Rejuvenated reboot!

It's been a strenuous cross-country move, but getting back to normal.

In May 2022, I optimistically wrote that it would only be a little while longer before I re-started this newsletter. Little could I know how difficult this move was to be. From containers the moving company forgot in Las Vegas, to finding places to put things in a much smaller home, it’s been … fun.

Seriously, it has been fun. Stressful, yes. Tiring, yes. Overwhelming, yes.

But also fun.

Some of my away-time has been spent roaming this area, figuring out back roads and reading a million historical markers. The Gettysburg campaign was fought here in July 1863 primarily because the CSA wanted to control this critical crossroads: Ten roads converge here, leading to DC, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and beyond. I’ve explored six of those ten roads, following dirt roads that veer off the two-lane highways that represented vital communication links in 19th century America.

The reason for Gettysburg had more to do with finances than history. At least at first. I loved the Valley Forge area where I’d lived around twenty years ago. It’s now out of my budget, as these days trains connect it to Center City (Philadelphia). New homes have sprouted everywhere, every one of them out of my price range and driving up cost of living.

Gettysburg has remained low-key. Homes are affordable, it’s a pleasant mix of rural peace and borough activities, plus home to a great small university.

It’s also home to President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I’ve now heard it read, spoken, narrated a couple dozen times since landing here in May 2022. That speech never fails to move me. It also perfectly defines our White Rose work - why we do what we do, and Why It Matters.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The students and adults of the White Rose lived in different times than President Lincoln. They lived in different times from our own.

Yet the words the president spoke here almost 160 years ago echo throughout our work, honoring those of the White Rose (and other resistance groups) who had the courage to say NO to an authoritarian tyrant, a tyrant who murdered and imprisoned millions simply for their ethnicitiy or faith or politics. Some of them gave their lives for their fight, while others spent years in prison. Some were disowned by their families and lost everything, even after the war.

All, however, left a great task for us, an unfinished work that they so nobly advanced. Whether they lived or died, they gave the last full measure of their devotion for the notion that liberty and justice matter, that we may not stand idly by while fellow citizens and strangers in our land are abused, misused, murdered.

So: We’re back! Still pictures to hang and odds and ends to manage. Focus is now shifting away from house to this work that has been front burner since 1994, even when W2’d full-time doing accounting.

Will post regularly going forward. As always, your feedback helps us grow and move in meaningful directions.

Let’s renew our conversation, let’s revitalize our work. Because there are still too many who live without the protection of liberty, or justice.

© 2023 Center for White Rose Studies