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Showing posts from August, 2023

Precious Vacation Friendships

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Last month my family spent six beautiful days on vacation near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  Someday I'd like to take the kids to Charleston for its history, both important and terrible. Prior to the Civil War, Charleston (a 90-minute drive from Myrtle) was the capital of the slave-trade industry, with as many as 40 percent of all enslaved Africans arriving at the New World through its port. It's essential to me that my children learn the unvarnished truth about this darkness in our national history, so they can better understand America as a whole.  But not yet. At 7 and 10, they're still too young to understand and appreciate seeing the historical artifacts of slavery in person. Rather than being educational, I think Charleston's stories would be deeply upsetting to them. So we stuck to the greater Myrtle Beach area on this trip.    It's a two-day, 700-mile drive to get there, so by the time we arrived at the resort my children were eager to run, make lots of noi