TRAVELING AND THEN STAYING PUT
Mark Twain famously wrote about the positive aspects of travel: " Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." I was privileged in 2022 to travel all over the U.S.A. in our pop-up camper and then spend 33 days in Scotland and North England in August and September. I enjoyed the beaches and art scene in St. Petersburg while celebrating a family get together of cousins. The Gullah History in South Carolina, the "Redneck Coast " of Florida and some amazing Civil Rights sites across the South brought diverse perspectives to my 73 year old brain. Whitney Plantation in Louisiana was particularly informative , since it focused on plantation life from the perspective of enslaved people. Spring bought me to the Nashville Lutheran Retreat Center, along the