They warned there were 250 steps on the tour, but we didn't take them all at once. Our guide was excellent. He started out on the ground in front of the house, telling us the difference between gargoyles (which serve as downspouts for rainwater) and grotesques (which sit on the corners of railings and are supposed to ward off evil spirits and discourage birds). They were all carved in place from limestone from Bedford, Indiana. The house is constructed of 4,000 tons of steel and 33 million bricks with a limestone facade. Limestone is also used for the cantilevered grand staircase, which winds around a 1,700-pound chandelier.

While we were out on one of the highest balconies, we watched some men working to repair the roof. They had removed the large ornate copper ridgecap, which had deteriorated and leaked, and sent it to France to be duplicated -- or to Florida, depending on which guide you get. There is embossed copper all around the ridgecaps and the details were originally embossed with gold leaf, some of which can still be seen. The copper was practical. The chemical reaction of the copper and rainwater produced a self- cleaning action for the slate roof.

The estate today consists of 8,000 acres. It was originally much larger -- the size of the District of Columbia -- but in 1914 the government started collecting property taxes and Vanderbilt (who had depleted his fortune building the estate) couldn’t pay. So he made an arrangement with the federal government to turn over 125,000 acres for a national forest, which preserved the land because it could never be developed. It also preserved the pristine views of the landscape from the Biltmore House.

We enjoyed something extra during the house tour -- an exhibit called “Dressing Downton: Changing Fashion 8 for Changing Times,” featuring costumes worn by the characters in PBS’ “Downton Abby” series. The white mannequins were faceless, but they had the posture of the characters. Most notable was the Dowager Countess Violet Crawley (portrayed by Maggie Smith), who is posed sitting on a couch or standing (at right) with her hands crossed, holding a cane. They looked right at home among the splendor of the Gilded Age.

We had dinner (rissoto for me) at a Cedric’s Pub near the winery, named for Vanderbilt’s favorite dog, a St. Bernard. His collar, which has a 33-inch circumference -- is displayed behind glass. That was a big dog! There were five St. Bernards and they had the run of the house until Mrs. Vanderbilt discovered them in the kitchen, licking the tabletops. She ordered wooden “dog gates” installed to keep them out of the kitchen.

During the Gilded Age, the wealthy followed the European tradition of distributing their wealth by age. When the original robber baron died, he left his fortune to his older son, who doubled the fortune and left most of it to his oldest son. Younger son George got “only” $10 million in assets and $3 million in property -- basically a lesser share like that given to female offspring. George decided he didn’t want to join his older brothers in the family business because he had so many interests he wanted to devote his time to.

One of these interests was entertaining friends. The house contained 33 guest rooms. Guests were met at the Asheville train station by a horse-drawn omnibus, which took an hour to reach the house on a purposely winding road through the estate. Meanwhile, the servants and the luggage were transported to the house on a much-faster service road, so that by the time the guests arrived, their clothing would be unpacked. Women changed clothes up to six or seven times a day -- a different outfit for every activity.

In the 1880s, at the height of the Gilded Age, George Vanderbilt, youngest son of , began to make regular visits with his mother, Maria Louisa Kissam Vanderbilt, to the Asheville, North Carolina, area. He was in his 20s at the time. While she underwent treatments at the mineral hot springs for an illness (either malaria or a respiratory problem, depending on which guide you get), he rented a horse and explored the area. He loved the scenery and climate so much that he decided to create his own summer estate in the area, which he called his “little mountain escape,” just as his older brothers and sisters had built opulent summer houses in places such as Newport, Rhode Island, and Hyde Park, New York.

He bought 2,000 acres right away and hired Olmstead as a consultant to see if anything could be done with the land, which had been clearcut of timber and then farmed so much that the land was sterile and barren. Olmstead he could fix it, so George hired a land agent to buy more land. He didn’t want the locals to know a Vanderbilt was buying the land because he didn’t want to be taken advantage of, but he also didn’t want to take advantage of the landowners, so he paid above market value. 9

During a bus tour of the estate, we learned that water to the estate came from a spring on top of a mountain miles away, which flowed through terra-cotta pipes into three brick- lined reservoirs. The gravity-driven system was so efficient that water reaching the house had pressure of 90 pounds per square inch -- much more than today’s municipal water systems provide. Olmstead designed this system using his self-taught engineering skills. The estate used this water until the 1980s, when the first restaurant opened on the grounds and regulations required it to use city water. Today the spring water is used for fountains and irrigation.

Olmstead planted 6 million trees. The was the first place in America to practice modern forestry -- selectively cutting trees and planting new ones in their place. The first forestry education program in the U.S., the Biltmore Forest School, was founded on the estate grounds in 1898. After the imposition of income tax and property tax, George couldn't pay the property taxes so he negotiated a deal with the federal government, selling it 86,000 acres on the surrounding mountains. This became the nation’s first national forest, saving the land from development and forever ensuring pristine views (above) from the Biltmore.

The estate was designed to be self-sustaining and that philosophy continues today. There are 9 acres of solar panels, which provides most of the electricity for estate, which also grows canola for use in the restaurants and as diesel fuel.

The estate’s name came from the town of origin of George’s Dutch ancestors and an alternate spelling of the word “moor,” which refers to a rolling grass highlands.

During the upstairs/downstairs tour, we learned that the staff was treated very well, being paid close to New York wages. Their medical bills and funeral expenses were paid. Each staffer had a private bedroom. They had modern conveniences -- a service elevator for transporting trunks upstairs, an electric dumbwaiter, state-of-the art ovens and refrigerators. The floors downstairs were tile, which were easy to clean.

The house was built facing the west to take advantage of the westerly winds, which provides natural air conditioning when the windows were open. 10

The house had central heat, with huge boilers in the basement, directly under the courtyard between the house and the stable. In case of an explosion, the blast wouldn't go directly up into the house. In the servants’ area downstairs, radiators can be seen in the hallways. Upstairs, they’re hidden in the walls. But there are none in the bedrooms. Servants built a fire in the fireplace each morning and let it die down at night. It was believed that germs attacked people while they were sleeping, and a cold room helped prevent illness.

There are electric clocks on the walls in many places in the servants’ areas and in some places upstairs, and a large clock (left) on the stable, which is the main clock. They’re all connected, so when the stable clock’s minute hand moves, it sends an electronic signal to each of the other clocks to move the minute hand forward.

George and his wife had separate bedrooms, which was routine. The reason was that each was dressed by a valet or ladies maid and it would have been inappropriate for the valet to be present while Mrs. Vanderbilt was being dressed, etc.

Guest rooms for women always contained a writing desk and a chaise lounge, which was intended for afternoon naps. Women would not nap in the bed, because it would require a servant to make the bed again -- completely. George insisted that bed linens be changed and washed every day.

During the guided house tour, we learned that when Cornelius Vanderbilt died, his fortune had reached $100 million. (His eldest son doubled that amount in 8 years.) He was the richest man in the history of America. At the time of his death, of every $10 in circulation, he owned $1. The ratio for Bill Gates is 38-1. During his lifetime, his wife suggested that he do something nice for his soul, so he gave money to a small college in Nashville, which changed its name to Vanderbilt and named its sports teams the Commodores. 11

The ceilings are intricately decorated and all are different. Some are “strap ceilings” (at left). Leather was carved in designs and the layers were piled up 4 to 6 inches thick and attached to the ceiling, then covered in plaster and designs were carved into them.

George brought back many things from his travels, including a large armory box containing 42 locks and one large key. Each time the key was turned, one lock closed. One day a gust of wind blew the lid shut and the tour guides heard all the locks click into place one at a time -- with the key inside. They had to bring a locksmith over from Spain to unlock it. Now the lid is braced open.

Many of the rooms in the Biltmore were designed specifically to display certain artwork. The 90-foot-long Tapestry Gallery, for example, was built to display three tapestries made about 1530 as part of an allegorical series, “The Triumph of the Seven Virtues.” On one side of the room is a series of French doors which open onto a large porch to allow the whole area to be used for dances. The two-story- tall library was built to display the Giovanni Antonio Pelligrini (1675- 1741) painting “The Chariot of Aurora” that was originally in the Pisani Palace in Venice. Measuring 64 feet by 32 feet on 13 canvases, it depicts the dawn and symbolizes the light of learning. (Photo on a previous page.)

Inspired by the staircase at the Chateau de Blois in the Loire Valley, Biltmore’s grand staircase is a marvel of physics built using counterbalance. The weight of each of the solid limestone slab steps is offset by the weight of the wall bearing down. Suspended from the middle of the grand staircase is a 1,700-pound electric light fixture, 50 feet long, which hangs from a single bolt that runs through steel girders under the dome roof. (Photo on previous page.) The bolt has been replaced only once since the house was built. Wisely designed, the copper dome opens for easier access to the fixture.

George could read eight languages and reportedly read 80 books a year and kept a list of everything he’d read. He started collecting books as a child and had 30,000 of them at the 12

Biltmore, all of which are on display. The furniture in the library was designed by Hunt larger than usual because of the scale of the room. The wood on the walls and floors of the house is oak, except in George's bedroom, where it's walnut. The large entrance doors are oak but painted to look like more expensive wood to avoid paying higher taxes on more expensive wood.

After immersing ourselves in such luxury, we stopped at a more modest home on the way back -- Thomas Jefferson’s retreat, Poplar Forest, near Lynchburg, Virginia. After Jefferson retired from politics, Monticello was inundated with visitors -- mostly strangers who wanted to meet him. It was the custom of the day to invite visitors to stay overnight or for several days (or longer) and Jefferson couldn’t get anything done with all these people around, so he built a house on a plot of farmland 90 miles away that he’d inherited from his wife’s father. He’d go there several times a year and stay for months. The journey took three days. He was 63 years old when he started building the house, but he used it for 20 years. I wrote extensively about Poplar Forest some years ago, so I won’t repeat it, except to advise you to visit if you’re ever in the area.

After a couple days back home, Charlie and I drove to the Cincinnati area to celebrate our 46th anniversary. Going to a museum (particularly such a somber one) may not be most people’s idea of a romantic get-away, but we love history and it was perfect for us. Had a wonderful meal at Mitchell’s Fish Market in Newport, Kentucky, then spent most of the next day touring the National Underground Railroad Museum Freedom Center in downtown Cincinnati. We’ve wanted to visit it for years, and tried to once, but a Cincinnati Reds ballgame was under way next door and we couldn’t get anywhere near the place. We checked the baseball schedule this time. The building is large and impressive and overlooks the Ohio River -- and Kentucky, where the slaves escaped.

The museum has excellent exhibits on the history of slavery in America and the efforts of enslaved people to escape -- with many personal stories of the slaves and the white and black people who helped them -- but it also emphasizes that slavery continues today in most parts of the world, even the U.S., and contains a large exhibit devoted to the subject. The introductory film features the stories of Solomon Northrup (of “12 Days a Slave”) and a Cambodian youth who was kidnapped to work on a fishing boat and a plantation, who was able to escape a couple years ago. 13

The museum displays a “slave jail” that was originally in Maysville, Kentucky, owned by a man who bought slaves locally and shipped them South. Kentucky was the top center for raising and selling slaves in the days before the Civil War. They were walked from Maysville to Nashville and then on the Natchez Trace to Natchez, Mississippi (a journey which took 37 to 40 days), frequently being held in similar slave pens along the way for days or months. Archaeologists found 7,000 artifacts in the yard around the Maysville slave jail, many of which are on display.

We saw another film about prominent abolitionists in Ripley, Ohio, who helped slaves escape. (I covered that in a journal some years ago.) Narrator Oprah Winfrey walked down the streets of Ripley and told the story of John Parker, a former slave who had bought his freedom, and the Rev. John Rankin, a Tennessee minister who moved north so he could preach against slavery. Together, they helped thousands of slaves escape to Canada.

The Underground Railroad Museum was having a special exhibit called “Unlocking the Gates of Auschwitz Seventy Years Later,” to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the most infamous Nazi concentration camp. An estimated 1 million prisoners, mostly Jewish, died at the camp. The exhibit explored the very depths of human cruelty -- but also the heights of human hope and perseverance. The following is from a Columbus Dispatch newspaper story:

The story is told largely through the recollections of two Cincinnati-area residents who survived Auschwitz. Bella Ouziel, 89, and Werner Coppel, 90, relate their experiences through video interviews interspersed with more than 100 concentration camp documents, photographs and other artifacts.

The stories told by Ouziel and Coppel are horrific but ultimately redemptive. Ouziel was a Greek Jew deported in 1943. Coppel was a German Jew whose father had been a German soldier in World War I. Both lost their entire families and suffered physical and mental tortures in the camps. But both also clung to a hope that helped them survive.

Ouziel arrived at Auschwitz with her family. She tells how she and her sister Sylvia were enslaved and forced to work in the camp as the rest of her family was sent to the gas 14 chambers. Sylvia eventually despaired, refused to eat and grew weaker as her sister watched, helpless. Like other sick prisoners, Sylvia, too, was eventually murdered. But Bella hung on and survived with the help of friends she made in the camp.

Coppel recalls the terror Jews experienced even before being sent to the camp, when Nazis marched through the streets of his town singing, “When Jew blood runs down our knives, we will have something accomplished.” Coppel was at a youth camp in 1941 when he learned his mother, father and younger brother were being deported. He never saw them again. He, too, was deported to Auschwitz.

“We were loaded on trains in broad daylight,” he recalled. “All the Germans knew” what was happening, he said, even if they refused to acknowledge the reality of the horror.

When Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops in January 1945, only 7,000 prisoners remained. More than 50,000 others -- including Ouziel and Coppel -- had been forced by their captors to undergo a death march to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany as the Soviets approached. Coppel escaped during the march and hid until he could reach Allied troops. Bergen-Belsen was liberated by British and Canadian troops in April 1945.

Items in the exhibit include many never before displayed in public. Some of the most seemingly innocent items are, upon closer examination, the most horrifying: a small collection of colorful children’s books -- spouting the racist and anti-Semitic Nazi Party line; a pair of children’s shoes -- manufactured with slave labor at the camp; small cylinders about the size of oatmeal canisters -- marked with the labels Zyklon B, the pesticide used to exterminate humans in the Auschwitz gas chambers.

The aim of this exhibit and many similar ones is to educate the public so that this will never happen again. But, as a plaque on the wall near the end of the exhibit shows, it’s still happening. 15

Charlie and I enjoy long drives, because we share a good book (he reads; I drive) as well as each other’s company. We just finished “The Character of Meriwether Lewis” by Clay Jenkinson, a humanities scholar who portrays Thomas Jefferson as well as Meriwether Lewis, has written many books about Jefferson and other historical figures, and who is host of PBS’ “The Thomas Jefferson Hour,” which we listen to as podcasts on our iPhones. Now we’re reading “The Third Reich: Charisma and Community” by Martin Kitchen, the textbook for Dr. Rutherford’s class on Nazi Germany that we’ll take in the fall. I can see why Dr. Rutherford (whose undergrad degree is in philosophy) chose it. The first long chapter is about the philosophical ideas that created the climate for the Nazis. The second chapter gets into the history. It’s very well written and fascinating.

We’ve also started a new habit. At mid-morning, Charlie makes coffee and we enjoy it while listening to a 15-minute audio lecture from a series called “Language A to Z” by linguist John McWhorter. It’s part of a Great Courses series. Meanwhile, the Great Courses DVDs we’re watching now are “America in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” inspired by my visit to the Biltmore. Next on our reading list is “The Last Tycoon,” about Cornelius Vanderbilt. The audio book I’m listening to while gardening is “Cell” by Robin Cook. I’ve read all his medical thrillers. This one is about a smartphone app that acts as a personal physician and can even control the release of adrenaline from a surgically implanted reservoir. What could possibly go wrong? The kicker is that this app was developed by an insurance company and all the patients who experience sudden death had just been diagnosed with some form of cancer that would have required lengthy expensive treatments.

I’m enjoying my new “freedom.” It feels odd not to have to leave the house at 8 a.m. three days a week for classes at Marshall, or to go to physical therapy twice a week. I can sleep late (but rarely after 7:30) and do whatever I want! Mostly that’s yard work. The garden has been ignored for two years while I was off having adventures. This summer I’ve vowed to do a little bit outside every day. I can no longer spend six hours a day gardening like I used to because it hurts my back, but I’m accomplishing a lot with only one or two hours, working on the largest weeds in a particular bed each day.

I don’t usually pay much attention to politics, at least this early in the season, but there’s an interesting development in West Virginia. Our governor cannot run again, so Jim Justice, the billionaire owner of The Greenbrier Resort, is in the race. Should be interesting.

The Flood’s weekly band practice is held in our library -- a former dining room lined with 7-foot-tall bookcases filled with books, which are also stacked on top of them. Books are also stacked in other places around the room. Charlie was afraid the books would fall and kill somebody, so when I was at the Biltmore, he cleaned out the library, putting the books he could part with in boxes and bags. He got rid 16 of almost 600 books! But the library shelves are still full of books. We stacked the boxes on the screened-in porch and had the Huntington Museum of Art come pick them up for its annual book sale.

Our cultural event this month was a lecture in Charleston by Harvard University Professor Timothy McCarthy on “The Changing Role of Media in Politics: From Tom Paine to Twitter.” He detailed the history from the pamphlet wars of the American Revolution to the social media revolution, exploring the history of the relationship between media and U.S. politics, with an emphasis on key moments of transition. He also examined the role of print culture and news photos during the abolitionist movement and the Civil War, and the role of photography in reform movements during the Progressive Era that focused on child labor, housing regulation and the Food and Drug Act. And the role television played in the election of John F. Kennedy. And the effect of social media in events like Ferguson, Missouri. The talk may have been fascinating to non-journalists, but we knew all that stuff and was hoping for more analysis. But the trip to Charleston wasn’t entirely wasted. I did a little shopping and we enjoyed sautéed orange roughy at Tidewater Grill, our favorite restaurant.

Haven’t been too many good movies lately, but we enjoyed “Tomorrowland,” which is a really fun movie with a strong warning about climate change and other things that humans are doing to destroy the Earth. Maybe the message will get to young people through this movie.

The 1937 Flood was invited to perform at the V Club, a downtown bar which regularly brings in big national music acts. Not Rolling Stones big, but young musicians who’ve had a record or two. We’ve never heard of any of them, but our college classmates have and are amazed that they’d come to Huntington. V Club concerts usually start around our bedtime, but once a month the Huntington Blues Society invites a regional band there to play early -- 7 p.m. -- followed by a jam session. The Flood concentrated on blues music, with a few jug band tunes and others thrown in. They have a wonderful lighting and sound system and a small stage in front of a dance floor. The Herald-Dispatch did a huge story about it beforehand, using as a hook the fact that all proceeds were going to help earthquake victims in Nepal, and they raised $820! Chris Sutton, head of the local Blues Society, was on tour in Katmandu last fall and made some musician friends there. Chris is an excellent musician, and has won lots of national blues contests, including a big one in Memphis. And he’s a 17 really nice guy. During the evening, he invited the Flood to perform in August at the Diamond Teeth Mary Blues Festival downtown. Cool!

We’ve paused halfway through reading the WWII textbook in order to read a new book -- “Dreamland” by Sam Quinones. He covered Mexican immigration and drugs for a dozen years for The Los Angeles Times and turned some of his research into a fascinating book. I usually don’t read much about the drug problem because it’s too depressing and there’s apparently no solution. We’re reading this only because it’s local. He starts out writing about a young man from a good family in Columbus who died of a heroin overdose. The second story in the book is about the son of Teddy Johnson, owner of the largest plumbing company in Huntington, who died of a heroin overdose several years ago -- before most people knew heroin was even available here. Several other young people died of overdoses here that same weekend. He discovered that unlike most drugs, which come from Mexico to Detroit and then to places like Huntington, black tar heroin (a less refined but more potent version) is sent to this area through Columbus. Those who buy it are usually people who got hooked on Oxy but now can’t afford it. Black tar heroin is a much cheaper alternative. A large part of the book will be about a doctor in Portsmouth, Ohio, an hour away, who ran one of the biggest pill mills in the country. These drug dealers are very organized -- printing business cards and taking orders by phone, then delivering the drugs to the door. No longer do people have to go into bad neighborhoods to buy. The drug dealers stay out of large towns with black gangs. They go to Midwestern towns with a lot of Mexicans so they can blend in. The author wanted to talk to some of the dealers in prison and a Columbus cop who was helping him casually mentioned that all these guys are from the same small town in Mexico. So he went to the town and told the story of a young man who went to the U.S. and got involved in the business. The book is well written and fascinating. And depressing.

And on that note, I’ll end another month.