On Jefferson, Monroe, Charlottesville...and Shugars

Marilyn and I just returned from a brief - three night - trip to Charlottesville, VA. The highlight of the trip was a visit to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. The trip was an easy one, 325 miles, 5 and 1/2 hours, most if which goes through the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Now when you talk about the Founding Fathers, I will concede that George Washington is far and away the overall Number One draft pick, but it seems to me that Thomas Jefferson has got to be the #2 overall pick. What a visionary and what an intellect. When President Kennedy hosted a gathering of Nobel Prize winners at the White House, he commented that the gathering no doubt represented the single largest gathering if human intellect in the history of the White House "with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Some thoughts, comments, and observations about our recent trip...

• Monticello is a beautiful building, but surprisingly, to us at least, small when you actually see it.



• Amazing the innovations that Jefferson designed into the building - a clock that told day, hour, minute, and second that worked on a system of counterweights (and that still functions today), pneumatic-like doors that also still function today, and indoor privies.



• The gardens that Jefferson laid out atop his mountain are still being planted and producing to this day.



• You can see the Jefferson grave site on the property. It is an awesome feeling to be standing at the grave of Thomas Jefferson. The cemetery is privately owned and is still being used to bury Jefferson's descendants.



• Jefferson was widowed after only ten years of marriage, and was a widower throughout much of his public life, including his presidency.



• We know know that Jefferson did not lack for female companionship, including his relationship with slave Sally Hemmings.



• Tours of Monticello do not gloss over the Jefferson-Hemmings relationship, nor do they gloss over the fact that the man who stated that "all men are created equal" was a slaveholder. It is truly a conundrum when you consider Jefferson's life and body of work to realize that he owned slaves. It is clear, though, that Jefferson recognized the moral quandary that this presented, and it is also clear that he struggled with the quandary up until his death.

• Amazingly, as we were walking the grounds of Monticello, who do we run into but our nephew Bill Sproule, who was in town for a business meeting. Talk about a shock! This was one trip where we couldn't say "we never run into anyone we know."
  
  
• Our current political leaders, who feel the necessity of placing a fundamentalist Christian litmus test up to all other candidates and officeholders, would do well to go back and read up on some of Jefferson's thoughts regarding religious freedoms and state-sanctioned religions.



• About two miles down the road from Monticello sits Ash Lawn Highland, the home of James Monroe, Fifth President of the United States. We also toured Ash Lawn Highland as well. Now, this estate is no Monticello, not by a long shot, but it was an interesting tour nonetheless.



• James Monroe gets kind of lost in the shuffle of history, but he has a story to tell as well. Did you know that he was the Secretary of State under Jefferson who negotiated the Louisiana Purchase with Napoleon of France? I didn't. He also was a fairly wealthy guy for the times.



• President's back in those days were paid a salary of $25,000 a year. Seems to me like that is a whole lot more, comparatively, to what Presidents make today (which I think is $400,000). Presidents then, however, had to operate the White House out of their own salary. There was no government budget for operation of the Executive Mansion.



• There is a massive oak tree at Ash Lawn Highland that is estimated to be over 400 years old, which means it was already over 200 years old when Monroe lived there. For some reason, that little fact fascinates me.



• Like Jefferson, Monroe was a slaveholder. Unlike Jefferson, he had no moral struggle with the issue.



• If you ever make a similar trip, and I strongly recommend that you do, do not, under any circumstances, eat lunch at a place called Michie's Tavern. It advertises itself as an "authentic, Jefferson-era tavern," but what it really is is an tourist trap and a rip-off joint. The fact that we got sucked into it represents the only bad part of our trip.



• About 20 miles from Monticello is an estate called Montepellier, which is the home of President James Madison. We didn't make the trip there, but think of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe all living within 20 miles of each other. Some neighborhood!



• We enjoyed the town of Charlottesville. It is a college town, but it is not like Pitt in Oakland which is within a large city, nor is it like Penn State which is the only thing in State College. Something in between, and it was quite pleasant. The central part of the downtown district is a closed off pedestrian only mall that runs about five blocks and consists of a nice variety of restaurants, theaters, retail businesses, and four, count 'em, four independent bookstores. We really liked it.

Oh, I hinted that there was a connection between Thomas Jefferson and our own friend Fred Shugars. Residing at Monticello was Jefferson's daughter and her 11 children. How to entertain kids? You play games, of course. It seems that Jefferson enjoyed the mental stimulation of playing games. He was in inveterate chess player, and one of the parlors at Monticello was devoted to games playing. A very popular one was something called the "Royal Game of Goose" and a board of this game is on display in the Monticello parlor. It appears to be some sort of Parcheesi-like roll the dice and chase along a trail game. One of the folks on the tour with us said that she, in fact, had this game and played it regularly with her grandchildren. Of course, I figured that the Royal Game of Goose would be on sale in the Monticello gift shop and I planned on purchasing it as a gift to present to Fred for use at GamesFest 2011, but would you believe that they do NOT sell this. I was quite disappointed.

So we can add one more distinction to the long list that is Jefferson's legacy: A Founding Father of GamesFest!