cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to stumble across an occasion where I’m not sure what century it happened in. Very early one morning, I was driving down a narrow road through a national park. A brick house rose out of the mist and forest to my right. A Civil War soldier relaxed in the doorway, rolling a cigarette, his musket beside him. When I glanced back an instant later, he’d vanished – with no signs of another modern vehicle anywhere around. I felt as if I’d set foot on a Civil War battlefield during the 1860s. The first time I visited Williamsburg , the weather was freezing cold and the wind howled. Very few guests came that February. Traversing the old city meant dashing from one building to the next, always hoping the door would be unlocked. By the end of the day, my family was chilled to the bone and desperate for more comfort than a historically accurate slate floor to rest our senses on. We lunged into the last house before the bus stop back to the hotel, figuring it would be...

I moved to the East C oast from California several Decembers ago. Lucky me, it happened to be a winte r filled with mi nus-twenty degree wind chills. By February, I was so frozen stiff that I dem anded a vacation. I he aded to c elebrate Washington’s Birthday where my historian’s heart had always drea med of visiting – Williamsburg , home of George Washington, Thomas Jeff erson, and Patrick Henry. Land of impeccably restored eighteenth century architecture, peo pled by historical interp reters, and dotted with fine restaurants and good shops. Eve n better, surely it was far enough south to feel balmy, right? Well, we did st ep out of the car to fi nd mid-twenties temperatures during the day, swept across our faces by f orty mile-per-hour winds. We r eminded ourselves this was warmer than where we h ad left and s allied forth. In th e summer, Williamsburg’s stree ts swarm with tourists and historical interpreters shout at them like bark ers to catch their att...